Faculty Academy 2008

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Tim Berners-Lee's TED Talk about Linked Data went up yesterday. Always a delight to hear him. The big message, at least for me, is:

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I have debated for quite some time now how I was going to approach this blog entry, because I truly am trying to have an open mind and want people to share their opinions about this controversy, but it’s REALLY hard for me to channel any empathy for the tribe of instructors described below.

In short, a few bad eggs in classes that surf their eBay bids or FaceBook page during class are causing many faculty to ponder whether they should ban laptops from classes. The University of Chicago Law School, for example, recently removed Internet access in classrooms because of concerns about students surfing the Web during class.

I happen to be taking some Instructional Technology and Educational Psychology classes, and in large part, the Instructional Technology courses are awash in technology…if someone saw something they wanted to share in class but couldn’t remember the details or name, etc., we are usually all online looking the information up. We surf to find opposing views to those offered in class, and quite often perspectives and facts that would have otherwise been left out find place in class discourse due to the instant access to the Internet.On a personal level, my laptop is a trusted note taking tool, in addition to the points made above.

A professor I had last semester had a bad experience with her undergraduates and laptops, banned them, and noticed a dramatic change in her classes. She then decided that she would do the same thing with her Educational Psychology graduate course on CMC, (a course full of 30 and 40-somethings), due to seeing someone in class doing e-mail next to her and her being distracted by the typing sound. Needless to say, I was very upset. I simply cannot keep up when trying to write by hand, and the Internet access allows me to better challenge points raised in class that need challenging. I think I understood her position, but I didn’t agree with the policy.

When I put on my teacher cap, I can understand the urge for faculty to ban everything they can’t control, including the technology of the time. We’ve all heard the stories of the ballpoint pen being banned by faculty in the late 1940’s in favor of the fountain pen and the calculator in the 1950’s in favor of the slide rule. Faculty do have legitimate authority to control the classroom environment, and to eject students from class for anything they choose, including staring at a laptop screen instead of the professor, I guess.

Of course, the first things that come to my mind go something like this: How good of a teacher can you be if your students would rather surf Facebook than pay attention to what’s going on in your class? Why aren’t you looking for ways to have your students use those laptops for legitimate classroom purposes?

We have all ostensibly made the jump from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”, but I wonder, because some faculty seem to lack the impulse control to stay away from the notion that they are the sage/gatekeeper/dispenser of the wonders of the discipline, and this urge to ban technology from classes is a glaring example of that. If you don’t merit your students’ interest, you certainly won’t get it by banning their laptops.

That brain-dump having been executed, I truly want to see how all of you feel about this, especially those who favor a ban, because I truly want to understand what I apparently don’t now.

I’m begging for your comments!

Something got in my way of writing this on February 22, 2009. It’s name was Bluehost. Now I don’t really hold a whole lot against Bluehost. I know they are trying to provide a good service, just like many other web hosting companies. No, this is not about what got in the way of that post. It wasn’t ready 11 days ago. Now it is.

Every once in a while an event reinforces what you’ve been feeling for days, weeks, months, or even years. I don’t want to be flippant with this or melodramatic, but I feel like finally someone has recognized the truth and stated it so eloquently (Jon Stewart would humbly disagree). However, it requires an effort. Approximately 21 minutes of your time. Watch this episode of The Daily Show.

Alright, I realize that you probably didn’t just watch this video just because I said so. You might watch it later. You might start to watch it and feel like you should be working instead. You might even watch and say “what’s the big deal”. Hell, you may decide not to watch it at all. Do me a favor and watch at least the first 3 minutes to see where Stewart is going with the show. Then go about your business if you want.

So why should you watch it? Here’s the background. Stewart’s guest was supposed to be Rick Santelli from CNBC. Yeah, the same Santelli I called a “horse’s ass” (twice) in my Feb. 22 post. I felt it was justified because of comments he made about “loser” mortgage holders and bailing them out. “Populist” sentiment that at least got the right-wing riled up. Anyway, Santelli cancelled the Daily Show gig, for reasons that were never made clear. Instead, Joe Nocera, a financial analyst from the New York Times, thankfully took Santelli’s place.

What we get then, is a most glorious send up of the analysis of Santelli and his other colleagues at CNBC. We begin with the comparison of Santelli to Howard Beale, the character in the movie Network who is featured in the video at the top of this post. That’s followed by the predictions of some of CNBC’s most “gifted” analysts such as Jim Kramer. Predictions, as it turns out were laughably (in a sick, pit of your stomach sort of way) wrong. Next, we see a parade of greedy corporate leaders being interviewed with kid gloves. The very people directly responsible for making some of the most disastrous financial decisions this country has ever seen. They get asked questions like, “how much fun were you having at that lavish corporate party?” Analyst after analyst, pontificator after pontificator, gets the financial picture so wrong. Contrast that with the people who Santelli and others believe are the real villains in this economic crisis. The “loser” homeowners, who have the chutzpah of wanting to get ahead, and after being told that they could afford the home, their value only going up, they were the ones who crashed the party. Yes, let’s equivocate the homeowners with the Sir Allen Stanford’s of the world. Stewart says it for us all when he says, “Fuck You!”

In the next segment of the show, Stewart offers his public service message of providing a revolutionary way of telling how well the president is doing - The stock market. Despite his public approval ratings of 60%, the analysts from Fox News say he’s doing terribly, because the stock market knows all. In the final segment, Stewart’s guest Joe Nocera is praised for his article about AIG and its, oh what’s the word? Ah got it - SCAM. AIG’s belief was it wasn’t their fault, they were just serving their customers. Stewart’s analogy of the failing financial industries as a character in a Bruce Willis movie with a bomb around their chest about to push the detonator, is about as dead on as it gets. I guess we don’t have much choice but to negotiate.

So this will now give you a clue as to why I think Rick Santelli and his ilk qualify for the term horse’s ass. Or worse. However, I remain optimistic. That is if we stop listening to the assholes. At a minimum this country has switched from one where our leaders told us what to be afraid of (apparently it wasn’t terrorism, but the economy we were supposed to fear), to one in which our leaders are telling us how we can fix things. We’ve gone from “there’s nothing wrong with the economy” to “there’s something deeply wrong, but I believe we can fix it, if we pull together.” So I’m not going to take their crap any more. I’m behind President Obama (and Jon Stewart). It would be unpatriotic to root for the president and the country to fail. Right?

Cost is the issue. No research to my knowledge documents any learning benefit according to empirical analysis–in this case, raising hands as opposed to clicking keypads in those hands.

Here’s my point:

Unless we stop underwriting any benefit, especially without the above analysis, technology–which promised to democratize academe–will continue to corporatize it, at the expense of the Humanities, I’m afraid.