e-learning - new issue out now!

Special Issue: Digital Interfaces
Guest Editor: Angela Thomas
Volume 3 Number 2 2006

latest favorite google video

russian climbing

just watch it.

high school student's rwanda blog

Rwanda Journal

written by malika khandelwal, a 16 year old from pa who is writing about the aftermath of the rwandan genocide for the philly inquirer this summer.

devastating anonymity

i've given in to the media hype and am watching anderson cooper's special dedicated to world refugee day, during which he is spending much of the two hour show in conversation with angelina jolie. in one exchange that especially caught my ear, both cooper and jolie recounted the first children they had connected with while visiting refugee camps who died hours or days later. moments later, the screen was filled with a child, aminu, being fed some milk with a dark blue tin cup. cooper's voice tells the viewer that this may be the only photograph to exist of this child, who died hours after the photo was taken. while the ability to capture, duplicate, and disseminate images is a relatively new phenomenon in human history, in this age of camera phones, video ipods, and digital cameras, it's hard to imagine a time without (relatively easy) visual documentation. it's more difficult to realize that in this age when we rely so much on the audiovisual modes to communicate, these are not viable options in many parts of the world.

on this report, devastating images abound. rifles strapped onto the backs of adults embracing young children; bright colored cloth cloaking the bodies of women and children who are discussed as statistics of rape, beatings, genocide; tents, food rations, camps; images across africa and within the united states documenting undocumented youth living in the u.s. without family; all seeking refuge.

apologies in advance and for the previous post for incomplete thoughts, simplistic analyses...

"no community wants too many"

arbai
madina
aden
ali
khadija

these are the names of some of the somalian refugees whose lives were portrayed in the film, "rain in a dry land," part of the human rights watch film festival going on from june 9-22, 2006 in new york city. the film follows two somali bantu families on their journey from refugee camps in kenya to their new lives in the united state, in springfield, massachusetts and atlanta, georgia, respectively.
several things struck me about these interwoven stories, but perhaps none as strongly as the role that linguistic communication plays in enabling or preventing these families' transition to their new surroundings. there is frustration at not being able to navigate forms, institutions, and new ways of doing things far from familiar homes. the children negotiate institutionalized schooling, teachers, classmates, tests, assignments, and dating. and we are shown the families' struggle to retain communal ways of life in a highly individualistic society.

one narrative cut particularly deep:
ali, living in springfield, drops out of high school after one year. the filmmaker, anne makepeace, shows ali's evolution as he goes from receiving verbal accolades in school to giving up on homework; the latter point is juxtaposed by text that tells the viewer that ali is too old to play on the high school soccer team. the interviewer underscores this by noting that ali is not able to do the one thing he truly loves. ali's face resembles his father, aden, but does not show the weight of war survival. he is often shown scratching his head from the back, with a soft smile on his face, which, by the time the film comes to a close, is not as constant as in the beginning. it appeared, from the images and vocals we were shown, that ali's reasons for dropping out were not so unfamiliar from the reasons that many native US high school students drop out - feeling disconnected from and frustrated by school. in ali's case, his teachers were supportive of him - the ones that talked on camera, at least - but it was his difficulty "getting it" (as one teacher put it) that hindered him from achieving his previously stated goal of focusing on and obtaining an education. he said he wanted to go to college to be a doctor. he imagined pursuing college on an athletic scholarship.

it feels naive to focus on language, and certainly the film's description and presumably the filmmaker would agree. there is more going on in ali's and the others' lives than a "failure to communicate." but as i bow my head in shame at the recent press my adopted hometown has gotten over the language requirements at a well known food establishment, i recognize that a failed congressional gesture isn't going to negate the reality that english not only functions as a national language in the linguistic sense - e.g., the language of forms, dominant media, restaurant menus - but in the visceral sense, as well. as an immigrant, i devoured the english language and prided myself on diagramming perfection, grammatical precision, and a laudable vocabulary. as a faculty member at an education school in a technology and ed program, i advocate for the wider use of multiple modes of communication - including multilingual, multimodal, and multiple literacies. however, at no time was mine a refugee reality.

