Social Justice: Technology Trumps Teaching?

My headline stems from my reading of the article on social justice at school by Colleen Swain and David Edyburn. In it they use language that suggests teaching as subordinate to technological instruction as a means of providing students access across gender and cultural lines. They create an argument where technology, not the educator, actuates success or overcomes barriers and impediments. The teacher rates relegated to the background as a facilitator who passively accepts technological instruction and plugs-in students to their lesson. I may have read this article incorrectly, but I cannot find an area in where they point to teachers creating and engaging students via technology.

On the other hand, Christine Greenhow's article about the assumptions of students technology saavy generates a educational theory based on vigilante interaction between student and teacher in tandem with technology. She posits a classroom from a student-centered perspective of underdeveloped skills and untapped technology. She shows that students maybe spending a lot of time on the computer no matter where they live, but they are not getting the training to mine this technology to its richest depth. She writes that student want to learn more about the technology, and not simply sat in front of it to display some semblance of social justice.

I think educators tend to view technology as an individual tool. We think that when students use a computer to access their lesson, then we should disengage and encourage the student develop their computer skills independently. However, students view technology as a social tool. They see the computer as a portal to every door on the face of the earth and into the cosmos. There isn't an thing or person they cannot access. As educators we need to provide a relationship and a challenge to this philosophy. We need to challenge students to relate with us, so that they have a portal to their education that they can access both in and out of the classroom. I believe the more opportunities we allow students to access their lessons through multiple technology, then they will seek more from themselves. When a youth believes they can do more than what they have been told, then they are seeking social justice.

Gaming in Class: Schrodinger's Cat

I cannot decide if I think video games should be used in schools. I agree with Mr. Gee that video games cultivate engagement in the game of subject. However, my concern with the incorporation of games in the classroom, or instead of the classroom stems from the non-human interaction games encourage. When I talk with students in the Portland area about their performance in the classroom they use the same language that they use when describing a challenge or enemy in a video game. Although, when you make the correlation between their academic difficulty and their gaming strategy they display confusion and reticence to transfer platforms. I feel that the virtual or simulacral word of video games further divests and distorts the real-world learning platform presented by formal education, which has its own issues as presented by Mr. Gee in the video, but as future teacher and a current student advocate, I believe video games must take a backseat to real-world education.

Admittedly, as I stated above, I agree with Mr. Gee's analysis of video game attributes for education. I think that educational theory could learn a lot from video game's ability to encourage, what Mr. Gee terms "Identity", "Production", and "Risk Taking". As a teacher I aspire to inspire my students to perform their work as the role or identity of the subject. I think that students gain more through experiential education instead of linear education where the content informs the application. The students should imbibe the persona of the information from the narrative perspective of the people involved. As in the gaming format I would support the students through a peformative or mock experience of the content. Therefore, they are able to produce or reproduce the vignette, motives, culture, crisis, and options that brought about the initial outcome. Through this performative method the student then could take risks not thought of by the original characters and produce an outcome from which they could assess the original for its flaws and benefits. This process provides the student with the collaborative passion community aspects the Mr. Gee promotes in the video and his paper. Moreover, where gaming puts the student in a seat and transports them to another world through a limited identity, performative teaching denies the seat and incorporates the extended identity of historical+fantastical identity. The student do not have to deny their limited real capacity or conform to the virtual artificially limited capacity, but embody all aspects of their identity with those of the characters they inhabit. The questions become less about how to advance through the game, and more about how to advance complexity of human intelligence through re-imagined critical situations.

I support the idea that video games are a great way to acquire strategic skills of troubleshooting, but we have to remember that these virtual environments are cognitively rich, but practically and socially irrelevant and scarce if not reiterated in the classroom. Maybe I do believe video games deserve a place in the classroom, but let's look at the creativity and professionalism of teacher before ablate more of their responsibilities with video games.

Wikipedia: Ask Questions!

