This is a video essay for my Education 401: Issues in Learning and Teaching class.
It's on our "Knowing" module.
10/17/2011
On “Teaching Ethical Know-How in New Literacy Spaces”; Jargon and Substance
EDUC 404 – Individual Group Reflection Paper
Philip Bird
Prepared for Dr. David Watt
Our inquiry group has decided to focus on the use of social networks within school, especially when pertaining to literacy. Due to the relatively new nature of the social network, both as blossoming idea and also as it has infiltrated and embedded itself into the culture of youth (and broader culture for that matter), our group has generally found that much of the literature that describes this phenomenon is simply trying to frame it in older, perhaps cultural, ideas about literacy.
The reading used in my inquiry focus on a paper by Luce-Kapler, Sumara, and Iftody, “Teaching Ethical Know-How in New Literacy Spaces” (2009). After reading this paper, I was initially struck by the defensiveness of the writers towards this new social vehicle. As I expressed in my powerpoint, they take an initial stance of “greatest concern... the propensity with which individual stories can be appropriated and disseminated without regard for the individuals who exist as subject of those stories.” To parse this language – they are concerned with individual stories become social gossip writ large, and available to all. This is a genuine, legitimate and valid concern, but it sets the tone of the paper as generally alarmist, without a substantial solution to a new media reality that new teachers, and their students deal with on a day to day basis. Our group also discussed the example in the paper of the “Star Wars Kid,” (See after this paragraph) as well as cutting analysis from Penny Arcade in the “John Gabriel's Greater Internet F*****d Theory” (Krahulik and Holkins, 2004). We finished up with a discussion on how this paper applies to to the story of Jamey Rodemeyer, a victim of cyberbullying, and his tragic death (Dangerous Minds, 2011).
Star Wars Kid:
Our discussion found that popular culture is moving at a pace that the educational system is struggling to keep up to. We found that the reading was inadequate in fully comprehending the nature of an “Ethical Know-How,” in social networks and new media – in fact it only address surface concerns similar to the emergence of any new media – such as concerns with televisions and children in the 60s. The discussion group suggested that a class exploration and discussion of online etiquette and a discussion on what is appropriate or not would fathoms deeper and furlongs further in addressing “Ethical Know-How,” especially in context to cyber-bullying or facebook-drama.
What I found valuable from the reading was the attempt to begin how to set up an ethical system for online behaviour. It asks valuable questions, such as how do we protect and guide our students in this new field of literacy and culture? It suggests an empathetic approach,
(Luce-Kapler, Sumara, & Iftody, 2009)
While this is start, I found that the paper did not go beyond simple empathy, and its relation to Buddhism. The authors later begin a discussion of close reading, which we felt completely sidestepped the original topic. However, they do highlight a serious concern facing students today. For example, in the aforementioned case of Jamey Rodemeyer, his suicide was prompted by cyber-bullying after he came out publicly about his homosexuality on YouTube, in the form of an “It gets better” video – part of an online campaign against GLBT bullying in high schools.
This reading provided great fodder for questions, such as: Why does the article only employ one kind of ethics (namely an Buddhist empathetic approach)? How do you articulate and apply such ethics to online behaviour? Further, how do you teach this to students? Can you give examples? How do you defuse online drama as it bleeds into the classroom? How separate should you as a teacher be to the students? Do you “friend” them on facebook? What are the other uses of social networks? What about the issues of anonymity, pseudonymity, and virtual selves? What about the discussion on privacy, and digital permanence. Or what about digital surveillance and the use of facebook to scout potential employees by employers? We found that the surface was barely scratched, and we were only left with jargon, and little substance on a question that will burn in the minds of teachers in today's digital literacy.
Reference List:
Luce-Kapler, R., Sumara, D. & Iftody, T. (2010). Teaching ethical know-how in new literary spaces. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 536–541.
Star Wars Kid. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
Krahulik, M., & Holkins J. (2004, March 19). Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies). Penny Arcade. Retrieved from: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
Dangerous Minds ( 2011, September 20). Another Heartbreaking Gay Teen Suicide. Dangerous Minds. Retrieved from: http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/another_heartbreaking_gay_teen_suicide/
Philip Bird
Prepared for Dr. David Watt
Our inquiry group has decided to focus on the use of social networks within school, especially when pertaining to literacy. Due to the relatively new nature of the social network, both as blossoming idea and also as it has infiltrated and embedded itself into the culture of youth (and broader culture for that matter), our group has generally found that much of the literature that describes this phenomenon is simply trying to frame it in older, perhaps cultural, ideas about literacy.
