Reporting on Impacts of Youth Media Literacy

"Home Is Where the Heart Is," a silkscreen piece created by participants of Circles Restorative Justice workshop, March 1, 2014

“Home Is Where the Heart Is,” silkscreen piece created by participants of Circles Restorative Justice workshop, March 1, 2014

I’ve recently come full circle in more ways than one.

During high school and college, I had the privilege of reporting features stories for such publications as Glenbrook South High School’s The Oracle and Northwestern University’s The Daily Northwestern, The Summer Northwestern, and arts + performance magazine. 

A dozen-plus years later, I’m reporting features stories once again; appropriately, my first subject was a workshop entitled “Circles.” On Saturday, March 1, 2014, I engaged in participant-observation by joining fabulously motivated peers, jotting notes, and conducting informal interviews at this day-long exploration of Restorative Justice.

Restorative Justice (RJ) seeks to cultivate both peacemaking and healing by facilitating meaningful dialogue. Practiced through conversation circles, whose norms include “listen with respect” and “speak from the heart,” RJ provides contexts for sharing feelings and perspectives related to community issues and conflicts. Individuals directly engaged in altercations, as well as bystanders and other community members, gather to discuss inciting incidents, understandings, preferences, past experiences, ideas, and advice (Felt, 2014, para. 3).

This workshop also was irresistible from a scholarly standpoint as it situated itself squarely within my research interests: youths, social and emotional competence, communication proficiency, arts and media, and community-building. I became acquainted with the phenomenal work of partner organizations, including Las Fotos Project, and am eager to cultivate professional relationships in this space.

My publisher is Departures, a transmedia resource hosted by the largest independent public television station in the United States, KCET. Departures uniquely cultivates southern Californians’ civic pride and sociological imaginations through reporting on community-level stories in such areas as activism, immigration, art, gentrification, food, city planning, small businesses, murals, history, and politics. The Departures site also offers multiple participation points, from opportunities to engage with interactive maps and multimedia installations to invitations to help solve civic challenges (e.g., How would you improve the 710 corridor? How can an empty lot in Cypress Park become a community asset?).

This wasn’t my first brush with Departures. Back in 2011, Rubi Fregoso of Departures Youth Voices facilitated a workshop for graduates of the PLAY! program, a multi-part professional development + research project designed and evaluated by USC Annenberg Innovation Lab colleagues and myself. On January 22, 2014, Rubi again lent her expertise to a USC Annenberg endeavor by participating in a webinar entitled “Spreading Your Story.”  This webinar was sponsored by my friends/associates in the Media, Activism and Participatory Politics project, an entity that bridges the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the USC School of Cinematic Arts Media + Practice Division, and the Connected Learning Research Network. Kat Primeau, one of my co-conspirators at non-profit Laughter for a Change, also participated in the webinar. With so many friends gathered simultaneously at the same online spot, discussing one of my favorite subjects — how to spread youth civic engagement stories — I couldn’t stop myself from posting to the webinar’s real-time backchannel chat.

Here’s the webinar:

Watch live streaming video from connectedlearningtv at livestream.com

 

In light of all of this journalistic activity and online communication, I have applied to the UCD Clinton Institute’s 2014 Summer Seminar, a week-long deep-dive into how to be an academic AND a journalist. Should I be accepted, I hope to expand on my recent article on Restorative Justice (RJ). I wonder how, if at all, international youth-produced media has supported RJ movements and/or exemplified RJ processes? Which effects, if any, have these youth productions had on knowledge, attitudes, practices, or policies?

Meanwhile, I’m loving the opportunity to interview trailblazing media literacy organizations and share their important work with the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)’s 2000+ recipients of its online newsletter. My first piece featured the Center for Media Literacy (CML), an assignment for which I interviewed CML’s accomplished President and CEO Tessa Jolls.

Since 1989, when media literacy pioneer Elizabeth Thoman established CML, this organization has served as a global resource for media literacy education. CML has worked with overseas partners in such far-flung nations as Peru, South Korea, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, while simultaneously continuing to produce original curricula that meet the United States’s diverse education standards (Felt, 2014, para. 2).

Reflected Jolls, “It’s not so much about the technology, it’s about critical thinking, and having the process skills, whether you’re producing or consuming. So that’s what we’ve been trying to focus on — what’s timeless, what’s a systematic way of looking at media, and how media operate as a system” (Felt, 2014, para. 12).

Reconnecting with my journalism roots and networking with people/organizations whose work supports youths’ cultivation of vital 21st century skills is deeply rewarding both personally and professionally. I look forward to continuing to enjoy this synergy as the District 4 delegate to City Councilmember Tom La Bonge for Los Angeles ArtsDay 2014.

Thanks to everyone who helped to make these developments possible!

“Open Concept” Floor Plan: Helicopter Parents’ Panopticon?

http://www.jwhomesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/open-layout-4-with-people.jpg

http://www.jwhomesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/open-layout-4-with-people.jpg

I’ve made some new (parasocial) friends.

My Canadian pals include income property expert Scott McGillivray, fixer-upper angels Drew and Jonathan Scott, designer & realtor nemeses Hilary Farr & David Visentin + (their junior counterparts) Jillian Harris & Todd Talbot, and even Type A reno maven Candice Olson. In Minneapolis, I’ve got my girls Nicole Curtis and Amy Matthews who absolutely rule. In LA, there’s home-makeover fashionista Sabrino Soto, real estate gurus Josh Flagg, Josh Altman, and Madison Hildebrand, and perfection stager Meridith Baer. Cuddly cousins Anthony Carrino and John Colaneri make housecalls in Jersey, David Bromstad keeps it colorful in Miami, Egypt Sherrod assists property virgins in Atlanta, Allison Victoria crashes Midwestern kitchens, and house hunters troll the country (and overseas) for turnkey bargains.

Clearly, I’ve got quite the social life.

When a debilitating cold couched my body but skirted my mind, I was in prime condition for (over)analyzing HGTV.

I’m thinking about if/how American parents’ belief in surveillance has influenced residential architecture and home purchases, specifically in favor of the “open concept.” Do parents really need unwalled kitchens so they can always see their kids in the living room? Talk to me.

I posted that status update to Facebook, a condensed version of this URL + comment I’d posted a few moments earlier:

Love this: “They [Japanese people] like for the children to spend a lot of time with each other with minimal adult intervention so that they can learn how to get along with each other. …children deserve a childhood where they’re able to walk around and have fewer adult eyes on them every moment, then really things can change. Parents can feel that trust in their children.”

Similar sentiments were voiced by a preschool teacher in Norway (not the nature barnehage, a teacher at a conventional preschool). They had a room that was ONLY KIDS ALLOWED, like a clubhouse, because they believe that kids need some time to themselves. In American preschools, there are no doors on bathrooms because teachers need to be able to see kids at all times (and, due to fear of predation, adults are never allowed to be alone with children at any time).

So I’m thinking about if/how American parents’ belief in surveillance has influenced residential architecture and home purchases, specifically in favor of the “open concept.” Parents (usually moms) claim that they need unwalled kitchens so they can see their young children in the living room. How much time do they spend in the kitchen, and why is this chiefly the woman’s concern? What would happen if their eyes were off the kids during their kitchen time? How might lack of privacy and the unimpeded carrying of noise adversely affect familial relationships or activities? Talk to me.

