William R. Seaman's “Active Audience theory: pointless populism”, 1992
Active audience theory grew in practice during the application of ethnographic research methods in the study of TV audience viewing practices in the 1980's. In John Fiske's 1987 book, “Television Culture” he explains how ethnography came to be a valid method of studying television and its viewers. David Morley (who Seaman actually criticizes in his 1992 paper), felt that Stuart Hall overemphasized the role of class in producing different readings (Hall's work was in encoding/decoding, examining preferred reading, negotiated reading, and oppositional readings). There were some cross similarities between people of different social backgrounds such as bank managers and apprentices, and Morley surmised that the two were similarly constructed as subjects of capitalist ideology, inserting themselves into the dominant ideology in a shared interest of the economy's survival and success. As a result, the emphasis of ethnography shifted away from the textual and ideological construction of the subject to socially and historically situated people. The emphasis in the late 80s turned to studying “the way people live in their culture” and acknowledged the differences between people despite their social construction and pluralized the meanings and pleasures they found in television. (Fiske) Greg Philo later writes that people do read the intended encoded message of a media text the same; it's not polysemic in having different meanings to different groups. He believes instead that audiences are likely to criticize the content of a message in relation to another perspective, which they hold to be correct. “They are therefore aware of the encoded meaning and the manner in which it was constructed -they just do not agree with it.” (Philo, Active Audiences and the Construction of Public Knowledge, 2008)
Summary of reading
Seaman has an aversion to ethnographic research in the field of cultural studies, rejecting the overall view that, “television audiences hold far greater power over the medium than is generally acknowledged.”(301) He also says that an “active audience approach has tended more to mystify than to clarify, to rationalize a set of practices rather than to explain them.” (309) Further, he charges active audience theorists with taking a rhetorical role in theory construction, rather than an analytic or descriptive approach. (306) Seaman also argues against the active audience theorist view that the viewer's individual interpretation constitutes interaction, implying a measure of control over the televisual text, as the text is just an A/V signal and is not altered itself by the viewer. (306) This goes against Fiske's view that TV doesn't have an effect on the individual, but rather on the ideology of a society in that it promotes and prefers certain meanings (that already exist).
Seaman has trouble with the term “free agency.” Unless viewers are aware of the “highly constrained character and content of programming...of the information, analyses, perspectives, beliefs filtered out by mainstream media, it is wrong to suggest they are truly free of their decisions to act.” (307)
Ethnographic Research
-Seaman believes it allows cultural studies theorists to makes self-serving judgements
Seaman's first critique of ethnographic research in active audiences is that it focuses on the apparent characterizations of these theorists in certain cultural practices as “resistant” or “oppositional”. He criticizes Morley's playing with the oppositional reading. Morley countered an earlier view that Thomas Lindlof and Paul Trandt had earlier observed in that television is used to create personal space and may actually be used to avoid conflicts and be used to lessen conflicts within larger families with his own reading that television is used for things such as acceptable zones for private pursuits and provides organizing centres and an opportunity for new types of communicative contexts. In doing so, Morley started to replace words such as “can be seen” with the more definitive “television is”. Another example Seaman gives is when theorists say that the text is being “used” in a particular context, it implies that the subject is controlling the text for his or her own purposes. Other questions must be asked first, such as whether or not the subject is even aware of alternative choices so that essentially I think what he is saying is that comparisons need to be made in order to judge the assessment's validity or plausibility. Seaman warns that theorists must be careful that possibilities are not turned into judgments as this can be misleading.
Audience Interpretation
-Ineffective override and negative reinforcement
A) Seaman warns that mediated effects cannot confirm whether or not a target subgroup interprets degrading representations of that subgroup in ways that overthrow the dominant reading.
He used the example of Fiske's work in stating that “women have told me how much they enjoyed Charlie's Angels when it appeared on their screens in the 70's and that their pleasure is seeing women taking active, controlling roles was so great that it overrode the incorporating devices that worked to recuperate feminist elements in its content back into patriarchy.” The way that the women may have perceived the experience of viewing cannot stand alone as the success of overriding the incorporating devices of a television program. “The word “pleasure” has to be explored in context. Seaman surmises that interpretations that rest on such elements as “viewer pleasure” can be self-serving.
B) He also warns that an oppositional reading of a text by a subgroup may work as an affirmation of their prejudices, giving them even more strength. He cites the anti-Arab racism in the American mainstream media and says the harm is not the demoralization of the subgroup, but the reinforcement of the prejudice and an encouragement to continue racist feelings in the dominant group.
Empowerment and the Active Audience
-Seaman wonders how can Active Audience findings empower, if there's no readable action being taken?
Seaman says viewers do use the information they pick up on TV as reference points in making sense of the world but worries when theorists see this as an empowerment. He argues that viewer empowerment through the use of interaction with television is alarming to the “degree that elite interests dominate our news media and so constrain the field of options for 'reference points', examples and analyses” (305). I think he means that knowing that not all of the information and viewpoints make it to the audience by way of TV, it would be scary that we only see what does make it to the tube as worthy enough of conversation, consideration, or even value. More evidence to this view is on page 308 when he writes, “The problem does not lie with audiences, but rather with a system of mass communication that systematically excludes certain forms of programming and imagery in favour of a profoundly restricted and highly interest driven selection. The problem is not with audience interpreting practices, but with what is available for interpretation.”
Seaman seems to have a problem with theorists who use the term “empowerment” when it doesn't really have a measurable effect in terms of action. On the subject of empowerment, he writes about Madonna as empowering for young women, “does nothing to decrease the staggering risk of date rape and other all too common forms of sexual assault and harassment.” (308) The result deals more with thoughts and feelings, which Seaman says is difficult to characterize, and makes the point that it's not that he feels audience thoughts and feelings should be ignored.
