Video Games as Collaboratories

To facilitate encounters/experiences, we need to revisit Dewey's model of the laboratory school. In his lab school, students learned through hands-on, constructive activities. Core curriculum was tied life skills, students' personal interests, and past individual experiences. It was a model that was infeasible for most school districts due to the resources required to carry out such interactive and personalized learning stations in the late 1800s, earlier 1900s. However, we no longer need to construct a series of hands-on laboratories outside of the classroom to create the type of interactive learning proposed by Dewey. All we need are computers and high-speed access to the Internet.

               A modern version of the Dewey Laboratory School can be seen at Quest to Learn in New York City. It's the creation of both game researchers and teachers, which "re-imagines school as one node in an ecology of learning that extends beyond the four walls of an institution and engages kids in ways that are exciting, empowering and culturally relevant" ("Quest to Learn"). Learning emerges from play as students engage in games/quests and tackle narrative challenges in collaboration with each other. By learning through games, students are able to practice their problem solving skills. Unlike textbook narratives, games are non-linear. Greg Costikyan explains how games depend on decision-making: "Decisions have to pose real, plausible alternatives, or they aren't real decisions. It must be entirely reasonable for a player to make a decision one way in one game, and a different way in the next" ("I Have No Words" par. 15-16).

               Dewey discusses extensively how we build knowledge through confronting problems, experimenting with possible solutions, and making discoveries. Experimentation is key and is an integral part of video game design. Players navigate environments and instigate events and outcomes through their actions. Games operate often through trial and error as players try to achieve their desired results. As James Gee explains, "[Video games] situate meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experience to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the modern world." Video games are hands-on, experiential, customizable, and often inquiry-based models of learning.

As mentioned earlier, Dewey asserted that a collaborative community is the core of democracy. Often gamers learn from each other, divulging their discoveries and cheats. This component of gaming has grown exponentially as games have moved beyond their initial console boxes to become networked online. The largest example of this is the World of Warcraft Wiki which contains over 99,000 separate pages. Because collaboration has become a key component of the gaming experience, one could argue that video games can be used to promote democracy globally.

               In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal argues that video games can be seen "as global collaboration laboratories, or collaboratories: online spaces for young people from around the world to come together and test and develop their ability to cooperate, coordinate, and cocreate at epic scales" (279). She gives the example of a game she designed for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, Lost Ring. The game premise is that ancient Greeks banished an Olympic sport and tried to destroy evidence of its existence. Now, gamers must collaborate and work together to piece together the history and rules of this lost sport. Once collaborators discovered the whole history of the sport they began to play it, gathering in various cities to revive the lost sport. On the last day of the Summer Olympics, six teams assembled in various cities across the globe and competed for honorary medals in the Lost-Sport Olympics. As this example demonstrates, a global collaboratory was formed as people worked together to cooperatively revive a sport and create events.

               Recent interest in interactive games and online collaboration have led to games based on real world problems, such as our dependency on oil. The game World Without Oil creates a simulated oil crisis asks online players to consider life without oil, what the effects would be, and how they would adapt. Essentially, players are engaging in problem-based learning in a collaborative, game setting. Learning is individualized based on the locality, interests, and lifestyle of the players. A farmer, soldier, college student, and auto worker all have very different experiences. Together their narratives and reflections build a larger simulated reality. McGonigal explores why individuals would participate in a game based on a negative forecast rather than an escapist fantasy. She discovered, "By turning a real problem into a voluntary obstacle, we activated more genuine interest, curiosity, motivation, effort, and optimism than we would have otherwise. We can change our real-life behaviors in the context of a fictional game precisely because there isn't any negative pressure surrounding the decision to change. We are motivated purely by positive stress and by our own desire to engage with a game in more satisfying, successful, social, and meaningful ways" (311).

Nick Dyer-Witheford connects the pooling the intelligence through gaming environments to Marx's concept of general intellect. In Grundrisse, Marx predicts a turn in capitalism whereas wealth will come to depend on social knowledge due to automation and communication and transportation networks. Dyer-Whitford discusses the complexity of general intellect in the post-fordist world: "Read sympathetically, 'general intellect' can be seen as a prescient glimpse of today's knowledge economy, with production teams, innovation milieux and university-corporate research partnerships yielding the "fixed capital" of robotic factories and global computer networks. The dialectical prediction of "classical" Marxism was that "general intellect," though generated by the world market, would destroy and supersede it... The assertion of neoliberalism, although phrased in very different terms, is that the world market is completely compatible with general intellect. The concept of "the new economy" is a marriage made in heaven between high-technology systems and the commodity form, a perfect union of Net and Market: "friction free capitalism." However, within gaming environments, Dyer-Witheford sees potential for resistance. Players are asked constantly to shape the reality of their virtual environments, making narrative choices, designing avatars, and managing populations. This ability to imagine alternatives as well as to plan to strategies can be applied to social problems. 

The Fall of Critical Pedagogy: Draft 1 (The Uncut, Overwritten Version)

While there is much to hold onto within the typical formation of critical pedagogy -- viewing education as means for social change, encouraging teachers to become public intellectuals, creating curriculums driven by students' interests and experiences, and supporting diversity and multiplicity -- the dialectical approach driven by a counterhegemonic sociopolitical vision against capitalism has become problematic. Criticisms emerged and grew as critical pedagogy moved from theory into practice. Educators struggled to manipulate a model based on the informal education of Brazilian adults to fit the institutionalized classroom setting where work is required for credit and graded. In 1988 Elizabeth Ellsworth claimed in "Why Doesn't This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy" that critical pedagogy does not go far enough in problematizing the role of the instructor and the limitations of dialogue. No matter what the sociopolitical vision of the instructor may be, classroom equality is an illusion as critical pedagogy practices leave the "authoritarian nature of the teacher/student relationship intact" (306). In addition, the instructor's personal stake and relation to their sociopolitical vision is often left unexamined. Ellsworth suggests shedding the goal  of "utopian moments of 'democracy,' 'equality,' 'justice,' or 'emancipated' teachers -- moments that are unattainable (and ultimately undesirable, because they are always predicated on the interests of those who are in the position to define utopian projects)" (308).

