You’re Never Alone in Second Life

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A glimpse into the world of the N-Gen’s texts seems to indicate that these learners have grown up doing the very things that traditional pedagogy discourages. When viewed in this context, the N-Gen student may appear deficient, lacking the skills necessary to succeed in the academic world. Texts that do not look like books or essays and that are structured in unfamiliar ways may leave educators with the perception that the authors of these texts lack necessary literacy skills. Are these students missing something, or are they coming to us with skills as researchers, readers, writers, and critical thinkers that have been developed in a context that faculty members may not understand and appreciate? The striking differences between the linear, print-based texts of instructors and the interactive, fluctuating, hyperlinked texts of the N-Gen student may keep instructors from fully appreciating the thought processes behind these texts. Learning how to teach the wired student requires a two-pronged effort: to understand how N-Gen student understand and process texts and to create a pedagogy that leverages the learning skills of this type of learner.

Innovate: Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read: Understanding the Net Generation’s Texts -Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley, Innovate, August/September, 2008.

This is one of those solid, common-sense articles that appear now and again, reminding teachers that their students are different and pedagogy must adapt, etc. It’s probably more true at this moment in history– given the flood of technological change– than it’s been since the 1960s.

It’s a helpful reminder, especially for those teachers who continue to bemoan the ill effects of the computer on writing, or who resist it’s introduction into the classroom. On the other hand, all of the efforts to teach to the “first generation of kids raised on television” did not really come to much.

It seems reasonable, then, to be skeptical, at least until the economics behind these phenomena play themselves out a bit longer. Right now it seems faddish at best when schools set up Second Life campuses; maybe in a decade or more it will seem evolutionary.

What I look for, too, is some sense that the teachers are pushing back against the market in a productive way. This article has little of that, I’m afraid. The market wants constant change, movement, obsolescence; we need to offer contemplation, reflection, even solitude.

I’m not sure how we go about doing that, given that the culture of education seems so polarized between a kind of willful anarchism and a willy-nilly embrace of each and every new product that comes along. My guess is that good sense is out there somewhere, uncelebrated but productive.

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Professional, Writing

The Dream of (Canadian) Centralization

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A Gartner analyst thinks Canada’s natural resources and cooler temperature can help it take advantage of the growing cloud computing trend to provide services and Web applications.

The country has an estimated server installed base of more than one million units, and in the next five years, the market will demonstrate incremental growth typical of a mature market, said Jeffrey Hewitt, vice-president of research with Stamford, Conneticut-based Gartner Inc.

“But is there a way in Canada for that to be boosted beyond that standard incremental projection?” asked Hewitt.

He thinks the country’s years of investment in hydro electric power facilities and ambient temperatures will enable data centres to be powered and subsequently cooled. And, he said, the concerns around power and cooling are only getting bigger as Web content grows with video sharing sites like YouTube. Therefore, the country can take its hydro electric infrastructure to “another level” and extend it to the Web, said Hewitt.

Canada primed for cloud computing: Gartner | The Industry Standard, Kathleen Lau, ComputerWorld Canada.

I used to work at a school that dreamed the dream of centralization and not surprisingly, it was a disaster. This dream is a variant of the automated factory dream; the idea that one day we can get rid of all of those pesky, complaining, expensive workers.

I’m no Luddite. This dream has to do with the idea of a pure profit, divorced from human labor, not with technology. Technology is simply the dominant strategy of the dream in our time. In universities, the dream is as strong as anywhere else, maybe stronger.

Imagine a school without teachers and their pesky unions! Actually, though, the dream as I experienced it had to do with the expense of support people. We had a nightmare of a classroom computer system that needed to be updated. That was clear.

It was also clear that the reason the system was a nightmare was that there was not enough support personnel. Somehow, someone heard about “thin clients”– computers that were, in effect, nothing but a monitor and a box with some flash memory. The software lives on a central server.

It sounds so great. Obviously, the real problem isn’t a lack of support personnel, it’s those wacky students and teachers who keep messing up the system. The “thin clients” made sure that no one could change anything important. It made support almost unnecessary!

