I guess the ranting tech-part of me felt obligated to point to this. I’m leaving it at that … for now. I am thinking through current acceptable use policies at school and their implications; this will be the final brick that will need to fall before pedagogy can be addressed.
And this is pretty much a solid read for any writer. A Visit From the Goon Squad is one of the best books I’ve read this year (the Pulitzer folks got this one right). The much-discussed “Powerpoint“ chapter is touching (and probably one of the few palatable uses of the clunky program). And this quote’s resonance on teaching implications is profound:
The desire to become a writer struck suddenly and without warning when she was a teenage backpacker in the early 1980s, traipsing across Europe, lonely and depressed, missing her family. This was the era of queuing for the public phone box: “There was a kind of intensity to the isolation of travel at that time that’s completely gone now. You had to wait in line at a phone place, and then there weren’t even answering machines. That feeling of waiting in line, paying for the phone and then not only having no one answer, but not being able to leave a message so that they would never know you called. It’s hard to fathom what that disconnection felt like. But I’m actually very grateful for it. Because it was extreme. And that kind of extreme isolation showed me that I wanted to be a writer.” [Hat tip to Ms. Hopper for pointing me toward both quote and profile.]
The human sense of isolation, loneliness, and disconnection as ascetic transformation is instantly recognizable and the kinds of feelings we strive (understandably) to avoid within formal learning spaces. However, apprenticeship/internship spaces to nurture, support and cultivate growth and occasional discomfort could be a useful area to think through educational reform.
I want to revisit a concept I began toying with in a post a few months back. In it, I reflected casually on the role of marketing and participatory media in the culmination of Kanye West’s release of My Dark Twisted Fantasy. I spoke broadly about the role that the mechanisms that musicians like Mr. West utilize to successfully launch an album’s release also have strong implications not only for what educators can do in a classroom, but–what I argue–they will have to do in order to maintain an equitable approach to teaching America’s youth.
In conferences, courses I am teaching, and occasionally on this blog, the statistic I’m regularly calling attention to (other than the continually frightening statistics related to the achievement gap) is the dwindling rate of college completion in the United States. It’s a large focus of the U.S. Department of Education’s Blueprint for Reform, and it meshes well with the books that have held me captive on a smattering of longish flights lately. And while policymakers and district officials continue to search for solutions to equip more students with the proficiencies needed to matriculate to and, eventually, graduate from four-year universities, I would posit that the skills to learn so are being represented by a sole College Dropout.
I hope to provide a handful of case studies (like Kanye) of the ways the tentacles of a Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy are creeping into mainstream culture, influencing how we interact, think, and make choices about how we engage with the world around us. These examples are not emerging on the fringes of popular culture. On the contrary, they are the essence of what is revealing itself as a participatory youth culture. Kanye’s album was a critical and commercial success. These are examples that are, for now, largely lacking in the kinds of instructional practices most teachers are utilizing in their classrooms. They are not themselves critical. On the contrary, they are capitalistic by nature and are seen in the marketing ploys of musicians, film companies, and general products.
Too often, we look at the realm of capitalism and disregard it wholesale; naw, that [person, product, event] ain’t down. And yet, while the content is a problematic perpetuation of marketing practices, the approaches themselves speak to the ways students are engaging, interacting, and approaching informal learning.
Approaching the challenging domain of capitalism with a lens of pragmatic optimism, I’m trying, here, to direct our attention toward the potential of participatory media as enacted by for-profit companies and think through ways these can be harnessed for wholesale social transformation.
All that being said, today, I want to talk about Wheat Thins.
With commercials that appear extremely low-fi, Wheat Thins crafted a marketing campaign that not only went viral, but encouraged participation and amplification of their brand. They did this by highlighting real individuals and real tweets:
And yes, Chris Macho is real (there’s a commercial where the Wheat Thins reps prove they are uber real). And yes, as a result of his awesomeness, he’s gotten a TON of people to follow him on Twitter:
Not only did thousands of people follow Wheat Thins, but the company got people to willingly engage in dialogue, share what they liked about the company and, essentially, advertise why Wheat Thins are an awesome snack, accessory, and guitar pick.