as i exited the cool comfort of the theater, i overheard two women talking. one wondered aloud why the refugees were sent to different cities and her friend responded matter-of-factly, "because no community wants too many." ali's dashed dreams, aden's new found passion for gardening, arbai's daughter's wedding - all reduced in that phrase to the singular category of "too many." yes, language is significant - certainly, like gloria anzaldua notes, "ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity - i am my language." but, like anzaldua, who offers opportunities for language to flourish despite, and because of, linguistic barriers? where are the chances for these barriers to provide bridges to new understandings and relationships? there isn't time in the school day, in the trigonometry class, to slow down for one student who math acumen is evident but whose ability to comprehend a new linguistic code is not given sufficient nurturing. what happens to these adolescents? and what new ways of supporting refugee youth can we imagine and enact in the every day, moment-t0-moment decisions that inform the routinized practices of teaching, learning, and knowing...?

headlines

some that worry me:
Leak Counsel Won't Charge Rove, Lawyer Announces

some that make me chuckle:
A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears

and some that make me go hmmmm...
Apple surpasses beer on college campuses

drop everything and go.see.now!

luckily, this command requires only your time - that is, dedicated time, attention, engagement. for what i am commanding is this: spend some time viewing the 16 films featured in this year's media that matters film festival.

i spent the evening at the opening of the festival which took place at the ifc theater here in new york city. there was something powerful, intangibly penetrating about viewing these films, all together, one after one, in dialogue, on a large screen. the filmmakers raise questions about the criminal justice system, fair use policies for media, the iraq war, army recruitment, impossible/unrelenting standards of beauty, gender, and sexuality, and more... they evoke not only emotion, but a sense of action, response, and, hopefully, the need to spread the word so that these films reach far, wide, and deep.

but don't take my word for it. view them now!

immigration sound byte - postscript

i accompanied erick to horizon academy at rikers island last thursday to help the young men practice reading their pieces out loud and to establish the reading order, etc. this was the first time i had spent any extended amount of time in the bilingual class. there were about ten young men in there whose average age seemed to be 20 years old. i pulled a chair and sat next to a young man wearing knee length jean shorts and a black t-shirt. i'll call him david - it was the name he said that he would have chosen for himself because there were already too many people in his family with his given first name.
david smiled briefly in my direction, shifted his feet slightly, and resumed his conversation with his classmate sitting next to him. after several minutes, david and i began talking. the following is a list of notables that i learned during our conversation:

• arrived at rikers two months ago
• arrived in the united states three years ago
• is awaiting sentencing on a plea he just agreed to so that he can serve out his sentence before being deported back to the dominican republic.

my face must have registered my disbelief at this last point because david laughed quietly, shook his head, and said the thing that was going through my head, "can you believe that shit?"

the following day, david read for tito who was not present for the reading. it was clear that he had practiced and as he uttered the following words, i could almost see him writing them himself.

david, reading for tito:
"Advice comes from experiences that the person giving it to you already had, supposing a person that gives you advice already through those experiences or has seen then and doesn't want you to have to go through the same thing.
A lot of times I didn't follow the advice, but I did listen. But I didn't change, or I might for a month or so and then go back to doing the same things. ...
I don't want anyone to do the same things I've done, it's no good - look at where I am now. Do you understand the advice I'm giving?"

voices of immigration - beyond sound bytes

this past friday, 5/26, i sat in the gymnasium at one of the jail sites at rikers island listening to young men, who are there awaiting sentencing, share excerpts from published stories in the collection titled, Echando humo para siempre (Forever billowing smoke). of the six authors in the book, three were present for the reading. their stories, printed in both spanish and english in the eighty-one page book, were read aloud in both versions that made the gym reverberate with reflections about family, musings on inequity, observations about cross cultural survival - these words painted images that challenged the sound byte media culture about immigration.

