Blending Voices, Blending learning: Lessons in pedagogy from a post-16 classroom
and it focused on some of the inspirational work we have seen at The Sheffield College. We were really excited about it when we worked with some of the tutors there last year who have developed a course which draws on young people's issues, interests and experiences in a course which manages to blend the lives of the students with the voices of poets and others. The project features work from Eminem and William Blake in a manner that allows the students to see connections between their own lives and the words of literature in a range of eras. (Hey and did you check it out? Both poets now have their own websites.)
Aaaanyway I was there again today, involved in a different piece of research and talking to some VERY interesting people. One of these just commented in a kind of casual way,
' I am sure these days we all blend our activities. We blend our lives in all sorts of ways.'
I found this a very interesting observation; she was talking about how she mixes media all the time, looking in bookshops, thinking about Amazon; disregarding printed train timetables and resolving to look up times on the Internet.
We communicate with each other using so many different types of technology without thinking about it.
I know that what she said was obvious; but at the same time I found it startling.
It is the whole thing about dependency on technology and using it on the move, just embedding it into our everyday activities. We are so networked.
And later, when I went and talked to the people (the tutors from the wonderful course) I love so much in their stafffroom, I took photos of scenes that I have seen so many times through the windows there.
The world going by through the window, old and new ways of travelling side by side. When you are in that part of the college you feel so much a part of Sheffield, the emblems of the culture whizzing past so often and the whole panorama laid out before you. It is no wonder that the tutors never forget who it is they are teaching, who it is they are writing for and working with. In that room I feel I have a foot inside and a foot outside the college all the time.
And in the corridor, the technology that keeps us going in the liquid modern world, is shown in the presence of the suddenly trendy fashion of exposed wires and pipes running across the ceiling. We want to be confronted with what we have made, proudly showing the mechanisms of technology, instead of hiding it (as we used to do) under plaster. It is as if we want the technology in our faces. This is interior design that says we are not ashamed to show how things work; that we are modern beings; that we depend on technology.
10 comments:
Yes but what we have to remember is that in a modern or so called post modern society is that this type of rationality de mystifies the world for us (Durkheim). The exposing of wires and pipes is modernism par excellance. Max Weber points to this when he talks about the 'ironcage of rationality' while its true that these modern technologies give use the impression of freedom, what they actually do is make us less free. We are tracked by our visa cards, satellite survelliance can pin-point us to within a metre when we use our mobile phones, security services can listen to our conversations, we are tracked by cctv cameras as we walk through the city, every webpage we visit is logged, through the impact of the new technologies we are less free than ever.
We might well want to blend these technologies into our lives, but human beings have always had to adapt to the circumstances in order to survice that is exactly why we have been so successful as a species. But i would perhaps want to argue that rather than being inclusive they are in fact majorly alienating. They remove us from the socil millieu, they isolate us, cut us off from face to face human interaction, indeed I may want to go as face as sayiing they are simply another way of controlling us al la Marx and false consciousness - embourgeouisement.
Showing your pipes is, I would argue is actually belated modernism. The modern building is soulless, anomic and alienating simply becuase of its rational design and its dehumanising features. Modernist buildings lose their soul by displaying it on the outside like a cheap hooker on the kerb. Post Modern buildings look to the past in an attempt to re-gain their soul to become more human and less soulless. Pre modern buildings have more soul are less alienating and have more mystery.
What we need in our lives is as Durkheim suggests more mystery and as Weber tells us less rationality. Where new technologies fit ie mobile phones, blackberries and so on I'm not so sure.
"Modernist buildings lose their soul by displaying it on the outside like a cheap hooker on the kerb." An excellent line, I love this.
Funnily enough when I took out my camera to take the pipes and wire photo, the person with me pointed out that it was less a design feature than an economic decision.
However, that aside, I quite like the look of this as the wires are purple and neat. I don't like the starbucks approach though, where they seem always to reveal huge ugly pipes.
I have got a bit more right wing as I have got older I suppose and am very happy to be tracked. I have never felt intimidated by the fact that I can be traced and indeed find it reassuring that video tapes reveal who the London bombers are etc. Also. When my friend was missing afterr the Tsunami in Thailand in December 2004, I managed to find he was safe because the police tracked him via his use of his bank card.
So I have to say I have found technology good on this area too!
And are you joking?? Technology removes us from the social mileau?? I would never have 'met' tou or Vitriloica without blogs. I would never have 'met' Anya online and then gone to see her in Miami.
No DrRob. You have to admit it; technology is fab and you love mixing it into your life.
Cheers Chris glad you found it interesting. In fact they are knocking the building down soon apparently.
Ah yes we may have 'met' online but is this a fulfilling relationship of the sort marx talks about when he talks about alienation? Arn't we both alienated from each other and from everyone else who is part of this great big machine.
In that sense our relationship, as all of them are, online or via other technology are false and simply illusions of meeting. We suffer estrangement from each other from our community, society, or world.
Oh I'm no luddite, far from it, I want a blackberry and an Ipod and and and
But it worries to see kids fixated on their mobile phones, thier whole world shrunk to a square inch of glass, txting messages to their friends five feet away from them. But I suppose they said the same thing about Rock n Roll eh!
Alienation is a contestable concept. It assumes a 'real' or 'authentic' experience and delinates how far we are away from it. Using it in this context is problematic, because:
a) It assumes we yearn for the real. Actually I quite like the fact that I have never met anyone who smells on the internet.
b) It assumes that virtual relations are replacements for other relationships. I think they could well be supplemental.
My tea break is over, I have to return to the handstand position.
Hmm I just am not sure I know what Marx means though by a fulfilling relationship. I am not sure really.
I don't think that online stuff should be an 'instead of' but an 'as well as' . But I also think that like tv it opens up new vistas for people - even those who would otherwise not look very far.
So many people are experiencing new things in the REAL world, because of what they have found out online too. People are rarely totally confined to their screens - unless they are forced to be so.
I am hugely influenced by seeing my daughter - virtually housebound and totally reliant on me to take her out, yet has had her world opened up to new relationships and experiences that would otherwise not have ever touched her. She has friends all over the world; and while this would not ideally be what she wants as first choice sociallising, it is a wonderful alternative to complete isolation from same age peers. Most of those she knows online are fit and healthy and bring her news of what they are doing and thinking and it is a real life line - for me as much as for her I guess.
Mind you, just to argue backk against myself, it would also be pretty cool if her school (when she belonged to one) or social services would think about how to enrich the lives of young people in her position...
synchronicity. I think Troistetes and I were writing at the same time.
This is all very interesting- fascinating infact- but what about the outcome of this year's Feb 14th which was promised?
Oh, and by the way Trois Tetes, I think I do get bad smells off some BLOGS I read- but none that is included in Dr Joolz's links.
On reflection Digigran, I agree. Pheeew!
What a shame I missed all this I was UNBLENDED and lived a 19th century life in Dorset thus missing out on blogging etc etc.
But I will catch up with Issy's wonderful digital pics of Portland and BLEND in again.
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