This summer, I’m honored to be co-teaching DS106 with my new colleague, Alan Levine. We’re going to be teaching the class entirely online over 10 weeks. In typical DS106-fashion, we’ve invited the Web to participate. The class will be made up of a group of enrolled students at UMW as well as a cohort of open-online participants. We’ve got a lot planned.

First, and foremost, our version of DS106 will be taking place at Camp Magic MacGuffin, a very special summer camp for digital storytelling, creativity, and self-actualization. (I don’t actually know what “self-actualization” means, but it sounds nice.)

In a day or so, we’ll be sending out a welcome letter to our UMW students. Others who interested in participating should check out our welcome video and our special video for open, online students. You can also review the syllabus and packing list. And, if you’re really dying to know more, you can get to know Alan and me better or take a look at the folks who’ll be joining us as camp counselors.

For the duration of camp, I’m going to be blogging my entire experience on a shiny, new site. I’ll be feeding those posts to my Twitter account as well as showing them in my sidebar.

See you on the other side of the mountain!

I. The Rise & Fall of Mike Daisey

Like a lot of other people, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent revelation that Mike Daisey’s January piece Apple’s suppliers’ factories in China on This American Life contained some serious lies and fabrications. I listened to the original broadcast in January and was horrified by the descriptions of working conditions at technology factories in China. It definitely moved me as a story of greed and our culture’s obsession with consumption. And it made me think quite a lot about my own role in this (as well as the responsibility of companies like Apple to monitor working conditions and wages of their suppliers’ employees.)

This Monday, I listened to the podcast of the most recent TAL episode, in which Ira Glass confronts Mike Daisey about the lies he told. It’s painful to listen to. Daisey comes up with rationalization after rationalization for why he did what he did. At times he seems in physical pain as he tries to navigate the conversational waters and survive the interrogation.

The one rationalization that Daisey seems most drawn to is that the lies he told were justified because of the ends they served: his story was meant to inspire audiences to Think Different about their consumption of the latest gadget or technology gizmo. It was supposed to awaken our consciences, forcing us to confront (as I did) our own roles in this system. It was supposed to haunt us, and, hopefully inspire change. It’s worth mentioning that if this was the main purpose of Daisey’s piece (and the monologue from which it is derived), he was terribly successful. MANY people were effected by the TAL episode (it is the most-downloaded episode episode of the most popular podcast in the iTunes store). In inspired additional press coverage, some with Daisey (during which appearances he repeated the lies he told). It seems to have prompted Apple to release even more information about their auditing of factory conditions. The primary factory that Daisey dealt with in the piece, Foxconn, hired a heavy-hitting PR agent to handle the press coverage and backlash after the show aired. and over 200K people have signed a petition on change.org.

During the retraction show, Daisey mentions how the ends of his story justify the means several times:

I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work,
that I know is really good, and tells a story, that does these really great things for 15
making people care, that it would come apart in a way where, where it would ruin
everything.

and

…everything I have done in making this monologue for the
theater has been toward that end – to make people care. I’m not going to say that I
didn’t take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard. But I stand behind the work.

and

I stand by it as a theatrical work. I stand by how it makes people see and care about the situation that’s happening there

And from his blog:

Especially galling is how many are gleefully eager to dance on my grave expressly so they can return to ignoring everything about the circumstances under which their devices are made. Given the tone, you would think I had fabulated an elaborate hoax, filled with astonishing horrors that no one had ever seen before.

Except that we all know that isn’t true.

There is nothing in this controversy that contests the facts in my work about the nature of Chinese manufacturing. Nothing. I think we all know if there was, Ira would have brought it up.

You certainly don’t need to listen to me. Read the New York Times reporting. Listen to the NPR piece that ran just last week in which workers at an iPad plant go on record saying the plant was inspected by Apple just hours before it exploded, and that the inspection lasted all of ten minutes.

If you think this story is bigger than that story, something is wrong with your priorities.

Daisey has dug deep into the rationalization that the larger story of corruption and abuse at these factories far outweighs the lies he told in that story.