Wheat Thins essentially nudged a huge market to become mavens, salesmen, and connectors (to lift Gladwell’s labels**through Twitter; the incentive may be a sweepstakes-like gimmick (send a note about wheat thins, and you might end up on a commercial), but I can also reasonably imagine that the participants had fun feeling engaged in the marketing strategy. And considering that this campaign has been going on for months, it’s telling that people are still tweeting in hopes of their tweet being “heard” today:
Again, this isn’t a post pointing to a secret phenomenon – the ads are seen by millions, tweeted by thousands, and you’ve likely seen them before. They aren’t doing anything new either: companies respond to tweets, follow/like other information on social networks all the time, and produce DIY-style video for their products on a regular basis. In essence, companies mimic what young people regularly do on their own; they do what kids do when they are having fun hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.
As educators, how can we inform our pedagogy by Wheat Thins? Perhaps not the most astutely worded of education-related questions, but a necessary one nonetheless. The company has made participating in their ad campaign fun, silly, and sticky. Why can’t our classrooms leverage similar tools to get young people excited, in conversation, and networking globally around classroom content? I am not speaking about co-opting youth practices within a classroom. On the contrary, I am speaking about a large-scale effort to update the classroom into the kinds of networked ecologies that are utilized for interaction everywhere except for in schools.
A Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy is one that envelops students in opportunities to engage with extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. It allows youth to speak back to the content and see work in dialogue. It begins with youth interest and quickly amplifies key concepts that resonate within a classroom and well beyond. And while I can’t pinpoint a specific series of steps that can be taken to “update” one classroom after another, listening to young people, delving into previews for blockbusters, forcing yourself to spend sometime noticing commercial during primetime television (even if you hate American Idol and have sworn off MTV), are going to be the best signals for how young people’s attention is being drawn both outside of schools and–if you’re at all having the kinds of phone-use woes I’m hearing from many of my colleagues–in your classrooms.
A gimmick like Wheat Thins’ isn’t going to save our schools. It is, however, going to point towards ways we can work hand-in-hand with our students and communities to save our schools.
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*Twitter footnote: I was so proud of this tweet that I had to share it:
** Sorry, after teaching The Tipping Point a half dozen times to seniors, this is what happens.
So I guess the above map is about right. The location tracking for my phone only started when I switched to the iPhone 4, so the map above is indicative for a little less than a year at this point. Hey, check it out, you can see where I live:
Oh, if you haven’t heard, it was recently discovered that iPhone systems have been tracking where the phones have been and keeping a log on your computer. You can read more about this and see a visualization of your phone’s movement over here. [And since the map can be read down to street level, it is relatively easy to simply find the most frequently visited locations to deduce one’s residence, work place, hangouts, etc.]
If anything, the information here poses a couple of significant opportunities for us as educators. Several of my social studies colleagues were recently awarded a UCLA Teaching Initiated Inquiry Project grant to focus on GIS-related skills. How great could this kind of track data be to look at the movement patterns of youth in and around the city?
I can’t say I’m all that surprised that a log of where my phone has been is being maintained. Frankly, I wouldn’t even be surprised if I were to later find out that the information is being sent elsewhere – it would not be that different from targeted advertising in my Gmail or Facebook accounts. What’s important to realize here is that, once again, the notion of what we teach in terms of critical literacy is expanding. Not only do we need to teach students how to use new media tools but also to question and understand the implications of their use. The wording difference may be slight, but this is a significant change in what literacy development means.
In a sense, we are looking at a symbiotic relationship between a tool and its wielder; we rely on mobile media devices throughout the day for various functions and it too tracks and maintains a log of where and what we are doing.
