Cerebral Bypass

Yeah, that headline just happened. This is going to be a quick post to deal with a truly stupid issue: The release of Obama’s Birth Certificate. An while I’d love to tear into the Donald and the “birthers” on this issue, my friend Jessie, HuffPo and the Onion already beat me too it. So I’ll focus my ire at a different source: The Media.

SERIOUSLY?!?! How is this still being given any airtime? What do you think you’re doing? Have you all gone stupid, or just lost all journalistic integrity?!?

*huff* *huff*… Ok, now that I’ve calmed down, let me explain this as simply as possible: There ARE NOT two sides to every story. If a lunatic repeatedly makes claims that are false, you don’t have to listen to him or disseminate the insanity, even in the hopes of “correcting” it. Why? Because in order to tell people that he’s wrong, you’re first telling them what he said. Why not just stop at the source and just ignore the stupid? Yes, I know you’re interested in ratings, and that’s ok, but don’t let people take advantage of your addiction. You’re better than that. I hope.

This is certainly not a communication related post, but it is a tech and society one. According to this opinion piece on cnn.com, not one of the retired space shuttles is being sent to Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center. And, leaving aside the issues I have with the retirement of the venerable flying bricks, I do have a serious issue with refusing to honor the men and women on the ground who helped make the Space Program what it is. I’ve been to Cape Canaveral, I’ve seen the shuttle launch, I’ve watched it come back down both successfully and not, and throughout all of that the people in Space City U.S.A. were the ones who made it happen. Let the shuttle go home to Texas where it belongs. Whatever strange politics and backroom deals have occurred within NASA that led to this decision need to be explored and overcome. I urge everyone who reads this to write to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (or failing that NASA in general) and demand that Mission Control receive what they so rightly deserve.

While I doubt this is getting much national coverage, I have to mention it: Wisconsin’s own walking family values scandal Randy Hopper has managed to hop back to the top of the sex scandal column. Mr. Hopper, perhaps driven by a need to live up to his porn-star-esque name, first made headlines when it came out that a) he was estranged from his wife and no longer living in his district; b) he was living with his 26-year-old mistress/girlfriend, who just happens to be a lobbyist; and c) that the aforementioned girlfriend was given a state job, complete with a paycheck 36% higher than the previous holder of the post. And, like the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, Hopper has again lived up to his name in his quarterly letter to constituents by listing the number of a phone sex chatline as his office phone number.

Now that we’ve all had a well-deserved laugh at this gaff, we need to ask whether he and his staff deserve a break. I mean, the porn industry does comprise 25% of the 1-800 numbers in the U.S. So it is rather easy to accidentally send someone their way.

On the other hand, who doesn’t double- and triple-check that their contact information is correct, particularly a politician plagued by scandal and facing a potential recall. All in all, this is just another example of the amateur hour politics that are increasingly making it to the national stage. Taken individually, Hoppers antics are funny. Taken together, they begin to approach the level of sadness and disdain.

But for now it’s still just damn funny.

In my previous post, I discussed one project I’ve been involved in and began to dissect the issue which I’ve noticed (seriously, if you haven’t read the previous post, you kinda’ should).

In this one, I’m going to tackle some of the less technological, more pedagogical issues I have seen, which call the actual assignment (creating a video application for a study abroad program) and the supposed learning outcomes into question. But again we need some course background, in particular some background into the trajectory of assignments. As previously stated, this is a foreign language composition course, and as such it is somewhat writing and grammar intensive. Over the course of the semester students are required to complete three essays, each of which goes through multiple rounds of revision, in addition to numerous quizzes and homework assignments. There is no final exam for the course. The last of these three essays asks the student to discuss a personal formative experience and is due 2 weeks before the end of the semester.

So how does the video project fit in? Well, that’s the thing… it really doesn’t. A tenuous link has been formed between the video application and final writing assignment in that students are supposed to connect the formative experience with the study abroad program they are applying to. At no point in the semester are the students provided the opportunity to work through their script, but rather they are required to complete and hand in both the script and the video on the same day as the third writing assignment. The final two weeks of the course are devoted to watching all of the videos in class and discussing their pros and cons. So what exactly are the problems raised by this approach?

1. It diverges from the instructional pattern developed throughout the semester. Requiring students to complete multiple revisions of their work, with feedback from both instructor and peers, develops a set of expectations which should not be destroyed without good cause. Yes, it may be fair to require a final paper which illustrates the concepts covered and does not undergo the same level of editing or assistance, but not if the final project fails to conform to the structure of the others.
2. It’s due the same day as another major assignment, and is actually supposed to draw from said assignment. Doing this without a good reason results in harried, under-performing students and reduces the impact of both assignments.
3. It’s a waste of time and highlights the deficiencies in the project. While I normally champion in-class discussion of projects, in this case I must object. Given the poorly constructed nature of this project, the time being devoted to “analysis” could be allocated much more effectively. As it is, the students have been set-up to fail, and this will only make that failure public. Not to mention that this is a composition course, not a film analysis or production course, which means that the students (not to mention the instructors) have not been trained in providing or receiving multimedia critique and feedback.
4. The value of the assignment is disproportionate to the amount of work involved. As it stands, the assignment is worth 5% of the student’s overall grade. Given the workload and time required to complete a quality video project, particularly for students without any real training, this is grossly unfair.

Ok, this post is getting longer than desired, so I’ll come back to some proposed solutions for the above issues in the next one.

So, it appears that my previous fears were somewhat unfounded… although Mother Nature certainly may have played a role: “Democracy is crying frozen tears about Sarah Palin’s visit to Madison. Or it’s snowing in April.”

