Still Skeptical

[Margaret F]

Continuing to learn about technology, this week at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, a week-long "Storycentric" workshop for K-12 teachers about film and story, my skepticism survives. The first three days, we were watching and learning about how filmmakers create meaning, and it was a great pleasure and time well spent to watch and discuss Psycho, In the Mood for Love, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with experts and fellow educators. Today, we made "films" in five frames in the morning, followed by animation using very simple tools and imovie in the afternoon. My reflection, now that my partner Shirley's and my "film" is in the can, is that we focused on the tool and the five frames and took or made no time to reflect on whether our plot outcome might have lacked good sense or taste. I'm feeling as if it should be erased. I'll email Shirley. More on this in a minute.

At the end of the very enjoyable animation afternoon with Joe Summerhays, all of us amazed at the animated "short" we created in 20 minutes with such simple tools, Joe showed us the Youtube video we saw with Paul on our last techstitute day of Matt Hardy, now sponsored by StrideGum, dancing with strangers around the world. Joe, a funny and dynamic man, gave his all to inspiring us to join up with the digital natives in their e-volution, and I was surprised after the Hardy video to find myself saying out loud I thought it was "pointless and meaningless." Out loud, that sounded like not exactly what I meant.

What continues to worry me is that if these (Youtube, hypertextopia, blogs, VoiceThread, tumblr, twitter, etc.) are tools--and maybe that concept is leading me astray--for what are we using them? In our morning 5-frame story activity, Shirley and I were successful students--our story (though hardly flawless) had one of the strongest through-lines and plots among those of our peers. But we never had or made time to ask ourselves if our concept was wise. We created a melodrama, but one that could easily be misread--on its own, without us to chuckle among viewers about our plot devices, it could cause concern or offense. How did this come about? I think because our focus was not on using the technology to serve a learning or communication goal but rather to learn the technology. When I watched the Hardy video again, I felt it was electronic junk-food--fun for all (them and us), momentarily uplifting, momentarily community-building--but what next? What could people spontaneously joining Matt to dance do together next? How could this lead to global economic justice, world peace, global environmental sustainability? I don't see more than fleeting joy. Fleeting joy is certainly wonderful and a far better thing than no joy at all, and I am, in addition, entirely in favor of pure research and art for art's sake. A Fra Angelico fresco or Degas pastel is not diminished, imho, if it does not simultaneously serve as a lampshade or slipcover. (I am, however, wild about David Byrne's new bike rack sculptures.)

Considering all the time invested in technology and we digital immigrant educators learning and practicing technology and young and old people spending hours online using it, how is it different from the great wasteland of television? Okay, we're able to be producers as well as consumers, so the passivity downside of tv is no longer inevitable. But really, my enormous doubts about the end result of all this time grow with every hour spent online.