Of course, the real problem is that this data becomes tied to individuals. Pinpointing migrant patterns of undocumented students, for instance, would be a serious concern. Likewise, after school locations of gang-affiliated students, congregation areas for truancy or just about any kind of published data about where someone is if they don’t wish that information to be known is a real concern. Put even more clearly, the FAQ on the iPhone Tracker site states:
The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine. Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it.
The more fundamental problem is that Apple are collecting this information at all. Cell-phone providers collect similar data almost inevitably as part of their operations, but it’s kept behind their firewall. It normally requires a court order to gain access to it, whereas this is available to anyone who can get their hands on your phone or computer.
By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements.
Literacy development today includes understanding the rights we sacrifice in stepping into the realm of participatory media. Cognizance of how search is being manipulated, of how we are being marketed to on Facebook, and of how your movements are being tracked are all new skills that need to be developed within students today. If we are serious about thinking beyond the work of New London, I am arguing here that literacy development is going to be about the underlying symmetry of use and cognizance when interacting with cloud-connected tools.
I’ve started blogging for DML Central. My first post went up yesterday and you can read it here.
If anything, the material I write for the DML Central blog will extend ideas I’ve been fulminating over here over the past couple of years (if you are at all an occasional peruser of The American Crawl, you won’t be too surprised by the concepts I write over there).
My first post really focuses on the need for DML related pedagogy and innovation to occur within classrooms and formal learning environments. As I think more about this, I would argue that what DML faces is a charter selection problem.
I’ll expand on this in the coming weeks, here, and hope to use this space to act as a scratchboard for ideas for future posts. (I’ll only be blogging monthly or so over at DML, so if you have suggestions for things you’d like voiced or represented, please drop me a line.
I’m honored to have an article I wrote a couple of years ago, “Rethinking MySpace,” republished in the newest book by the Rethinking Schools group, Rethinking Popular Culture and Media.
In terms of publications related to teaching practice, Rethinking Schools is basically the only periodical I consistently read, and I want to encourage any teacher to read and support this work. Rethinking Schools is put together by full time teachers who do this out of a commitment to social justice teaching; as much as I am proud to count myself as a contributor to the magazine, I can say with utmost confidence that I’d still be reading, subscribing, and recommending Rethinking Schools’ materials regardless of if I had written for them.
Now, I realize it is 2011 and I’m now in the position of promoting an article about MySpace. Like Friendster, MySpace has pretty much come and gone. [A good read related to the downfall of MySpace can be found here.]
Talking with students recently, several admitted that they still have an account there, but that for the most part they are almost entirely interacting with peers on Facebook. [This is significantly recent shift that I want to explore further in future posts. Less than a year ago, I would talk to students about Facebook and it was still not considered “cool” or accepted by youth. This was pretty much still the norm.]
In any case, regardless of which corporate entity students are adopting for their social networking, participatory media has directly changed the way students communicate, socialize, learn. The practices I describe in “Rethinking MySpace” are far from obsolete and the challenges we educators face are becoming more complex.
Critically, we need to recognize that many people (not just students) are engaging with new media tools without questioning the structures that are in place: How are companies making money off of my decisions in a space like Facebook? How is this money being used? What capitalist ideologies do I reify each time I “like” a friend’s status update, retweet, or respond to a colleague’s request on a network like academia.edu?
The literacy skills we instill in students need to include not only how to interact with the new tools that have emerged over the past few years, but also a recognition to understand the implications of using these tools.
In upcoming posts, I want to expand on ideas I began with in “Rethinking MySpace,” question how social networking practices have transformed my practice, and explore what is happening in larger conversations about privacy and social networking. In the meantime, please support Rethinking Schools (and their sister site Not Waiting For Superman).
After a couple of days to recover, I wanted to share a few thoughts on another AERA conference. Though they do not represent everything I saw within the conference, I think they speak directly to what needs to be improved.