What’s deeply sad and ironic is that there IS a lot of truth in Daisey’s story. It is NOT a complete fabrication. He had a great story before he added the lies. His message, because it IS based in a terrible truth, is in-and-of-itself terribly compelling. But, in the name of a BETTER story, he devalued and undermined the real story he had.

II. KONY-ization

I had never heard of Joseph Kony before a few weeks ago. His name first appeared in my Facebook feed, when one or two friends shared the KONY2012 video. I had also seen mention of it on Twitter that morning, and so I took 30 minutes out of my morning and watched the video.

My reaction to the video felt schizophrenic. On a deep emotional level, I was moved by the stories and voices of Kony’s victims. The stories are horrific; the voices are deeply compelling. This reaction was obviously shaped by the incredible production values and the slick storytelling that the video employs. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching just to reflect upon the use of rhetoric, media, and storytelling for advocacy. It is hard to watch and NOT feel moved.

But, at the same time, that slickness also felt deeply manipulative. I knew I was being “shaped” by the video. I knew that the reactions I was having were programmed to happen. I wasn’t used to advocacy making me feel quite this way. I wasn’t sure if my feeling manipulated was actually a sign of my own cynicism. Was I too jaded to sympathize? Was I letting this reaction intervene in the deep empathy that I was also feeling?

It was uncomfortable, because what I WANTED was to just feel for these people and, as a result, DO something. And I’m sure that’s the reaction that the creators of the video were going for. But the production was getting in the way.

There’s a human story behind KONY2012 (and in the larger work of Invisible Children), that should need no slick video in order to be told. As people, the horror of that story should be enough. Period. But, the makers of the video emphasize that the story wasn’t getting out enough.

It wasn’t enough.

They needed to employ the tools of Hollywood in order to get our attention. And, did I mention, I’d never heard of Kony until I saw this video?

I did further reading about Invisible Children and Joseph Kony. And it didn’t take long to find the critiques. (And, to their credit, IC responded thoughtfully to many of those critiques.) The criticism doesn’t accuse the video of telling lies, per say, or fabricating the stories. Instead, it’s rooted, in part, in a belief that IC drastically over-simplifies the story that is being told. And that they shape that story tremendously with Hollywood-style storytelling techniques. Others, apparently, felt manipulated, too.

III. Storytelling for Good

Both the Daisey and the Kony episodes seem to me to be rooted in similar practices: shaping and molding, and even fabricating, stories in order to serve a higher purpose.

The context of these stories matters tremendously. Others have noted that Daisey’s real sin was not in lying or fabricating or “shaping” a story, but when he allowed that story to be retold on a show that is, for the most part, a journalistic endeavor. (It’s worth also noting, as others have, that TAL regularly airs works of fiction–which are generally labeled as such–and works of “loose” memoir, such as David Sedaris’ Santaland Diaries–which are not.) Daisey, himself, admits that letting his work air on TAL was the biggest mistake he made.

KONY2012 doesn’t pretend to be journalism. It is blatant advocacy, and it relies on the passion of the crowd and the value of word-of-mouth recommendations to spread.

But, both pieces, serve to tell a story in order to raise awareness and spark action. They seek to inspire us, and not just the way any good story might inspire. Rather, they seek to inspire us so that we want to become witnesses to change.

I can’t decide if telling a story for this purpose should drive you to a higher standard — or if it buys you a space of grace in which you can tell small lies, shape narratives, and beg your audience’s forgiveness because you believe that what matters is not the telling of the story itself, but what the story creates in our hearts and minds when it is told.

IV. A disclaimer

Lest it’s not obvious, I do understand that there are differences between what Daisey did and what KONY2012 does. I don’t believe that anyone has accused the makers of the latter of telling any outright lies in the video. But I still feel like there is a deep connection here about our expectations with regards to narrative and advocacy.

