The Digital I & Thou

December 7, 2011 By 3 Comments

At a recent faculty roundtable, a familiar conversation surfaced: why do students incorporate the rhythms, abbreviations and tones of digital communication at all the wrong moments and in all the worst contexts–using emoticons in requests for paper extensions or text-speak in formal essays, for instance? A core complaint runs through this line of questioning: technology has ruined students’ ability to write. And as familiar as these dilemmas are, so too is one potential pedagogical response: the problem is not texting or emailing or twittering; it’s learning to teach students to move competently and consciously amidst various modalities, to identify and name types of writing and forms of mediation, and to practice when and how to deploy them.

When I first taught freshman composition, I was charged with covering the five primary rhetorical modes. Of course there have always been more than five, but the contemporary moment demands that we re-direct our gaze toward the reality of an infinite body of modes (even if we continue to insist on the tidy and classical handful of five: they can still be useful). This doesn’t mean that every classroom must embrace and welcome tweets and texts and slang into its culture and content, but rather that even if we want to limit the language-types circulating in our classrooms or in our students’ essays , we’re going to have to name them, collectively, first. “The ability to write” does not constitute one undifferentiated field, and as teachers we must liberate ourselves from that fantasy.

I’m curious to hear about strategies others have uncovered for teaching multiple fluencies. One of the challenges of living up to the promise of this pedagogical approach is that the very assumption of audience that underlies the conventional conception of rhetoric has been thrown into deep disarray.  To whom is a Facebook status update addressed? Is it to an individual, to some parcel of one’s collection of “friends,” to some imaginary conglomerate Other, or an aspect of oneself?  I’m quite sure that in many cases both the identities of speaker and audience are unknown. Perhaps one route of entry into the new rhetoric of communication is via a return to, and revision of, an elemental study of self and other: one that accounts for student, teacher and screen.

 

 

Filed Under: teaching, Technology, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Instruction

The Trobriand Islanders Never Friended Malinowski on Facebook

November 30, 2011 By 4 Comments

It used to be that the anthropologist traveled far from his/her home, conducted research in a foreign culture, and wrote up findings which never made it back to those who were studied . Globalization and now social media have changed this paradigm (as well as debates over who research actually belongs to and what moral responsibilities a researcher has to those he/she studies). Now, the “natives” are your Facebook friends. This a positive development, we should be in conversation with our research participants, but what does this mean for their confidentiality and privacy?

Trobriand Islanders never friended Bronislaw Malinowski on Facebook. Judging by his posthumously published diaries, he didn't like them enough to accept the request anyway.

This post is more of a question than a statement. It is about research ethics, confidentiality and social media. When I began my research on tuberculosis (TB) in Romania, I did not have a Facebook account. I never imagined that TB patients I work with would be among my Facebook friends and that they would actively share my writings using social media in which they or their loved ones appear.

First, much of my PhD research was conducted at a mountaintop TB sanatorium, that one patient described as “beyond the sight of God.” I spent over two years studying TB and much of that was spent talking to dying people and sometimes even holding their hands while they died.  The field site was amazing—visually stunning, but tragic. It was a place of abandonment where many patients would go to die, not just of TB, but also of its complicating factors: poverty and hopelessness.  Dozens of patients I interviewed are now dead, but a few of those who survived keep in touch via social media.

I first met Mariana (all names are pseudonyms) in 2009  when I attended a Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB)  patients’  group therapy session. I had agreed  to have a question and answer session about my research and TB in general. The patients sat in a semi-circle across from me. I was nervous. My Romanian is very good, but in 2009 it wasn’t.  Worse still, I am terrible at translating when multiple people speak at once. There I was, nervous and awkward; wearing a mask that covered most of my face, trying to talk with patients about what it is like having TB and answering questions TB in America.

© Jonathan Stillo. "Hi, I'd like to ask you a few questions!" Me in my hospital robe and mask.

I was struck by the diversity of ages in the room. There were many young people.  Looking towards a group of patients I joked that this looked more like high school than a hospital. One young woman  fascinated me from the beginning. She was in her mid 20s, and looked like a skeleton floating in a fluffy pink robe.  Mariana is beautiful and despite being one of the sickest people in the ward, filled the room with laughter and jokes. Then,  after I mentioned how I wanted to improve TB treatment in Romania by working with policy makers and the government, she locked eyes with me and asked “Do you really think the government and the people in charge will listen to you?” I told her I did, because TB is a major health problem.” She replied “Then you tell them this: TB is an economic problem and patients need support.”  I would interview Mariana many times over the course of my research in Romania. I learned how she had become ill with the disease by caring for her father who died of TB, that she had a little boy and she was very poor. I have close relationships with a number of people I met over the course of my research 2006-2011, but Mariana is the only patient I really think of as a friend.  I have written about her in publications in Romanian and English. However, I faced an ethical dilemma when I received her Facebook friend request. I thought, of course I should accept, she IS my friend.  I am happy that she can actively consume the things I write about her, and that she even shares them with others (some of whom know the articles are about her and others who do not). While this added an ethically complicated layer to our relationship, I think it is a positive one. We can keep in touch more easily and she is able to read what I write about her and other patients.

