Educators, Web 2.0 and the Content-Code Divide
Posted on October 22, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
News that University of Arizona is building a Web 2.0 course module had me thinking about conversations I’ve had recently about education and the web.
First the news: “With the help of IBM, the University of Arizona will put together a course designed to essentially teach people how to apply Web 2.0 services like BitTorrent, blogs, wiki’s and social networks in a business setting.”
In Ireland too there are moves in that direction. Web writing pioneer Bernie Goldbach is teaching multidisciplinary writing (text, web, podcast, vidcast) it in Tipperary. In his case he butts up against the division between software writing and creative writing - the students have to learn both and many quit rather than turn their heads inside out.
Some time after talking with Bernie about it I met up with Shel Israel and Rick Segal. Shel touches on some of these issues here.
I asked Shel if the Naked Conversations era of his life felt like something of a millstone in that it landed him with a whole set of arguments that he was destined to defend forever. Bear in mind we’d already started to discuss the issue of what exactly it means to have perfectly open communications.
Shel was refreshingly honest and said (Shel correct me if I misinterpret) almost as soon as he put the final full stop to Naked Conversations, concluding that we’re entering an era where anyone can reach out and communicate to anyone, he began to regret it. Why?
Our conversation was revolving around the issue of what communications is really about.
My point was that it comes in a variety of guises and is often at its most powerful when it is symbolic, when young people are confronted with the flow of information about the many events in the world and they conceptualise that, they translate all the words into symbols of meaning.
It may come out as a scratch video or a work of fine art, or a 3 minute song. But these works make life memorable, in instances.
Perpetual conversations divert us from that act of transformation, when flow becomes meaning.
My understanding of the conversation with Shel is a) he thinks there is bad writing and bad art so no change there but b) yes, we lose something when we skip the important process of producing quality work, when in fact we evade the pain of failure. None of us need to fail as bloggers, for example. There are no barriers to cross or hurdles to fall over.
Beyond blogging however we lose more. We lose those moments of transformation, when chaos is turned into something with meaning that often communicates without words.
Somewhere in that transformation we elevate our appreciation of a writer or artist. We call it art even when the transformation is poorly executed. We make judgements about quality.
Rick’s take on that was also arresting. He agreed we have problems with quality going forward.
I think it’s an inevitable consequence of convergence. Technology is opening up the opportunity to communicate and nobody should be denied access to it.
What’s also happening though is that the cultures of the technologist - code - and content providers - symbolic meaning - are clashing, And because the economics are against quality (at least having the time to produce it), the advantage in the debate rests with the coder culture. Yet, at the extremes, we see life in quite different ways.
We need educational courses that take this matter on a stage and address that gap without giving up on the idea of cultural transformation.
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3 Responses to “Educators, Web 2.0 and the Content-Code Divide”
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Excuse me - this is just a test.
This is indeed quite accurate. Thanks for the mention and it was great meeting you.
Hi Shel and welcome to the site. Trust you’re not too exahusted on your travels.