I have reached the pinnacle of my career: I’ve been cited in a talk about the origins of the universe. What could be more important?
An old friend who I met in Paris back in 1994 while on my Watson Fellowship, Hugh Hill, is an associate professor of Space Science at the International Space University. Yesterday I got an email from him: “I thought that you might be amused (bemused ?) to see Slide # 9 of the attached lecture, which I delivered to our M.Sc. students in September. As a die-hard academic, you are duly acknowledged.” Slide 9 of the talk “Origin of the Solar System” is entitled “Bring Back Pluto? (The Silly Season)” and looks like this:
Here’s the portion of the slide that brings me into space immortality:
Hah!
As an aside, here is a mapping of International Space University alumni–an incredible achievement considering that it was founded in 1987:
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.
Last weekend, after reflecting on the fact that I talk about it all the time with students regardless of what class I am teaching, I decided to take the plunge and get a Facebook account. According to the fascinating Wired article, “How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web’s Hottest Platform,” I was 1 of 1 million new users in the last week, and among the fastest growing user population:
As for those concerns that Facebook’s membership had peaked? Well, now
it’s signing up nearly 1 million new users a week. By the end of August
there were 36 million of them. And these aren’t just the tweens or
college kids you might suspect; the fastest-growing segment of Facebook
users is over 35, a group that represents 11 percent of all site users.
Total registrations have more than quadrupled over the previous year.
The number of employees has tripled, as has revenue. And venture
capitalists say that if Facebook were to go public today, investors
would value it at more than $5 billion — five times what Yahoo had been
prepared to pay.
To say that I have found Facebook intoxicating would be an understatement. I am addicted.
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.
