American Idol: Audience as Juror

April 30, 2009 By 1 Comment

I admit it – I’m a fan of American Idol. The popular talent competition is now in its 8th season on Fox, and I’ve watched almost every year (I missed 2004 when Fantasia won … perhaps not a coincidence that I started my PhD program that year). I actually don’t start watching the show until they select the Final 12 performers, because I believe that’s when it gets most interesting. Each week the contestants perform, the audience votes via phone or texting, and the person with the lowest number of votes has to leave. Although the judges critique each performance, it’s the viewing audience that holds the power to keep their favorite contestants in the running.

Whether or not you’re a fan of the show, you have to give American Idol credit for continuing to be one of the highest rated shows on television. Some people attribute this to the fact that the show is a true “family program,” and in essence people of all ages and across all demographic groups can watch it. But I believe its popularity has a lot to do with the interactivity of the show. The audience has power over the outcome – “America votes!” Whether America agrees with Simon Cowell’s sneers or Paula Abdul’s cheers is somewhat irrelevant. Sure, this year they implemented the “Judge’s save,” but ultimately it’s the audience who selects the next American Idol. Of course, not everyone who watches the show bothers to vote (I draw the line there myself). But millions of audience members do vote, and that’s pretty amazing. The audience is not merely spectators, but jurors as well.

On a somewhat related note, I often feel like an American Idol judge when I help students rehearse their class presentations. It’s our job as fellows to critique their “dress rehearsal” and provide feedback on how to improve their skills before the final presentation in class. Just like the American Idol judges, however, we don’t grade the students (i.e., vote them off) … the professor does that. So should I tell it to them straight like Simon Cowell? I know I should, but it’s important to be encouraging as well, so I also emphasize the positive things I see (a la Paula Abdul). Has anyone else had these thoughts while conducting rehearsals, or do I just watch too much TV?

Filed Under: Audience, Fun, To Ponder

Ability to Communicate Still the Most Desired Quality…

April 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I don’t know if everyone read the Sunday New York Times’ “Corner Office” interview?  Well, Richard Anderson the CEO of Delta Airlines talks about, among other things, the interview process and what he deems important when he is looking to fill an executive position.

And guess what? It is right up the “Communication Walkway” (my term).

He talks about communication as a number one element needed in today’s work world. He also talks about an individual’s personal life as a key factor to integrating them into the organizational culture. Therefore, it is very important to be able to articulate one’s background, ideas and opinions, not just work experience.

Here is an extract and the link:

‘He wants subjects, verbs and objects”

Q. And is there any change in the kind of qualities you’re looking for compared with 5, 10 years ago?

A. I think this communication point is getting more and more important. People really have to be able to handle the written and spoken word. And when I say written word, I don’t mean PowerPoints. I don’t think PowerPoints help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. You can just put a phrase with a bullet in front of it. And it doesn’t have a subject, a verb and an object, so you aren’t expressing complete thoughts.

And here is another interesting tidbit:

You spend more of your waking time with your colleagues at the office than you do with your family and when you bring someone into that family — we have 50 senior leaders at our company and 70,000 employees — you need to make sure that they’re a fit to the culture. And that they’re going to be part of that group of people in a healthy functioning way.”

Thanks to Herb Brinberg for showing me and Mikhail this interview and to keeping us in the CEO Loop.

Filed Under: Jobs

Torture? culture? Torture-culture?

April 22, 2009 By 1 Comment

In an undergraduate class I teach on the social and cultural history of the US during times of war we always end the semester with a discussion of the contemporary conflicts we’re involved in now — “GWOT”, Iraq, Afghanistan — and attendant domestic issues like privacy, constitutional rights, legal jurisdiction over “unlawful enemy combatants”, balance of power between branches of government, political rhetoric, etc.

This semester we read and discussed the recently released Red Cross report on US treatment of terrorist detainees, treatment which was conclusively shown to be torture. Once we got the basic history stuff out of the way, I asked students to think through whether such treatment can ever be justified — a little dime-store ethical philosophy thrown in to the history classroom. There are usually some who think there’s no justifiable use of such harsh tactics as have been regular lately. Others insist that, if torture could be known to be likely to work, then we have to leave moral absolutism behind for a more utilitarian approach — i.e. it just might be OK to do some pretty rotten stuff to someone if it saves thousands, hundreds or scores of lives. This is always an interesting discussion, but it’s one that also makes clear how much the understanding of the torture question has been framed for my students by popular culture (“24″ (the worst culprit) and the many other movies and shows we all can probably remember).

