contemplating digital orality

“Connectivity brings new sharing of information and knowledge with others. What was once accessible only via a physical school, government building, or other public institution is now potentially accessible to persons all over the world” (113-114).

Veltman, Kim H. Understanding New Media: Augmented Knowledge & Culture. University of Calgary Press, 2006.

Virtual Communities
This term refers to the communities we form online that are generally based around a particular topic and that we use to communicate with others interested in that topic. The have, according to Cliff Filaggo in Hosting Web Communities, three characteristics: 1) focus, through a central subject or theme, 2) cohesion, through member to member relationships, and 3) interactivity, through member to member communication. (117 in Veltman).

This is very much the norm now, with the vast amount of forums and other online groups that exist online. One need not necessarily be a member or frequent visitor to many of these sites, but rather visit the community to answer a single question on a topic related to the communities theme. Read the rest of this entry »

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage, 1993.

Another take-away from Technopoly is somewhat oddly-founded, as it is based on a bit of a tangent that Postman pursues as an example of technologies coming in disguise (in Chapter 8: Invisible Technologies). He discusses the idea of academic courses in the educational world.

A course is a technology for learning. I have “taught” about two hundred of them and do not know why each one lasts exactly fifteen weeks, or why each meeting lasts exactly one hour and fifty minutes. If the answer is that it is done for administrative convenience, then a course is a fraudulent technology. It is put forward as a desirable structure for learning when in fact it is only a structure for allocating space, for convenient record-keeping, and for control of faculty time. (138)

Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly a third of college students reported that their parents or guardians would be “very upset” to know how little they actually attend classes in person.

College Students on Streaming Video: Get Me Outta Class!

Here is an article posted on the campus technology site last week, which offers a great conversation starter on the use of video in the collegiate classroom. However, the initial commenter, who finds the practice “appalling,” elicited a response from me, which is worth referencing here. My comment, admittedly too verbose for this platform, is about eleven up from the bottom and includes my name.

Jewitt, Carey, et al. “Exploring Learning through Visual, Actional and Linguistic Communication: The Multimodal Environment of a Science Classroom.” Educational Review 53 1 (2001): 5-18.

From the abstract:

It suggests that learning is realised through the interaction between visual, actional and linguistic communication (i.e. learning is multimodal) and involves the transformation of information across different communicative systems (‘modes’), e.g. from speech to image. It demonstrates that learning is a process of selection, adaptation and transformation motivated by the interests of pupils and the context of learning” (5).

This finding is quite important to my research, since it suggest that it is this multimodality of seeing, doing, and discussing that is most effective for learning. Furthermore, Read the rest of this entry »

Gurak, L. J. (2001). Cyberliteracy: Navigating the internet with awareness. New Haven Conn.; London: Yale University Press.

Even in 2001 (when Cyberliteracy was published), the use of the internet for distance education was growing. Gurak addresses this point from sort of a media richness perspective.

“The richest form of communication has always been face-to-face. Humans can communicate so much with their bodies. Read the rest of this entry »