Intellectual Cosmopolitanism

August 19, 2011 by Brian Hughes

A suggestive graphic by http://www.flickr.com/photos/acolavecchio/

I’m getting excited for the upcoming New York Times’ Schools for Tomorrow conference, and working on my presentation. I’ll be on the “Tools Available (college-level)” panel, and I’d like to convey some ideas about the future balance between tradition and timeliness in the academy. It’s hard to articulate an interesting position in the 5-10 minutes that I’ll likely have. So here’s one idea . . .

Without prognosticating, I’ll sketch out a view of the growing necessity of intellectual cosmopolitanism at the K-12 level—the idea that curriculum must continue to diversify around cultures and cultural practices.[1] Why? Well, as people around the world are increasingly connected, it’ll be harder to maintain a narrow worldview—and related mental habits. Right? (Hey, I’m not suggesting this will happen overnight.) In other words: more tech = more appreciation of diversity.

The import for college-level learning is that students will already have formed a two-pronged approach to education: increasingly relying on personal and non-school tools (more appreciation of diversity = a greater economic incentive to learn) for rote and “professional” learning (including deep expertise in academic subjects) while engaging community-focused and group-based learning in the classroom.

On this view (and let’s say 10-20 years away, just to push the limits of non-prognostication), civics emerges as a dominant theme of secondary formal education, while higher education increasingly becomes grounded in problem-solving (now more fashionably called “design”). Traditional modes of liberal learning (reading, writing, discussing) will not disappear so much as take place outside of formal education (fingers-crossed?). Instead of lamenting this retreat, educators must to pursue ways to connect group work to liberal learning—to make it count, so to speak.

Sound familiar? The more things change . . .

OK, so this isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but I think this perspective allows me to speak to several interesting points:

Group work will be standard practice. And it needs to get much better. Mainstream collaboration tools like Google Docs have improved communication and information sharing (full disclosure: I haven’t yet checked for evidence here), but there is room for improvement and specialization. Today, there are dozens of collaborative writing tools for different purposes. We can expect to see these options across all disciplines and modes of knowledge-sharing. Goodbye lectures.

Certification will happen outside of school. Yep, that’s right: no more “high stakes” tests in college, at least. Probably K-12 too. Students will still have to take them for a variety of reasons, but they’ll be created and offered by national (international!) consortiums (of one sort or another) and proctored by a handful private companies (want to take the SAT at a Google facility, anyone?).

Open data standards don’t matter. Students of all ages will want access to their own data. And they should get it from small companies and large educational organizations alike by virtue of market pressure. But that doesn’t mean companies have to adopt complex systems (like Raymond’s data backpack). I know this is speaking heresy, but this is good news for small companies who would otherwise be squeezed out of the education space but tech giants—a scenario that would be reminiscent of publishing giants dictating curriculum through textbook production.

Thoughts? I still have plenty of time to sharpen my thinking!

[1] I’m not sure if the term “intellectual cosmopolitanism” has been used elsewhere, but I think it poetically captures the force that technologies are exerting on curriculums and teaching practices.

Philosophy as History

July 25, 2011 by Brian Hughes

This afternoon I had the honor of working with Art Education students in Teachers College’s Instep program – thinking about John Dewey’s legacy and impact on art education. As preparation for the lecture and group activity (collaboratively writing philosophies of art education), we read:

Ursula Niklas’ “On the Philosophy of Teaching Philosophy of Art” to reflect on how philosophical methods can be used in different ways within the context of art education.
The Encyclopedia of Aesthetic Philosophy’s “John Dewey: Survey of Thought” entry on John Dewey for a historical look at the impact Dewey had on discussion of art, education, and philosophy.
Three chapters from John Dewey’s “Art as Experience” to better understand his philosophical views and context (at the very least read the “The Live Creature” passage from 525-540).
The Wikipedia entry on Richard Shusterman (a contemporary aesthetic philosopher) to see how Dewey’s philosophy continues to serve as a philosophical touchstone (especially the “Definitions of art” section): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shusterman (Actually, they didn’t get the Shusterman reading in time, but I spoke about it in my short lecture.)

