In-Between Two Worlds: From Print to Digital

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

This is a version of the presentation I made at the January 22, 2012  “One Book, One State” event which was sponsored by the Rhode Island’s Center for the Book. More than 200 people gathered in a historic church just outside of Providence to hear Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Caleb’s Crossing, a work of historical fiction that brings readers into the life of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University — in the year 1665.

I’ve been reading a lot more on my iPad these days. Reading online has some tiny frustrations: I miss the cover art and pagination of a printed book. But there are some deep pleasures. For example, I love the ability to highlight a digital text and then share my highlights with other readers. I love the “swish” movement of turning digital pages, I admit. Highlighting a moving, lyrical passage (and discovering that hundreds of others have identified it too) makes me feel connected to a community of readers.

From a scholarly point of view, however, we don’t know much about online reading. We know it can be different in many ways from reading from a printed page. This topic inspires my great curiosity, which is one of the many reasons why I’ve picked up my life and my family to come to the University of Rhode Island to serve as the Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media. I am relishing the opportunity to work with distinguished scholars and practitioners to create a new kind of communication school, developing innovative interdisciplinary programs that enable us to figure out how to help people acquire the new competencies required for full participation in contemporary life.

As I read Caleb’s Crossing on my iPad, I couldn’t help but have a highly personal response to this remarkable coming-of-age novel which offers readers a close-up exploration of the state of in-betweeness. It’s a major theme of the novel. We feel this state of mind as we see the young Native American boy, Caleb, encounter the strange world of the English settlers, and through the novel’s narrator, Bethia, the minister’s daughter, who gains insight on the intense beauty of the natural and spiritual world through her interactions with the Wampanoag natives of Martha’s Vineyard in the 1600s.

The state of in-betweeness is personally relevant to me. I’ve been living with it for many months, as I have anticipated the move from my beloved urban lifestyle in Philadelphia to a new life in Rhode Island, where the waves and the natural world are close at hand.  Reading the book helped me see with precision the exquisiteness of the state of being in-between. As Geraldine Brooks has captured it, it represents a place of possibility for both Caleb and Bethia as their encounters with the “other” create opportunities for deepening their personal and social identity.

Having a personal response to literature like this is certainly among the most profound joys of my life. It happens when people can not only decode and comprehend the little black squiggles, but when they feel deeply engaged in the reading process. Having a personal response to literature demands a confident stance toward reading. I’m lucky to be an empowered reader.

But I’m aware of the fact that many people never get to experience this pleasure. There are far too many reluctant readers in our society today. Too many people grow up today seeing reading as merely a chore, another set of hoops they must jump through on the way to graduation. Lots of people – and perhaps some here today – feel the urge to blame the iPad, the videogame, and the TV for this situation. But there’s no point to that.

Today, it’s more important than ever to stop the either-or thinking that pits print media in opposition to  digital media. In fact, the world of mass media, popular culture and digital media can help engage readers and promote intellectual curiosity. One example of this is work of filmmaker Anne Makepeace, whose film, We Still Live Here, offers insight on the experience of contemporary Wampanoag people who reconnect to their cultural heritage by reviving their native language. Digital media is not the enemy of print reading. Educators, librarians and authors — and ultimately all citizens– must recognize and exploit the many synergies that exist among the various types of new literacies that are emerging today.

In many respects, we are –all of us– living at a time of historic in-betweeness, as the world has shifted from a print-centered cultural environment to an increasing digital world. We may mourn the impending loss of wandering the stacks, cracking open the cover of a new book, feeling the weight of it in the hand. Yet we find ourselves surprised and pleased by the thrill of using new tools and technologies for the transformative practices of reading and writing. Living with iPads, e-books and digital media, I’m intensely aware of how many people are out there for me to discover and learn from. Like Caleb and Bethia, I relish the sense of possibility of self-discovery that results from being in-between the print and digital worlds.

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Trust, Mistrust and Advertising

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

I’ve been exploring the practice of media literacy education in early childhood settings. One important concept that I like to introduce to preschoolers is the idea that media messages are constructions– they’re made by people who make choices.

Of course, all acts of communication involve a set of choices. The decision to lie or tell the truth is a choice that’s highly relevant to young children, and researchers are helping us see the developmental trajectory of this particular competence as a social skill.

Maggie Severns of the New America Foundation writes:

Children naturally seek out information, but young children lack the ability to decide who and what are trustworthy sources. Learning when to trust and distrust other people is an essential early skill, as that information enables children to begin the lifelong process of filtering and applying things they learn to their understanding of the world.