This year however, in two separate classes, something new arose: Students, on their own started advocating torturing people not to in order get intelligence that would prevent 9/11 Pt. 2, but as punishment. Eye-for-an-eye sort of thinking — you get what you deserve, and there are no real limits to what you might deserve except how egregious your own crime was.

I found this truly unsettling. How did we get here? I think that the way we got here is a good old fashioned slippery slope. On TV, the bad guys get tortured and either give it up or not, die or not, feel terrible physical pain or not — but they’re the bad guys, so in the verbal and visual rhetoric of trashy (and extraordinarily popular) TV, it seems OK to many viewers. Torture becomes a regular adjunct to justice.

In addition, there are movies every year which prominently feature torture of human beings either in the same context or as “horror films” (really sadism films), in which the torturers are bad guys, the enemy. In the second case, torture seems despicable, so in one evening of viewing a person could be treated to a rather schizophrenic overall depiction of the issue – the cruel device of the worst fiends and the necessary tool of the righteous. But also in the second case, the problem is not that torture becomes linked with justice, but rather that it becomes entertainment; it’s a fun way (apparently) to get scared for an hour or two before making out with your girlfriend or checking on the sleeping kids.

What separates us, ideally from the Taliban, among other things, is our idea that justice and vengeance are different things. What renders us humane instead of merely human is, among other things, the idea that there are some acts which are simply morally unacceptable. What separates adults from children, among other things, is that adults see the real social utility as well as the moral truth of the old saw that two wrongs don’t make a right.

As a culture, we’re letting go of these things by the way we accept depictions of torture, as both titilating and just. To have a torture culture is not just to accept depictions of torture without clear disapprobation; it is, as the term “culture” implies, to grow, to nourish torture. And so, I think, when you have a culture rife with torture perhaps you end up seeing the fruits of that tortuculture blossoming in your nice calm classroom one April day.

Filed Under: Audience, Debating, Higher Education, Language, Liberal Arts, Media, Non-verbal Communication, Politics, Style, To Ponder, Uncategorized, What if . . .

Touching, Feeling

April 21, 2009 By 2 Comments

Teaching the music of Tori Amos, Bjork and Coldplay to a group of 5th graders would not seem an obvious pedagogical choice, but a Staten Island public school teacher’s passion for alternative and indie rock has led him to do just that.

In a YouTube video that has been recently floated around facebook, the PS22 choir sings Coldplay’s Grammy award-winning “Viva La Vida.” Check out the kids as they perform here with great feeling.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_tcE4rWovI[/youtube]

I have liked Coldplay’s song since I first heard it last year, but have puzzled over the song’s meaning. The lyrics, I think it is accurate to say, tend toward the esoteric. So I can’t help but wonder what these kids in the choir think the song is about – or what it might mean to them. But more than that, I find it interesting that these students are somehow making a connection, if not exactly to the meaning of the lyrics in the songs they sing, then to the music – to the harmonies and melodies that they are learning. I imagine that the teacher, known as Mr. B., has supplied them with some sort of interpretation for the song, which makes religious and historical references. And yet, I suspect there’s more behind the emotion displayed here than the students’ ability to have tapped in to the song’s meaning. My suspicion is that the connection being made here is also in large part about Mr. B. – maybe even more so than it is about the actual music.

As a writing instructor and graduate student specializing in Composition Studies, I have spent much time thinking about pedagogy and best practices for engaging students. Watching this video reminds me that a good teacher can often get his or her students excited about any subject if they themselves are passionate about what they teach. Mr. B. keeps a running tab of the choir’s accomplishments (there are many) on blogspot.com; with a quick glance at the blog, his enthusiasm for the music and for the kids is evident. Mr. B adores this music and the kids adore him. He is clearly a gifted teacher, able to communicate his passion for these songs, which in turn, enables the students to learn them and to love them too.

In the midst of composing this post last week, I learned the sad news that CUNY had lost one of its own gifted teachers. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a brilliant scholar, was also a thoughtful and dedicated professor who made non-traditional pedagogical choices in her classroom and inspired passion and creativity in her students. As many take time to remember her in the coming weeks, I wonder how the Staten Island students will remember Mr. B. How will his atypical way of communicating his passion for music stay with these kids and transcend the usual music education most receive in elementary school?

Filed Under: Pedagogy

Uncultured Oafs?

