[2b2k][eim] My Stuttgart syllabus
June 15th, 2013 by davidw
I’ve just finished leading two days of workshops at University of Stuttgart as part of my fellowship at the Internazionales Zentrum für Kultur- und Technikforschung. (No, I taught in English.) This was for me a wonderful experience. First of all, the students were engaged, smart, talked from diverse standpoints, and fun. Second, it reminded me how to teach. I had so much trouble trying to structure sessions, feeling totally unsure how one does so. But the eight 1.5 hour sessions reminded me why I loved teaching.
For my own memory, here are the sessions (and if any of you were there and took notes, I’d love to see them):
Friday
#1 Cyberutopianism, technodeterminism, and Internet exceptionalism defined, with JP Barlow’s Declaration of the Independent of Cyberspace as an example. Class introductions.
#2 Information Age to Age of Connected. Why Ted Nelson’s Xanadu did not succeed the way the Web did. Rough technical architecture of the Net and (perhaps) its embedded political values. Hyperlinks.
#3 Digital order. Everything is miscellaneous? From information Retrieval to search engines. Schema-based databases to tagging.
#4 Networked knowledge. What knowledge looks like once it’s been freed of paper. Four challenges to networked knowledge (with many more added by the students.)
On Saturday we talked about topics that the students decided were interesting:
#1 Mobile net. Is Facebook making us more or less social? Why do we fill up every interstice by using Facebook on mobiles? What does this say about us and the notion of the self?
#2 Downloading. Do you download music illegally? What is your justification? How might artists respond? Why is the term “intellectual property” so loaded?
#3 Education. What makes a great in-person course? What makes for a miserable one? Oddly, many of the characteristics of miserable classes are also characteristics of MOOCs. What might we do about that? How much of this is caused by the fact that MOOCs are construed as courses in the traditional sense?
#4 Internet culture. Is there such a thing? If there are many, is any particular one to be privileged? How does the Net look to a culture that is dedicated to warding off what it says as corrupting influences? End with LolCatBible and the astounding TheJohnnyCashProject
Thank you, students. This experience meant a great deal to me.
I have just finished reading “Everything is Miscellaneous” and throughout the book I wondered what German word I would use in explaining the concept to my students. What would you consider an appropriate translation?
And if I may ask you what approach did you use in teaching the students about topics like hyperlinks and tagging? Lately I have got the impression that my students – I teach Japanese history and Classical Japanese at the University of Tuebingen, near Stuttgart – are less ‘net smart’ than the generation before them. At the moment I am still looking for an way to introduce this topic into my regular classes and if you have any advice for me I would appreciate it very much.