She describes research from the September/October issue of Child Development where psychologists at the University of California, San Diego, found that children begin to learn about distrust around age three, but cannot apply that sense of distrust until around age five.

Media literacy educators frequently explore the genre of advertising with young children because it’s ubiquitous in their lives and provides an opportunity for them to recognize characteristics of persuasive messages. In fact, some children under age seven can make inferences about the author’s motive and purpose, when the genre is familiar to them.

Parents and teachers may approach this issue differently, depending on their existing attitudes about advertising. Some parents and educators may conceptualize advertisers as the “tricksters” while others will not see it very useful to frame advertising as essentially a form of lying. Both groups generally agree, however, that children need to recognize that information and emotional responses are shaped by the choices made by advertisers aiming to persuade.

But as the developmentalists note, it’s one thing to be able to recognize and identify an trustworthy and an untrustworthy source. It’s another thing entirely to be able to disregard untrustworthy sources. That’s not easy.

In fact, we could argue that this phenomenon persists into well into adulthood, as voters may recognize the false and misleading political campaign advertising (given that it’s normative to the political process), but still be influenced by it in making their choice at the ballot box.

For most people, it’s actually pretty difficult to disregard untrustworthy information. One of the reasons why media literacy has such useful potential as a community education movement is that awareness of the process of identifying trustworthy and untrustworthy sources and using information appropriately based on source credibility are competencies that apply across a wide range of stakeholders and contexts across the lifespan.

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End of Semester Blue-Joy

Posted on December 18, 2011 by

Yes, grading papers is a slog, but it’s a precious moment when you stumble across an undergrad expressing the reverberations of the wide-open mind, as “ridiculous amounts of ideas are bouncing around” inside the brain at the end of the semester. And in capturing the joy of teaching by describing “the pure beauty of the process of student-based inquiry learning,” this young writer explains how experiential learning is transformative:

I find myself constantly questioning, learning about what can be done in the ways of approaching difficult situations, in areas including education, culture, class and race, amongst many others. I would not trade my experiences at this program for anything, as I feel it has opened my eyes, which is not to say they haven’t been open the whole time, but it is almost like getting a new prescription. My vision is still not completely clear, but through the experiences and knowledge gained, I have created a hunger inside myself, which yearns to be more introspective – to look at everything from every angle I can possibly think of.

Sentimental me: No joy compares to the joy of teaching and learning. No more glorious present could be received than this. Seriously. Exhausted me: Give him an A.

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MacArthur Foundation v New York Times

Posted on November 26, 2011 by

I’ve been surreptitiously enjoying the ongoing “spat” of sorts between the MacArthur Foundation and Matt Richtel and other New York Times writers and contributors. It’s been a feisty and useful debate that demonstrates the still-robust nature of the very productive tension between empowerment and protectionist impulses on the American media education scene.

Why is it this fall season I see so many real benefits associated with picking a fight? (Hmm..perhaps this is a topic for me and my therapist!) In my view, the empowerment-protectionist tension captures exactly the genuine paradoxes at work in the lives of many teachers and parents today. Who doesn’t have a significant “love-hate” relationship with digital media, mass media and popular culture?

After nearly $80 million of MacArthur hoopla has been spent on demonstrating the wonders of digital media and learning, the NYT writer Matt Richtel has been exploring some of the omissions, paradoxes and contradictions in the enterprise,  nearly always featuring some of the MacArthur scholars in response to various and sundry critiques. For example, I especially enjoyed the October 23rd story on the children of Google executives who attend a Waldorf school where technology is not used.  When Richtel then wrote about the amplification of teenage identities and the resulting potential negative impact on human attention, intellectual curiosity and emotional responsiveness, the folks at MacArthur’s Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning hammered out a critique.

Dismissing or Trivializing Educator Concerns

There are some annoying characteristics about how this generally healthy debate gets played out in the blogosphere, however. I’m especially frustrated by a certain dismissive attitude about educators’ questions about or resistance towards the use of digital technology in education. Teachers who resist e-books are sometimes treated like pariahs, for example. Several times, there’s the insinuation that older teachers simply have to die out, like the dinosaurs. Perhaps I’m just too sensitive, but it doesn’t feel quite right to make teachers feel guilty or ashamed of their anxieties or their lack of interest in using technology. In my view, teachers’ attitudes about media and technology are a highly significant place of inquiry – a place of conversation and dialogue, not a “problem” to be “solved.”

