Marching to the library this afternoon I got to thinking about how a year ago I was writing about the importance of taking a break. Suddenly now, halfway through my sabbatical, I find myself thinking and writing about teaching. A strange dialectic.
So what about critical thinking in a postliterate world? I've always been big on showing my students images. I learned to use powerpoint to my own purposes, no bullet points, no wordy outlines, mostly images. I found that my students used their cellphones to photograph me during my lectures. They would come in for office hours with a printed version of my lectures, highlighted by pictures of me next to a gigantic mitochondria or chlorophyll molecule. Wow. Images (with a side serving of words) as a way of learning. Maybe deep learning!
This brings me back to the "Man in the Holocene" exhibit at MIT. One of the artists featured there is the Futurist artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose early 20th century work used mathematical symbols to evoke the sensations brought about through modern technology and science.
Protoemoticons?
Thinking about Marinetti's work brought me back to my NEH trip this summer, where we learned that among royals of the Mexican central highlands, iconography evolved as a lingua franca to accommodate feasting and gift giving associated with ethnic intermarriage. Iconography and glyphic communication systems allowed diverse peoples to make meaningful, long lasting, and politically potent contact with one another.
We discussed this in the perspective not of a prehistoric, non-literate cultural milieu, but in the context of an advanced, highly refined set of human interactions that had cast aside the written word in favor of images.
So here we are in this century in this world cascading toward an international, intercultural, postliterate system of communication. How can we harness this cultural trend to make our teaching and learning environment more effective?
By combining the wants and needs of different cultures into one cohesive form.
ReplyDeleteI think the evolution of the society we live in had offered us diverse education possibilities. We can take advantage of the knowledge of people all around the world with the new forms of communication that he have access to.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this trend and make teaching and learning environment more effective by using abstractions to help inspire critical thinking.
ReplyDeleteBy using these new tools and interweaving them with the traditional ways of learning we can learn material much more effectively. If we appeal to new forms of communication then we can use it to our advantage to relate to many more people in our environment.
ReplyDeleteAdapting to new technologies will better engage generation Y in the learning process because we have grown up with these ever-evoloving forms of media and technology. With your worldview intertwined with ours, the technology will serve as a platform for growth of a synthesized worldview of the two generations, teaching and learning as one.
ReplyDeleteTo harness the cultural trend to make teaching and learning environments more effective one can take the needs of the students into consideration. Some students learn better visually more than auditory. The younger generation I am apart of has a big reliance on technology. Way back when, teachers primarily used blackboards to write things down or just verbally spoke to teach their students. In a generation now where iPhones are constantly in the hands of everyone around you, teachers should harness the new generational way of teaching through technology to better engage and get the focus of their students.
ReplyDeleteStarting with incorporating postliterate strategies into teaching, just as you do in your lectures, we can utilize this new cultural trend to make the teaching and learning environment more effective. By adding images either instead or in conjunction with words on the screen of a powerpoint, we as a society can propel ourselves into a new innovative way of education, and a lot of the time, this is found to be helpful for students as well.
ReplyDeleteWe need to embrace these new cultural trends/technological tools to share, educate and learn. I think that including pictures and new technologies in a powerpoint (or whatever ones teaching method is) helps those who learn in different ways than listening or reading words. Using symbols also helps make the message more universal. I think the main point is to embrace these new methods without losing the old methods of educating.
ReplyDeleteIsabel Vera NS 201
ReplyDeleteI believe we should combine the old ways of the world with the contemporary cultural trends in our respective society. Today, our generation tends to be very visually and technologically-inclined, and I find that the teaching world could use this to its advantage by providing a intriguing and comfortable medium for students to learn from. The use of twitter and phone photography in our Natural Science course, for example, is a great way to harness the cultural technological trend of the world while also incorporating the verbal teaching style that has existed for centuries.
Doug Lewis NS201
ReplyDeleteWell the obvious advantage of a transition to a form post-literate communication is that more information will be able to gathered and understood at a quicker and more concise pace. When it comes to learning this creates a tremendous advantage to the student because now once the basis of information is gathered, more time can be taken to think critically about this. The problem that this more universal form of communication creates is the possibility that a student will be blindly gather an excess of information without critically thinking about its purpose, but hopefully the material will create inspiration for the student to gain a further understanding.
In our world today, it is important to note what type of communication is used to pass information. Information is being processed by individuals of various backgrounds, languages, and cultures. When communicating with individuals of different areas, visual aspects are key in establishing the point that is trying to be made. While words can be lost in translation and lose or gain a different meaning in different places, pictures and other visual representations remain universal.
ReplyDeleteI think that if we add these new technologies and ways of thinking with the old ways then we are able to not only learn, but teach better. Especially when you were talking about powerpoint and using photos, I think this helps people a lot because many, including myself, have a hard time learning with just bullet points. In most of our classes we are used to this boring way of being taught and I think it's refreshing to learn in different ways sometimes too.