The dream was, of course, utterly wrong. In fact the new system was even more of a nightmare than the old, outdated computers. If one thing went wrong somewhere on the network, none of the computers would work. Another dream come true.

The idea of putting the servers in cold places is a good one, but I think it’s also important to think very carefully about cloud computing as the latest instance of the dream of centralization. It’s fine to put all our You-Tube videos in the same place. I’m not sure the same holds true for much else.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Economics, Professional, Union, Writing

It IS Not about Technology

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We have technologies now that allow us to carry forward the evidence of work and the work itself from semester to semester. Though we can use the semester time frame as a way to define fees and revenue, there is no longer a reason to use the semester time frame as a way to define student work. Students already learn in many alternate ways on many differing but formalized learning paths. Higher education is expert in managing experiential or co-op learning, semesters abroad, internships, service learning, and so on. We know how to create structures based on the work itself and the natural work cycle, just as in real life, so altering how we structure a learning cycle is fully within our expertise.

It IS about Technology: Integrating Higher Ed into Knowledge Culture— Trent Batson, Campus Computing, 8/6/2008

I shouldn’t get all cranky– Batson’s making a legitimate point. The current educational pattern– classes, semesters, lecture halls– hasn’t changed all that much in the last one hundred years when compared to the changes in technology and the rest of our lives.

As a professor of mine used to say, you can look at photographs of classrooms from the late 19th century and things won’t look so different than they do now. At some point things are going to change, and the new system may suddenly snap into place like a rubber band.

On the other hand, the current system grew up under the assumption that educational access should be universal and universally good. The new system seems to be emerging out a very rigid class system, in which material privilege is hardly challenged.

The poor have one medical system, the middle class another, the rich yet another. It seems, too, that the new technology increasingly means the poor will have one education system, the middle class another, and the rich their own. It’s class, not technology.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

All We Are Saying, Is Give Hope a Chance

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Roosevelt had called for a “New Deal for the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic heap” in a direct appeal to the working class and the poor that few if any major party candidates had ever made. He already had a record as Governor of New York supporting pro labor and pro social welfare policies, even though those policies had only been enacted in a very limited way. New forces, progressive and largely independent political forces ,were already rallying around him.

I would say the same thing today about Senator Barack Obama. He has a solid record as a progressive in both the Illinois State Legislature and the US Senate. His campaign has mobilized independent non party progressive forces in a way unprecedented excepting the mobilization of non party forces of the religious right behind the Republicans, since the McGovern campaign of 1972 (and his chances of victory today and infinitely stronger than McGovern’s then). Those who are attacking him from the left because of his inconsistencies and lack of specific policies are ignoring both what American politics is and what he is and can become.

Hopefully, McCain and his party will go down to the crushing defeat that the Bush administration and the congressional GOP has richly earned in this coming watershed election. If we are successful in making that happen, an Obama administration will be in a position to address both the present crisis and begin to reverse the disastrous policies of a generation. If we don’t succeed, 1932 on an even grander scale will very likely be the shape of things to come.

Political Affairs Magazine – Bush, Herbert Hoover, and Memories of the Great Depression.Norman Markowitz

Markowitz reminds me that my worries about Obama, particularly his “liberal-as-conservative” centrist rhetoric, has one major ambiguity: events on the ground. It’s not certain, in other words, that the policies of an Obama presidency will be as timid as those of the candidate.

Maybe we are all hoping for some sort of magic, one moment evoking one or more Kennedys, the next F.D.R. Only time will tell, of course. But I think FDR might be the better precedent, particularly if the economy continues to tank. McCain is certainly Hoover like in his love of the powers-that-be.

Even if the economy is just all dull and listless, as it has been recently, but not Depressed, the idea is still sound. If both House and Senate are Democratic, for example, we can fight for a single-payer plan; they could substance to any green building program.

I don’t why Obama would stop laws to make organizing easier; we can keep his feet to the fire about the war on the one hand, and the bases in Iraq, on the other. I certainly would rather have a Democratic administration in the case of another Rita or Katrina. So maybe hope really is an option.

Posted in: Economics, Union, War, Writing