OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL

 

Number 3. 

 

Open Access  Sources and Journal  first appear as an alternative  to standard or traditional sources that were viewed as costly, , selective and restricted to minorities or under privileged groups. The idea behind the creation of these sources was to promote the diffusion at lower cost to knowledge worldwide. Unfortunately,  observed some advocates of open sources, they are  still fighting against resistances widely spread about their  supposed cost and affordability.

For Peter Suber, Open Access to academic research is still a ‘hot’ topic that is unfortunately held back by people who should know it better. He identifies 6 main myths that need to be overcome in order to fully understand and then make good use of open access journals

The first stereotype is that ‘‘the only way to provide open access to peer-reviewed journal articles is to publish in open access journals’’. Beneath this myth, according to Suber, is  the misunderstanding of the  term journal  itself.  At this point, the difference between gold (from source journal or publisher) and green access (from repository or institutional website) seems to play a major role.

 The second myth is that ‘all or most Open Access Journals charge publication fees’ whereas facts, from  2006 -2012, are that more than 67% of OAJ are free while at the same time about 75% of  conventional non open journal actually charge fees. Consequently, it’s become clear that publishing in open access would be less expansive than doing so in a non-conventional journals.

The third myth asserts that ‘most author-side fees are paid by the authors themselves’, whereas  they are paid by funders (54% )or by universities (27%).  Moreover, it is only 12%  of that author fees that are actually paid out of author pocket.

The fourth  myth, establishes that ‘publishing in a conventional journal closes the door on making the same work open access’. At this stage, he underlines the point  that authors  might ask for addendum (a proposed contract modification which the publisher might or might not accept). Furthermore,  there is still the option of  ‘rights-retention policies’  on the side of faculty at the university level. These rights  ”assure that faculty may make their work open access even when they publish in a non-open access journal, even when the non-open access journal does not give standing permission for green open access, and even when faculty members have not negotiated special access terms or permissions with their publishers”

The fifth most recurring myth is related to the quality of  Open Access Journals . In that vein, it is commonly believed that ‘Open Access Journals are intrinsically low in quality’. That belief is proven to be false by Marie E. McVeigh. Indeed, in an article written in 2004, in the Thomson scientific, she reveals that “there was at least one open access title that ranked at or near the top of its field in citation impact”.

The six myth lays on the assumption that ‘Open Access mandates infringe academic freedom’. This myth is completely irrelevant according to Suber, because only ‘one-third of peer-reviewed journals are open access, requiring researchers to submit new work to Open Access Journals would severely limit their freedom to submit work to the journals of their choice’

Have you ever had any resistance to publish in an Open Journal? If yes, does any of your fear(s) to publish in Open Journal fall in one of Suber classification? Do you agree with any of Suber’s mythification of  common resistance to Open Journal?  If   yes which one and why? Are you convinced by the counterarguments he elaborated to breakdown these myths?

Collaborative Project–McDonough/Zhao-East Meets West

COURSE TITLE“EAST MEETS WEST: CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION ACROSS DISCIPLINES” 

DISCIPLINES: INTERDISCIPLINARY 100-LEVEL FOREIGN LANGUAGE and INTRO MEDIA STUDIES

INSTRUCTORS/CREATORS: Carolyn A. McDonough and Jing Zhao

Communication among cultures has become increasingly frequent in an age of globalization, making cross-cultural communication skills essential in the tool kit of a modern day college/university student. As instructors in higher education, how do we assist undergraduate students in both the opportunities afforded through such instantaneous global communication and the challenge digital era post-millennial communication presents?

This 100-level course for undergraduate students will explore the question through an interdisciplinary approach combining two inherently multidisciplinary fields of study: Language Studies and Media Studies.

“Culture” is an extremely profound concept that can be approached from various angles. “Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by [human beings] as members of society,” as described by British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor. The term “culture” is complex in nature and studied by various disciplines, especially those under the larger umbrellas of the humanities and social sciences. Teaching “cross-cultural communication” therefore, is an interdisciplinary act incorporating multidisciplinary knowledge and interdisciplinary methodologies.

