Michael Wesch, who created the virally popular internet video called Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us (its success drew on a sort of meta-application of the very concepts it discussed), was the keynote speaker at IDEA 2007 last week. As part of his keynote, he previewed two videos he has now released to the web.
The first, Information R/evolution, examines the challenges we all face in this age of information glut and shortening attention spans:
The second, made collaboratively by one of his classes (Wesch is a professor of anthropology at Kansas State University, where he is launching a Digital Ethnography working group to “examine the impacts of digital technology on human interaction”), looks carefully at how we are teaching today and how out of sync it has become with the lives of contemporary students:
In some ways, for me, the highlight of the conference was Wesch’s story about how he frightened himself one night in the communal sleeping quarters in New Guineau when he thought his own arm, which had fallen asleep, was a snake lying across his body. This story became the kernel of Wesch’s reputation with the people he was studying and living among, and helped him realize that telling stories is a big part of how we gain identities and fit ourselves (and others) into society.
Ambient info edu revolution
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4 responses to “Ambient info edu revolution”
The best teaching is Socratic, with the teacher questioning the student and the goal being for the student to discover how he or she thinks. How can the Internet serve the Socratic method? It can’t. These videos you posted disturbed me for some reason. I had trouble catching what they want to say because I was caught up in observing the production — the clever use of quick cuts and moving cameras. I was an observer. In other words, I was back in the last row of the 19th Century classroom watching it all, starving for something to touch me. We need to get past the utopianism of the Internet and try to see it for what it is.
I met Wesch earlier this year at the Web 2.0 expo and was blown away by the guy. Thanks for posting these videos.
Very touching movies, especially the second. But “Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us” is still unequaled. Thanks for sharing, anyway!
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