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I'm sorry to disappoint you, Iron Man fans.
Related to country: France

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Ever since the movie "Iron Man" opened, the popularity of this picture I took last summer in France has ballooned, thanks to people who are searching Google and Flickr for images with the keywords "iron" and "man" and "mask."

Apologies to the fans. I know it's not what you were looking for. But if it's any consolation, this was awesomely hilarious to see on the chateau tour.

the man in the iron mask

May 8, 2008 | 3:38 PM Comments  2 comments



Johnson/Jenkins SXSW Keynote
Related to country: United States

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I'm finally getting my notes from SXSW posted. I took a lot of them, and came home and promptly got really sick. But they will all appear here in good time.

Jenkins keynote

The opening keynote on Saturday was a conversation between Steven Johnson (author of Everything Bad is Good for You) and Henry Jenkins (professor at MIT, Comparative Media Studies Program). As a chronic conference-goer, I find myself hearing the same people keynoting over and over again, saying the same things over and over, and often saying essentially the same things as one another. It was refreshing that, despite having read the work of both speakers, and having heard each speak at other events, I actually learned some new things and had a chance to rethink some previous ideas.

That said, there were some points I was glad to hear repeated, since the audience at SXSW is not dominated by educators. We need people in other sectors to rally behind the need for empirical evidence and educational assessment models that support new media literacies, and to challenge the current reality that schools measure autonomous, not collective, learning. Also:
-high school students are one of the most highly underestimated groups online, but the challenge is – can we free young people up to write about what’s happening in their community? (not punish them, censor them, restrict their first amendment rights)
How do we give students the tools to use the time, creativity, and idealism they have, so they can be active community participants?

-if 50-60% of young people are creating content online, what is causing the other 40% not to create? Social, cultural, and economic disempowerment? Lack of ethical guidance from adult mentors?

-if America is failing in the world, it’s because workplaces and schools are failing to empower workers and students to realize their full potential – they start with the premise that we’re all idiots, not that we are all knowledgeable with expertise and creativity to share.

On politics, Jenkins made some interesting points about Obama’s “yes we can” as a metaphor for new kinds of social/civic engagement, by using language that describes a process of participation, collecting knowledge and distributing it to make change. He also argues that the criticism of Obama borrowing pieces of a speech from Deval Patrick holds less water if you look at it through the new lens of collective learning, knowledge, and participation. And, we should be asking what a culture of democracy truly looks like.

Other thought provoking ideas:
-the deep level of fan/consumer engagement with tv shows like Lost and The Wire, and the pop culture communities that have grown up around them, often come out of people not having enough intellectual and creative stimulation in the workplace.

-thinking about collective intelligence as Surowiecki’s “wisdom of crowds” (pooling knowledge and averaging out an answer) vs. the deliberative sharing of knowledge from different points of view and reaching a consensus (dependent on individual expertise, diversity of the community, and respect for all perspectives brought to the table). Jenkins aligned these approaches with YouTube (what moves up is the dominant/majority/popular perspective) vs. Wikipedia (a space with mechanisms for inclusion of diverse perspectives).

-it’s important to question the usage of the language of addiction related to online activity and gaming (many “addicts” are actually depressed and the addiction is manifesting itself through gaming; also Chinese gov’t using “addiction” as reason to restrict young people’s access to the internet)

-progressives need to have a context for where progress is coming from in order to encourage the movement to continue growing (this sounds like what Chris Lehman often says about the current technology in education movement)

Cool sites they mentioned:
- Harry Potter Alliance– global network of young people trying to change the world, inspired by Harry Potter as a young person who transformed his world:

- Outside.In – Johnson’s project, building out geographic infrastructure of the web and fostering people using the internet for very local community participation. Their about-to-launch tool is On My Radar (“like a geo-twitter,” commented Kate). Speaks to a need for civic media tools for local experts to participate and share knowledge without having to go through traditional media structures to communicate

Finally, some dissertation-ey thoughts about new media literacies. Because of YMEX I’ve had Jenkins’ framework on the brain for quite a while, but one component I would like to spend more time unpacking – is where these new media literacies intersect with the sociolinguistic concept of codeswitching. If young people are developing the ability to learn and access information across a range of modalities (what Jenkins calls transmedia navigation), can it also be argued that they are learning to communicate in a range of linguistic codes that these new media require? How well do they codeswitch between the linguistic norms of each – from text messaging to online social networking sites to the f2f classroom, etc.? How might educators interact better with their students if they understood their ways of communicating through the lens of codeswitching? I’ve been thinking particularly about how Ben Rampton’s work on codeswitching and youth could be applied…

And, apparently not everyone at SXSW was hearing repeat speakers. As I walked out, I heard a guy behind me say to his friend, “It was cool, but I didn’t know who he was exactly…I thought it was Henry James.”

Right.

March 25, 2008 | 3:03 PM Comments  1 comments



the world for which we prepare students
Related to country: United States


those of us who endlessly debate and define the future of education and the skills that students will need in the 21st century...we express concern about how students will fare in the global economy, how they will face the challenges of the future, whether they will have the literacies needed to manuever this new information society. But we rarely, if ever, talk about how to prepare students to address the challenges of violence and be part of building a culture of peace. And all too often, we try to isolate students from the world into which we will send them and protect them within the "reality" inside the four walls of a school, which often are not really safe at all.

What are we doing to make schools safe places where the learning process is not disrupted by violence, whether routine or unfathomable? Why do we continue to fail to equip students with the ability to understand the reality of violence and the skills to transform conflict? What changes can we make, and what new skills and values can we teach, to make our students both problem-solvers and peacemakers?

Tonight, more than usual, i'm falling short on answers and trying to just live the questions.

April 16, 2007 | 10:21 PM Comments  0 comments

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This Week in Washington
Related to country: United States


Buried beneath the "news from Washington" about presidential hopefuls, the future of the Iraq War, and the Scooter Libby trial, is the perpetually unbelievable (truthfully, all too believable) state of DC Public Schools. Here are excerpts from a high school student who attends one of the several schools that have gone without heat this past week:

"Things have been crazy since last Monday when we had to leave our school because of flooding and loss of heat....Last Thursday, we were so cold that the principal put us in the library, and we kept warm by opening the curtains and letting the sun warm us up. Students and teachers kept their jackets on the whole day....We were shoved into classes with students that we had never seen and without our regular teachers. We also did not have any textbooks or supplies. The teachers were doing their best to teach us, but most of us were not learning anything in these classes."

To read more student voices from this ridiculous situation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/14/AR2007021400645_3.html


And, what they lack in heat DC schools apparently make up for in lead:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/14/AR2007021401678.html

February 15, 2007 | 9:18 PM Comments  0 comments

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