I visit wikipedia.org frequently. If I have a cursory question about an author, term, current event, or theory, then I google it and access the top link, which appears as wikipedia 99% of the time. However, before I open the link I tell myself that I am access a site authorized by the creative commons, and I need to corroborate the information based on the sources, reference, or links provided. Most of the time I decided to use wikipedia to jog my memory. I may have forgotten where I heard something, or who I should attribute some term to, and I authenticate the information with my own memory, plus, the book or books at hand. I must admit that I access wiki technology beyond wikipedia to mine dense texts, but I always corroborate the information with the text at hand while considering the edition.

As to where I usually start researching a topic, it depends. If I have a text in my library, then I open that first. If I have the text, and I know I can find it hypertextually, and I do not want to spend time flipping through, then I access the hypertext copy. If the question elicits in the form of trivia, then I usual google it and access the first link, i.e. wikipedia. If I access wikipedia, and I want to know more about the topic, then I access the links and investigate the sources.

Based on my own frequency to utilize wikipedia and critically assess the sources, I would allow students to provide sources originating from wikipedia. However, I would develop and distribute specific guidelines for students who chose to cite wikipedia. Above and beyond the normal MLA or APA guidelines, I would provide a rubric that forced them to ask the questions I would ask when extracting authenticity from an unaccredited text. In other words, the student must display the skills of rigorous scholarship to support their exposition.

I agree with the Doug Johnson's assessment of the encyclopedic climate as a paradigm shift of information accessibility, standards, and engagement. The wiki technology of web 2.o allows the creative commons to interact with encyclopedic knowledge that rates otherwise hackneyed and stagnant. Students who experience technology as a categorical imperative have the opportunity develop a relationship with authors, theorists, scientists, events, politics, religions, diagnoses, geography, and phenomena by creating and editing wikipedia entries. Also, students enjoy sabotaging pages with false information, which means that they access and engage the factual content before falsifying it. In either case they participate in a dialogue. As Mr. Johnson states that he prefers the testimonial-driven tripadvisor.com over the expert advise of Fodors or Frommers when planning a trip, the students we teach prefer the social network of knowledge constructed by wikipedia.

Cellphones: the flip, slide, touch, and mod monolith of aught odyssey.

Forget Scylla and Charybdis, the Laestrygonians, Circe, and Polyphemus, the real threat to our students' educational odyssey is vibrating in their back pockets. Cellphones have usurped our classrooms! Or we have neglected to acknowledge the revolution. I agree with Liz Kolb, and her variegated strategies for utilizing cellphones as a tool for "constructing knowledge." I do agree with Josh Allen that it sounds absurd for our students to have blackberries and data plans, but the true is that they do, and we should assume that they do not just because we do not. Digital Native students function under a wholly divergent set of values than most of us, and we as teachers cannot suggests or impose otherwise. I agree with Liz Kolb that we must take stock of our students who have certain technologies at hand ubiquitously and ask them to use these devices for learning, especially when it comes to mining a new platform, such as: podcasts or audioblogs.

I head-up the KBOO Youth Collective at the NAYA Family Center, and I encourage students to probe their environment with their cellphones to brainstorm and bring soundbites that illuminate their stories. This initiative goads students into engaging their peers with questions and comments that my otherwise passover unaddressed.

In my class I would seek to engage the student through their technology by developing a database of who uses what technology for what social interaction. In the first week a teacher could learn the circuitous network by which all their students are related and develop an intranet of news, review, and assessment. Furthermore, I would ask my students to devise a egalitarian protocol for using their cellphones, so that we could all expect the same standard of engagement and distraction during our time together and apart. Basically, I would break it down into the secular/sacred argument: what times and topics rate secular and sacred. I view this argument as a perfect transition to discussing secular and sacred texts or the public and private domain. Also, I believe that any breach of this agreement would incite a need for mock trials based on research, oration, rhetoric, logic, and precedence.