ReplyDeleteThere is no disputing that technology has tremendous implications for education. Technology enables students to personalize how they access information and how they absorb information. However, this potential can only be actualized if we (as a society) embrace the changes technology has to offer. For example, I remember being told last year that, unless you had written consent from the office of learning disabilities services, computers were forbidden during discussion and lectures in CGS. Why? Note taking applications on computers offer students the ability to organize their thoughts in a more linear format – a format that allows information to be added too easily. We should embrace these tools and integrate them into our education system instead of suppressing them from our education system.
ReplyDeleteThe different cultures and their individual ways of communication make it very difficult to teach and learn in an uniform, or or effective way. However, through understanding all cultures' languages, history, and cultural norms, communication in between cultures or cultural circles can be more effective. In other words, openness and a will to understand all are key, not just debating whether to adapt simple visuals or complex languages.
ReplyDeleteWe can make our teaching and learning environment more effective by updating our traditional ways of learning. We can apply our modern technological abilities to traditional ways of learning by teaching students how to apply what we learn to our everyday lives like through social media to engage more students.
ReplyDeleteThe Knowledge we have of other cultures can aid us in forming more efficient ways of communication. Throughout history, communication has become more and more efficient. Today, we need to utilize the ultra-efficiency we have at our fingertips to make learning more efficient and more effective simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI believe that technology has created so many new ways to communicate with one another (from email to snap chat) that visual stimuli can maybe be a more exciting way to communicate between one another. Powerpoint slides devoid of words and just possessing images are something many of us haven't seen before and that may prove to be a good things since communicating symbols along with an idea or lesson seems to be very beneficial.
ReplyDeleteI believe this cultural trend enhances our learning. People have learned to live in different societies, that are different to their original living conditions. Language barriers have become uncommon because over the year, people have chosen to learn new languages for many different reasons, whether for pleasure or business purposes. Technology has also enhanced our ability to communicate with other. For example, Facebook has enabled people to reconnect through photos. Photos tell a lot. Not only are they helpful in Professor Hammer's lectures, but they tell a lot about a culture, and barriers are somewhat broken between the unknown.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a very special time in which communication and technology allow us to both teach as well as learn in new ways. Rather than reading out of textbooks about cultures and scientific subjects, we are now able to visually observe them. If we stray too far away from traditional teaching structure, however, students will come to rely too heavily on technology rather than observation to get work done. We must blend modern technology in with more rigid education in order to maximize the potential benefit for both students and teachers.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend by promoting the innovative teaching and learning environments which are accessible to many people. Perhaps, through technology and social media mediums, we can alter our ways of learning, relaying, and retaining information and, through our success with this method, we can promote this way of learning.
ReplyDeleteWe harness this cultural trend by taking advantage of the various resources around us. In our generation, the most available and wide-spread resource is technology. Computers and smartphones exist to speed up the process of communication and it is important that we use those resources to enhance our learning experience. The instantaneous characteristic of modern media makes learning so much available and makes spreading information so much faster and easier. It is our responsibility to make the most out of that.
ReplyDeleteVictoria Pache:
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend by doing exactly what you are doing Professor Hammer, we need more Professors that embrace the visual art of teaching. BY doing this we can instill the idea of visual learning in generations to come.
We can mix new technological and traditional ways of learning. For some people, it's easier to learn in a more traditional setting, but others enjoy using new systems and programs.
ReplyDeleteGabrielle Kanellos
DeleteThis can be a very effective method of teaching and learning because it uses a delivery system that students our age are very good at. It encourages us to be creative and it even excites us - after all, technology and social media are a very integral part of most of our lives. Additionally, it allows us to communicate our thoughts in a more concrete manner.
ReplyDeleteAbby Danowitz
We can harness this cultural trend of international, intercultural, and postliterate system of communication and enhance our learning environment by using a variety of different forms of communication. Not only through images and words or descriptions, but also through various forms of abstractions to help encourage critical thinking. Everyone learns and understands things differently, and through multiple ways of communication, our learning environment will have such a diversity that inspires each and every student to learn and study.
ReplyDeletewe can harness this trend of an international , intercultural, world by using images. instead of trying to communicate with speech and having barriers there, we can use images, that is how people learn, a picture serves more than a thousand words
ReplyDeleteI believe the best way to harness this trend is by not fighting the changing world we live in, but embracing it. This means learning new forms of social media, taking lots of photographs, questioning facts and authority out loud (and on social media platforms), being unafraid to delve deeper into the unknown. Communication will help as well. By integrating different types into the course, we will learn not only on a deeper level, but a more varied one.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend to make our teaching and learning environment more effective by using images to try to communicate and try to improve language barriers.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend to make our teaching & learning environment more effective by coming up with different forms of communication rather than just writing and speaking. We can use pictures, diagrams, videos, and music.