Seaman harshly slams the active audience approach, saying it provides no insight into research in communication and media theory. He refers to the “pleasures made possible by inflected television readings simply will not address, let alone confront, the parochial bigotries, racist and sexist hiring practices, or the conservative voting trends that threaten even the most basic social programs, affirmative action and abortion rights here in the U-S...the violence against women and people of colour. “ (309)
Morley's Rebuttal
In 2006, Morley wrote a response to the backlash against ethnographic research in his paper title, “Unanswered Questions in Audience Research.” Morley feels Seaman's “Pointless Populism” is really “a return to a very old story about media effects and largely readable as the return of a narrowly fundamentalist political economy.”
“It is one thing to argue (as I have myself done) that some recent audience work has exaggerated, and wrongly romanticized the supposed power and freedoms of media consumers, imagining that all audiences everywhere are engaged in a continuous form of “semiological guerrilla warfare” (Eco, 1972) with the media, in which they constantly produce oppositional readings of its products.” (Morley, 2006)
Morley further acknowledges Seaman's criticism of qualitative ethnographic research for not leading to follow-up action. “The further question raised by the critics of cultural studies audience work is whether it matters if people make oppositional or subversive decodings of media material, unless they go out and 'do something' (go on a demonstration; start a petition) about it.” Morley defends himself by saying that the many micro-instances of 'pre-political' attitude change in the cultural sphere acts as the impetus for political change. (Morley, 2006)
Morley ends up calling for a balanced approach to the two methodological practices of qualitative and quantitative. He surmises that there are times when more traditional types of research such as quantitative (number crunching and statistics) may be useful in audience research but warns that too much content can “deaden” under the weight of the “quantity of unanalysed contextual data. He gives validity to qualitative and ethnographic research in that it provides insight into, “the complexities of how audiences “indigenise” the media materials which they consume”, but warns that it runs the “danger of, descending into anecdotalism” and “we should not mistake the vividness of the examples it offers us for their general applicability.” (Morley, 2006)
Friday, November 13, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
I pulled my first all-nighter Sunday night. I wanted to get my research paper done for Research Methods at least two weeks before it's due. The reason why? I know how weird this sounds but if I write the paper now and leave it for at least a week, I can go back and edit my own work. Besides, I had just read 12 papers on my subject area, "TV is still a part of the texture of everyday life". If I had gone to bed without writing my paper, I would surely have forgotten everything I read by the next day. That's what having kids does to your brain. Well, that and age and probably some stress added to that as well.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Culture IS Ordinary!
While pulling my information together on Raymond Williams, I soon discovered how important it would be to explain his whole background, for this is central to Williams’ socialist outlook on culture. In order to best describe his background and ideas, I played with words and images in PowerPoint to help me organize the information and stick to the most important points of Williams’ contributions to the study of media. I went on the Rolands Collection website and downloaded a video of Michael Ignatieff interviewing Raymond Williams back in the 80s on an interview show in Britain. The file had DMR rights to it so I couldn’t play the video itself, but I was able to record a short audio clip of Williams speaking about mobilized privatization.
Raymond Williams was born to a working class family in Wales; the son of a railway signalman. He went to grammar school and later attended Cambridge on a scholarship. After being called away as a wireless operator and a tank operator during World War II, Williams returned to finish his schooling in modern languages, history and the classics. He became a tutor in Adult Education where he discovered that people who wouldn’t normally be from the same social circles (think of a factory worker and a doctor), could come together for social discourse. As well, because of his own ordinary upbringing and background, he discovered through experience that culture is not for the elite, it is for everyone. In this, he differed from Marxist viewpoints in approaching culture through class conflict. He felt the teachings misunderstand what culture really was, and disagreed that “since culture and production are related, the advocacy of a different system of production is in some way a cultural directive--to serve the ideology". He felt that socialism wasn’t the only model.
Williams felt culture could not be separated from other factors when studying effects models on an audience. He felt that the interpretation of culture must be done so in relation to its underlying system of production such as its political and economic conditions. Culture is a whole way of life and the arts are part of the social organization.
In looking at Williams’ writing in the article, I focused on three areas and asked three questions in relation to these areas:
1. Q: Williams criticized Lasswell’s sociology of mass communications’ effects model that looked at, “who says what, how, to whom, and with what effect because it excluded the question, “to what purpose or for what intention,” Although Williams believes it’s worth looking at “intention” at least from the point of view that there are interests and agencies of communication involved, the problem with the social model itself he says is that it, “abstracts social and cultural processes to concepts like socialization, social function, or interaction,” which basically amounts to filtering the results until you get what you want from them. The problem with this Williams says, is that you can’t isolate certain influential factors in socialization (such as school, work, home, television, and the press) because they are interwoven in social and cultural process. Can you think of another example involving a communications medium in which these socialization factors are intertwined?
A: For a modern day example, Pricewaterhouse Coopers did research which Don Tapscott was permitted to use in his book, “Growing Up Digital”, a study of the effects of and on the net generation, he admits in his Introduction when writing about interviewing 10-thousand people, holding dozens of private executive briefings on program results and recommendations”, that, “ The reports are proprietary to the research sponsors, but some of the high-level findings and main conclusions can now be shared publicly.” (xi Grown Up Digital, Mc-Graw-Hill, New |York, 2009) He thanks the sponsors on the next page, there are 25 of them including Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Sony, and Ogilvy One. (1. market research 2. technology company, 3. advertising agency. The companies holding the big bucks are directing the research here. What interests might Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Sony, or Ogilvy One have in a book that uses its research to show that Tapscott has discovered not a bunch of spoiled “screenagers” with short attention spans and zero social skills, but a "remarkably bright community which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing"?
(front flap, Grown Up Digital, Mc-Graw-Hill, New |York, 2009)
Furthermore, Williams said conflicting ideology also makes it difficult to focus on a particular aspect of socialization. In the article, Williams points out a preferred or dominant reading that violence is a contributing factor in aggressive behaviour, and an oppositional reading could be that violence is cathartic. (Stuart Hall ) Halloran called this ability to have differing perspectives in a society, 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'.