“The mother of all the rabbits”

Elena was barely twenty when she died. I didn’t know what to do when her mother found me on Facebook.  I knew I was treading ethically problematic ground.  She friended me after reading an article I wrote in the Romanian popular press. She told me she knew I had interviewed her daughter before she died. I wanted to say yes, I knew her daughter well, and give her the recording so she could hear her daughter’s voice again, or at least tell her what we talked about—how even though she was dying, she dreamed of being an actress.  Finally, I wrote to her, but kept all those details to myself. I told her that I did know her daughter well, that she loved her very much, and I was very sorry for what happened. I tried to comfort her. I felt I had that responsibility.  I am a human first and always an anthropologist second. It is hard to know what the right thing to do is when you are so deeply woven into the lives of those you research.  When family members come to you asking for information about their loved ones final days what does humanity require you to divulge. I always feel terribly inadequate in these situations. Certainly not everything is sensitive information. Elena told me of how one of her happiest memories in a life full of sickness and suffering was when she played the role of “mother of all the rabbits” in a kindergarten play. Her mother might have liked to know this. She might have liked to know that I cried when I listed to the interview again thinking how her life was so full of suffering that she had to go deep into her childhood to find a happy memory to share with me.

So my question is: how do we as researchers and citizens in this new world of social media balance ethics and privacy concerns with our responsibilities to our informants (which do not end after we leave our field sites)?  What might the future look like as more of our informants also become consumers of our research through social media? How can we balance our deceased informants privacy with their loved ones desires to know what their final days were like? What about participants who choose to reveal their identities and take on advocacy roles? Is it not their choice to do this, even though it violates IRB protocol? And finally, do our informants really understand how their activities on Facebook might lead to a breach in confidentiality?

Filed Under: Internet, Social Media, Social Networking, Technology, To Ponder

Beyond Stepford: Considering Human-Robot Interaction

November 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The subtitle of an August 2011 National Geographic article concludes with a rather provocative question: “Robots are being created that can think, act, and relate to humans. Are we ready?” A cursory thought about the things on my desk that need organizing, the errands that need running, and the meals that need preparing elicits a quick “of course” from me—“I’d like to have my robot now, please.” In more reflective and contemplative moments, though, I try to imagine some of the nuances of human-robot interaction (HRI), particularly how such interactions would redefine not only how we communicate with one another, but by extension, how the very notion of communication would be reshaped.

Rosie rules
Creative Commons License photo credit: ekai

For most of us, our interactions with technology are strictly non-humanoid. We e-mail, text, tweet, upload, download, blog, skype, and share, but rarely do we speak with or come into physical contact with technologized incarnations of ourselves. And when we do, we often might not know it, since we are not in physical proximity to the telephone operator transferring our call or the app administrator playing a game with us. Of course, robots have worked on industrial assembly lines for decades, albeit in the form of robotic arms rather than embodied laborers. Increasingly, humanoid robots are also being introduced into our social and personal spheres. While far from common in the workplace or home, humanoids already have been tested as receptionists, teacher’s assistants, showroom models, companions for the elderly, and child sitters. This current adjacency to and future integration with human society compels us to reexamine what we desire in verbal, visual, and tactile modes of communication. We must ask—and answer—some weighty questions: How will these robots impact day-to-day communication? How will human-human communication be reshaped as a result of humanoid participation? When an English-speaking robot is being programmed with language, what form of English will it be? Will our existing notions about class and education be reiterated in humanoid language software? And, more broadly, in what ways will our ideas about agency and subjectivity be modified and what might “humanities” come to mean?

As humanoid robots are further integrated into the human sphere, their creators are arduously trying to make them look, sound, and move more like humans. However, as Chris Carroll and Max Aguilera-Hellweg point out in their National Geographic article, current models underscore how much humanoids do not resemble humans. From a distance, some humanoids might already “pass” as human, but up close one sees that their mouths do not close completely, their speech still comes across like “scripted observation” rather than dialogue, and their skin lacks elasticity—all of which, as Carroll and Aguilera-Hellweg remark, lends a bizarre quality to these robots. We strive to make them resemble us as much as possible. We anthropomorphize them to make them more acceptable to us. Yet, in producing robots that are “more like us” manufacturers replicate some of the more problematic aspects of our cultural and interpersonal constructs.

One particular humanoid model was subjected to a transformation that illustrates this conundrum. Yume, a humanoid robot created by Japan’s Kokoro Company, was deemed not quite believable enough to “pass,” so she was shipped off to Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center where five graduate students worked to revamp her and make her a worthy “other” for human communication. The result, as one of the students summarizes, is an actroid who is “‘slightly goth, slightly punk, all about getting your attention from across the room’”. While her makeover was not considered a wild success, what is noteworthy about it, I would argue, is how she has been sexualized in order to grab attention “from across the room.” The physical and sartorial attributes that render a young human female fetching and approachable in the human world have been transposed onto a carefully modeled collection of wires, metal plates, and silicone in order to make it more “believable” in whatever “entertainment” context it is destined for. But do we really want to copy and paste our current norms onto this new terrain?