ReplyDeleteUsing images in conjecture with social media and other technologies allows for increased points of contact between the student and the material. Images are a huge facet of social media, and incorporating them in the curriculum offers an added level of intellectual stimulation to help students understand the content better.
ReplyDeleteWe can combine the old way and new way of learning. For instance, by using twitter, which limits us to 140 characters, it forces us to think more effectively so that we can fit what we're trying to say in those limitations. We can also do this with images and graphs or other visual ways. As technology advances, maybe we'll find more and more abstract ways to learn.
ReplyDeleteusing technology in images are ways to bridge language gaps. Also, it has already been proven to me effective to help learn complicated material.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend of having different systems of communication to demonstrate the different ways a point can be made. For example, you use more images than words, others used used mathematical symbols, and one used iconography. Each of those methods was useful to getting that person’s point across. If we take advantage of the diversity of communicate, it would the teaching and learning environment more effective as students may be more receptive to one or more of the variety of methods.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHow can we harness this cultural trend to make our teaching and learning environment more effective?
ReplyDeleteWe can control this cultural trend to make our teaching and learning environment more effective through visual aids and experimentation. For example, Aristotle believed that observing and experimenting was the key for valuable learning and to gain profitable experience. In addition, I believe that using social media, like the ones we have been using in NS201 this semester, is truly beneficial to the learning environment. We have now entered The Technological Age; thus, it is only to our advantage to use these resources in the learning environment.
Through interpreting the teaching methods of other cultures, we are able to compare and contrast the various possibilities of observing to enhance our learning process.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this trend by using the cultural variances among students as an advantage. We use different perspectives to cultivate new methods of teaching that go beyond the confines of the textbook such as multi-media photos, videos, podcasts, diagrams, and charts.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend by using old trends and combining them with new ones to create a more robust education where we are utilizing as many resources as possible.
ReplyDeleteJudy Le:
ReplyDeleteWe can use this trend to make teaching and learning more effective by using its benefit to our advantage. Reading this post reminded me of abstract art and how it is interpreted relative to the person observing it, and of course each person has a preferable method of learning. Since it appears that reading extensive passages can make one lose focus, this more interactive method of presenting information may be the solution. If we incorporate this postliterate trend into teaching and learning, as you have done in our lectures, then it might have a better result that involves more participation and interaction between students and teachers.
Using various forms of communication in learning can help broaden ones view of the world and think more creatively.
ReplyDeleteWe live in an age where new forms of communication are what we put our focus on. If we are able to incorporate learning with these forms of mass communication, then our focus will involve learning. If I'm scrolling through twitter or Facebook, reading about celebrities, it is not useful to me. But if I scroll down and there is educational information to take it, we use communication forms to our advantage. There are several different forms other than social media, but it is a major one at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI believe that a new form of communication that can be used to reach out to people can be found in the form of social media. On various social media sites, people can combine both visuals and words to get their message across. This method can be used to appeal to both literate and non literate people, which is something that is crucial to the foundation of ideas.
ReplyDeleteAs human beings, I feel like things are understood more easily when observed, when things are visual. We can show that there are more ways to learning than just looking at facts or what's written on paper. Seeing is universal; therefore, it is a better form of communication.
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is a universal form of communication. Whether it is a language that all understand or a simply a string of pictures which send a message, what is needed is for people of all nations and cultures to be able to communicate and bring pieces of there knowledge to bring answers to problems which humans have. Using images is great way for which people who to interact and bring forward ideas even when they don't speak the same language.
ReplyDeleteWe can use pictures and other images to teach that there are many ways people can learn. Learning is not just passed on through word of mouth but people can also be taught with detailed images. In fact learning through images can be more effective with some people than if they were taught by someone speaking. By harnessing these techniques in classrooms and workplaces people could learn more.
ReplyDeleteWe can harness this cultural trend to make our teaching and learning environment more effective by using these new forms of communication to be able to get messages across more effectively. Also with these new cultural trends we are able to stimulate students more with these visual ways of learning that is not just a bunch of words on a page that does not seem interesting. They are able to fully visualize what they are learning about and see it in a different context rather than in a textbook.
ReplyDeleteAlexandra Hilas
All effective changes in any evolution should facilitate a process. Clearly, using images to understand abstract concept works. Our ancestors devised written language to communicate...first through pictures and slowly into all kinds of alphabets. Just like math is seen as a universal language, so should pictures.
ReplyDeleteALejandra Rodriguez
In today's society, we can incorporate all of these ways of learning by merging the old with the new tools. By doing this instead of replacing the old ways, we can maximize learning effectiveness.
ReplyDeleteRather than finding a uniform communicatory medium, I think we should understand what it is about the various mediums we already have that makes them so successful; the intersection of cultures, values, etc. I think it's more effective to understand our current teaching/learning styles before learning others--an understanding of how we work is key to understanding how others work.
ReplyDelete