John Seeley Brown at IU

A sunny spring day welcomed John Seely Brown to the Indiana University campus. According to weather.com, storms were on their way, but the gray skies stayed away. While TB and I didn't have to navigate wet conditions to get to the talk, I'm not sure it was worth the two hours I set aside for it.

First, the room may have been ideal for a luncheon, but it was not adequate for a talk with a large attendance. After a number of people congregated along the fringes of the room, someone got the bright idea to bring in extra chairs. This still did not accommodate everyone. Fortunately, TB got a chair, but I had to stand for most of the talk.

John Seely Brown may be considered an educational "rock star," but he isn't a very inspirational speaker. He spent most of the time talking to the group of males sitting in chairs near the podium. (The women in the group obviously were not worthy enough of his words of wisdom.) There were also times when he was hard to hear, turned away from the group, gave rambling responses to questions, and mumbled unintelligible comments. One of Brown's main points was that educators should move away from the "sage on the stage" approach to teaching. Ironically, however, Brown lectured to the group for more than an hour. Stated another way, he was the "sage on the stage" he was arguing against.

In general, Brown's talk was tired and seemed somewhat out-of-date. Most of his talking points were presented in the article "Minds on Fire" he co-wrote in early 2008 with Richard Adler. If you have the opportunity to attend a presentation given by Brown, it might be time better spent to simply read the Minds article. Another "old" idea was the concept of play and fun in learning. Brown presented play (or as he calls it, homo ludens) as if it was new and revolutionary. He has obviously missed the wealth of information that is presented in much of the literature.

Other ideas mentioned in Brown's presentation:

• It's not a digital gap but a participation gap. (Hmmm...wonder what the individuals without computer and internet access would say about this? But, when you think about it, you can't participate if you don't have access. Referring to the digital gap by another name doesn't make it magically go away.)
• Play as an epiphany - Free your mind and the learning will come.
• Tinkering is the key to mastering a world in flux. (Much of the literature on women and computers suggest that males are typically tinkerers and females are not. If tinkering is the key, and females don't tinker, is the assumption that they won't master this world in flux? That's not a very optimistic statement. Shouldn't we be working toward learning environments that are friendly to all students, not just those who are male?)
• Pushing toward the acquisition of 21st century learning skills is wrong. Instead, according to Brown, educators should be working toward creating a 21st century disposition in our students. What is a 21st century disposition, you might ask? Brown defines it as just being open to the idea of learning from others.

Many individuals in the audience appeared to be wowed by Brown's presentation. Maybe I've read too much at this point in my doctoral career, but none of the concepts Brown mentioned seemed new or particularly revolutionary to me. Guess I'm not cut out to be a groupie, at least not for this rock star.

Girl Gamers, Not Stewardesses

Leave it to the serendipity of the web to point me in the direction of this article on gender and video games. I was reviewing the blog posts thousands of individuals (1,980 individuals, to be exact) contributed on Ada Lovelace Day (March 24), when I came across a reference to "Crossing the (Gender) Divide." Who would have thought that Delta Sky, the magazine you find in the seat pocket of Delta Air Lines flights, would have an article on gender and video games? Here's an excerpt from that piece:

Many of today's video games are shedding their decidedly male "skins" and reaching out to female players with both avatars and themes designed specifically for "girl gamers." And that's just the beginning. Avid gamers of the "gentler persuasion" are heading back to the classroom to earn advanced degrees in computer programming so they can create the games they, and others like them, have dreamed about playing.

The end of the piece includes a "Chick Click" site, which includes links to "chick-friendly" video game-related sites. One of those links leads to a hard-core girl gamer site - Frag Dolls. Learn more about these tech-savvy females here.

New Educational Video Players

Hulu and YouTube have tossed their hats into the educational video ring. Hulu's contribution is Academic Earth, a site where visitors can access "thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars." Not to be left behind, YouTube introduces YouTube EDU, which offers "videos and channels from our college and university partners." Who are the college and university partners? A list is available here.

What does this mean for sites, like TeacherTube? Can all three survive in these tough economic times? What features and characteristics will distinguish one from the other? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind, and I'm sure others will surface over time.

What's in a name?

Women librarians have made great strides in recent years. According to Deyrup (2004), more than 50% of library leaders (top administrators; library directors) are women. This is significant in that in 1991, women made up 80% of the library workforce, yet 80% of the library administrators were men (Kauffman, 1993). Moreover, there are scholars (e.g., Zemon & Bahr, 2005) who claim that there are cases where the salaries of female directors exceeds that of the male directors. So, the issues surrounding the "disadvantaged majority" (i.e., women librarians) is over, right? Not so fast. While scholars such as Cassell and Weibel (2007) suggest that there are bigger issues today, there remains the image problem that has been plaguing libraries since the 1940s (O'Brien, 1983).