One of the most common utopian moment critical pedagogues aspire to is a moment where capitalism is rejected. A central claim in much critical pedagogy scholarship is that schools are a reproduction of capitalistic corporate society (Giroux, Shor, Mclaren, Apple). During the 1980s, the parallels between the factory line and the classroom were easy to make -- they were both housed in centralized institutions, employed standardized forms of labor, etc. However, today such comparisons are much more difficult to make as scholars from various fields have begun researching the increasingly dominant status of "post-fordist" or "post-factory" categories of labor: affective labor (Hardt and Negri), immaterial labor (Lazzarrato), knowledge labor (Drucker), virtuous labor (Virno), linguistic labor (Marrazi), symbolitic analytic labor (Reich), ludolabor (Dibbell), info-labor (Berardi), spectacular labor (Bellar), cognitive labor (Yann Moulier Boutang), etc. What all of these formulations have in common is a recognition that the classic Marxian “labor theory of value” that drove critical pedagogue’s conceptions of labor and capitalism (as well as much work in critical and cultural studies work of the 70s and 80s) no longer makes much sense (even as many turn to another conception of Marx’s—his references to “General Intellect”—for contemporary inspiration).

Lazzarato divides immaterial labor into two parts: "informational content" and "cultural content." The informational content is comprised of communication within computerized and cybernetic systems, whereas the cultural content involves consumer and lifestyle choices that can be tracked and monitored. Taken together, the two result in what Mario Tronti calls a "social factory" in which labor in increasingly less defined by time and location (as in the traditional factory), creative and “intellectual” work takes precedence over physical labor, and products tend to be created for smaller groups of consumers and more flexibly attuned to shifting consumer demand (Thoburn).

The large encompassment of immaterial labor supports Antonio Hardt and Michael Negri's claim in Empire that there is no longer an outside when it comes to capitalism:  "There is nothing, no 'naked life,' no external standpoint, that can be posed outside this  field permeated by money; nothing escapes money [...] The great industrial and financial powers thus produce not only commodities but also subjectivities. They produce agentic   subjectivities within the  biopolitical context: they produce needs, social relations, bodies, and   minds-which is to say, they produce producers" (22).

Traditionally, critical pedagogues applied tools of postmodern critical theory—foregrounding the contingency or ‘constructed’ nature of societal norms, recovering marginalized identities or subjectivities—to resist the corporatization of schools. However, based on their analysis of contemporary shifts in the flows of capitalism, which feed off of the fragmentation of social identities, Hardt and Negri map contemporary capitalistic power as a system that is “not only resistant to the old weapons [of resistance] but actually thrives on them, and thus joins it would-be antagonists in applying them to the fullest. Long Live Difference! Down with essentialist binaries!” (138). Thomas Frank, to give just one more example, has echoed this analysis more eloquently, and with more of a focus on the cultural politics of American Leftism; he writes in his essay, "Why Johnny Can't Dissent," (an allusion to Rudolf Flesch's famous 1955 essay on literacy, "Why Johnny Can't Read"):  “Corporate America is not an oppressor but a sponsor of fun, provider of lifestyle accoutrements, facilitator of carnival, our slang-speaking partner in the quest for that ever more-more apocalyptic organism…Consumerism is no longer about ‘conformity’ but about ‘difference’” (34). Such a change complicates critical pedagogy's identity as a resistance pedagogy fueled by counterhegemonic practices. Resistance to norms only creates new niche markets on which capitalism can feed; simply put, in contemporary 'late' capitalism, resistance becomes surplus labor.

Recognizing these changes is key to addressing the conservative critique of critical pedagogy. Jeff Smith contends in "Students' Goals, Gatekeeping, and Some Questions of Ethics" that as college instructors we have an ethical obligation to help students fulfill their goals, even if those goals are to gain social mobility by joining, rather than critiquing, the dominant class. Similarly, Russel Durst argues for instructors to acknowledge that students are taking composition to gain skills for their future careers. However, he does not suggest that instructors shy away from critical examination of power structures and ideologies, as long as they acknowledge and accept those students who wish to hold onto their conservative beliefs and faith in meritocracy. Sullivan and Porter argue that there is a false dichotomy between students' future professional lives and their civic lives: "[W]e feel that many people in computers and composition have not paid                sufficient attention to workplace studies in professional writing, and to some extent have even exhibited hostility to the workplace, or at least reluctance  to see the workplace as a potential site for change.  However, by dismissing workplace practice, computers and composition fails to engage the key site  students will inhabit. The field ends up separating the workplace agenda  from the social change agenda in the composition classroom, thereby  reinforcing an old binary (classroom v. workplace), that, we contend, is  ultimately harmful to students" (xiii).

What is lost in this dichotomy is the middle ground and the belief that individuals can make a difference through their career. Engineers can incorporate more environmentally friendly approaches. Medical professionals can treat their diverse patients with better understanding and sensitivity. Scientists and innovators can question the patent system.

