- Jan 2016
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www.washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com
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Ferguson protesters, who faced down tanks, tear gas and assorted forms of military-grade hardware, tasted what many activists suffered throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As these examples show, the fight to end the criminalization of black protest, and of black people more broadly, lies at the heart of African American freedom struggles then and now.
I'm reminded of what President Obama said recently in an interview with NPR. Essentially, the racism we see so explicitly on social media as part of #blacklivesmatter is not new. Only smartphones and the ability of the oppressed to leverage media channels is new. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNop1dom1m8
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King observed in the “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”:
In recent years there has been a growing critique of the US media for publishing mugshots of victims when black citizens are shot by police. In these instances, critics point out that the officers under investigation for misconduct are pictured in dress uniforms with American flags behind them while The innocent citizens are shown as criminals. Looking at King in a mugshot now, I know history will remember him as a formally dressed minister but I see the importance of his decision to dress as a common man and subject himself to arrest and jailing. Seeing him photographed this way might slow the judgements we make about the people our popular media frames in mugshots. -
In the last speech of his life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WZbxYGy3As
A powerful excerpt from the last speech of his life.
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“A state trooper pointed the gun, but he did not act alone,” King said. “He was murdered by the brutality of every sheriff who practices lawlessness in the name of law. He was murdered by the irresponsibility of every politician, from governors on down, who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism.”
A quick search on Jimmie Lee Jackson taught me that King revised the eulogy he used for the four girls who died in the bombing of the 16th St Baptist Church in order to speak about Jackson's killing. Obviously a big difference resulting from that revision would be lines like the ones quoted here that denounce the police and the political system. Back to sanitizing, we're more comfortable as a culture in denouncing racist terrorism like the bombing of the church but we struggle to see systemic racism in our government agencies.
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While a sanitized image of King as a Southern civil rights crusader has been enshrined in popular memory, his dream of ending American militarism has proved more difficult to accept.
To what degree have we sanitized King to make his image palatable to white America? One way we have, in my mind, is by canonizing his "I Have a Dream" speech with its positive vision while focusing less on the critiques of the white church he levels in "Letter From a Birmingham Jail."
Maybe these myths serve to support this sanitized view, which works in service of "the politics of personal exoneration" that Coates writes about in Between the World and Me.
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King’s speech to Memphis sanitation workers a month before his 1968 assassination, on the economic disparities between blacks and whites, is a better measure of his mature thought. His words could have been written in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis: “When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the black community, they call it a social problem. When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the white community, they call it a depression.”
The Huffington Post published a good article in 2014 about why King was in Memphis in the first place. That text paints a clearer, more specific context by describing the mistreatment of black sanitation workers.
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dogtrax.edublogs.org dogtrax.edublogs.org
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Ian talked about having students in his college courses annotate the syllabus with suggestions and comments. Joe talked about the power of the crowd, coming together on a single document (apparently, that is going on tonight with the State of the Union speech) as an example of social networking. Jeremy (of Hypothesis) talked about (or wrote about) how teachers can keep track of student work, and the article references how this might fold into student learning portfolios. Terry noticed Karen working all through the hour, and talked about how one might video-capture with reflection the act of annotation as a way to show your learning and thinking. Remi noted how this kind of active annotation might have more value than Twitter chats and other social gathering activities, where too much affirmation and cordiality might soften some deeper learning and sharing of insights.
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signal
Thanks, you guys, for marking up the margins of the page.
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hung out in a Google Hangou
Those conversations about text can reside in the margins, too. Although I have to admit I can't seem to get a YouTube video to embed in an annotation even though I've seen annotations with vids embedded. Do you know what I might be doing wrong?
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We did not have a solid answer, except to note that teaching the art of curation is getting relatively short-thrift in a lot of our classrooms. Ian noted that by not teaching curating, we are missing an opportunity and important skills in the information-rich Digital Age.
I wonder if the mess naturally precedes the beautiful curation effort. In a museum like the one pictured below, you can imagine the back rooms cluttered with treasures and artwork that needs sifting and organizing by someone with any eye toward presentation. Does the mess stimulate the meaningful curation?
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animated GIFs
The margins can really come to life when .gif files appear.
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But the act of annotating an online article together, as a crowd, is always an interesting experience. There are a lot of tools out there to do this, from the comment feature in Google Docs to Genius to Diigo and more. Hypothesis is a nice tool, clean to view, and if the tool is activated, when you come to a page that someone else has annotated, it allows you to view and comment and add to other people’s annotations.
I think it is important how you note that there are a number of tools with which to engage in social annotation and the social experience is something unique. Really, there are two reviews people might do: a tool review and a reflection on the experience.
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chronicle.com chronicle.com
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A portfolio should incorporate some principle of selection. (“Curation,” if we really have to have a no-longer-trendy buzzword.) There should be some metacognitive element, wherein the learner is able to reflect on all their experiences–academic, co-curricular, undergraduate research, athletics, work-related–and demonstrate their accomplishments in a meaningful way.
A key point. When I think about a portfolio, I like the real world analogy of a photographer or architect who has a messy studio from which they pull pieces for real world audiences and would-be employers. They emerge from the studio with a polished, clean, audience-specific presentation. With curation so easily done online, wouldn't we want the metacognitive aspect and the awareness of audience?
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As Quantified Students declare majors and continue to accrue skills, four years of academic work will find a permanent home in the cloud rather than in the trash.
Here, too, the idea that a portfolio is build for and stays with the student is a palatable one. Again, I struggle with the idea of quantifying something that can really give a more complete narrative about someone's learning, passions and successes.
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Quantified Students will be able to map current skillsets against the requirements of target careers, evaluate the gap, and then select the educational program or path that gets them to their destination quickly and cost effectively.
