Visualised ABC of Education in Sociocultural Perspective

This presentation stems from the belief that visual perception is a cognitive activity. I prepared it when working on the project “Moodle” som verktøy for læring tilknyttet pedagogikkundervisningen” (Nesna University College), and meant it to be an example of how we may process information by translating a message from one set of symbols to another set of symbols (from verbal language to visual language). The idea is presented in the post Utilizing Simple Media to Develop Deep Approach to Learning.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Presentation “Audacity for the Very Beginners” is an example of visual instruction. I prepared it to help students do do the task that was a part of a course IKT og læring (Nesna University College). My goal was to use as little verbal laguage as possible, and my main concern was to show “things” in context.

Revisiting the Concept

Is position of media in cultural and political life central? ….. Yes

Is media presence in everyday life ever-increasing? ….. Yes

Is media landscape changing rapidly? ….. Yes

Does the presence, or rather context, of these hard facts create the need to study media in a critical way (at all levels of education)? …………………. Yes (I would say)

The concept of MEDIA EDUCATION has been disscussed for quite a number of years. To revisit its ideas, and find out how they can be put into practice, I wholeheartedly recommend clicking the following links:

Media Awareness Education,

Alliance of Civilizations,

EuroMeduc,

MediaShift

Media Education Foundation

The study of words and numbers   OR   the study of “pictures” ???

Nothing is in the intellect  which was not previously in the senses (the Sensualist philosophers say) yet the educational status of senses seems to be underestimated. Educational system continues to require “productive” thinking, neglecting the importance of strengthtening perceptual component and seemingly excluding the activity of the senses from cognition (eh, those antagonisms). Yet perception is judgement and judgement is thinking (or not?). Recommended “homework”: a)  Gestalt psychology, b)  Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim, c)  A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink (the concept of six essential senses provokes thinking).

Information, Revolution, Pollution

What is driving “progress” forward? Technology. What is the most “hard-working” technology of our times? Information technology. What is the side-effect of this “hard work”? Information smog.

Information technology is revolutionizing our lives on regular basis. As revolutions tend to be burdened with “paradoxes”, the information one also brought some. Let’s consider two results of IT: access to information (which has been made truly immediate), and amount of information (which has been made truly “laaaarge”).  Immediate access to information makes us (somehow) have less time, although, by definition, time-saving technologies should provide us with more time. Loads of available information  make us (somehow) know less, although loads would rather connote multiplication. As a result of these results some tend to be confused, some tend to be overwhelmed, some just do not care, and some seem to manage quite well (and even try to help the others). Every change in cultural ecosystem (and particularly in the domain of symbolic universum) triggers implications of educational nature. Information overload creates a change that belongs to the category of disturbances. Can we qualify it as a pedagogical problem of media? Well, the term disturbance smells “problematic” so we may assume the presence of some potential for generating (also) pedagogical problems (though problems happen to be “constructive”). Of course, again, it’s only up to us (read: our media literacy) whether infosphere will be providing us with utopic or dystopic contexts. Recommended reading: Tyranny of the Moment. Fast and Slow Time in Information Age, by Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

Reflection triggered by yet another comment from Tom Erik Holteng (min digitale hverdag)

The idea of utilizing blogging for educational purposes seems to be not a bad idea. But, … there are always some “BUTS”. I’d like to refer to the “but” related to “social” factors that could create “barriers” for blogging. Some claim they are not social enough to expose their ideas to “public”. And I have a bit of a problem with this particular problem. I have a problem working out if we’ve got here a problem with social interaction or a problem with the content we are supposed to put into the messages expected from us (e.g. with reference to educational tasks). Social interaction is one thing and creation of meaning to solve a problem (whether socially or not) is another thing. I do agree with the opinion that teachers to be should be developing social skills in the course of their studies so that they make true professionals (and I expand on that belief in the post Utilizing Simple Media to Develop Deep Approach to Learning), blogging will only help develop these skills. Social skills are  practical in their nature (by the very definition of the term skills), and blogging is “PURE” practice (social practice of communication), and this “challenge” shouldn’t be avoided by teacher students.  I’d like to attract your attention to the notion of semiosphere and provoke reflection on how it relates to social functioning.