I tipped my biased hand by trotting out the term “surveillance,” which hardly has neutral connotations. It’s a credit to my FB friends that they didn’t totally bristle at this, and I’ll share their insightful comments a little bit later. But before we examine what my friends taught me, I’d like to explain my interests in child-rearing, home design, and surveillance.

My Background

During the spring of 2002, I observed and interviewed educators at several early childhood education and care (ECEC) establishments in eastern Norway, Paris, and Chicago. While my objective was to investigate dimensions of educating vs. caregiving, I couldn’t help but notice how different laws and philosophies influenced the activities of teachers and students alike. From 2003-2006, I had the great good fortune of working in ECEC at The Open Center for Children, Harvard Yard Child Care Center, and The Eliot-Pearson Children’s School; I also regularly visited my best friend Jenn at Garden Nursery School.

In 2008, I began my doctoral studies in Communication at the University of Southern California‘s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Two years later, as a student in IML 501: Digital Media Workshop, I worked with a couple of phenomenal classmates to record a satirical video about ceaselessly measuring and surveilling young children. We designed our video in order to hyperbolically emphasize both the ridiculousness of unremitting assessment and the toll it exacts in the form of overstressed parents and burned-out children. We argued that such a joyless, goal-oriented approach to life and learning, as well as its accompanying usurpation of the free time necessary for developing sensory, social, and emotional skills, may significantly hinder children’s capacity to negotiate in-school and out-of-school challenges.

For three weeks during the summer of 2011, I co-taught two classes of children (aged 5-7 years old and 7-9 years old, respectively) enrolled in a private enrichment program in Mumbai, India. A huge part of the job was educating my privileged students’ wealthy parents. From Monday through Friday, I wrote each class’s daily newsletter for distribution to the parent listserv. Not only did I enumerate our activities, I also explained how the children’s work facilitated their development of fine motor, gross motor, pre-literacy, pre-math, and social and emotional capacities. At the end of each week, we hosted an Open House for parents. I would narrate our slideshow of classroom images, again demystifying the connections between Activity X and Learning/Developmental Goal Y. Then my co-teachers and I would invite parents to both peruse their children’s products and recreate an art project/science experiment. We struggled to strike a balance between keeping parents convinced of the program’s “value-add” and keeping students engaged with projects of value.

The following fall, I was a Teaching Assistant for COMM 395: Gender, Media & Communication. From Dr. Alison Trope, I learned about Foucault’s theory of the panopticon (and then turned around and taught it to my students). Literally, a panopticon is a round, windowed guard tower in a prison yard; from it, rifle-aiming overseers can surveil inmates at all times while inmates never know if/when/who is watching. Foucault reviews societal institutions such as schools, factories, and hospitals and identifies “panopticons” in those environments — sites from which people in power can observe/control subject populations.

Today, I study and design pedagogy that endeavors to teach the whole child; dote on the children of pals and passersby; think about children’s toys and leashes and media and meaning-making; and yearn for (the right time when I can have) children of my own. Two weeks ago, I visited ECEC exemplar Stock School and the autonomy-supportive Chicago Quest Schools. Inspired by a recent in-flight conversation with a Swedish seatmate and friends’ posts of an article + a documentary about “forest kindergartens” (operational in Norway and Switzerland, among other places), I’ve lately been reflecting on European child-rearing. And also, don’t forget, I watch a lot of HGTV, especially since I got that pesky cold.

Research Questions

On most HGTV shows, the high-maintenance home seekers want “open concept” floor plans and rule properties/plans in or out of consideration according to this criterion. So, the Property Brothers, Love It or List It’ers, and other patron saints of home renovation blow out walls, install header beams, and design spaces in order to accommodate this “open concept” craving. Collectively, this adds up to a whole mountain of money.

And why? I hear a lot of parents on these shows claim that they need “open concept” because they have to supervise their children. And I wonder, Do you really _need_ to supervise your children? What happens if you don’t supervise — will the kids REALLY get into life-or-death situations and/or incorrigible patterns of danger-making? What happens if you do supervise — will the kids never learn how to self-monitor and/or entertain themselves?

I also hear parents contend that they entertain a lot, and I wonder what “a lot” means. How frequently do they really have people over, and to what extent should these occasional visits dictate how the house functions on all of the other days of the year?

So that’s how I got from “open concept” floor plans to parenting to panopticons. And now that you know the context, you might very well ask how I could have done otherwise.

Methods

From my two FB postings, I welcomed 20 fascinating comments from 13 friends (Jen, Christine, Grace, Sara, Mike, Diana, Melissa, Marci, Joy, Lauren, Mallory, Liz, Aylin), and also contributed to the conversations eight times in order to clarify, query, and/or share. Here are a few of my comments:

I remember when we were older — maybe it was when my brother was 14, that would make me 10 — my brother and I would be bothered by the light and noise coming from our mom in the kitchen because it interfered with our easy TV watching (poor us, right? anyway). So Benjy figured out that if he opened a storage closet door, it would block our sightline of the kitchen and help a bit with the light and noise… And so I wonder what happens when kids grow up in these homes — do these issues cause them to retreat even further, like to basements or bedrooms, foiling the “all together” rationale of open concept? Is that just a normal part of adolescence? Is open concept really about getting a grand room and not about “all together”?

and

I guess I just wonder about how often kids will get into unsafe stuff during food prep time, and I wonder about the consequences if/when they do. Is the frequency and/or intensity of either enough to justify expensive choices, and potential incursions into privacy? I also wonder if non-catastrophic consequences — like, a child gets a booboo — provide opportunities for learning about cause-and-effect and ultimately, self-regulation and self-efficacy. We all know, I DON’T HAVE KIDS and I’m an egghead for a living, so enlighten me, debate me. I’m just, as the pretentious call it, problematizing… Thank you, friends :)

I also did a very wee bit of online research (Brunner, 2013Hillukka, 2012) and continued to consume HGTV programming in gluttonous proportions.

Results

From these data, I identified opportunities related to “open concept” vs. “traditional” floor plans in terms of three areas:

  1. Sensory Access

  2. Proximity

  3. Lifestyle

Attached to each opportunity are considerations for “everyday” and “entertaining.” I cite the arguments (e.g., raw data) that support each perspective directly beneath them. I purposely leave my judgmental frame behind, instead using positive terms to describe the affordances and assumptions that come with each floor plan. This is not a table of pro’s vs. con’s; it is an inventory of pro’s and pro’s.

1A. Sensory Access (Sight, Sound, Temp) – Everyday:

  • OPEN CONCEPT: Monitoring safety, Lighting multiple rooms from common set of windows, Circulating sound from multiple rooms (e.g., children’s fighting, crying, querying), Universal heating/cooling

Diana: “Parents want to make sure their kids aren’t doing anything unsafe while the parent is trying to cook dinner.”

Melissa: “Right now, I wouldn’t be able to cook dinner if I couldn’t see my kids while I was cooking. Little ones are always getting into something. Not sure the open concept will be as important when they are a little older.”