It was a tough session to plan for, as I wanted to provide a broad view of Dewey’s relevance to art education, but also engage the class in thinking about the use and purpose of philosophy in their own teaching practices. Still, in good hermeneutic fashion, I tried to allow for both.

I asked everyone in the class to say a bit about their background in grappling with a teaching philosophy, and perhaps it was no surprise that people had a wide range of experiences – with respect to geography, philosophy, and education.

During the course of my talk, some interesting questions arose – about the use of wikipedia for doing philosophy, about my description of the “essence” of hermeneutics, and about whether or not teaching experience is necessary for philosophers who grapple with truth(s) of art and education. This latter question was one I did not have a chance to respond to in class, so I’ll respond here: this is a well-worn question across many philosophical disciplines, and there is no easy answer. On some accounts teaching experience is a hindrance, but on most it is an asset. Essential? Let’s not go that far. Valuable? YOU BET.

I’m not sure the philosophy-as-history angle was a useful hermeneutic, but it did allow for an important central argument: that philosophy is a tradition with which art educators must grapple. I hope it was interesting enough for these students to latch onto, and hope for feedback in the future. I’d like to keep working on this set of ideas, and a short lecture is an interesting (if challenging) format.

The students appeared to have engaging discussions about four elements of a “Deweyan Philosophy of Education” I put forward: Context, Definition, Interpretation, and Excellence. I hope they are able to continue to speak back to these four deeply philsophical themes in the future.

Thanks to the students for their energy!

Publishing with Libraries

April 2, 2011 by Brian Hughes

Last week I attended the annual Association of College & Research Libraries conference in Philadelphia. Julia and I presented a poster on Pressible, and how our library is using it to expand the publishing possibilities available to our community.

Fig. 1: a flattering tweet about our poster session

I attended panel and paper sessions on “embedded librarianship, “building lean and mean web project teams,” and “connecting to the campus through creativity.” And Julia and I went to the great keynote on “declaring interdependence” by Raj Patel, the author of several books about food, economics, and democracy. Overall, it was a great day to think about libraries, information, and related educational issues.

I came away from the conference with a lot of different ideas. Instead of trying to make sense of it all (from project ideas to criticism), I’m just going to list a few:

Co-blogging. Librarians can support student writing projects by helping to host, edit, and collaborate around public blogging.
Augmenting reality. It would be cool to have an augmented reality mobile app for “seeing” alternative social perspectives. This app could make new kinds of choices possible by making them visible (e.g., choosing where to eat, shop, and hang out). But how could the data be generated, and by whom?
Reader advocacy. How can books better, and more directly, promote social action?
Cultivate a constituency. To strengthen democracy, all educational institutions need to cultivate student activism and civic-mindedness.
Pressible TV. What if made a short video of the daily headlines on Pressible? Could it better serve an audience that wants to read less but still be up to date about the community? If we had this stream of content, what else could we do with it (besides featuring it on the network site)?

Looking back at my notes, I see the theme of scholarly publishing emerging. Most of the sessions I attended touched on opportunities and problems around publishing—from the perspective of either a librarian, student, or scholar. I think these ideas stand out to me because there are so many opportunities around publishing at colleges and universities, not only “scholarly” publishing per se, but “educational” publishing more broadly.

The theme of our Pressible poster reflects this: our idea of “small ‘p’ publishing” is about creating new opportunities for students, researchers, teachers, and professionals to learn from and with each other. New technology and a lot of old-fashioned hard work is making it possible. And now that it’s possible, and on the rise, it only remains to be seen if these new avenues of publishing can have a positive impact on learning, and even a transformative impact on the education sector.

Overall, Thursday’s program was a very interesting and dense (sadly it was the only day I was able to attend the conference). I was appreciative of the conference organizers who clearly follow the “less is more” maxim when scheduling paper and panel sessions—the sessions I went to were attended by hundreds of seemingly attentive, inquisitive conference-goers. This alone left me with a positive feeling about the future of libraries.

