blogging about .edu stuff
Archive for trends
October 7, 2007 at 9:24 am · Filed under TheWeb, trends
I had heard about lifecasting earlier this year. It’s getting more popular as this article in the LA Times shows. Strap a webcam to yourself a cast your life.
I never got into reality shows. And since I have a Second Life, my TV’s been in the shed out back. I can watch Desperate Housewives online.
I like these kinds of trends because at their core they redistribute discourses. The argument is of course that most peoples’ lives are not “entertaining,” and that there will always be a desire for “high quality” entertainment. From the industry’s point of view, that’s a point. From my point of view, TV on the whole is not high quality entertainment.
Looking at trends likes these is more about looking at life in 10-20 years. TV viewing is already the domain of primarily BabyBoomers.
Let’s wait and see.
July 6, 2007 at 2:04 pm · Filed under schools, trends
Stephen Downs and other edubloggers noted this tidbit in the UK:
“Knowsley Council in Merseyside, which – for years – has languished near or at the bottom of exam league tables, has abolished the use of the word to describe secondary education in the borough.
It is taking the dramatic step of closing all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009. As part of a £150m government-backed rebuilding programme, they will reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, learning centres with the aid of Microsoft – which has already developed links with one school in the borough, Bowring.
Read the article in the Independent.
Like those blogging about this, I welcome the departure. The rationale makes sense: students aren’t learning.
May 28, 2007 at 8:39 pm · Filed under jobs, trends
When I think ahead in terms of what students could do after college I’m perplexed. On the one hand I believe in the value of liberal education; on the other I remember working at Jimbos in the 80s, managing the deli and looking over applications from college graduates, wondering why they wanted to make sandwiches for $5 an hour. Envisioning what one could do in life with a degree in psychology or communication has never been easy. It’s why I left school after an associates in the early 80s. I knew a degree didn’t secure anything I was interested in, like music. It’s of course very different now. I don’t hesitate saying that the world is very different, more competitive and without a foundation, it’s difficult.
This article is interesting in that it sheds some light on the changing landscape of work. It helps us as educators connect students with what’s next. I think it might be part of liberal education after all, helping students envision connect what they’re doing in college with what they could be doing as a result of their education. There are so many “jobs” that require a composite of skills, like the ones illustrated in this article about Nokia.
Read more
March 2, 2007 at 7:24 am · Filed under TheWeb, trends
on the internet. How’s it shaping up? Where’s it going? If connectivity and the social webare what’s been said they are, and as the podcast suggests, globalization has only just begun, the distance horizon might look very different. The web is presently dominated by American culture socially, technically and politically. Cornel West would argue that good innovations are adopted by other cultures, (his is a teleological argument), simply because they are good. Dominant groups’ technologies are dominant for a complex of reasons. According to his historical world, no culture remains untouched by others. Those with the capacity to adopt good innovations and adapt them to their needs, are often those which survive.
West doesn’t seem to think that domination/oppression is problematic.
Foucault’s argument begins with questioning West’s orientation to rendering history in terms of Darwinian and capitalist notions (turned truths) of progress. To disrupt these discourses and question these notions turned truths, has not only been Foucault’s project, but that of critical theorists over the last four decades.
I’m working out Foucault’s ideas; they seem to make sense. They seem to be the subtext or the essence of conversations I come across.
This podcast was aired in June, 2006.
February 13, 2007 at 12:49 am · Filed under Online communities, TheWeb, trends, web2.0
I think I blogged about this paper on participatory culture earlier. And I just commented on a discussion about crud and not crud. From an equity, social justice standpoint, yes I want everyone to participate, create, feel empowered. And I’m concerned about the gap in participation.
But from a philosophical, political and educative point of reference, it seems to be just another episode in the American Dream show of celebrity and spectacle. Anyone who has achieved anything has had to buy into the notion of quality, of good, better, best and crud. Dewey, Delpit, Socrates all advance both participation and expertise.
I don’t have a problem with crud, as long as I’m allowed to call it that without being ostracized as an elitist. I’m certain there were artists as brilliant as Picasso at the time, who..well…didn’t get a break. I should be able to feel ethical about appreciating expertise, particularly because I do articulate an understanding of how sociocultural context allows certain kinds of expertise over others. Naming crud has to be a part of that discourse, otherwise I’ve abandoned it.