April 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A recent NYT Op-Ed piece addresses a curious issue of what it means to be perceived and self-perceived as an intellectual, and the expectations and anxieties associated with it. The author, Calvin Trillin, a graduate of a prestigious university, is concerned about “whether or not [he is] an uncultured oaf.” He has found a good way to evaluate his intellectual and cultural inclinations: by comparing his likes and dislikes to those of his highly respected intellectual friend James. He was particularly glad to learn that James shared his admiration for a recent dance performance. BUT the reviewer of the performance “implied, without using these precise words, that the program had been designed to make modern dance palatable to, well, uncultured oafs.” He concludes the article, pondering, “What did that say about me? What, for that matter did it say about James? Is it possible that I’m such an uncultured oaf that the person I’d always considered the most cultured person I know is also an uncultured oaf?”

Surely, once we receive a particular degree or become a part of a particular profession, we immediately set expectations and become anxiously self-conscious about fulfilling them. In various ways, academic settings tend to enhance our sensitivity to whether we come across to our audiences – and to ourselves – as uncultured oafs. The article brought back memories of my first year in graduate school when I felt like a total impostor in a circle of aspiring young scholars. I was also reminded of the eagerness with which beginning graduate students sometimes imitate the convoluted and often incomprehensible academic prose they read.

Trillin wants to do away with the very label of uncultured oafs, it seems to me, as most of us want to do away with the bifurcation of high and popular culture, or academic and real worlds. Have we all been successful?

Filed Under: Audience, To Ponder

How I Use Twitter (but this is just me)

April 20, 2009 By 7 Comments

Not sure if it was @Oprah joining, #amazonfail, #pman (Moldova), or the tipping point on a meme, but the world is atwitter about Twitter.

I thought I’d share a few thoughts about how I use and perceive the service, which I joined about a year ago.

I’m not a Twitter evangelist; I don’t think it’s for everyone. If you’re using it and you don’t know why, maybe you shouldn’t be using it?

Twitter is not a platform, it’s an application that allows you to construct and dip in and out of conversations. You should @ often.

Anyone analyzing tweets only as stand alone statements will see self-absorption and “innate incoherence.” They miss the point.

Yet it’s easy to be misled by how Twitter works, because most answers to the question “What are you doing?” aren’t interesting.

But that’s not how the people I follow or I use it. Most of the people I follow instead answer the question “what are you thinking?”

If you follow interesting people who think interesting things, then it follows to think that their tweets might be interesting.

Over time your mind’s eye will learn to identify tweeters who have something relevant to say and to find yet others. Read critically.

The people I follow on Twitter aren’t necessarily my “friends.” Some people are comfortable with 100% virtual friendships. I’m not.

(I’m not raining on online friendships, I’m just saying they’re not for me).

The people who aren’t my friends whom I follow on Twitter I consider “acquaintances.” I think that’s a fairer name for what we share.

I’m willing to bore friends, but I try not to bore acquaintances, because some day, I might want them to be my friends.

I don’t — or try not to — complain about traffic or the academic #jobmarket, because, really, who’s interested in my bitching?

I bitch about traffic and the #jobmarket to my friends, and rarely think twice about confronting them when we’re hanging out.

I always think twice about confronting someone on Twitter. It’s not polite to disagree with acquaintances, though sometimes it must be done.

Mostly, though, I avoid confronting others because arguments in Twitter are unsatisfying. Neither party gets sufficiently into it.

So when I disagree with a tweet, I resolve the disagreement by reading and thinking more, writing a blog post, or talking with friends.

As a result, my tweetline offers a path into my life, reading, and thinking that’s perhaps a tad more upbeat than the real thing.

Ultimately, Twitter works for me because through it I am exposed to people that push and prod me to think and read more deeply and broadly.

I follow links from educators & historians & journalists & technologists whose judgments I respect. I learn. Hopefully, I also contribute.

“Blog to reflect, tweet to connect.” @bgblogging Claim anything more for Twitter, you’re either selling something or setting up a straw man.

As such, Twitter is not for people who have uttered the following statements:

“Twitter won’t work because it’s not profitable.” “Twitter can’t save journalism.” “Twitter encourages our worst impulses.”

Those statements are usually uttered by people with closed worldviews, with minds already made up.

Twitter, like everything else, is purposeful only if you use it with a purpose.