It seems like this "Fitbit of higher ed" is not such a repulsive notion, if we accept that a student might have personal goals and want to track progress toward them. The "quantified student" on the other hand flies in the face of what I think workforce wants and the world needs- the truly "qualified" student.
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impedagogy.com impedagogy.com
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If so, why are American citizens paying so much of that bill? Why ain’t anyone else helping foot the bill? I suppose the answer is that we all are paying and that because Americans benefit the most they should pay the most. It is interesting that while I jack up my barn, I am connected intimately to the fate of the Chinese economy. No one is an isolated jack handler unto himself.
What a turn. I expected one thing when I saw the picture of the farm jack and got another. I was unprepared for this ending but I also appreciate the stream of consciousness reflection as an engaging public brain-dump.
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And here is some fun I had with a quote from the book and my new best app friend Legend.
The stacked .gif files is a wild effect that I may have only seen in #ds106 until now. I really think it is a great visual device.
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I teach with two important principles in mind. One is iconoclasty and the other is improvisation. This book is full of lots of improv principles and applications that might really messify your classroom/office for the better. Here are a few of those principles boiled down in this marvelous list from the end of the book
Now I think this might be about lists and the usefulness of them, somehow. In that case, roll with your podcast list idea, my friend, and scratch my unsolicited advice. I'm interested in your thoughts about this book because it is the second time in a few weeks I've heard someone mention it.
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Decide which podcasts give the best ROI and why I think so. Describe how I derive better signal over noise as I listen more intentionally over the next year. Get Bryan (and other podcast afficionadi) to articulate how they decide what to listen to.
I wonder about drilling into one or three, really shortening the list since his is extensive but overwhelming to you. It might be more "signal oriented" for others if you describe why one podcast is a favorite and even touch on episode specifics. Just a thought.
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Looks like I will be “reading” Bryan Alexander’s blog post, “Fine podcasts for 2016: a mega-list of what I’m listening to“, for quite awhile. Or should I say I will be living his listening life. I am a huge podcast fan as well, but I have a problem–how do I unpack this? How do make signal here out of what I consider to be an overwhelming mass of beautiful noise?
I've been listening to the Note to Self podcast about technology Note to Self podcast and thinking how they would make great media texts to study with high school students or to launch personal learning inquiries with teachers. I wonder what kind of unpacking you envision?
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onewheeljoe.blogspot.com onewheeljoe.blogspot.com
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In that way, even in this state of sense-making I can model for others how I'm seeking to identify the potential of what we're doing in the margins when we gather as a mob to annotate together.
I propose some prototypes for this kind of scholarly/active research work.
- Pick a short text/poem/digital object.
- Create a solo Hangout on Air.
- screencast the text chosen at highest possible resolution.
- annotate with hypothes.is while the the Hangout is running.
- When finished, upload to YouTube.
- Create a YouTube playlist with all participants represented.
- Use Vialogues or NowComment to comment on other's videos or to analyze or otherwise annotate and observer and name and notice.
Of course one could also do this with a screencasting tool like Screencast-o-matic or Camtasia. I am sure there is better workflow than this, but maybe this "small pieces loosely joined" philosophy works best. It doesn't matter how you get it to the cloud, just get it there and share. I know I will be doing this in my online intro to lit course this semester. Gotta.
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I think there is something to learn by engaging in text-centered discourse and then looking back at the digital footprint that results.
Yes! This is the next step that these technologies enable. And who knows what will happen once we step through that door and see four more doors in front of us. Just hope it's not a tyger behind one or all of them.
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One important possibility I see for collaborative annotation is the opportunity to structure learning conversations about texts that produce transcripts of written discourse that we can see, study and learn from.
Take it a little further from the other night--Google Hangout on Air + Screenshare +Hypothes.is = a new way of collaborative learning. And a new way to learn about our learning, metacognition on the hypothes.is half shell.
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Skimming through these familiar texts I thought about the potential for social annotation.
Great. My thoughts, too. How do we make these affordances dance, how do we make them mean more and give us a stronger signal on how people and ideas work.
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my aforementioned brother
ah, the subtext here could fill volumes...well,
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Not pictured above are the giant, expensive sticky notes I used to annotate Blau's book at the end of each chapter. They're big and pink and covered with my excited ideas
Does it seem like annotation tools are just pouring old wine into new bottles? They afford so much more. What they represent are useful palimpsests, bridges between people carried by 'text' like a StarTrek transporter.
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the promise of having educator readers mark up text together
Yet another way to look at writing and reading as indistinguishable conversations. This would be a profound author talk tool.
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favorite, "annotation discussion thread"
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My favorite annotation from the flash mob
Just love the rhetorical strategy here--give a fav. I love the phrase "for example". As a reader I am being mapped down a wide blue highway when I hear it or its many cognates.
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annotation mobsters.
Love the moniker. Now where's my gat. Gotta have a gat to be a mobster. Or at least a pen.
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With those as yet undiscovered possibilities in mind, some colleagues and I convened online for an experimental "annotation flash mob."
Consider all the adjacent possible doors that had to open for us to even consider taking this small step toward collaborative annotation. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
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The Internet, with its interactive opportunities and Web 2.0 applications, suggest a more social approach, and present an opportunity for teachers and students alike to consider the possibilities for annotating together
But now...annotation can be social. The Webs are alive with marginalia.
In pairs, in web-powered groups, and yes oh yes in crowds
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Still, though we shared our annotations in discussion, the act of annotating was an independent act that we did alone,
Historically, even very recent history, annotation is a solitary act. Or at best it's an imagined conversation with the author, usually one-sided.
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In teaching I learned the authentic value of talking back to a text with annotations.
Talk back to the text--annotate
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