The reading used in my inquiry focus on a paper by Luce-Kapler, Sumara, and Iftody, “Teaching Ethical Know-How in New Literacy Spaces” (2009). After reading this paper, I was initially struck by the defensiveness of the writers towards this new social vehicle. As I expressed in my powerpoint, they take an initial stance of “greatest concern... the propensity with which individual stories can be appropriated and disseminated without regard for the individuals who exist as subject of those stories.” To parse this language – they are concerned with individual stories become social gossip writ large, and available to all. This is a genuine, legitimate and valid concern, but it sets the tone of the paper as generally alarmist, without a substantial solution to a new media reality that new teachers, and their students deal with on a day to day basis. Our group also discussed the example in the paper of the “Star Wars Kid,” (See after this paragraph) as well as cutting analysis from Penny Arcade in the “John Gabriel's Greater Internet F*****d Theory” (Krahulik and Holkins, 2004). We finished up with a discussion on how this paper applies to to the story of Jamey Rodemeyer, a victim of cyberbullying, and his tragic death (Dangerous Minds, 2011).
Star Wars Kid:
Our discussion found that popular culture is moving at a pace that the educational system is struggling to keep up to. We found that the reading was inadequate in fully comprehending the nature of an “Ethical Know-How,” in social networks and new media – in fact it only address surface concerns similar to the emergence of any new media – such as concerns with televisions and children in the 60s. The discussion group suggested that a class exploration and discussion of online etiquette and a discussion on what is appropriate or not would fathoms deeper and furlongs further in addressing “Ethical Know-How,” especially in context to cyber-bullying or facebook-drama.
What I found valuable from the reading was the attempt to begin how to set up an ethical system for online behaviour. It asks valuable questions, such as how do we protect and guide our students in this new field of literacy and culture? It suggests an empathetic approach,
“ethics emerge from our empathetic identification with others... a necessary condition for developing an adaptive and responsive (i.e., complicitous) sense of personal consciousness or identity. Deep empathizing requires a dissolving of one's own ego boundaries, understanding that to be more fully oneself, one needs to imagine the mind of another”
(Luce-Kapler, Sumara, & Iftody, 2009)
While this is start, I found that the paper did not go beyond simple empathy, and its relation to Buddhism. The authors later begin a discussion of close reading, which we felt completely sidestepped the original topic. However, they do highlight a serious concern facing students today. For example, in the aforementioned case of Jamey Rodemeyer, his suicide was prompted by cyber-bullying after he came out publicly about his homosexuality on YouTube, in the form of an “It gets better” video – part of an online campaign against GLBT bullying in high schools.
This reading provided great fodder for questions, such as: Why does the article only employ one kind of ethics (namely an Buddhist empathetic approach)? How do you articulate and apply such ethics to online behaviour? Further, how do you teach this to students? Can you give examples? How do you defuse online drama as it bleeds into the classroom? How separate should you as a teacher be to the students? Do you “friend” them on facebook? What are the other uses of social networks? What about the issues of anonymity, pseudonymity, and virtual selves? What about the discussion on privacy, and digital permanence. Or what about digital surveillance and the use of facebook to scout potential employees by employers? We found that the surface was barely scratched, and we were only left with jargon, and little substance on a question that will burn in the minds of teachers in today's digital literacy.
Reference List:
Luce-Kapler, R., Sumara, D. & Iftody, T. (2010). Teaching ethical know-how in new literary spaces. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 536–541.
Star Wars Kid. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
Krahulik, M., & Holkins J. (2004, March 19). Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies). Penny Arcade. Retrieved from: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
Dangerous Minds ( 2011, September 20). Another Heartbreaking Gay Teen Suicide. Dangerous Minds. Retrieved from: http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/another_heartbreaking_gay_teen_suicide/
1/20/2009
Inauguration
"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
...This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed—why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."
11/05/2008
10/27/2008
Headshot
Fingers tense in sudden excitement
Palms sweaty, a shallow breath
Held in eager anticipation
BOOM Headshot!
A wicked, glorious glee
And a foe defeated, a player pwned
Bloodlust captured, transformed,
Ameliorated
The gritty pixel, a battlefield of bytes
There are new heroes, new laurels
of respect, cred, and cool
And they are but a construct
An achievement is a tick on a screen
A bloody warrior, avatar of grim justice
ripped now from myth and legend, made
Alive to hew at the ephemeral
seething flanks of an imagined enemy
A boyhood imagination's playground
Transmogrified into half-reality
Power lies in the controller, the flick of a
thumbstick, and a thought commands armies
fleets, a KO, a Superbowl victory
The nectar of triumph, a sweet drought
to a thirsty imagination trapped
in a dull and pallid existence
Where there is no war to win
No fight against desperate odds
or a clarion call to courage
Palms sweaty, a shallow breath
Held in eager anticipation
BOOM Headshot!
