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Assignment 2: Reaction to Gardner Campbell’s Discussion

Posted by
| January 28, 2012

To help keep myself organized, and provide external information to anyone who might be reading this that is not familiar with what I’m talking about, here are the links to the sources that I am referencing and reacting to.  Here is the video that was to be watched before his discussion with our class (lets call it video 1), as well as the article.  The talk he gave to DS106, Spring 2012 can be found here.

First, I want to take a second to talk about the readings/videos that were assigned before Thursday.  As a Psychology major, I loved all of the references he made to psychology (Pavlov dog, 30:30 in video 1).  His metaphor to the “bag of gold” about how humans sort of created the skill and ability to read.  We have a section in our brain [as he said] designated for speech; however, reading was not there but by practicing it and developing it we gained this new and invaluable tool.  A “bag of gold.”  I also liked how he mentioned situational learning, which essentially has to do with gaining knowledge and understanding by doing, sort of as emersion, and as wikipedia says

“Situated cognition poses that knowing is inseparable from doing [1] by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts.[2]“

I like the idea of this style of learning.  I like what he was saying about students being actively engaged in the process of learning, while narrating these processes.  Education should not only be about taking instruction, it should be about expanding one’s knowledge and understanding, not just knowing what is necessary by cramming for a test.  He mentioned that students should have something new that they have discovered to show their teachers and I think this is something we might, at times, lose sight of.  Technology as a medium provides a plethora of possibilities, and it expands, there is even more potential.  His criticizing of higher education in not fully taking advantage of this medium (in only doing the “digital facelift“)  is good.  I understand how it can be difficult for individuals who are not familiar with online resources to feel totally overwhelmed when asked to digitalize their system.  As a student who has been exposed to computers and to some extent the internet since before I entered grade school, I at times feel overwhelmed too.  Even for this class, I can’t help but feeling like information is going over my head, but when the time is given, it eventually clicks.  By providing training that goes to the most basic aspects of how to use these online sources,  I think it would be good for teachers to be able to use technology beyond the facelift, as it allows students to keep up with the evolution of technology.

Jim Groom gave us a few questions that we needed to address:

Why do people not want a Bag of Gold? What is a digital facelift? Where else does this happen? What are the potential benefits/drawbacks of these Personal Cyber Infrastructures?

People don’t want a bag of gold, because I think a) they don’t recognize it’s a bag of gold, or b) they don’t know what to do with it.  I think it’s like his simile to language, as I mentioned before (9:00 in video 1).  I think we take reading for granted, because we don’t have to think about it when we do it.  ”I don’t have time for your philosophical questions Gardner!” (3:20 in video 1).  People don’t recognize that the internet is a Bag of Gold.
A digital facelift is (what Gardner mentioned) like when a newspaper takes all of its content and digitalizes it.   It’s a very shallow level, “nibbling at the edges” as Gardner called it (9:30 in video 1) as it doesn’t fully take advantage of what the web offers.  They aren’t using all of the mediums – video embedding, slide shows, etc.  I think this also happens in the education system.  Teachers and professors, and schools (I think specifically of the website for my elementary school), that basically take a syllabus or course material, and put it online.  There are places where videos or sounds could be used, or even hyperlinks, but they are not.  I would love to see examples via video, or even introductions from teachers in a video before you take a class.
Some benefits of Personal Cyber Infrastructures (PCIs) is that I feel like it goes in the opposite direction of “Transactional exchanges with professors,” (15:25, video 1) at least when we are looking at PCIs from an educational standpoint.  I think it allows for a lot of creativity, and development of one’s work, and finding inspiration because of the tools that we have (he talks about this a little during the lecture in our class).  Also, the sense of community is great.  Getting feedback, seeing what other people are doing, getting new ideas and going with it comes from PCIs, I think.
The only drawback that comes to mind is that what you are putting out there is a risk in that others can take your ideas, and in some ways this might even be a good thing.  Sharing ideas makes us come up with new ideas, and knowing that someone is taking your idea sort of forces you to come up with more new ideas.

Okay, so onto the talk on Thursday!  

His talk was great.  He was very well articulate and he had a lot of interesting and thoughtful information.  I also enjoyed his word choice, such as the word “civilization.”  It was wild to hear, and to imagine, what life was like before resources like google, blogs,  and youtube were easily available.  This turning point in the web and in his life and career in education makes me feel lucky and unlucky at the same time.  Lucky in that I have all of these resources at my finger tips.  It’s here and I don’t even need to try because I can reach them anywhere with internet, and I can even use many of them on my cell phone!  Unlucky in that because this internet has sort of been handed to me on a silver platter, I think I take it for granted sometimes.  I can only imagine how Campbell felt watching the web evolve – first having to post his student’s work online for them, to slowly connecting to others on the web (i.e. the , to figuring out new ways of communicating with others via web, to having the resources available today.  I think that’s a huge experience, and maybe there will be another evolution or turning point in the web in my adulthood as well, although I find it difficult to imagine that it will be anything like his.

I also liked “hammer-hand.”  I did NOT get it when he first said it, but then it clicked.  A hammer does not function fully as we think a hammer would without a hand hold it and moving it.  A hand has a totally different function(s) when it doesn’t have a hammer in it.  But when you put them together, you have a new tool.  You have the combo of a hand and a hammer, and each affect each other’s function when they are used together.  Brilliant!

 

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