educating people not consumers

July 20th, 2011 • books, library
Tags: consumerism, education, formal, informal, jane mcgonigal, jonathan hickman, libr559m, module 2, people, reality is broken, school, the nightly news, videogames

Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken has a good discussion of formal vs informal education, and of the difference between creating consumers and creating people. Participating in culture is the way to the latter. Which brought to mind this quote: “The only thing you should learn from school is that you do not belong.” (The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman)

scavenger hunt for inforg 2.0 terms

July 17th, 2011 • library, tech
Tags: 2.0, art, cliche, comics, computers, education, incrementation, libr559m, module 2, neurologist, ning, nsw, puns, scavenger hunt, social media, state library, version numbers, webcomics, wired

When I looked up Education 2.0 the bookmarkable stuff I found was a defunct Ning site (and an active one for Art Education) references to the Khan Academy and some interesting articles from Wired in 2007 when they were doing an Education 2.0 spotlight, plus a Neurologist talking about an Education 2.0 that hasn’t been achieved because computers are still an afterthought. They all had to do with interaction and participation through digital media, so that’s good and consistent, I guess. I liked the fact that two Ning groups were noticeable since I think of them as one of the interesting upstart social media companies that seems to have melted away into corporate blandness. (I may be completely misreading the current state of Ning. If so, and you care, I’m sorry.)

Another use of 2.0 I looked briefly at was a subject dear to my heart, comics. Specifically webcomics. There was a book in 2008 called Webcomics 2.0 and reviews even then mentioned the confusing nature of the title, since the book might be seen as a sequel. I thought that was kind of interesting since this was a book made about internet people and you’d think the audience would be up on the buzzwords.

As far as libraries go, I found an interesting non-bloggish blogspot site from 2008 run on by the State Library of NSW, billed as a Learning 2.0 course. While they use the 2.0 thing consistently with the rest of the webiverse there (though Australians I’ve met tend to say “web two” instead of “web two point oh” which still weirds me out), what I really liked is how they called their 2010 sequel course New South Wales public library learning 2.1. The idea that you don’t jump straight from 2.0 to 3.0 and that bit of consistency with how computer people do version numbers, which is where we got the whole 2.0 thing from anyway, made me very happy.

I feel like libraries and other information organizations just use the 2.0 because they like to keep up with trends from five years before. Individuals within organizations might be pushing for things earlier, but by the time stuff gets approved it’s become cliché. I guess the good thing about only using the terms once they’re cliché is that “everyone knows” by now that people saying 2.0 mean something to do with computers. It doesn’t mean much but it’s something to start with, I guess. (And if people don’t try to make godawful puns with it.)

computational literacy and the gibsonesque present

January 26th, 2011 • library, tech
Tags: bruce sterling, burning chrome, computational literacy, computer science, design, education, eric meyers, future, google docs, gui, informal, infrastructure, instruction, interaction, libr535, metacognition, michael twidale, programming, school, sf, skype, social learning, special effects, touchscreen, twitter, unintended consequences, unix, video, vimeo, william gibson

After an 8am class on instruction in which we started to learn about treating lessons as products to be designed, I attended a colloquium by Michael Twidale about Computational Literacy & Metacognition (here are my rough notes).

It was a pretty excellent talk about the way we teach people how to do computery things. What I liked best about it was that Dr. Twidale was coming at this from what he called an Engineering point of view as opposed to a Science point of view. The idea that rapid prototyping in research might be more useful than studying precisely how things work at a point in time is something I’m very sympathetic to. I especially loved how he discussed the unintended effects of different technologies that go beyond what their designers had in mind, such as Twitter revolutions and large touch-screens enhancing learnability and interaction because of their poor usability for one person. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the famous William Gibson line from Burning Chrome “…but the street finds its own uses for things.”
Read more »