Finally, I declare that we should not teach to the phone as Josh Allen's argument supposes, but we should teach the phone to the students. If the student does not understand the extent of the technology quivering under their twitching thumbs, then they will view the technology as one dimensional. We must open up the purview of this expanding platform and make it dance before their imagination.

Cyberbullying: the T-X of text

According to Kelley R. Taylor, Esq.'s hyper-legal, "cyberbullying is the use of Internet technology to inflict emotional harm through repeated and deliberate harassment, threats, and intimidation. Cyberbulling can consist of making threats; issuing insults and slurs; and other activities that are designed to inflict harm or damage to a person and his or her reputation,

life, or even computer system (e.g., flooding a person's e-mail with unwanted or offensive messages). The technology used for cyberbullying typically includes e-mail, cell phones, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, and instant messages." She goes on to say that the definition of cyberbulling does not discriminate age; adults are just as prone to cyberbulling as youth. However, the term cyberbulling tends to morph into cyber-harrassment or cyber-stalking in order to height or relate the intent to adult law. Unfortunately, the law tends not to account for the indiscriminate nature of the intent in both age brackets where youth employ extremely adult harassment, threats, and intimidation to adult ends, such as: assault, suicide, and homicide.

I never experienced such violent cyberbulling, but I have been a witness to and a perpetrator of harassment through chats and posts with the intent of humor at someone else's expense. I know that no matter the intent the outcomes can be the most unimaginable and severe, and I am thankful that my adolescent invincibility gave-in to adult accountability. I believe that this natural progression inherently undergone by the pyscho-social crisis of identity and industry via neural entropy in the adolescent psyche persists as a community allocated performance for ritual redress. The internet, blogs, and social networks simply construct an inchoate venue. The etymology of venue goes back to French for "attack." However, as educators we cannot view this venue as a battlefield with victors and defeated.

I agree with Lynn Wietcha's assessment of the social climate and the school's responsibility and opportunity for the internet. We must utilize the twitch speed, parallel processing, and random access of our students to guide discourse and teach innovation, transformation, and advocacy. Our school resources are their to teach, and we must teach our students to use public and private resources responsibly. We do the same thing with cars, so why not the internet. I know the analogy sounds like a round peg in a square hole, but we continuously stress the rite of passage that comes with attaining the legal age, the legal license, and the requisite insurance to drive a car, so why shouldn't we be able to deliver the same ritual performance with appropriate behavior on the internet. Additionally, if a youth participates in reckless behavior that gets some killed, such as drunk driving, crashing, or hitting something or someone, then they should undergo the legal punishment. A punishment delivered by their own peers. Therefore, we as a community, and we as educators must do our job to role model and inculcate the maturity and responsibility thereof using the internet, blogging, and socially networking. These are privileges given to them by society, and not simply protected by our society's laws.

In my school and in my class I would make a point of integrating law and policy into the curriculum, especially when I will be incorporating webpages, blogs, and social networks into the content. I see technological integration as a tool of social and ethical education. If students understand that their teacher's influence extends into cyberspace, and that this venue rates as less a Wild West controlled by the how many four-letter words you can fire before the other gunman, and more a metropolis governed by a central ethic reiterated with each login; then the students will actuate in some semblance of self-awareness. I know it all sounds utopian, but I think we should presents such as idealist parameters to challenge our students, and not function in a state of reaction based on fear.

Social Networking: Separate but Equal

I feel a little unpopular.

A Google search delivered information on my friends blog from his reportorial romp through Southeast Asia, but not my own blog from my year spent in Thailand.

http://oursharedworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/behind-gates.html

A few pages later, I found race results from my High School cross-country days:

http://www.prefontainerun.com/race-results/teamscore.php?ryear=1998&goverall=M&teamtype=1

A page or two after that, I finally uncovered my name in the website of my current employer:

http://www.nayapdx.org/about/staff-and-board.php

The Pipl search brought up a random account I create and forgot:

http://www.wayn.com/profiles/MarimayaK

However, I respect my unpopularity on the web as diligent editing and savvy ambiguity. The only thing I would like to change would be a more prolific positive image of myself, i.e. webpages, blogs, articles, quotes, and causes. I would like my name to appear next to things I believe in, care about, or simply enjoy. In other words, I would like students, parents, and colleagues to think I have a life.

