Really New Media

Prepping for the new semester, making improvements to the website students use to access readings, links to viewings and assignments this week.

Peaceful and calm, as the season is upon us, and we enjoy family and friends near and far.

It's hard to see the outline of every pebble from the window of a speeding train, and so it is for me as I watch the mediascape as my students and I travel through time together.

I started teaching in the 1980's when we used textbooks. No DVD's or VCR's in the classroom, no cell phones in students pockets. Presentations were on poster board using cut-outs from magazines and newspapers. Now my students have their own You Tube channels and most feel utterly comfortable using multimedia software that I can't even start up.

We teach in Mass Communication about the industry that I began working in during the 1970's in radio, television and the newspaper in Laredo, Austin, and San Antonio.

Today that industry has effectively been eclipsed by the Internet, in the manner of all mass media, according to McLuhan: the new kid on the block adopts the programming of its predecessor (radio did it to vaudeville, TV did it to radio) and the beat goes on.

Seth Godin, however reminds us that it is more than the-beat-goes-on, because the Internet is a game-changer.

McLuhan might have thought of it as a return to life prior to the invention of mass media, when our stories weren't for sale or selling something (the commodification of information).

Here is Godin from his post today:

"Lifestyle media isn't a fad. It's what human beings have been doing forever, with a brief, recent interruption for a hundred years of professional media along the way. That interruption is fading away, and lifestyle media is resurging. People publish. Instead of denigrating user-generated content (what an obscure way to describe human stories), marketers need to understand that this is what we care about.

We shouldn't be surprised when someone chooses to publish their photos, their words, their art or their opinions. We should be surprised when they don't."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/the-most-important-page-on-the-web-is-the-page-you-build-yourself.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

Next to TED Talks, I count this writer as having the most valuable perspective on the Internet. I am encouraged and grateful for the impulses we humans have to share using media, whether via text, video, or the next platform.

How The Kitchen Floor Taught Me An Important Lesson

I'm finishing grading a five-day report from students on their experiences in observing their thinking patterns and behaviors, and learning about great strategies to improve their thinking and their lives. Their text is "25 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living"

http://www.amazon.com/Days-Better-Thinking-Living-Improving/dp/0131738593/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319304914&sr=1-1

Truthfulness and honest introspection are common among this generation of students. The students in my classes submitted many insightful and courageous experiences. They give me lots of hope for the generation stepping up to bat in the game of life.

I feel honored to be a part of their lives and to be able to intersect with them for this short time of a semester. I am blessed to be a witness to their courage and their efforts.

Reading about many of my student's challenges in communicating and focusing, I'm tempted to comfort them by saying, 'You're not alone, that's part of being human.' I am also tempted to say that troubles communicating and focusing may be persistent problems that get better over time, but they seem to keep showing up no matter your age or what you do in life.

The kitchen floor, for example, is a great teacher in the areas of communication and focus.

For the first 30 years of my life I took my cues from television as to the proper way to clean the kitchen floor. Thousands of Spic and Span commercials in my childhood and more recently commercials from the Swifter brand had convinced me that the way to a clean kitchen floor was by mopping with a cleanser.

The results were less than Mr. Clean would have approved of. In fact 'lil old me-- of much lower standards than Mr. Clean in these matters-- did not approve. The corners, for example, never really got clean using a mop. Maybe the mop and bucket just seemed like over-kill for such a small space. The deck of a ship at sea, possibly, but not my home kitchen.

Finally, a woman who grew up in Mexico came to work for us cleaning our house. She taught me an uncomfortable lesson. She would start the kitchen floor project first by sweeping. Then she would take her shoes off and kneel down, with the bucket at her side, scrubbing, rinsing and repeating. Not missing a spot. Including the corners and beneath the fridge.

My reaction at first was to feel a sort of shame in our common Mexicanity. (Cool word, huh?) I felt embarrassed because she was so old fashioned and not 'with it'. "Oh, wow. How backward. How unenlightened of her to do it this way!"

Then, my sister came for a visit, and after a terrific time one night feeding family and friends, she took it upon herself the next morning to clean up the kitchen floor. I was thunderstruck when I saw her, my paragon of beauty and elegance, coolness and sophistication, on her knees, scrubbing up stains from last night's mole sauce.

I stood and stared, then joined her knees to knees. I asked if she always kneeled to clean the floor, and she answered me like I'd lost my mind, "Of course. It's the only way to do it. How else do you propose doing it?" "A mop--like on TV," I muttered. To which she quickly asked, "Well, what about the corners?"

Mr. Clean never got down on his knees. Mr. Clean was a cartoon.

Communication and focus. Lessons come from the oddest places, including corners.

I love you, Dr. Michael Wesch

My five sections of Introduction to Mass Communications at Northwest Vista College are embarking on Week Six of the semester by exploring topics their groups have selected that are 1. important to college students 2. using relevant technologies, much in the style of "Visions of Students Today" by Kansas State University Anthropology professor Michael Wesch.

http://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o


So far some of the topics the 30 groups in the five classes have selected are: "What is it like living in post 9-11 America", "What is it like living without ready access to drinking water", "What is it like living in a consumer-driven economy?" and "What is it like being in a relationship surrounded by media-driven images about romantic relationships?" The students worked on their "research question" by discussing their interests and carefully editing for bias or leading language.

The 'relevant technologies' they are using are similar to the ones used by Dr. Wesch's class in the video which has had 45 million views since 07 when it was uploaded by his students. These include Facebook Group pages, Google documents for collecting and gathering responses, as well as others, including Twitter.

The student groups are energized about this project and I'm eager to see the process evolve, and to learn from our classes efforts. I'm not sure we'll have 45 million views on our projects, but I am sure this is the sort of activity that tells students education is about things they care about and that their ideas, voices and efforts can contribute to building a better world.