Re: [xmca] adult affordances

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

And here I was about to suggest (somewhat jokingly) cell phone and wifi
jamming devices (some schools already have these in classrooms). But
judging by the tone of the conversation, it seems like that would be akin
to joking about using medieval torture devices in the classroom!

Nonetheless, I will try to present a counterpoint to the "embrace new
media" vibe that has been running through this thread (and somewhat in the
mode of the field of media ecology, but hopefully not quite that far).

To start, I don't have a problem with students going on flights of fancy in
the classroom and would even encourage it. I'm all for imagination, but,
imho, that's not what facebook and twitter and the internet do (and maybe
I'm romanticizing in the same way that book readers did when the radio came
along and radio listeners did when TV came along - but I'd still say that
there is something more humane about the temporality and pacing of nightly
reading of a book that you don't find in a nightly TV show [NB: I just
returned to this email from my weekly dose of Criminal Minds! Go get 'em
Hotch!]).

But it seems to me that these media suck you into events that are "less
robustly imaginative" (I put that in quotes so that anyone interested can
easily find it and criticize appropriately) than what happens when you
stare out the window in a history class wondering about a pretty girl in
some historical scene. That kind of flight of fancy or imaginative play
seems to me to be very different from what you do when checking your email
or shopping for a new pair of jeans during class. There is a fundamental
difference in the entanglements that each creates and how these are caught
up with, or not, the substance of the course being taught. In line with
Martin's original note, I do feel that these new media are "seductive" -
they pull on us in ways that take us away from our own pursuits - even from
our flights of fancy. [did I mention that I'm supposed to be working on a
paper right now as I write this email?].

For a break in the action, I'm reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's story Harrison
Burgereon when Harrison's mom, after watching her son shot dead on tv,
can't recall what just happened and when she tells her husband, who had
seen Harrison's picture but then immediately forgot it because of the
transmitter in his ear that makes it impossible for him to maintain his own
train of thought. When her husband comes back from getting a beer, he hears
a loud noise too that disrupts his query about why she was crying. They
both note "boy that one was a doozy."

What was I saying again?

Ok, just looked back at what I'd written, think I've got it. Thank heavens
for the written word...
So anyway, maybe I'm a luddite, but it seems that there is value of quiet
contemplation and reflection. When teaching my General Semantics course
last year, during one class I had students sit quietly for just a single
minute while we all tried to grasp the world in its immediacy (an
impossible task to be sure, but a useful practice to engage in
nonetheless). I can't tell you how disquieting that single minute of
solitude was for many of them!

Frankly, I'm fine with the argument that we need to do away with higher ed
as we know it, but as long as we are only together for 3 hours a week, it
seems to me that it would be nice to spend that time entangled with one
another, at least entangled in one another's virtual spaces - and I should
add that this places a major burden on the teacher to provide sufficient
entanglements (and is increasingly impossible as class sizes increase -
more than 20 or so students and it's a lost cause).

Moving from Vonnegut to Orwell, don't they have computer tracking programs
that you could use to track what your students are doing during class?

But seriously, Michael, it might be interesting (with their permission -
and if anonymity could be maintained), to see exactly what flights of fancy
they are taking during class. I think we'd certainly be surprised by some
who are googling terms raised in class and making notes and such.

And also seriously, I know that there are far too many holes in this dyke
to hold back the flood so if anybody knows of any good programs that can be
used on a PC to integrate twitter and such in the classroom, I'm all ears
(the programs Martin suggested were Mac based).

Looking backwards in front of my class,
greg

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> OK, Michael, but what's the punchline to your story? With Facebook,
> twitter and texting, did they pay any attention at all to what you were
> trying to teach them?
>
> (Actually, I didn't finish reading your message. I went for a snack...)
>
> Martin
>
> On Mar 14, 2012, at 9:33 PM, Michael Glassman wrote:
>
> > Hi Larry, Martin, Adam,
> >
> > Thanks for the great post Adam.  A couple of years ago under the
> tutelate of a graduate student I had all students in my class bring the
> laptop and keep it open.  I told them they don't have to be listening to
> everything I say, they could be on Facebook or they can text or twitter.
> They didn't have to hide it from me.   My students were shocked.   No, no,
> this can't be happening.  Every other class is a battle against this new
> technology.  I told them a story about when I was in college lo these many
> years ago.   I took a class in Russian literature with someone who was
> considered one of the great professors on the subject in the country - not
> just as a scholar but as a teacher.  And he was amazing, and passionate,
> and caring, and one of the two or three best professors I ever had.  I
> would go to class and dutifully open up my notebook and focus my attention
> on the professor.   My eyes never wavered but my mind certainly did.   A
> little while into the class I would start thinking, "Hmmm, what's for
> lunch" and then, "I wonder what I should do tonight".  Oh I would get
> pulled back to the class again and again, I remember him waving his arm and
> shouting,   "And think of the scene of Napoleon riding into Moscow and his
> men cheering and the subtle irony in the scene and what lies ahead."  I saw
> in my mind the soldiers gathering around their beloved emperor, but among
> them was this woman Lori who I wondered if I should ask to eat with me at
> the dining hall that night.   That is the way our mind works, jumping from
> point to point, and there is a method to the madness of our minds, the
> jumps are meaningful and perhaps keep us in the game.   The idea that
> anybody is paying attention to anybody one hundred percent of the time is
> pretense and the idea that even the most vibrant speaker has control over
> another's thoughts is an illusion that gives the speaker warmth.   The
> Facebook, the texting, the cell phones, all of it, just outward
> manifestations of what our minds have been doing all along anyway.  Come
> one, be honest, how many reading this were thinking for a little while
> about their next snack or perhaps checking Netflix.  Technology has finally
> caught up to our minds.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Larry Purss
> > Sent: Wed 3/14/2012 10:09 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] adult affordances
> >
> >
> >
> > Martin
> >
> > Reading your post, I was thinking about Harre's explaining
>  Wittgenstein's
> > notion of rule following and language games.
> > Harre gives the example, When I say *6 times 6* persons participating in
> > our *way of life* will respond [immediately? automatically?
> intentionally?
> > with self-control?]  with the answer *36*
> > If cell phones as a form of technology are now part of a *way of life*
> for
> > many students [part of our grammar] who is in control?
> >
> > Larry
> > On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> An odd conjunction of issues of content and management  in my
> >> undergraduate developmental psychology course has me puzzled, and so I'm
> >> appealing for xmca help!  A few weeks ago I was expounding on the notion
> >> that the toddler lives in a world not of permanent objects but of
> >> affordances - irresistible offers to action, made by the things and
> people
> >> and places that surround him or her. Gibson, filtered through Vygotsky.
> >>
> >> At the same time, I was waging an unceasing war against the use of cell
> >> phones in the classroom. (Today I actually got to the point of
> confiscating
> >> them when I saw them, and telling the students they could buy them back
> >> from me later in the city center. With humor, I hope!)
> >>
> >> Finally, it struck me. These young adults, too, are victims of
> >> irresistible offers to action, made by their little iPhones or Nokias or
> >> whatever.
> >>
> >> So what is it about a cell phone that completely overwhelms any and
> every
> >> facet of self control? Why is it that I can forbid cell use at the
> start of
> >> each class, yet in seconds they start to appear? What is it that
> transforms
> >> a young adult into no more than a toddler?
> >>
> >> Martin
> >>
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-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
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