Digital Artifact Review

Yesterday's first digital artifact presentations were eye-opening. Every student in the class took a slightly different approach, and covered a slightly different issue. There were presentations focused on unheralded problems with few efforts being made to provide solutions (vanishing cultures, for example). There were also presentations about problems so prominent that almost everyone has an opinion (Israel-Palestine). I made a poster, while my classmates created everything from powerpoints to podcasts, with some movies mixed in.

There were a few moments that really jumped out at me, whether because of the quality of the presentation, or the relevance of the project to my interests. I want to talk a little about each of those moments, to see what, if any, common theme runs through them.

Ashley asked an important question during her presentation, "Can mobile learning stand on its own without formal schooling?" In India this is obviously a big question, as mobile learning is, in many ways, already more widespread and effective than the traditional classroom. It is certainly the case that mobile devices afford the opportunity to learn where otherwise there may be none (or little, anyway), but Ashley's question is a good one. How much support from a teacher does a student need? Can a phone be a teacher, really? I'd be curious to know what level of success young people in India have learning English through their phones.

Jacob's video, I thought, was excellent, not only because of the production, but because of the content. There have been many grassroots efforts to create peace in Israel and Palestine, but few have grabbed my attention like the PeaceMaker game Jacob spoke about. In contrast to most strategy games, PeaceMaker forces the player to determine the best way to avoid conflict, rather than to be successful at it once he has started it. This kind of subversive game-making - challenging young people to see the value and the strategy behind peace, and seeing it as an objective that is difficult to acheive - is far too uncommon. In this case, it seems particularly well done, as well, which is rare in an "educational" game.

Coram spoke to the issue of vanishing cultures. As the Hawaiian culture - and language, and people - could certainly be described as "vanishing," I was particularly interested to discover that languages and cultures are dying as quickly as they are around the world. This seems so underreported to me, yet so blindingly obvious and somewhat disturbing. I'd love to know more.

During Mike's presentation, he made an interesting point that's worth remembering: "Communities feel less empowered when education comes from outsiders."

Tony's description of Youth Radio in Oakland seemed to me a promising model that could easily be transported to other locations. As long as there is a sufficient population of listeners, the idea of putting together some kind of youth-driven radio has, obviously, a lot going for it. How big of an urban area do you need for this to work?

Because many Hawaiians are homeless, Keith's treatment of homeless job training was engaging to me. It seems a key factor in the success of such programs is the motivation of the people who are homeless to work hard and to get back on their feet. I worry that, in Hawaii, motivation is often a sizable obstacle, because many Hawaiians do not see why they should integrate into a culture that has hurt them so badly. Of course, there are also plenty of Hawaiians who would jump at the opportunity for proper job-skills training like those mentioned in Keith's presentation. It would interesting to hear about how widespread programs like the invisible people project are.

I believe there was something interesting and engaging in just about every presentation, but these were the things that really struck me the most. Overall, I was glad for the chance to learn from my peers, and to see what kind of projects they know about, and what kind of issues they are passionate about. I also relished the opportunity to see how each of us chose to present our material. It certainly speaks to our relative comforts with certain technological media, and is clearly an important step in the process of designing a presentation.