Brooding over Baudrillard

This morning's task is to get my head around Jean Baudrillard's The Illusion of the End, my second reading for the summer.  This book is very different from Technologies of Wonder, as Baudrillard is a sociologist and philosopher looking at culture and society versus Delagrange, an academic looking at digital technology specifically.  So, this blog post will have two parts.  First, I am going to lay out my understanding of Baudrillard's philosophy of history, as history is the foundation of The Illusion of the End.  Then, my ultimate goal is to determine how Baudrillard applies to digital media work.

A Temporary Stop ...

I have come to a stopping point for my Google Sites and coding exploration. My goal has been to create a class site for my high school freshmen on Google Sites with CSS coding within the pages to personalize them. My students will use this site throughout next year to share work with each other and a larger audience (for example, they will present original poems and recorded recitations of them) and to complete group projects (for example, they will work with partners to research and create a page on the site about a Holocaust topic).

Exploring Blogs

Responses to first part of Lingua Fracta:
- Cheri Lemieux Spiegel's post
- Diane Cooke's post

Responses to finishing Lingua Fracta:
- Eric Sentell's post
- Mat Reynold's post





My partner in the canonical book assignment (McLuhan's Understanding Media):
- Jennifer Buckner's post
- (Reading Eric's post above and seeing that he was also reading McLuhan led me to read his McLuhan post ... so I have two on three topics versus three on two topics. Hope that is okay ...) Eric Sentell's post

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #5

Understanding Media: The Extensions of ManChapters 1-11:
Marshall McLuhan ... "McLuhan wrote with no knowledge of galvanic skin response technology, terminal node controllers, or the Apple Newton. He might not have been able even to imagine what a biomouse is. But he pointed the way to understanding all of these, not in themselves, but in their relation to each other, to older technologies, and above all in relation to ourselves our bodies, our physical senses, our psychic balance. When he published Understanding Media in 1964, he was disturbed about mankind’s shuffling toward the twenty-first century in the shackles of nineteenth century perceptions. He might be no less disturbed today. And he would continue to issue the challenge that confronts the reader at every page of his writings to cast off those shackles" (Gordon).

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #4

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, chapters 16-22:

"Because without the Mercerism experience we just have your word that you feel this empathy business, this shared, group thing" (209-210).

After our 1/23 class when Dr. Rodrigo shared that one reason we are reading this book is to think about empathy as we study new media, I have found myself pondering this idea even more. When I first wrote about empathy, I was thinking about whether digital networks can ever replicate the empathy drawn from physical proximity that underlies non-digital social networks. Dick wrote (see above quote) that empathy will always be the divider between human and android -- which makes me think about whether humans can ever find full empathy through digital connections. Does the inherent lack of empathy in something digital create a barrier to the conveyance of human empathy across digital channels? Dick's empathy box does generate human empathy across its technology -- is this something possible outside of science fiction?

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #3

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, chapters 11-15:I am going to wait to comment on this novel for my next post when we have finished reading it all ... Today instead I would like to explore our next text ...

Lingua Fracta, chapters 1-4I somehow reached my place in life as an English major and teacher without taking classical rhetoric. However, I am lucky because I am married to a Latin teacher who pulled right out of his files this when I asked him about the classical rhetoric canons. I hope you find it helpful too -- I keep mine in my Lingua Fracta book as my reference. My husband says the picture is of him at a younger age ...

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #2

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Chapters 6-10
I am still enjoying reading this book. Dick has set up parallel story lines that I know must cross in significant ways as I finish the book, and I am curious how that will happen. A version of Rachael Rosen showing up at John's apartment was the first link, but now with the android faux police headquarters appearing, it seems certain that the idea of separating android from human will only tangle up more. I did wonder how the (as we were to discover) android police were able to run the bone density test so quickly on the victim in Rick's car; that test had been said to take a very long time at Rosen. Maybe androids are more adept at pinpointing other androids? Which is intriguing -- how the humans are worrying so much about correct identification, while the androids are either better at it or care less for accuracy.