raul: "In Mexico we don't treat [minorities] like they do here. Even Americans have a lot of businesses there - the best, I'd say - and we don't treat them like they treat us here."

jaime: "[My parents] brought me up with the music - the meringue, the bachata, the salsa - and they brought me up with the food, too. The brought me up with the culture from over there, like the people from there, like it was before for their gradparents, they they had been raised."

enano: "I miss my family so much - my parents, my friends. Here, you have friends while you have something to give, but if you don't have anything, they turn their backs on you. And over there, whether or not you have anything, they're your friends."

edwin: "...being out here in the United States there are always good chances, many opportunities here to come out ahead. Here I found out that I can draw - I started to draw here. ... I bought a tattoo gun and as soon as I leave here, if I ever do leave, I'm going to start tattooing."

in their words are "undeniable ambiguities and contradiction," (a point made in the introduction written by patricia cortes) that further call attention to the inadequate scope of the immigration rhetoric that dominates popular media discourses.

from a literacies perspective, we might ask what the implications are for how these young men make sense of their world through literacies as the move across national borders and cultural boundaries. lesley bartlett's research explores this and related questions about transnational literacies and resonates with some work that doris warriner is doing, as well. both of these literacy researchers, along with many others, are helping the field understand the life changing, sometimes threatening, experiences of individuals who are border crossing on a minute-to-minute basis. their work and the recently published Echando humo para siempre reminds us that we need stories that are not only rich in ethnographic detail, but that also are produced by those individuals whose crossings, negotiations, and balancing of transnational literacies, identities, experiences, challenges, and dreams too often become the purview of overused phrases and easily quantifiable categories.

this story was also filmed for the local news (new york city, abc) but i was out of town and didn't catch it. i'll report back on what story sound bytes made it to the small screen...

can you see me now?

to everyone who mocked my early musings about the feasibility of creating a real life invisibilty cloak (based on the key harry potter accessory): it appears that i am having the last laugh! check this out:

Theories see path to invisibility

this real-life version is made possible with "optical-camouflage technology." i wonder: can the marauder map be far behind? it's really only a matter of tweaks to the current gps technologies, if you ask me...

if a tree falls...

i was looking through some field notes on the bus today and came across some quotes
i had jotted down while attending the launch of EVC's Video Production curriculum titled "Youth Powered Video" (which i wrote about earlier). what caught my eye this time was a question posed by a woman from arts engine who - after the curriculum had been previewed for the audience and an EVC alum had talked about his experiences - wondered aloud, "if a film is made and no one sees it, does it make an impact?" she immediately acknowledged that the actual video production certainly had an impact for the participants involved in the process, but challenged the audience to consider the distribution and dissemination dimension of youth media. who views the films? engages with them? shares them? is aware they exist???

next week the sixth annual media that matters film festival will kick off here in nyc. the 16 films that were selected from hundreds (maybe thousands) of entries will be shown and also available online at the media that matters website. here's a link to last year's online film festival, which features a couple of films produced by youth. this is one of several spaces in which youth media production is being made visible, recognized for the contribution the stories contained in these films makes, and celebrated for the intentional attention paid in the films that are chosen to social action and justice.

in response to the challenge about impact, i offer the following list of sites as a first step in spreading the word about youth produced media, including film and radio documentaries, digital stories, and a range of texts:

listenup.org
EVC
youth media distribution
mnn youth channel
youth portraits

and in the real-world-like words of the opening voices on the youth radio site, youth media can show us "what happens when [youth] stop being stereotyped and start getting real."

fyi: ymdi also makes a youth video distribution toolkit available on their website.

