Category Archives: Technology

Pete Hamill, Teaching, Technology, Willie Mays

Say Hey!

1 Comment

The secret of life can be found in baseball.

Oh, not today’s steroid-driven, television revenue-addicted, brazillion-dollar bonus baby baseball, but the “real” baseball of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, and the St. Louis Browns. Virtually every novelist I’ve ever interviewed has been a baseball fan (Cub and Red Sox fanatics predominate). I can still name the line up and batting averages of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals (who beat, of course, the Great Satan — the New York Yankees).

And it is with that background that I re-read Seymour Papert’s thoughtful (if turgid) “Why School Reform is Impossible”. It’s a slow but worthwhile slog for those of us wanting to know if this patient (education) can be saved.

Frankly, Papert isn’t convinced it can — or should be — resuscitated. Certainly there is much to be discouraged about right now. Public school teachers and university lecturers and adjuncts teaching four sections of freshman English are on the front lines of a cultural and technological war, even while Higher Education retreats further and further into the distant past, cutting off supply lines, and shooting its wounded warriors.

Hell, I’d be depressed … except … except … it’s Spring Training. It’s baseball. It’s a well-reviewed new book about Willie Mays, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend by James S. Hirsch. I’ll probably read it someday.

In the meantime, I loved Peter Hamill’s review in the February 28, 2010 New York Times Book Review section. Hamill (a recovering Brooklyn Dodger fan) is one of our great writers, a brilliant newspaperman and stylist, and currently a distinguished writer in residence at N.Y.U.

As is their custom, The Editors of the Book Review section include a short bio/appreciation of Hamill at the beginning of the magazine. In it, they cite Pete saying that he’s actually optimistic about the future of journalism:

“The delivery system is changing , but the kids I meet at N.Y.U. have the passion and desire. They deserve to work with great editors, full of exactitude, including grouchy copy editors who insist that ‘reference’ is a noun, not a verb. In a place where they will learn something new every day. I hope also that their future work is in the company of others, where stories are bounced around in city rooms and saloons. If not, they will miss a lot, including the sardonic laughter.”

This is profound stuff. As profound, in its own way, as Papert’s essay. “The delivery system is changing.” When it comes to technology, the future is now.It’s not in the batter’s box, it’s at the plate, with a belt-high curve ball that’s not breaking coming right down the pipe. Those of us who refuse to see it/believe it will end up with the “Golden Sombrero” (four strikeouts in a game) and the game, the sport, the future will pass us by.

Get over it. Deal with it. Learn to use technology.

Second, “In a place where they will learn something new every day.” This isn’t about the students, this is about their professors. WE ought to be the ones learning something new every day. About the BEST means to BEST reach those students who are full of, as Hamill writes, “passion and desire.”

And third, “I hope also that their future work is in the company of others …”. Hamill may be talking about his journalism students, but this applies directly to professors. I hear too many of my colleagues bad-mouthing the students — and each other. I see too many of my colleagues across the academy hide behind closed doors, avoiding students, dissing their counterparts down the hall. They claim Research is their god and that students are at best an annoyance and secretly (and not so secretly) despise them.

Guess what? I hear students talk. They know who you are. They despise you. You’re just another hurdle to overcome on the way to the future. Their future.

Baseball. Journalism. The academy. We’ve got a lot in common. Hirsch reports that Willie Mays approached every game (and he played a LOT of them) with a genuine enthusiasm and joy. In our worst days, we’re still touching lives, changing lives. It’s a privilege, not a burden.

We operate in a deeply, deeply flawed system. I’m not sure if Papert thinks it is salvageable. Maybe not …

But it’s Spring Training … every team has a chance … and Willie Mays is in centerfield….

David Bowie, Teaching, Technology

Ch-ch-changes …

1 Comment

Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
— David Bowie

Most things change, by entrophy if nothing else. Governments evolve and change. Even the military, that bastion of conservatism changes. The generals in World War I who watched the flower of the youth of several nations die senselessly before the machine gun were operating under principles set in place before Napoleon. But even they were forced to change with the onset of World War II.

Education, however, does not change. Yes, there are differences between modern education and the original Socratic method, but Socrates never had an Introduction to Mass Communications class of 300. And my smallest classes do, indeed, revert back to the Socratic question/answer method.

In fact, education fights change. Professors fight fierce rear-guard scorched earth actions against change. (And the higher the ranking of the professor, the greater the resistance to change.) Alumni withhold donations over perceived changes. Administrations move at a glacial speed, even when a change is clearly in everybody’s best interests.

Seymour Papert’s thoughtful paper “Why School Reform is Impossible” is a reasoned response to the this age-old question. His observation that even modern technology, which has changed all other facets of modern life, has failed to impact education (secondary and college), save for tiny pockets of enlightenment here and there is perhaps the most chilling section of the essay.

Sure, professors and students now communicate by e-mail, professors use Blackboard for grades and attendance, some even link edited film clips to Power Point presentations. But those are superficial changes at best.

