Bud the Teacher

    Lots of good stuff has either slid through the podcatcher or across the TV screen lately.  Thought you’d be interested in these two.

Frontline is looking very seriously at the future of news as well as what it means to keep secrets in a four part series called NewsWar.  A teacher’s guide is in the works and you can already view some of the show online.  (Frontline also keeps a collection of episodes online for viewing.  I love PBS.  And WGBH.)

Open Source the radio show recently did an hour on the One Laptop per Child program.  I’m wondering how to get one of those machines in hand so that I can fiddle a little bit — but I’m guessing that won’t happen anytime soon.  One concern I have about the program is the notion that the computers are a magical solution.  I hope no one expects that simply distributing laptops will create a better educated world.

    I haven’t watched it yet, and I’m not sure when/if I will, but I thought I’d pass on that Bill Moyers did a PBS special on Wednesday night about net neutrality.  It’s part of a larger series on modern citizenship that looks downright interesting.  All of the series, like other PBS programs, is available online for viewing via stream.

John’s been playing a lot of Worlds of Warcraft lately, ostensibly as research.  Clarence talks from time to time about educational gaming.  Others have mentioned the idea that we can teach with immersive games, too.  I got it, and agreed, intellectually speaking.  But I didn’t see us quite there in terms of logistics, practicality, and technology.  Then I read this story about James Cameron’s current projects  in Businessweek today:

 Cameron has more than a passing interest in simulation and
next-generation games. A former physics major at California State
University, he once served on the board of NASA. Aiming to shoot all
his future films in 3-D, he has helped pioneer a whole suite of 3-D
cameras, tools to capture actors’ performances and import them into
simulations, and various post-production techniques. Cameron now sits
on the board of Multiverse, a startup that helps developers create
their own games in return for a cut of the subscription revenues.
"You’re seeing what hundreds of thousands of people in this game
environment can create," he says.

Other big directors are glomming onto MMOGs. Imagine Entertainment, the
company run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer that created the TV show 24, has teamed up with producer Jim Banister, Halo
creator Alex Seropian, and others to develop a sci-fi reality show
called XQuest. If it flies, contestants will occupy a cramped
spaceship-like module for a month. Its flight simulators will subject
them to rocket-like conditions, including six Gs of thrust. Players
will ply the galaxy while following the rough contours of a plot.
Outside the ship, online gamers will track the crew’s mission and
ultimately board their own PC-based spaceships to rendezvous with
contestants in shared, simulated space. The next season’s cast, in
theory, is chosen from those who show the most skill playing the game
at home.

    Boy was I wrong.  I totally get it now.  More later.

    Okay, so I’ve got to come clean with all of you:  I’m a Lost fan.  I’m not ashamed — my wife and I really enjoy deconstructing the show and we both enjoy the way the show paints its main characters — but I feel like I should come clean. 
    Earlier today, I was catching up on some reading on my listservs, and I came across a thread asking about uses for Lost in the classroom.  I didn’t have any specific ideas, but I did write the following because I got to thinking about some of what Lost is doing on television, and how that relates to other trends I’m noticing.  I’m curious to know what you think.

I’ve been struck by how Lost is moving off of television and onto the Internet and other
places.  Several "mythology off the show" websites have sprung up
that contain hidden secrets of the show.  Some links:

(The fictional airline of the show — there
are some interesting bits of text hidden in the code of this page.)
  (The group behind the mysterious hatch and the Dharma Initiative.)
  (This is a link to a novel purportedly written by someone who dies on
the plane crash.  While the cover of the book features a Lost
logo, the description on the Amazon page acknowledges the fiction that
the author died in a fake plane crash.)

Now, I know that some of this stuff is just to create hype for
the show and to sell a few more products, but I’m really intrigued by
the idea of telling a story in several different media — along the
lines of how The Matrix involved comic books, anime, and video games
in its storytelling. 

  As media get more and more complex, how should we be teaching
the concept of "story?"  How do we trust a site like Amazon when
they themselves play the game of the fictional story? 

A while back, some of my students interested me in the concept of
Alternate Reality Games , fictional
stories that reach out to real people via text messaging, late night
phone calls, and a ton of other real interactions.  (I played one of the first, but I didn’t know they were called such back when I started playing.)  Heck — one
author a while back wrote a book called A Treasure’s Trove and hid
more than a million dollars in real treasure all over the United States
(There were clues in the book to help you discover the real treasure.  All but one of the treasure jewels have been found so far). 

  Is the nature of story telling changing, in some
ways?    Or is this a bogus question, and has nothing
really started to change?

  I don’t have a clue about the answers — but I find this stuff
really, really interesting.  As a reader of textual and visual
media, I am very captivated by some of these developments.  How can we help our students to both navigate these new environments — and, more importantly, create their own?
 

Johnny Carson has passed away. 
    I remember long ago sneaking around in order to stay up late enough to watch him and, after The Tonight Show, The Benny Hill Show.  I didn’t get why they were funny as a little boy, but I watched them just the same.   Carson was funny and, to a young man, a kind and gentle person.  I suspect the real truth was something different, but I am saddened by his death. 
    Why do we have such connections with celebrities?