The healthy tension between the NYT and the MacArthur Foundation mirrors an instructional practice that I have used with both educators and college students for several years (something I have written about in my new book, Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom). Called “Our Love/Hate Relationship with the Media: A Four Corners Activity,” the lesson never fails to generate meaningful dialogue about the many paradoxes associated with our complex and multifaceted engagement with print, visual, sound and digital media. Through a structured dialogue activity, participants inevitably reveal their capacity to articulate both their many “loves” concerning media and technology along with sensitive and often poignant reflection about those aspects of life with media and technology that they “hate.” The lesson works because it enables participants to deepen their awareness of just how many different aspects of contemporary life and cultural values are inflected by media and technology. Such dialogue naturally builds an appreciation for the many valuable perspectives across the whole continuum of attitudes and beliefs and it results in a clearer understanding of the practical need for digital and media literacy education in both higher education and in K-12 schools.

A Timeless Concern: The Impact of Media on Human Development

In critiquing the idea of neuroplasticity and the potential impact of digital media on attention, the MacArthur post actually quoted a silly Tweet from Siva Vaidhyanathan, stating “there are no wires in the human brain.” And so when Chrisopher Chabris demolished MacArthur’s own Cathy Davidson in reviewing her new book about the brain, attention, learning and technology, one line was particularly resonant:

Like many authors who embrace new ideas rather than build on what has come before, Davidson sets out to destroy the old beliefs, as if burning down a forest in order to plant new crops.

Perhaps that’s what’s most frustrating to me about the overall tone of the MacArthur digital media and learning project. Framed as “something completely different,” digital learning may lose touch with its deep roots in inquiry learning, creating ed tech champions but alienating the larger mass of classroom teachers who don’t get all doe-eyed and gushy over apps, cell phones and gaming in schools. That’s why it was so refreshing to see a nicely balanced, sensitive and nuanced piece from the New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey about the best approach to address digital and media literacy in the elementary grades. In my experience, I’ve found that elementary educators perceive many subtle ways in which media and technology displace other forms of expression and communication in problematic and limiting ways. Their concerns about media, popular culture and technology are worth respecting. But because they also fully embrace the opportunity to educate the whole human being, elementary educators can often make use of popular culture, media and technology in creative ways that support the development of students’ imagination, creativity, collaboration and communication skills.

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Why I Write

Posted on October 20, 2011 by

The National Writing Project is hosting Why I Write to increase the visibility of the power of writing through a national campaign on October 20. As a big proponent of expanding the concept of literacy, I’m supportive of any initiative that conceptualizes composition as the practice of using symbols (of all kinds, including language, images, graphic design, sound, music and interactivity) to create and share meaning.

My big-picture vision about multimedia composition is paired with a substantial interest in helping students master the mechanics of writing. Word choice, grammar, organization and structure– all these skills come together when we write. In digital composition, a similar carefulness and precision enables us to create and share complex emotional nuance and deep ideas. Even as an experienced teacher, I continue to discover new strategies that help students learn how to manipulate symbols. These days, I’m quite taken with Gerald Graff’s and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing.

A well-organized essay or a well-turned sentence can thrill me, although that’s not the reason why I read or “why I write.” For me, reading and writing are far more prosaic: both are simply a means to support my thinking as I discover and share ideas.

And even though I’m keen on all things multimedia, I reject the claim that online writing is a completely new discourse form. The idea simply revolts me: good writing is good writing is good writing.

For these reasons, I was amused to find this set of comments at Inside Higher Education. Perhaps it’s inevitable that people will blather on quite sloppily about the importance of writing when posting online, with all the speed and ease it offers. Perhaps it’s just a little TOO easy to string together banal ideas about the value of writing.

But there are some things to really treasure about online writing. For example, see below. How glorious when the dangling modifiers of a university president get corrected by a high school student!  

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Tuning in to Media

Posted on October 10, 2011 by

I finally got around to digitizing my 1993 documentary, Tuning in to Media: Literacy for the Information Age, which I produced with Rob Stegman of Blue Star Media in Boston as part of the Harvard Institute on Media Education. What a trip to see my 80s hair!

