contemplating digital orality

“Education is ultimately concerned with something more than passive responses. It entails the creation on new visions” (183).

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

In chapter 8, Veltman explained how the corporate world created “action science,” a management method based on the tutorial approach of the academic world. He opens chapter 9 discussing that education, in turn, adopted some of this method into the idea of distance learning. In this way, more responsibility is placed on the student to become a more active learner. “Education is becoming learning or, as one company puts it: ‘the twenty-first century has no room for students, only learners’” (180). In other words, the opportunity for students to be less-involved or active, sitting passively in the back of a FtF class focused largely just on getting the class grade is not possible in the distance education class. The distance education student must be more active and involved, completing not only the required assignments but also being engaged in discussions online, since the instructor is not always leading the class in one-to-many lecture. Rather, the instructor still holds a leading role, but the students are all forced to show their presence and opinions, helping shape the class. The focus becomes not just getting a grade but on being more engaged in the learning process and in actually learning the material. Read the rest of this entry »

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – T.S. Eliot “The Rock” (1934)

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

In my last post, I ended with a comment on how new media changes the way we organize knowledge and by extension changes the way build and retain it. To continue that discussion, I looked at Veltman’s chapter (10) on enduring knowledge.

[E]nduring knowledge, or perennial knowledge as it is called in the Far East, concerns what is stored in our memory collections (libraries, museums, and archives)” (229).

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“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 »

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

As I’ve discussed in the past, one of the greatest potential benefits of the online video conversation (OVC) in the asynchronous online classroom (AOC) or anyplace is in regard to space and time; there need be no spatial or temporal concerns in getting to a meeting at a specific a location or time. Rather, one can access a given OVC environment at any time and from the convenience of his or her own home, workplace, or other location. Read the rest of this entry »

With every tool, man is perfecting his own organs, whether motor or sensory, or removing limits to their functioning. – Sigmund Freud (1929).

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

Veltman lists the major functions of computers as their ability to perform calculations, write, visualize, create multimedia, enable multi-sensory study, permit inter-media, interact, augment, delegate information/knowledge, and simulate synthetic reason. Of those on the list, I want to focus on multimedia, which is linked with three of the other listed functions: multi-sensory, inter-media, and inter-action. Read the rest of this entry »