I just stumbled across this excellent anti-cyberbullying ad from the US Adcouncil and had to share:
It’s simple, straight-forward and extremely effective. Show your kids.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot this semester has been the way my teaching does - or doesn’t - encourage my students to develop that elusive, highly ambiguous but universally sought-after quality of creativity. I’ve been running two units - Digital Media, which is a relatively large second year unit (about 140 students) with a fairly hefty hands-on component; and a far smaller honours unit called Creative Selves which is specifically about exploring the way creativity is thought about, situated and can ultimately be harnessed in the world of work (or, at least, the world outside of formal education).
Even though creativity is often associated with the romantic ideal of the lone creative genius, one of the contradictions I’ve been quite aware of, and something that has come up in both units, is that both individual and group creativity is often meaningfully enhanced and provoked when students are thinking about the audience that might ultimately view/experience/interact with their creative work. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise since over the last 4 years I’ve often encouraged (and occasionally mandated) that students blog their work for just that reason. In so many cases, when the potential audience for a work - written, audio, video or whatever else - stops being just the marker or examiner and starts being a potentially global community, students tend to push themselves to work that little bit harder. Occasionally one or two students have suggested this is unnecessarily stressful, but 99% of the time when students are faced with the large potential audience that the internet provides, they step up to the challenge. There are other clear advantages of getting students to create in the public sphere, too, such as those outlined by Jason Mittell:
One of my pet peeves about teaching is that often you get wonderful student work that is, by design, written for an audience of one, and has no lingering presence beyond the semester. By asking students to blog, share, and otherwise publish their work, it both raises the bar for their own sense of engaging a community with their ideas, as well as offers an opportunity for faculty to publicize their excellent work.
Mittell has written a series of posts showcasing some of the impressive work students have made as part of his Media Technology course this past semester. They range from podcasts which interrogate something specific about audio, to video-games based shorts (sort of machinima, but not in the Red Vs Blue sense - more videos which mix and match game footage in different ways to highlight a particular critical or creative point). One assignment I particularly liked was the use of video remixes, or mashups, which included one student effort which remixed current blockbuster trailers - and a ubiquitous iPhone ad - to create an overhyped trailer for technological convergence itself:
Another student collaboration I’ve come across recently is Shake Girl, The Graphic Novel. This graphic novel was a collaboration between 17 Stanford creative writing, art and design students who’ve produced a moving and provocative story which ultimately ends up being a heart-wrenching tale highlighting the terrible phenomenon of acid attacks on women in Cambodia. This is no two-dimensional moral rant, though: it’s a thoroughly engaging story, with sophisticated characterisation which envelops the reader in the story only to shock them with the protagonist’s fate. In their About section, one note rang particularly true for me, regarding the challenges but also the substantial rewards which come from successful creative collaborations between students:
The process of collaboration - we think all of our students will agree - was both one of the most frustrating and exciting experiences of our lives. A lot of the first in the first two weeks, much of the second in the last four. Those of us writing the script seemed to trip over one another in the early stages. We wrote, researched, rewrote, tossed drafts aside, argued, yelled sometimes, tossed our hands up in the air, and then started over. The illustrators waited patiently, until patience ran out, and we were finally left with this mission statement: 1. We want to get this project completed, and 2. We want to make everyone moderately happy.
And with that, we made the jump to light speed. How many late-night hours did we draw, redraw, rewrite, design, redesign, and mostly… really enjoy each others company, efforts, and camaraderie?
All I can say is that Shake Girl definitely highlights an impressively successful student collaboration! [Via BBoing]
This graphic novel also reminds me on one idea for a small-scale creative project I’ve always wanted to do especially with a large first-year class. Many of you will recall the fabulous Theory.org.uk Theorist Trading Cards, which were essentially bubblegum cards featuring well-known cultural theorists. In a large first-year class where new theorists, ideas and concepts are introduced for the first time, I suspect that if students generated their own cards as part of tutorial presentations, this would be a great way to creatively get them reading and thinking about the main features, and differences, between the writers and works they encounter. As an added bonus, these trading cards could be collated online and serve, to some extent, as useful prompts when students are revising for exams.
For a few more examples of engaging creative work, Siva Vaidhyanathan has posted two nifty videos created by students in his Introduction to Digital Media course: Restricted Knowledge? University Bandwidth Regulation and Facebook World.