As instructors of Chinese language and Media Studies, we are keenly aware of the complexity of language, culture, media and educational technology. We were inspired to create a course on the intersectionality of these in the larger context of cross-cultural communication. We will combine our individual disciplinary approaches pedagogically as “critical co-investigators” and culminate the course with the “student as producer” in the Final Project. (Rosen and Smale, Open Digital Pedagogy=Critical Pedagogy, 2015)

The interdisciplinarity and cross-cultural communication focus of this course thereby also speaks to the concept of “connectivism” in both higher education and modern culture-at-large. “Learning is a process of connecting entities” and the “ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts” is a core skill. (Stephen Downes, Elements of Connectivism, 2011) Our course design is thus an embodiment of connectivism. Students are encouraged to make connections between elements of “culture” through various disciplines, some of which they may have little or no prior knowledge to access or experience in studying.  

Siemens points out the importance of “unknown knowledge” by stating that “our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.” (George Siemens, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, 2004)

This new cultural imperative, then, is the mandate of the student/citizen in the post-millennial digital, global era: that of being connected and making connections among various disciplines. Siemens emphasizes “[T]he starting point of connectivism is the individual” (Siemens, 2004) as the locus of a network which becomes an organization.

Learning, however, is not entirely under the control of the individual, according to Siemens.

Therefore, in order to make connections in interdisciplinary learning, students need to collaborate. For this reason, it is required that students work in teams of two to complete their Final Project. They will also need to research effective tools/resources and to present the results of critically utilizing them.

The course itself will become a network example of Siemens’s connectivism. 

Digital tools are thereby inherent in the course design and are an embodiment of establishing such networks for learning. Students will be required to use multimedia resources, and the “languages” of different media, to demonstrate a collaboratively established network. Critical thinking is highly engaged when encountering media texts and it is also enlivening to encounter new types of media in both teaching and learning.

Description of Final Project:

Students will be required to create a visual “academic ad campaign” in the form of a digital media flyer/poster/handout/online ad, etc. that promotes cross-cultural exchange via language study between universities. Students must conceptualize, design and create a visual that would be seen on campus, or on the university’s website, announcing an opportunity to study another language abroad, in the language of a host university.

For example, a flyer at the University of Florence would announce an exchange program to “STUDY CHINESE IN CHINA” written in Italian. Conversely, a flyer at the University of Beijing would announce an exchange program to “STUDY ITALIAN IN ITALY” written in Chinese.

In teams of two students per team, choose two universities from two different cultures. Research your choices. Collaborate by comparing and combining your research.  Design an ”academic ad” to announce and promote cultural exchange via a language study program. Your joint findings should inform the ad’s content while also communicating cross-cultural exchange through language study.

The following components are required in the Final Project:

-Digital Media Design (sourcing visual media/collecting visual media)

-Language and cultural references and/or symbols intended to promote, convey and facilitate cross-cultural communication.  

Your team will be responsible for creating TWO different “academic ads”. Please see the following visual example:

Example_Visual_For_East_Meets_West_Final_Project

We encourage you to research print ads, posters, online ads, broadcast ads, travel publications, travel websites, cover art, artwork found in scholarly journals, etc., and DON’T FORGET to also look around while going about your day. We are surrounded, indeed barraged, by visual images and these can often spark ideas.

HELPFUL HINT: SYMBOLS SUMMARIZE and REPRESENT. THINK MEME.

Digital design tools must be used and may range from basic Microsoft Office or more advanced digital design software such as Adobe Photoshop. Feel free to explore the many free photo editing apps like PicLab and filter apps, or go “old-school” by creating a hands-on collage of images from magazines (but this MUST be scanned in to a digital format and submitted digitally.)

The Final Project is to be submitted/posted digitally in .jpg or pdf file format to the class blog site. Peer review is highly encouraged.

The criteria we will use to evaluate and assess the Final Project and fulfilling its requirements are: 

-overall digital media design

-use of language and symbol

-does the ad/meme convey a sense of connectivism?

-is the ad culturally sensitive and gender friendly?

-was care employed in the design and in the use of digital technology to disseminate media?

Rationale for Final Project:

STUDENTS ARE TO DEMONSTRATE CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS [language/media/digital media/social media] AND BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE/EMBODY THESE IN VISUAL FORM. STUDENTS MUST ALSO DEMONSTRATE FEMALE PEDAGOGY THROUGH CULTURAL SENSITIVITY.