 

It is difficult not to see elements of Narcissus’s and Pygmalion’s stories here. We seem to be so enamored of ourselves that we are willing to replicate qualities that many of us deem problematic, even detrimental, to fruitful, engaging, respectful relationships. We might not have fallen in love (yet) with these humanoids, as Pygmalion did with his creation, but the ongoing work of robotics designers suggests that the prize of near-perfect object-companions is worth the labor. Which begs still further questions: What sorts of interactions will be acceptable and what types impermissible? How far down the Stepford and “Svedka” roads do we want to go? Could increased interactions with humanoids—which lack self-awareness and emotion—broaden our understanding concerning sentience and its role in communication? Does HRI ultimately suffer because we know a light remains off in the attic even though the battery pack is fully charged? If we want to move beyond “Hello Kitty” clad Yumes, then people whose work is centered in communication need to be involved in research and development.

Filed Under: Interpersonal Communication, Technology, What if . . .

Is Siri the One and Only?

November 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Apple’s Siri, the personal assistant software that uses elements of artificial intelligence, received multiple accolades from the media. But is it the only software that is able to maintain general conversations and understand commands based on speech recognition?

Iphone rulez
Back in the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT created ELIZA, one of the first computer programs (chatter bots) that could maintain a meaningful conversation with humans. ELIZA was created to help patients in need of psychotherapy. ELIZA software responded to patients by using pattern matching techniques – providing answers based on similar keywords. The name ELIZA was inspired by Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, who learns to speak as a member of the elite society.  After some interaction with ELIZA it was possible to discern that ELIZA was a program, however some people believed that ELIZA was a real person.

A Turing test is usually used to evaluate how well a software program imitates humans. Created in the 1950s by Alan Turing, the test helps differentiate between humans and computer programs that imitate human intelligence. During the test, a human judge is assigned to chat with a human and a machine. If the human judge is able to guess who is who, the software program fails Turing Test. The test is implemented in an annual Loebner Prize competition that evaluates the most sophisticated chatter bots.  One of the winners of Loebner Prize – A.L.I.C.E.  is able to maintain a conversation, however in spite of receiving three Loebner Prizes, it still fails to pass Turing test. Another chatterbot Cleverbot won Machine Intelligence Competition in 2010  and passed Turing Test by only 42 percent.

A recent trend is to apply artificial intelligence for the development of personal assistant programs in mobile devices. Dragon Dictation software types down everything you say, and a Genius Button imbedded in hardware of some Android based phones is at your command at all times – finds locations, replies to your emails, calls your contacts and performs other routine tasks. Personal assistants can send emails, post to social media sites, take notes, translate, look up weather, update calendars, find directions and talk to their owners. While Apple’s Siri received a lot of attention in the media, there are similar programs available on Android Market, such as SpeakToIt and Jeannie. To help understand accents, a Singapore company SingTel created DeF!ND, software that understands Singlish – English spoken with a Singaporean accent.

While the use of Artificial Intelligence in mobile applications is on the rise, how this technology will develop? The usage of such applications in academia is also intriguing. For example, can students benefit from using “personal assistants”? Will it be possible to create technology that looks up references, helps in doing homework, or automatically creates and posts assignments by the deadline?

Filed Under: Computer Mediated Instruction, Technology, Tools Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Human vs. Technological Amplification

November 22, 2011 By 5 Comments

I originally planned to write this post about the difference in communication between human and technological means. Specifically, I was going to look at the use of the people’s mic and police bullhorns as exemplified by the events on October 1 at the Brooklyn Bridge. While the group had been using the people’s mic to amplify communication within itself and to outsiders, the police used a single bullhorn. In a letter on behalf of the people kettled that day, lawyers argue that the bullhorn was unintelligible.

However, events at Baruch College last night changed my planned post. A clearer example of the unintelligibility of technological amplification, when compared to human-centric distributed communication, occurred in the lobby of the Baruch College William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus Conference Center on the evening of November 21.

CUNY Police Attack Student Protesters from keith on Vimeo.

As this video shows, the security guard attempts to use a bullhorn within the Vertical Campus lobby. Sound waves are directed only toward part of the group he is addressing. The group above on the balcony or behind him past the turnstiles must rely on sound waves bouncing off walls in order to hear his transmission. Additionally, according to the Baruch website, the lobby consists of two “stacked atria, one rising from the ground floor to the fifth floor, with a glass curtain wall facing Baruch’s Information and Technology Building to the north, across Bernard Baruch Way; another, wider atrium rising above that, from the fifth to the eighth floor,” that provide much vertical space in which sound waves can get lost while reflecting off of the eight floors of glass. Since the security guard’s attempt to use directional technological amplification based on increased volume is insufficient to communicate his message to the students, one of the students must institute a people’s mic in order to ensure that the message is understood (see 00:13 in the above video). Distributed human communication succeeds where top-down technological communication fails.