Lastly, some quotes from Raj:

On the Dustbowl: “It isn’t an example of the ‘tragedy of the commons‘ because people were forced to enact the counterproductive behavior.”
On democracy: “Apparently the voting public thought Obama would be the pizza delivery dude of change.”
On hedge fund managers: “Luck [of class, education, and ability] isn’t the thing that should entitle you to that kind of money.”

Hey, I’ll be the first to admit, these were not ideas I expected to come from a library-related conference.

Designing Learning Futures

March 16, 2011 by Brian Hughes

Here I am giving an Ignite-style talk two weeks ago at The Digital Media and Learning Conference in Long Beach, CA. It was my first time (both giving this style talk and attending the DML conference), and I really liked the format—20 slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds for 5 minutes. They’re supposed to be fun and thought-provoking, which was a good challenge in the context of a conference about “designing learning futures.” I tried gently poking fun at the audience by suggesting that we’ve all dreamed about being the person who, once and for all, creates a “Facebook-for-learning.”

The main point of the presentation was to think through how we’d go about building it—with a focus on development choices. Based on a simple rubric of what characteristics such a learning-centered application would have, I asked the audience to consider four diverse models of “social” apps (Facebook, Amazon, Moodle, and the SATs). I suggested the image of an Okapi neatly summarized the development conundrum, and concluded that such an application should be complementary to Facebook—not its replacement.

Well, there’s no guarentee my talk was substantial enough for the audience, but I enjoyed putting it together and delivering it. Several of the other speakers shared heartfelt, personal stories, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit upstaged. Deservedly so!

But the subtext of my talk—which I hope I sparked in at least a few of the couple hundred people in attendance—was to consider the necessity of developing niche applications for educational contexts. That is, it’s glorious that Facebook has a community of 600MM+ users, but it’s unlikely that learning communities will benefit much from being part of such a large-scale project. Sure, it would be great to preside over such a massive community as a software designer, and there are many feats that could be accomplished with data that it would throw off, but I’m skeptical it could serve learners more powerfully than smaller, more focused tools.

So, though I asked people to think about development issues, I hoped they walked away thinking about a learner’s “user experience.” I am cautiously optimistic that at least one person did so, as she tweeted:

“Facebook for learning. Okapi problem.”

Semantic Technologies in Learning Environments

January 27, 2011 by Brian Hughes

Interesting slides (56-58) listing challenges for developing learning tools, via elearnspace:

Semantic Technologies in Learning Environments.

Teaching Wikipedia as a mirrored technology

January 22, 2011 by Brian Hughes

A good read on Internet literacy and Wikipedia via First Monday:

Teaching Wikipedia as a mirrored technology

Programming as a New Literacy

December 29, 2010 by Brian Hughes

I’ve just read Douglas Rushkoff’s shortbook Program or Be Programmed, wherein he shares “Ten Commands for a Digital Age.” Though his portrayal of various “biases” of digital technology (e.g., timelessness, abstraction, depersonalization) is polemical, he succinctly describes major challenges of new technologies in 144 pages.

His main point is to describe a new literacy – a digital literacy he says we must achieve to continue to shape our world in positive ways. He argues that the consequence of not being able to “program” (or, he allows, at least being familiar with the scope and power of programming) would be to allow digital technology – and those who wield its powers – to overdetermine our lives.

I am sympathetic to this message, but reading his argument served as a good exercise to review the larger picture – and consider how well this kind of story about “digital literacy” hangs together.

One area Rushkoff’s book helped me reflect on was the design of online learning environments. In line with his descriptions of digital biases, current learning management systems are often positively shaped around the “advantages” of digital technologies. Asynchronous discussion boards are favored. Students are asked to use their real identities. There is “space” for collaboration.

So far, so good. But Rushkoff helps us ask: what about the “speed” of dialogue and collaboration? It seems to me that instructional designers (teachers or their assistants) could make the mistake of hoping that student interactions (with the course, and with other students) only increase. Or, similarly, that the administrative evaluators of such courses favor more frequent interactions.