a beer in the afternoon

recently, in recognition of the semester being over, i indulged myself and accepted an invitation to have a beer in the afternoon. or rather, a cider, to be precise. i sat oustide with two students in our program and watched people walk by as we discussed a range of topics and enjoyed the just-right warmth of a spring day. as i walked back to my office afterwards, i recall feelings of guilt. as if i had broken some unwritten rule... crossed yellow and black caution tape...

earlier this year, i experienced a similar feeling when i shared some ideas for research with some individuals whose support i'll need to move forward with my project ideas. i laid out a plan for engaging youth as co-researchers in exploring certain dimensions of the "school-to-prison" pipeline. i emphasized the role of young people as not only informants but as participants and collaborators in the research design. the questions that followed had less to do with the project and more to do with my sanity regarding this approach. as they raised questions about "safety" and "trustworthiness," i could feel my insides shriveling and slowly detaching themselves from my skin. i began to feel guilty for suggesting new methodology, but later realized that it had more to do with the disruption to business as usual and all of the ontological and epistemological implications such a proposal entailed. it was as if i had taken a swig from a flask right there in the middle of an otherwise civilized meeting.

fun with letters

maybe schools should use this to teaching spelling

a long road ahead...

my younger brother graduated this past weekend, which directly translates into: a lot of time with my family, namely my parents who live closeby but who i see not too frequently, and certainly not for two straight days at a time.

during a conversation with my father on the very long, rainy, and construction-ridden drive back, i found myself defending television... again. to the casual observer, i might have sounded a bit maniacal as i declared, with fervor, that it wasn't the tv watching itself that was the point, but rather the context in which the watching of tv occurred. that is, is tv seen as another text with which kids engage? and are parents motivated to ask them about the shows they watched in much the same way as they inquire about the stories found in the books they read?

in response, my father replied with a vignette starring the granddaughter of one of his colleagues who, he said, rarely, if ever, watches television and on a recent visit to his friend's house he witnessed the hypnotizing effects of television as this otherwise "bubbly and loving child" (his words) sat transfixed and immune to the happenings of the world around her. wouldn't we excuse that behavior, i asked him, if the same child exhibited the same reaction (or lack, as it were) while engrossed in a book? i reminded him of the hours and days i spent lying in my bedroom completely transported to other worlds as i read printed text, much in the same way as i was fully immersed when i watched television; yet i only ever got reprimanded when i watched tv.

i guess i need to order him a copy of steven johnson's book and hope that he, and others like him for whom reading trumps tv any day, recognizes that we live in a technicolor world - one that transcends the boundaries of black and white print on paper, and that to keep hierarchicalizing texts in this way is not only a waste of time, but delegitimizes experiences that some of us hold quite dear.

reading as wine tasting

there is a scene in the movie french kiss that, to me, personifies the experience of reading.

in it, kevin kline's character (luc) scaffolds the wine tasting experience for meg ryan's character (kate) by intentionally blending the sensations of smell and taste with the use of a box which has in it numerous smells including lavendar, rosemary, and other herbs and flavors used in winemaking. luc asks kate to taste the wine and asks her to describe it. she does, and her description is adequate, acceptable. she might score well on a test. he then asks her to close her eyes and inhale a scent he places near her nose and then asks her to taste the wine again. she does, and this time kate can taste more in the wine - flavors that were there the first time, but that are "visible" to her palette after her olfactory experience. her new response might risk fracturing the 5 paragraph essay format and she may fail...

i've been thinking about this scene a lot over the last several months as i've been delving back into research literature that explores (and often bemoans) the state of adolescents' literacies. on the one hand, there is little space for their interpretations, literacies, and lives in the space of the school day (or, too often, in adolescent literacy research...); and on the other hand, there is little space or time in the school day, or curricula to offer new scents and lenses for youth to read their worlds and to reread texts and to delve deeply into the history of the soil in which the grapevines grow.

i was also thinking about the art of wine tasting as reading after watching breakfast on pluto. i won't go into the plot details but will say that i loved it and think it's absolutely worth watching. which is why i want to forget some of it before watching it again. that is, in the act of rereading, or re-watching in this case, the experience is never quite like the first time, but i'm wondering what scents and flavors i can experience before watching this movie again, for the first time ... (the first again-time, that is)

what if you don't know what you're good at before you try it?