 

 

A second incident from the Board of Trustees hearing that serves as an example of the failure of technological amplification comes from the first people’s mic check within the meeting itself. As this video shows, before the chair of the meeting Valerie Lancaster Beal requests, “Security, please eliminate the young lady,” (at around 1:30) her microphone cannot make her heard above the people’s mic.

Since this is a small room—only able to hold a fraction of the public who wished to attend—the issues of technological amplification are different from the bullhorn in the lobby. In this instance, a distribution of bodies throughout the room ensures that no individual—whether a part of the people’s mic or not—is very far from another person who is repeating the message. Valerie Lancaster Beal’s microphone and amplifying speakers are placed at the front on either side of the room. Therefore, her disembodied voice appears to come from three distinct locations, whereas the people’s mic emanates from a few dozen bodies throughout the whole room. This second approach not only allows listeners to hear words as spoken by human beings—rather than relayed through electrical wires—but gives an indication of how much support there is in the room for any relayed message. Just as in distributed network computing, if one of the people’s mic speakers is “eliminated” (to use Valerie Lancaster Beal’s word choice), in theory the message could be picked up by any other member of the group, thus ensuring instantaneous redundancy backup unavailable to the single-point-of-failure electrical microphone system. If the cable breaks or power is cut to an electrical microphone system, then the ability to continue transmission is interrupted.

The benefits of the human-centric people’s mic over a technological amplification system in these circumstances—whether bullhorn or electrical microphone—seem clear and come down to a division between “many-to-many” communication and “one-at-many” top-down transmission.

With technological amplification there is merely unidirectional speaking at a group with significant opportunities for miscommunication. By contrast, the people’s mic encourages a network of one-to-one communication which allows for instantaneous dialogic communication to clarify any points that were missed.

Technological amplification passively objectifies the recipients of the message—it is unconcerned with whether or not the group agrees with the statement being transmitted. The people’s mic, however, demands active participation by all of its subjects, even if they are in disagreement. While not the ideal way the people’s mic was designed to work, the choice can always be made not to relay a message if the matter becomes too disagreeable to the participants.

The means by which distance is overcome also differs between these two methods. With technological amplification, directed volume is employed. As the message gets further away from the specific direction that speaker is facing, sound waves dissipate and the message is lost. Increasing the volume on the technological device can improve the distance at which the device can be heard, but also increases the distortion, making the message unintelligible even to the listeners close to the device. With the people’s mic, sound radiates from the speaker through the crowd of the listeners’ collected bodies. Distortion is possible, as in the children’s game of telephone. However, since the number of repeating bodies is significantly lager than the single person in the children’s game—a whole group rather than one child whispering to their neighbor—redundancy is built into the system to make distortion very unlikely. There is also a chance to clarify anything unheard or misunderstood through an immediate side conversation.

His Master's Amplified Voice

Filed Under: Administration, Audience, Baruch College, CUNY, Interpersonal Communication, New York, Oral Communication, Technology, Uncategorized

Stay, Staying, Sted? Who is Teaching these Kids Grammar?!

November 9, 2011 By 8 Comments

Note: It is somewhat hypocritical for me to complain about people’s grammar. A member of my dissertation committee has repeatedly urged me to purchase a grammar book and alludes that my unedited writing is annoying.

I’m not ready to declare the death of the English language and literature yet, but my faith has been shaken twice in the past week at my local Bay Ridge Starbucks. The first occasion involved a loud group of teenage girls trashing the novel “Catcher in the Rye.”  “Ugh…It is like the worst book ever.” Yeah. It is not even about anything.  Terrible!”  I quickly stifled my first reaction which was to curse them out for disparaging a brilliant book that ought to speak to the alienation they feel as young people.  Instead I just took a deep breath, and imagined myself as a cranky old curmudgeon in a rocking chair muttering about kids these days and just continued writing. Who am I to defend J.D Salinger anyway? I didn’t even know who he was until my mid-twenties.

Where did the ducks go?
Creative Commons License photo credit: BRNFRRR

Yesterday, it happened again. There I was sitting on the couch working on a grant proposal (edited by my girlfriend whose first language is not English, but whose technical grammar runs circles around my own, but I will get to that…) when four high school students  piled onto the large couch next to me.  The usual teen activities of passing around each others cell phones and talking about fake IDs was soon replaced by a heated debate over what the past tense of the verb “to stay” was. One girl argued at it was “obviously ‘sted’” two of the teens were unsure and didn’t offer opinions leaving only one guy arguing that it was “stayed.” I kept working on my own writing until the group had decided that an impartial arbiter was necessary so the “sted” girl asked me, “you’ll know this, “sted” is a word right? Like they left, but I sted, at his house.” I said no, that the right word was “stayed.” She looked at me surprised.  English was this girl’s first language, and probably her only one.  This wasn’t a case of an irregular form of the verb, just a simple –ed ending. So what is happening?