Some rights reserved by Pretty/Ugly Design on Flickr

As I’ve blogged about before, I’m teaching a course on digital identity this semester. When the course was scheduled, I was really excited. Talking to students at UMW about digital identity has long been something I find incredibly rewarding. I feel like I have a fair amount to share on the topic, and it’s always incredibly cool to have students share their own thoughts about the formation of their digital identity.

I think one reason that the course subject resonates so deeply with me is that I’ve long felt that the formation of identity (of all kinds) is a profound piece of the undergraduate experience. I don’t know that we talk about that explicitly very much within our traditional curricular and academic practices (or maybe we do and I’m just not part of those conversations), but we in DTLT (and the faculty we work with) definitely talk about it WRT digital practices and pedagogies.

So, teaching a course that was entirely framed around digital identity seemed like such a rich and exciting opportunity.

We’re a little more than half way through the course, and some things have gone fabulously. I have a great (albeit small) group of students who frequently contribute to very rich and nuanced conversations in class. I’ve been pleased with how the conversations we’ve had seem to build upon each other, and I think that I’ve seen them begin to develop richer, more nuanced, understandings of the meaning of digital identity and their roles within digital communities and spaces. It’s a fun process to see unfold.

But, on other fronts, I feel like I’m failing a bit miserably.

Not surprisingly, a key component of the course is actually asking students to create (and inhabit) their own identities. This is done primarily through having them purchase their own domain and build their own site within that space. I ask them each to install WordPress and then explore the possibilities of that environment — by installing plugins, playing with themes, and, MOST importantly, developing their presentation of themselves and inhabiting the spaces they’ve created.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised that this can be a struggle (We use this approach in ds106, and, certainly, not every student gets it everytime), but I feel like this should be intrinsically appealing to them! And, to a certain degree, I think they really DO appreciate the opportunity to build their own site and make it their own.

But the inhabiting of that space is a struggle.

Blogging is a key component of the course — I expect my students to use their spaces to share their thoughts on the readings we’re doing and the conversations we’re having. I expect them to read and respond to each other. I REALLY, REALLY want to read what they are thinking. And I REALLY, REALLY want them to read what each other is thinking. I want them to feel empowered by this opportunity. And I want them to feel inspired enough that they can’t help but want to post and share and commune.

To that end, I started the class by taking a somewhat, I guess, “liberal” approach to the blogging component. I didn’t want to prescribe a number of posts or comments. I didn’t want to dictate how often they should post or how long those posts should be. I didn’t want to tell them what they should or shouldn’t include in a post or what kind of voice is “appropriate” for them to use. After all, this is a class in digital identity! I want them to explore that for themselves!!

So, here’s what I put in the syllabus about blogging:

This includes your reflective topic posts and technology assignments. It also includes your commenting on your classmates blogs and posting about other things of interest to you. Think of your blog as an extension of the community of the class as well as a place to carve out and explore your own identity. You will have explicit things you need to do in this space, but I also expect you to “inhabit” it. You will receive an explicit grade on each of the topic discussions and technology assignments. In addition, twice during the semester, I will be reviewing your blog presence holistically and considering how well you are exploring and owning this space.

I wanted to carve out a loose framework for them to understand the role of blogging in the course. But I didn’t want to be so prescriptive that they felt like this was a mere “exercise” — something that they needed to check off of their list once a week (or however frequently).

My framework has been something less than a roaring success. By spring break,  I began to think that maybe they weren’t understanding what I meant when I said “inhabit your blog.” Posts that were required weren’t materializing, and more exploratory uses of their spaces were few and far between.

We talked about this frequently in class. I tried to explain my expectations in as many ways as I could.

After spring break (last week), I decided to try a different approach. I gave them some explicit blog assignments and deadlines. This didn’t work either.

We were supposed to have a conversation tonight about a lecture that the class attended last week. Each of them was supposed to blog about it before tonight, and I even went so far as to ask them to discuss at least three things they learned from the lecture in their posts. Only a few students completed the assignment.

I came to class tonight feeling disheartened. I decided to mix things up and I threw out the discussion idea and gave them a group “field” assignment. I’m hoping this will mix things up enough and might open up some creative gates and get them thinking differently.