I do believe that teacher's should be held to community standards. A teacher must continuously reiterate their desire to influence their community by interacting or rehearsing the standards assigned to their position by the community. A teacher is a teacher no matter the venue, and a teacher must remember that the classroom acts a conceptual structure not just a building. The The classroom exists wherever your class gathers, whether that is at the supermarket, the concert hall, or the sidewalk. A teacher must command respect and not distribute relativity; therefore, if something exists in the classroom, then it must exist out it.

Teachers must understand that their social networking profiles are public knowledge, unless otherwise marked. I am inspired by the teacher's who use Facebook to communicate with students about deadlines, notes, and test dates, but if that is how you are going to use Facebook, then the line must be clear. A teacher must realize that they need to separate their public and private lives. I support creating a separate profile for your students that can be made public and that only deals with public issues. I am amazed that 40% of the population using Myspace is over the age of 35, and the public decries that we have a cyberbulling epidemic with our teenagers. These people are using the site for the same purposes. Therefore, it is even more imperative that teacher's rehearse the community standards both off- and on-line.

I know that I will continue to vigilantly examine the content made available to the students I interact with, and make myself available for positive modeling.

Message to Marc Prensky: Duh!

I am a digitial native; although, I cavil with the moniker, but that conflict must defer for the time being. I make such a declaration because I interacted with a monitor and a qwerty board my entire life. I will never forget the old "Lisa" I would saddle up to in media class at Wilson Elementary, and Mrs. Hopkins would walk us through the "educational" software flashing in gradations of green. At home, I passified in front of Doogie Howser M.D. and his digital journal. My mind lullied to sleep by the rhythmic clicking of his thoughts across orphic enchanted keys. Now I read Wired, subscribe to podcasts, and refuse to pay for anything digital. My prophet is William Gibson; my leader is Chris Anderson; and my peer is Cory Dotorow.

In the face of all this, I stand reciting Walt Whitman's famous line, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself." I believe this elicits from the postmodern identity in which we are unable to hold a mirror up to ourselves and say, "There I am. This is me." I think this refers to the second part of Whitman's line: "I am large, I contain multitudes." Also, it explains Prensky's statement about Digital Native's penchant from learning: "They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked." The last two attributes Mr. Prensky points to identify the quantum speed and collectivity of the noosphere in which the Digital Native actuates and reiterates culture.

This culture performs within a hive-minded episodic fascicle of infinite ramification. Therefore, as Prensky cites from Peter Moore, logic algorithms impede the process of learning, "Linear processes that dominate educational systems now can actually retard learning from brains developed through game and web-surfing processes on the computer." Prensky suggests that we must adapt to the non-linear randomness of "future math", which he indicates as, "approximation, statistics, binary thinking". I agree with Prensky on the first two, but techonology in the classroom and in society has taught me to refuse binary thought and embrace pluralism, such as the parallel processing Prensky declared a cornerstone of Digtial Native interpretation. In high school, technology became a corpus: a body of knowledge that enables a a student to dissect and replicate performance both realistically and virtually. I engaged technology as exponential, integral, and limitless. The Matrix did not assuage any of those notions and compounded them with mythology and paranoia. In other words, technology became both human and god. In college, I found a new society of technology. Professors questioned every aspect of being and evolution through the technocratic complex. Students were asked to become self-aware of the liminal coalescence. And it either became a blue screen of death (for those gamers: the red ring of death), or a dynamic DNS among the Cloud. I'm sure there is something in between, but the Native never moves backwards.

Truthfully, I learned a little from the articles and video. One, the video was too slow, and provided the crux of my Native identity. Two, I'm Plastic Man. Until next time, away!

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