#EDCMOOC ROCKS! – Sunset Observer #38, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld
October 31, 2014 Whitney Farmer 2 Comments
@farmer_whitney (Twitter/FLICKR) or farmerwhitney (Instagram) and Facebook
#edcmooc #edcmooc3 #edcmooc.rocks #iLoveGypsies
Note: The University of Edinburgh’s MOOC “Digital Cultures and E-Learning” begins on Sunday night, midnight GMT. The course is FREE and open to ALL. To register or for more information, go to:
https://www.coursera.org/course/edc
Once upon a time last week, a man told me that – if I break his heart – he will write a blog.
Drop the bone…back away…
He also told me, “U talk 2 much.”
True.
When we were young and were ‘crushing’, we would dial the phone number of the radio station 13KYNO-Fresno and ask the DJ John Wallace to play a song dedication. Then we would drag the phone by its 16 foot cord into the closet off of the living room and wait for the Beloved to call.
Now we click through a YouTube hyperlink on Messenger or Viber, or click ‘like’ on an electronic image of a bouquet of flowers. Hearts pound when a smartphone gives the distinct alerts letting it be known that a text is being read by the Beloved at THAT EXACT MOMENT, and when the Beloved responds with a consenting emoji.
It is clear that living happily ever after now is more likely to happen with mastery of the use of social media platforms.
It also gets a boost if there is fluency in the languages of digital culture, if spoken as a native born into that village where everyone drives a Prius but forgets to bathe. It is a world wherein LOL has broken hearts because senders mistakenly assume it means “Lots of Love” and write “I can’t wait to see you…LOL”.
This is a world wherein mommies must learn from their children, rather than texting them “WTF!” when informed about a great grade in Chemistry and assuming that they just told a child “Why That’s Fantastic!”
When I first spent time in the Gypsy camp in Royan and then in Le Gua, I noticed that the Bright Young Things all had smartphones. Those who would be designated as illiterate in an academic setting were able to navigate better than me as they would log on to the wifi at McDonalds. They would hold Le Big Mac in one hand while notifying friends what were the coordinates of their encampment where they could be found for the next two weeks. Pop culture news would be downloaded while selfies emulating the good life would be uploaded. In a population that lacks access to formal education, literacy and other critical skill sets are acquired as a consequence of being a teenager. The push into education instead becomes a pull into learning as this next generation tries to understand the world beyond the sunflower fields where they are encamped.
Last year, I took a crash course from the University of Edinburgh called “E-Learning and Digital Cultures”, affectionately as #edcmooc. For me, I felt like Helen Keller when she suddenly knew that ‘water’ was symbolized by the shapes that Annie Sullivan formed into her hand. I was one of 21,000, but I was grateful to contribute my data point to the Milky Way sample of a cluster. I was there for the purest reasons: I sought knowledge, and I didn’t want to look stupid anymore when I talked with teenagers.
This year, the #edcmooc team asked if I could be one of their Community Teaching Assistants for the class that goes live online on Sunday, sometime Greenwich Mean Time. I gave them the obvious answer: “THANK YOU, JESUS!”
Now my goal is to try and help others learn what #edcmooc taught me. Maybe I will be able to help be a part of establishing school without walls within the global Gypsy/Sinti/Traveler/Roma community…or education in areas oppressed by terror organizations like ISIL or Boko Haram which invariably have declared war on education and target groups when students gather together to learn…or help launch a startup for digital delivery of curriculae to support homeschool efforts worldwide…
Or perhaps, if successful, at the end of it all I will understand what in the world this particular guy is trying to tell me…
Quote of the Blog, from Sage Frances: “The rich get richer until the poor get educated…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XPrz5FCKdQ courtesy of Ezra Herbert at the Verizon Store in Huntington Beach, California, U.S.A., who helped me when I dropped my smartphone in the toilet.
Picture of Edinburgh, forwarded during class last year by Dr. Hamish Macleod of the University of Edinburgh to the #edcmooc community via Twitter.
For the archive of my previous Un Pop Culture blogs, click here:
Martha Thomases
November 1, 2014 - 4:42 am
I don’t know that digital is any more than a tool. Useful, but useless without the skills. So much praise for passing on the skills.
Moriarty
November 1, 2014 - 5:09 pm
Whitney,
KYNO; are we the last generation to listen to music on AM radio?