Technology is key in achieving connectivism. In a globalized era, in real time or asynchronously online, it is essential to seek the positive aspects of different cultures for peaceful co-existence in shared spaces, both physically and virtually. Therefore, the tone of our course is one of “care” toward our students, our network, our organization, and so on, in the hope of helping students identify, analyze, and apply the “nurturing” aspects of technology to enhance cross-cultural communication.

Using technology in a responsible and “caring” manner to discover the more “humane” side of technology instead of treating technology as “neutral” and emotionless  is very important in developing a “humane” attitude toward using “objects”. This kinder attitude will assist students in learning how to deal with the culture of technology upon us, which has become a part of everyday life globally, as they embark upon careers, while fostering both connection and cross-cultural communication.

Carolyn A. McDonough is a non-matric in the ITP Certificate Program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is applying for the MA in Digital Humanities and holds her first MA in Media Studies with a BA in Medieval & Renaissance Studies. She enjoys how her degrees come together in the field of the Digital Humanities and is interested in cultural studies.

Jing Zhao is a student of Masters of Liberal Studies program at CUNY Graduate Center, digital humanities track. He is also a Chinese language teacher and translator. He is interested in studying the affordances of educational technology and second language teaching.

Lauren and Filipa’s Collaborative Assignment

Assignment Overview:

This upper-level undergraduate course will examine gender representations in media and digital culture. Throughout the semester, students will explore the way gender is constructed, represented, and expressed within the context of traditional media, online media, and especially within social media representation in the 21st century.  Students will study gender ideologies, feminist theory, and communication theory and practices, in order to gain a thorough understanding of critical approaches to gender representation across various media. The goal for the course is to transform students from media readers (consumers) to writers (producers) with the ability to critically contribute to conversations by using various media producing platforms and technologies.   

The final assignment will give the students the ability to demonstrate how the theories and readings from the course have been understood by them. They will show how they have transformed from consumers to producers by creating/curating a series of Instagram posts that share a common thread of gender representation.  Each image will also have to be accompanied with a minimum 100 word annotation. Students will finally have to defend their decisions and annotations of the images by presenting to their classmates on the final meeting day (5-7 minute presentation).

In completing the assignment, students will engage with a variety of technologies. First, they will become proficient in creating and producing to Instagram accounts, which is a popular social media tool.  Additionally, students will need to use image capturing devices and other applications to edit their photos such as smartphones or digital cameras (devices) and Flickr or Snapspeed (applications). Furthermore, since a main requirement for the final assignment is to include one external course reading, i.e. articles from a library database, students will need to become familiar with optimal searching strategies in the library’s databases.  During the middle of the term (before the final assignment is given) students will be brought to the library to work with a librarian on search techniques and strategies. Lastly, students will need to present their work to their class, so presentation software such as Prezi, PowerPoint, or Slides will be used.

The following criteria will be used to evaluate the assignment:

  • 10-20 posts on Instagram, containing at least 1,500 words of text (for 15 posts, that’s 100 words per post).  Creativity will be highly valued, so use varying images and annotate them well!
  • Project draws from at least two major sources from the course readings (and one beyond) in a significant way.  Students visited the library to receive an overview of searching tips and techniques, as well as receiving guidance on the best databases/resources available for this project.  Choosing an external reading that demonstrates mastery of library searching is ideal.
  • Project takes up major subjects from at least three different fields (entertainment, pop culture, politics, sports, public intellectuals, etc).
  • Project coheres into a larger understanding on the function of gender in the media.  This will be clearly stated in the presentation as a thesis statement.
  • Project presentation is engaging and informative.

Assignment Draft (addressed to students):

For the final project of this course, you will not be writing a traditional research paper, but will create a series of annotated Instagram posts that demonstrate your critical understanding of gender representations through a media platform.  The images you use should be created by you (photos of yourself or things you see) AND should also include images pulled from other sources, i.e. an image of a Cyborg referring to the Donna Haraway reading (proper citation within the annotation is required).  A mixture of self created and borrowed images is ideal. For each image, you will write an annotation that deconstructs its representation of gender and addresses the theories and critical discussions we’ve had throughout the semester.

