What triggers the human brain to reminisce about our past experiences in life? Smells, I am told, are critical to our memories. But, this week, for the first time, I ran across an old machinima that I shot in 2008 and (believe it or not) I found myself virtually reminiscing. Physical space, such as our houses or the streets and shady parks we remember from our youth, cause us to recall personal memories.
Perhaps I am one of the first to discover a personal “pang” of reminiscence in a virtual world. The spaces we live in are moving from physical to virtual. Whether or not we have an avatar is of little consequence.
Little One, your hands are beautiful
and they hold all knowledge
Move your finger and surroundings change
to your favorite color—
swirls of blue with silver sparkles
Touch your ear and musical harmonies slowly swell
Wave your hand to augment history
Look into my eyes and they will tell you of another time
For these eyes saw a different world
where colors could not change
Only nature held the power
That world was unprogrammed and unsafe
My body was separate from the digital realm
And each person was required
to learn how to think
But you, Little One, are
safely digitized
You have never seen broken things
Books with worn, tattered pages
Cars with flat tires
Bruises or skinned knees
You live in the simulated shell of digital protection
Gingerbread and hot cider appear when you blink
and friends await you at all points of Earth
But now, I want to tell you what I miss
from the world before
the Singularity
I miss…
Today is Digital Learning Day and I am whirling through tecnology tools and formats (alongside physical resources) in my school library as I seek best practices for teaching digital literacy in what has become “participatory culture”.
My 4th graders are studying poetry and I am teaching them to share through our library blog. I want them to understand the importance of striving for meaningful content, not just posting and tweeting nonstop. Digital citizenship requires us to be responsible for both our consumption and production of information. I sometimes think that because we are so excited about all the cool “Web 2.0” applications that allow us to produce and share online, we forget to emphasize revision and reflection.
Buried deep beneath the clutter, four or five hyperlinked clicks away, is there some really important meaningful content of high quality or aesthetic appeal? For years, I have empasized process over product in education because all learning, like life, is a process. Now, in the digital age (as content floods my screens nonstop), I am realizing there has to be balance between process and product. At some point, the author or the artist must say “here is what I have done.” The goal is to say something worthwhile.
We all now live both physical and virtual lives. If you don’t agree, take a look at how close your digital device is at this moment. We are networking, connected, and always online. This evolution of networked culture has challenged me to be both a physical world librarian and a virtual world librarian.
Within this past month, I was coincidentally (I am not sure if that is the right word when you realize how pop culture inspired this post) asked to edit a Gangnam Style video in both worlds.
As a school librarian, I was asked to edit a video showing student engagement. The popular Gangnam Style dance parody was embraced by everyone from kindergarten to our principal, pictured dancing in my library loft.
Just a few days later, as a virtual world librarian leading an exhibit tour to the Museum of Virtual Media, I was asked to edit another Gangnam Style dance- this time with avatars from around the globe. One of the tour guides, from Argentina, gave the participants a dance animation for the closing festivities. The exhibit was built by the University of Washington’s Certificate in Virtual Worlds Class of 2012 and features the evolution of media from ancient cave paintings, through radio & movies, into the future. Being asked to produce a video by two completely different patron communities fascinated me.
We all hear every day, as educators and librarians, about how we now live in a participatory culture. Spending time editing such diverse groups, in both physical and virtual worlds, made participatory culture clear to me in a way that I had never before experienced. Learning theorists, like Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey, proposed that learning is social in nature nearly a century ago, way before digital culture took hold. Witnessing this human desire to be part of a social experience through the global phenomenon of a popular dance video illustrated a new frontier in constructivist learning.