Reading, Thinking, Reflecting #1

(A note about many of my blog posts this semester: I have started my New Media Theory I class in my doctoral program at ODU with Dr. Shelley Rodrigo. Many of my posts will be reflections on the reading and work we are are doing. I will always note what reading I have done in case you want to find the texts yourselves. I am loving Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep!)

Chapters 1-5, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
I am thinking about empathy right now. Empathy -- the connection to others that androids cannot feel. Rick's realization that he was caring for an android in the form of his electric sheep (42) really spun the idea of empathy for me.

Back to School

School has fully started for me now -- both my teaching and my doctoral class. While I always mourn the loss of loose summer days, I am a teacher because I do still love the start of school. I have a few goals for this year:

1. Deepen the collaborative work I have done with the wonderful Katie Dredger at Virginia Tech. Katie and I have used a Ning to link preservice teachers with my AP English students as they study Othello (see post here about this work) . Katie and I are going to try to link her students and my freshmen this fall in a study of poetry. I already use a Wiki for my students' poetry work -- they post their own poetry, their favorite poems by other authors, and recordings of their poetry recitations. Having this new platform to experiment collaboratively with is very exciting for me (and leads to me next goal ...).

2. Develop students' understanding of collaborative learning through new media and technology. My freshmen this year used a few different technology tools in Middle School, and I hope to build on their experiences with an emphasis on linking to others through these tools. We have started this on their blogs, as they have been excited to receive comments from each other. (Maybe you will comment on a post too!) We will use these blogs as joint repositories for our ideas about short stories, and we will talk at the end about how they are a great study guide since there are so many ideas to test your own against. We will move to the Wiki later this fall where they will put their own work out there more directly for comment, and I am excited to have Katie's students as an audience for this work. That is still for me the major roadblock for taking full advantage of the collaborative learning potential of Web 2.0: finding an audience. Students lose steam when they are only interacting with their teachers online, but it can be very hard for teachers to find strong collaborative relationships to create audiences for their students. Yes, there are students out there who end up finding their own audiences, but that is rare, to be honest, in the world of everyone as a blogger, tweeter, and vlogger.

3. Dive deeper into my study of collaboration through social media platforms. I was able to write about my Ning work last spring in my doctoral class. I hope this fall, as I am taking Research Methodologies, to move into full research of this work. Once again, Katie and I hope to work together on this, with her mentoring me as I am new to "official academic research."

4. Stay clam and in the moment. My most important goal. My children are growing, my body is waiting for me to take care of it, my bookshelves are filling with future reads, my trees will drop leaves to be raked, apples will grow that need picking and canning into applesauce ... These are the things I want most to do as I also work on my professional goals above. I have made this goal many times in the past and, to be honest, not done very well achieving it. This school year is different though, and while I am not fully sure why, I think I know a big reason.

I spent this past summer for 6+ weeks in my first "summer doctoral institute." While I learned a ton and enjoyed it in many ways, I also truly wore myself out. My eyes were bloodshot from all of the reading, my legs were stiff from all of the sitting, and my brain was too full to take in anything new. Yes, doctoral students hold these ailments as badges of honor, and certainly going through these stresses does warrant congratulations. However, I do not want to live my life that way, and I went into this doctoral program with the self-promise that it would not consume me. I had no idea how I was going to make sure it didn't (I am no better than all of the doctoral students who have cone before me, so who I am to do it differently?), and I failed at it this summer. But it was not a total failure in the bigger sense of things. Instead, I have seen clearly where I do not want to end up, and I have seen how I got there.

So, I have been doing very well ever since stepping back and doing only what I can, trusting that what needs doing will get done. My biggest achievement has been not griping at my kids every morning as I get them ready for school but instead enjoying the time I am lucky enough to have with them since we go to school together and remain together until I walk them every morning to their classrooms. That is an amazing thing I get to do, and I know it will come to an end as they get older. Better enjoy every minute of this now.

I will be back to this blog throughout the year each time I find myself failing with my fourth goal ... because I know I will fail and regroup many times. Here's to 2011-2012!