Youth workshop in a college computer lab.
For the first time in my teaching career, I have access to a computer lab. It simply was never possible before. My classes will only visit the lab three times in the semester (beginning, middle, and end) for design-work but I am just now incorporating this into my pedagogy. I am embarrassed to admit that this is the first time that I am understanding how significant the changes in pedagogy are based on the lay-out of a computer lab. I have read about these issues, for sure, but honestly, I ain’t read all that stuff closely. What I need to think about all of this for when my students’ university-supplied laptops die at the second year? Or what if we ain’t got no labs? Those texts didn’t relate to me and maybe I was hatin a little bit on them folks with resources. I shoulda been listening though.
So here is what I have worked with:
- classrooms where all students have a laptop that they bring to class with them
- a large lab with long rows and computer-station/screen at front
- a medium-sized lab with concentric squares and computer-station/screen at front
- a small lab with desks with the computer-station at the back of the room and the screen at front
- no tech at all (very few students have laptops, there are no labs, and there is a long waitlist for a classroom with computer and screen).
By far, I like #4 the best though that spy-cam stuff could give the same effect (where you see what each student is doing on their computer screen on your own screen). I also like #1 for everyday classroom activities but when you are doing design or introducing CSS, there’s just something about those large, television-sized screens that really offer a unique dynamism.
Your whole body movements shift in these labs. For #1, you are sitting at small group tables with students. For #2, you are pacing rows after you demo some design issue but you can walk to the back of the room and get a sweeping, panoramic view of what everyone is doing. For #3, you are circling rows after you demo some design issue (there is no room at the back so you never get the panorama). For #4, you are hidden from view, only your design elements are visible to students. You offer highly individualized instruction because you can see what your students are struggling and hesitating with as you look on their screens during your demo. Each room lay-out offers different possibilities that I now need to think about before I select the lab location.
Click here to go to this digital interview.
All in all, my students’ CSS design so far is impressive. They still have some work to do and I did not teach things like left navigation hovering (I barely understand it myself), but all is good. There are ironies though. For the first time that I have this much ability to design my e-pedagogies, design is not really valued as composing, literacy, or thinking in the 21st century here. There are more ironies. I have many colleagues across the country where ePortfolios are mandated or saturated across the curriculum who often complain to me, quite bitterly at times, at how unthoughtful and uncritical their students’ visual design is. On the contrary, I asked my students to think of what they want to convey— just with color— in the context of a course that makes culturally relevant pedagogy central, and they soared with flying colors on that (pun intended). But hardly no one around them seems to see or value that as literate behavior or 21st century composing. It’s a damn shame. I’m not worried about students though because they are entering a digital world with a whole different set of expectations and requirements than the digitally-illiterate folk who marginalize them. To my students: keep flyin high. I see you!
Maybe this is an academic/professor thing but I am often perplexed by self-aggrandizing and conceited college faculty. I remember when I first started on the tenure track and was surrounded by folk who thought their scholarship was the most impressive and deepest thing ever. It was perplexing because these folk weren’t the least bit interesting to me, much less offering some kind of new Kuhnian shift to the world. It was like these folk had no sense of themselves, what they did well and what they didn’t do well. It became very dangerous because you could end up working on a project/committee with someone who claimed an expertise on the subject at hand, only to find out they didn’t know/do jack! The folk who I actually thought were brilliant scholars and teachers NEVER spoke of themselves, name-dropped their famous advisors, patted themselves on the back for the comp exams they took 10+ years ago, quoted from their unpublished/old dissertations, or sent emails/tweets announcing the brilliance of their newest publications/talks! They were somewhere writing, organizing, working with students, and actually BEING brilliant, not talkin about themselves. The lack of self-awareness could even extend beyond scholarship. I remember once talking with a colleague who had spent hours shopping, picking an outfit, doing her hair and make-up, and getting ready for a campus event because she needed/wanted to aesthetically compete with one of the women in the program. Here’s the thing: the woman who was the mark is a former model with a wardrobe/collection of labels rivaling Michelle Obama’s… and also one of the nicest people around (I knew her outside of the campus from common friends). She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen and yet she doesn’t think of herself this way nor is she the type to compete with women for men’s attention. Now here’s the real twisted part. The woman who saw HERSELF in competition is a dead-ringer for an Italian Greyhound dog. Yes, I know I am being triflin’ and mean, but I just gotta call it like I see it. DEAAAAAD-RINGER! 