However, the media coverage left much to be desired, and the spin was out in full force. During the live stream of the “event” on channel3000.com (a local broadcast station), the camera never left the stage or provided context to the size of the event. Nor did it provide coverage of the counter-rally headlined by Madison Mayor-Elect Soglin and Rep. Erbenbach, though it is worth noting that the counter-rally was small, as most people opted to surround and disrupt the Tea Party rally.

Yes, I said surround. By all accounts the number of Pro-Union/Anti-walker protesters outnumbered the attendees for the Tea Party by a solid margin, even managing to drown out the high-powered audio system at times. Early accounts published by both the AP and CBS (neither of which are available currently) put the Tea Party at 500~1000, while the Anti-Tea Party was between 5500~6000. Final tally by the Capitol Police put the count at 6500, but they would make no estimates of the distribution of the crowd. This is obviously being spun to fit the agenda of both sides, but the level of outright lies and hyperbole is actually rather restrained. So far.

First: Colbert for the win.

There’s enough out there on the web about the Colbert/Kyl exchange (if you’ve missed out, head here for a simple summary) that I don’t need to toss any more onto the fire. Rather, I’m going to look forward to the upcoming Tea Party Rally, complete with Sarah Palin herself, that is descending on downtown Madison tomorrow afternoon.

I have no issue with the Tea Party choosing Madison for their annual Tax Day Rally, but I do have reservations about how the event will be portrayed given the previous coverage of both Tea Party and the Madison protests. Obviously I can’t foresee exactly what the coverage will be (I’m good, but I’m not that good), but I am going to make a prediction: The crowd size will be grossly exaggerated.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the traditions of Madison, WI, I should clue you in to what Saturday actually represents: The First Farmers’ Market of 2011. Each week over the summer, the Dane County Farmers’ Market is held on the Capitol Square and is (according to the website) the largest one in the country.

Watch coverage of the Tea Party and WI Protest over the weekend. Keep a close watch on the counts provided and the discussion around it. I’ll have a more detailed analysis after the fact.

Although my work at DoIT:Engage offers me plenty of opportunities to explore the uses of technology in the classroom, I’ve recently been assisting a colleague to incorporate a number of technologies and new media forms into her class in an unofficial status, and have come to recognize some potential pitfalls, as well as some unforeseen benefits, which I hadn’t dealt with previously.

But first, a bit of background (and yes, the names have been omitted to protect the innocent): My friend is a teaching assistant for a spanish composition class here at UW-Madison. There are over a dozen sections of this course, of which she teaches two, and the entire course is overseen & structured by a coordinator. Each TA has a large degree of automomy in developing course plans and determining how to run their sections, with the coordinator responsible for maintaining parity across the course and providing the overall structure. Both my friend and the coordinator are intrigued by the teaching and learning possibilities offered by new forms of technology. Yet neither of them are, in my experience, highly tech-savvy.

In the past, my friend has integrated a number of technologies into the course with varying degrees of assistance and success, some of which I will be covering in a later blog post. However, today I feel the need, as a videographer and instructor (not to mention unabashed geek), to discuss the course wide implementation of a video project framed as an 5 minute application video to a study abroad program.

First, the tech side. At the most basic level this is a simple assignment technology wise, requiring a relatively new computer, a camera, and video editing software (all of which are readily available to students). The final project is to be judged on content, not production quality, so students could simply sit in front of a camera and read their script. But simply reading a script to a camera does not qualify as innovation, as there is no pedagogical benefit of that over having them stand in front of the class and give a speech (truthfully I think having them give a speech would actually be more beneficial). Rather, if you are going to have them produce a video they should learn the basics of how to actually use the form to enhance their message.

And this is where the first major issue arises. In this particular course, the coordinator, as well as most of the TAs, provided no support for the technology or multimedia aspect of the project. The TAs themselves did not receive any training, and only one opportunity (a publicly available “Intro to iMovie” course with room for 30 people offered by DoIT) was made available to the roughly 300 students. While both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker have been developed to be as user friendly as possible, not providing students training or instruction in how to succeed at a given task is unforgivable, particularly when there is a simple solution.

In this case, my friend and I sat down and worked through the project over the course of an afternoon. She developed the script (more on the specifics of the assignment in a later post) and I walked her through both what a storyboard is and how to use one to organize the various media (video, images, music, onscreen text, etc.) for a project. We then filmed her reading the script, imported the video, and walked through the basics of iMovie using her storyboard and materials to complete a rough video. The following day, we conducted two training sessions (one for each section) wherein the students used the same storyboard and materials to construct the beginning of her video. Total time investment: 7 hours. Payoff: Unknown (projects are not due for a few weeks), although the immediate, informal feedback from the students has been highly positive and their stated comfort level with the project has increased.

Looking at the bigger picture, the process above is one which could, and should, be expanded and modified to give both the TAs and the students a better feel for the project and a better chance at gaining something through the experience. Given more time to prepare, I would have implemented the following training outline:

1. Develop a written step-by-step training script covering the basics of iMovie and video production, including storyboard development, basic camera operation, quality and use of still images, use of music and sound, and copyright limitations and guidelines.
2. Develop a set of unified materials for use in the training process, including a storyboard, videos, audio, stills and text.
3. Conduct a training session for the TAs following the script developed above, allowing them to learn the program in the same way their students will, and familiarizing them with the teaching script/plan.
4. Require each TA to complete a video similar to those being constructed by the students and make the final products, as well as the components of each, available to all sections.
5. Hold training sessions for each section with the TA as the instructor and a technology specialist on-hand for assistance if needed, establishing the TA as qualified to conduct, assist with, and evaluate the project.

Five simple steps. That’s all that would have been required to take this section of the project from ineffective and unsound to effective and pedagogically sound. But the underlying problems would still be there, and that’s where the next post will pick up.