Scheduled Seminar Discussions

Thank you for the feedback, Richard. My user profile on my home computer got corrupted last week, so reinstalled the operating system and most of the programs, and am finally trying to catch up a bit on my (electronic) life. Let me begin my reflection on your suggestion here.

Jean-Francois Lyotard -- Lyotard was one of the founding members of and more important of those considered to be postmodernists. I recall the first time I read his seminal work The Postmodern Condition (which was funded partly as a Canadian initiative in Quebec), I was a bit overwhelmed. This work addresses issues of a society where knowledge and power are seen through the lens of those who hold it, so how we see the world is partly due to those who are in control. His definition of postmodernism itself, which (translated into English) is "incredulity toward metanarrative," can mean that diversity of worldview (in its many meanings) means that a traditional Western view of history and society (which is overwhelmingly dominated by a US view of "things") is derived from a power that no longer can be seen from a merely one-sided perspective (the dualistic "we are right" or "of course this is the 'true' way to perceive" this or that). In a nutshell--in an incredibly complex world that is now made even more complex (and flat) with technology and online social networking and learning, it is not longer as easy to assume everybody sees the world or learning or education or "right" or "wrong" in the same way, as "we" no longer have the power to enforce it.

While Lyotard is certainly more complex and controversial, this was the thinking I had when I first suggested him here. Lyotard is not per se focused on technology, but as technology how has such an influence on how and why and who uses it educationally, I think his work is even more important now.

Regarding Baudrillard, I was thinking about his concepts in his work Simulation and Simulacra as well as his concept of hyperreality. With an increasingly complex world that is focused on production and consumption (here we go again with the power issues and who controls what for whom; think about this from our perspective on education and learning), scenes in the media and technology are often more real than reality itself (who doesn't think life for reality tv stars is better, or that we should all look and act like supermodels or glitterati?), so there is a blurring between our lives and the ways we begin to "believe" our lives should be? While this is before Baudrillard wrote, think about how glamorous movie stars were when they smoked; even network news people used to smoke on sets. Everybody smoked, so when the science reports started to show smoking is dangerous, nothing really changed until we stopped seeing the "reality" of smoking as "glamorous;" remove it from the media, and we tend to then emulate it in out lives.

When I mentioned Baudrillard, I thought of his work and how Second Life and social media are more real than F2F relationships for many people, and while this can be contested and seen from a variety of perspectives, I simply like the way Baudrillard helps to provide a framework from which to consider these ideas.

Phew, all this thinking about these two makes me want to reread them . . .

George, this is a good point. When you and Richard started talking about this issue, there were no ed tech people per se who came to mind. I then started to consider how I approach these issues, and my worldview has been heaviy influenced from these people, so thus my contribution.

No, this stuff we are doing does not arrive in a vacuum, and I think that if we consider this we will become better educators and learners in the process.