February 12, 2007 at 10:26 pm · Filed under coolstuff, trends, web2.0
I just tried out
http://zoho.com/, a web-based office suite with added features like a notebook where you can drag and drop text, pictures, videos all in one interface.
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us at YouTube is a fascinating digital ethnography.
A demo of an “interface free” computer.
January 21, 2007 at 7:49 pm · Filed under Gender, TheWeb, education, educational technology, equity issues, trends
I was glad to participate in this conversation with others who question the whole digital natives/immigrants, net geners “movement.” Of course many are off to the ELI annual meeting where this movement seems to generate its ideas.
Being relatively new to academic discourse from the inside, I’m wondering if this is the way it goes. There’s popular culture that may or may not be grounded in rigorous investigation, but nobody seems to mind. We all jump on the bandwagon, cause it’s there, the D.J.’s good and the celebrities show up.
As was pointed out in this conversation, where’s the discussion of class, SES, ethnicity and I’ll add gender? It’s painfully obvious, (to me anyway) that this talk is coming from predominantly white male voices. The circling conversations as well. I think I might have posted this white paper before,
Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, which gets at the issue from a different angle, defining and categorizing via activities and use.
October 28, 2006 at 10:49 pm · Filed under Gender, Politics, trends, women
A sticky topic. Doubtless, I’m suspicious of the ideology behind the decision.
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October 26, 2006 at 6:55 pm · Filed under educational technology, learning, trends, ways of knowing
I was recently at a webinar about a next generation learning environment, epsilen.com. I’m always excited about the potential of next generation ideas, the built-stuff that follows them is usually disappointing.
Learning objects sounded like it had potential in 2002 when I first started looking into it. When SCORM hit the pavement running, I became uninterested, not only because the US Department of Defense created the standard, but that no one seemed to mind. I still like the idea of learning objects; I don’t think they’ll be used by most instructors in higher ed, at least not in the near future. The term is too hyper-modern, the notion too abstract for most faculty.
The same is true of the term and notion of an intelligent agent.
By and large, I ignore the intellience in Amazon. And I recently noticed the intelligence in emusic; I’ve already started ignoring it too. I may actually see if I can disable it; I spend enough time there to justify the effort.
Intelligent agents are one of those cool ideas. The ones I’m aware of, like the Paperclip in Word, Amazon and eMusic-like vendors who remember what you’ve done, are more annoying than not. They get in the way of my experience. They structure; they categorize; they further dehumanize by acting as if they “personalize” an already impersonal experience.
Vendors are about commerce and there are rules of commerce. Since I don’t follow them for the most part, the agents don’t work.
I use help menus extensively now and have acquired a certain intelligence about them. If I’m stuck, it’s often because I don’t have the language to find the answer. The paperclip can’t give it to me either.
The missing links of intelligent agency are linguistically and contextually bound, utterances and contexts are infinitely unique and profoundly human.
August 27, 2006 at 10:12 am · Filed under learning, trends, ways of knowing
“Pay as your throw”, that is, charging households for disposing of non-recyclable waste is what the Brits are currently discussing.
Julie Hill of the Green Alliance was quoted “… I think that’s a much more rewarding way of going about it than say, for instance, compulsory recycling and the threat of penalties.”
But is it? The chain of production, consumption and waste is complex and can’t be successfully addressed in its last links, so to say.
In Rubbish 101, we learn about the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Changing habits of reducing and reusing results in overall less rubbish, recyclable and not, and from a behavorist perspective that might be all that’s needed to improve the situation. Is that enough?
How deep into the subject does the average household need to go to be informed enough? How much do we need to know and who decides? Seatbelt wearing became compulsory; cigarette smoking will eventually be outlawed in most public places. Most of us know relatively little about either, but we know enough to decide what we’ll do and for the most part, why.
Interestingly, many people still smoke, knowing what we do about it, suggesting perhaps that simply knowing or being informed isn’t enough to learn. There must be other ways of knowing–socially, emotionally, intellectually conjoined knowing, to effect some change in behavior. There’s also evidence suggesting that one’s beliefs play a significant role in one’s understanding.
For example, many people, including me, incorrectly think that as we back away from a mirror in which we can only see our upper torso, we see more and more of ourselves. Even after the fallacy was illustrated in an experiment, I still went back to my office, to prove it to myself with my little mirror. I did not want to or could not believe it. Why?
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