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.

View from the Borderlands: Happy Feast Day, Virgen de Guadalupe, We Need You ...

View from the Borderlands: Happy Feast Day, Virgen de Guadalupe, We Need You ...: In villages all across Mexico, high in the mountains, in the desert and in the jungles of the coasts, people awoke this morning to honor th...

Happy Feast Day, Virgen de Guadalupe, We Need You More Than Ever

In villages all across Mexico, high in the mountains, in the desert and in the jungles of the coasts, people awoke this morning to honor the virgencita, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Many are doing the same in the Southwest, in towns and cities.

The thought of this makes me happy inside. I like to imagine the many reasons we are getting up early on her feast day to celebrate. Some of us to give thanks for her help and guidance every day of the year's that's ending. Some of us to pray for a special reason for her protection and care. Some of us to mark the season, the calendar's march forward with a day of worship and thanksgiving; a tradition that repeats without our thinking of it like a heartbeat, a childhood rhyme or story that has become a part of who we are.

Here are the elements: Tonantzin, corn goddess of the Azteca; Juan Diego a peasant traveling to the city for medicine for his ailing grandfather; the apparition of the Virgin on the desert hill at Tepeyac; Juan's refusal to take the Virgin's request for the construction of a church to the bishop; Juan's avoidance of the Virgin; At the third request, Juan accepts her request and carries roses in his tilma to the bishop; the miracle, the tilma transformed from shirt to her delicate image, hands in prayer, standing upon a half moon, drafted into duty to persuade a new nation into Christianity.

Or here is another view. Was the Virgen drafted to emerge yet again?

Was her transformation from Azteca indigenous to Western ideal of beauty simply another way of revealing herself? Of providing us with protection, guidance and hope that fire up our spirits, lead us to do "important work" in the words of Seth Godin?

Have we people in the Americas, and also in Africa, Asia, Europe, the regions of China, India, the Arab world, everywhere we live on this chance planet, stepped forward to mark the end of the seasons for centuries before centuries were counted, to worship our protectors and providers?

Student Video Projects That Will Make You Smile

Students in my Mass Comm 1307 sections (Introduction to Mass Communications) were asked to view Simon Sinek's TED Talks presentation on "Why-How-What" vs. "What-How-Why"

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Next, they were asked to read and extract the main ideas from an article that appeared last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the impact of cell phone texting on sleep, and effects of this on academic performance. From these two elements, the students were asked to work individually, in pairs or groups of three to create public service announcements for an audience of entering college freshmen.

The work was done in a total of three days! Some students created particularly fun projects to demonstrate their talents. Here are two examples:

The first is by an individual student, Fred Lindgren.

The second is by a group of three (Jorge Alvarez, Megan Fitzsimmons and Dallas Glowka) who have worked together all semester on projects.

Night the Living Stayed Up Instead from Jorge Alvarez on Vimeo.

When Communication Kills

When Communication Kills

A friend whose brother-in-law was killed recently as a consequence of the cartel violence in Mexico said it best.  She explained the violence was finally brought to the fore, had become real. Before, the violence had seemed more of a concept, at a distance--until it struck close to home.

In a similar fashion, the struggle for power and domination by cartels in Mexico became real to me this week. The murder of a man this week in Nuevo Laredo, who thugs wrote in a hasty note was being punished because of his blogging activities was my own wake up call to fear.

Students in my Introduction to Mass Communication classes had just finished examining the way media impacts our society by studying the films "The Most Dangerous Man in America" and "All The President's Men. This week we explored the innovations that new media technologies like blogging and Twitter have brought to to the business and technology of mass media.

We had just viewed the inspiring and encouraging call for citizen journalism in the TED Talk from British journalist Paul Lewis

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_lewis_crowdsourcing_the_news.html

That's when we learned of another innovation. We read of the fourth person murdered in Nuevo Laredo due to their social media activities.
Here is an update from the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/mexican-man-apparently-killed-by-drug-cartel-for-anti-crime-web-comments/2011/11/09/gIQA24X66M_story.html?wprss=rss_world

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.

A Sporting Weekend

There's a thread that ran through this past weekend: seeing sports from new points of view. First, I added a third Zumba class to "dial up" my weekly exercise. Dancing to Zumba is a sport of a kind, I'll admit I'm stretching the point, but that's OK.

Next in my sports trifecta I saw the excellent movie, "Moneyball," which is less a sports movie than one about change and the pressure to squeeze the last decimal of probability out of sports because the stakes ($) are so high.

On Saturday, at the local TEDxSanAntonio, two of the best speakers were both using sports to arrive at interesting and unusual ends.

Jose Angel Garcia Elizondo is from Tampico, Mexico. He is an executive in a fuel distribution and service station company. The violence that has devastated Mexico has spurred him to fight both crime and a growing obesity problem in Tampico. He and a team of investors started a professional basketball team. The idea was to inspire boys and girls to play basketball and become more fit and healthy and have alternatives to joining the narcotraffic cartels. The Huracanes Tampico team have visited schools and performed for 15,000 kids.

On the same stage earlier in the day, San Antonian Gordan Hartman, former developer and businessman, and son of former friend and co-worker at KSAT TV, Gordon Hartman, spoke of starting a professional soccer team in San Antonio. The team's earnings will help pay for the operating expenses to Morgan's Wonderland, the world's first "ultra accessible family fun park designed with special-needs kids and adults in mind."

The two creative solutions to serious problems were a real revelation. My how times change: A basketball team for a Mexican city, a soccer team for an American city, and it all makes perfect sense when you consider how small the world has become.

But the reasons for creating each sports team are what really make these propositions (and realities) so cool. That's the real measure of how much the world has changed.