Reflection triggered by the comment from Tom Erik Holteng (min digitale hverdag)

Educational qualities of blogs, or rather BLOGGING I should say, are numerous (and unquestionable). They are mostly related to, and stemming from the fact that blogging is both a process and communication. Due to that characteristics the outcome of blogging, which is a blog, is an ALIVE and INTERACTIVE construct. Having the potential of enhancing research activities (helping exploring, monitoring and registering), blogging equip the ones who are involved in it with the possibility of receiving feedback from the others (MANY others, and VARIOUS others), which makes it a “collaborative mind technology”. Display of reasoning (which a blog makes) together with social interaction (which a blog entails) gives the activity of blogging the quality of social semantic networking and makes learning a truly social adventure. (Isn’t it so?)

Reflection triggered by the comment from Robert K. Blechman (A Model Media Ecologist)

On studying the comment on my Media Ecology post I couldn’t stop the develoment of my undisciplined thoughts towards the issue of media content. Due to my natural inclinations over which I have no control, I cannot help raising ethical questions related to rapid development of media “messaging” and commercialization of communication being a “NATURAL” consequence of that (“commerce” truly contributed to the development of human civilisations thus epithet natural seems to be natural in this context).  Coming back to the point, reflecting on the issue of orality versus literacy (oral culture versus writing culture, considerations triggered by Walter Ong), as well the issue of translocation (in terms of time and space) being the quality of registered messages (though not only), I’d like to point out to the characteristics of contemporary media. Contemporary media are mobile, interactive and highly integrated (multimedia) – which makes them not only written and oral at the same time (e.g communication in Internet chat environment), but also visual and dialogical (at the same time). I want to focus on the last quality mentioned. To what extent are contemporary media dialogical in fact, and to what extent they are dialogical because they create such possibilities in technical terms? The simple answer could be: media are dialogical to the extent  we make them dialogical. And that is obvious (and logical). The only problem is whether we’ve got the competence to convert our contact with messages brought by media to a dialog. Today I’d like to attract your attention to the issue of content analysis, and wake up your reflection on the ability to interract with media content as part of media literacy.

About environmental approach to media

What connotations does the word environment bring to your mind? Does it trigger thoughts about fresh air or pollution? Maybe it’s  Greenpeace that makes the first association with reference to it. I want to put an emphasisis on the FACT that envirinment is about interaction (and, as interaction is so closely related to communication, I could say environment is about communication, but I’m not going to go that far in this post). What’s the relation between media and environment? Well, media ARE our environment, and the evidence for that thesis is provided by an interdisciplinary character of media studies. One could say media are not our natural environment. And that is true. But to what extent are we still “natural” creatures? Well, to a certain extent, of course, we still are, yet the acceleration of technological change pushes us towards expantion of our cultural “face”, and media are the most dynamic “layer” of contemporary culture. An animal symbolicum has never been that much “mediated“. Media create our cultural environment, and as an educationalist, I cannot refrain myself from posing a question to what extent this environment is human friendly, or (using trendy “nomenclature”) ecological . Today I’d like to attract your attention to the concept of media ecology, and one of its originators Neil Postman (enjoy ).

Useful reading: What is Media Ecology?

A short introduction to the concept of image-based research

Have you ever thought over the question why the saying “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words” was coined just like that, and not the other way round? Intuitively, informative power of images is “something” we can (somehow) not question. There is a number of reasons for that. Firstly, images activate numerous modes of nonverbal communication making communication “richer”. Secondly, images trigger building  meanings by denotation “faster” than words, making communication more efficient. Thirdly, images “speak” with universal signs, which makes communication easier. Finally (although I skipped fourthly and so on), images are omnipresent in contemporary culture. Visual imagination and visual sensitivity can be of more help in exploring sociological phenomena than questionnaires and interviews ( visual sociology). Images make quite a career in social practices of conveying information (visual journalism), not to mention research work (visual anthropology). I’d like to encourage you to “stop” now and then in order to do some “reading” of visual data around you. It can be an interesting experiment.

Recomended reading:  visual literacy.

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Whenever I go through the pictures I took in Cadiz (southern Spain, 2007), this one always makes me “stop”. I “guess” it tells quite a story (by the way, I call it “excepto”).