Along a similar line, this week my Digital Media students are presenting a pitch, outlining an idea for a short video which will critically explore some aspect of digital culture loosely based on arguments about either convergence or citizen journalism, so I hope I’ll be able to post a few of the results in a few weeks time.
Until then, I wanted to end this post by pointing to the very cool and very virally popular video Apple Mac Music Video by Dennis Liu. While not really student work (Lui has just finished formal education, but has been working professionally for a while; read an interview here) this is video is inspirational. It’s a brilliant reminder that under the hood of an Apple Mac (or even a decent PC) is more than enough power to make some truly inspiring and amazing creative work …
Michael Wesch and his 200 students in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, Spring 2007 collaborated in exploring what exactly a student does these days. Their results make a fascinating video and a timely reminder of the way (some) student experiences are changing:
Some of the noteworthy results from 133 of the students survey included:
Given how many times Wesch’s first video, ‘The Machine is Us/ing Us’, has been used to discuss Web 2.0, I suspect this video may very well find itself as part of the conversations we have in rethinking student engagement in the twenty-first century.
Sometimes I find it hard to get the time to explain certain concepts - RSS, for example - which both have enough information and avoid boring to death those who already know things. Thankfully, those folk over at CommonCraft do really, really good introductory explanations of Web2.0-type tools. Here’s their take on social bookmarking:
After that you’ll also want to check out RSS in Plain English; Wikis in Plain English; Google Docs in Plain English; and Social Networking in Plain English. Watch the show for future useful episodes. I’m sure these clips will find some use in my teaching! 
Australia’s QUT has been in the grip of a very public controversy recently which dovetails between issues of freedom of speech, academic ethics and the transparency of university processes. The controversy came to light and media attention on 11 April this year when two QUT academics, John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, published an article in The Australian entitled ‘Philistines of relativism at the gates’. In it, Hookham and MacLennan very publicly took issue with the ethics of work being done by PhD candidate, Michael Noonan:
A time comes when you have to say: “Enough!”, when you can no longer put up with the misanthropic and amoral trash produced under the rubric of postmodernist, post-structuralist thought. The last straw, the defining moment, came for us when we attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach. Candidate Michael Noonan’s thesis title was Laughing at the Disabled: Creating comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains. The thesis abstract explained that “Laughing at the Disabled is an exploration of authorship and exploitation in disability comedy, the culmination of which will be the creation and production (for sale) of a six-part comedy series featuring two intellectually disabled personalities. “The show, entitled (Craig and William): Downunder Mystery Tour, will be aimed squarely at the mainstream masses; its aim to confront, offend and entertain.” (Editor’s note: the subjects’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.) Noonan went on to affirm that his thesis was guided by post-structuralist theory, which in our view entails moral relativism. He then showed video clips in which he had set up scenarios placing the intellectually disabled subjects in situations they did not devise and in which they could appear only as inept. Thus, the disabled Craig and William were sent to a pub out west to ask the locals about the mystery of the min-min lights. [...]
At the seminar we were told there was a thin line between laughing at and laughing with. There is no such thin line. There is an absolute difference that anyone who has been laughed at knows. We must admit with great reluctance that at the seminar we were alone in our criticism of the project. For us, it was a moment of great shame and a burning testimony to the power of post-structuralist thought to corrupt. It is not our intention here to demolish the work of Noonan, an aspiring young academic and filmmaker. After all, ultimate responsibility for this research rests with the candidate’s supervisory team, which included associate professor Alan McKee, the faculty ethics committee, which apparently gave his project total approval, and the expert panel, which confirmed his candidacy. [...]
What we have instead is the reality that cultural studies is in the grip of a powerful movement that we call the radical philistine push. It is this same movement that has seen the collapse of English studies and the consequent production of graduates who have only the scantiest acquaintance with our literary heritage. It is also undermining the moral fabric of the university.