Could it be that my local high school is particularly awful? Technology is frequently blamed for the impending doom of proper English. I don’t think it is the problem.  There were serious worries about the telegraph ruining English prose by making it terse and choppy. That never happened. As this NPR story shows, the introduction of new communication technologies has not destroyed the English language. As evidenced by the fact that here you are reading my (mostly) proper English.

Teens are not using texting abbreviations when writing college placement exams so it appears according to researchers and I have never received student work with “OMG.” In fact, even text messages students send me often begin “Hello Professor.”  I’m convinced there is enough of a moat around formal English to protect it. Actually, this boundary is enforced by both teacher and student as I learned last semester when I  wrote “LOL” in my comments on a student’s essay. What she wrote was absurd, involving surveying people during a refugee crisis about what their favorite foods are.  I really did laugh out loud. When I handed the papers back, the students giggled at my use of such unprofessional language. I countered that, just days prior, LOL had been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and therefore my use of it was completely acceptable, though perhaps a sign of the apocalypse. This only got me laughed at for even knowing that bit of trivia.

I still struggle with my grammar, but being in my 8th year of a PhD, my writing is much better than it used to be.  The problem is that no one ever taught me formal grammar, or at least I never learned it.  The emphasis, especially when I was in high school was on literature and creative writing. When I am feeling grammatically inadequate, I joke that I was taught grammar by hippies:

Youth Culture - Hippies 1960s
Creative Commons License photo credit: brizzle born and bred

[Flutes playing and birds tweeting in the background] “just write, just get your feelings on paper, don’t worry about the punctuation.” It is partially true. One of my favorite teachers wore Birkenstock sandals, had a ponytail and introduced me to amazing socially conscious books and how to write passionately, albeit without commas. I had a great time writing in high school, got A’s in English, but then got to college and discovered that I was clueless especially when it came to commas and semicolons, and passive vs. active voice… forget about it.

Many students are escaping formal grammar instruction or at least it is not sticking. There is quite a debate over how grammar should be taught, when and if at all.   Some students are not taught it in school or home school.  So unless the “Ellis Christian Academy” extends its K-3 program to college, this little girl may have as hard of a time as I did when I presented my passionately written run-on sentences and lack of punctuation to college professors who were not at all impressed.

So why don’t we teach grammar? And when it is taught, why aren’t students learning it? How can we explain the large numbers of college students who have poor grammar if we don’t blame the usual suspects, technology and “kids are just lazy these days?” What can we do to make sure that students as they are entering the job market can properly write a cover letter, or an email.  I think part of the problem is that no one is telling students why they need to know where a semicolon goes or the difference between “affect” and “effect” (something I learned last year finally, I think…) I explained it this way which got a few wide-eyed looks and raised eyebrows: “if you all don’t learn how to write properly, you will not get hired. Your peers are not hiring you, people like me are, and I am not impressed.”  Ugh…I have become the professors I hated in college.

Filed Under: Language, Technology, Uncategorized, Writing Instruction

How Disruptive is Digital Publishing?

October 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

E-books are booming. Similar to Gutenberg’s printing technology that replaced handwritten manuscripts, digital technology is replacing printed books.

E-books are not new. They existed in various formats, PDFs mainly, for a number of years. However, the launch of Amazon Kindle in 2007 changed the game. Light, easy to carry Kindle could hold hundreds of books. A year after, Barnes and Noble followed with a Nook reader. Later, Borders joined the contest by partnering with Kobo, Toronto-based e-reader manufacturer. In 2010 Apple’s device iPad was released, providing a more efficient way to buy e-books from various providers including the Apple’s own iBooks app. Android tablets followed the suit. By the end of 2010, Amazon reported for the first time that they sold 115 e-books for every 100 paperbacks, excluding free book downloads.

17-05-10 I Got Tagged
While Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Apple’s iBooks reap the most benefits from e-book sales, publishing houses have to face the most dramatic change since Gutenberg’s times. Traditionally, publishers have not worked with end consumers. Instead, they employed a middleman – a bookstore. But bookstores have their own agenda. The Internet makes everything cheaper. Amazon, a dominant book retailer, deliberately reduced e-book prices in order to increase its market share and sales of Kindle devices. For example, if a book retailed for $26, Amazon would pay a wholesale price $13 to a publisher, and sell the book for $9.99 to an Amazon customer. By taking losses, Amazon ensured cheaper prices of e-books.

