Category Archives: Technology

Redefining Romeo and Juliet: Reclaiming the “Ghetto”

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Teaching ninth graders, the past month has been one centered around themes of conflict as my class analyzes Romeo and Juliet. Over this and a couple of future posts, I wanted to share some of the work my students and I have been engaging in. Essentially, the role of the seminal, ninth grade text, has shifted. No longer can students simply read and analyze Romeo and Juliet. Instead, it is not an option to include materials that exist outside of the original text; it is an imperative part of understanding the text. I’ll return to this idea after sharing some examples.

Utilizing the Flip Cams that Peter and I used for our What Son Productions course, the students will be recreating their own versions of scenes from the play. This is not an original or a very creative idea (more about that in a minute). What is interesting, though, is the process of reading Romeo and Juliet across different interpretations. As we read a scene, we may screen a scene from the 1996 Lurhmann interpretation as well as the 1968 Zeffirelli interpretation. We are then utilizing a 4×4 graphic organizer to note key differences between the original source, two films, and our own ideas of how the scene could be produced. These products are becoming the basis for a production log the students are creating as they note where one version may fall short – Tybalt being too aggressive to Romeo in the 1996 version before Mercutio becomes a “grave man,” for instance.

As I mentioned, the concept of asking students to recreate their own versions of scenes isn’t a very new one. In fact, as more and more students have easy access to tools of production – as these tools have become ubiquitous – it’s easy to see student work samples online. However, the vast, vast majority of these samples appear to be from overwhelmingly white communities. And these versions are taking significant liberties in their portrayal of urban reenactments of Romeo and Juliet.

Over the course of a week, I began each class by screening a 3-7 minute YouTube clip. I simply searched “Gangster Romeo and Juliet” and a deluge of student-created videos showed up showing “ghetto” versions of the play. [This was inspired by a conversation about developing this unit with my colleague Peter Carlson.]

This ghetto, however, is technically the community my students live and go to school in. This ghetto is stereotyped by white students in ways that at first issued guffaws. My students found the videos funny at first. However, after a couple of days, students said they felt “mocked.” They said that the videos didn’t show things correctly, were making fun of the community, and actually lacked textual understanding of Shakespeare’s words (several of the films, for instance, abbreviated Abraham’s name the same way that Luhrmann’s did).

Often times, these videos are posing these ghetto versions in lush, rural or suburban communities:

I want to underscore that I am not using these examples to criticize the students that have made them. However, when discussing them with students, we have noticed that there are not similar “ghetto” versions made by people of color. And if they are not creating them, essentially, an incorrect truth about what the ghetto is and how people act within it is being reified. My students shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they began thinking about the messages that a critical mass of lighthearted “ghetto” student clips are sending; these paired with YouTube clips of student fights are furthering stereotypes of student behavior and expectations.

As educators, our role is changing; the power of student production is a necessary tool for critical analysis. How can these tools break down existing assumptions?

As a class, my students are thinking about how they can create videos that respond critically to the samples they’ve seen, accurately reflect a nuanced understanding of their neighborhoods & worldviews, and express thematic interpretation of the canonical text. It is the necessary hard work I am excited about seeing develop in the next two weeks.

Again, as I said in the opening paragraph, the role of Romeo and Juliet is much more inclusive than simply the 92 pages of the Dover edition that my students have each been asked to purchase. The culture and understanding of the text is inclusive of a rich body of knowledge, assumptions, and continuing dialogue with the work through writing, acting, and recording. Social networking, new media, and a changing access to technology means that simply summarizing plot and theme is disregarding the other critical skills students need to learn in an English class.

Bored, Doodling, and Caught in the Act: How Livescribe Can Make You A More Exciting Educator

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After discussing research strategies with peers and doing some online ‘vestigating, I recently bought a Livescribe Echo.

Briefly, the Livescribe pen essentially records audio as you are taking notes. As simple as that sounds, what’s most valuable is that it plays back audio tied to exactly what you were writing at the time – instead of listening through an entire lecture or trying to queue up to a moment you remember, you can tap on a jotting, chart, or note and the audio from the moment you were writing will play. It’s intuitive and user friendly and not necessarily affordable for widespread consumption yet. (Here is a useful article that talks about Livescribe and its potential.)

Particularly due to the need to create robust fieldnotes based on in-class instruction for my dissertation, the ability to record and pinpoint audio moments in a classroom that are tied to my own (sloppy) handwritten jottings looks to be a valuable asset.