Marci: “Also now that I have a boy, I have a new appreciation for how quickly a little one can get themselves into trouble. Lucy was easy peasy; James ends up on the coffee table ready to go over the edge in seconds and bruises and head bumps do not deter him – he’s an animal and totally born to be a running back.”

Marci: “In a world where even Lucy watches tv while on my iPhone with 3 other people in the room doing their own thing, I think your ability to hear changes for better or worse”

Hillukka, 2012: “You can also watch the little ones play while you are cooking or working in another room. Finally, an open concept allows more natural light into every room, making the entire area seem more spacious and welcoming.”

  • TRADITIONAL: Facilitating autonomy, Lighting each room from each set of windows, Creating sound barriers between rooms (e.g., TV in living room, food processor in kitchen), Specific heating/cooling

Liz: “the mirror on the wall to see into the living room from my place at the kitchen table works perfectly well. it has been there at least 25 years. i’m also a firm believer in “if it’s too quiet something is up.” especially having been the one making too little noise during childhood.”

Aylin: “dear laurel. hi. i am totally with you that kids need their own time and space to play.”

Jen: I absolutely agree with your thoughts on this, Laurel. American anxieties regularly interfere with play (is my child being bullied? is my child not talking enough? too much?) making it hard for kids to practice resolving things on their own. Honestly, this is one of the reasons we opted for a house without and open floor plan (that and cost–because nobody wants them!).”

Christine: “Very interesting to think about. I have a 5 and 3 year old (and one due any day now). I think what happens is that children’s abilities evolve so gradually, and parents don’t always see that growth because they’re in it every day. Parents may not realize their children can be trusted with the next level of difficulty. Also, I think our generation of parents prioritizes eliminating pain/suffering for our children and will go to great lengths (home construction, surrender of privacy, etc) to control their environment. It is physically and emotionally exhausting to try to keep this up for any length of time. We have tried to settle into a more comfortable style of mitigating risks so the kids can play unsupervised (we have a fence, we removed saws from the basement play area). It is so satisfying to hear the kids playing independently. We’re all having a lot more fun.”

Grace: “I remember childhood as a non-chaperoned experience. My parents were there but they would not have known to intervene unless we asked them to. They weren’t poor parents – they were parents in the 60’s and 70’s.

Today we have a number of issues that make this ideal difficult. -Heavily scheduled young kids. -Childcare – my nanny job often entails entertaining and daycare has a schedule to follow. When would most young children be able to experience this and living in America today – how would we facilitate it? Beyond safety concerns that have our hands tied – a group of cousins I know- spend time at gatherings away from prying parental units and every time, as their parents relate, they wreck the place or gang up and bully one or more of the group. I guess this might mean that they need more ‘alone time’ to work things out in a positive manner. But it could also just be Lord of the Flies. But as far as ‘open concept’ – in 30 years as a nanny working in other peoples homes, the last 15 years the homes are open -before that they were closed. I think you might be onto something!”

Hillukka, 2012: “Sight lines are challenging in an open concept plan. When painting the walls or decorating one area, you have to consider the way everything looks overall. Worst of all, sound carries throughout and it can cost more to heat and cool this type of home… If someone in the household wakes up early or likes to stay up late, keep in mind that the noise might carry throughout the house, keeping everyone else awake.”

1B. Sensory Access (Sight, Sound, Smell) – Entertaining:

  • OPEN CONCEPT: Revealing process, Maintaining cohesive design across rooms, Enabling continuous dinner party conversation, Wafting kitchen smells

Mallory: “But mostly, I believe that the open plan house is a reflection of American society becoming less formal and acknowledging where our time is actually spent. Instead of hiding away the messiness of meal prep, it is now out there in the open for everyone to see.”

Brunner, 2013:  “‘It also showcased a shift to a more casual lifestyle,’ says Andrea Dixon of Fiddlehead Design Group. ‘People weren’t afraid to expose reality — i.e., a messy kitchen.””

  • TRADITIONAL: Controlling spectacle, Establishing particular design per room, Enabling private tangents, Containing kitchen smells

Brunner, 2013: “‘There will always be some people who are uncomfortable with letting guests see their ‘unmentionables,” she [Andrea Dixon of Fiddlehead Design Group] says. ‘It’s definitely a more formal layout, but it ultimately comes down to personal preference.’

If you want to leave your smells and mess behind when serving meals, a closed layout could be for you.

[Said Andrea Dixon of Fiddlehead Design Group], ‘But a couple who loves to entertain might opt for a closed-concept space so they can prep courses ahead of time and not spoil the surprise. It totally depends on your lifestyle.'”

Hillukka, 2012: “For example, if you have lots of artwork, you will have little wall space to hang it. You also have to work extra hard to keep every space within the room clean; if one area is messy, it can affect the rest of the room.”

2A. Proximity – Everyday:

  • OPEN CONCEPT: Facilitating everyone’s desire to be close, Relying on multi-tasking

Diana: “Think about how much time working parents have with their kids on week nights. Hint: it’s not much, and a good part of it is spent frantically doing chores. Parents want to maximize their time with their kids. Open concept helps them do this.”

Marci: “For the kids, when you have what amounts to a second shadow, I imagine it helps decrease the number of times you hear mommy where are you and come in to the living room and watch me lol.”

Mallory: “I have three girls, so my take on toddlers is different than those with boys. My girls (2 and 4, the 4 month old can’t get away from me yet) can play in their bedroom or in the playroom in the basement if they would like to while I am preparing dinner, but they are at the age where they want me involved in their play a fair amount. And as Diana Tang pointed out, as a working mom I have to say no to those requests all too often, so having an open plan allows me to participate without sacrificing dinner. “

Mallory: “In terms of multitasking, you just get used to constantly doing two things at once.”

Marci: “Everything about parenting is tiring lol but if you are good at cooking, you will find you don’t need to devote as much of yourself to the process.”

Marci: “Lol, it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done and I’m sure you feel the same but it is tiring an involves a lot of multitasking. I can’t remember the last time I was able to focus on one thing for more than 30 seconds. I just don’t get that kind of free time anymore”

Aylin: “the open plan thing is helpful not so i can keep my eye on the kids but because they won’t go play somewhere far away from me. generally they want to be where the action is, where everyone is hanging out, where their mama is. if i put a playroom somewhere out of sight or hearing of me, my kids would never go in there. they would take their toys and come play by me, wherever i happen to be. my guys are little though so i’m sure it changes as they get older.”

Brunner, 2013: “Today this layout has become the go-to kitchen style, particularly for families. The combined layout allows for optimum multitasking — parents can prepare dinner, watch the news and help with homework at the same time.”

  • TRADITIONAL: Supporting everyone’s need for alone time, Boosting efficiency

Mike: “I also know that when I am cooking and people are over, I can only spend a small portion of my attention on others. So if the purpose is awareness of and connection to your children, I wonder how much this type of floor plan really allows for that. 

I mean, I really enjoy cooking as a hobby and like how I can focus on a task and lose time in it. I know hobbies go on the backburner in parenthood, but I would think that the act of cooking and watching your children would really change the process. In fact, i wonder whether it would make it even more mentally taxing to have your attention split between two things you really want to be monitoring. It seems like it could be tiring to keep track of everything.”

