According to her bio on the NMC conference program, Mimi Ito is a "cultural anthropologist who studies new media use." She studies informal learning among peers and has conducted extensive studies of the online Japanese anime fandom community. danah boyd (@zephoria on Twitter), another new media scholar whose work I've admired for years, is excited to be here:
Given this ringing endorsement, I expected a powerhouse of a talk. I was not disappointed.
Mimi opens by mentioning The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, a highly rated new release on Amazon by Nicholas Carr. In the book, Carr talks about distracted culture in the internet age and its perceived negative effects on human intelligence. A similar theme can be found in The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. In contrast, you have the work of technology embracers like Don Tapscott (Wikinomics, Grown Up Digital) It's all too familiar according to Ito (and I agree) - the same old polarization: those who embrace new technology or other cultural elements vs. those who blast them. But both views are correct. It helps to remember that "opportunities and risks are inextricably entwined" (missed attribution). I'll highlight at this point one quote from Ms. Ito that had the audience applauding:
Google isn't making us stupid, we have only ourselves to blame for that.
Indeed. If we are distractable, we will find something to distract us. The technology itself is a neutral entity. There is indeed great opportunity with the social internet: information at our fingertips, on our desks or in our pockets. There's also an undeniable temptation to distraction. But again, we can't blame the technology.
Now for the meat of Mimi's talk. There is an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning here that has not yet been fully realized. Very few institutions are taking advantage of the opportunity. We have a mindset of separating entertainment and learning and so we're looking at these social networks and online cultures as outside of the realm of education. This is wrong - we need to tap into the spaces where the learners are clearly engaged.
There is a culture clash here. We expect students to meet a standardized set of objectives year after year, and get upset when they copy each others' work. We need to reward the act of building on the work of others when creativity and depth is added. We watched some hilarious videos of the "lip synch" and, um, "crazy antics" variety set to popular music, and we viewed other types of remixes.
Jonathan McIntosh remixes TV advertisements to create a whole new critical narrative:
Buffy vs Edward - more than just a funny video, it offers a critical view of gender roles:
So, what would it look like to use that deep peer interaction and engagement as the actual focus of learning? Students are interacting in their networks and not just with static content - we know this. So why are we not working to create social interactive wrappers around our content? Twitter user @skiley13 quips on this point:
Indeed. So which version of the "net generation" is correct? Socially engaged or dumbed down? Is that even the question we should be asking as educators? Kids and adults of all ages have always found means of distraction; indeed, a New York Times editorial by Steven Pinker published just today (well worth the click-through and a read) argues this very point - there have always been detractors arguing that new media makes us stupid whether that new media is the printing press or the Internet. Rather, today we have a unique opportunity to utilize these technologies in a way that will keep our students engaged. If we don't meet this challenge, we will be the ones "dumbing down" our students by forcing them to conform to old models of teaching and learning, and ultimately losing them. There are already examples of faculty and institutions doing this - the rest of us need to get on board.
MacArthur foundation - re-imagining learning in the 21st century
I would love to hear your take on the keynote or on any point I've made on this evolving topic.