I had to preface this by explaining to them why I was doing things differently and why we weren’t having the talk we’d planned on having. I feel like it seemed like I was trying to give them a guilt-trip or shame them. I’m really uncomfortable with that. Much like parenting, I don’t think guilt or shame has a place in teaching.

I’m left wondering if the problem is me. Have I failed to express my expectations clearly enough? Have I been too loosy-goosey, kumbaya about the whole blogging thing? Am I asking too much? Am I not modeling enough or well enough?

I think my students like the class and are engaged in the topic, but, for some reason, I can’t seem to get that to translate into meaningful discourse in the space that is the illustration of what we are investigating — their own personal domain.

I’m struggling with whether to publish this. I know that my students will likely see it and read it, and I don’t want to add to any sense of guilting or shaming — certainly not publicly. But I also believe in transparency and shining lights in the dark corners of our classes. And, most importantly, I believe in asking for help.

I should also come clean and note that I’m sure a large part of my frustration comes from the fact that I am, by profession, and instructional technology specialist! I’m one of those people who works with faculty to help them figure out how to use these digital approaches in their classes. On a certain level, I feel like I should know the answer! But, of course, it’s never that simple.

Way back in the olden days of 2004: I was first getting my blogging legs under me. I had returned to UMW as an instructional technology specialist under the inspired leadership of Gardner Campbell. I began to find and connect with other people at other institutions who were doing amazing stuff. And I started to admire them and learn from them.

Somewhere along the way, I stumbled across this guy who blogged a lot and whose alter ego was a dog. He was REALLY smart and talented, and I started to read his blog regularly. At DTLT staff meetings, his name would come up, spoken in tones of admiration.

He was kind of a big deal. In fact, I remember the first time I left a comment on Alan Levine’s blog. (it took me 2 years!!) I felt like I was leaving a comment on a celebrity’s site!

I’ve gotten to know Alan a bit better since then, and I’m pretty sure he’d laugh at my calling him a celebrity. But, truly, within the field we work in, he’s someone whom I admire tremendously.

So, how exciting is it for me and all of us in DTLT that Alan CogDog Levine has come to UMW as an instructional technology specialist?

Looking around the room (which inclues my other amazing colleagues), I feel like we could do just about anything!

For the last two years, I’ve been working with professor Denis Nissim-Sabat in the department of psychology here at UMW. He teaches a course every fall on the history of psychology, and in 2010 we started working on a project to transform the final projects students were doing in the class to digital presentations. Previously, students had worked in groups on particular historical topics of their choosing. At the end of the semester, they would present their work in a collaborative PowerPoint, with each student covering a particular aspect of the topic.

When Denis and I started working together, he decided he’d like them to develop an online site for their topics, with a particular emphasis on exploring how to build a Web-based information resource that integrates new media. (Big hat tip to Jeff McClurken who’s history of technology class projects inspired the approach, to a large degree).

My role in this course has been to introduce the students to UMW Blogs as well as give them advice about finding and using various kinds of media and tools in their sites. I also offer each group up to one hour of “consulting” time with me, in which they come in and work through specific questions and ideas.

Denis, of course, is the one who really lays the groundwork for how to construct a historical research project. And he pushes them to be both rigorous and creative in the development of their ideas and presentations. Over the last two years, we’ve had about 20 projects developed.  Overall, I think we both felt that it was successful, and we’ve also learnt something each time about how to improve it the next time around.

But I wasn’t prepared at all for the email he forwarded to me from the chair of the psychology department earlier this week. It seems she uses a textbook, Serial Murderers and their Victims, that is currently being revised by its author, Eric Hickey.  Apparently, Hickey (while researching the new edition) came across a Google map created by one of Denis’ fall 2010 student groups. The group was researching the History of Forensic Psychology, and they compiled a map showing the location of significant events in the history of forensic psych. Hickey wants to include the map in the next edition. How cool is it that this group of students could end up with their work published in a textbook — all because they not only were involved in an undergraduate research project but because they were required to share that work publicly and openly on the Web.