Apple proposed a different pricing model. Apple allowed e-book sales through their iBooks App by charging 30% per transaction. Publishers liked a new model as it let them set the price of the book rather than dealing with Amazon’s draconian methods. As a result e-books became more expensive. Amazon did not have a choice but to adopt a new agency pricing model. At the same time, Amazon did not forget to innovate. In September 2011, Amazon announced a new Kindle Library lending program. Library users with access to Kindle software can borrow Amazon books for free from their local libraries. In addition, the majority of libraries offer free Kindle instruction sessions ensuring that e-book opponents can receive guidance and sufficient training on how to use e-books.

eBook Readers Galore
Publishers have fewer outlets to sell books at a regular hardcover price. However the costs of running a publishing house did not change. Publishers spend money on author advances, royalties, printing, advertising and distribution, facilities and operations, editors and so on. In addition, more and more authors prefer self-publishing. By avoiding a publishing house, authors reach out to consumers by offering books mainly in 99c range. Moreover, all classic literature is available for free to download due to expired copyright protection rights. How can publishers put up with disruptive digital publishing?

Guido Lang, VP of Business Development at MintRight, Inc., a global e-book distribution platform, says: “Publishers have to answer the question of how they add value. In a world where you can publish online in real time and at little or no cost, it is hard to convince someone to pay for a publisher. On the flip side, publishers have great experience in identifying, developing, and marketing great stories, which will remain a key skill. However, publishers have to adopt the new tools of their trade – e-books, apps, and social media.”

Of course, opponents of e-books may claim that an e-book will never replace a ‘real’ paper book. However, what is real? The first books known to humanity were set in stone, written on papyrus scrolls, clay tablets, parchment and silk. Paper books replaced ancient forms of book making, and Gutenberg’s printing technology replaced handwritten books. Digital technology and e-readers are ready to transform the whole industry of publishing.

Will paper books cease to exist? Probably not. While everything that is released in paperbacks can be easily digitized, books with colorful illustrations, such as cooking books or art books are perceived better in paper formats and are great gifts. As an analogy, mass produced prints did not replace handmade paintings. The challenge for publishers is to update their existing business model and innovate.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

more thoughts on technology in the classroom

October 27, 2011 By 1 Comment

I’d like to continue on the topic of technology in the classroom that James brought up in his blog post of the other day and that Erica continued with on Wednesday. These two posts and the responses they elicited in the comments section are fascinating and have helped me think through my deep ambivalence to technology in the classroom (in this case the college classroom) and I figured I’d jot down some questions and ideas in this post.

Like one of the commenters on James’s blog post, I ask my students to keep their computers and phones in their bags or out of sight. In the same way that I don’t want someone checking their phone while we’re talking, I don’t want my students to be distracted by an open website while one of their peers is engaging in the often extremely revealing process of speaking up in class.

That said, I do use technology in my classroom. For the past two semesters, I’ve created a blog for a survey course I teach called Great Works of Literature I (which ranges from the beginning of time to around 1600 CE). Over the course of the semester, each student is responsible for writing three 2-page posts (so on any given class day, four or five students have written and posted a short but complex argument on the text we’re reading for that day) and they are also expected to comment on each other’s posts. The work on the blog counts for a fifth of their final grade (5% per post, 5% for commenting) so it is a hefty part of what I am asking them to do for the class.

A snapshot of my course blog this semester

Above I said that I do use technology in the classroom. However, the blogging I ask students to do takes place outside the actual classroom.

Part of me really likes the fact that it’s done outside of class. It allows shy students to speak up in the comments section. It exponentially multiplies class-time (something they probably have mixed feelings about!). It puts the students at the center of a large part of the production of the class, since they’re the ones who write on the blog, not me. (I write prompts in a special “prompts” section of the blog and occasionally make an announcement using the blog, but they do all the posting and commenting otherwise.)

But I do want to find ways to better incorporate what they do at home into what we do in class. I’ve been feeling lately that the blog sometimes feels irrelevant to the students during class. Sometimes, depending on how the conversation goes, the blog goes unmentioned and all the work that went into the posts and comments for that day might seem unnoticed or unimportant to the writers or to the readers of the posts. While I’m reading and commenting on everything (I email the students my responses to their posts, partially in order to keep the comments section strictly for the students) I sometimes wonder how often the other students are actually reading all of the posts. Reading four or five posts in addition to the day’s reading is a lot of work, and unless I find ways to bring the blog posts into the classroom in a more comprehensive and integrated way, I fear they’ll be writing just for me, not for each other.

So how can I keep laptops from popping up on every desk while still honoring the work they’ve done on the blog and keeping student responses at the center of the class’s production of ideas and knowledge?

Some brief ideas in response to my own questions:

1.    Use the overhead projector more to simply display blog posts and address specific points raised in them. Plan before class which parts of each blog post might be relevant and referenced.
2.    Prompt students to include video or music or other media that relates to the reading in their blog posts. Play these found connections in class on the overhead projector and solicit responses from the rest of the students.
3.    Ask students to come to class with questions for the authors of the posts. Split the “commenting” requirement into comments on the blog and comments in class. Maybe also do in-class writing that involves the text and the blog posts in response to that text, thus reinforcing the idea that they have to come prepared having read their peers’ posts.
4.    Make games/role-plays using the blog. For example, ask a student who didn’t blog to “be” one of the bloggers and explain “her” position. Then have the real blogger respond with a counter-argument, thus asking the blogger to rethink or elaborate on or qualify his original claims.

