The American Crawl

Fascinated by the fact that San Quentin State Prison is on Yelp.

Though it looks like this started out as a snarky joke, I’m loving the re-appropriation of the space for conversation about prison conditions and tourist mentality. In some ways I think having students look at review sites like Yelp as sites of civic participation offers tremendous potential. I think students accessing and engaging in conversations through these venues offer the kind of imagination that’s lacking in much of today’s youth-organizing and public participation methods.

Somewhat reminds me of what’s happening with book reviews for The Possessed. The debate around the Macmillan vs. Kindle situation is clouding authentic book review. (Full disclosure, I found this site from reading the author’s blog. This guest post, in particular, is fantastic.)

Only tangentially related, I’ve been feeling skeptical about crowd sourcing and grant funding. I’m excited about the Refresh Everything project, but feel it’s going to mainly help those that need help less than those that can’t directly connect and leverage mass online participation (like, say, public school teachers and students in South Central Los Angeles). I’m still wrapping my head around this but when my Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of advocates to vote for TFA and other well-established programs, I can’t help but wonder what other voices are being left out. More to come on this topic – there is, after all, a whole year for this program.

[From the introduction of Stop It: Our Future, A Threat ]:

At the beginning of this quarter, the students in my third period American Literature class decided to engage in a focused inquiry on the history of South Central Los Angeles from a literary lens. One of the texts that our class read was Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, by Anna Deavere Smith. This documentary theater project was based around a series of interviews with key witnesses and individuals related to the Rodney King Riots. Using Smith’s model of including word-for-word interviews, our class attempted to document the ideas, questions, and frustrations that the Manual Arts community is facing in today’s economic crisis. These monologues interweave various language practices and, though some of the grammar will occasionally confound, reflect the naturally occurring poetry of everyday human speech. This work is offered not as a definitive statement of the effect of the budget cuts in South Central, but as an opportunity to engage in a continuing dialogue with the voices of the present.

You may download a copy of this work here.

Within a week and a half, my third period class identified a topic for inquiry, interviewed, edited, and arranged an entire play in six thematic acts. The title, the individuals interviewed, and the sequencing were all decided democratically within the classroom. The work’s blemishes and typos and occasional faltering in clarity are part of its charm. Students will be introducing and discussing this work to the Manual Arts community on Tuesday at lunch. After finishing the play, students reflected on the varied viewpoints represented and identified next steps for our collective research. This work will be continued when the students return on-track in May.

- My cat is pregnant.

- Cats are always pregnant! What the hell!?

Came to work today and was pleased to see the bungalows covered in new murals by esteemed LA graf writers and students.

I was out of town on the Saturday when the muralists held a public event for the community to attend. However, a colleague described it as “our Woodstock – a once in a lifetime, magical event.”

The murals are incredible and anyone that’s driven through the city will recognize many of the artists represented in these new pieces.

I sent a student to snap photos with my phone during first period today and share the pix below.

Overall, I can say I was both impressed and pleased with the way the Digital Media and Learning Conference went. It was certainly one of the more exciting conferences I’ve dragged myself to in the past few years. I think the interdisciplinary nature of DML made for much richer conversations than the kinds I find myself falling into at ed conferences.

I’ve left with a huge list of people to stay connected with and a ton of areas for collaboration with my students and colleagues at Manual Arts. In particular, many of the programs taking place at USC are right up the alley of the work I see our 9^th grade academy tackling come July. Would love to build a more extensive relationship with USC that extends beyond the generally small (and non-b-track) opportunities of the NAI program.

I left with three general critiques to keep in mind for next year’s conference:

1. For a conference focused around “Learning,” there was a dearth of actual practitioners. In addition to my presentation, I know my colleague Veronica Garcia did an amazing job presenting with her students. But how many other teachers presented, let alone even attended? This is a general critique I have of other conferences too – AERA especially. How are we expecting teachers to hear about these conferences and opportunities? What are we saying about the role of schools in digital practices if they aren’t a part of these conversations? And if the bulk of a conference is during “school days” are we making it that accessible to teachers when funding for substitutes is tight?
2. Some of the panels were positively bursting with too many people. The Saturday evening symposium especially had too robust a group with far too much important information to share to be adequately covered in the short time. I admire the effort here, but would have preferred if each person was given a larger slot of time and used the Saturday session to really see dialogue across the various interdisciplinary perspectives.
3. Like my first critique, the bulk of the presentations I went to and the two keynotes focused on the informal practices of youth and what happens outside of schools. I get that this is where most of these practices are happening. I’ve written elsewhere about how schools stifle these kinds of digital practices. However, why aren’t we demanding and discussing the empirical research about what is and should be within a school? Where is the ongoing conversation about what needs to happen in schools? I think this, in particular, would have been aided by the presence of more teachers. Instead, I think I came across as the whiny, complaining teacher on the DML twitter feed (speaking of which, I’m going to unabashedly wave my n00b flag and say that this conference and the #dml2010 hashtag really helped me get twitter – the conversations and dialogue there were a great experiential area of development for me).