Jen: “But with 3 kids we really didn’t want to see/hear all of their secrets and play. We also let them play in the pantry (the fairy cave), bedrooms with doors closed (letting the cat out first!) and other “secret” spaces.”

2B. Proximity – Entertaining:

  • OPEN CONCEPT: Allowing all guests into their favorite gathering space– the kitchen, Avoiding host’s kitchen-based isolation

Marci: “I want an open concept floor plan but not because of the kids. It’s great for entertaining since everyone always ends up in the kitchen and since I cook a lot, I can still be part of the party or the kids playing or whatever.”

Mallory: “And as Marcy pointed out – entertaining is much more fun, which we do a fair amount.”

Brunner, 2013: “And it’s difficult to interact with friends and family while whipping up meals, since most of the room is reserved for the work triangle.”

Hillukka, 2012: “If you like to throw parties, you will never feel like you are stuck in the kitchen again.”

  • TRADITIONAL: Satisfying most guests’ comfort in plush gathering space(s)– living/dining room(s), Promoting host’s kitchen-based focus

No one made this argument but it’s the logical counterpart to the former set of assertions. By closing off the kitchen, one “forces” guests to relax in staged and comfy surrounds. This removal of all/most guests from the kitchen also frees the host’s focus from conversing and hosting and directs it solely to the kitchen-based tasks at hand.

3A. Lifestyle – Everyday:

  • OPEN CONCEPT: Making house/rooms seem larger, Welcoming everyone to join in projects

Melissa: “Definitely makes our living space seem bigger though.”

Sara: “We are building a house and designed an open floor plan with kitchen and family room. Not for surveillance, but those are the 2 most used rooms so why not combine them for use?!”

  • TRADITIONAL: Giving sense of coziness, Maintaining nooks for privacy or specific purpose

Lauren: “We lived with an open floor plan for 10 years, 6 of those with a child. We recently moved to an older home that is not open, and I love it. I like for every room to have its own purpose – with our open space, the kitchen and family room all blended together. So keeping food in the kitchen didn’t really happen. Papers were everywhere, toys were everywhere. I like separate rooms…but I do feel “old-fashioned” saying that. I’m clearly in the minority.”

Jen: “They [her children] have their own culture and complex power balance and we *mostly* try to stay out of it. Adults need to remember that we are less important than we think.  Thanks for posting!”

3B. Lifestyle – Entertaining:

  • OPEN CONCEPT: Hosting parties frequently, Preferring informal structures, Enabling unfettered flow between/among spaces

Mallory: “We actually entertain more than we did before we had kids. We don’t have to get a sitter, leave before bedtimes or try to keep toddlers entertained in a restaurant. It is somewhat backwards but it is actually easier than going out and we get to see our friends.”

Marci: “Most definitely but surveillance at least for me would be a very small component. It would mostly be for entertaining. We actually entertain more at home since having kids. It can be tricky to coordinate sitters and expensive so often it’s easier to have people come over after bedtime. It’s also impossible to eat out with small kids — you spend the entire meal wrangling them. But at home, they can play with each other while the adults have a civilized meal at the table with conversation and everything. It’s an entirely different world to have a meal somewhere the kids can run around and play.”

Brunner, 2013: “This layout doesn’t allow for direct access from the kitchen to the dining table, or vice versa.”

  • TRADITIONAL: Hosting parties infrequently, Preferring formal structures, Setting aside spaces for different types of energy/activity

Brunner, 2013: “‘You’ve got to consider the way you live in your home and the way you use your home,’ says Carrino. ‘How do you use your kitchen? How do you foresee using your new kitchen?'”

Say I, in terms of energy, especially when hosting, I think there’s value to having different “zones.” The gregarious need space to loudly cavort, introverts crave a less stimulating place to chat, and gamers might want a room to focus on their match-ups. While folks tend to use anchoring furniture to designate spaces within an open concept expanse, in practice I wonder whether these spaces get smushed or the potential for really getting loud/personal/competitive is limited by outsiders’ noise and eyes.

 Discussion

This work reveals both opportunities and unintended consequences related to design choices and parenting practices.

While I began this research by grappling with provocative questions about effects and implications, this study does not illuminate if/how architectural affordances impact child development. Rather, it is a descriptive study, illuminating everyday and entertaining opportunities that parents (and a few non-parents) consider in order to make floor plan decisions.

  • Future Research

Future research might examine whether and how floor plans are correlated with parenting practices and/or children’s self-regulation. If any correlation exists, which came first, the chicken or the egg — that is, did parenting practices inform floor plan acquisitions or did floor plans shape parenting practices? Did parenting practices lead to children’s self-regulation, or did children’s self-regulation inspire their parents’ practices? Obviously, working with a larger, non-convenience sample also would lend more credibility to my findings.

I was fascinated to discover how my friends introduced gender into the conversation. Rather than engaging with the feminization of housework and child care, which I briefly mentioned in my first unabridged comment, my (heterosexual female) friends talked about young boys’ and girls’ distinct play styles and subsequently differing “needs” for supervision. So how, if at all, would fathers’ and/or same-sex parents differently respond to my queries? Additionally, is my friends’ observation about boys’ and girls’ dissimilar behavior universally shared? How might expectations that sex/gender compel particular parenting practices then cause the manifestation of these particular parenting practices?

The question of class is the elephant in the (hybrid kitchen/living/dining) room. The “open concept” might be the exclusive province of the middle class — the upper class might prefer a closed kitchen in which their domestic help can invisibly toil, while the lower class might prefer several small rooms in order to shelter extended families and/or they may lack access to the newer construction in which “open concept” can be found. Gathering data on both rates of and preferences for “open concept” among families of various classes might be interesting. It’s also worth considering whether this entire examination is of limited import, reasonably chalked up to “first world” or “white people’s problems.” Like Ellen Seiter illuminated in Sold Separately, educated white women sometimes hand-wring over inconsequential issues that might affect their kids, instead of focusing on major issues (e.g., poverty, homelessness, broken public schooling) that do affect other people’s kids and, due to the vastness and ripple effects of the problem, them too.

My sorority sister Mallory observed, “What is somewhat interesting to me is that the open plan kitchen has risen while cooking meals is on the decline, or at least that is my perception.” Mike, my former classmate from both high school and college, replied, “I, too, have the impression that desire for this layout has increased when the actual amount of entertaining or cooking has decreased.” Is this inverse relationship borne out by the data? If so, does the decrease in cooking help to explain the permissibility of an “open concept” because the interference of cooking sounds and cooking smells, as well as the need for cooking concentration, no longer exist?

Finally, Mike went on to identify a few additional factors that also might have influenced the rise of the open concept:

“Right, so you could characterize the opening up of American floor plans to be about multi-tasking (or normalizing increased demands on attention) as much as you could surveillance. Although, you could also view it through the lenses of socialization, family interactions, electronics-centered entertainments, our approach to food and eating, etc. etc. People seem to be drawn towards it for a variety of reasons.”

Conclusion

I found that attributing the rise of the “open concept” floor plan to the surveillance needs of helicopter parents is too simplistic. Differing preferences for sensory access, proximity, and lifestyle in contexts of both everyday and entertaining help to explain parents’ gravitation towards or away from the “open concept” floor plan.