So, what starts with ethical questions about a particular thesis, quickly becomes a much more generic complaint about the corruption of education by poststructuralist and postmodern theory and approaches. I know nothing of the people writing or mentioned in this article, but have to say after reading the piece I wasn’t swayed; my sympathies were more with Michael Noonan than anyone else, because as a PhD candidate I know I would have been almost destroyed by such public denouncing of my work. This, I should add, is not a comment on the quality on the work being or proposed - I know nothing beyond the article above and the surrounding debate, and haven’t seen any of the footage mentioned - but rather a comment on the process and the reasonable expectation that any criticism of a candidate’s work be handled within the university as long as possible. I’m not saying there is never a case for ‘going public’ with dismay about certain research, but from what I’ve read I believe Hookham and MacLennan took that step far too early. More to the point, combining criticism of a specific project with a very generic attack on a particular body of theory and its influence on teaching seems a less than generous way of dealing with the work of a PhD candidate.
The issues raised here also beg serious questions about transparency and universities. There is a lot of talk about the need to transparency of research outcomes since (most) Australian universities are at least partially publicly-funded. I quite agree with that notion. However, I think the idea of the processes of a university being taken public under the rubric of transparency tend to skew what makes it into the public arena. Selectively releasing aspects of a process (such as an ethics review process and confirmation of candidature) around research which clearly relies on careful contextualisation is bound to produce a one-sided picture. Tellingly, when Hookham and MacLennan’s article was republished in Online Opinion, the were comments from a student - using the handle WWSBD - who’d had Noonan (the candidate) as a lecturer, praising his efforts to educate student about people with disability. Moreover, this is the only place I’ve seen Noonan himself comment publicly:
I am at the student at the centre of Hookham and MacLennan’s attacks.
I thank WWSBD for understanding and appreciating my work in its context. I appreciate the words of Anecdote, who understands that a work must be seen and placed in context before it should be attacked. And I am disappointed for bedwin, who has lost all respect for me on the basis of an uninformed and incorrect article.
Much has been assumed about my project, my integrity and my intentions. Very little of it is based on truth. The simple facts are these: the excerpts I showed at my PhD confirmation seminar were presented in the context of exploring and discussing issues of authorship and representation in disability. My project seeks to empower the disabled, to give them a voice through comedy. Each clip was prefaced with my own thoughts about whether or not this had been achieved.
As a sessional staff member at QUT, I can think of nothing more deplorable than attacking a student’s incomplete research in a public forum. Hookham and MacLennan have made no effort to read my PhD confirmation document (it was offered) and they rejected my attempts to meet and discuss their concerns.
To date I have not sought to respond to their attacks in print. But I refuse to be further bullied and vilified before the public, my peers and my students.
However, the story doesn’t end there. Earlier this month The Australian report that Hookham and MacLennan are now facing a disciplinary hearing at QUT for their public comments, with the university arguing that the two unfairly attacked the candidate and his supervisory team. Now, whatever their views, Hookham and MacLennan seem to have a reputation as inspirational teachers themselves, and the news of their censure galvanized some of the QUT student body to defend their actions on the basis of free speech. The student campaign is visible through it’s “Save Our Lecturers” MySpace page. Moreover, over at Martin Hirst’s blog, he has posted ‘Freedom of Speech disabled at QUT’ which points to this documentary which is now available at YouTube:
(Hirst is a friend of Hookham and MacLennan’s, and his post also contains the full text from Hookham and MacLennan’s original article in The Australian, as well as some additional commentary from The Australian and subsequent letters to editor.)
The YouTube documentary clip, by QUT student Adrian Strong, is very compelling; Hookham and MacLennan both come across as intelligent, compassionate teachers and academics who have good cause for concern. My point here is not to judge the debate being documented in this clip - although I imagine it would be extremely compelling for many people. Rather, in the era of participatory culture and digital media, this clip is indicative of a very profound change which can see debates and arguments that once would have remained closed suddenly being open to public viewing and public debate. In such an era, digital literacy is extremely important - the ability to create, edit and share such a clip is a key part of the ability to make a case in the public eye. It’s no surprise that QUT, which has Australia’s most renowned Creative Industries faculty, should be the source of the first such debate in Australia (to my knowledge, at least).
Illustrating my point, I just noticed another posted by the same YouTube user who posted the clip above (and thus, I presume, also be Adrian Strong) which talks in even stronger terms about a perceived campaign of censorship at QUT:
(Again, let me reinforce, I don’t know enough about the other things going on to really judge this debate, but I do know that the perception of censorship certainly doesn’t add to the reputation of any university. However, like the first clip, without any further rebuttal, this clip is likely to be very persuasive to viewers.)
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