And some more ideas about generally using technology in the classroom, aside from using the course blog:
1.    Intersperse class discussion, group activities, in-class writing, and mini-lectures (or anything else one does in class) with clips from youtube and elsewhere. I’m currently thinking up ways to use these two videos to communicate to students what I mean when I talk about tone:

2.     Digital story-telling, DIY radio. Lots to learn here from colleagues here at cac.ophony.
3.     Videos. Students can make videos with their phones, or borrow video cameras from their schools if possible (n.b. like Erica, I’m not going to get into questions of cost and privilege here). I’m envisioning students filming the process of memorizing a short poem (and including some of the bloopers), putting on scenes from plays we read and then proving surrounding material as if the video is a Criterion Collection edition, and  filming interactions with texts in non-classroom environments (filming a staged reading of Antigone at Occupy Wall Street, for example, or filming an interview with some yoga instructors  and practitioners about the Bhagavad Gita). We could then watch these videos together in class and discuss the results.

This has become essentially a long riff so I’ll stop here. I’d love ideas from cac.ophony readers. How do you use technology in or around your college classroom?

Filed Under: Blogs and Blogging, BLSCI, Pedagogy, Technology

Teaching the Mind AND the Body: Education without Technology

October 24, 2011 By 3 Comments

As a recent New York Times article wryly explains, it turns out that even the nation’s technological elites—the same engineers, software designers, and idea people, who brought us Google, E-Bay, and Facebook—would prefer that their children grow up and learn in a technology-free environment.

Ostensibly a profile piece about the experience-centered and technology-free Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos California, the article interviews several parents about why they chose to send their kids to a school without any computers or other media, thus setting the scene for a discussion of the potential benefits of technology-free instruction. Situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, one would not expect the Waldorf School to be very popular. However, it turns out that many parents who make their living designing the latest technologies are not too keen on their children using them. As one parent quoted in the article succinctly put it, “If I worked at Miramax and made good, artsy, rated R movies, I wouldn’t want my kids to see them until they were 17.” This aversion to technology in the classroom, however, is not held by most other parents and educators across the nation. So what do these parents know that others do not? It turns out quite a bit. For one, they know that education is not only about learning facts, but about becoming a well-adjusted and emotionally dynamic individual. They know, as one of them put it, that “teaching is a human experience,” and they know that technology, though incredibly useful in day to day life, can be a distraction in the classroom.

The article is, in fact, part of a series of recent New York Times articles exploring the use of technology in the classroom that offers a much needed critical analysis of what has thus far been a very one-sided policy debate. The belief in the value of technology in the classroom has become a kind of sacred cow of public education debates, and there are few incentives for administrators or school principals to question this orthodoxy. In fact, there are many hard-to-resist political and monetary incentives (mostly from the corporate world) that encourage technology use in public schools. While it turns out it’s very difficult to actually improve student learning and attention through the use of technology, purchasing a set of new Dells or IPads for the classroom, or signing students up for Facebook or Twitter, is an easy way to show parents and politicians that their schools are on the cutting edge; and who doesn’t want to be on the cutting edge? Indeed, even as many public schools struggle to keep teachers and restrict class sizes, they seem more than willing to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on corporate-manufactured technologies for the classroom in an attempt to demonstrate that they care about their students. Like an absent parent, who compensates by buying their child all of the latest gadgetry—with which they can then entertain themselves in their parents’ absence—our public schools seem trapped in a cycle of simultaneous neglect and harmful overcompensation. But as this particular article makes plain, the most important forms of learning do not actually require any technology.

Indeed, as it turns out, technology might even get in the way of important forms of learning. The Waldorf schools, which value human interaction and emotional development, have been around for a long time. However, their ability to continue to thrive and grow within a world that is increasingly technologically focused says something about the still small voice of emotion and the animal desire for physical forms of connection and meaning that persist within human communities. And what is most interesting about the Waldorf schools’ approach to learning—its emphasis upon the body—is precisely what is missing from so much recent technology-centered pedagogy. Teachers in the Waldorf schools encourage children to integrate physical activity into the curriculum, thus reintegrating body and mind in the process of learning. In contrast, technology-centered pedagogies, which require little physical movement and lots of focused mental attention, actually encourage a split between the body and the mind, privileging the mental, linguistic, and visual aspects of our experience over the interpersonal, intuitive, and somatic aspects. The negative effects of this split will no doubt become increasingly apparent as generation upon generation of children are increasingly raised in the constant presence of computer screens and digital forms of entertainment and information that encourage interaction without the complications of interpersonal communication; information without any organic context; and isolation without introspection.