Williams facetiously made an argument that if there is much more violence on TV than what is taking place in society, one might think agencies and producers are the ones living outside of the norm. (R. Williams: “Effects of the Technology and its uses”, 1975)
2. Q: Williams mentions that the technological landscape has led to a much broader access to television news, yet he notes the co-relation between voter turnout rates lowering and the numbers of people involved in social protests and demonstrations rising. What is he saying about the effects of television viewing here?
A: "It could be argued that increased exposure to competitive assessment in these terms has weakened adherence to occasional election as a political mode, or even that (given other kinds of political stimulation by television - the reporting of demonstrations, the dramatisation of certain issues) it has had some strengthening influence on alternative modes. (p 4)
Williams questions the preferred reading that the increased exposure to politicians provided by TV has strengthened the public's engagement with politics. He's suggesting an oppositional way of looking at this in that maybe watching TV news turns off voters and leads them to act publicly instead in the form of demonstrations and protests.
3. Q: The last question is in relation to Lazersfeld’s two-step flow model in that information is disseminated to the opinion leaders in society with the most access to media and the greatest understanding of content…who then pass on the information through their own politically-altered filters. Keeping this in mind, how would Williams view the use of the Internet for the dissemination of information?
A: I think he would look at the Internet as a broadly based tool in western society for getting both preferred readings and oppositional readings out into the public. (He might also note the somewhat limited use in some more remote areas due to either geographic availability of the service or economic affordability of the technology). The benefit of the medium in its heavy use of interactive, user-generated material, is that people who are willing to get their information from a variety of sources, may be better equipped to enter an educated arena of discourse with people from all different classes. The downside, he would say is the amount of disinformation dispersed on the Internet as a result of members of the public having difficulty determining some of the sources as reliable. This could make it difficult for the public to become genuinely educated on issues. As for the pop-up ads and side-bars, he alluded to a future of controlling agencies with commercial interests in his writing, Television – Technology and Cultural Form. Although he was talking about television as a great tool for helping generate, “an educated and participatory democracy”, Williams cautioned that, “a few para-national corporations, with their attendant states and agencies, could further reach into our lives, at every level from news to psycho-drama, until individual and collective response to many different kinds of experience and problem became almost limited to choice between their programmed possibilities”.
An informal list of sources (not in MLA style)
http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2008/02/work-life-williams-english
http://www.raymondwilliams.co.uk/
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/raymond_williams.htm
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/williams.htm
http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/audience.html)
http://www.rolandcollection.com/
(R. Williams, Television – Technology and Cultural Form. Quotes republished by Jim McGuigan /Loughborough University, UK on October 22nd, 2004 in Flow TV, http://flowtv.or/?p=685
Stuart Hall http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism11.html
Cole, Josh (2008) 'Raymond Williams and education - a slow reach again for control', the encyclopaedia of informal education.
Raymond Williams was born to a working class family in Wales; the son of a railway signalman. He went to grammar school and later attended Cambridge on a scholarship. After being called away as a wireless operator and a tank operator during World War II, Williams returned to finish his schooling in modern languages, history and the classics. He became a tutor in Adult Education where he discovered that people who wouldn’t normally be from the same social circles (think of a factory worker and a doctor), could come together for social discourse. As well, because of his own ordinary upbringing and background, he discovered through experience that culture is not for the elite, it is for everyone. In this, he differed from Marxist viewpoints in approaching culture through class conflict. He felt the teachings misunderstand what culture really was, and disagreed that “since culture and production are related, the advocacy of a different system of production is in some way a cultural directive--to serve the ideology". He felt that socialism wasn’t the only model.
Williams felt culture could not be separated from other factors when studying effects models on an audience. He felt that the interpretation of culture must be done so in relation to its underlying system of production such as its political and economic conditions. Culture is a whole way of life and the arts are part of the social organization.
In looking at Williams’ writing in the article, I focused on three areas and asked three questions in relation to these areas:
1. Q: Williams criticized Lasswell’s sociology of mass communications’ effects model that looked at, “who says what, how, to whom, and with what effect because it excluded the question, “to what purpose or for what intention,” Although Williams believes it’s worth looking at “intention” at least from the point of view that there are interests and agencies of communication involved, the problem with the social model itself he says is that it, “abstracts social and cultural processes to concepts like socialization, social function, or interaction,” which basically amounts to filtering the results until you get what you want from them. The problem with this Williams says, is that you can’t isolate certain influential factors in socialization (such as school, work, home, television, and the press) because they are interwoven in social and cultural process. Can you think of another example involving a communications medium in which these socialization factors are intertwined?
A: For a modern day example, Pricewaterhouse Coopers did research which Don Tapscott was permitted to use in his book, “Growing Up Digital”, a study of the effects of and on the net generation, he admits in his Introduction when writing about interviewing 10-thousand people, holding dozens of private executive briefings on program results and recommendations”, that, “ The reports are proprietary to the research sponsors, but some of the high-level findings and main conclusions can now be shared publicly.” (xi Grown Up Digital, Mc-Graw-Hill, New |York, 2009) He thanks the sponsors on the next page, there are 25 of them including Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Sony, and Ogilvy One. (1. market research 2. technology company, 3. advertising agency. The companies holding the big bucks are directing the research here. What interests might Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Sony, or Ogilvy One have in a book that uses its research to show that Tapscott has discovered not a bunch of spoiled “screenagers” with short attention spans and zero social skills, but a "remarkably bright community which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing"?
(front flap, Grown Up Digital, Mc-Graw-Hill, New |York, 2009)
Furthermore, Williams said conflicting ideology also makes it difficult to focus on a particular aspect of socialization. In the article, Williams points out a preferred or dominant reading that violence is a contributing factor in aggressive behaviour, and an oppositional reading could be that violence is cathartic. (Stuart Hall ) Halloran called this ability to have differing perspectives in a society, 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'.