The image problem has recently reared its ugly head at Rutgers University. At that institution, the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies is trying to remove the term "library" from its name. Some graduates, like Mary Chilton, a professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College (CUNY), are not happy about this move and state that they will not support it. In fact, Chilton claims the following:

It sounds as if the Dean really wants to say that librarians are female and poor and mostly wedded to a diminishing public sector, and SCILS wants private money and therefore has to appeal to private money biases, or to academic administrators who share these biases, all the while reaping the headcount of the MLIS students.

Chilton continues to suggest that should the name change be approved, she would like a "divorce" from her program. It appears that the presence of a female majority continues to taint the term "library." Maybe all women librarians who graduated from programs that remove "library" from its name should take similar action. Just a thought.

Despite the advances women have made in libraries, we cannot allow them to lull us into a false sense of security and mask the gender-related problems that still exist.

Cindy Sherman: Photos & Film

I first learned about Cindy Sherman a few years ago when I took a feminist methodologies course. We were using her work to learn how to analyze our data (i.e., photos) using a photovoice approach. (For more information on photovoice, this site has information about the creators of this method - Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris.)

Until the end of December 2008, a collection of Sherman's latest photos were exhibited at Metro Pictures in New York. While I was not able to view the collection in person, the kind people at New York Art Tours made it possible for me to vicariously experience the photos. The video tour for Sherman's work is available here.

Tomorrow (Friday, March 27), the new documentary, Guest of Cindy Sherman, will open in New York and in selected cities (read: The Film Center, Santa Fe). Co-directed by ex-boyfriend Paul H-O, this film has generated quite a bit of controversy. In fact, Sherman has spoken out against the documentary and does not want to be associated with it. For those who do not live in a community that will show Guest or who are looking for an alternative view of Sherman and her work, Culture Monster recommends the 2005 short, Cindy: The Doll is Mine - directed by Bertrand Bonello and starring Asia Argento. You can watch this film in its entirety here. Time to break out the popcorn!

Curriculum Changes in the UK

According to The Guardian, there will be more emphasis in the UK primary curriculum on emerging technology such as Twitter and blogging and less on the Victorians and WWII. This proposed curriculum is designed to give teachers more flexibility in what they teach, while ensuring that students are well-versed in the latest digital spaces. English, mathematics, communication, health & well-being, and science & technology, as well as art & design are the six core areas outlined in the proposal. While it appears that educators in the UK have jumped on the latest technological bandwagon, there are signs that the government didn't want to completely scrap traditional education. Although, an emphasis on books and the concept of reading for pleasure is downplayed in favor of online resources.

A statement made near the end of this article struck me. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, stated, "Children need to be enthused by learning, so they want to learn and gain the skills which will enable them to learn in later life." At present, I'm reading Dee Garrison's Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876-1920 for my project on women's roles in libraries. The third chapter in this book discusses early library leaders and educational reform during the mid-to-late 1800s. On p. 52, Garrison highlights the influence Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had on American pedagogy during this time period, and states, "With Pestalozzi, learning came to mean not the gathering of facts alone, but the enjoyment of those facts to solve practical problems." While another influential educator during this time period, Johann Friedrich Herbart, concentrated on ethical instruction, he emphasized the importance of learner interest, as well. Even though Pestalozzi and Herbart were calling for educational reform more than 100 years ago, their message mirrors those being touted by today's educational technology advocates - individuals like Mary Bousted.

SL and Other Virtual Learning Options

An article came out Monday (3/23) on virtual training and options beyond Second Life (SL). One of the first things the author, Jon Wilcox, mentions is that SL is not the virtual world darling it used to be. Wilcox is not the first to suggest that SL has entered a "gloom stage" (see Greenberg, 2008), but he doesn't dwell on this apparent turn of events. Nor does Wilcox imply that this signals a decreased interest in virtual learning. On the contrary. He instead turns to examine virtual worlds that are being investigated such as OLIVE, IBM's INNOV8 v.2, and TruSim. Mary Matthews, the strategy and business development director at TruSim outlines several requirements for successful virtual worlds. She argues that one of the most important features can also be the most difficult to determine - the right level of fidelity. Stated another way, not every training or learning task may require a highly detailed representation or a depiction of realistic characters.

While the current economic downturn may make some institutions more cautious in their experimentations with virtual worlds, this is not the case for everyone. Wilcox mentions, for example, that 50% of classes on one subject at a Boston university are using virtual worlds. Unfortunately, the name of the institution and the specific subject are not provided. On the surface, this sounds impressive, but it may not be. The subject could one in which two classes are offered; this would mean only one class was using virtual worlds. Also, why wasn't the name of the institution given? Does this Boston university even exist, or was this example used because it gives the illusion that virtual educational initiatives are alive and well in the physical world?

I do believe that virtual worlds have the potential to improve distance education and training. But because institutions are looking for ways to cut their budgets, they are likely to be more cautious in their adoption of emerging technologies. Many educators have been consuming new technologies like a child eating cotton candy at the county fair. After awhile, though, the excessive amounts of unnutritious fluff don't taste so good. At present, it appears that some virtual worlds may not be quite as appealing as they once were. Thus, it is necessary to examine these digital spaces more critically than has been done in the past and determine whether more nutritious options are available.