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:)

No6

ICT has got many advantages - that's a cliche. To say that the University is a union of people is also a cliche. The question is what is the relation between those two statements?

In the XXI Century we will, like it or not, rely more and more on technology. We will e-learn, e-work, e-meet, e-love, e-desire, e-fuck (e-provoke).

Let's get back in time to the year 1968 for a sec - Imagine the crowd of students demonstrating on the streets of Paris. Listen to what they shout, see the way they hug, hold their hands, sing, walk, fight the police. Revolution.

Now imagine them in the year 2010 - joining a protest group on facebook. Period.

You may say that they can meet in the real world. You may say that they may influence the authorities by signing an e-petition. But does it have the same meaning?

For me the Univeristy is not only a virtual union of people but also the place, the space of the buildings and parks around the university grounds that allows them to unite. The university is the place where I can listen to the students talks when I pass them by, a place where we meet in front of the coffe machine and a place where we (how ancient of me) ask each other to barrow a lighter in the smoking area.


Can one expect a revolution that can be 'shut down' from our eyes with few clicks to be more than superficial? It's way harder to turn your eyes away from the bricks. Still.


Not to be to bombastic let me finish with an example (not from the University but from the High School).

Being rebelious, resistant, nonnormative is essential for me in case of making the world a nicer place to live in.
Can you imagine this scene to happen online? It's the last episode of 1st season of the tv-series Popular. The story is that the teacher sends photos of one of the classes to all the places that they could go to during the "skip day" (last day of school) and informs the police of their planns. So as the only group they have to stay at school. Why they start to sing is yet another story...