A Portal to Media Literacy is a powerful lecture courtesy of Dr. Mike Wesch, the creator of some very popular Youtube videos that enlighten us to the significance of our current roles in the history of cultural development.
On his Digital Ethnography Youtube channel, Mike says, "[his] videos explore mediated culture, seeking to merge the ideas of Media Ecology and Cultural Anthropology." The exciting thing for me here is, I believe many of my peers in educational technology are also involved in quite similar work - not necessarily with video, but in teaching, peer coaching, blogging, tweeting, and, well... living! I just didn't realize it could sound so fancy. Now, not for a minute do I believe I'm thinking at the heady heights of Wesch, but...
Mediated Culture: we are using new forms of mediated culture to empower ourselves, students, our learning networks, and therefore, the collective "we".
Media Ecology: never have I been more feverishly absorbed in McLuhan and McLuhanesque concepts; and in how these concepts not only affect our cultural environment and future, but those of our global partners. Nor have I seen so many McLuahan truisms being sallied forth by my PLN contributors.
Cultural Anthropology: from within the context of international education and its associated cultural dialogue and exchange, we lend ourselves daily to forms of conscious and subconscious cultural anthropological study.
The terrific LMS mashup Wesch pieced together to meaningfully engage his students in a process of such everlasting and perhaps evolving value, would inspire even the most dour educational technologist or integrationist to reflect upon the possibilities of K-16, RSS Utopia.
The process we witness in Wesch's video superbly illustrates how Mark Federman's UCaPP will begin to change the face of education and other structuring institutions. Ubiquitous Connectivity and Pervasive Proximity illustrated in Federman's No Teacher Left Behind lecture will no doubt be misinterpreted, abused, and misused by many and varied levels of authority. However, this will all come to a screaming halt when the tipping point renders UCaPP invisible - camouflaged in the newly functioning society it will help to shape.
In the video we see Welsch's students successfully employing the tools of UCaPP to take control of their own learning fate and therefore shape their identities in the process. Federman's 4C's of Connection, Context, Complexity, and Connotation will not only shape the way we learn, they will hopefully shape the way all facets of society function.
My desire here is that education 'steps up' as a main contributor in this impending transcendence. Although it has always been the business sector that adopts early in the area of Connections (there's no 'duck and cover' when it comes to saving money and making profits), I don't fear that education will lag behind much longer. The driving forces of: under-engaged, digitally native students; under-performing learning environments; the explosion of free and Open Source weapons coupled with an economic crisis; the increasing liberation of educational resources; and a new breed of transparent and horizontal formal and informal teacher leaders that won't stop blogging to save themselves (e.g., Chris Lehmann and Will Richardson), are creating the perfect storm that might just be able to put all the C's together.
If Wesch's students are anything to go by, we (Education) could have this thing in the bag. All we need are a few hundred thousand Wesch's to get the job done.
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