Reading, writing and video games?
Peggy
Interesting...
Peggy
Reading, writing and video games?
From HBS Working Knowledge
Special to CNET News.com
May 19, 2002, 6:00 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-917284.html
John Seely Brown has had an epiphany.
In the past year and a half, the knowledge expert and chief scientist of Xerox
said he's gained a new respect--indeed an awe--for screen language.
And what is screen language? It's simply the vernacular of digital culture,
the way technology is increasingly put in the service of human imagination in
sophisticated ways. For the shorthand version, just think of any teenager's
natural affinity for instant messaging, video games, movies, open source, and
eBay.
How can that affinity be tapped, and how can those abilities be understood and
applied to lifelong learning?
As Seely Brown told a group of about 20 educators who attended his talk at
Harvard Business School on April 29, "If you can't deal with screen language,
you are not literate!"
Lacing his message with wit and a copiously illustrated slide presentation,
Seely Brown offered his thoughts on the new wave of knowledge transfer to
educators who came to HBS for a three-day program in adult and distance
learning. The program, held April 28 to April 30 and organized by the HBS
Division of Research, included sessions on designing interactive learning
activities and issues in adult learning. Seely Brown, who gave the kick-off
speech, is also the director of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the
author (with Paul Duguid) of "The Social Life of Information."
According to Seely Brown, there is a new kind of digital divide now, and it is
the divide between faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday's analog
world, are confronted with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital
technology and the virtues of hyperspeed. Students already have a handle on
how to convey their emotional states electronically. It's up to adults to
learn that vernacular, he said. Educators who create programs for adult
learning and distance learning need to apply the vernacular and deepen and
strengthen these new means of communication.
A cold medium? As an engineer, Seely Brown has continually battled the
problem of how to convey context through technology that only deals in
content. The content side is easy. At PARC, for instance, one of the great
ideas that fell flat was to invite well-known individuals to address a PARC
forum every Thursday afternoon. The speeches were to be Webcast throughout the
premises so 300 PARC employees could follow them at their workstations.
"Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness," Seely Brown said to the HBS
participants. It was disconcerting for speakers to arrive at the huge
auditorium, he said, find only four or five people sitting there and be told,
"It's OK, you've got X number of eyeballs on the Webcast. So you can feel good
now."
No one enjoys talking into thin air; a good speaker, like an actor, is always
engaged in conversation with the audience during the performance. That sense
of unleashing a dialogue between the speaker and the audience was lost with
Webcasting, Seely Brown said.
The experience taught him how important both content and context are to
learning, and how desirable yet elusive it is to find a way to facilitate that
interplay. "Technology is not good at context today," Seely Brown said.
One intriguing exception is offered by the Linux open-source movement. With
Linux, programmers write code to be read by their peers all over the world. In
crafting the code, they build on each other's progress. The system is a form
of "cognitive apprenticeship," Seely Brown said, because a programmer who
wants to be part of the Linux community adapts to the style and tastes of how
Linux works. The aesthetic--the context--underlying this building process, not
just the fact of code itself, is worth taking seriously, he said.
Reading the screen language Delving into screen language is another promising
start for sharing knowledge through both content and context.
Several methods Seely Brown has witnessed in the past year have greatly
impressed him, although he admitted it was a hard sell for a long time. "I
must have been a dinosaur. I thought hypertext was a joke. I hated video
games; I thought they were a complete waste of time."
He met three people who encouraged him to adjust his attitude: Stephanie
Barish, of the Annenberg Center for Communication, at the University of
Southern California; Shigeru Miyagawa of MIT, a specialist in technology,
language and culture; and J.C. Herz, author of "Joystick Nation: How
Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds." They
challenged him to think about experiments in new media and about how media
might fundamentally alter how people communicate among themselves as well as
with students.
One project of Barish's, for example, coaxed undergraduates and graduate
students to think about more than mastering some fun tools. Students had to
write their term papers in a multimedia language. Print was not allowed. The
project included not just film students but also students of humanities such
as history, philosophy, English, and women's studies.
At the start of a women's literature course, for instance, the students were
asked to pick a feminist they admired, find four photographs that expressed
the power of that particular woman, and write a very simple paragraph under
each photograph to explain why they chose the photo. Said Seely Brown, "The
beauty of doing that is that in the visual world you have no room for caveats
or commas or qualifiers or parentheses. In fact, Picasso does not traffic in
commas...It's so very clear what he wanted to say."