To accomplish this, you will:

  • Create a series of 15-20 posts on Instagram, containing at least 1,500 words of text (for 15 posts, that’s 100 words per post).
  • The series will draw from at least two major sources from the course readings, and one beyond that was found during/after the library research session, in a significant way.  For example, this could be accomplished by quoting from a reading in the post or by incorporating images that represent course readings. Please note, you can use more than three readings, but to receive full credit for this part of the assignment you need to refer to TWO course readings and ONE external reading.    
  • Series takes up major subjects from at least three different fields (entertainment, pop culture, politics, sports, public intellectuals, etc).  
  • Finally, you will prepare a 5-7 minute presentation that introduces your thesis, ties the chosen & taken images together into an argument justifying your choices and your annotations.  Your presentation should be engaging and informative. Presentations will be on the last day of class.  
  • Your presentation must include a thesis statement that indicates your  larger understanding on the function of gender in the media.  What ties all the images together? What representations are being depicted? You should be able to clearly articulate this thesis statement in your presentation.

Collaborative Assignment Design – Kyueun Kim and Kahdeidra Martin

Assignment Overview

Rhetoric is an important skill and art form that is used in all disciplines and aspects of life. As educators of speech communication and English composition, we want to support our students in strengthening their abilities to craft and deliver a speech that is appropriate to one’s occasion and audience. We collaborated to design one assignment that could be used in both introductory level speech and composition courses at undergraduate institutions.

For a final assignment, students will perform a commemorative speech in class. This assignment supports the objective of using the writing process to plan, revise, and finalize written assignments for diverse audiences, that is common to both speech communication and composition courses. In composition courses, the assignment also supports close reading and literary analysis skills. For example, students will need to develop a strong understanding of  characterization and other elements of fiction in order to convincingly write from the perspective of a character. In addition, they will use close reading strategies to make realistic predictions about character behavior in imagined contexts, thereby extending the author’s narrative.

 

Student Facing Assignment

Final Assignment: Commemorative Speech

Have you ever attended a wedding and nearly teared up when the maid of honor and best man offered their undying support and praise for the bride and groom? Or, have you ever imagined yourself winning a coveted prize or award for your dedication and achievement in [whateveritisyoudobest]? What would you say at the award ceremony? What would others say about you?

For our final assignment, you will write and perform a commemorative speech. This speech focuses on the use of language and performance to celebrate and show gratitude to someone or something. You can pay tribute to a person close to you, a celebrity, a group of people, an institution, an event, or an idea, etc. It calls for a less didactic speech than informative and persuasive speeches.

We will prepare for our live performances by: 1) drafting and editing our written speeches, 2) viewing and evaluating sample speeches from the media, and 3) performing and assessing a rehearsal speech. By the time we begin final speeches, all students will have received ample feedback on the content, format, and oral performance of their works. It is my hope that the final speeches are a celebration of growth and learning over the semester.

Part I – Write

Composition Prompt: Write a 3-5 min. commemorative speech based on the perspective of a character in a short story, poem, or play that we have read throughout the semester. Here are a couple of options that may be useful to start your thinking:

  1. Did your character attend an event at which he or she could have recited a commemorative speech?
  2. Based on your knowledge of the character’s interests, desires, and aspirations, imagine an achievement that he or she may be lauded for in the near future. Whom would he or she thank for support along the way?
  3. Does your character know anyone who may be getting married, achieving something remarkable on the job, winning an election, or other action that would elicit a celebration? Or, could someone they love pass away? What would your character say as words of  praise or eulogy?

Speech Communication Core Prompt: Write a 3-5 min. commemorative speech based on a real or imagined situation.

Take some time to review your notes and readings. Next, review the Exemplary Commemorative Speeches From Movies and note any patterns or strategies that you think will be helpful in drafting your own speech. You can use the speech graphic organizer 7 steps to writing your commemorative speech to help with writing your first draft.

Assessment: I will assess your written speeches using the Special Occasion Speech Rubric, and I will also use the same sheet to evaluate your delivered speech. The written speech is worth 70 points total, and the delivered speech is worth 50 points.

Part II – Evaluate

Evaluate a recorded commemorative speech from a real life or fictional context. During a class session, we will choose one of the example speeches to view and analyze using the Out-of-Class Speech Observation Worksheet. This will provide a guided model for you before you embark on the individual assignment.