Ellsworth also asks us to reconsider our expectations of students and the results of classroom dialogues. If as Ellsworth and others (Elbow, Wright) assert, the critical class retains the unequal relationship between teacher and student, it is not a safe zone where students feel free to say anything without repercussion. As Ellsworth notes in her own class examining race through literature : "Things were not being said for a number of reasons. These included fear of being misunderstood and/or disclosing too much and becoming too vulnerable; memories of bad experiences in other contexts of speaking out; resentment that other oppressions (sexism, heterosexism, fat oppression, classism, anti-Semitism) were being marginalized in the name of addressing  racism-- and guilt for feeling such resentment; confusion about the levels of                trust and commitment surrounding those who were allies to another group's struggle; resentment by some students of color for feeling that they were  expected to disclose 'more' and once again take the burden of doing the pedagogic work of educating White students/professor about the consequences of White middle-class privilege; and resentment by White students for feeling they had to prove they were not the                enemy" (316).

None of these possible road blocks are acknowledged in the abstract theoretical vision of critical pedagogy. Though Ellsworth doesn't used the terminology, issues related to affect are also noted in her classroom discussions of race, which are, to use Jennifer Seibel Trainor's term, "emotioned." The term "emotioned" is used to describe how "beliefs become persuasive through mediating and mediated processes of emotional regulation, individually experienced feelings, and dynamics of persuasion and rhetoric." Emotioned is not the same as emotional, as it points to the "related dynamics of lived affective experiences, emotional regulation taking place through institutional and cultural practices, and language." Race is a lived experience, not a property held by individuals.

Affect theory explains the limitations of rational discourse. Students cannot fully articulate the reasoning behind their subject positions or beliefs because of the pre-cognitive elements that shape them. Furthermore, when individuals are presented with facts that irrefutably challenge their beliefs, their beliefs become further entrenched, a phenomenon psychologists call belief preservance . As reported by Scientific American, "Everyone does it, but we are especially vulnerable when invalidated beliefs form a key part of how we narrate our lives. Researchers have found that stereotypes, religious faiths and even our self-concept are especially vulnerable to belief perseverance." Interesting, the beliefs they we are most reluctant to scrutinize and change are the ones most often touched about in a critical classroom. No wonder the pragmatism of critical pedagogy is being called into question.

                To address the pragmatism of critical pedagogy in the composition classroom, one must address the key tool which much of the curriculum hinges upon, literacy. Two key considerations much be made here -- one acknowledging the role of affect and the other acknowledging that we have moved from a print-based to multimodal networked world of communication. In "Experiential Knowledge: How Literacy Practices Seek to Mediate Personal and Systemic Change," Gwen Gorzelsky argues experiential knowledge is necessary to address "the disjuncture between students' experiences and the conceptual and procedural knowledge of social critique" (404). She defines experiential knowledge as "the combination of procedural memory and the subjective, emotionally grounded nature of perceptions and cognition" (401). As an alternative to critique, Gorzelsky proposes a guided meditation, which allows students to embody a perspective and gain empathy. Essentially, we need a literacy that allows us to communicate with and elicit response from the nonrational body.

               Experiential knowledge gives us a new means of understanding subjectivity, beyond ideological construction. As Brian Massumi explains, "Affect holds a key to rethinking postmodern power after ideology. For although ideology is still very much with us, often in the most virulent forms, it is no longer encompassing. It no longer defines the global mode of functioning of power. It is now one mode of power in a larger field that is not defined, overall, by ideology. This makes it all the more pressing to connect ideology to its real conditions of emergence" (104). This complicates the idea that literacies are ideological, which is the foundational premise underlying critical literacy. We need to reconsider and expand our conception of the "relational manner in which meaning is produced" (Lankshear and McLaren 10)

               This expanded notion of literacy as a political formation that has both affective and ideological dimensions needs to be applied to the multimodal, networked world of the Internet. Here we are not bound by institutions but by access, infrastructures, software, and site design. The strength of one's voice is determined by the ability to network, draw "hits," and construct texts in various formats (websites, blogs, videos, etc.).  Critical literacy means understanding how websites work and how the varying elements change perceptions, privilege certain information, create boundaries, and shape identities.

               Due to the interactive nature of the web and new media, critical literacy needs to involve not only the control of information, but the control of experience. The newest form of persuasion online is video games. Dartmouth and NYU have designed a whole current around the concept called Values at Play. Instead of reading about oppressed populations, such as Darfur refugees, you can inhabit their lives through game play. Through embodying these characters, players gain experiential knowledge and develop empathy. Empathy, of course, leads to prosocial behavior such as volunteerism and minimizes negative behaviors such as racial stereotyping.

                While many critical pedagogues recognize the need to revamp approaches of the past to address globalization and advances in information technology, they don't address the cultural shift that resulted as we moved from a factory society to a control society. This shakes the foundation of critical pedagogy, which was designed as a pedagogy of resistance against the hegemony created by the institutions of the factory society. Furthermore, critical pedagogues fail to address the limitations of ideological critique and rationality, leaving the affective dimensions of identity, politics, and education unexamined. These issues need to be considered when addressing the common criticisms of critical pedagogy and creating a path with which to move forward.

Experiential Knowledge and Video Games

Much of my recent reading has talked about the importance of experiences when it comes to understanding or reacting to a particular demographic, social issue, or political action. In "Experiential Knowledge: How Literacy Practices Seek to Mediate Personal and Systemic Change," Gwen Gorzelsky looks at how a guided Zen Buddhist meditation (particularly the work of Thich Nhat Hanh) can help individuals gain experiential knowledge that can increase their empathy. She defines experiential knowledge as "the combination of procedural memory and the subjective, emotionally grounded nature of perceptions and cognition" (401). This type of knowledge is overlooked in early critical pedagogy practice causing "the disjuncture between students' experiences and the conceptual and procedural knowledge of social critique" (404). Instead of approaching social critique through dialogue, Gorzelsky suggests undertaking a guided meditation where suffering is visualized. This visualization creates an emotional response which affects the individual's perception of the situation. Neurological changes in brain structure and activity due to meditation have been recorded.