View History of Forensic Psychology in America in a larger map

This morning, as I was waiting in the car rider line at my daughter’s school to drop her off, I heard this on the radio:

“Rumors abound that gas prices are about to spike. They could go as high as $5.00/gallon at 8:42.”

Shit. I looked at the clock in my car. It was 8:31. Could I make it to the station by 8:42? I really didn’t want to pay $5/gallon for gas this weekend.

Right after dropping her off, I sped off to the station and arrived there just in time: 8:40.

As I was pumping gas, I thought, “It’s really weird that gas prices are going to spike at exactly 8:42 this morning. Really weird.”

Really weird.

Huh.

At that moment I realized THIS was what I’d heard on the radio:

“Rumors abound that gas prices are about to spike. They could go as high as $5.00/gallon. [Story] at 8:42.”

Yeah. It’s been that kind of morning.

I can smell this picture. It smells good. (Some rights reserved by ~K~ on Flickr)

Yesterday’s Daily Create:

Using your voice as the only instrument, create a recording of a verse and/or chorus from your favorite song.

At some point yesterday afternoon, Tim bowed out for a few minutes and came back and shared his version of this assignment. (Go listen to that NOW!) I thought that was the coolest thing ever, so at the end of the day I asked him to show me how he’d done it. I knew I wanted to give it a go.

I spent about half-an-hour in our studio, laying down six or so tracks (listen to me — using that crazy music lingo!!), and this is what I came up with:

This creation is a really rich one for me. Bear with me, because I’m going get all rambly here now. I have no idea where this post will go.

I. Birthdays

Next week is my birthday. I’ll be 38. My birthday has always been really, really important to me. It’s hard to say why. When I was a kid, my parents would sneak into my room and decorate it with balloons and streamers while I slept the night before my birthday. When I woke up, I felt like the most loved kid in the whole world. (I now do this for my daughter). There was always something magical to me about birthdays.

It’s not just that I think MY birthday is so important. I think everyone’s birthday should be magic.

Over the years, I’ve had some pretty amazing ones. I’ve fallen in love on my birthday, had surprise parties thrown for me, gotten a surprise visit from my mom when I was living in Montana, and had college roomates who threw me a week-long celebration that culminated in a trip to the Bahamas (Well, okay, that was really already planned for spring break, but it FELT like it was for me!!).

Here’s one that stands out more than any other:

I’m 22 years old, 8 months out of college. I’ve just gotten out of a long-term relationship. I thought I would die when it ended. I didn’t. I had just started my dream job at a place that is, to this day, one of my favorite places on earth. I was acting for the first time in years; I’d just gotten the part of Laura in a production of Glass Menagerie. Every weekend, I was going to visit one of my best friends and college roommates and having some serious girl-power bonding time.

On my actual birthday, I took the metro home from work and my mom picked me up at the station for a family party. My new co-workers had bought me a potted plant — well, actually, plants. It consisted of miniature daffodils, tupips, and hyacinths. It was unseasonably warm. It felt like spring, even though it was the last day of February. I buried my face in the hyacinth on the way home and just breathed really, really deeply. I was happier than I had been in forever.

To this day, I always try to buy myself a potted hyacinth for my birthday.

And, what this has to do with my birthday is that this song (Sophie B. Hawkins, As I Lay Me Down) is my birthday song. I discovered it the year that my then-fiance was living in Montana and I was back east planning our wedding. I listened to it every night before I went to bed. The very first line, “It felt like springtime on that February morning,” captures completely the way I feel about my birthday.

II. Thursdays

I was born on a Thursday. Thursdays have always been magical days for me. I fall in love on Thursdays. I meet best friends on Thursdays. I go to awesome parties on Thursdays. I dig deep and find my most creative self on Thursdays. When I go to bed on Thursdays I believe that there is a really good chance that when I wake up on Friday something amazing will happen. Sometimes it does. I will probably die on a Thursday, and that will be just fine.