Williams facetiously made an argument that if there is much more violence on TV than what is taking place in society, one might think agencies and producers are the ones living outside of the norm. (R. Williams: “Effects of the Technology and its uses”, 1975)
2. Q: Williams mentions that the technological landscape has led to a much broader access to television news, yet he notes the co-relation between voter turnout rates lowering and the numbers of people involved in social protests and demonstrations rising. What is he saying about the effects of television viewing here?
A: "It could be argued that increased exposure to competitive assessment in these terms has weakened adherence to occasional election as a political mode, or even that (given other kinds of political stimulation by television - the reporting of demonstrations, the dramatisation of certain issues) it has had some strengthening influence on alternative modes. (p 4)
Williams questions the preferred reading that the increased exposure to politicians provided by TV has strengthened the public's engagement with politics. He's suggesting an oppositional way of looking at this in that maybe watching TV news turns off voters and leads them to act publicly instead in the form of demonstrations and protests.
3. Q: The last question is in relation to Lazersfeld’s two-step flow model in that information is disseminated to the opinion leaders in society with the most access to media and the greatest understanding of content…who then pass on the information through their own politically-altered filters. Keeping this in mind, how would Williams view the use of the Internet for the dissemination of information?
A: I think he would look at the Internet as a broadly based tool in western society for getting both preferred readings and oppositional readings out into the public. (He might also note the somewhat limited use in some more remote areas due to either geographic availability of the service or economic affordability of the technology). The benefit of the medium in its heavy use of interactive, user-generated material, is that people who are willing to get their information from a variety of sources, may be better equipped to enter an educated arena of discourse with people from all different classes. The downside, he would say is the amount of disinformation dispersed on the Internet as a result of members of the public having difficulty determining some of the sources as reliable. This could make it difficult for the public to become genuinely educated on issues. As for the pop-up ads and side-bars, he alluded to a future of controlling agencies with commercial interests in his writing, Television – Technology and Cultural Form. Although he was talking about television as a great tool for helping generate, “an educated and participatory democracy”, Williams cautioned that, “a few para-national corporations, with their attendant states and agencies, could further reach into our lives, at every level from news to psycho-drama, until individual and collective response to many different kinds of experience and problem became almost limited to choice between their programmed possibilities”.
An informal list of sources (not in MLA style)
http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2008/02/work-life-williams-english
http://www.raymondwilliams.co.uk/
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/raymond_williams.htm
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/williams.htm
http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/audience.html)
http://www.rolandcollection.com/
(R. Williams, Television – Technology and Cultural Form. Quotes republished by Jim McGuigan /Loughborough University, UK on October 22nd, 2004 in Flow TV, http://flowtv.or/?p=685
Stuart Hall http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism11.html
Cole, Josh (2008) 'Raymond Williams and education - a slow reach again for control', the encyclopaedia of informal education.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Teetering between Digital Immigrant and Digital Native
(This is a re-post from my regular blog which I also wrote today. It appears here because it is quite relevant to the work being done in this class)
The initial panic is wearing off from being back at school. I think I've come to terms with the the fact that I won't seem my family again until August.
There is a lot of reading, which I initially tried to read off the computer screen. I have since printed off the articles, highlighted passages and written notes in the margin. I do have the technology to write sticky notes in the columns of PDFs and highlight text but I don't seem to retain the information in the same way. There's something about feeling the paper in hand and putting the geographical positioning of the passages into photographic memory that makes me connect better with the text than a screen scroll on a computer. This brings to question whether it's a digital native versus digital immigrant issue. I don't think that it is.
My brain did re-wire itself over the past 10 years though I am considered a digital immigrant. I have much evidence of this transition, especially since going back to school. I had to re-learn how to write with a pen. Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but it took a long time to 1. choose between printing and cursive for speed and legibility, and 2. I couldn't remember what my style of hand-writing looked like. The only time I had been using pen and paper was to write short shopping lists and to-do lists.
So far, I have discussed only the use of tools, but even my processing of information is slowly changing back. I am a little better able to focus on individual tasks one at a time again. Since, re-gaining this skill, I found my level of comprehension has gone up. Before, I had gotten to the point of multi-tasking so much with technology that I couldn't even remember what other tasks needed completion.
Three weeks ago, I was trying to read an article for school on my computer when I came across a word I needed to look up. The word was "inchoate" (which is quite funny, because that's how I've been through this whole transformation). I ended up searching the Internet for the meaning of the word and got lost in different information as links led to other links, leading me away and on to other topics.
I made a point of disciplining myself and returned to read my article and my thoughts drifted to another class of mine. We had been discussing how Facebook looks at your profile and tailors the sidebar advertisements to your interests. That reminded me of a great book I read called, "Feed". The book was about a futuristic society in which children when born, typically, they were implanted with a chip. The chip monitored a person's interests and formed demographic and psychographic profiles in order to offer geographical services and products right to the brain throughout life. "Feed" focused on two teenage characters. One had a late implant and as a result, she could at times, willingly disconnect herself from the feed. Because she was still able to think for herself, she ended up playing with the system and giving out messages to the chip that she was interested in things outside her demographic and psychographic profile like expensive cars and things that didn't make sense for her lifestlye. It was an informal experiment she was trying out (I won't spoil the book, but the act leads to her demise). The other teen had the implant from birth and couldn't decide things for himself, couldn't concentrate, and couldn't form coherent full sentences. He let the feed guide his movements and activities. Ironically, I couldn't remember the author's name, but I was trying so hard to finish my reading that I resisted looking up the information. When I got the end of the article, I couldn't remember what it was I wanted to look for. I even posted on Facebook that I was having difficulty remembering something I knew I wanted to look up, complaining and blaming multi-tasking with technology. When I stepped away from the computer and went to have a shower, it was while rinsing my hair that I remembered what I wanted to look up.
