Place-Conscious Education and Technology
First of all, Hello! I'm a new member of the HASTAC community and am already very impressed with the dialogue. My first post may or may not be a clear representation of my interests throughout the year, but it is a current interest and one that others of you may be thinking over.
Over the past six months, I've been increasingly interested in the concept of place-conscious education in the composition classroom. To paraphrase David Gruenwald and Gregory Smith in Place Based Education in the Global Age, an education conscious of place is directed by a pedagogy responding to current patterns in the academy, public schooling, the professional world, and other institutions, that are disintegrating what we've come to know as "community," the "commons," and local "environment" (xiii-xxiii). These patterns of dismantled local life are fueled by globalization and a market economy that tells coming-of-age citizens (our students!) a narrative of individualism, material superiority, and technological one upspersonship. Instead of inhabiting a place where one can support a community and the local ecosystem, our newest generations are relegating physical place to the status of "means" to achieve individual success and material wealth. As a result, the communities break apart, the environment fails, and cynicism toward community grows.
As an educator, I'm concerned with bringing place into the classroom not only as a "theme," but as a starting point for an understanding of and an engagement with our civic responsibilities to our communities. College campuses are wonderful places to begin. Many campuses foster a pride for place that municipal communities do not. Working from the student's pride in their schools, we can, as Donna M. Bickford and Nedra Reynolds argue, use campuses as sites to help students " “analyze the politics of space, the effects of the built environment, the complexities of being the insider or the outsider, or the functions of surveillance and control in public or semipublic spaces” ("Reframing Volunteerism" 241). Campuses have too long been seen as unproblematic spaces from which to observe outside social problems. Injustice, institutional racism, environmental degradation, and corporate influence are problems evident on most campuses. Projects can be brought into the classroom that ask students to interrogate the realities of their places and to address those problems (However, I do worry that we need to be careful not to fall too deep into the service-learning mindset where social Band-Aids trump understanding the root causes for social problems).
So here are my questions: As teachers that promote technology and information literacy, how can we use technology to support an ethic of place-preservation? Typically, web-based technologies focus outward toward a global audience with a goal of mass-connectedness. What kinds of shared community projects or "charrettes" are possible through social media and other web interactions?
Sources:
Bickford, Donna M., and Nedra Reynolds. “Activism and Service Learning: Reframing Volunteerism as Acts of Dissent.” Pedagogy 2.2 (2002): 229-52. Print.
Gruenwald, David A. and Gregory Smith, Eds. Place Based Education in the Global Age. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2009. Print.
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Virtual and Physical Spaces
Cyberspace has made the idea of locations and addresses a much more fluid thing. Campuses and communities include websites as well as physical locations. One thing I love about food studies is that it takes for its subject something that has an immediate connection with the physical world. Food, being a substance that allows us to continue our biological existence, offers a special interaction between the human and nature. With regard to students and educators, a local farm like the one found at the Yale Sustainable Food Project is a great example how agriculture and the culinary arts can be used to provide students with a sense of connection to their physical campus and community. I think their student blog provides a good example of how information technologies can be incorporated into a campus-based project.
Could it be possible that when we talk about technology and information we are talking, in large part, about the internet and devices that can communicate via the internet? Wired magazine has a good article that describes the difference between the web, the internet, and the dominant role apps will play as our relationship with the internet develops. The question of how we use technology in the classroom seems to be the question of how we use the internet as a method of interaction with the content of this or that course. What interface(s) do we use?
One idea is for professors to develop mobile phone apps specifically for their courses, sort of like a Blackboard or Web CT, but designed for Prof. Soandso's English 101 course and available for iPads/etc on iTunes. A twitter feed for a specific class could also be a valuable resource. Anything that puts the interface through which the student can interact with the course material, and discussion modules, in the palm of their hands seems like a plus to me. Imagine having a video of your last lecture sitting in your pocket when you need it, or being able to compare classnotes with other students on a mobile interface. Thinking of these things, I'm sure some prof somewhere has probably already designed an app specifically for their course (?).
On a final note, as a graduate student, all of my best classes were amazing because of the breadth of knowledge the professor exhibited and their passion for the material. Lectures, with white boards and the occasional projector/video, have resulted in plenty of inspired learning experiences in the classroom for me. A person excited about sharing knowledge, could this be the most important technology employed in a learning environment? Does this go without say?
Layering place-based education with augmented reality?
I think it does go without saying that an impassioned and knowledgeable instructor is the bedrock of an effective learning environment. And, I'll be the first one to argue against technology for technology's sake.
Your comment and link (thank you) on apps makes me see the possibility for layered "place experiences" through augmented reality applications. An institution could create virtual walking tours (maybe this already happens) that physically position people in the place while layering the experience with historical, material, and biological information to help students or faculty understand the place in multi-dimensional terms. I wonder about the extent to which screen-based information layered with physical observations would hold more credibility and create an emotive appeal to get students intimately involved with their local places. Until something like this would be available or more students and instructors have affordable access to mobile technologies, I'm hoping to use Google Maps or Bing Maps in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, the experiential component is limited to a fixed geographical position.
Hypercities comes to mind. I
Hypercities comes to mind. I haven't tinkered with it much, but it might be a good model to steal from in terms of a multi-layered approach to interactions with geographical locations. Google/Bing Maps should be useful too.