The American Crawl

A worthy followup to this:

C’mon people. I’m in South Los Angeles here. Our school’s Internet moves at just less than a creep. I can’t get a working ethernet cord, log on to social networking sites, youtube, etc. You’ve heard me whine about it before. Obviously most of my students aren’t accessing the Internet at home. Our isle of misfit computers at school is their only (semi-)reliable resource for developing media literacy skills. I don’t say this to bash the equipment at our school, but to criticize the disparity between my students’ opportunities to engage online and students in more affluent neighborhoods.

I continue to hear about amazing things happening in Second Life, about online study groups, and vodcasted lectures. But we’re still stuck in our first, perpetually offline life, like it’s still 1999 and Napster is alive and destroying our dial up connections.

At a recent school focus group meeting, several teachers discussed frustration with technology access on campus. The skills students need to succeed in college and beyond are expanding. Sooner or later someone is going to expect my students to be able to quickly and effortlessly post to a blog, add to a wiki, or collaborate via some sort of social networking protocol. And once again, my school will have failed to prepare them for such a task.

And About those Cameras
Somewhat related to this, I recently wrote about a video experiment I am conducting in my first period class. [If you’re too lazy to read the link, I’m having students in my first period class videotape the lesson everyday. Of course, I say it much more elegantly at the link, so just go over there ya putz!] What I’d like to add is that, by handing the cameras to the students, power and agency is shifted within the classroom. Suddenly, I’m not the one scoping out misbehavior; we are complicit in maintaining order within the classroom. As a result, the camera empowers instead of demeans – unlike the recently installed security cameras that students frequently bemoan.

On Friday, Professor Greg Niemeyer spoke with my students. Part of his talk described the differences between surveillance, co-veillance, and sousveillance. I have a feeling that this is something we will be revisiting on Monday.

I found a secret sketch that Rhea left on the table. It looks like she’s up to something …

Maybe she is building protection from this.

More substantial posts coming this weekend. In the meantime, please report anything unusual to the Daily Polluter. Assistance for accessing the Black Cloud Monitoring Network coming soon.

First Breath.

Xylon.

(In Alphabetical Order.)

It’s time to take sides.

If you’re new around here, it’s probably due to my Your Name Here review, as linked by the great Rachel Zozanian Helen Dewitt

I’m giving y’all fair warning: most chatter in these here parts is about secondary education and what’s happening around my school.

In any case, my class is busy investigating the Black Cloud and reporting sightings over here. Maybe you are interested in unraveling the mystery too.

Exhibit A:

It really is amazing to see my students graduate every year. Here’s Berhanu shortly after the ceremony. Berhanu wrote one of the best narratives I’ve read. Hopefully you read it too.

Exhibit B:

Is it absolutely necessary for our school to hold its graduation at the Sports Arena?

Spent part of Sunday morning watching last week’s LAUSD School Board meeting. Found the discussion on the Small Schools resolution interesting. I took a bunch of notes but they seem to have gone MIA on this computer.

As a teacher that’s been in an SLC for the past three years, I do think that the small schools effort is one that is benefiting our students. It’s not perfect, but I see the value it’s brought to our schools. That being said, I found the discussion amongst the board members exasperating. The concern shared by some members that adoption of a universal Small School plan would shift attention away from quality teaching to simply focusing on size isn’t one I’m able to follow.

I wish I still had the quotes I jotted down during the re-broadcast. In general, I agree with the first comment here.

And if you’d like, check out the amended resolution from the meeting here (the small schools action begins on page 8).

 I don’t really know where to begin. No, Your Name Here isn’t a book to be categorized as BSRAYDEKWTDWT – you start at the beginning and work your way to the end – but it is a book you don’t know how to process. And even that’s not quite right: it’s entirely linear. There’s a beginning a middle and an end (kind of). Rather, there are a few of each.

That awkwardly unavoidable question
And so comes the rather inherent question any book is supposed to rely upon as a selling point: What is it about?

The problem is I don’t know where to start. Let’s see, here we go: You (and a bunch of other “You’s”) are reading different books on an airplane [You – yes, you – brushed up on your Calvino, didn’t you?]. One of these books is by that author Helen DeWitt, Your Name Here. Another is Lotteryland by one Rachel Zozanian. There’s a hotshot film auteur on the plane. All of the books have Arabic characters (not people, but, like, you know … letters). Any sense of overarching narrative is then disrupted by a series of emails between Helen and Ilya or their respective counterparts: Rachel and Alyosha (or Alexander or Dmitri or Kaplan or etc).

I’m the first to say that this book isn’t for everyone. I’ve handed the first chapter (excerpted in N+1) to a friend only to be told it’s garbage. I’ve tried (on countless occasions) to get Rhea to read The Last Samurai. She got a third of the way through, which I consider a success. I kind of feel like Mike at the beginning of YNH when he talks with his friend: “No, no, you have to read it, it’s fucking great, there is Greek and Japanese, but it’s motivated.” Alas, I wonder how large the audience for a book I can’t even describe will be.

I learned quickly during my jaunt of freelancing not to describe a band by comparing it to other bands (“Dude, it sounds like the Strokes and Aphex Twin got in a fight in an 8-bit version of ‘From the Aeroplane Over the Sea,’ bro.”). However, think Calvino meets Adaptation meets 8 1/2 meets Tristam Shandy (starring Steve Coogan!) meets smut, meets TTYL meets, well, Lotteryland all integrated with a few hefty ‘Hooked on Arabic” lessons.

