EdTechTrek

(Continuing on with by book club of 1…)

Today, I read a new post by Will Richardson on the topic of Twitter and it resounded so strongly with me (you can read my comments there) because I had just finished reading this fifth chapter of Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and found incredible parallels between the influence of the telegraph, photograph, and television to the newer forms of information technology in this last decade . Will is wrestling with the impact of Twitter on his world, and how folks are restricted to communicating in 140 characters or less and others following up to 600 or more tweeters out there. Wow - have we ever changed from information moving as fast as physical people could carry it to seconds after the “post” or “publish” command has been invoked. Postman introduces the idea that this has produced “context free” information which holds merit simply because it is novel, interesting, our curious, “elevating irrelevance to the status of news”. I don’t think I am alone in being annoyed with the state of news in the US these days. In the morning I get 5 minutes or less of shallow news bytes and then 55 more minutes of the best macaroni and cheese recipes, 5 tips to firmer thighs, and where in the world is Matt Lauer. There is now such an glut of irrelevant information out there that instead of finding productive ways of taking action locally in our own communities, we struggle to stay afloat in the endless sea of information that seems important, but so disconnected that in the end we can’t find ways to take action on any of it. The idea of neighborhood has been replaced with “global neighborhood” - one that Postman defines as “… a neighborhood of strangers and pointless quantity; a world of fragments and discontinuities.”

Although Postman’s thinking evolves into a criticism of the television world, I find meaningful connections to newer worlds as well. To quote Postman once again,

“Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation… Knowing the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, backgrounds, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing lots of things, not knowing about them.”

As a teacher, I am compelled to help my students make sense out of both the information at their fingertips as well as the impact that the information medium has on his or her understanding and view of the world. I am challenged in new ways to help my students use new information tools in powerful and meaningful ways that do not sacrifice depth and complexity for breadth and glitz. How are we making sense of our world with the presence of such tools and glut of information? Are we struggling just to RSS the headlines and keep up the Jonses… I mean the Twitters? Do we need to be up on every RSSd headline or blog post? Or, are we tackling meaningful projects that positively impact our own communities based on meaningful and powerful uses of information. Are we contributing at all, or have we become so consumed with feeding on information that we have forgotten about our real neighbors and communities? Do we now live so much in Facebook or MySpace that the idea of community service is almost crazy? I mean, I have followers… I have an obligation here to satisfy them and their desire to know what I am doing every moment of the day. (sorry… this is getting a tad sarcastic)

Wow… this is making me think about a great deal. I have no answers at this point as I struggle with all of this. But, I am struggling, reading, and reflecting…, and that is good. What do you think about all of this?

Wow… after being away for 2 weeks, and I mean 2 weeks away from any sort of Internet connection at all, I really feel behind in the world, in my social network, in my writing, email… This is the first time in a long time that I have been disconnected for so long. And, since I have become more connected on-line, this 2-week separation seemed quite hard. It now seems like quite a daunting task to catch up on all of the blogs that I enjoy following. Thanks to my RSS aggregator, NetNewsWire, this task makes it much easier. I can download all of the entries of all the blogs that I follow at once and quickly skim through entry titles and short descriptions. When something of interest catches my eye, I can read the detailed post and even visit the actual blog site from within NetNewsWire. And, all of this can be done off-line once the RSS feeds have updated. So, here’s to the power of aggregators! I still have entries to skim and perhaps read in full, but it is much less daunting this way.

Just one thing before I close this entry. It is unrelated, but I was interested in the idea of how employers are increasing their presence within social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace for the purposes of recruiting. This was one of the stories on the national news this morning. They mentioned that this new age of social networking is becoming very powerful for both employers seeking employees and individuals seeking to be employed. I went to Facebook and indeed, there are many social networks focused on employment. It makes me think that I may need to change my profile and page content to better reflect the professional rather than the personal side of my life. I have little there and certainly nothing that would put a potential job in jeopardy, but it certainly is not geared toward employability! Perhaps I need two distinctly separate profiles/accounts.

Anyway, Happy New Year. It will certainly be an exciting one, I think.