And while a couple of cursory Google searches yield interesting reading on the role that some are seeing Livescribe as a tool for ethnography, its challenges, and risks of deceit, I have been thinking about its potential as a tool for pedagogical feedback.

Last weekend, as I sat through a panel at the MLA convention, I momentarily spaced out and began absentmindedly doodling on the Livescribe notepad. Later, as I reviewed my notes and queued up the audio for relevant jottings I took during the recording, I glanced at the scribbles I made in the notepad’s margins. Because of the way the device works, I could listen to the exact moment that a speaker lost my interest.

While I can’t afford a class set of Livescribe pens for my students (and I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the best way to invest in technology for my classroom), it would be interesting to give an arbitrary student a Livescribe in class each day. By simply listening to the audio from anytime the student draws, sends a note to a classmate, or begins working on something for another class, teachers can quickly note when their lessons are less effective and they are not communicating in a way that is maintaining interest.

I am now amassing pages that are empirically showing when I become naturally bored in meetings and presentations. I can think more critically about my role as a participant or audience member and could conceivably provide feedback to others based on this. Now it’s time to equip my students with the same possibilities.

[One note about Livescribe: though they are relatively affordable, the paper that Livescribe pens write on is proprietary. You need to purchase specific notepads and printing out your own isn’t the easiest thing to do. It would be nice to be able to buy Livescribe printing paper to make handouts, printout essays and do audio peer-review. I plan to write to the company about this shortly.]

iDefer

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I was already jotting out notes in response to this article in the New York Times about iPads in the classroom, but Cathy Davidson’s response captures my sentiments.

I will say that the $1 million plus that my school is spending on laptops and smart-boards is a similar, if less trendy, example of utilizing new technology to reinforce archaic classroom structures. If we aren’t using the tools for new modes of learning, if we aren’t reinventing the classroom space and experience, we are subverting student potential with shiny gadgets. Just last week, Kanye inspired me to write about this exact problem:

Is it really the best we can do to simply duplicate textbooks and textbook practices when equipping students with iPads and mobile devices? Screen reduced to nothing more than digital page?

Cutting Down The Instructions and a Wilde Diversion

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So, I’m reading The Instructions. Only a handful of pages in and I’m excited about the journey this book is intending. I also like the feel of this book. Like other McSweeney’s publications, it’s a beautifully designed item.

Its physicality is the very argument against e-readers. At the same time, the book is staggeringly big:

With my laptop, notebook, and mishmash of teaching materials, it literally doesn’t fit in the bag I bring to work each day. This is, indeed, a compelling argument for e-readers (especially considering that an iPad is a typical component of my daily arsenal).

Did I mention that there is no digital copy of The Instructions? As much as it would make this situation much easier, I like that I have to hold the pages as Levin’s Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee intended.

So I bought another copy.

I bought a copy that was to be slaughtered for the greater reading good. It arrived a surprising, innocent white. And once again I was captured by the intense beauty of The Instructions as Object. I almost turned against my original blue copy until I noticed the strangely askew sticker placement on the back.

And the hacking began.

I first cut the book from its hardcover, and found suitable chapter ends with which to cut the book. Now in five digestible tomes, I can cart the book in fragments.

As I cut into the literary flesh I was reminded of El Gaviero who, in one of his earlier adventures – perhaps “The Snow of the Admiral” – also brought along only tattered fragments of greater books due to size and space. I also drew inspiration from the recent reading of Skippy Dies; the edition I read was spliced across three paperbacks housed in a handsome box, making it ever the easier book to transport. A similar appreciation was felt for the same version of 2666.

Finally, searching for the appropriate places in the text to sever text from text, to create neat piles of books, I scanned the top to see if cutting specific signatures of the book would be feasible. This did not meet my preference for separations at the end of chapters so didn’t pan out. However, I was reminded – in tracing this line of thinking – of a fragment of a literary anecdote: while doing an undergraduate fellowship at the Clarke Library, I was shown a book that was unique in the library not for its content than for its state of being. As one of the foremost collections of books by, from, or related to Oscar Wilde, the book in question (though its name is of course lost to the ineptitude of youthful obliviousness) was a gift from Wilde to his lover at the time. However, after receiving the book, Wilde’s companion rejected Wilde. The book, now owned by the Clarke Library is a treasure in that the top signatures of the book were never cut; the pages could not be opened without these being cut. The book is an artifact of a relationship run stale; Wilde’s gift nothing more than a weighty reminder of a past romance, nothing to be consumed or to even pretend to have opened.