Lack of twitter
While I didn’t expect a twitter feed as lively as #dml2011, I was disappointed by the lack of engagement with the not-so-new medium. With nearly 15,000 people and the usual phone-book sized directory of sessions, Twitter is an ideal way to personalize the conference experience, engage in networking, and collaborate. Competing hashtags, a lack of free wifi & spotty service in the main hotels, and a limited number of tweeters made the conference generally disappointing in terms of social networking. One person tallied roughly 20-25 attendees (total) were contributing tweets from the conference.
And having a mobile app that does little more than act as a clunkier version of a directory doesn’t bring AERA any closer to connecting to a “social imagination.”
The problem with CHAT
The problem with CHAT isn’t really a CHAT problem at all. Instead, it is much more a problem of depersonalization and decontextualization of the research at AERA. I described AERA to several people as a giant five-day show-and-tell. While there is meaningful research being contributed, what happens as a result of AERA? More directly: we have 15,000 experts in the same place, at the same time, and all largely wanting to engage in conversations about education; why can’t AERA be productive, active, and responsive?
And so, I found myself participating in a working group that largely revolved around discussing CHAT-related sessions at the conference. Don’t get me wrong, when I understand CHAT, I find it really interesting. I’ve described it this way to a friend recently: “CHAT is a theory about everything and nothing. It’s kind of like the Seinfeld of learning theory.” In any case, geometry has never been my strong suit, and a conversation about CHAT eventually devolves into a conversation about triangles (literally). I couldn’t help but feel the tension of having flown across the country to engage in dialogue with the best of academic researchers only to have this be a conversation about triangles.
[btw, I’m amazed there is no wikipedia entry for CHAT … get some grad student to get on that!]
The “It’s so nice” syndrome
I spent a healthy portion of my time with the UCLA IDEA Council of Youth Research. I can say that they were the true highlight of the conference, representing both cutting edge research and calling those that saw their work to enact change.
However, I heard several conversations throughout the conference that described the research of teachers and students in ways that was tokenizing. Specifically, a conference attendee described hearing students talk in ways that matched current researcher rhetoric. The students were described glowingly and the attendee said it was “so nice” to hear these students speaking so clearly. I’ve been on the side of the discussed students before as well; teachers presenting and interacting at AERA fare little better than students. While the Council argues for students and teacher to be engaged in the process of research, we are still more subject than peer at AERA. It is difficult to imagine a research community that will treat practitioners and youth as legitimate partners if their experiences and voices are not more fully developed within the conference. I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted about this when reflecting on past AERA conferences as well.
Monday morning had one of the best sessions of the entire conference: four different youth-oriented research groups from across the country presented their findings. It was powerful and meaningful work and it was all voiced by high school students and teachers. Of course, it was the only session like this and a morning sessions towards the end of a conference (in New Orleans of all places) didn’t yield record crowds. Yes, it’s a step forward for AERA to have sessions with students, but with this sliver of a door open, it’s time to budge open full swing. How about, instead of a single, round-table session where students are literally competing for audience members, we make this a regular part of the conference. What if sessions had students and teachers as discussants? Or are we not as concerned about relevance when it comes to our work? Summarizing a question Ernest Morrell asked at the end of a session on Saturday, what’s going to be more important at the end of the day: directly interacting in research with teachers and students to improve education, or getting another citation in a peer reviewed journal?
The future and beyond
A non-Council of Youth Research highlight for me was seeing the members of the New London Group discuss what is in store “Beyond New London.” While the academic Lollapalooza was fun, at the end of the day, it left me curious about what’s next. When actually addressing what is “Beyond” in terms of the future of literacies, the group did little more than shrug. Likewise, the working group I was involved in, “Intervening for the Future,” while a useful group for intellectual conversation, puttered more with the concept of intentional intervention; should we or shouldn’t we? Not that I’m thrilled with a book like this, but I do wish AERA had a bit more forward-thinking, on-the-ground engagement at this year’s conference. I do see the research of my colleagues and I as moving beyond New London “stuff,” and the Council provides me with a sense of optimism and possibility for the future, but these are tangential groups and not all mainstream practices within AERA.