I am frightened for the digital natives. Their ability to retain information in their long term memory by connecting and making attachments is at risk largely due to the distractions precipitated by the act of technological multi-tasking and short spans of time with information. Stephen Kotler wrote an article in the May 2009 edition of Psychology Today in which he wrote,
"The harm being done by Twitter is the harm it's doing to the brain. The average user goes tweet-tweet all day long. This tunes the brain to reading and comprehending information 140 characters at a time.
No one's yet done the research, but I'm willing to bet my lunch-money, that if you take a Twitter-addicted teen and give them a reading comprehension test, their comprehension levels will plunge once they pass the 140 word mark."
Kevin Parrish wrote an article in Tom's Guide, published in September of 2009 about research done by Dr. Alloway, that suggests that Kotler is right.
"As reported by the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, working out of the University of Stirling in Scotland, says that working memory is the ability to remember information, and actually put that information to use. After extensive research in working memory, she believes that success and happiness stem from this ability rather than having high IQs. She also believes that certain video games can train working memory, especially those that involve planning and strategy.
Although Facebook offers "thinking" games such as Sudoku, managing friends and dates on the social website exercises the working memory. Twitter, YouTube and texting, on the other hand, isn't exactly healthy. "On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,'' said Dr Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.''"
Alloway's work was done with 11-14 year old test subjects. Perhaps, it would also be beneficial to study those of us that teeter on the wall between the digital natives and digital immigrants. It might also be worth studying younger teachers for the added benefit of revealing the impact on the development of a new "educational model".
The initial panic is wearing off from being back at school. I think I've come to terms with the the fact that I won't seem my family again until August.
There is a lot of reading, which I initially tried to read off the computer screen. I have since printed off the articles, highlighted passages and written notes in the margin. I do have the technology to write sticky notes in the columns of PDFs and highlight text but I don't seem to retain the information in the same way. There's something about feeling the paper in hand and putting the geographical positioning of the passages into photographic memory that makes me connect better with the text than a screen scroll on a computer. This brings to question whether it's a digital native versus digital immigrant issue. I don't think that it is.
My brain did re-wire itself over the past 10 years though I am considered a digital immigrant. I have much evidence of this transition, especially since going back to school. I had to re-learn how to write with a pen. Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but it took a long time to 1. choose between printing and cursive for speed and legibility, and 2. I couldn't remember what my style of hand-writing looked like. The only time I had been using pen and paper was to write short shopping lists and to-do lists.
So far, I have discussed only the use of tools, but even my processing of information is slowly changing back. I am a little better able to focus on individual tasks one at a time again. Since, re-gaining this skill, I found my level of comprehension has gone up. Before, I had gotten to the point of multi-tasking so much with technology that I couldn't even remember what other tasks needed completion.
Three weeks ago, I was trying to read an article for school on my computer when I came across a word I needed to look up. The word was "inchoate" (which is quite funny, because that's how I've been through this whole transformation). I ended up searching the Internet for the meaning of the word and got lost in different information as links led to other links, leading me away and on to other topics.
I made a point of disciplining myself and returned to read my article and my thoughts drifted to another class of mine. We had been discussing how Facebook looks at your profile and tailors the sidebar advertisements to your interests. That reminded me of a great book I read called, "Feed". The book was about a futuristic society in which children when born, typically, they were implanted with a chip. The chip monitored a person's interests and formed demographic and psychographic profiles in order to offer geographical services and products right to the brain throughout life. "Feed" focused on two teenage characters. One had a late implant and as a result, she could at times, willingly disconnect herself from the feed. Because she was still able to think for herself, she ended up playing with the system and giving out messages to the chip that she was interested in things outside her demographic and psychographic profile like expensive cars and things that didn't make sense for her lifestlye. It was an informal experiment she was trying out (I won't spoil the book, but the act leads to her demise). The other teen had the implant from birth and couldn't decide things for himself, couldn't concentrate, and couldn't form coherent full sentences. He let the feed guide his movements and activities. Ironically, I couldn't remember the author's name, but I was trying so hard to finish my reading that I resisted looking up the information. When I got the end of the article, I couldn't remember what it was I wanted to look for. I even posted on Facebook that I was having difficulty remembering something I knew I wanted to look up, complaining and blaming multi-tasking with technology. When I stepped away from the computer and went to have a shower, it was while rinsing my hair that I remembered what I wanted to look up.
I am frightened for the digital natives. Their ability to retain information in their long term memory by connecting and making attachments is at risk largely due to the distractions precipitated by the act of technological multi-tasking and short spans of time with information. Stephen Kotler wrote an article in the May 2009 edition of Psychology Today in which he wrote,
"The harm being done by Twitter is the harm it's doing to the brain. The average user goes tweet-tweet all day long. This tunes the brain to reading and comprehending information 140 characters at a time.
No one's yet done the research, but I'm willing to bet my lunch-money, that if you take a Twitter-addicted teen and give them a reading comprehension test, their comprehension levels will plunge once they pass the 140 word mark."
Kevin Parrish wrote an article in Tom's Guide, published in September of 2009 about research done by Dr. Alloway, that suggests that Kotler is right.
"As reported by the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, working out of the University of Stirling in Scotland, says that working memory is the ability to remember information, and actually put that information to use. After extensive research in working memory, she believes that success and happiness stem from this ability rather than having high IQs. She also believes that certain video games can train working memory, especially those that involve planning and strategy.
Although Facebook offers "thinking" games such as Sudoku, managing friends and dates on the social website exercises the working memory. Twitter, YouTube and texting, on the other hand, isn't exactly healthy. "On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,'' said Dr Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.''"
Alloway's work was done with 11-14 year old test subjects. Perhaps, it would also be beneficial to study those of us that teeter on the wall between the digital natives and digital immigrants. It might also be worth studying younger teachers for the added benefit of revealing the impact on the development of a new "educational model".
Teetering between Digital Immigrant and Digital Native
The initial panic is wearing off from being back at school. I think I've come to terms with the the fact that I won't see my family again until August.