today's ny times had two articles that captured my attention, both for their content and mutual resonance.

freakonomics authors stephen dubner and steven levitt, in their monthly column for the paper, took on the age old question of whether practice really does make perfect. based on their review of anders ericsson's research, the answer is a resounding yes! few of us, the authors argue in their article titled "a star is made," are born with the inherent ability to achieve/perform/excel at high levels without additional practice thrown in. they note:

"This is not to say that all people have equal potential. Michael Jordan, even if he hadn't spent countless hours in the gym, would still have been a better basketball player than most of us. But without those hours in the gym, he would never have become the player he was."

in another article on the sims, titled, "welcome to the new dollhouse," the author, seth schiesel, notes that this game, and others like it, are replacing the role that dolls used to occupy in the lives of children. schiesel includes quotes from young players and older academics alike; among them, jim gee, who posits that, "[Video games are] a great resource for them to design and think about relationships and social spaces."

where the article begins to break down, and where these game researchers and psychologists could take a lesson from the freakonomics noted above, is when gender is addressed in all too simple terms.

"Modern girls are very interested in video games, but then when they get toward high school they start to gravitate away because they begin to think that boys don't like girls who play games," said Professor Gee. "They give up their interest in video games around the same time they give up their interest in science and math and that's a real problem because boys use video games to foster an interest in technology, and if girls give that up we're going to continue to see a real gender imbalance in these areas."

levitt and dubner begin their piece by revealing that over half of european professional soccer players are born in the first three months of the year. then, at the end, explain that since the cut off for most team selections is done by calendar year, the kids who were born in december of a given year as assessed on their skill level alongside kids born in january. as the authors write:

"Guess which player the coach is more likely to pick? He may be mistaking maturity for ability, but he is making his selection nonetheless. And once chosen, those January-born players are the ones who, year after year, receive the training, the deliberate practice and the feedback — to say nothing of the accompanying self-esteem — that will turn them into elites."

shouldn't we be asking, of video games, more about the kinds of possibilities these games open up for kids who might not have thought to explore or pursue various avenues prior to playing games? what kinds of practices, identities, and rabbit-holes do these games allow kids to discover and create in ways that other activities do not? and, from a pedagogical standpoint, knowing that practice - and specifically ericsson's notion of "deliberate practice" - can develop, nurture and challenge an existing skill or talent, particularly when there is immediate and sustained feedback, what can we ask about how the girls who play video games are encouraged and supported to pursue their practice?

and finally, from the dollhouse article:

Ms. Kelleher of Carnegie Mellon said her research with school-age girls made much the same point. "If you walk into a room full of girls and ask them, 'Who wants to learn to program computers?' you don't get very many hands," she said. "But if you ask them, 'Who wants to learn how to make a movie like Pixar or perhaps something like The Sims?', you get a very different response. And fundamentally, those two activities can be the same thing."

why? and is this always the case? if yes, if no - where? why? when?

crazysuperfun-cam

check this out:



imagine the avatar-being, storytelling, world-creating fun you could have with this!

i really hope it's not a hoax... i always have this fear whenever something crazysuperfun is revealed to me. (thanks, ingrid!)

adolescent images

i love this image:


reminds me of what laurence fishburne was said in a wire image podcast interview - that there are possibilities for representing different images of the african american community and the movie he is currently featured in, Akeelah and the Bee, is an example of one such image. i haven't seen the movie, but am intrigued both by its premise and the lead actress, keke palmer.

the image above (it should change pics periodically) is taken from the website for the Youth Media Development Forum taking place this year in Mali. yes, i want to go; no, i'm not going. what's particularly interesting about this forum is that the organizers intend for this to be a forum for youth media producers from developing nations. there is tremendous potential, in an event like this, for new images to be produced and emerge. if anyone attends, or is planning to attend, do let me know!