The basic methods of teaching (lecturing and testing) are virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, our students drop out, tune out, and grow more cynical, even as our old school methods of conveying information grow more irrelevant. David Bowie again:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through

When we allow them to bring their laptops to class, students check their e-mail and Facebook pages, surf the Internet, or play games. I can see the glow of their cellphones as they text each other, pretending that they’re listening. Although lately, some have quit pretending…

Still, Why Education Reform is Impossible implies that the revolution will occur. In fact, it is occuring now. The difference is that this revolution is occuring — like the very best revolutions always do — from the bottom up.

We’re in a period of transition — the first waves of students who have mastered these new technologies are flooding our educational systems. When they’ve moved on into their careers — and hopefully some of them will choose K-12 and college education — they’ll bring with them the technology skills many of us current lack. Old timers will fight them. School boards won’t support them. Parents will complain about them. But the sheer weight of numbers will overcome all obstacles. Technologically aware and adept teachers will teach technologically aware and adept students … and things will change.

It’s happening now in the Journalism Department. We’re scrambling to keep up with students who already know (or who can quickly master) Dream Weaver, End Design, Adobe, and digital editing. We’re having to learn how to challenge these kids, how to assess them, how to incorporate what they know and want to know into our teaching methods on the fly. And the results, I’m happy to say, aren’t half bad.

I have colleagues in other departments who say that’s all well and good for “the trades” (as some of the derisively call departments like Journalism, FDM, Consumer Science), but that these changes will NEVER infiltrate their “pure” academics, the humanities, philosophy, math, Latin, Great Texts. They tell me that a REAL education is not possible utilizing these tools and advances.

Fine. Or, as my students say, “Whatever.”

The Fourth Wave. The Fifth Wave. The Sixth Wave … but who is counting anymore? The kids are bringing it with them NOW.

And guess what? The kids are alright.

Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can’t trace time

Teaching, Technology, Thunderclap Newman

Call Out the Instigators …

1 Comment

Call out the instigators
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
— “Something in the Air”    (Thunderclap Newman)

“Something in the Air” is one of my all-time favorite songs, a one-hit wonder of titanic proportions, right up there with “Scene Beyond Dreams” (The Call) and “In a Big Country” (Big Country). I love the sense of the apocalyptic … it captures a moment in time in the late 1960s when everything seemed to be a spearpoint in history. Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the landing on the moon, the assassinations, the riots, the end of the hippie era and the beginning of something unknowable, but inbued with infinite promise.

My musically VERY aware son Van has many times lamented that he wasn’t born at such an exciting era (the old Irish cautionary phrase, “May you be cursed to be born in interesting times” notwithstanding). I generally nod knowingly, sigh dramatically, and pat him on his young head. (This is where in a perfect world I’d take a long draw on my pipe and say something wise, except I don’t smoke and usually all I can think of during these teaching moments is an old limerick.)

Since I’ve been teaching the Introduction of Mass Communications JOU/FDM 1303, however, I’ve come to a very different understanding. Nearly ever week I have to update nearly every lecture. Stuff is happening at an extraordinary clip right now.

Something is in the air RIGHT NOW. It’s called technology. The digital, dig-able planet. Lots of good stuff. Lots of bad stuff. But mostly lots and lots of NEW stuff.  Like it or loathe it, fight it or ignore it, surrender to it and good gently into that good night or rage, rage against the dying of the light. It don’t matter. We’re on the crest of the wave.

I want to be one of the instigators. I want identify the good stuff, learn the good stuff, and incorporate it not just in my classes and my professional life but in my daily life. For years, I’ve resisted it (I don’t have the time, it costs too much money, I don’t need to know this).

No more.

The Revolution’s HERE.

Connections, Story-telling, Technology

Perspective …

Leave a comment

coal_hands_g1v4Despite its somewhat daunting title, Gavin Weightman’s The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World 1776-1914 is a bright, fascinating read. I was particularly taken with the stories about Abraham Gesner, the man who distilled a useable lighting and heating oil from coal and petroleum sludge.

For all of the horrible things burning dirty coal has done and is doing to our environment (incidences of asthma and autism skyrocket the closer you live to a coal plant, for instance), Gesner’s  invention is one of the cornerstones of the modern age.

And yet, in his own account of the process, he refuses to take credit:

“The progress of discovery in this case, as in others, has been slow and gradual. It has been carried on by the labors, not of one mind, but of many, so as to render it difficult to discover to whom the greatest credit is due.”

The deeper I get into the research for Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement, the more profound that statement becomes. I stand on the shoulders of giants.

It would make a good opening paragraph for my book, I think.

Teaching, Technology

You are the song

4 Comments
Conductor Christian Thielemann
Conductor Christian Thielemann

Itay Talgram’s brilliant “How to Lead Like a Great Conductor” (TED) works on a couple of levels for an old dog like me. There is most certainly a joy that comes from enabling other people’s stories to be heard, at the same time, in a “classroom concert.” But I’ve rarely built that possibility into a lecture in the past. Perhaps it is ego — my rationale has always been that there’s simply too much material to cover and too little time for any “digressions.”  And, depending on the class, that may be true:

1. My Intro to Mass Comm class has 300 kids. Not a good setting for that sort of thing. Plus my evaluations have been (if I may be so immodest) really good

2. My small advanced writing/workshop classes. Most of the time, the kids do all of the heavy lifting of assessing and commenting on each other’s work … I only speak at the end if there is an additional point or two to be made. Again, the reviews have always been great.