Again, I need to emphasize that this was a really great conference. I’m excited about being connected next year. I hope that there will be more of my colleagues in the room next time (and keeping it free will be key for getting classroom teachers to be willing to venture out with the budget crisis nowhere near an adequate conclusion).

I’ll have some reflections on the DML conference later on. For now, I wanted to share the slides from our presentation below.

Also, if you are interested, Sheryl Grant live-blogged our session. You can read a great overview here.

Meanwhile, data on air quality at the conference has been collected over the past two days at blackcloud.org. The sensor will be back in South Central on Monday.

I’m in the process of slowly weaving various conferences into my teaching/studying/dog-walking schedule.

This Friday I’ll be participating in the Digital Media and Learning Conference in San Diego. I’m speaking as part of a session titled “Orality, Pedagogy, and New Media: How Children Develop Self-Awareness and Collective Consciousness.” I’m pasting the info below. Registration is closed, but if you’re heading down there anyways, drop me a line.

Orality, Pedagogy, and New Media: How Children Develop Self-Awareness and Collective Consciousness

Location: Room 4004

Chair: Antero Garcia (University of California, Los Angeles)

Participants: Antero Garcia (University of California, Los Angeles), Greg Niemeyer (University of California, Berkeley), Davida Herzl (Aclima), Dehanza Rogers (Cal State Northridge), Scott Ruston (Arizona State University, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication)

An analysis of the convergence of orality, pedagogy, and new media, this session looks at how new technologies are still rooted in oral culture and the implications of this distinction on pedagogy. Presenters will discuss and provide interactive opportunities around ways these themes tie into game play, literacy development, data aggregation, and DIY filmmaking. Alternate reality environmental game, the Black Cloud, will anchor part of this presentation and allow real-time prediction and aggregation opportunities for participants. Similarly, session participants will engage in cell-phone literacy demonstrations, help author a FlipCam documentary, and engage in traditional dialogue. Further, presenters will examine the role of radical transparency and collective eco-intelligence as they disrupt existing measuring systems. As social media proliferates and cell phones continue to overcome barriers within classrooms and informal learning environments, the role of orality within education continues to be disregarded. Reexamining new media’s emphasis of an oral culture through text messages, status updates, and twitter feeds, this interactive symposium provides analysis of orality as it plays out in gaming, cell phone applications in a high school context, data aggregation, and the role of documentary filmmaking. Looking into the connections between John Dewey and Walter Ong, this symposium and its interactive dialogue help guide practitioners and researchers towards expanded media and pedagogical opportunities through orality.

Further down the road, I’ll also be presenting with a group of friends at the Critical Teaching in Action Conference on March 13. The full program is not online yet.

The AERA schedule is up too, but I’m still figuring a few things out.

My dad would be 58 today.

The influence that both of my parents had on shaping how I see the world and interact within it cannot be overstated. As I’ve spent much of this past year focused on schooling and teaching, it’s been useful for me to come up for air now and then and reflect on the experiences and moments of growth that have guided me. I typically avoid acute personal information on this blog, but feel that this process of reflection is as integral to our learning and progress as anything else.

Someone asked me a while back about this, so below I’ve copied my speech from my father’s memorial service that took place a bit over three years ago. If you’re interested in reading through it, maybe you’ll also want to listen to one of my dad’s songs as well.

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We are both storytellers. Lying on our backs, we look up at the night sky. This is where stories began, under the aegis of that multitude of stars which at night filch certitudes and sometimes return them as faith. Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surround them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

- John Berger

[btw, if you're interested in getting the entire text of Berger's And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos in regimented daily doses via email, sign up here. Not a bad way to get a bit of refreshing thought in the clutter of junk and business.]

This is from the booklet of the new Gil Scott-Heron album, which I recommend (though I realize buying CDs kinda puts me in the minority these days):

There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment.

Music, for example. Buying a CD is an investment.

To get the maximum you must

LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS.

Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset.

Take it home.

Get rid of all distractions, (even her or him).

Turn off your cell phone.

Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles.

Make yourself comfortable.

Play your CD.

LISTEN all the way through.

Think about what you got.

Think about who would appreciate this investment.

Decide if there is someone to share this with.

Turn it on again.

Enjoy Yourself.

Gil Scott-Heron

The title track, a cover of a (smog) song, comes across differently after having read this.

The situated moment, the connection with the music as an object (like my current studies of information as a thing), and the duality of music as both individual and collective experience point toward the ways I hope learning can create kinship, enrich identity, reify space as a fluid negotiation. Perhaps music, like dancing and photography, can become a totem of student agency. A totem of a mutual agreement to do away with the hegemonic “rings or beeps or rattles or whistles.”  What will make our students want to “turn it on again” when the CD player clicks itself back to its point of origin and we are returned to our uncontested space? What will it take to feel transformed in this space? To feel “new here, again”?