Gorlzelsky's call for more experiential approaches to literacy reminds me of the recent boom of "empathy games." Dartmouth and NYU have designed a whole current around the concept called Values at Play. Instead of reading about people, such as Darfur refugees, you can inhabit their lives through game play. Essentially, empathy can be taught through video games and empathy leads to many prosocial behaviors, such as volunteerism, and reduces negative behaviors such as prejudice. It would appear video games work much like mediation, creating experiential knowledge that affects people's perceptions and makes them more apt to take social action.

One of the most recent of these games is the Half the SkyMovement, which can be played through Facebook. It explores issues facing women globally, such as poverty and domestic violence. To play you inhabit the role of one of these oppressed women and go through her daily life (i.e. walk in her shoes). The characters face the tough issues of their community and work to creat change. Since its debut six months ago, over a million people have played the game (myself included). The game has so far raised over $400,000 dollars in donations.

Gorzelsky, Gwen. Experiential Knowledge: How Literacy Practices Seek to Mediate Personal and Systemic Change." College English 75.4. March 2013. Print.

Belman, Jonathan and Mary Flanagan. "Designing Games to Foster Empathy." COGNITIVE TECHNOLOGY 14.2. Print.

Affect vs. Ideology

One of the cornerstones of critical pedagogy is practicing counterhegemonic movements. The concept of hegemony as a component of political power emerged in the work of Antonio Gramsci. He believed it was the ruling classes promotion of cultural norms, behaviors, and desires that led to working classes' acquiescence of their oppression. For him, it answered why they supported the rise of fascism in Italy. His theory inspired the Birmingham School and the burgeoning field of cultural studies, which looked at how messages were decimated to the masses and reified norms and practices. For them it answered the question of why the British working class supported Margaret Thatcher. Later, American academics would apply the same causality to the election of Ronald Reagan.

Deleuze explains the acceptance and participation in fascism as related to Spinoza's concept of  "conatus, this being an innate tendency towards self-preservation which involves a determination to act on affectations however they are experienced or conceived through body or mind, through superstition or reason (E II, P9, S; E III, def.) but in which, 'self-preservation' can become mobilized in all manner of distinct experiences of self, inaddictions, perversions and transformations" (Ruddick 35). Essentially, their desire of self-preservation primed their acceptance for the political perversion that was fascism. Conatus is one component of the larger field of affect theory, which builds upon the work of Baroch Spinoza.

Affect theory moves us beyond ideology. As Brian Massumi explains, "Affect holds a key to rethinking postmodern power after ideology. For although ideology is still very much with us, often in the most virulent forms, it is no longer encompassing. It no longer defines the global mode of functioning of power. It is now one mode of power in a larger field that is not defined, overall, by ideology. This makes it all the more pressing to connect ideology to its real conditions of emergence" (104). Massumi returns to the election of Ronald Reagan, but instead looking at hegemonic practices and messages, he looked at the affective appeal of Ronald Reagan the man.

Logically, Ronald Reagan was not the best candidate. He often fumbled in his speeches, which were at times incoherent. He's physical presentation was jerky and unpoised. However, as Massumi explains, "The two levels of interruption, those of linear movement and conventional progressions of meaning, were held together by the one Reagan feature that did, I think, hold positive appeal--the timbre of his voice, that beautifully vibratory voice" (102). Somehow, because he presented no coherent ideologies, he became an inscribable presence. Voters fill in the blanks of his disruptions and place them in their local context. "That is why Reagan could be so many things to so many people; that is why the majority of the electorate could disagree with him on every major issue, but still vote for him" (103). Also, people felt he projected an air of confidence.

The concept of confidence became a key factor in the Kerry/Bush election as noted by Lauren Berlant. It was an election arguably one by affect. Affect is, according to Spinoza, 'affections of the body by which the body's power of acting is increased or diminished, helped or hindered, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections' (E III, Def. 3). As Berlant explains, "The Republican right paired an economic and imperial project with what Jameson calls a 'fantasy bribe'⁹: in this case the bribe was fantasy itself, the opportunity to keep fantasizing about the normative good life, authorized by the right-wing promise to maintain a vague scene and sense of normalcy (sharpened at one end by homophobia and, at the other, by the fear of economic and terrorist disaster)." More so, Kerry portrayed himself as a waffler who was unsure. The perception diminished people's desire to vote for him. Whereas those voters for whom Bush keyed in one key components of their values felt positive voting for him, even if they disagreed with some of his policies and actions. In these cases, affect seems more concrete, an impression that encounters individuals' affections, most of which are not consciously perceived or fully understood, and limits or encourages certain behaviors/reactions.

As explained by Massumi, the addition of affect doesn't dismiss ideology; however, it shows that ideology is just one component of a much larger picture.

Berlant, Lauren. "Unfeeling Kerry." Theory & Event 8.2. 2005. Web.

Massumi, Brian. "The Autonomy of Affect." Cultural Critique 31. Autumn 1995. 83-109. Print.

Ruddick, Susan. "The Politics of Affect: Spinoza in the Work of Negri and Deleuze." Theory Culture Society 27. 2010. Print.