But then comes the spinsterish head of academia: I believe a researcher expressed an interest in reading this particular copy of the Clarke’s collection. Does the library cut open the book for the needs of academia? Or preserve the book’s unrelinquished secrets in the spirit of historical veracity? Honestly, I don’t remember what decisions were made. The story itself comes as little more than a literary reverie.

A diversion, I realize, but one that brings me back to pure fascination of books in their dusty, hefty, and sometimes unwieldy physicality.

2010 in Music and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy

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I can’t say I would have anything entirely surprising in a top albums of 2010 list. You can tell when an album stays with you when your favorite song skips from one track to another until you-one moment-realize that you’ve had secret trysts with all of them; Lisbon and This is Happening both hold this distinction for me. Of these, Lisbon gets the slight edge over LCD Soundsystem if only for the stunning one two sucker punch of the closing tracks.

However, as much as these were my favorite releases, I feel that the year was one for Kanye. His album was justly heralded by critics and I think West and Co. masterfully marketed it in a way that educators should be paying close attention to.

For the greater part of 2010, Kanye West has been on my cultural radar. He’s done this deliberately and he’s done it in a way that’s made his presence, his performances, and his music something of a conversation with friends, students, and now—dear reader—with you.

By the time the album leaked, weeks before it’s official release, its music was anything but surprising – Kanye had already leaked the majority of the tracks as free downloads over the months – one song a week, featured others in a short film, and even given away the album’s bonus track. Deliberately, I was privy to Kanye’s thoughts, his music, and his oh-so-famous rants.

Musically, the album is an assemblage of the best of what Kanye has to offer without ever seeming like pastiche. The album’s two-track finale is the surprising highlight for me and I’m glad to see the playful exchange with Gil Scott-Heron that now continues across three albums.

Just as the album was finally released and the G.O.O.D. Friday series concluded, I finished reading New Literacies by Lankshear and Knobel. The book reinforced a bevy of literature I’d been reading through for my own research. Near the end, the authors discuss the internet proliferation of “memes” and what they can mean in terms of education.

Kanye’s every step in releasing the album, from ludicrous twitter messages to on-air blowups to banned album artwork meant that there was not a day that I couldn’t catch up with the latest in the Kanye-verse. In all of these Kanye has evolved the hip-hop mixtape to its proper 2.0 configuration: it is, too, an always-on amalgam of music, personality, and hype.

[Queue hip-hop for dummies paragraph:] The role of mixtapes is one that (as far as rap is concerned) dates back to the early days of hip-hop in the late ‘70s. Splicing together popular rap verses with unreleased hip-hop beats, mixtapes were underground commodities traded and sold by the aficionados within a somewhat exclusive subculture. Though it’s been years since mixtapes have actually been distributed as cassettes, the idea is still the same; otherwise unreleased or un-cleared samples are released non-commercially. Transitioning from tapes to CDs and now to direct Internet downloads, mixtapes have lately been co-opted by mainstream rappers to sustain interest between album releases. Lil’ Wayne, in particular, has benefited from a plethora of mix tape releases that have helped make him a popular rapper with both mainstream radio listeners and with online media consumers. No longer are mixtapes simply an extension of the listening experience for rap fans. Instead, they act as previews and major marketing ploys for rapper artists. Additionally, they may signal an artist’s credibility with rap fans.

But this is where the mixtape ends and Kanye deconstructs it; instead of the mishmash of 40-70 minutes of free music, Kanye slowly strings along track after track over months. Enticing the listener, responding and changing music as responses are blogged and status-updated. The silly mashup of unexpected artists that is typically reserved for mixtapes becomes a centerpiece for the album: indie darling Bon Iver’s lilting voice is paired earnestly with the hip-hop/club encounter on “Lost in the World”.

The pervasive nature of Kanye’s approach to marketing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is something educators can lift. How can we deconstruct classroom pedagogy to move beyond traditional application of emergent technologies? Is it really the best we can do to simply duplicate textbooks and textbook practices when equipping students with iPads and mobile devices? Screen reduced to nothing more than digital page? And what about the continuous nature of Kanye’s approach? His persistence and personality are what helped transfer knowledge, interest, and passion for his work. How can this 2.0 approach be adopted for classroom use?