View at least two speeches from the list below and choose one to evaluate:

        1. Madonna’s Tribute to Michael Jackson (6:39)
        2. Oprah Winfrey’s acceptance speech  at the 2018 Golden Globes (9:39)
        3. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2016 Tonys Acceptance Speech: ‘Love is Love’ (1:34)
        4. A Beautiful Mind John Nash: 1994 Nobel Prize Acceptance Address [VIDEO + DIGITALLY ENHANCED AUDIO!]  (1:40)
        5. Mr. Holland’s Opus Governor Lang Honors Mr. Holland and his Opus [VIDEO + Digitally ENHANCED AUDIO!] (2:24)
        6. The Life of Emile Zola Eulogy for Emile Zola         [VIDEO + DIGITALLY ENHANCED AUDIO!] (2:32)

Complete the “Out of Class Observation” worksheet for your chosen clip, and be prepared to discuss your feedback during class.

Assessment: I will assess observations as Complete or Incomplete. This assignment counts towards your Informal Writing grade and will not be included as part of your final grade for the commemorative speech assignment.

Part III – Rehearse

After editing your written speech to incorporate feedback, you will rewrite it, and record a rehearsal speech. First, you will divide into pairs, and then you will record and upload your speeches to Vocat. Use the Commemorative Speech Evaluation Form to evaluate your partner’s speech and to provide written and oral feedback. In addition, you will complete the Special Occasion Speech Self-Assessment to evaluate your own speeches.

Assessment: I will assess observations as Complete or Incomplete. This assignment counts towards your Informal Writing grade and will not be included as part of your final grade for the commemorative speech assignment.

Part IV – Showtime!

As a culminating activity, you will incorporate your learning and feedback from Parts I- III to perform a live commemorative speech during class. Before delivering your speech, prepare a 4-5 sentence introduction to identify your character, the occasion, and projected audience for the speech.

Assessment: I will use the Delivery and Time limit sections of the “Special Occasion Speech Rubric.” You can earn up to an additional 50 points towards your speech. Your final grade for the speech will be based on the total points earned from Parts I and IV (70 + 50 = 120 points possible). (Note: The time limit is 3 min. on the rubric, so we would edit it to 5 min. before teaching this unit.)

Technology Use:

Students will use a range of open access technology to complete their assignments. First, they will need access to Vocat. It is an effective tool to use for annotation and for a peer review assignment such as ours. However, the loading time is excessive, and there are often glitches. Second, they will need access to an electronic device with recording capabilities because they will need to record their own speeches in order to upload them to Vocat. Third, students will need access to a reliable internet connection in order to view the six example speeches on various websites, and they will need to use word processing software to type their final speeches. Finally, they will need access to a printer in order to run off hard copies of their completed manuscripts.

2 Images: 1 Powerful, 1 Derivative

Per our class discussion Monday, March 19, here is the Obama HOPE poster designed by Shepard Fairey in 2008–American artist via skateboard culture–and the KONY 2012 poster “thank you gift” from the “Action Kit” for donating to Invisible Children, the organization that produced a documentary film with the same title. While the film became a YouTube video phenomenon in 2012, the very public breakdown of its maker, Jason Russell, came to dominate the media coverage, shifting the story from Kony’s atrocities and the Invisible Children, to Jason Russell’s personal life as tabloid fodder, exposing his evangelistic agenda.  The whole arc playing out in real time during my Media Studies 101 course Spring 2012 semester, as we delved into the film and discovered its bias, gave my students a great example of persuasion, media hype, fame/celebrity and an emerging medium (YouTube) as they employed critical thinking habits in analyzing the film and very complicated attending humanitarian and political issues.

Developing a lab for working with digital media

I am involved in a wonderful project to develop a Film and Media Lab at Bard Early College (BHSEC Queens). I was very sure about what I would be doing in this class: writing a grant for a lab.

But as the discussions progressed for the project more issues seemed to come up. If it is a Film and Media Lab then is it going to be just a place to make or study film? And then how is Media Studies involved with Film Studies? As we were contemplating this question we realized that the acronym would be FML!  Do we want it to be FML when we are teaching HS age students? Perhaps not.

Maybe then we can have it as a Film and New Media Lab… maybe that would fix the bridge between media and film. But still it was becoming hard to envision this as a space for film screenings and film production work or a place to teach kids python or other forms of digital literacy.