Critique Critical Pedagogy Pt. 1

At this point in my dissertation, I'm looking at breaking down the critiques of critical pedagogy and tying them to the epochal shifts from the factory society to the control society, from disciplinary power to biopower, and from rationality to affect theory.

I went back today to look at one of the earliest critiques of critical pedagogy, where an instructor struggled to take the theory and put it into practice. I'm not sure if these paragraphs will make the cut.

Issues emerged as critical pedagogy moved from theory into practice. In 1988 Elizabeth Ellsworth claims in "Why Doesn't This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy" that critical pedagogy does not go far enough in problematizing the role of the instructor and the limitations of dialogue. No matter what the sociopolitical vision of the instructor may be, in college credit classes classroom equality is an illusion as critical pedagogy practices leave the "authoritarian nature of the teacher/student relationship intact" (306). In addition, the instructor's personal stake and relation to their sociopolitical vision is often left unexamined. Ellsworth suggests shedding the goal  of "utopian moments of 'democracy,' 'equality,' 'justice,' or 'emancipated' teachers -- moments that are unattainable (and ultimately undesirable, because they are always predicated on the interests of those who are in the position to define utopian projects)" (308).

So should educators have a sociopolitical vision for their classroom? One of the main distinctions between Freire and Dewey was Freire's radical agenda. This radical agenda is a response to capitalism and the cultural institutions that reinforce its exploitative nature. Because capitalism is pitted as the evil we are trying to extract ourselves from, critical pedagogy became divorced from the careerist or vocational aspect of education. As Ellsworth notes, this conscious movement away from the professional goals of the students is fueled by the interests of the instructor. A students' vision of utopia usually contains  a well-paying job.

Complicating this vision of helping students dismantle the system of capitalism is the emergent argument that there is no longer any social, political, or personal element outside the realm of capitalism. If, as Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt argue in Empire, there is no place outside the system of capitalism, then critical pedagogy needs to assess its counterhegemonic practices that are not only oppositional to the students desires, but ineffectual at keeping students from feeding the system.

In addition to the role and vision of the instructor, Ellsworth also asks us to reconsider our expectations of students and the results of classroom dialogues. If as Ellworth and others (Elbow, Wright) asserts, the critical class retains the unequal relationship between teacher and student, it is not a free zone where students feel free to say anything without reprecussion.

"Things were not being said for a number of reasons. These included fear of being   misunderstood and/or disclosing too much and becoming too vulnerable; memories of bad experiences in other contexts of speaking out; resentment that other oppressions (sexism, heterosexism, fat oppression, classism, anti-Semitism) were being marginalized in the name of addressing racism-- and guilt for feeling such resentment; confusion about the levels of trust and commitment surrounding those   who were allies to another group's struggle; resentment by some students of color for feeling that they were expected to disclose 'more' and once again take the burden of doing the pedagogic work of educating White students/professor about   the consequences of White middle-class privilege; and resentment by White students for feeling they had to prove they were not the enemy (316)"

None of these possible road blocks are acknowledged in the abstract theoretical vision of critical pedagogy. Though Ellsworth doesn't used the terminology, issues related to affect are also noted in her classroom where realized "all knowings are partial, that there are fundamental things each of us cannot know" (310).

Affect theory explains the limitations of rational discourse. Students cannot fully articulate the reasoning behind their subject positions or beliefs because of the pre-cognitive elements that shape them. Furthermore, when individuals are presented with facts that irrefutably challenge their beliefs, their beliefs become further entrenched, a phenomenon psychologists call belief preservance . As reported by Scientific American, " Everyone does it, but we are especially vulnerable when invalidated beliefs form a key part of how we narrate our lives. Researchers have found that stereotypes, religious faiths and even our self-concept are especially vulnerable to belief perseverance." Interesting, the beliefs they we are most reluctant to scrutinize and change are the ones most often touched about in a critical classroom. No wonder the pragmatism of critical pedagogy is being called into question.

---

The New Radical: Working with Capitalism?

“Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.”

In a thought provoking speech, Bono asks his audience to consider what this past global recession would have looked like if it weren't for the rise of the middle class in India and China buying goods from the United States and Europe. Granted this is very much a self-interested position. However, he also considers the quality of life change for those now able to participate in market commerce. Though I hope philanthropic endeavors continue, I agree that "aid is just a stop gap." Aid without opportunity denies people of the ability to self-determine and participate as equals. It is why my favorite type of aid is microfinancing. 

I've been thinking about Bono's speech as I work to develop my own reimagining of critical pedagogy, which has long considered itself a pedagogy of resistance, particularly against capitalism. The radical critique of critical pedagogy, particularly by Peter McLaren, is that it doesn't go far enough in its critique of capitalism and promotion of socialist values. However, at this point, I believe the much more radical idea is to work with capitalism rather than dream of a communal, market-less utopia. Is this possible? I will be exploring this concept more through the Erik Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias. He argues that we should work to redirect capitalism with a "socialist compass" and gives examples of hybrid economies that function with both elements of capitalism and socialism. Essentially what he offers is a pragmatic argument for incremental change and compromise. While it may seem to some that this is compromising too much, it is a feasible plan that can start with everyday actions rather than a dreamed about revolution. 