Life Turned into a Database

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Information systems need to have information in order to run, but information underrepresents reality. Demand more from information than it can give, and you end up with monstrous designs. Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, for example, U.S. teachers are forced to choose between teaching general knowledge and “teaching to the test.” The best teachers are thus often disenfranchised by the improper use of educational information systems.

What computerized analysis of all the country’s school tests has done to education is exactly what Facebook has done to friendships. In both cases, life is turned into a database. Both degradations are based on the same philosophical mistake, which is the belief that computers presently represent human thought or human relationships. These are things computers cannot do.

– From Jaron Lanier’s manifesto, You Are Not A Gadget, a problematic text I’m still ruminating upon.

Thinking about Wabi-Sabi and Digital Youth Participation

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First he raked until the grounds were spotless. Then, in a gesture pregnant with wabi-sabi overtones, he shook a tree trunk, causing a few leaves to fall. Wabi-sabi, as evidenced here, is clean but never too clean or sterile. (from here)

Not a lot to add here, yet, other than the fact that I’m wondering if a pedagogy of wabi-sabi can be implemented in thinking spatially about classroom design and instruction.

[Somewhat related, I’m wondering if I can use a wabi sabi aethetic as an excuse to continue postponing the cleaning of my house. No? I guess you’re, right.]

AERA Slides, Papers, and Pep Talks (Oh My!)

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I’ve embedded my slides for my AERA presentation, “Can You Hear Me Now?: Student Voice in the Battle For Cell Phone Use in a Less Than Receptive School” below. I’ve reused some of these slides for various presentations at this point and I feel ready to retire most of this for something newer on the next go around.

I will make the paper that Rema Reynolds and I have authored for our presentation, “Hip-Hop ‘Hypocrisy’: New Teacher Perceptions of Critical Pedagogy and Student Experiences in ‘Critical’ Classrooms” available here soon.

Also, I wanted to share a couple of pep talks from the Council of Youth Research below. The first is from Manual Arts High School senior, Gaby Dominguez and the second from UCLA Education Professor Ernest Morrell. Enjoy.

Gaby Dominguez Gives A Pep Talk from Antero Garcia on Vimeo.

Ernest Morrell Speaks to the Council of Youth Research from Antero Garcia on Vimeo.

Game Play/Real Play & We Live In Public

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I wanted to share a couple of recent videos that I’ve been rewatching.

First, while I don’t agree with all of Jane McGonigal’s arguments, I’m genuinely excited by her recent TED talk. At this point, I am strongly aligned with the idea of connecting game play to real world change. You could do a lot worse than spend 20 minutes watching Margolis’ presentation.

I’ve been following Jane’s work since Greg Niemeyer showed me World Without Oil (A bit of trivia: Greg was also one of the members of Jane’s dissertation committee).  Her article, “Why I Love Bees” fits directly into my research on the Black Cloud. Similarly, Evoke seems like an interesting premise. And while I understand what she’s doing with her argument by contrasting the time youth spends playing video games with the time they spend in schools, I think this is where a lot of researchers are missing a big opportunity. As a field, we continue to look at the informal environments for game play and research. It’s easier to do so – a select group of interested individuals, less controlled curriculum, easier access issues, etc. However, think about how the power of game play for change could be compounded within formal learning environments. I’m working on developing material around this within my classroom, and expect game play to fit somewhat prominently into my dissertation. So if it sounds like I’m grandstanding or being a bit presumptuous here, it’s more personal throat-clearing than anything else.

Second, I just saw We Live in Public and found it to be an absolutely compelling and terrifying documentary. I’m not clear about what disqualified it for an Oscar nomination, but think it could have given The Cove a run for its money. The foundational arguments about privacy, surveillance and our culture’s relationship with the media are extemely prescient. As I continue to think about how student-generate media products will be created, shared, and assessed within my classroom, these are the topics I am concerned about. Ownership of data, of our lives, and of conceptions of propriety is in flux and the experiments that Josh Harris challenges us to face this fact.

His next project sounds equally as preposterous as past efforts, and I’m interested (if not extremely wary) about what will transpire if he gets the funding for this. Though I encourage you to watch his pitch below, I highly recommend seeking out and viewing We Live In Public for a better sense of context.