As Rushkoff points out, such desires could be our ill-considered adoption of digital biases, and in fact, slower, less-frequent interactions could be preferable. While he harkens back to the “early days” of online bulletin boards, and points to the “depth” of discussion that came out of less frequent “logging in and signing on” (p. 24), I think it could more simply be a case of “less is more” – that writing and editing take time, and focus can help one achieve better communication. I wonder, therefore, how we could sharpen the design of online discussions to favor more reflective engagement.

There are already great examples of this online. From the way sites like the New York Times aggregates Comments, to the way tools like Disqus track one’s diverse contributions, there is a lot of good thinking about shaping online discussion. How could educational designers incorporate these and other strategies into a “course” experience?

The Skinny on the Media Show

June 11, 2010 by Brian Hughes

The Media Show – a show produced by EdLab’s video team that came out of the After Ed TV project, and a product of Gus Andrews’ imagination – recently won the Fair Use Award at the Media that Matters Festival (see the posting here). The particular episode that won the award (above and on youtube) is a look at the use of Photoshop in advertising, and a short history of image manipulation. Here’s Gus’ description of the show and the episode:

The Media Show is a YouTube channel series staring puppets Weena and Erna, two high-school-aged sisters skipping school to spend time making their own videos in an abandoned storage closet in an advertising agency in New York City. The show’s model of media literacy aims to reconcile the exuberance of fan-created media with a critique of ad-driven corporate media.

In this episode of The Media Show, My Hotness is Pasted on Yey!, Weena and Erna happen across a terrible graphics job in Cosmopolitan, leading them to the website Photoshop Disasters, which gets them thinking about other photo manipulation throughout history. Stalin, Hitler, OJ Simpson, Beyoncé—who hasn’t been touched by photo alteration in some way? The girls explore art and propaganda and end up playing with Photoshop themselves, taking control and manipulating their own appearance.

Perhaps even more exciting than the development and grow of the YouTube-based show, is a case study Gus has developed for using The Media Show in schools (see the Pressible site). We hope this will create an inroad for using these video resources in new and interesting ways.

For example, earlier this spring Gus worked with students at a Brooklyn High School using The Media Show to support a media literacy curriculum about advertising. Skye Macleod supported this collaboration and helped produce videos about the experience (see them here and here).

We’ll showcase the case study in the next few months on the EdLab website, and look forward to talking with educators (and others!) with an interest in this resource.

See more on the history of The Media Show here.

An irony of scholarly attribution

April 15, 2010 by Brian Hughes

I have been thinking about the academic honesty issues for a while now. So far my best ideas are in my draft essay, Challenges on the Horizon for Scholarly Attribution (another Knol experiment).

My interest in academic honesty came out of my exploration of the copyright wars, and my subsequent considerations of ownership in academic culture. Policies about scholarly attribution (acknowledgements, citation, and so on), for example, are the result of beliefs about the importance of acknowledging ownership of ideas – at once protecting authors’ livelihoods as well as allowing us to trace the history of an idea through multiple author’s works.

I have struggled to untangle these two goals not only to better understand the intention behind academic policies, but also their effects. My purpose is twofold: 1) to suggest that AHPs reveal a conflict between the scholarly and educational goals of academic culture, and 2) to show how limitations conceived by intellectuals under the sway of copyright law have a dramatic negative impact on educational opportunities.

From the abstract of my essay:

This essay explores how new tools demand that educators rethink the goals and effects of policies that prescribe originality in scholarship. The example of appropriation in art, and the conflict between appropriation and copyright law, will not only suggest how new tools can allow individuals to overcome limitations of policy to a productive end, but how we may value originality differently as a result of technological change.

An additional sidenote about my interest: those familiar with copyright law (and especially those who are critical of it) can appreciate the irony that academic honesty applies to ideas themselves – which is not the case with copyright. Thus, academics have seemingly gone one step further than so-called capitalists to protect themselves and their trade at the cost of individuals’ ability to freely “create culture.” This is perhaps my strongest motivation to continue to create an analysis of this urgent matter. I believe that the future of education depends on ending this embargo on unattributed intellectual production. (Which is not to say that attribution doesn’t have a proper role in education.)