Thank you all for your contributions and inspiration!

Biometric Banality

Reading this article about PayPal+Lenovo’s nascent scheme to eliminate online passwords via, among other things, fingerprint identification, I was reminded of my old rant against quotidian biometric data capture. I wrote this silly (yet wicked smaht) post over 5 years ago and my position on the issue remains the same. Of course I’m interested in protecting property (financial, intellectual) and I’m more likely than not to forget my online passwords. But is our best and/or only recourse to give up our bodies? Surrender our skins to registration, classification, and verification? Unlike my 5-years-younger self, I now have the benefit of Foucaldian study behind me. And this physical intrusion just doesn’t, for lack of a better term, feel right… HOWEVER. For fans of irony, check out my postscript that follows this blast from the past.

Stealing Cybersouls 

(originally published online, 10/04/07)

Check my yard for bombshelters– you won’t find a one. I bank online, date online, and fly worldwide. All of this is to say, I’m hardly an alarmist. I let all sorts of personal data/”personal data” (wink wink nudge nudge) mingle with real and virtual strangers. It’s the post-9/11 twenty-first century, and I feel fine.

But I could feel finer.

And that is both the cause AND the effect of my registration with a new gym.

I was finally fed up, literally, with my excess paunch. So after work on Monday, I marched myself straight down to the gym I associated with the 1980’s. Obsessed with brushed steel, black leather, and conspicuous consumption, this is the gym where jagbag consultants self-possessedly sweat.

You read me right. They’re jagbags.

Approximately one year ago, this gym sent me scurrying to the kinder, gentler halls of the YMCA. The only thing is, the YMCA also has a kinder, gentler personal training program. And when you’re hoping to annihilate a lifetime of habits and accumulation, “kinder, gentler” just ain’t gonna cut it. If I were a small-town girl with big dreams, and my weight was a go-nowhere high school sweetheart, I would tell myself (in an unnecessary Southern accent) “Honey, ya gotta ditch that nice, aimless fella and hitch yourself to the cutthroat, ruthless guy high-tailing it outta town. And God forgive you.”

So I sold my soul to XSport Fitness.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that, in so doing, I also surrendered my identity.

Guess the method to cash in your personal training sessions. Is it:

A) Sign your name in a book

B) Swipe your membership card

C) Display photo ID

D) Answer a security question

E) Fingerprint scan

If you guessed A, B, C, or D, congratulations, you’re sane.

But if you answered E, then you’re correct.

A very matter-of-fact employee informed me of this horrifying system. I stared back at him blankly, waiting for him to say “Just kidding!”, trying to figure out an alternate meaning for the string of syllables that he just uttered… to no avail. Slowly my face registered horror and confusion. His remained blank.

The next day, I unwittingly surrendered my prints. My trainer asked me to tap my finger on a digital disc. No explanation, nothing, just tap your finger four times. I complied. Heck, the previous day I had held a digital device that measured my body-mass index, so I figured this disc was going to calculate my bone density or guess my cup size or something.

Not so. Its job was to steal my identity.

Dismayed, I brought my concerns to the gym manager.

Where and how is this data stored? I asked. What happens if hackers get a hold of this information? You’re a gym, not a high-security data haven. People worry hardcore about their credit cards, but they can always cancel their account and get a new string of numbers. This is not the case with fingerprints. I have been and will continue to be stuck with my fingers for life. If somebody lifts my prints, then I’m permanently screwed.

The gym manager went on the defensive. These are actual sound bytes:

“All the gyms are doing it!”

“It’s the only way.”

The only way?

Let’s say my lawn had a weed problem. Would the only way to address it be dousing it with Agent Orange?

No. There’s some middle ground between the status quo and “the nuclear option.”

So then he recommended that I call corporate. And when he gave me the number, he admitted that I wasn’t the first person to question the fingerprinting. Maybe they’ll repeal the system, he speculated.

Well, he didn’t say “repeal.” But that’s what he meant.

After the evil digital disc had captured my fingerprint, after I had completed my series of squats and lunges, I hit the showers. The report on the television in the locker room (pause to process “the television in the locker room”… and moving on) showed an adolescent girl named Alyssa whose Facebook profile had been stolen. In the Valley Girl tones of too many female adolescents, she bemoaned the obscene speech that had been posted in her name and bleated that her username and password had been changed, locking her out of her own account.

If the commercials of old men talking like bimbos with bustiers hadn’t done it, then perhaps this saga of a socially un-networked preteen will drive the message home: Identity theft is rampant! Even Web gurus are getting played. And my gym thinks it can keep fingerprints safe?!

I started to do some research on this topic and discovered that the use of sensitive biometric data for completely frivolous ends is on the rise. They’re introducing biometric measurement tools in school cafeteriasWalt Disney World lines, and airport security counters.

I listened to a podcast of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, originally broadcast on August 8, 2007, entitled “High-Tech Spy Tools Aren’t Just for James Bond.”

Host Neal Conant interviewed Walter Hamilton, director of the International Biometric Industry Association. In a nutshell, Walter loves employing biometrics. He thinks it’s great, safe, efficient, delicious. Eliza Du, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Indiana University, also loves biometrics. She’s trying to manufacture the recognition technology that astounded/freaked the s*#$ out of us in Minority Report.

Then Neal and Walter took some phone calls.

Mark from San Francisco, a member of the Air Force Reserve, extolled the merits of the “Clear System,” or registered traveler program that provides a fast-lane security option for frequent fliers who have undergone background checks and submitted biometric samples (fingerprint and iris recognition).

For Mark, this amazing technology represents a “20-30 minute savings on a typical morning.” He opined, “It’s kinda a risk-benefit ratio. I think the convenience here, for me at any rate, far outweighs whatever concerns I might have that information will be misused…”

Sure, of course. 20-30 minutes… the integrity of your persona… potato, potahto.

Then Jim from California called in. He just got back from the Blackhead Defcon Conference in Las Vegas (don’t know what that is, but they use the term “Defcon” in War Games, so I’m impressed) where he had seen a demonstration of a new technology. It’s familiarly referred to as the “passport Smartchip” and basically, it’s a microchip loaded with biometric data that each person could put in his/her passport. At this demonstration, the data on the chip was cloned and, thus, compromised.

Here is an interchange between Jim and Walter:

JIM: Digital data can be copied readily. Once that digital blob is compromised, anybody can use it in the appropriate application by sending it into the system that wants that response from the reader… Biometric data, while it’s very sexy, is also very dangerous, so I have great concerns about it. And, having watched the source being cloned, and having biometric data on the passport, I think it’s a real danger.

WALTER: Biometric data, like any personally identifiable information, needs to be adequately protected in terms of how you design a system. It should be encrypted when it’s stored, wherever it’s stored. It should be sent over secure communication channels whenever it’s transferred—

JIM: It’s not, that’s the problem!

WALTER: When it’s not, that could be a problem.

JIM: The bottom line is the encryption method that is being used is inadequate for the purposes for which it’s intended and the systems in general are not really designed to take into account the sensitivity of this data. So it’s a matter of convenience rather than a matter of security. It’s a matter of system design, it’s a problem of implementation and understanding of consequence, and I don’t think we have a clear understanding of that yet…

So there you have it. Mark’s a tool, Walter’s a flunky, and Jim’s a prophet of truth.