In a world where children’s emotional experiences are increasingly manufactured and often mediated through technology, the Waldorf School’s emphasis upon the body as a vital part of experience and learning is more necessary than ever. Sadly, at least according to the reporting in this article, those benefitting most from the lack of technology in their schools also appear to be among the wealthiest and most privileged. Meanwhile the rest of the nation’s children, whose parents cannot afford the $17,000 a year price tag to attend a Waldorf school, remain the victims of a system whose desire to appease corporate and political interests seems to have overwhelmed their ability to actually teach. As schools in historically underprivileged districts spend their resources in a vain attempt to keep up with the latest technology, they are throwing away perhaps their one chance to offer a real solution to the increasing opportunity gap between the rich and the poor. As technology becomes more efficient and simultaneously more self-evidently easy to use, the real winners will be those who have the deep emotional and imaginative skills to navigate the pitfalls of this new world. Those trained only in the use of technology on the other hand, will likely find themselves its unwitting victims.

Filed Under: Education, Pedagogy, Technology

Playing with Communication

October 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I came across the work of Kate Hartman while watching a whole bunch of TED talks in preparation for a semester of teaching communication studies to both college students and high-schoolers.  I was hoping to find presentations that would get my classes excited about the possibilities of oral presentations, both through their content and the quality of the speakers’ delivery.  Ideally, these would be examples of innovative, critical thinking, presented to an audience in a creative way, with enthusiasm and well-utilized visuals aids.

That Kate Hartman’s work is all about communication—with oneself, with others, with nature, with inanimate objects—was so much the better.  Hartman creates what she calls “wearable communications” and is a Professor of Wearable and Mobile Technology at the Ontario College of Art and Design.  Here’s an example of one of her designs, the Muttering Hat, which externalizes the process of thinking and also enables you share it with a friend:

http://www.katehartman.com/projects/mutteringhat/

Kate Hartman's Muttering Hat

I was first struck by the way that her objects make concrete and a little strange (in a Formalist way—as in making us suddenly aware, making visible) the possibilities and challenges of communication and relationship in various contexts.  I like how her designs experiment at the interface of body and communication device, sometimes seeking to fit the device a little more easily to the flesh by making electronics more cushy and comfortable to wear (see her work on “soft and flexible” circuits) and sometimes acknowledging a huge gulf that needs traversing between our bodies and the natural world.  Her sweet, almost tender design for an interface for communicating with glaciers is an example of the later.  She describes the suits she has designed for this project as “intended for awkward introductory glacier encounters…enabling a person to lie prone on the surface of the glacier and give it a hug.” (See “Initial Investigatory Research for Glacier-Human Communication Techniques.”)  Here are some views of her glacier communication device:

http://www.boulderpavement.ca/issue001/glacier-human-communication-techniques/

Hartman's Glacier Communication Suit

All of her designs highlight awkwardness is some way, as she brings into view the weirdness and circuitousness of our attempts to listen to/communicate with other beings and natural things, but also the beauty and the vulnerability of those attempts.  But these works are also tapping into some big issues swirling around right now, like the uneasy integration of technology with nature, or how some scholars are engaged in rethinking the position of the human being in relation to the technological and natural worlds—a project driven by urgent ecological and ethical imperatives.  The more I look at and think about her work, the more I notice how it attempts to facilitate communication between humans and the non-human other by utilizing the newer communication tools, like Twitter, that we’ve become so accustomed to—thus throwing the limits and the possibilities of these tools into relief.  (Three of her works are featured in the current exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, “Talk to Me,” which is all about the ways people and things communicate. You can read here, for example, about the “Botanicalls” project she co-created, in which houseplants can send tweets to their owners when they need to be watered.)

Because of how resonant and current I found the ideas behind her designs, I was fairly surprised, during a leisurely scan of the viewer comments under her TED talk, to find so many viewers dismissing her work as childish, frivolous, and unworthy of the platform the  producers had given her.  Yes, she is kind of a funny, irreverent speaker, but her creations clearly are engaging on multiples levels with contemporary concerns.  So I was left with a few questions, which spurned some further musings about how I teach communications.

Maybe what I was reading in the comments speaks to the difficulty of getting different disciplines talk to each other, and to what happens when someone decides to work through a variety of disciplines—between art and design, technology, and teaching as well.  And perhaps because Hartman is playing around with her concepts, as in really being playful and having a good time about it, it might be harder for some to see the heavier intellectual work behind her explorations.  Hartman herself has spoken about the need to balance enthusiasm and criticalness.  She said in an interview: “I think we need both. It’s really important to lower the barrier for entry to get people involved but that shouldn’t subsume maintaining a sense of criticality in the ways in which we use technology and the ways we view art and design.”  So I’m left wondering: is there a way to create spaces in my Comm. 1010 classroom for both play and critical thought?  I often struggle with wanting to encourage my students to become inquisitive, receptive listeners, to be able to let down some of their filters and be open to radically new or different perspectives.  At the same time, I want to give them the tools to be critical listeners, sharp and adept at evaluating claims and assessing evidence.  Because honestly, I think they need help becoming both (as do I).  But don’t students have to master the forms before they can play with them, push at their edges?  I plan to show Hartman’s talk to both my classes, and not just to mine it for examples of good delivery, or strong argumentation, but also to begin a conversation about how to approach novel concepts with both an open and a discerning mind.

Filed Under: Art, Technology
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