Too Much Noise (in Education and politics)

I don't know about others, but the amount of wireless noise promoting this technology over that technology is overwhelming.  If noise were to be the judge, technology is teaching our future citizens and not teachers.  And, to boot teachers are part of the noise as they search for the latest technology to help them better manage their classrooms (online or live).  Point being that in all the noise I feel like students and the teachers interested in mentoring students are lost in the noise.

And another kind of noise:  For instance parents and students worry and complain about the cost of texts.  Understood.  Agreed. But, the larger problem isn't textbooks its tuition.  We elect state and federal officials who have slowly but surely cut funding to higher education with the result that what we now have is a form of taxation not without representation, but in-spite of representation, and it's called tuition.  And those same cuts force into existence every larger and larger classes that on the one hand make up the lost revenue but because of class size less and less learning takes place... while tests report that American education is falling further and further behind the rest of the world.  While we fight two wars that have gone on for twelve years at a cost of billions and our congress shuts down the government over healthcare for everyone, it doesn't seem money can be found to make education better, just bigger.  (I can't help but think those conditions and the loans that support them make Wall Street bankers smile.)

But in the midst of all the noise — ideas are sometimes lost.   Ideas that can and do improve learning. Two nights ago I heard a lecture by Scott MacCloud. Scott pointed out that "comics" are capable of imparting vast amounts of knowledge visually and in small spaces.   Scott wasn't talking about funny cartoons, but the techniques and ability of "comics" to tell educational stories; complicated stories of physics, sociology, etc.  And he is right.  The work of Richard Mayer and the research around Vizi Courseware support Scott's ideas.  Actually, its pretty simple.  Our eyes are capable of taking in vast amounts of information and in a digital age we should be looking for ways to take advantage of that human capability with the capabilities of digital technology.  Now, there is a real revolution without blood and the noise isn't all that loud.

McLuhan's Ghost and Higher Education

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher of communication theory whose work became the cornerstone of media studies.  He reportedly stated that people who think that entertainment has nothing to do with education or that education has nothing to do with entertainment, really don't know much about either one.  That statement has influenced the greater part of my life both in entertainment (live and recorded, theatre and film) and education (both as a student, a teacher, and now a publisher).  To know about theatre is to know about 3000 years of early media wherein theatre has attempted to engage audiences, broadcast ideas, and instruct or reflect on human behavior. Engagement is at the deepest center of theatrical entertainment.  To educate someone or to educate oneself is to be involved in the act of learning.  The compelling nature of both experiences is what engages the individual.

Engagement is the bridge between entertainment and education.  It is the juncture toward which this blog tips its hat to Marshall McLuhan.  His ghost has its fingerprints all over entertainment and education in this digital age.  Truly, the medium is the message.  In this space I hope to look at both problems and solutions that inform educational discussions.  The comments in this blog are of course my own.   I am the only one responsible for them.  I believe, as many do, that the very nature of our educational institutions need to change and that in fact they are already changing.  Some of those changes are wise and others questionable.  Which is which?  Hopefully, this blog will make a reasonable attempt to tease out some of the efficacy in those changes.

In this first post I admit a bias: for me the relationship between teacher and student is paramount.  Technology can support that relationship and enhance it, but it cannot replace it.  The technology of books did not replace teachers and neither will digital technology replace the educator. Content, teacher, and student form my holy grail in education whether live, on-line, or virtual. However, just as Gutenberg's technology changed how teachers teach, so digital technology is changing how we impart or encourage knowledge acquisition.  We need to understand technology and how to use it, if for no other reason than our students live in a world where technology is ubiquitous in their personal and professional lives.

While this blog represents my opinions and observations as an educator, full disclosure requires that I note that I am an emeritus faculty and director of the Institute for Digital Education at Ball State University and the Chief Creative Officer for Vizi Learning Systems (a commercial publisher of digital media/multimodal educational resources).  While this blog is not supported by VLS, my work in the multimodal world obviously shapes many of my views.  Anyone interested in what a Vizi is can go to a video overview that explains the pedagogy of those resources (https://vimeo.com/72929005).  This blog is not about commercialization, but education.