Ironically, my fingerprint-greedy gym is the reason my print is currently impaired. Not that that’s gonna save me, the whorls are still readable, they just ain’t pretty. And THAT I blame on the gym.

I had risen at an ungodly hour to kickoff my new, early morning workout routine. Bleary eyed, I made my way to the kitchen, shoved a few soy bacon strips into the toaster oven, and shuffled back to my bedroom. Either squeezing into my Spandex took more time than I had anticipated, or I had torqued up the toaster setting too high. In any event, that bacon burned, baby. That bacon burned.

And I wasn’t about to watch my bean curd-based breakfast go up in smoke. I thrust my hand into the inferno and pulled out the charred remains. The fingertips of my right index and middle fingers paid the price. To this day, i.e., one and a half days later, they sport horizontal slash marks as if they’d been sliced by a Gillette Venus Razor For Ladies.

Now, I wouldn’t have been toasting that bacon, incinerating that bacon, or swiping that bacon if it weren’t for the gym. And frankly, I’m not sure how that bodes for my new stab at fitness.

On the bright side, if all of this working out doesn’t, well, work out, at least my identity will be gone. So that slightly pudgy girl won’t really be me.

POST-SCRIPT: I moved to Los Angeles in 2008. My gym in Glendale, CA, instituted fingerprint check-in almost immediately after I joined in 2009. And guess what? I’ve been giving them the finger — literally, the index — ever since. So much for living your values…

Digital Equity

“Digital equity is the social-justice goal of ensuring that everyone in our society has equal access to technology tools, computers and the Internet. Even more, it is when all
individuals have the knowledge and skills to access and use technology tools, computers and the Internet”
(International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Digital Equity Toolkit – Working Draft, 2006).

Nora Fleming recently queried me on digital equity. After writing back an extremely long response (see Q’s and A’s), I decided to plunge deeper — and probably more responsibly — into Nora’s specific area of interest and the work that she previously has done to that end. I wish I had done this digging first — and I hope any/all readers will do as I say, not as I did; from this point forward, I will do my homework first and pontificate last. Lesson learned.

So today I searched for a definition of digital equity and, to my relief, it is as I had conjectured — a state in which both the digital divide and the participation gap are bridged. I wonder if the term digital equity has fallen out of favor, as the definition and other articles I found that used this verbiage were not current; indeed, the piece I cite above (a working draft at that!) is six years old, which is a lifetime in the digital realm. If this is indeed the case, then Nora might want to consider adopting a more relevant label.

I would argue for a different term in any case because I’m wary of limiting our scope to just digital. Do we really wish to focus exclusively on the digital, I wonder — just 1’s and 0’s, only what’s written on microchips? Is that the characteristic of interest? Or do we wish to consider media and communication more broadly? This would encompass beneath its wide umbrella all things digital, as well as information products and communication processes that qualify as analog. Rather than digital equity, then, perhaps we need to call for communication equity... That doesn’t sound as catchy but maybe it’ll catch on…

I read Nora’s 6 November 2012 article, Schools Are Using Social Networking to Involve Parents, and was struck by a number of things. First, Nora already knows a lot of what I spewed in last night’s email. In fact, she had a few things to teach me; all the way from Washington, DC, she discovered and reported that I have a colleague in my backyard: “Wendy Lazarus, the chief executive officer and co-founder of The Children’s Partnership, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based nonprofit that helped launch a school-based digital education initiative for parents in the Los Angeles area several years ago” (Fleming, 2012, para 28). Overall, I found this article extremely interesting and full of useful information.

If I were to offer any constructive critique, it would be to consider some of the (1) human, (2) professional, (3) commercial, and (4) environmental impacts of this pursuit of equity. Often, good-intentioned interventions fail to deliver unqualified benefits — or even any benefits at all — where these dimensions are concerned.

1. Human

In terms of human impacts, I would challenge us to consider the toll that unremitting digital access can exact. According to Michael Searson, the executive director for the School for Global Education and Innovation at Kean University in Union, N.J., and the president of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, “It’s unethical to provide a robust digital learning program in school for kids who don’t have access in their bedrooms and family rooms. As schools begin to integrate mobile devices and social media into education, the out-of-school equity issues have to be considered. Education leaders need to understand equity is not only access to devices, but access to the networks that allow people to get information” (cited in Fleming, 2012, para 38).

I disagree with the first part of Searson’s argument. A robust digital learning program can certainly be utilized in classrooms, and skilled educators there can help their students to scaffold their development of digital/new media literacies. It’s unfair to expect students to work on digital projects at home if they don’t have digital access at home — I agree with that. But what are the ethical implications of working towards online access in kids’ bedrooms and family rooms? The body of research on televisions in children’s bedrooms demonstrates that the presence of this media fount is correlated with impaired sleep (e.g., see this most recent write-up of a study from the University of Alberta). Humans need sleep. Humans need respites from any given activity, and certainly from more passively-oriented, visually stimulating activities. I happen to find it unethical to introduce powerful technologies into sensitive contexts, such as children’s bedrooms and families’ spaces for togetherness, without thoughtful, deliberate processes for establishing boundaries, and without offering some sample guidelines for reference and remixing.

Without these conversations and limits, some (most?) folks will struggle to appropriately portion control and will inevitably overuse. They’ll send infinite messages, spend excessive amounts of time managing Inboxes, bury their noses in their smartphones whenever there’s a lull in the action, and keep their mobile device at their bedsides, to jar them from sleep when an email comes in and to consult with immediately upon waking. We all know people like that, don’t we? And we cannot dismiss them all as addicts run amok, slaves to frivolity.

2. Professional

My partner, for example, is one of these embattled individuals. He’s accountable to notices that beep their way into his iPhone (which he pays for himself) at all hours of the day and night. I plead with him to just turn it off, but it’s not that simple. If Mike doesn’t react to the communique, he’ll soon hear about it from his boss in three other mediated ways (e.g., text, phone call, skywriting). And it’s not as easy as sitting down with his boss and saying, “Ease up.” If they institute a company policy to ignore the late-night notices, then another company will scoop up the notices’ embedded opportunities. Then this other company’s clients will ultimately land the jobs that will help them feed their families — these other company’s clients, not his. And Mike’s clients have hungry families too.

So we have a systemic issue here, which requires an industry-wide solution, perhaps a multi-industry solution, to give adequate amounts of time during the workday for the execution of professional labor, and to recognize that a limited workday does exist — all time does not equal work time. As Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park reminded us, Just because we can [in this case, work around the clock], doesn’t meant that we should. And arguably, we can’t — see my humanness argument above.

These rules and realizations extend to teachers and parents too. They deserve a manageable slate of tasks and expectations so that they aren’t consistently set up to fail, and/or internalize the sense that they’re always falling short. In her article, Nora explained “Mr. Vodicka [Superintendent of Vista, CA] started a Twitter account and began making the rounds to schools, with the goal of reaching every classroom in the district and tweeting his experiences at each to his Twitter followers. Other administrators in the district have followed Mr. Vodicka’s lead—now, 60 administrators have school-related Twitter and Facebook accounts, and around three-quarters of the schools now have some kind of social-media presence” (Fleming, 2012, para 18).