III. Music

I am, and have always been, musically inept. Well, let me say that again. I actually used to be an okay piano player and for a while I could sing music just by sight-reading. That was neat.

What I’m inept about is what’s cool. I don’t know what’s cool when it comes to music. I like show tunes. I like songs that feature strong female vocalists. I like songs with lyrics that tell stories. I have no idea why they are or are not musically worthy. I cannot, for the life of me, remember who sang any song.  I don’t particularly care except when it makes me feel like I’m missing a limb in conversations about music (or trying to figure how to participate meaningfully in an internet radio station).

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this song. I don’t think it’s cool that I do. I have a feeling it’s not a particularly cool song to love. Until now, I’ve only told a handful of people that I love it. And I don’t think they realize that when I say I love it? I mean that I will listen to it, on repeat, for a 90 minute drive. Seriously.

So, this? Recording my not-so-stellar singing self, singing a not-so-cool song, and putting it up on the Web for anyone to listen to. THAT’S KIND OF A BIG DEAL.

That’s all I got tonight. Peace.

For some reason I thought I should find an image called "Robot Love" to illustrate this post. Here it is. (Some rights reserved by Aaron Webb on Flickr)

The topic this week in di202 (ably led by Lindsay) was about deception online, particularly with how it relates to digital identity and the formation of relationships online.

Here’s what I find fascinating about this topic: I have a sense that our formation of relationships online is fundamentally different than our formation of relationships IRL because of the vast differences between those two contexts. Okay, after re-reading that, I realize it doesn’t sound like a very bold statement. Let’s see if I can dig deeper. . .

I’ve always thought of the Web as being a performative ¹space, by virtue of it being public and valuing public(ation) as a means of sharing and creating identity and self. I’ve written before about what I call the Imperative of Audience — how by providing us with the sense that our ideas and creations can be witnessed by others, the Web pushes us into a mode of performance (and sharing). Once we’re in this mode, I believe it’s human nature to want to explore the boundaries of this new stage.  As a result, you see people experimenting with the presentation of them self in really interesting ways. I think it’s why there is a fascination with Web- and internet-based tools/spaces that give us the opportunity to consider the presentation of our self — virtual worlds (even if you hate them, you know you find them fascinating), use of avatars, sites like Facebook that channel us into answering a series of common questions as a way of painting a picture of who we are.

In meatspace, we rarely build our identity in such overt ways. Instead, who we are is gradually (and gently, even unconsciously) formed through minute experiences and interaction.

And because the Web is so inherently performative, it’s not uncommon for us to build identities for ourselves that are different from who we “really” are. We misrepresent ourselves not necessarily because we are trying to be deceptive but because we are sprung from the physical restrictions and realities that limit us in face-to-face interactions. In many ways, I think this is freeing. I, for one, am a whole lot better at maintaining and nurturing some friendships online than I am in my face-to-face life. I think those friendships are just as meaningful and important — what allows me to do this is the tacit understanding online that what we are doing is a performance, and so we are allowed to become something that might be different than who we’re perceived to be offline.

So, that’s what I find fascinating when I think about lying and deception online. What about you?

I don’t know about the accusation that DS106 is ‘over-branded.’ I think it’s far more accurate to acknowledge that it is a definitely a cult.

To that end, I reworked this TIME magazine cover. (Next up: I want to figure out how to animate those tentacles.)

It’s that time of year again. We’re gearing up for Faculty Academy 2012. This year we’re ahead on getting some stuff done (speakers lined up, some logistics planned), and behind on picking a conference theme. Mostly, the theme is just important so that we (and this year that means Tim!) can design publicity. We brainstormed for a bit in the office today, and came up with a list. Now we want your opinion. Go vote:

By far my favorite today, however was “Rotting away from the Inside.” (a loose quote from Videodrome, the inspiration for Summer of Oblivion). Can you imagine the graphic possibilities for that one!? My colleagues deemed it inappropriate. They are SO stodgy.