I realize that people love greyhound dogs and I mean them no offense; greyhounds do seem quite unique but you gotta admit they are some scraggly, weird-looking things. The point remains: if you look like a greyhound dog on your best day, what makes you think you are a shining star next to one of the most beautiful women in the world? Really, how does someone anoint themselves as Miss Universe when in actuality they could be racing around a dog-track chasing a fake rabbit? Maybe these folk just need some black friends because ain’t no way I could even walk out the door so falsely convinced of my superflyness without my peoples setting me straight real fast (my family talks about you BAD to your face for much LESS than the examples I have offered). Just this summer, I tried to purchase some $8.99 finger nail polish and the 19-year-old black male sales clerk assured me that it made no sense to spend THAT much money for a color that had NO chance of looking good on my toes. I put it back and saved myself that 10 dollars. When black folk offer constructive feedback, they really CONSTRUCT! My toes can’t even make it out the stores in my neighborhood without some real honesty. Academics don’t choose their profession because of their good looks so this kind of vanity is a REAL strange and misplaced thing anyway. If you think this greyhound-dog-woman had an inaccurate sense of something as irrelevant and materialistic as physical beauty, well, honeychile, you need only imagine how delusional and impressed she was with something serious like her scholarship. If women get away with these levels of fantasy, conceit, and delusion, imagine what men in such patriarchal structures do. In fact, at every “third-tier” university where I worked/interviewed, male administrators stayed proclaiming the university’s similarity to the University of Illinois. I have been to UI campuses: there are NO similarities. The last time I saw such grand delusions of grandeur was when I lived in Hollywood, Los Angeles for a summer in my 20s. This is why self-reflection is important: if you are convinced you are the BOMB, then you don’t ever look deeply at yourself, at what you are doing, at who you are, and why you are making the decisions you are making. You just walk around proclaiming to be one thing when you are another altogether and stay STUCK on stupid forever.
Granted, I probably take the public nature of a digital universe too seriously. I will concede that. When I see “professionals” in my field uploading videos of themselves where they are dancing to one beat, their small child dancing to another beat, and a black artist’s song playing in the background with an entirely different beat altogether, I think: oh hayell TO THE naw. If that weren’t bad enough, these folk got the nerve to be singing along, karaoke machine in full display, to the tune of yet another beat, wearing the paraphernalia of their college alma mater. If I were the president of that college, I would have to pull these folk aside and talk to them. It’s like an audition for American Idol that has gone very wrong: someone has got to step up and just say naw, baby, this right here ain’t for you; focus on another goal. Call me an essentialist then… I think this might just be a black thang. The black folk who I know and who raised me simply would not be out here uploading videos of pre-rehearsed performances (copied from TV) to broadcast for the world where they and their CHILDREN are singing and dancing with NO KINDA RHYTHM, RHYME, or TIME. You have to be the Jackson Five for that kind of thing! In what I define as black culture, when you publicly display yourself, you better be ready for sharp critique: think Showtime at the Apollo here— the youtube before youtube. It ain’t nuthin nice when you need to be told to exit that public stage. Even with those youtube videos that bougsie black folk like to critique forever and a day of black mothers twerking (with their kids mimicking in the background), you have to concede one thing: them. folk. CAN. dance. I’m not saying all the black folk that I know can sing and dance, just that when they can’t, they KNOW it and so don’t arrogantly display it for the world. At the end of the day, even in the worst kind of minstrel show, black folk just don’t get the option of public display without an iota of talent or rhythm. And though we are never credited as such, the black folk who I know and those who raised me have some high standards by which you come to understand yourself.