I applaud this administrator’s transparency and accessibility. But I worry about the implicit — or explicit — demands this introduces for his staff and the parents in his district. Avoiding Twitter could frame teachers and parents as less conscientious, less communicative, and/or less contemporary than they should be. This is unfair since attending to Twitter and other social media accounts doesn’t come from a vast wasteland of time — teachers and parents aren’t thumb-twiddling, they’re phenomenally busy. So how does introducing accountability to social media add more (unpaid) labor to already teeming job descriptions ? And how does this detract, if at all, from quality of life and family time?

3. Commercial

In terms of commercial impacts, I’m wary of private enterprises’ encroachment into public domains. I studied commercialism in schools when I was working towards my Master’s degree in Child Development, and I worry about the growing prevalence of commercial messages in taxpayer-funded spaces, especially those frequented by youths. Some people say that these partnerships are win-win; for example, when as a kid I participated in Book It!, I was encouraged to read and rewarded with free personal pan pizza. But was this less of a win for reading, which arguably should be intrinsically motivated in order to sustain lifelong engagement, and more of a win for Pizza Hut (since only my meal was comped, not my brother’s, sister’s, mom’s, or dad’s)?

Nora wrote, “With donations from the Microsoft Corp. as well as $25,000 from the local school endowment, the district created “parent super centers” on five school campuses” in Houston. I appreciate this, but I can’t help but notice the business opportunity in this “philanthropy” which brands it as much, if not more, of a PR endeavor and chance to establish a brand relationship with a new market of consumers. Computers for Youth facilitates the receipt of a refurbished, personal computer by parent enrollees of computer training workshops; they also guide parents in how to get broadband Internet in their homes, which they can typically access at highly discounted rates (Fleming, 2012). Again, I appreciate this assistance, especially in terms of negotiating the complicated processes of subscribing for services and obtaining low-income discounts. But which company’s computers are they distributing? Which internet service providers are they promoting? How, if at all, do non-profit and public institutions operate as middlemen for multinational corporations, and what is the net benefit for citizens?

4. Environmental

In terms of environmental impact, let me back up and say, I had the good fortune of studying political economy with Dr. Ellen Seiter. In her course, we read Vincent Mosco’s The Digital Sublime, an eye-opening look at how increased digital consumption via personal devices contributes to inhumane labor conditions, massive amounts of e-waste, and dangerous scavenging through these mountains of chemical-dripping refuse by folks desperate for income.

Some research also identifies how increased demand for tin, tungsten, and tantalum — the elements that power our digital devices — has transformed them into “conflict minerals.” Like “conflict diamonds” (made famous by the 2006 film Blood Diamond), pursuit of these minerals has inspired brutal conflicts between rival militias in eastern Africa, resulting in widespread slaughter and rape (for a dramatized explanation of this situation, see Law & Order: SVU’s 2010 episode “Witness,” written by Dawn DeNoon; an analysis of this episode’s impact, written by Sheila Murphy, Heather J. Heather, Sandra de Castro Buffington, and myself will be published in a forthcoming edition of The American Journal of Media Psychology).

Mosco also challenges us to consider how, if at all, this increased access to information (some of it credible, some of it spurious, and few of us able to distinguish the difference), and increased access to communication (some of it useful, some of it banal, and few of us able to control our predominant engagement with the former), actually makes our lives better. It undoubtedly does sometimes, but not always. So should our goal be to increase round-the-clock access universally, or to identify the qualities of and conditions under which more information and communication delivers benefit?

My belief: the latter. Let’s identify the qualities of and conditions under which more information and communication delivers benefit. This will help us to recognize when it better serves us to disconnect from the screen and plug in to each other. And this will imply a less drastic product-fix: not a portal in every bedroom, necessarily, or always-on internet, but household access, peak hour availability.

As we struggle for equity, we must simultaneously fight for humanity.

The Power and Importance of Play

Today I had the honor of participating in a conversation organized by DML Central‘s ConnectedLearning.tv about the power and importance of play. The featured guest, Nirvan Mullick, is the innovative filmmaker behind Caine’s Arcade and Caine’s Arcade 2, and architect of Imagination Foundation and Global Day of Play, among other things. His groundbreaking work — sharing the creativity and passion of a young Angeleno boy’s cardboard arcade, leveraging its mini-viral popularity, creating a scholarship foundation for Caine, and building a global movement — is inspirational to say the least.

This conversation was organized by Jon Barilone, Community Manager of DML Central, moderated by Tara Brown, Technology Director of DML Research Hub, and enriched by contributions from Isaiah Saxon of DIY.org and Monika Hardy of the be lab. Of course, chatty ol’ me also said a thing or 10. And I would have said more if I was following the webinar’s LiveStream chat! Great backchannel conversation.

The webinar’s collaborative document listed the following as key quotes:

  • “This was lightning in a bottle in my world. This tremendous opportunity, but also this tremendous pressure to try to make the most of it.” – Nirvan
  • “There should be a seamless gradient from their naive play to what adults would recognize as work.” – Isaiah
  • “We have to create a culture where play is not only acceptable, but valued. Where we’re demonstrating that we care about play and creativity.” – Laurel
  • “Making/playing is a platform for kids to have the confidence to try a new skill they don’t have yet.” – Isaiah

———————-
For me, interesting points of the conversation include (but are not limited to): playing vs. making; values vs. rewards; capacities vs. checkmarks; practice vs. philosophy; today vs. tomorrow.

  • Playing vs. making

I’m interested in creating a Venn diagram for these two concepts, playing and making, because I find them to be interrelated and even overlapping at times yet not synonymous. Isaiah said that in order to make, one must play; I agree. But in order to play, one does not have to make — that is, unless we define “making” more broadly to encompass making narratives, making interpersonal connections, making characters, making decisions, etc. I feel that makerspaces and hackerspace are havens for tangible tinkering — taking an object and transforming it in some way. But by definition, play does not require any objects. In fact, my favorite way to play — improv — insists upon no props, no sets, no nothing.

Isaiah elaborated that to earn a Skill badge on DIY.org, one must complete at least 3 challenges that incorporate play. So play is in the DNA of making. But what is in the DNA of play? USC Dornsife’s Joint Educational Project will pilot a badge system in which service-learners can earn badges in play. Designing challenges that support play proficiency is on my To-Do list for — now-ish, I suppose :-), and by “now-ish” I mean NOW, since we’re launching this in February 2013. I’m looking forward to demystifying (and complicating) a process/concept we all thought we already understood: play.

  • Values vs. rewards

I characterized badges as expressions of values, ways to show community members what we care about. By recognizing Attendance Award winners, schools show that they care about kids coming every day. By letting a student walk to lunch first because she raised her hand without calling out, a teacher shows that he cares about turn-taking and orderliness. Do these rewards motivate and incentivize behavior? Perhaps, to a point — extrinsically. We all know that the value of such methods is limited and we do not want to create a generation of individuals who require external validation.

