Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Sunday’s Dallas Morning News carried the article “FB schools have different view of immigrants,” relating the story of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district that continues to focus on educating its diverse student population despite political shenanigans by local politicians over immigration issues. According to the article:

The Farmers Branch City Council declared English the official language… City Council member Tim O’Hare, the driving force behind the city’s measures, cited declining schools among the reasons to target illegal immigrants. Some of his supporters also talk about increased gang activity, high dropout rates and a general lack of parental involvement in schools.

Targeting illegal immigrants by marginalizing non-English speakers and attempting to ride a political wave of ethnocentrism and fear are ignorant and destructive political tactics. I appreciate the words and attitude of CFB trustee Nancy Strickland, quoted in the article saying:

As I told the city manager years ago, what you do in the city is one thing. We are here to teach children, and that is not a political game for us.

Arthur Schlesinger wrote “The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society” back in 1991, but sadly many of the same trends he observed then remain today in the United States. Many people (apparently a large number of our politicians) seem uncomfortable with the FACT that ours is a multiculturally diverse society. If politicians are really concerned about illegal immigration, why don’t they crack down on business owners who employ them? The fact is that large numbers of employees in certain economic sectors are not documented, and without their assistance a great deal of work would go undone. Have you paid for a new roof for a Texas home in the last few years? I have. Not many of the workers spoke English as their native language. But you know what? That was just fine with me. Those guys had families and kids just like I do. The fact that some of our politicians are mono-lingual, may have international experiences limited to visits to Mexican or Caribbean beach resorts, and are looking for a fast way to draw public attention and quick votes shouldn’t translate into policies of “English-only” and cracking down on hispanic residents in U.S. towns and cities. The politicians in Farmers Branch who voted for the “English-only” resolution may have not seen or heard “Did You Know” yet. Even if they have or do in the future, I wonder if the message would be able to permeate into their apparently thick, ethnocentric skulls? According to the same article:

The city’s immigration debate has pitted “neighbor against neighbor,” said Tony Muñoz, who has two children at Stark and is a member of the city’s school-community relations board. “We’re sending mixed messages,” he said. “We’re wanting Hispanic parents to be involved. This [ordinance] conflicts with involvement.”

According to answers.com, ethnocentrism is:

the feeling that one’s group has a mode of living, values, and patterns of adaptation that are superior to those of other groups. It is coupled with a generalized contempt for members of other groups. Ethnocentrism may manifest itself in attitudes of superiority or sometimes hostility. Violence, discrimination, proselytizing, and verbal aggressiveness are other means whereby ethnocentrism may be expressed.

Sadly, some email messages forwarded along as chain letters also serve to perpetuate ethnocentric attitudes. Racist and fear-laden political schemes like this one advanced by the Farmers Branch City Council may be wrapped in false patriotic trappings, but at their core they represent attempts to strengthen negative stereotypes of one group at the expense of another. This ridiculousness must STOP.

We just celebrated our national holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. again in the United States. I learned recently that a stretch of 17th street, which passes by my old elementary school in Manhattan, Kansas, has been renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Drive. Holidays and renamed streets are nice, but my question is, WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL LEADERS in our country helping cultivate attitudes of love, understanding, cooperation, and the causes of equal treatment and equal opportunities in life? All of these causes start with the family, and rely extensively on education. I, for one, can be counted among those who explicitly OPPOSE ethnocentric attitudes, actions, policies and politics. I love my country and am proud of it, but I’m also proud to speak a second language and blessed to have lived and traveled a bit outside the United States. I know we live in a global village because I’ve seen a glimpse of it face-to-face, and I now work in it daily via the Internet and the edublogosphere.

We live in a global village that is getting smaller every day. In his presentation at the 2005 TED Talks, Ray Kurzweil discussed some of the huge changes in our society we are now experiencing. The SMALL amount of time we have now to adapt to changes is a major shift. Think about how long people had to grow accustomed to new technologies like the telephone and the television. Then think how quickly records morphed into cassette tapes into compact disks and now into portable digital audio players, like iPods. Have you played Second Life? Do you realize how significant it is that SL now has a gross GDP larger than some countries which are members of the United Nations? According to some predictions, “Second Life’s overall GDP for 2007 could be close to $700 million.” The opportunities we have now and will have in the future to communicate, collaborate, and work together to address challenges and generate wealth across the globe are likely beyond the wildest imaginations of any of us.