3. My Magazine and Feature Writing class. I’ve been very disappointed with the response/production/engagement  in two of the last three semesters. So disappointed, in fact, that this is the class I’ve replaced with the ATL Fellowship. The evaluations have been good, but not as good as the others. More importantly, I’M not happy with how I’m teaching it. (Lecture with Power Points, no textbook, lots of writing, lots of personal stories of what NOT to do.) It has worked for 20 years. It ain’t working (in my mind) as well now.

So, if the “project” part of the ATL class is to both improve your own teaching AND share how that can be done (theoretically using the new technologies that DO engage kids now), then it seems logical that that’s the class I should target.

Well, drat.

I really want, as Talgram says, to be able to create the process and the conditions in this little world that maximize the potential for success in each student. The great directors, he seems to be saying, have somehow created the process/conditions in such a way that the musicians have just enough framework to allow them the freedom to “own” the music (save for that one hapless trumpet player) and guide themselves.

That’s a tall order. It appears I’ll need to revamp that class. But then, identifying the problem is part of the battle.

 I guess my goals are to now identify WHAT I can do to create a successful partnership, WHICH technologies will facilitate that, and HOW the HELL I’m going to be able to do that in such a way that I can share it as the ATL project at the end of the Spring semester.

I may start with baby steps, working on something a little easier at first.

Like World Peace.

Teaching, Technology

Changing the Sense of the Possible

1 Comment

open-university-logoI was fascinated by Dr. Brenda Gourley’s talk ,”Dancing With History: A Cautionary Tale.” A number of her statements struck me, including her claim that it was academics who “most fiercely” resisted the changes suggested by the creation of an Open University. I don’t come from an academic background (as some of my “colleagues” in my previous department frequently reminded me. So when I did arrive in academia, I was pretty naive. I thought academics would be different than the comparable folks I knew in the military or business or politics. I thought that there would be this utopian, unified vision of helping humanity, mentoring students, working together. And, as a not-particularly-promising lad at Baylor in the early ’70s, that’s what I (thought) I saw taking place.

Boy, was I in for a shock! At every level, I saw (and continue to see) in-fighting, turf-wars, empire-building, back-stabbing, and just plain old meanness. I saw a lot more honor and respect growing up in the military. I don’t know that I was disillusioned — I was a working journalist, after all — but I was saddened and personally hurt. (As the old saying goes, “The reason academics fight so hard is because the stakes are so low.”)

Ultimately, what I was seeing was a reactionary response to an ever-changing world. (Which is kind of dumb, when you think about. Another old saying claims that human-kind has been in “a period of transition” since the Garden of Eden.) Of course, the courtly, fascinating, dynamic professors* of my days at Baylor and North Texas weren’t facing the level or speed of technological, social and economic change that today’s professors face.

Instead of embracing (or at least shaking hands) with this change, we dig in our heels and fight it. Fiercely. (BTW, my wife Mary addressed a lot of these issues in her book Beyond 2020.)

But Dr. Gourley said something early in her talk that reminded me it is actually human nature to respond this way in the midst of  this kind of change. A lot of us are expending a lot of our energy just to get by.

She said, “It’s challenging. Twenty, thirty years from now, it’ll be historic. Now it’s just challenging.”

I talk to folks who survived World War II or the ’60s and they remember the challenges the best. The knowledge that what they were living through was “historic” was a pretty low priority at the time. I was too young to participate in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the ’60s (A. We were in Japan. B. I couldn’t drive.) but in retrospect, they look like fascinatingly vital, exciting times to be alive. Historic, even.

I believe we’re in just such another “historic” time. Dr. Gourley’s eloquent summary of the State of the (Teaching) Art was a valuable reminder that maybe I need to get with the program more. Maybe I need to be more intentional about what’s going on (particularly from a technological standpoint) and look for more “modern” ways to engage this new student. I’ve caught myself, as a teacher, bemoaning the lack of writing skills this new generation possesses and assigning blame. Instead, I need to be using what’s already working at attracting their attention and harnassing it.

It’s a new culture. It’s a new economy. The “change back” theory says that people will usually prefer the familiar over the unfamiliar, even if the familiar was dysfunctional and damaging.  I don’t want to be guilty of that. I pledge to work harder in 2010 to (gently) embrace what’s already here and look forward what’s yet to come, both as a teacher AND as a citizen. Dr. Gourley called it a train. I don’t want to be left at the station and miss what could be a wild, wonderful ride.

* A shout-out to Bob Reid, Ralph Lynn, Rachel Moore, O.T. Hayward, Barry Klingman, David McHam, Mike Stricklin, Bullet Lowrey, Doug Starr …