Maybe we should just keep it Digital Media Lab or Digital Media Arts Lab?

These are the small funny little discussions my colleague Suzanne Schulz and I are finding ourselves in as we develop this digi-lab.

Fortunately, we have a supportive administration. And we were able to articulate ourselves well enough to win a grant for new equipment.  We were given a grant for a cart of laptops, with some film editing software (which ones we are not sure yet).  Some boxes that we thought were tech for recordings turned out to be a lectern.  So we have a little more waiting and seeing before we have a full inventory.

The next step is agreeing up on a room where we can test-run this mobile digital media lab. We have a very long semester that lasts until June, so perhaps we may start well after the semester ends here at GC.

Space has been an issue all on its own. In our small space, BHSECQ is two floors in the LaGuardia Community College building, we have the choice of either a small windowless room that fits only 18 students, or a windowless room that fits 25 students but is L-shaped. Then there is a room that stores old chairs and broken office furniture. Perhaps we can clear it out and create a video editing room and a training room? But then this is also the room with a vent that connects straight into the cafeteria…

My project is to raise more funding and fully define, along with my colleague and friend, Suzanne Schulz, at BHSEC Queens a mission statement for the… well, what seems to be best described as a making space, so perhaps we will keep it as a The Digital Media Arts Lab. We hope to train students and faculty in audio and visual communication, or we are training students and faculty in increasing their digital literacy (still debating which sounds better as a mission statement or grant request line). We will definitely be creating a space for experimentation and play.

What is interesting is that with students at this age level, we need to go through a special office for permission to post video/media works that students put together that show their face. (This makes sense and it is a simple process, but something I had never thought of before!)

I was thinking that I could also use this class to develop a workshop for faculty around complicating the notion of the canon. Our students are protesting the predominantly Greek and Italian material in First Year Seminar. But I will revisit this once again in another week. We are still working on a mission statement and the goal is to complete it by April 9th.

We have some amazing students who are working with us. They will be sharing their video and digital media projects to a proposed website that will showcase their work.

I will make an official list of what we got and what we still need. I believe we received about $25000 because the laptops are equipped to edit video. Thank you for offering this space for me to think through some of the planning of this space. We have an amazing tech specialist at BHSECQ Adam Rhodes and a young filmmaker Sara Aboobaker to help develop this ______Lab!

 

Hybrid/Online Learning II

I approached this week’s readings keeping last week’s readings in mind because this week’s class is Hybrid/Online Learning, Connectivism, and the University II, while also considering the prompts from the syllabus and the larger context of the Digital Pedagogy Unit we’re currently studying. At times while reading, reviewing last week’s readings and “task-switching” to print important pages and/or look up terms in the readings, it felt like juggling with all the balls in the air at the same time. But the good news is that by this morning, the readings’ content and their context started to gel.

I’d like to focus on Chapters 4-5 and Appendix in Digital Technology as Affordance and Barrier in Higher Ed (Smale and Regalado, 2017) and leave the remaining readings for class. I’m really intrigued by the very vast quantitative study that Smale and Regalado undertook, the extreme detail they went into with each participant and constituency, and their findings from a such labor-intensive research project for both participants and researchers.

Chapter 4 “College Students, Technology and Time” treats the concepts of  time and space in tech. I must admit, as I stare at 4 major projects on my  desk and desktop with deadlines all close to each other within the coming weeks, reading about time and time management in academic work with the task of being this week’s motivator was pushing my buttons. Still, the concept of time + space in tech is larger than my own personal situation. For example, we all experience that “digital devices teleport work into spaces and times once reserved for personal life” (Wajcman 2015, 137 in Smale and Regalado 2017, 60) and while this can be great it is also be really tricky to manage.

So I pose this opening question: how do you manage tech in spaces and times once reserved for personal life?

I myself have maintained “sacred times + spaces” such as meals with family, mornings, bedtime, and DRIVING, during which no tech is allowed. This has been a tech battle with my teen since her high school teachers use Remind apps, Google classroom, etc. and often post important info very early in the morning on the day of classes or late at night the night before classes. I get aggravated by this because I feel it erodes all the years of my parenting/modeling “no tech” at such times.

Start the day with a sun salutation not a Facebook update, please!!!