A wicked, glorious glee
And a foe defeated, a player pwned
Bloodlust captured, transformed,
Ameliorated
The gritty pixel, a battlefield of bytes
There are new heroes, new laurels
of respect, cred, and cool
And they are but a construct
An achievement is a tick on a screen
A bloody warrior, avatar of grim justice
ripped now from myth and legend, made
Alive to hew at the ephemeral
seething flanks of an imagined enemy
A boyhood imagination's playground
Transmogrified into half-reality
Power lies in the controller, the flick of a
thumbstick, and a thought commands armies
fleets, a KO, a Superbowl victory
The nectar of triumph, a sweet drought
to a thirsty imagination trapped
in a dull and pallid existence
Where there is no war to win
No fight against desperate odds
or a clarion call to courage
10/15/2008
Worth
Who am I?
A question that tugs at the bottom of every soul.
What is worth, what is of worth?
We are made in the image of the Creator, blood, dust and bone. We are reflections of a singular and unfathomable will. We are the children of the Word that fell from His lips onto the world.
There is something inherently of value in us, of us, that we radiate. It is in what we are, it is in the unlimited potential of the DNA in our cells, we are the many, we are the variegated, and we are the host of possibilities. There is something of His eternity in the incredible manifold paths that the complexities of biology offer us.
And that is merely in our form, our shape, our dust. And He showed fit to give us something more. He gave us His breath, the animus, the soul, the ability to choose. He gave us choice. He gave us the capability of understanding.
A question then follows, regarding understanding. We ask, especially to the literal translation: If Eve knew, truly knew the fullest consequences of her actions, would she have bit into that apple? Would she have enslaved us, a world, to thousands upon thousands of years of pain and suffering? Would the mother of us all condemn us in a moment, for the sake of knowledge? And yet, to push the literal translation, even her limited understanding of a choice between God and self would mean that she knew of good and evil.
Regardless, there is something rotten at the core of us all. There is a malignity to us, and it colors every decision that we make. We are bent, and everything we do is thrown askew. Yet, I ask, are we broken, in the fullest sense of the word? Are we incapable of understanding altogether, that we are totally and absolutely lost? Would being this broken not even allow us to be capable of self-reflection? Would we not even know how broken we are, unable to answer the question to why we mess everything up?
Do we mess everything up?
A man called Tolkien said once, “We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth-making, only by becoming a "sub-creator" and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall.”
But. But: Are we not the reflection of a God that is perfect? Are we not the refractors of a pure Light? Is there not something in us that calls to Him? Is there not something in all of us that recognizes we are the vessels of His Light, His greatness? Is there not some worth in that?
We see through a mirror darkly.
So: the problem. We can’t, being the instruments of our own destruction, engineer a way out that destruction. If we see sin as death, in and out of this mortal coil, a death in the little sense during our life, and a death after we pass, then we’re f*cked. It takes something to straighten us. It takes something to repair this “broken” soul.
It takes something like Jesus. For God so loved the world. Notice the language. Notice what it says. He LOVED the world. He saw worth in it. He saw something worthy of redemption. He saw something that needed to come back to Him.
It is true that we cannot manufacture this worthiness by anything we do, for in the end it falls short of its mark, it bends in its skewed flight, it misses the target. It is not complete, it is not perfect. But that we do, that we know, that we try, that very fact is from what we inherently are, the image of God. We seek after His face even though we cannot give the very search its words. We look for transcendence; we look for that purpose, engage in that passion that will deliver us to something better. Worth comes then, when we are our truest selves, an independent agent of the Will of God, spun into the world. We see this, in the image of who Jesus is, and what he’d done. The greatest thing a man can do is lay his life down for his friends, a free act of volition, not some prescribed fate. Our worth is immeasurable, for God took an immeasurably worthy Son and had him die for us. Our price has been the death of the Son of God.
Let us hold to the value of this worth, with humility and gratitude. For we are bought, purchased with a coin of infinite value.
Autumn, Interior and Exterior
This sums up how I feel nowadays, in a much more sublime fashion than I can craft at the moment. Go Go PB Shelley
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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