There is a lot of reading, which I initially tried to read off the computer screen. I have since printed off the articles, highlighted passages and written notes in the margin. I do have the technology to write sticky notes in the columns of PDFs and highlight text but I don't seem to retain the information in the same way. There's something about feeling the paper in hand and putting the geographical positioning of the passages into photographic memory that makes me connect better with the text than a screen scroll on a computer. This brings to question whether it's a digital native versus digital immigrant issue. I don't think that it is.
My brain has seemed to re-wire itself over the past 10 years though I am considered a digital immigrant. I have much evidence of this transition, especially since going back to school. I had to re-learn how to write with a pen. Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but it took a long time to 1. choose between printing and cursive for speed and legibility, and 2. I couldn't remember what my style of hand-writing looked like. The only time I had been using pen and paper was to write short shopping lists and to-do lists.
So far, I have discussed only the use of tools, but even my processing of information is slowly changing back. I am a little better able to focus on individual tasks one at a time again. Since, re-gaining this skill, I found my level of comprehension has gone up. Before, I had gotten to the point of multi-tasking so much with technology that I couldn't even remember what other tasks needed completion.
Three weeks ago, I was trying to read an article for school on my computer when I came across a word I needed to look up. The word was "inchoate" (which is quite funny, because that's how I've been through this whole transformation). I ended up searching the Internet for the meaning of the word and got lost in different information as links led to other links, leading me away and on to other topics.
I made a point of disciplining myself and returned to read my article and my thoughts drifted to another class of mine. We had been discussing how Facebook looks at your profile and tailors the sidebar advertisements to your interests. That reminded me of a great book I read called, "Feed". (spoiler alert) The book was about a futuristic society in which when children when born, typically, they were implanted with a chip. The chip monitored a person's interests and formed demographic and psychographic profiles in order to offer geographical services and products right to the brain throughout life. "Feed" focused on two teenaged characters. One had a late implant and as a result, she could at times, willingly disconnect herself from the feed. Because she was still able to think for herself, she ended up playing with the system and giving out messages to the chip that she was interested in things outside her demographic and psychographic profile like expensive cars and things that didn't make sense for her lifestlye. It was an informal experiment she was trying out (I won't spoil the book entirely, but the act leads to her demise). The other teen had the implant from birth and couldn't decide things for himself, couldn't concentrate, and couldn't form coherent full sentences. He let the feed guide his movements and activities. Ironically, I couldn't remember the author's name, but I was trying so hard to finish my reading that I resisted looking up the information. When I got to the end of the article, I couldn't remember what it was I wanted to look for. I even posted on Facebook that I was having difficulty remembering something I knew I wanted to look up, complaining and blaming multi-tasking with technology. When I stepped away from the computer and went to have a shower, it was while rinsing my hair that I remembered what I wanted to look up.
I am frightened for the digital natives. Their ability to retain information in their long term memory by connecting and making attachments is at risk largely due to the distractions precipitated by the act of technological multi-tasking and short spans of time with information. Stephen Kotler wrote an article in the May 2009 edition of Psychology Today in which he wrote,
"The harm being done by Twitter is the harm it's doing to the brain. The average user goes tweet-tweet all day long. This tunes the brain to reading and comprehending information 140 characters at a time.
No one's yet done the research, but I'm willing to bet my lunch-money, that if you take a Twitter-addicted teen and give them a reading comprehension test, their comprehension levels will plunge once they pass the 140 word mark."
Kevin Parrish wrote an article in Tom's Guide, published in September of 2009 about research done by Dr. Alloway, that suggests that Kotler is right.
"As reported by the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, working out of the University of Stirling in Scotland, says that working memory is the ability to remember information, and actually put that information to use. After extensive research in working memory, she believes that success and happiness stem from this ability rather than having high IQs. She also believes that certain video games can train working memory, especially those that involve planning and strategy.
Although Facebook offers "thinking" games such as Sudoku, managing friends and dates on the social website exercises the working memory. Twitter, YouTube and texting, on the other hand, isn't exactly healthy. "On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,'' said Dr Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.''"
Alloway's work was done with 11-14 year old test subjects. Perhaps, it would also be beneficial to study those of us that teeter on the wall between the digital natives and digital immigrants. It might also be worth studying younger teachers for the added benefit of revealing the impact on the development of a new "educational model".
There is a lot of reading, which I initially tried to read off the computer screen. I have since printed off the articles, highlighted passages and written notes in the margin. I do have the technology to write sticky notes in the columns of PDFs and highlight text but I don't seem to retain the information in the same way. There's something about feeling the paper in hand and putting the geographical positioning of the passages into photographic memory that makes me connect better with the text than a screen scroll on a computer. This brings to question whether it's a digital native versus digital immigrant issue. I don't think that it is.
My brain has seemed to re-wire itself over the past 10 years though I am considered a digital immigrant. I have much evidence of this transition, especially since going back to school. I had to re-learn how to write with a pen. Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but it took a long time to 1. choose between printing and cursive for speed and legibility, and 2. I couldn't remember what my style of hand-writing looked like. The only time I had been using pen and paper was to write short shopping lists and to-do lists.
So far, I have discussed only the use of tools, but even my processing of information is slowly changing back. I am a little better able to focus on individual tasks one at a time again. Since, re-gaining this skill, I found my level of comprehension has gone up. Before, I had gotten to the point of multi-tasking so much with technology that I couldn't even remember what other tasks needed completion.
Three weeks ago, I was trying to read an article for school on my computer when I came across a word I needed to look up. The word was "inchoate" (which is quite funny, because that's how I've been through this whole transformation). I ended up searching the Internet for the meaning of the word and got lost in different information as links led to other links, leading me away and on to other topics.
