2 thoughts for the day

I. Sketchy Notes on Enduring Tropes (and pet peeves?) of adoption of emerging technologies:
1. recurring trope: confusing personal practice with general use –
“no one will want to x (read text on a computer screen, listen to a podcast, listen to music on a phone, etc.) so we shouldn’t do it
[in this case “no one” = “I”]
2. (corollary of 1.?) recurring trope: culture clash
– assignment: put yourself out there on the blog!; consequence: get fired, get disciplined, get embarrassed 5 years later. It is the nature of the technology that only the things you don’t want to lose are lost. When your understanding of appropriate and open conflicts with someone else’s (and there is probably a correlation between a person’s level of tolerance and their desire to object to other’s actions) what happens?
3. people who use IT in education
“‘THEY’ don’t understand the pedagogical value of emerging technology x. They think is is no different than technology y.” (Well why the hell should they when you are using PowerPoint to demo it??)
4. “heard here first” or, Andy Warhol strikes again – notice how rapid pace of emerging technologies is paralleled by the positive frenzy to be the first to name the new. Google on podagogy.
5. online optimism and self-fulfilling prophecies: “he who says the most has the most to say”
5. and there was another one but 2 phone calls broke the train of thought and I’ve got to get back to preparing for class
II. Writing across the Disciplines/Curriculum/Community and podcasting:
for many, writing is hard, talking is easy. For understanding some things, sometimes reading is the better (faster?) vehicle, for others, audio. Will decisions related to which to use in a given educational setting be determined by the pedagogical value or by expediencey? (well duh) Will claims about which is “better” be made based on one or t’other? From scholarly books to articles to ??? (Also, books as a physical artefact are obviously not dead. But take fiction/fun-non-fiction and textbooks out of the mix? What’s the health of what’s left?) (Read any 17th century prose lately?)
Listening Across the Curriculum…