Thoughts on the Anti-Education Era by James Gee

In the final chapter of Anti-Education Era, James Gee argues that we need to critically read like writers-- questioning the construction of the text and putting the text in conversation with our own work and interests. It is with this spirit that I compose this blog post. While I agreed with many of the points Gee made and found the book an easy read, I was overall disappointed. The back cover highlights four points Gee argues in eye-grabbing red font: "social media can both grow and stymy the next generation of learners," "it's up to educators and parents to maximize social media's positive effect inside and outside the classroom," "digital learning and social media can teach students to resolve global challenges," and "synchronized intelligence is an important strategy to overcome the limitations of today's schools." Overall, though, the book most spends a majority of the time discussing why humans are stupid (147 of 215 pages). This portion of the book is general social commentary about the faulty nature of memory, the need for comfort and meaning, and how people group themselves. Within this portion, my favorite quote, has to be, "We join committees where the committee as a group is usually stupider than the dumbest person on it and rarely smarter than the smartest person on it, but we call for more and more committees" (5-6).

The commentary on social media is mostly related to affinity spaces and the game Sims. It lacked anecdotes about using digital learning for civic engagement. Instead, the two key anecdotes focused on how people learn in the game environment-- one example being a Sims game based on Nickled and Dimed that demonstrates the difficulty of raising children on low income and the other example being a grandmother who learned how to construct a virtual purple toilet for her granddaughter to use in her Sims game.

In terms of use value for my own work exploring critical pedagogy and new media, I did relate his circuit of reflective action to John Dewey-- mentorship, experience, goals, personal investment, and meaningful action (15-16). I tie it to Dewey, rather than Freire, as it is more pragmatic and emphasizes mentorship and experience. I also enjoyed learning the term Pareto Principle, which was new to me. The Pareto Principle explains how a small fraction of the population have the largest take, whether that is in wealth, ownership, attention, impact, etc. This reminds me of the Andrew Keen's critique of Super Nodes, which notes that though everyone can create and publish online, certain individuals garner most of the attention.

Most of the information in the book is common knowledge, at least for those in higher education. Inequality leads to social ills. People gravitate towards meaning over facts. Our memories are imperfect. Stories motivate individuals more than dry statistics. Why the arguments are not unfamiliar to me, they may be to my undergraduate students. I am considering adding chapter two, "Short-Circuiting the Circuit of Human Reflective Action," to my composition coursepacks. Overall, the book is highly readable and easy to skim as it is written in plain speak and only cites sources at the end of the book. 

Are schools driven by market logic?

In the opening chapter to his 2011 book, On Critical Pedagogy, Henry Giroux writes, "Public school teachers were deskilled as one national political administration after another embraced a stripped down version of education, the central goal of which was to promote economic growth and global competitiveness, which entailed a much-narrowed form of pedagogy that focused on memorization, high-stakes testing, and helping students find a good fit within a wider market-oriented culture of commodification, standardization, and conformity" (7-8). While I respect the work of Giroux greatly, his view on the relationship between schools and markets has not evolved since the 1980s. The standardized, hegemonic practices in schools does not reflect the current market logic, but is an antiquated system reflective of the factory society. Students are unable to meet employers expectations because schools are not giving students the skills needed to succeed in today's market.

In a report by the Chronicle of Higher Education, half of the companies surveyed stated they had difficulty finding college graduates with the right qualifications to meet the requirements of their job openings. That is not the worst of it: "Nearly a third gave colleges just fair to poor marks for producing successful employees. And they dinged bachelor's-degree holders for lacking basic workplace proficiencies, like adaptability, communication skills, and the ability to solve complex problems."

Companies no longer want passive cogs who will perform a task without questions. While students are leaving colleges with technical skills, they lack the critical thinking skills necessary to problem solve and innovate. The New York Times interviews Jaime S. Falls, the vice president of a large Human Resources Organizations. He states that college graduates starting out “are very good at finding information, but not as good at putting that information into context."

In addition to problem-solving and critical thinking skills, another buzz word that often comes up is "flexibility." This seems in direct opposition to conformist and standardized educational practices. While the argument in critical pedagogy has often been these practices are harmful to democracy, it appears they are also harmful to the economy. Who benefits from standardized education?

Reflections on Online Activism

               Throughout seven weeks of the winter semester, my online Composition II students completed online activist activities that corresponded with the problem/solution essay they were researching and writing. At the end, I asked that they write a reflection on what they discovered and how successful they felt they were.

The writing prompt:

Throughout almost half the semester, we engaged in online activities designed to promote a cause and bring about awareness and change. Now we are going to reflect on our experience, discussing what we learned about online activism.

Introduction:

In your introduction you want to describe your cause and what you wanted to achieve through your online activist activities. End with a thesis statement that discusses what you learned, what opinions you formed, and how successful your endeavors were.

Body paragraphs:

Make at least three claims that support your thesis statement. Back up those claims with specific examples and analysis of those examples.

Conclusion:

In your conclusion, look to the future. Do you think you’ll use these skills again? Do you feel that these skills empower you to create change in the world?

I tried not to be too leading in my writing prompt. If I were to change anything about the prompt, it would be to emphasize that both positive and negative opinions regarding online activism were acceptable if they were able to support those opinions with their own observations and experiences. However, based on the mix of feedback I received and the discussion of the assignment in my student feedback forms for the class, I don't think most of the students were simply feeding me the answers they thought I wanted to hear. It is always a worry when a reflection like this is tied to a grade.

For the most part, students seemed empowered by the process and were surprised by how social media could be used for more than sharing personal feelings and celebrity gossip. One student, who was advocating for animal writes, wrote, "I used Twitter for my awareness and was blown away by how many other people were behind the same cause. Seeing new posts everyday about a dog or cat needing a new home made me determined to spread the word... Communicating with others over the internet allowed me to learn about all the cruelty that happens with animals. For instance, I read posts and saw photos about grizzly bears being strapped in jets and ejected to see if the systems worked. Using Twitter in this way opened my eyes to things that were going on that I’d never heard of.  I began to read articles from other countries and became acquainted with organizations from around the world. My passion for fighting for animals grew even stronger." Many students had similar reactions of surprise and noted how much Twitter actually helped them with researching their topic.