I made a point of disciplining myself and returned to read my article and my thoughts drifted to another class of mine. We had been discussing how Facebook looks at your profile and tailors the sidebar advertisements to your interests. That reminded me of a great book I read called, "Feed". (spoiler alert) The book was about a futuristic society in which when children when born, typically, they were implanted with a chip. The chip monitored a person's interests and formed demographic and psychographic profiles in order to offer geographical services and products right to the brain throughout life. "Feed" focused on two teenaged characters. One had a late implant and as a result, she could at times, willingly disconnect herself from the feed. Because she was still able to think for herself, she ended up playing with the system and giving out messages to the chip that she was interested in things outside her demographic and psychographic profile like expensive cars and things that didn't make sense for her lifestlye. It was an informal experiment she was trying out (I won't spoil the book entirely, but the act leads to her demise). The other teen had the implant from birth and couldn't decide things for himself, couldn't concentrate, and couldn't form coherent full sentences. He let the feed guide his movements and activities. Ironically, I couldn't remember the author's name, but I was trying so hard to finish my reading that I resisted looking up the information. When I got to the end of the article, I couldn't remember what it was I wanted to look for. I even posted on Facebook that I was having difficulty remembering something I knew I wanted to look up, complaining and blaming multi-tasking with technology. When I stepped away from the computer and went to have a shower, it was while rinsing my hair that I remembered what I wanted to look up.
I am frightened for the digital natives. Their ability to retain information in their long term memory by connecting and making attachments is at risk largely due to the distractions precipitated by the act of technological multi-tasking and short spans of time with information. Stephen Kotler wrote an article in the May 2009 edition of Psychology Today in which he wrote,
"The harm being done by Twitter is the harm it's doing to the brain. The average user goes tweet-tweet all day long. This tunes the brain to reading and comprehending information 140 characters at a time.
No one's yet done the research, but I'm willing to bet my lunch-money, that if you take a Twitter-addicted teen and give them a reading comprehension test, their comprehension levels will plunge once they pass the 140 word mark."
Kevin Parrish wrote an article in Tom's Guide, published in September of 2009 about research done by Dr. Alloway, that suggests that Kotler is right.
"As reported by the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, working out of the University of Stirling in Scotland, says that working memory is the ability to remember information, and actually put that information to use. After extensive research in working memory, she believes that success and happiness stem from this ability rather than having high IQs. She also believes that certain video games can train working memory, especially those that involve planning and strategy.
Although Facebook offers "thinking" games such as Sudoku, managing friends and dates on the social website exercises the working memory. Twitter, YouTube and texting, on the other hand, isn't exactly healthy. "On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,'' said Dr Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.''"
Alloway's work was done with 11-14 year old test subjects. Perhaps, it would also be beneficial to study those of us that teeter on the wall between the digital natives and digital immigrants. It might also be worth studying younger teachers for the added benefit of revealing the impact on the development of a new "educational model".
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Drowning under all the readings!
I am into my second official week of the Masters program and I can't believe how many readings we have for our classes. Monday morning I finished off the last of my readings for the classes I was scheduled for that day. When I reached the outside doors of my first class, another student was sitting reading what looked like a photocopied book. I asked him what class it was for and he said it was for the second class of the day. For a moment I thought he must be in a different class so I checked by asking him if the topic was on the "Effects model". He told me that was last week's topic. When I checked my book I realized that I had finally caught up on last week's readings, not this week's.
The incident frazzled me so much that I came home and wrote an essay for the class that isn't due for another month. When I went to bed at 1:30 AM this morning I felt relieved. When my alarm woke me up at 6:20 AM, I was exhausted. I'm going to have to put aside a few hours to get some extra sleep. I don't know when that will be. I have a huge Google Earth project due next Monday and we've been told it shouldn't be for a tour. There goes all the wine tour pictures I took this weekend. Back to the drawing board.
The incident frazzled me so much that I came home and wrote an essay for the class that isn't due for another month. When I went to bed at 1:30 AM this morning I felt relieved. When my alarm woke me up at 6:20 AM, I was exhausted. I'm going to have to put aside a few hours to get some extra sleep. I don't know when that will be. I have a huge Google Earth project due next Monday and we've been told it shouldn't be for a tour. There goes all the wine tour pictures I took this weekend. Back to the drawing board.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Mirror Worlds and Virtual Worlds
I've only had one class so far this year in Digital Virtual Environments, but I can already tell it's going to be my favourite. I'm lucky enough to have Gemini winner, Richard Lachman teaching the course. Lachman is known for the online work he did surrounding Discovery Channel's Race to Mars.
We've had an intro to Mirror Worlds which basically amounts to modeling of the real world online like Google Maps and Earth. I will need to create a multi-media project that ties in as a story to Google Earth. I'm waiting for the light bulb to go off on this one.
We've also talked about the Virtual Worlds which entails self-contained environments and fictional creations such as those in Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games. I'm familiar only as a bystander in MMORPGs. My 9-year old son plays Runescape. One of his avatars is a female. It's an annonymous way of trying on a completely different identity. One character asked him, "What's happening, hot chick?" I think I'm going to learn some things from watching my son. Eventually in the class I will need to create an avatar of my own in the online game, Second Life.
We've had an intro to Mirror Worlds which basically amounts to modeling of the real world online like Google Maps and Earth. I will need to create a multi-media project that ties in as a story to Google Earth. I'm waiting for the light bulb to go off on this one.
We've also talked about the Virtual Worlds which entails self-contained environments and fictional creations such as those in Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games. I'm familiar only as a bystander in MMORPGs. My 9-year old son plays Runescape. One of his avatars is a female. It's an annonymous way of trying on a completely different identity. One character asked him, "What's happening, hot chick?" I think I'm going to learn some things from watching my son. Eventually in the class I will need to create an avatar of my own in the online game, Second Life.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
School Preparations
Well, summer vacation is coming to a close and I am still trying to tie up loose ends.
First, I still have to figure out how to get to school in Toronto each day. Looking at how limited the Greyhound sched is and how slow the Go-Train is (it takes a friend of mine 1 3/4 hours a day from Mississauga to drive to the station, take the train, and then walk to her downtown workplace), I've decided to drive and park. I spent almost the entire day looking over options, checking Kijiji, craigslist, Ryerson Ancillaries, etc. I'm really hoping to have this sorted out by the end of the week.