Other classroom projects included making an "interpretive film" around a
favorite poem, and creating a composite image with Photoshop to reveal
important aspects of the students' autobiographies. The latter project was not
complete until students went to the front of the class and explained to their
classmates what they were trying to express through the images.
At HBS, Seely Brown was quizzed by several participants on whether images have
a tendency to distort information. Art images can be deceptive, observed one
educator. While it is good to approach media with an open mind, and while many
students can indeed learn some "nifty" techniques that yield seemingly
impressive results, real--as opposed to surface--learning requires navigating
much tougher terrain.
Another educator said she was troubled by the prospect of summing up a
feminist's complex life story in four photographs. Much can be captured in a
photo, but "much is lost" as well, she said.
Seely Brown accepted their reservations to a degree. However, he said, none of
these projects constituted "a final event" in the learning process. Rather,
they provided a powerful entryway to engage hearts and minds. The real
learning of students in the Photoshop project he mentioned, for example, was
not the creation of composite photos but the remarkable experience of getting
up in front of their classmates and discussing their autobiographies.
The Web is a medium that "honors" multiple forms of intelligence and has tools
that amplify and express content as well as contextual aspects of emotion,
passion and feeling, he observed. "I'm not saying you can't do that with text.
But I'm saying, 'Here is the vernacular. We aren't paying much attention to
how that vernacular could enable us to open up forms of communication,
expression and so on.' That, I think, is going to become increasingly
important." Improvements in technology will make such forms of communication
easier and easier to do.
"I spent my life reading corporate memos that were written so they couldn't be
misread. And I'll tell you, every department reads them differently," Seely
Brown said. Image texts and music texts are similarly open to interpretation,
he allowed. "The real catch for me is not that this is an end in itself. I'm
not arguing that we should never have text qua print text. I'm suggesting that
this may be a powerful way in for kids in terms of appreciating more their
vernacular, in order then to be able to open up experiences, get a more
expressive medium...and then build on that."
Cultivating a sense for different vernaculars and how we use them is something
we don't think much about, he added.
Click here for Harvard Business School's information portal.
© Copyright 2002 President and Fellows of Harvard College
Peggy
Reading, writing and video games?
From HBS Working Knowledge
Special to CNET News.com
May 19, 2002, 6:00 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-917284.html
John Seely Brown has had an epiphany.
In the past year and a half, the knowledge expert and chief scientist of Xerox
said he's gained a new respect--indeed an awe--for screen language.
And what is screen language? It's simply the vernacular of digital culture,
the way technology is increasingly put in the service of human imagination in
sophisticated ways. For the shorthand version, just think of any teenager's
natural affinity for instant messaging, video games, movies, open source, and
eBay.
How can that affinity be tapped, and how can those abilities be understood and
applied to lifelong learning?
As Seely Brown told a group of about 20 educators who attended his talk at
Harvard Business School on April 29, "If you can't deal with screen language,
you are not literate!"
Lacing his message with wit and a copiously illustrated slide presentation,
Seely Brown offered his thoughts on the new wave of knowledge transfer to
educators who came to HBS for a three-day program in adult and distance
learning. The program, held April 28 to April 30 and organized by the HBS
Division of Research, included sessions on designing interactive learning
activities and issues in adult learning. Seely Brown, who gave the kick-off
speech, is also the director of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the
author (with Paul Duguid) of "The Social Life of Information."
According to Seely Brown, there is a new kind of digital divide now, and it is
the divide between faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday's analog
world, are confronted with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital
technology and the virtues of hyperspeed. Students already have a handle on
how to convey their emotional states electronically. It's up to adults to
learn that vernacular, he said. Educators who create programs for adult
learning and distance learning need to apply the vernacular and deepen and
strengthen these new means of communication.
A cold medium? As an engineer, Seely Brown has continually battled the
problem of how to convey context through technology that only deals in
content. The content side is easy. At PARC, for instance, one of the great
ideas that fell flat was to invite well-known individuals to address a PARC
forum every Thursday afternoon. The speeches were to be Webcast throughout the
premises so 300 PARC employees could follow them at their workstations.
"Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness," Seely Brown said to the HBS
participants. It was disconcerting for speakers to arrive at the huge
auditorium, he said, find only four or five people sitting there and be told,
"It's OK, you've got X number of eyeballs on the Webcast. So you can feel good
now."