We have no time for ethnocentrism. There is NO appropriate time or place for racism. International exchange programs like AFS, international videoconferencing initiatives like Global Nomads, and international team blogging projects like Global Voices Online are tangible efforts aimed at (among other things) fostering cross-cultural understanding and respect, and obliterating the specter of ethnocentrism from our planet. These are the types of educational activities, experiences, and projects in which we need to involve more learners of all ages.

My hat is off to those educators in Carrollton-Farmers Branch and elsewhere who carry on with the vital mission of public and private education for diverse learners, despite the ethnocentric political actions of local as well as national leaders. Commit yourself to have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness, which include policies, name-calling, or tolerance of actions which reinforce and perpetuate attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism. We live in a global village, and we have to find ways to help our brothers and sisters all around us understand the similarities which can bind us together, rather than focusing on the minor differences that can be used to splinter us apart.

Technorati Tags: diversity, education, multicultural, politics, multiculturalism

After seeing Stephen Klein’s extensive WikiPedia user page (linked from Ethan Zuckerman’s post about OLPC implementation today) I decided to create my own WikiPedia user page. The risk of doing this, I suppose, is that someone could edit my page and put something there I wouldn’t want included. (I am NOT throwing down a glove as a challenge by posting this, btw!) In a workshop today we were talking today about this dynamic of creating web 2.0 resources, and having a continuum of control: Do you want to leave everything open, lock everything down, or find a middle ground somewhere in between? This discussion was in the context of creating a new Flickr group. I actually created my first group today in anticipation of the initial 3 days of professional development for the Oklahoma Digital Centennial project next week in Enid. I ended up creating a public group that is invitation-only, so there will be some level of control over membership and therefore contributions to the pool and discussions. For more background on the project, check out the first discussion post to our Flickr group.

As generational digital immigrants, I think it is natural to lean towards more control when it comes to web 2.0. Certainly in the context of schools this is natural. It is interesting as well as risky to venture into these waters, but this is the collaborative, dynamical, uncertain but empowering world in which we are called to live today! I’m really looking forward to having a chance to work with teachers in Oklahoma on digital storytelling and web 2.0 projects in the context of the state centennial!

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, ok100, wikipedia

I received an email today from a blog reader who is using the “listen to this post” link at the bottom of many of my posts to hear rather than read my posts. She is having trouble listening to my post on John Seely Brown’s interview with Steve Hargadon. Her email prompted me to login to Talkr (the company that provides this service for free) and view some reports on downloads. I was amazed, since the first of the month people have listened to over 1400 of my blog posts!

I added Talkr to my blog on October 25th last year. Between that date and the end of the year, people listened to a little over 2800 posts.

This information is very helpful, and I think it brings home the importance of accessibility and the importance of providing people with CHOICES in the ways they access content and ideas.

This also relates to providing podcasting audio files in the most accessible formats possible. I know Apple would love it if everyone used iTunes to subscribe and listen to podcasts, but the fact is many people don’t. (I love iTunes and Apple, but my overriding reason for podcasting is to share ideas with others more than promote use of a particular product. That’s why I don’t release podcasts in exclusively m4a or m4v formats, which are QuickTime-only.) Here is a current graph showing the types of podcast aggregators (podcatchers) subscribers to my podcast have used in the last 30 days:

At one point, about half my podcast subscribers were using iTunes, but currently it shows that just about 36% are using iTunes. An equal number of people are using Feedblitz, which is a free email notification service for any RSS feed. For me, this means it is more important than ever to release all podcasts (even enhanced or video podcasts) as audio-only mp3 versions. I also like the free Wordpress plugin podpress, since it enables people to use an embedded flashplayer to play the podcast in their browser. I’m guessing that feature is especially useful for people who are getting podcast updates via email, and then clicking a link to view/access podcasts using a web browser.

Section 508 accessibility requirements for schools may not be legally binding for private individuals, but I think we should all strive to make our content as accessible as possible. The new “read-only” of the 21st century is about CHOICES for the formats of media people consume, as well as choices for the TIMES and PLACES they consume media. (I discussed this at MacWorld.)