No 9. Information Society - implications for education and socialization (talking bout' a revolution)

Oh yes, the revolution... Digital, Virutal, Communist, Insurections, Liberté, égalité, fraternité... The first, the second, the new, the frontier...

In the texts provided by the course everything seems very nice (it is the goal of every revolution to makes thinks nice after all). However (IMHO), the aspect that is not stressed enough is the resistance towards the change.

You think I'm talking about the teachers? About their lack of motivation and getting stucked to "old way"... Well no...


I mean the students. OK, after their parents go to work, they are brougt up by Uncle Google and taken care of by Aunt Mozzilla or cousin Explorer but does it mean that they are keen on the new media in school?


Last semester I conducted a course in "Methodology of self-study". I didn't want my students to prepare a text for their finall project or a PowerPoint presentation. The first would collect dust in the archive, the second would be burried on a CD. I wanted them to prepare a short movie related to the subjects covered by the course and post it on youtube. The goal was to prepare something that would be usefull for a person who looks for materials about the human brain, fast learning techniques etc... Edutainment please....


I was shocked when a big group of students said that they would preffer THE OLD WAY. The Folk said no to the revolution - bring back the emperor, away with the parlament.
Maybe it was very autorative of me (yeah it was) but having the power I decided to enlighten them (narcissism on my side right) and bring them happiness even against their will (talking bout a revolution).

When the time for the submission of their projects came, I made quite a revolutionary (i like that word today) discovery. The students who durring the class were rather lame made really nice movies - vivid, amusing, interesting. But the ones who were always prepared, read the texts made movies that were more of a lecture than a movie.
As in every revolution, the ones who were on the top of the ladder before have some hard time adjusting to the new situation. The ones who were already ahead are ok.

But what are you going to do when it comes to giving grades? Punish those oldfashioned? Give them some time to adjust?
As every revolution before, the revolution brought to the Education by ICT will need some time to become the regular way. What will happen next? Will it be remembered as the revolution of 1989 in Poland? that brought us to the times of democracy? Or maybe like the Revolution in Russia, that despite nice slogans brought only terror? Or maybe it will be the French way? Great ideas and let's celebrate it despite the quite a big number of cut heads on the way?


Here are two movies that I really liked, both given the maximum grade... Sorry guys they are both in Polish... However the first one doesn't have to many text and it's about the difference in being in High School and at the University. The second one is on the brain (quite a nice thing). Mind you, how different they are in techniques. The first one is well made, the second one was recorded with a mobile phone camera pointed at a PP presentation). Enjoy and feel free to comment:

No8 (Education, new media and the concept of a stage)

If University is a stage than I would like to be a comic relief...

Like Wittgenstein said: "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."

But seriously ("where's the booze"):

In the concept of the stage I'm an actor, my students are the audience.

Ach ja oder nicht nicht?

In the concept of the stage my students are actors, I'm the audience.

Ach ja oder nicht nicht?

Both true to my opinion. I try to start with a stand up comedy, do a bit of drama and than encourage them to improvise on their own. Let's call it a performance:)

Sometimes my script is well written, sometimes I just have some basic goals and try to see what comes, what the audience likes... I try to create myself and to influence their parts.

Sometimes the audience plays their parts too. The are well known ones like: Cute Idiot (who in fact is smart as hell but knows that being soooo cute should bring profits), the Rebel (OK so I am here but do not think for a second that I'm going to enjoy a single minute at the University), the Nerd (oh please stop trying to be amusing and give me some reading), the Fool-Challenger (Let's see who's smarter and more funny) and so on...

If me and them are the audience and acotrs, the classroom is the stage then what is new media?

IMHO we could compare it to FX, visual effects, blue(green)screen. Such an act would allow us to see further analogies:


FX/New Media
- do not carry any meaning on their own
- can make a movie/class more attractive
- can be used too often and make the message superficial
- are not essential for a good movie/class

We all know classic and even quite new movies which are shocking although the effects are not used (e.g. I was terrified while watching Blair Witch Project) on the other hand we have movies like 2012 which would unbearable without new technology... Same is with classes/education.

Maybe education should follow the path of Avatar? Take some basic message the one that so many people have seen in Pocahontas and other pop-culture pieces, give it some bells and whistles and enjoy the praises. Maybe the new generation would find it revolutionary?

Technological determinism? The young ones are not able to focus if something is not NEW SPARKLY FLASHY?

Should we put Freud's theories into youtube movies and Aristotle's ethics to flash games?

Should we be shocked to do so?


I always considered myself to be pragmatic:)

No7

Beata asked me what do I think about this lecture:



The truth is... I love it!

It requires your attention for the entire 10 minutes. One may say that it's only 10 minutes. True... we could make quite a decent piece of academic 90minutes-borring-to-death-lecture out of it... The topic itself would not allowed it to be borring? One of my friends gave a 1,5h presentation on the sexual liberty in 18th Century France with some explicit picutres... I almost felt asleep...

The problem is in my opinion that many great scholars and scientist are poor teachers. Changing a lecture to a multimedia powerpoint presentantion will not profit to greater attention of the students without teaching the teachers how to teach. The sharpest sword is just a big kitchen knife in a hands of a Stepford Wife...

And honestly, can you imagine the "when I was a student" professor to show a cartoon during his class? He is a scholar (behave yourself young man)!

I consider myself to be already a part of that "FLASH" generation which attention span is to be compared with a gold fish... We need stimuli, sensetions more and more (and more and more)...

Just like "I could eat an entire Galaxy" Jean "Phoenix" Grey...