No one enjoys talking into thin air; a good speaker, like an actor, is always
engaged in conversation with the audience during the performance. That sense
of unleashing a dialogue between the speaker and the audience was lost with
Webcasting, Seely Brown said.
The experience taught him how important both content and context are to
learning, and how desirable yet elusive it is to find a way to facilitate that
interplay. "Technology is not good at context today," Seely Brown said.
One intriguing exception is offered by the Linux open-source movement. With
Linux, programmers write code to be read by their peers all over the world. In
crafting the code, they build on each other's progress. The system is a form
of "cognitive apprenticeship," Seely Brown said, because a programmer who
wants to be part of the Linux community adapts to the style and tastes of how
Linux works. The aesthetic--the context--underlying this building process, not
just the fact of code itself, is worth taking seriously, he said.
Reading the screen language Delving into screen language is another promising
start for sharing knowledge through both content and context.
Several methods Seely Brown has witnessed in the past year have greatly
impressed him, although he admitted it was a hard sell for a long time. "I
must have been a dinosaur. I thought hypertext was a joke. I hated video
games; I thought they were a complete waste of time."
He met three people who encouraged him to adjust his attitude: Stephanie
Barish, of the Annenberg Center for Communication, at the University of
Southern California; Shigeru Miyagawa of MIT, a specialist in technology,
language and culture; and J.C. Herz, author of "Joystick Nation: How
Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds." They
challenged him to think about experiments in new media and about how media
might fundamentally alter how people communicate among themselves as well as
with students.
One project of Barish's, for example, coaxed undergraduates and graduate
students to think about more than mastering some fun tools. Students had to
write their term papers in a multimedia language. Print was not allowed. The
project included not just film students but also students of humanities such
as history, philosophy, English, and women's studies.
At the start of a women's literature course, for instance, the students were
asked to pick a feminist they admired, find four photographs that expressed
the power of that particular woman, and write a very simple paragraph under
each photograph to explain why they chose the photo. Said Seely Brown, "The
beauty of doing that is that in the visual world you have no room for caveats
or commas or qualifiers or parentheses. In fact, Picasso does not traffic in
commas...It's so very clear what he wanted to say."
Other classroom projects included making an "interpretive film" around a
favorite poem, and creating a composite image with Photoshop to reveal
important aspects of the students' autobiographies. The latter project was not
complete until students went to the front of the class and explained to their
classmates what they were trying to express through the images.
At HBS, Seely Brown was quizzed by several participants on whether images have
a tendency to distort information. Art images can be deceptive, observed one
educator. While it is good to approach media with an open mind, and while many
students can indeed learn some "nifty" techniques that yield seemingly
impressive results, real--as opposed to surface--learning requires navigating
much tougher terrain.
Another educator said she was troubled by the prospect of summing up a
feminist's complex life story in four photographs. Much can be captured in a
photo, but "much is lost" as well, she said.
Seely Brown accepted their reservations to a degree. However, he said, none of
these projects constituted "a final event" in the learning process. Rather,
they provided a powerful entryway to engage hearts and minds. The real
learning of students in the Photoshop project he mentioned, for example, was
not the creation of composite photos but the remarkable experience of getting
up in front of their classmates and discussing their autobiographies.
The Web is a medium that "honors" multiple forms of intelligence and has tools
that amplify and express content as well as contextual aspects of emotion,
passion and feeling, he observed. "I'm not saying you can't do that with text.
But I'm saying, 'Here is the vernacular. We aren't paying much attention to
how that vernacular could enable us to open up forms of communication,
expression and so on.' That, I think, is going to become increasingly
important." Improvements in technology will make such forms of communication
easier and easier to do.
"I spent my life reading corporate memos that were written so they couldn't be
misread. And I'll tell you, every department reads them differently," Seely
Brown said. Image texts and music texts are similarly open to interpretation,
he allowed. "The real catch for me is not that this is an end in itself. I'm
not arguing that we should never have text qua print text. I'm suggesting that
this may be a powerful way in for kids in terms of appreciating more their
vernacular, in order then to be able to open up experiences, get a more
expressive medium...and then build on that."
Cultivating a sense for different vernaculars and how we use them is something
we don't think much about, he added.
Click here for Harvard Business School's information portal.
© Copyright 2002 President and Fellows of Harvard College