Second, I just found out the Board of Ed I work for will not let me supply teach during a leave of absence. This has me scrambling for work as I will need to work out how to pay some extra bills this year! So far, I have a week's worth of work lined up as a Popcorn Server at the Toronto International Film Festival. Something tells me the pay won't see me through the third week of September. Still, I'm excited for the experience. It's something I should have done 20 years ago when I first started my undergrad.
Third, I keep waiting for some type of inspiration in pinpointing a documentary topic to focus on this year. I am interested in the new media technologyu and how it has changed the way kids think and learn and what it all means for teachers and the future workforce. I'm just not sure if I have a large enough audience of people who care about the topic (besides teachers). After all, this is my chance to focus on areas outside of education if I should so choose.
Lastly, as a mother of three I know I won't be able to walk into Ryerson any time of the day or night and edit my doc, that's why I bought a MacBook pro. Now all I need is the Final Cut Studio package, Adobe Production Suite, Office for Mac, an audio console, wireless mic, portable lighting set, and a Sony HDRXR500V camera. I guess I'd better go back and focus on the second part of my list or back to bed and start dreaming!
First, I still have to figure out how to get to school in Toronto each day. Looking at how limited the Greyhound sched is and how slow the Go-Train is (it takes a friend of mine 1 3/4 hours a day from Mississauga to drive to the station, take the train, and then walk to her downtown workplace), I've decided to drive and park. I spent almost the entire day looking over options, checking Kijiji, craigslist, Ryerson Ancillaries, etc. I'm really hoping to have this sorted out by the end of the week.
Second, I just found out the Board of Ed I work for will not let me supply teach during a leave of absence. This has me scrambling for work as I will need to work out how to pay some extra bills this year! So far, I have a week's worth of work lined up as a Popcorn Server at the Toronto International Film Festival. Something tells me the pay won't see me through the third week of September. Still, I'm excited for the experience. It's something I should have done 20 years ago when I first started my undergrad.
Third, I keep waiting for some type of inspiration in pinpointing a documentary topic to focus on this year. I am interested in the new media technologyu and how it has changed the way kids think and learn and what it all means for teachers and the future workforce. I'm just not sure if I have a large enough audience of people who care about the topic (besides teachers). After all, this is my chance to focus on areas outside of education if I should so choose.
Lastly, as a mother of three I know I won't be able to walk into Ryerson any time of the day or night and edit my doc, that's why I bought a MacBook pro. Now all I need is the Final Cut Studio package, Adobe Production Suite, Office for Mac, an audio console, wireless mic, portable lighting set, and a Sony HDRXR500V camera. I guess I'd better go back and focus on the second part of my list or back to bed and start dreaming!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Back to School Jitters
It's been 16 years since I completed my undergrad in Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson in Toronto. I just completed my course request form for my Masters in Media Production, due to begin this Fall. I have to say, I'm a little nervous.
Though I've been teaching high school Communications Technology for the last 13 years and have taken several courses in education and media during that time, it's the technical side of things that has me sweating. I signed up for a course on digital virtual environments. This is an area my professors talked about back in the very early 90's, telling us to keep an eye on the future of this technology.
My knowledge in digital virtual environments is amateur at best. I use digital virtual sets with my students in the new TV studio at the school where I teach on a Newtek VT5 system I set up but I know this is just a small introduction into the world of digital virtual environments. The gaming world is evolving rapidly with virtual reality technology and even the movie industry's special effects/animation departments have grabbed hold. High-tech companies are continuing to build evolving and complex systems using virtual reality for training in a variety of industries. Christie Digital of Kitchener, Ontario held an exhibit at the Canada 3.0 Digital Showcase in Stratford this past Spring. On a break from manning a booth for the school board I wandered over to take a peek. They had a virtual reality display set up to simulate the "virtual" manufactured inside space of a helicopter to help designers with the placement of controls in the space. The perspective could be transferred to multiple users. It blew me away.
Imagine how this technology could change the future of education. As many school boards start to bring the axe down on tech programs they now deem "unsafe", with a little more time and investment in this technology we could start to use it in our traditional tech shops as a substitute for the traditional teaching methods. I'm sure there will a large number of opponents that will say nothing can replace the tried and true traditional teaching methods of actually doing the training in a real environment, but digital virtual environment technology would surely have The Workplace Safety Board, School Boards and Insurance Companies sleeping a little better at night.
Though I've been teaching high school Communications Technology for the last 13 years and have taken several courses in education and media during that time, it's the technical side of things that has me sweating. I signed up for a course on digital virtual environments. This is an area my professors talked about back in the very early 90's, telling us to keep an eye on the future of this technology.
My knowledge in digital virtual environments is amateur at best. I use digital virtual sets with my students in the new TV studio at the school where I teach on a Newtek VT5 system I set up but I know this is just a small introduction into the world of digital virtual environments. The gaming world is evolving rapidly with virtual reality technology and even the movie industry's special effects/animation departments have grabbed hold. High-tech companies are continuing to build evolving and complex systems using virtual reality for training in a variety of industries. Christie Digital of Kitchener, Ontario held an exhibit at the Canada 3.0 Digital Showcase in Stratford this past Spring. On a break from manning a booth for the school board I wandered over to take a peek. They had a virtual reality display set up to simulate the "virtual" manufactured inside space of a helicopter to help designers with the placement of controls in the space. The perspective could be transferred to multiple users. It blew me away.
Imagine how this technology could change the future of education. As many school boards start to bring the axe down on tech programs they now deem "unsafe", with a little more time and investment in this technology we could start to use it in our traditional tech shops as a substitute for the traditional teaching methods. I'm sure there will a large number of opponents that will say nothing can replace the tried and true traditional teaching methods of actually doing the training in a real environment, but digital virtual environment technology would surely have The Workplace Safety Board, School Boards and Insurance Companies sleeping a little better at night.
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