Whitney
November 1, 2014 - 11:03 pm
Divine Ms. M –
All I seem to be able to think of these days is that girls can still be learning through digital delivery if they live in areas where they will be murdered if they dare to seek education. I’m not in a very good mood right now.
Terrorists are right: Educated women are dangerous to them.
Whitney
November 1, 2014 - 11:14 pm
Moriarty –
KYNO was an AM station…I had forgotten…
Do you remember Alpha Bits cereal? They had a 45 record printed on the back of the box sometimes that you could cut out and play on a record player, albeit with some distortion from the wavy distressed cardboard surface.
We got “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies and danced around that same living room that I referenced above, while my big sister Asheley talked in the closet at the end of a sixteen foot phone cord with boys…
Moriarty
November 2, 2014 - 10:12 pm
I remember 45’s on cereal boxes and in MAD Magazine.
KYNO radio station field was at the end of the block I grew up on. It had these two huge towers, probably 300 feet high. I think they are still there. The field was big because of the tower’s guy wires. When you hit one of those wires with a stick or rock it would make a really cool laser like sound. I think they used that exact technique in the early Star Wars movies.
Whitney
November 3, 2014 - 10:23 am
Moriarty –
And you lived to tell about it…God must have something planned.
George Haberberger
November 3, 2014 - 10:44 am
“I noticed that the Bright Young Things all had smartphones.”
Wow! I wonder where they get those?
Whitney
November 4, 2014 - 3:53 pm
Jorge, as they say in L.A….
Let me begin by apologizing.
You wrote a thoughtful and important comment on my last post. I wanted to respond to you in the same honest spirit.
That day, I dropped my smartphone in the toilet.
And my mother lost her balance and stumbled into the computer. Hard drive dead.
Days later, new hard drive and new cell – but I hope my window of opportunity hasn’t closed to respond to you.
I am also copying this response to last week’s post, where it would have been more timely…
Last year when our group went to Paris after our work in Le Gua, our Gypsy host went with us. At a metro stop near the Louvre, some Gypsy kids came up asking us to read a petition. After Michel ordered them away and got dirty looks from them, he pulled us away. He said, “Stay away from them! They are Gypsies!”
To this we said, “Michel…you are a Gypsy.”
He said, “I know! They will rob me, too!”
I know a young beautiful bride whose wedding dress was stolen from her caravan.
People I have known within the community have been threatened with violence.
I suspect that there is a system of vigilante justice that lacks mercy.
But I have never encountered any problem. All of our gear is locked up safe in our tents behind a zipper and canvas…
I don’t want to be naïve or unsympathetic. I know that I can be the victim of any and all things that you have experienced and that people have read about.
But our group has been given safe passage for a time. I am grateful for it and don’t want to take it for granted. And we work with people with clean hearts who seek a better life for themselves and their children. They are watched by many eyes to see if they are genuine. So far, they have passed the test.
ANY people group who is subjugated within a society through limited access to education, economic equality, freedom of worship, etc. will be faced with the hard choice of choosing a broad illicit path, or staying a narrow and difficult course that brings change….eventually.
After WWII, the courts of the world decided that the genocide perpetuated against the Gypsy/Roma/Sinti people was an extreme but understandable response to a culture of endemic criminality. Only in the 1970s was that decision reversed and the mass murders deemed crimes against humanity. This delay in justice might partially be due to a high rate of illiteracy within the community because of being chased from place to place throughout generations.
If you can not read or write, it is difficult to be a strong witness to the truth of events because you must depend on others to tell your story.
This is where all can learn a lesson from the Jewish community: READ. WRITE. This allows truth to be told and for the heralds to run with it.
What happened to you was wrong, George/Jorge. And I am so sorry that it did.
George Haberberger
November 4, 2014 - 4:41 pm
Whitney,
Thank you for your response. I understand that the gypsy communities have been subject to discrimination for centuries and as I said I do not begrudge them panhandling. At the time, it kind of cast a pallor on our trip but as my wife said, “it’s just an object.” Time has assuaged the resentment and I realize that I was probably considered a “rich American” just by virtue of being there. Compared to those girls, I guess I am rich. I hope they do not have to do stuff like that for the rest of their lives.
It was largely an inconvenience. The British man was quite a bit more upset than me because of his photos. I usually use a camera for photos so that wasn’t an issue for us.
Again, thank you for the response.
Whitney
November 5, 2014 - 6:55 am
Jorge/George –
“I hope they do not have to do stuff like that for the rest of their lives. ..”
That’s it. Well said…