Chapter 4 also speaks to the need for students to be “adaptable” due to the vicissitudes of tech (slow wifi, smartphone charging, power outages due to weather, etc.) As a freelancer (which we’re not supposed to say anymore, I believe the correct term is now “flex time worker”) and adjunct professor, in my “lived experience”, adaptability is essential.

Do you find your students to be rigid, adaptible/flexible or just simply not skilled enough yet with tech? What are some of the affordances and barriers you encounter as teachers and in your students?

I’ve thought about this often in the context of “the trope of the digital native” (Smale and Regalado, 80). I, too, agree Smale and Regalado, who are in agreement with “Bennett and Maton (2010) who suggest we must move beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate as it currently stands” (Smale and Regalado, 75) or as Ryan Cordell articulates in “How Not to Teach the Digital Humanities” (a reading from Core 1) “digital native does not equal mastery”. (Debates in Digital Humanities 2016, 464)

In Chapter 5 “Recommendations for Technology in Higher Education” the researchers “found that fixed tech’s greatest restriction on students’ academic task-scapes is that it requires them to create academic space for themselves in locations that may be occupied by multiple other people engaged in a variety of activities… Mobile tech can allow students to transcend place… affording them the opportunity to reduce the distractions of others” (Smale and Regalado, 74) to which I’d add, provided their own distractions (notifications, updates, Snapchat selfie taking etc.) are turned off or silenced while they’re working academically, in order to amplify/maximize/dedicate time. I heard a study cited–I can’t remember the name or group which conducted it at the moment–which reported that it is estimated that women in college spend 10 hours PER DAY futzing on smartphones–why the study singled out women I don’t know–but still, this is staggering!)

To the point of time usage and economy, the students revealed a finding that the “most useful” tech was for “managing time or time-saving”. But while “technology can certainly be harnassed to provide support for student time management” (Smale & Regalado 81) I find the use of remind apps to be another tricky thing to manage in and of themselves. They’re great when the remind is programmed or the event info is input by students themselves, but if it’s part of a larger automation I think it takes away from learning the very valuable and essential time-management skills, that are also a BIG part of learning and researching.

In summary, Chapters 4, 5 and Appendix bring to light the “lived experience” of tech, or as Laurie Hurson said during a TLC workshop that I attended (which Jing and Kyueun also attended) on Teaching With the Commons when WordPress hit a bump during a demo, “this is when tech gets real”.

I’ve found that the use of tech is always about “the time created with one digital technology evaporate[ing] due to the barriers of another” (Smale & Regalado 64) and that we must CHOOSE WISELY as educators and students ourselves.

Chapters 4, 5 and Appendix also bring up the concept of BOUNDARIES in TIME/SPACE/PLACE and made me examine the following questions in regard to academic work, which: -Where do I want to work? -What time/s can I work? -WHEN do I work best? WHEN does my sched allow me to work? (often the ideal/optimal/desired times do not correspond to deadlines.)

Perhaps we could create a check list of FUNCTIONS of TECH in HIGHER ED:

-Learning

-Teaching

-Exchanging: academics, relevant anecdotes in both academic content and academic tech

-Streamlining! Less is more

What would you add this this list?

Finally, how do you think these chapters speak to the syllabus prompts:

“What are the biases of the technologies we’re using, and how can we interrogate those biases from within the environment they have created?”

It’s clear from reading Smale and Regalado’s comprehensive research that tech access + digital literacy are matters of social justice. I really liked the professor in an allied health department at City Tech who said, “as faculty we teach content, but I like to think that we, more-so, facilitate learning through technology”. (Smale & Regalado 80)

Indeed, I find this to be the mandate we face as educators.

In closing, please find photos of my own personal remind system, the very high tech Post-It Note attached to my smartphone and clothing. The most important thing about tech, low or high, is that it must work for you.

Works for me!

Quantifying Students

Hi everyone, thanks for a great discussion in class last night. On my way home I was reminded of this recent research that’s garnering lots of discussion from critical educational technology folks on Twitter, posted here by Chris Gilliard (we’ll be reading some of his work in a few weeks):

Gilliard’s whole Twitter thread is worth a read, and here’s the original announcement of this research from the University of Arizona: Researcher Looks at ‘Digital Traces’ to Help Students

What are the implications of quantifying students in these ways?