On comic books, travelblogging, and the nature of education
Any Neil Gaiman fans out there?
If you follow Neil’s journal at all, you’ve probably seen him talk about his god-daughters, 13-year old Sky and 11-year old Winter McCloud. Recently, he linked a piece that names Sky and Winter fangirls of the year and details their travels around the country on their dad’s (Scott McCloud, comic writer & theorist)book tour.
Reblogged: OUCH! Don’t touch that button!
This piece was originally published by the Macarthur Foundation on their Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog (original link).
It is a classic study, one that every student of psychology–and anyone who does research on “human subjects”–knows: The Milgram Experiment.
In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram studied reactions to authority by asking volunteers to administer electric shocks to a subject as part of a research study. The volunteers were told that the study was looking at how punishment would affect the subject’s performance on a test. The volunteers were reluctant, and grew more so as they heard the cries of pain from the subject getting the shocks. But the researchers said they had to continue with the experiment, and the volunteers gave bigger and bigger shocks to the subject–in some cases at or past dangerous levels.
But the experiment was a ruse. There were no subjects and no shocks. The study was really about the volunteers’ willingness to submit to authority: to continue to punish someone despite more and more desperate cries for help because a researcher had told them that they had to do it. And the experiment is notorious because of the psychological damage it did to the volunteers, many of whom were haunted by their willingness to inflict pain on another person, even after they learned of the deception and the true purpose of the experiment.
Fast forward 40 years, to a new study, this time by Mel Slater, of the Catalan Polytechnic University in Barcelona, Spain, and University College London, UK. (The study is reported in Nature’s news site (originally available at: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061218/full/061218-17.html), with subscription required, but also more briefly here for free.)
The setup is exactly the same as in Milgram’s experiment, only this time the subject getting electric shocks is a character in an immersive virtual environment.
Working Class Studio
In February 25th’s New York Times Magazine, Rob Walker writes about a “program at the Savannah College of Art and Design (or SCAD) in Georgia, called Working Class Studio, that is so focused on marketplace realities that it seems more like a company than a college course.” Students in the program, referred to as “interns,” conduct trend research and are involved in producing prototypes and products, some of which actually have sold well in the real marketplace (in stores like Anthropologie and online).
Neighbourhood Wizard
How often do we think about the consequences of making changes in our neighborhoods? Using a website called The Neighbourhood Wizard, Jos van Leeuwen aims to get citizens thinking about the viewpoints and needs of all members of society and to help citizens express their needs in terms of solutions. Though the website is in Dutch, I summoned my high school German skills and played around a bit. The website has social and physical tradeoffs built into the equations, and when a user chooses one livability option over another, graphs are dynamically constructed allowing the user to compare her choice to the choices of others. After a few minutes on the site, I started feeling like I was taking an interactive test, and I lost interest (my insufficient Dutch skills may also have been a contributing factor). The test taking feeling might have been averted with a bit of narrative interaction (i.e. a blog for sharing ideas instead of ideas conveyed via bar graphs).
In his paper, he argues that people using The Neighbourhood Wizard began to understand that certain physical changes had variable impacts on different sections of the population. In short, users began to understand the complexity of the urban system. Continue reading »
“What’s Wrong With Vocational School?”
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, (subscription required) “What’s Wrong With Vocational School?” Charles Murray critiques the “false premium that our culture has put on a college degree.” Murray suggests that instead of touting 4-year college as the top educational option, we should recognize that because of its traditional emphasis on “advanced analytic skills” applied to a broad range of information, it is really just an option for those to whom this kind of education appeals, which is by no means all students. So what about everyone else? Continue reading »