Finishing up my packing for AERA. I’ll be wandering around the convention and the French Quarter, so if you’re in town, send me a tweet.
I’ll be speaking at a couple of sessions related to the Council of Youth Research. You won’t want to miss the kids speaking at the sessions on the poster below:
I’ve been playing around with the AERA mobile application. I appreciate the step forward. It takes a while to load:
There are way too many speakers to make the name and sessions searching very efficient. If anything, I think an app like this misses the social component that I’m expecting from a convention like this. #dml2011 was a huge resource during the Digital Media and Learning conference; I suspect those that weren’t on twitter missed a substantive amount of that conference. Likewise, AERA is trying to move to wireless devices, but lacks the social engagement that would have been easy to embed in the application. Compared to an incredibly smaller sized conference like DML, AERA’s twitter presence is pretty subdued…
AERA President-elect Bill Tierney has some suggestions on weaving through the waves of AERA and is also looking for feedback to improve the conference.
On Friday, I will be doing an afternoon Ignite talk. I will be elaborating on learning implications related to this post.
On Saturday, I will be part of a panel called, “DML Competition Winners and Race to the Top: Adopting Participatory Learning in Schools.” I’ll be sharing updates on the Black Cloud, and educational policy impacts on digital media.
If you’re at the conference, please send me a note so we can meet in person.
Hasbro, I want to tell you something: I grew up playing Monopoly with ever-evolving house rules that varied everything from the value of dice roles, to jail-breaking bribery, to lucrative Free Parking.
I’d imagine many educators would point to a concern about elementary math skills lost without the transaction of paper money. However, I think the main problem with this proposal is the lack to augment, challenge and reinvent when all of the rules and arbiters of those rules are hidden inside a speaking, electronic box.
Part of what is so important about the value of games is the way they make us challenge traditional thinking. Passing go, for instance, would be a relatively easy task without the rules that you must move in one direction and only on legitimate squares. Gambits of investing in trains, calculating income tax, and desperate negotiations to complete monopolies are part of the social interaction of playing games.
And while the importance of socialization of games is addressed, the value of “cheating” is just as important. Cheating – changing rules and exploring more creatively how to problem solve within a gaming environment are just as valid in learning to play, compete, and evaluate the structures of power placed within a game.
Games like Little Big Planet, level editors for popular first person shooters, and avid affinity spaces online for gaming strategy, guilds and lore are all extensions of why the creepy tower in the middle of the Monopoly tower thwarts creativity, fun, learning. Ultimately, limiting one’s freedom in authoring gaming components within Monopoly will reduce the success of garnering a newer, “digital” audience and transferring videogame components to board games.
This New York Times article about search is fascinating. As much as I found the general peek into the power of a company like Google insightful, I think the article points to long-term implications for educators.
As we continue to think about the productive world that our teens are engaging within, how students navigate online, how students question the content they seek, produce, or encounter, and how students promote or validate sources is going to become a crucial part of their critical literacy development.
While traditional critical literacy and even critical media literacy engage in evaluating the power structures underlying authorship and production, this literacy is expanding to include how this information is found, suppressed, promoted. “White hat” and “black hat” optimization (whether knowingly or unknowingly as J.C. Penny claim in the article) are part of the components of critical literacy that educators could not have foreseen.
More than simply teaching students how to use critically the tools of search that are available (from Google to library catalogs to online databases like ERIC and DataQuest), we will need to engage in an inquiry into how results are yielded, how to parse metadata, and to question the programming structures at hand. Program or be programmed indeed. Perhaps educators should be demanding a large place at the table at this summit?
Time for a new course of study. If you haven’t read the article yet, please take a look.