Filed Under: Internet, Interpersonal Communication, Tools, Web 2.0 Tagged With:

To be, or not to be…

April 7, 2009 By 2 Comments
From: http://layoder.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/nicholas-hughes-natural-selection/

From Pauvre Plume (originally from Fairbanks Daily News-Miner)

Let’s face it, I was stalling; instead of prepping for my looming dissertation defense, I was skimming news bites on the Internet. I stumbled upon the obituary for Nicholas Hughes – the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes – who had recently committed suicide. The online obituary held little information about Hughes himself, but made much of his famous parents and manner of death. Struck by the lack of biographical detail, I turned to Wikipedia for a quick gloss on who he was and what he’d done. The Wikipedia entry had little more to offer: a few details about his work, a quote from his sister regarding his love of nature and his struggles with depression, a mention of his dual British/American citizenship.

Most striking of all, the Hughes entry was flagged for possible deletion on the grounds of “general notability”. The Wikipedia community was invited to discuss whether Hughes was important enough to warrant an entry of his own, or whether the entry should be deleted completely. The discussion was brief but vigorous, reflecting a vocal range from lofty academic to colloquial chat. There were those who suggested that his only claim to notability was as the son of two (in)famous literary icons; he was at best a footnote to their Wikipedia entries. Others felt Hughes’ research and scholarship had been completely misrepresented, not to mention mislabeled; he was not a marine biologist, but rather a fisheries biologist with a broad range of applied research behind him. A couple of discussants huffily questioned whether the sensationalism surrounding his death (he committed suicide as did his mother and stepmother) was enough to warrant his presence on Wikipedia. Some found the timing of the whole deletion discussion tacky. After all, the man had just died; couldn’t we spare him a moment’s attention before confining him to oblivion?

I found myself completely sucked into the discussion, as the participants negotiated Hughes’ virtual right to life. Who do you have to be, in order to be? What does it take to become visible — and stay visible — in a socially constructed world? Especially a world that precludes physical embodiment? As we explore virtual community in all its shapes, forms and permutations, how do we co-construct presence and absence? And what does it mean when we do so?

Postscript: Are you wondering what happened to the Nicholas Hughes entry? After a roughly a day’s debate, the decision was made to keep him as an independent entry. A general call went out for more information, and as of this writing, the sketchy “stub” that initially drew my attention has tripled in size. Hughes is now more “present” on Wikipedia than before the threat to his virtual existence. Present, but perhaps not completely visible there…There still is no picture of Hughes posted to his profile.

Filed Under: Media, Process, To Ponder, Wikis

Think Before You Snark

April 6, 2009 By 11 Comments

We had a bit of an incident last week with a course that’s using Blogs@Baruch. In this course, every student was to keep a blog, which was then republished in an aggregator blog so that every participant in the class could easily access and comment upon everything published by the other participants.

Last week the class abandoned its use of Blogs@Baruch to instead use a group on Facebook called “Baruch Blogs Down!”

snark
Creative Commons License photo credit: Squid P. Quo

The name of the group is a reference to server problems we had at the beginning of the term, which were resolved almost two months ago; we’ve been up without interruption for almost 60 days. In fact, members of the class were posting to their blogs without problem for a good six weeks before they switched to Facebook.

The faculty member apologized when it was pointed out to him that the name of the Facebook group was insulting and mocked the work that had gone into building our system and supporting his course, last semester and this. He noted that the switch wasn’t planned, that his students suggested the move and the group name, and that they were more comfortable using Facebook to exchange thoughts about course material. So he went with it.

I have problems with this on a few levels, even beyond the insulting group name. First, the only argument to go to Facebook — which I accept is completely the faculty member’s prerogative — seems to be that the students “felt more comfortable” with the application than they did Blogs@Baruch. Comfort with a medium has pedagogical value, for sure; but you’d like to think that more than students’ comfort would determine the choosing of a technological solution.  I’m not sure that it did.

Second, there’s the implications of using Facebook in an instructional setting given the recent conflicts over their Terms of Service and assertions of ownership over user content. I don’t think the class discussed what was to be gained and lost from switching platforms; the students just lobbied the professor to use something “easier,” not better.  These points are both problematic in no small part because this is an Internet Marketing class!

Finally, there’s the inaccurate implication embedded in the group’s name, which appeared in a public forum. I’ve thought a bit about this, since I, too, have been guilty of snarking a piece of software. Blogs@Baruch was down periodically early in the semester, and that had a negative impact on some courses’ use of the system. We DO deserve to get called out for failing to deliver what we promised to deliver.

Yet, there’s a difference between mocking us and mocking a behemoth corporation with a closed source product.   The difference embodies one of the core issues in instructional technology, which is often seen as a subset of information technology rather than as its own unique area of university life that requires the establishment of relationships and understanding across the disciplines.