PUBlicity

it's true, we all seek a bit of self promotion here and there. (sidebar: thus, who could blame the opal author entirely for her 17 year old enchantment at the prospect of having fame and quite a hefty fortune, all for fulfilling the requirements for someone else's "concept"...?)

's most recent issue is the second part of a special double issue titled, "Learning in the Digital Age: papers from the second Ideas in Cyberspace Education symposium." i've been reading this journal for the past couple of years and have found that it has quickly become my source for getting a pulse on how online spaces, identities, practices, and politics are being conceptualized, performed, and explored. in the near future, the special issue titled, "Digital Interfaces," guest edited by the fabulous angela, will hit the shelves (so to speak). for a sneak peak, go here. (you'll notice that yours truly has contributed to this issue, along with wonderful notables in the growing expanse of literacy research for/in "new" times.)

is this news?

mathu alerted me to yesterday's ny times article on ny killings, by the numbers. it notes that there were 540 homicides last year, though only 519 were committed last year; the other 21 were deaths were initiated by a homicide attempt that occurred in years prior.
...at any rate, the article states some facts that feel redundant, yet important to note:
- men and boys were responsible for 93 percent of the murders
- they killed with guns about two-thirds of the time
- their victims tended to be other men and boys
- and in more than half the cases, the killer and the victim knew each other

these are important facts because they, along with recent data published by the bureau of justice statistics indicate that non-white, non-asian - and more specifically, black - males experience the greatest number of deaths due to homicide. the BJS also notes that especially among young, black males, ages 18-24, have the highest "homicide victimization rates," and often at the hands of other young, black males.

what becomes of utmost important at this point in the conversation is what we do with this information. that is, do we treat these numbers as self-fulfilling prophecies? do attribute experiences to identity - that is, how are the identities of young, black males (re)positioned in light of this information? if i read this article as a teacher would i fall into the practices of many of the teachers in ann arnette ferguson's study whose assumptions about who the black boys might become paralyzed them from taking seriously their roles as educators who might engage in intellectual partnership with their students?

on wednesday, as i was leaving a talk given by edmund gordon held at iume, i was accompanied by an older, african american woman who also attended the talk and was looking for company on the walk back to campus. as we walked, we reflected on some of what gordon had brought up, namely the continued inequitable educational circumstances of many children who are underserved (and, i would argue, who lives are underrepresented in the political rhetoric surrounding education). as we turned onto amesterdam avenue, she wondered out loud if the crisis call surrounding the disproportionate numbers of african american and latino young men who are incarcerated would still exist if the 9 to 1 (versus white males) incarceration rate were reversed. "wouldn't they just find a solution," she mused.

i understand that the ny times and the bjs and the ojjdp have to report "the facts" - by government contract they are legally required to, but so, too, by public opinion are they obligated to do so. however, it is the the combination of complacency and lack of creative thinking surrounding the interconnected realities of mass incarceration, atrocious school buildings and classroom conditions, lowered or non-existent or deficit expectations by teachers, and the rapidly bifurcating of the economy into high tech and service sector jobs.

when 9, 13, and 16 year olds, alike, consistenly claim that their teachers or other adults don't like them, don't understand them and that they don't like school or care about anything, it isn't merely childhood or teenage angst; it is a window into this web of realities that has become rapidly monolithic in stature. but if we look closer, this monolith is really comprised of several small decisions such as the one to give cyrus the benefit of the doubt when he doesn't have an answer ready; or the act of believing that a group of kids joking and having fun with each other in front of their home are doing just that; or giving angel the chance to convey his responses through his drawing, not necessarily to limit him but to give him an entry into the conversation, as well...

is this news? i'm not sure. but so long as small moments and individual decisions continue be overlooked by large brushstroke policies and unthinking mandates, i suppose i'll keep being redundant.