I care much less about people working for the reward, and much more about the symbolic value of giving time and attention to a certain set of values. I like what badges express. When an organization supports a play badge, it says, “We care about play.” When an organization connects a group of badges to its program, it says, “These are possible outcomes of your work. These are some goals we find worthwhile.” To learners — who may understandably assume that this learning context is just like the rest, and that their job is to sit passively and spit back the expected responses — it declares, “This time, it’s different.” Badges show what you can explore, do, become. “Welcome, current and budding Players, Zoologists, Engineers. This experience transcends an A in who-knows-what. This experience is open for you to grow.”

Maybe this sounds idealistic and naive. Maybe that’s my specialty. ;-) I just think we need to unambiguously show learners that the world is rich with possibilities, and have our learning contexts reflect and honor that richness.

  • Capacities vs. checkmarks

Educational standards have become (or were they always?) a dirty word. Our American educational system is not federal but wide adoption of The Common Core moves us closer towards national norms. Is this a hollow affair at best, a time-sucking or even sinister situation at worst?

It depends on what you believe standards do. From Monika, it sounded like she believes that standards superficially designate “good” and “bad” where such qualifiers don’t exist — there is just difference.

So far, I can only think of examples where I disagree… I’m struggling to play devil’s advocate with myself and find a case that will support her point. Perhaps I’ll get there as I  share my own position.

I think there are basic skills that allow people to play the game. If you don’t know how to dribble, you can’t really play basketball. You can make up your own game with different rules and not have to dribble at all, or only dribble in a certain kind of way. That’s fine. But that’s not basketball. Whether we want to transition to this new game becoming THE game and replacing basketball, that’s a separate issue. But this new game is not basketball. To play basketball, you have to be able to dribble.

So that’s what I think of when I consider standards. To be able to read, you have to understand phonemes. To be able to subtract, you have to understand the number line. Teaching these skills to children is an important task we give to schools. Standards articulate this expectation, this part of schools’ job description. By the end of the year, the students should understand X, be able to do Y.

Standards become problematic when the learning goals they outline are: 1) irrelevant; 2) beyond students’ zone of proximal development (either too easy or too hard); or 3) chained to inappropriate instructional methods. If/when any of these criteria describe standards, then the standards should be rewritten. But in my opinion, the phenomenon of standards should not be dumped all together.

I want our children to be able to engage with challenging texts. I want them to be able to express themselves so that comprehension is not limited by writers’ poor grammar but by listeners’ own willingness to engage. I want our children to be able to look at a pie chart and know what it means. I want our children to be able to calculate which carton of orange juice at the grocery store is a better deal per milliliter. And of course, I want our children to love themselves, treat one another with respect, and dream of what never was and ask why not (to borrow a phrase from the late, great Bobby Kennedy).

Isaiah said that his ideal middle school would consist of two required courses in character-building and five electives whose content would authentically integrate standards/basic skills. Amazing idea. To that integration end, I encouraged educators to identify the basic skills already embedded in creative projects, and to discover diverse subjects’ interrelationships, e.g., a social science standard within the scope of a science project.

Let’s help school enable, rather than prevent, education.

  • Practice vs. philosophy

What we believe is one thing; what we do is often another. How can we make our teaching reflect and support our philosophies? What can we DO? Fabulously time-strapped teachers legitimately ask for this concrete guidance; in many cases, educational advocates are preaching to the choir instead of giving them a hand. Of course teachers want to support their students; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have gone into this (largely thankless) profession. But how are they supposed to get the job done? Even though I know better, sometimes I catch myself teaching in the same way that I was taught (didactially) and taught to teach (by the book/standard/standardized test). I need a model for another way; I need practical guidelines; I need an example. I think we all do.

In terms of a model, in today’s conversation I presented participatory learning (which is similar to connected learning). In a playful participatory learning context, educators surrender some classroom control in order to honor students’ self-directed learning and creativity, embrace technology and digital media even in the absence of personal expertise/mastery, and value process over product – that is, escape the tyranny of perfection (Vartabedian & Felt, 2012, p. 62).

In terms of practical guidelines, I shared the five characteristics of participatory learning (hereafter referred to as the “5 CPLs”). Our research from USC Annenberg Innovation Lab’s PLAY! project and, previously, from Project New Media Literacies, found that rich learning flourishes with the establishment of these values and practices:

The 5 CPLs

● heightened motivation and new forms of engagement through meaningful play and experimentation;
● an integrated learning system where connections between home, school community and world are enabled and encouraged;
● co-learning where educators and students pool their skills and knowledge and share in the tasks of teaching and learning;
● learning that feels relevant to the students’ identities and interests; and
● opportunities for creating and solving problems using a variety of media, tools and practices (Project New Media Literacies 2010; cited in Felt, Vartabedian, Literat & Mehta, 2012)

The following tool might help educators and their students to discern whether and to what extent their learning contexts qualify as participatory. Areas of weakness are simply spaces for development and innovation.

4 C’s of Participation Inventory

  1. How do we provide mechanisms to CREATE?
  2. How do we offer opportunities for media [which can be understood as messages and information] to CIRCULATE across platforms, disciplines and ages?
  3. How do we help learners to COLLABORATE and build upon others’ knowledge?
  4. How do we encourage learners to CONNECT with counterparts and establish productive networks?

(Reilly, Jenkins, Felt & Vartabedian, 2012)

In terms of a sample activity or curriculum, I suggested improv games. Improv establishes a context in which to develop essential and versatile skills, and improv’s respectful implementation helps to co-create a culture in which risk-taking is encouraged, “failure” is acceptable/impossible, collaborating is key, and gift-giving is just how we roll.

I think we’re still figuring out the HOW. But I think that getting down to these brass tacks, discussing practice rather than philosophy, is necessary in order to avoid old habits and move forward.

  • Today vs. tomorrow

A ConnectedLearning.tv community member shared a question via chat. While this query set off our riff about standards, it also inspired my final comment about who we reach out to and how we conceptualize our goals. We would be remiss if we focused exclusively on either today or tomorrow; we must consider both.

Exchanging concrete practice is very today-oriented, extremely here-and-now. The task of identifying standards across one’s teaching is also contemporary. It speaks to what’s currently on the books. For today, let’s do all we can to hack/mod the system, establish standards crosswalks, and connect our ideals with our realities. We can’t abandon today to rhetoric of tomorrow. And, institutionally, we can’t abandon formal education to the potential of informal learning. Our children are in school for many hours every day; I refuse to surrender that time and just invest in the outside. Nothing against the informal! But a formal does exist. Let’s dig in and fix a thing or two NOW.

In terms of tomorrow… We we all know that our educational system is sick. We all know that a lot of renovation is required. So let’s also reach out to the funders, architects, and contractors of that system — in other words, government officials and representatives, school board members, and curriculum developers. Let’s ask them to build school spaces that look less like factories and more like labs, libraries, coffee shops, and meeting rooms. Let’s ask them to write standards that are neither irrelevant nor beyond students’ zone of proximal development nor chained to inappropriate instructional methods. Let’s ask them to offer professional development workshops that model and encourage playful participatory learning.

Let’s work better today. And let’s build a better tomorrow.

I’ve embedded today’s webinar below and welcome the opportunity to continue this conversation on Twitter! Please talk back to me via @laurelfelt and/or hook this up with the communal discussion via #connectedlearning. Thanks again!