I had a great time reading Your Name Here. I’d look up from the text every handful of pages thinking, “Good god, Helen [Rachel, Ilya, the Body] is doing it! I can’t believe she’s pulling this off!” I also continuously wondered if the book will actually be published as it is or in “a more-or-less direct and therefore awkard translation” from an email in the text: “In modern literature there are quite a number of famous books which are as difficult to understand as yours, the only problem is that although after publication readers come to appreciate the complexity of these works, before publication how can the publisher be convinced?” In some ways, a book about an author looking to complete and publish a book fits rather nicely as a digital file for anyone to stumble across. At the same time, I want to root for Helen and for the book to make millions and get huge film advances and for her to publish the many other books she alludes to have already written. I am an insufferable and selfish brat and I want to be another second person narrator in another unfinished book by Helen and her Thompson-esque co-author.

And yes, you can still get your copy here.

Saw Wall-E at the El Capitan on Friday. And while the El Cap usually does a great job turning a movie into a full event, the best added feature for Wall-E was the series of Hubble telescope pictures adorning the walls of the lobby.

As far as the film, I can’t think of a more human, more touching movie I’ll likely see this year than Wall-E. This isn’t a kids film, but it’s one they (along with everyone else) should be seeing.

Lastly, as much as I am a fan of films and books with post-apocalyptic settings, I found Wall-E’s vision of the future extremely unsettling. What happened to the World Without Us?

I’ll preemptively end my thoughts on the film here as I’m on the verge of gushing endlessly. Since watching, I’ve now bought this and I’m contemplating this too.

And here are a bunch of clips I’ve been meaning to put up here for a bit:

This Largo review mentions both of my song requests. (I’m famous!)

The Southern California Library hosted a graffiti symposium in conjunction with the curricula that Mark and I have been developing. Here’s an article about it. (So famous!)

Travis Miller’s class was profiled for an article about same sex marriage. Sadly, I couldn’t be at school on this day and the spotlight had to be handed over to a much more adept educator. (Not so famous…)

LA Weekly article about Ray Cortines. Though I was interviewed, my quotes of unrelenting wisdom did not make the cut. However, this is another opportunity to link to the interview Travis and I did with Cortines. (Not famous + re-linking an old clip = quasi un-famous?)

I spent part of Friday night watching MTV. Seriously. This post is not an admission of guilt (or another celebration of guilty pleasures). Actually, I wanted to take a moment of your internet-browsing time to talk about how MTV is changing the world of youth culture.

Brief Personal Background Information
There are two things about me that will relate to my connection to MTV’s culture today:
1. I watched MTV as a teenager and have occasionally perused select current shows as I have written about before. America’s Best Dance Crew is rather entertaining. I warmly recall the days of actual music videos regularly played for most of the time on the channel.
2. When it comes to social networking, I’ve only begrudgingly taken obligatory steps toward participation. Out of pedagogical duty, I created a MySpace account. Out of pedagogical experimentation, I created a twitter account. Out of a necessity to not lose anything else, I created a del.icio.us account. Out of the interest of offering occasional pictures to a rather text heavy blog (ahem), I created a flickr account. YouTube, ditto. Of these accounts, the amount of actual social networking I do is practically nil. I only respond to MySpace comments from my students and everything else is pretty much used as informational depositories.

Okay, Now That That’s Out Of The Way
Friday night, I was privy to see the latest MTV debut: FNMTV. From my non-scientific investigation, the show’s title is short for Friday Night MTV. And, unlike other shows, this one is about music. There are music videos, musical performances, and even a musician as host.

The show is another ho-hum live audience production. A bunch of bands play, a few celebrities introduce new videos and other celebrities show snippets of classic videos from yesteryear. The format’s not all that exciting.

What is exciting is the way the show engages its audience. Taking the standard format of a music show, MTV has integrated youth participation at every step of the way. A trio of commentators looks at various live polls and comments on the FNMTV site and reports trends and noteworthy suggestions being made. Do you have something important to say about that new Snoop video? Your comment just might be scrolling across the screen while the video is playing. And what about that new Ting Tings video? If you liked that dance, go ahead and record your own version and in all likelihood MTV will play that too. You like the lyrics to another song? Sing along and you can karaoke for the world.

If you aren’t prepared (or if you’re under the age of 18), you’ll probably be overwhelmed by the show. The screen is filled with the kinds of information that only a hyperactive multitasker hopped up on Red Bull could follow: live audience shots, a music video, scrolling text, and webcam shots all fill the screen simultaneously. Every faucet of the show demands not only for audience members to watch but to plug in and participate. Currently, the site for FNMTV offers four different ways for visitors to participate. I expect this number to, at the least, remain consistent, and in all likelihood increase.

And Why Should I Care?
This is a huge, huge shift in how our culture interacts with media. Unlike the lazy bums of my generation, these aren’t your average couch potatoes today. Today’s kids are looking for ways to be a part of the media they are interested in. And no, I’m not at all the only person talking about this. In particular, I point you to a rather excellent lecture by Lawrence Lessig, if you have the time to watch it. He points out the Soulja Boy phenomenon (short story being that rapper Soulja Boy created a YouTube video explaining the steps to a dance he created, millions of people watched the video and, subsequently, millions of people created their own versions of the Soulja Boy dance).

I don’t bring up this FNMTV phenomenon to nod along with a bunch of scholars that flood my RSS reader. Instead, I do this because this isn’t a trend being discussed within the educational community that I am a part of. My students are a part of this FNMTV audience. They are engaging in these practices. As educators, we are not talking about them. And what about that whole participation gap thing I’ve been terrified of? Yeah, that’s only widening.

With an insurmountably growing schedule, I don’t feasibly see myself expanding my social networking practices. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t study my students’ usages of these skills. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t either.