Seeing it again after many years, I remember the thrill of assembling luminaries such as Neil Postman, Barry Duncan, Kathleen Tyner, Joshua Meyrowitz and Bob Kubey for a screening and discussion of the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots. For me, it was a great learning experience to create this documentary, as I got to participate in the full production experience: raising the money, developing the concept, writing the script, gathering footage, editing, voice-over, post-production, and distribution/marketing.

I had thought the program would be about teachers and students using media literacy in the classroom, but when an amateur video of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King hit the national airwaves, we were all shocked. Many Americans had no idea what police brutality looked like in large urban centers.  Amateur video was a new phenomenon. It came as a surprise then, when the jurors in the trial convicted only one officer who was found guilty of excessive force; the other officers were cleared of all charges. The verdicts were broadcast live, and word spread quickly throughout Los Angeles. At various points throughout the city that afternoon, people began rioting.

I remember that Elizabeth Thoman was about to head home to Los Angeles the very day the riots began after participating in a media literacy conference on the East Coast. It was a tragic experience for her to come home to her city in flames– and it was a difficult time for all Americans. At the time, it seemed as if the chaos in the city reflected the depth of public confusion about the relationship between the world of symbols and the “real” world. For the next three days the violence and mayhem continued, covered unflinchingly by the news media. People stayed home, watching on TV with the rest of the country as live TV coverage showed fires raging throughout the city, innocent bystanders being assaulted and looters sacking businesses. It was the worst civil unrest the city had experienced since 1965: more than 50 people were killed, over 4,000 injured and $1 billion in property damage.

I’m just as troubled today as I was in 1993 about the level of desensitization in our society – and its impact on the quality of our democracy. As it has ratcheted up, we are left with quite an “empathy gap,” as genuine feelings that lead to action are drowned by a barrage of sensation provided to us by both news and entertainment. I suppose I’m still attracted to media literacy’s potential to activate our critical awareness and help us “wake up” both cognitively and emotionally to the role we play as citizens in making a difference in the world.

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Picking a Fight

Posted on September 27, 2011 by

I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of person to pick a fight.

I do like to deeply engage with ideas, of course, and I prefer to engage in arguments that are well-supported with evidence and reasoning. And of course I can spot and attack “gee-whiz” marketing hype from 500 yards. But no one I know has called me a mama grizzly.

And I’ve never been someone to bludgeon someone over the head with my own ideas. Like any academic, I do like to talk about my work– but I also like to ask questions. I aim to learn from others, even when their viewpoints are very different from my own.

But when I read a recent issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, it simply made my blood boil. Jim Potter’s invited essay for this important and well-respected journal claims in its title to depict the state of media literacy. But it omits so much of the innovative and important work that has emerged in the last ten years from scholars across the fields of communication, education and public health. My grad students, colleagues and Labsters will remember that week — I could hardly believe Potter’s essay had been published. I simply went ballistic! I pounded out a rejoinder (in a verbal body slam of sorts) and e-mailed it off to the journal.

What made me see red? By conceptualizing media literacy primarily as a response to counteract the negative effects of mass media and popular culture, Potter’s vision of media literacy mischaracterizes the field. At a time when more and more stakeholders are embracing the depth and complexity of media literacy, Potter publishes a narrow little piece that boxes media literacy into a wee corner of the media effects tradition. Yikes!

Let’s set the record straight. Jim Potter has long had a rather ambivalent relationship with the larger community of media literacy educators and scholars. He’s published a best-selling textbook titled, Media Literacy and another book titled, The Theory of Media Literacy. But he’s never participated in the discourse community of media literacy scholars. To my knowledge, he’s never attended a media literacy conference— and there have been dozens and dozens of them over the past 15 years. We travel in different circles, I guess you might say.  Unfortunately, some communication scholars still see media literacy simply as a minor variant within the media effects tradition precisely because Jim Potter has carefully positioned it there– not as a field of inquiry, a place of advocacy, an innovative pedagogy, or a community education movement,  but simply as an antidote to all manner of negative media effects, including media violence, materialism, stereotyping and much more. I thought this argument was nearly over in 1998, when I thought I had nailed the coffin on this issue by identifying it as one of the seven great debates.

Jim’s going to publish a response to my critique of his essay, as well he should. Maybe we will get a chance to duke it out at ICA, NCA, BEA or AEJMC. Two big ol’ bears growling at each other– it could be crowd-pleasing fun! But special thanks are owed to Susan Brinson at the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, who accepted it for publication. You can read my critique of Potter’s essay by clicking here.

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