Bill Wolff’s Composing Spaces

My old friend who is an art teacher in the town where I grew up (and I blogged about here) is having her students design advertisements based on the iPod theme. Students come up with their own poses to communicate a certain meaning. My favorite is by joseph318:

I am constantly amazed by the work her students are doing–especially when I think back to what I created in that same classroom space: papier-mâché everything—a memory my sister also shares. Their understanding of technique, theory, and form suggest that there is something significant going on in their minds and in her classroom. When I first saw the pieces I immediately thought of Janet Emig’s The Composing Process of 12th Graders, wondering if there is a composing process that can be identified for K-6 art students.

I have been meaning to post this reminder that the One Laptop Per Child Give One, Get One campaign is currently under way. Between Nov 12 and Nov 26 you can purchase 2 of the way cool, eco-friendly, hand-powered, solar-powered, outlet-powered OLPC laptop for $399 (plus shipping) and one will be donated to a child in a developing country. Your tax-deductible donation comes with one year of free T-Mobile hotspot access.

The laptop runs on the Linux operating system which means that user-driven development will be creative, practical, fun, and on-going. You can see the applications (called Activities) that come standard as well as others that have been and are being developed.

This review of the OLPC laptop is quite good.

I can’t wait for mine to arrive.

Chris Anson of North Carolina State University forwarded a link on the WPA list to a pointed and hilarious letter from Pat Conroy to the editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette in which he lambastes the Kanawha County school board’s suspension of his books, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. The letter begins with:

I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music.” I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.

And ends with:

The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You’ve now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book banners are invariably idiots, they don’t know how the world works — but writers and English teachers do.

Update, 9:18pm: Video from Zack Harold who is one of three finalists in West Virginia for MTV’s Choose or Lose ‘08 election coverage. He submitted this as port of the interview process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpq1yZOrtYA

Update 10/24: An uncut, extended version has been leaked:

Just came across this: The Blogging Scholarship. Funded by College Scholarships, this is an annual award that provides college student bloggers up to “$10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs.” Full or part-time students eligible. The 2007 deadline has just passed (see the 20 finalists, which have blogs on a range of subjects), but prepare for the 2008 competition by blogging your fingers off.

Hat tip: Mark Ghosh at weblog tools collection

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Michael Wesch, creator of The Machine is Us/ing Us, has collaborated with 200 students in his Cultural Anthropology class to create a new video, A Vision of Students Today:

The video, set in a 60s- or 70s-era stadium-seating lecture hall, presents the technological and educational habits of the 200 or so students in his class. It highlights the fact that contemporary students are multitaskers, that they have disparate interests, that there is not enough time in the day, and that they learn by active engagement. They use Facebook, read barely 50% of the assigned readings, and some never crack a book. The vast majority don’t believe their teachers know their names. There is an interesting (though I’m not sure successful) causality argument taking place about the spaces of education, the amount of time students spend with their education, and the amount of time students spend using technology.

Also significant is the media used to present the message. Several writing spaces are employed: walls, chairs, notebook paper, Google Docs word processor, and a chalkboard (the latter of which is overlaid by a quotation heralding its invention, though the remaining footage seems to mock the space itself).

As an exercise for students, I can see the value of such an assignment: use multiple media to create a message about your experiences a student and individual in contemporary society. And I support the overarching theme: that the spaces in which learning occur in most university classrooms inhibit the kind of pedagogy that is effective with Student 2.0. It is an argument I make often. Yet, for some reason the video leaves me unsettled. Perhaps it is the passivity of the students’ messages. Perhaps it is the retread of some of the material from The Machine is Us/ing Us. Or, perhaps it is because there are no solutions offered. We know the complaints. What, students, are some of the solutions? Hopefully, we’ll see such a video from these talented students in the future.

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