A Portal to Media Literacy

Added: Jul 10, 2008

Duration: 66:12

Presented at the University of Manitoba June 17th 2008. (for those of you waiting for the Library of Congress presentation, it will be posted July 19th-ish.) From Stephen's Lighthouse: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2008/07/michael_wesch_l.html "Many of you have probably seen Kansas State University prof Michael Wesch's thought-provoking video, "A Vision of Students Today". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o. Recently Dr. Wesch spoke at the University of Manitoba where he explained the the basis of this video in a talk entitled, "Michael Wesch and the Future of Education." I found it fascinating! He describes how he so naturally incorporates emerging technologies into his courses from the smallest seminar type class to the largest lecture theatre filled class. More importantly he not only talks about the technologies but how he encourages extraordinary participation and collaboration from his students by engaging them in meaningful learning activities. Although the video is 66 minutes long...pour a coffee, iced tea or glass of wine and enjoy this dynamic presentation from a master teacher." http://umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html Dubbed "the explainer" by popular geek publication Wired because of his viral YouTube video that summarizes Web 2.0 in under five minutes, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch brought his Web 2.0 wisdom to the University of Manitoba on June 17. During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future. "It's basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online," he explains. "We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn't."

Channel: Education

Tags: college culture literacy media pedagogy significance

Rating: 4.85 (159 ratings) Views: 42035' favoriteCount='500 Comments: 25

tommyjohnson142 Says:

Jul 27, 2008 - holy shit i did'nt know you could make a video an hour long..wow..

ArabianDesertMonkey Says:

Aug 3, 2008 - What a compelling talk, and how incredible to be able to have access to it! I've also just watched the Library of Congress Anthropology of YouTube talk! WOW. I do some work with youth empowerment, storytelling and multimedia literacy, and these talks are enriching my approach and fine tuning my thinking. I am grateful to the work you and these incredible students are doing. What a wonderful, brave new world this is!

ArabianDesertMonkey Says:

Aug 3, 2008 - YES. Watch it! :)

happilynomadic Says:

Aug 7, 2008 - This is the most powerful kick to distance learning providers I have seen in a good 25 years. A superb inspiration to up our game to not outdo the mundane classroom experience (that's easy) but to meet the best blended-classroom experience. Would be interested to know how the assessment scheme works.

GwynforLwyd Says:

Aug 26, 2008 - My mother, a lifelong teacher, defined a lecture as being where information was passed from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either. I teach, too, but I am not a qualified teacher. I do incursions into high schools running interactive medieval history sessions. I don't teach information. I first foster a love of learning (and the specific subject), then I faciltiate the learning skills of the student. Do that and they teach themselves.

brent0004304 Says:

Sep 11, 2008 - This is thought provoking. However, Wesch makes many jumps to make conclusions about media literacy. I feel that isn't at the core of his success. What is? - He cares about what he does - He got the students to care too - He nudged them in a direction How did he do it? He surprises the students by caring enough to work out a new delivery. I don't care how innovative your tools, if you convince students you actually care about them, they amazing things. Networks need interested people.

shadling21 Says:

Sep 22, 2008 - Wow. This took place at my school, and I never heard about it. It's unfortunate for me, since I'm considering going into digital media...

madsgorm Says:

Oct 5, 2008 - Are the slide for the presentation available for download?

cookiesrgoood Says:

Oct 7, 2008 - 1 hour omg!

pbkrispeys Says:

Oct 7, 2008 - hey read Don't laugh at this! Just do it Start thinking something you really really want cause this is astounding the person that sent this to me said their wish came true 10 mins after they read the mail so I thought what the heck You have just been visited by DrSuess's Cat in the Hat. He will grant you one wish Make your wish when the count down is over 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 MAKE A WISH Send this to 10 videos within the hour you read this. If you do, your wish will come true

kidel3 Says:

Oct 19, 2008 - how can you make a hour movie? i can only 8 minutes

yitih Says:

Oct 21, 2008 - Compression. You probably have a high resolution on your videos which make them take up more space and therefore either your software can't handle more than 8min of that res or you don't have the hard-disc space for it ;) It's my best guess anyway.

hughlilly Says:

Oct 22, 2008 - he probably has an account with special privileges, one of which will be the ability to make longer videos...

clubsandwedge Says:

Oct 22, 2008 - Fantastic video.

midpacnate Says:

Nov 2, 2008 - Nicely put. And someow very hard when I am trying to ram all my required content into my studetns...

midpacnate Says:

Nov 2, 2008 - Good point. Sometimes it isn't the method, but the excitement the method generates in the teacher herself that carries the day.

midpacnate Says:

Nov 2, 2008 - The simulation described at the end is an amazing example of how harnessing creativity and interaction really drives students to engage the issues so much more deeply In short, for a intro cultural anthro class, students create an entire mock world set in 1450 (involving lots of research because, while fictional, the ethnographies have to be realistic) and then discuss how to make it into a simulation/game (requiring research in political sscience, economics, systems theory, etc) and ...

midpacnate Says:

Nov 2, 2008 - then run simulation through year 2050. The simulation has parallels to actual events. The world ends badly, students reflect- "did we miss any solutions?" etc. Bonus idea: setting up games and simulations with very different rules and metaphors, we can escape some problematic worldviews (the place of competition, economic growth as the sole metric and engine of prosperity. etc.) or at least gain insight into how powerful they are and begin to mitigate them. See game Starpower for an example.

mojomayes Says:

Nov 9, 2008 - Mark this as a spam!!!!! DONT READ IT!!!!! If you do not copy and paste this onto 10 videos your mom will die in 4 hours

LuckySantiago Says:

Nov 9, 2008 - Hey..well, what can a massive amount of people do to change education so it becomes passionate, engaging, and real?So, we all follow and support some groups/non-profits, what have you, that fight for a goal for change and a better way of doing something.How do we petition?Who do we go to, to make this change on a wide scale?For those that care and have a smaller amount of time there needs to be someway to support financially a cause for better education, or some way to symbolically do this.

Aawaice Says:

Nov 10, 2008 - mojomayes, how can you pass this on? this is the forth video from wesch that you spammed with this message.just stop, it's just not funny. it's sad

mileyawesome4ever Says:

Nov 11, 2008 - 1 hour OMG! I had never see a video that can last an hour!

clc24601 Says:

Nov 18, 2008 - Corporate Instructional Designers create an environment that you describe. We design for adult learners who have life experience and need to share and do more hands on. How do we build a classroom environment that facilitates that? Interesting that instructors/designers see digital technology as a tool to communicate in a learning environment; we use it for every other aspect of our lives. Do you have any data showing information retained is more relevant or more meaningful for students?

GuzmanTierno Says:

Nov 30, 2008 - Superb.

bwinkler8787 Says:

Dec 4, 2008 - I like to say that the whole school system isn't long enough. The time given to try to learn the massive amount of information just isn't long enough, not to mention that the way in which is done isn't that successful. The best way to learn is to teach, teaching forces you to remeber the information better, and everytime you do it you begin to add things in trying to make it more interesting. This is how school should be.