Most students defended their feelings of empowerment by making statements about "making one person aware." Some, though, felt discouraged by the difficulty of gathering a large audience or getting people to comment on their work. It's not enough to simply Tweet facts or begin a blog. The most successful online activist in the class utilized his Facebook network to create an activist group of 400 members, which led to a successful online petition that garnered support from all over the world. It's not enough to have a voice, you need to have a network. As one student wrote, "In doing this project, I found out that getting your name out there, and networking with other bloggers or tweeters like you is very important. With tweeting it can be as simple as mentioning someone in a tweet, and they will most likely respond to you. On Twitter, I learned how easy it is to connect with someone, even if they live across the world or are famous. And that is why I think it is important we did this project, because it taught us that we can connect with people all around the world, and have our voice heard."

Overall, I feel that I seen enough benefits this semester to continue this assignment. However, I have realized based on the feedback of my students that I need to have this be a full-semester project with more training on building a network. The only hesitation, and why I began this project with caution, is that some students have a very set negative opinions on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Those opinions roadblock the effort they put into the project and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Online activism only works with time and effort.  This was something a number of students noted in their reflections.

Project Online Activism

To gain perspective on online activism, my online composition II class read "Hashtag Activism" and "Politics of the Internet." Most students related to the article, "Hashtag Activism," which states: "The ongoing referendum on the Web often seems more like a kind of collective digital graffiti than a measure of engagement: I saw this thing, it spoke to me for at least one second, and here is my mark to prove it." It recognizes that social media is a tool, which purpose is driven by the one operating the mouse. Liking something on Facebook is not going to make you an activist. However, if you are an activist, Facebook can help you generate support and awareness. The article many examples proving the power of social media in the right collective hands, such as how an online petition changed the film rating of the documentary Bully from R to PG.

 The "Politics of the Internet," for me, was the more interesting read. It correlates the design of the Internet to philosophical principles that could reshape politics:

•                The internet is nothing if not an exercise in interconnection. Its politics thus seems to call out for a similar convergence, and connections between the disparate interest groups that make up the net movement are indeed getting stronger. Beyond specific links, they also share what Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist, calls the “culture of the internet”, a contemporary equivalent of the 1960s counter-culture (in which much of the environmental movement grew up). Its members believe in technological progress, the free flow of information, virtual communities and entrepreneurialism. They meet at “unconferences” (where delegates make up their own agenda) and “hackerspaces” (originally opportunities to tinker with electronics); their online                forum of choice will typically be something such as a wiki that all can contribute to and help to shape. ("The New Politics of the Internet: Everything is Connected")

It's an interesting piece that is grounded in free data optimism. Most interesting is that the piece in The Economist only discusses economical concerns in relation to intellectual property rights. It doesn't examine the hidden cost of free data -- our attention. But I digress... ah yes, online activism. Our journey should begin in full-fledged splendor after spring break.

Here is the assignment:

As we research our causes and later argue for solutions, I want us to document and promote our findings online. Online activism can take many forms through social media, blogging, website creation, petitions, videos, and memes. Because of the various options and because we will be working independently, I will expect you to keep track of your posts, Tweets, and work to submit in a portfolio on April 18th. For blogs, all I need is the URL. For the Tweets and Facebook group posts, I need an actual word documents with the Tweets and posts copied into it.
If you get behind on one of your tasks or decide you want to switch to another activity, that is fine. The flexibility of having the project submitted as a portfolio allows us this freedom.
More details on the requirements of each option are listed below. The Youtube video and website options are listed last, as they are the most detailed.

Option 1: Facebook group posts and comments
For this option you can start a Facebook group or join an existing group. Each week you will post or comment on a post at least five times. These posts and comments will need to be submitted in a word document at the end of the project. I suggest updating a word document every week.

Option 2: Twitter Feed
For this option you will need to have 10 tweets a week. Three of these can be retweets. You can always Tweet news stories or websites you like. There should be a hashtag related to your cause or created by you that you will use in your feed. Avoid plagiarism.

Option 3: Blog
For this option you will need to maintain a blog and post to it weekly. Blog posts need to be at least 200 words, proofread, and contain no plagiarism. You should also use tags or keywords in your posts so that you blog can be found through a Google search.

Option 4: Online petition
For this option you will need to create an online petition. You should have a strong written portion of 250-500 words.

Option 5: Three Memes
Your memes must not violate copyright laws or contain plagiarism. See examples of memes here: http://knowyourmeme.com. I suggest images with captions or parodies.
due dates: March 14^th, March 28^th, April 14^th

Option 6: Youtube video
Youtube due dates:
Storyboard: March 14^th
Email progress/youtube rough draft: March 28^th
Final video: April 14th
Your youtube video should make a compelling argument for your cause and/or solution. My suggested length is three minutes. However, we can negotiate this when you complete your rough draft. If you don't have a video editor you prefer to use, I suggest using wevideo.com, which is a cloud-based editor. I have a tutorial for the program here: http://youtu.be/35pnAQnMdgc.