If Blackboard goes down, users of the system are helpless, and can only wait for word that the system is back up.  They can call someone, but that person can only tell them that a ticket has been submitted.  Users of Blogs@Baruch have a name, and a number, and someone who can explain to them what the problem is and how it is being addressed. If something on the system isn’t working the way they want it to work, they can speak with someone about hacking it, adapting it, fixing it, strengthening it. Blackboard is a closed box without a face, whereas Blogs@Baruch is an open sandbox that gives back in proportion to what you put in. Blackboard is primarily an administrative system that allows the delivery of information. Blogs@Baruch is primarily a tool for the creative use of technology in instruction.

The faculty member (who has graciously apologized and changed the Facebook’s group’s name) should have realized this; he had benefited from our close support in the past and had been told to contact us if and as problems arose. He never did.  Instead, he treated Blogs@Baruch as information technology, as a data delivery service, and wasn’t really interested in bringing the system and its flexibility to his pedagogy. He and his students saw no difference between Blogs@Baruch and Blackboard or the escalators in the Vertical Campus.

So, I’ve learned a couple things from this episode. First: snark is fine, but if you’re gonna snark, do it in an informed way or in a hidden place, or you going to be called out.  Second: we need to do a better job of explaining to members of our community what Blogs@Baruch is and what it isn’t. If you can’t see any difference between what this system potentially provides and what Blackboard or Facebook provide, then those systems will probably work just fine for you.

Filed Under: Baruch College, Blogs and Blogging, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Technology and Communications

April 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I suspect that few of us would disagree with the hypothesis that technology has fundamentally, radically,  and perhaps forever changed the nature of communication.

In a private e-mail exchange I speculated that the neo-communicators (specializing in technocom) were becoming a much larger group that than the paleo-communicators (i.e., folks like me).   If I want to communicate with them it will be increasingly on their terms, not mine.

We have, of course, considered this phenomenon — technocom — at several of the annual BLSCI symposia.

The provocation for raising this issue again with you is the article “Does Your Company Have an IT Generation Gap?” from Accenture.  The abstract for this article reads:

“Surrounded by technology all their lives, the newest members of today’s workforce want a big say in the tech tools they need to do their jobs. They also say they want to pick their employers based on the “coolness” of the technology available to them. Those are just some of the challenges that business leaders must respond to now—before the Millennials’ kid brothers and sisters start joining the workforce.”

If you accept the hypothesis I advanced in the beginning of this post, then the force of “coolness” ought to concern you for it portends, as I see it, continued change in communications.  If we, the paleos, are unprepared, then we’re going to be left behind.  And being left behind means declining relevance and value.

To paraphrase a podcast I heard a few days ago, “If you don’t understand what’s going on, hire a nine-year old.”

I sense this, obviously, as an issue of growing significance.  My institution is doing little about it.  What about yours?


Filed Under: Uncategorized

The hug seen ’round the world

April 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I often discuss the importance of non-verbal communication with my students. Body language and simple gestures convey information to your audience, whether intended or not. Such non-verbal communication may lead to misunderstandings, particularly in cross-cultural settings. That’s why most organizations (or at least the smart ones) invest a lot of dollars in training managers and executives on the nuances of particular cultures before attempting to do business abroad. For example, there is a whole protocol to follow when exchanging business cards in Japan, and you better know the drill ahead of time.

Every now and again, however, protocols are broken. But fortunately breaking the rules doesn’t always result in an international gaffe. When First Lady Michelle Obama met Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace on Wed, she placed her arm around the Queen. Now, we Americans may not think of this as a big deal – aren’t people always reaching out to shake hands and hug our politicians and their spouses? This is particularly true on the campaign trail. But our politicians are mere elected officials, not monarchy. In England, one apparently does not reach out and touch the Queen. According to AP writer Jennifer Quinn, “When the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating put his arm around the queen in 1992, the tabloids dubbed him the ‘Lizard of Oz.’ When his successor, John Howard, was accused of doing the same, a spokesman insisted: ‘We firmly deny that there was any contact whatsoever.’”

Fortunately for the Obamas, the Queen appeared to be quite taken by Michelle, who stands about a foot taller. Perhaps even more shocking, according to British press, was that the Queen wrapped her arm around the First Lady as well, in a “rare public show of affection.” According to Rebecca English of the Daily Mail online, “In 57 years, the Queen has never been seen to make that kind of gesture and it is certainly against all protocol to touch her.” I guess she liked her.

Bravo to the Queen for breaking with tradition!

Filed Under: Cross-Cultural Communication, Non-verbal Communication, Politics
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