Option 7: Website

·       Create a website using www.weebly.com, www.wix.com or site builder of your choice

·       Repurpose your 5-7 page Problem/Solution essay to fit the conventions of writing for the web (see online activism module under content)

·       Have at least four distinct pages

·       Choose or design a fitting template

·       Pick images that communicate your message (www.creativecommons.org, www.flickr.com, www.morguefile.com, or http://photobucket.com)

·       Avoid plagiarism or copyright issues

Examples from my Winter 2012 English 112 class:

http://poverty.natemealey.com/
http://childabuseprevented.weebly.com/
http://solvepoverty.weebly.com

Youtube, Your Voice

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            For a democracy to function…citizens must actively engage in public debate, applying reading and writing practices in the service of articulating their positions and their critiques of the positions of others. To have citizens who are unable to write and read for the public forum thus defeats the central purpose of the notion of democracy. (Berlin “Rhetorics” 109-10)

            Most of my assignments in this half of the semester have to do with changes to the public forum. To be civically empowered, students must be able to navigate and create in the interconnected multimedia environment of the web. Mashable declared 2012 to be the year of Youtube, where 7,000 hours of news-related video was uploaded daily. If students want a voice in today’s media landscape, they need to be able to do more than write a letter to the editor. They need to be able to articulate an argument in a multimodal fashion.

            My basic writing students are passionately committed to wanting to improve their city. Most believe the answer lies in targeting the youth – the youth who are discarding their education and pursuing a lifestyle fueled by drugs and money. Reaching today’s youth will not be achieved through letters to the editor. To reach the broader demographic needed to make change, our students need to go through the channels of social media and Youtube.

            After spring break, my English 090 students are going to create their first digital stories, a collection of personal testimonies regarding violence in Saginaw. They will be personal and driven by narrative elements, as this will anchor the unfamiliar video components in mode of storytelling they are comfortable with. Honestly, having done my first testimonial video on the topic of urban violence, I can say it is a more raw and powerful way to tell a story. Writing allows for a bit of distance, in fact distance is necessary to achieve perspective and reflection. However, the sound of your own voice reading the story and the images of real places and people removes the distance. The story becomes more immediate, the pathos stronger. Multimodal storytelling has more affective bandwidth – it’s able to convey more, faster.

While I’ve done a lot of video editing and remixes and mashups, this is my first personal digital story. Somehow that makes it seem less polished and more earnest. It makes me uncomfortable, and I take this to be a good sign:

Connectivist vs. Participant, Dewey vs. Freire

I remember when I first heard about Gregory Ulmer coming up with his own terminology to reflect the evolution from literacy to a new symbolic, visual practice needed to thrive in digital environments, Electracy. Reading about digital pedagogy lately, it no longer seems radical to invent one's own term. It seems a new term crosses my Twitter feed on a weekly basis -- participant pedagogy, peeragogy, hybrid pedagogy, connectivism -- each indicating some new practice or means of interaction in a networked, online environment. Perhaps, I should be looking to coin my own term in my dissertation instead of trying to connect a very non-technical practice that is most often linked to Brazilian peasants to new media ecologies.


Today though (and this could be may lack of sleep and excess of coffee talking) an interesting distinction emerged that could connect to the differences between critical pedagogy forefathers, John Dewey and Paulo Freire. In one vein, you have connectivism, which discusses knowledge building as an associative activity, tied to experiential and active learning. In the other vein, you have the emerging peer-based learning, tied to participant driven MOOCs. One is a radical new framework for education and the other is a more pragmatic approach to using the online environment to enhance learning and increase student engagement. One can more clearly be related to the work of Freire and the other to the work of Dewey. I'm not sure what I'll do with this discovery....

Let the journey begin...

The diagnostics have been written, the goals have been stated -- I'm beginning to see this semester more clearly now. I realize now that I have two distinct groups of students this semester, which hopefully will yield some interesting comparisons. My online students are very diverse in their interests, causes, and life circumstances. They see their personal and civic empowerment coming from an array of places, from Youtube to Jesus. Their causes are national and even global causes, citing desires to change tolerance, gun control, violent media, government corruption. However, they all see mostly the same hinderances: money and time.

My basic writing students are located in a satellite campus of Delta College in an economically depressed area of Saginaw. They are united in same cause -- to make Saginaw a safer community with more positive activities and employment. When asked about what they can do, most state that they can use their voices to demand change. A significant number of students are studying criminal justice. They are a united community.

The question is what role can social media or digital skills play into these students making a change? In the first group, social media seems a necessity. They are students who have no common community in the class -- they must find community elsewhere. The issues they are exploring require national attention and action; hence, they need to connect with people throughout the country.

My basic writing students see civic action in a more direct manner, volunteering at their church, speaking out to others in their community, etc. What role can online tools/sites play? I no longer see social media as a key player in this class, as they have community. What I see being a key issue is creating a public voice and awareness. For this, I believe a website with a collection of digital stories and essays will be key.

What I see emerging is two different approaches to advocacy based on two different rhetorical situations.

The Year of the Sabbatical

Though the placemat at the Chinese restaurant I frequent may declare this is the year of the snake, I declare it to be the year of the sabbatical. It begins with classroom research and then tapers off into seven months of reflection beginning in May. Usually I lay my courses out fully and methodically with the entire 15 weeks planned out to the smallest homework assignment. This semester, I am being true to my Freirean roots and beginning the semester by listening to the needs, interests, and goals of my students. 

The central question will be can students harness/tame the online environment to serves these needs, interests, and goals instead of being driven to distraction. Can they direct information to serve their values? I hope by building a curriculum with the students instead of for the students that I will not only be empowering them but increasing their motivation. In Drive, Daniel Pink highlights three key motivators: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Integral to these motivators is students having an interest and a personal investment in what they will be learning this semester.

After taking in the desires of the class, the challenge will be integrating those desires with the key skills sets and literacies that are integral to becoming critical prosumers in the digital age. Let the intellectual puzzle begin...