User:Aaron Hung

From Studyplace

1 Projects
2 Conferences
3 Articles
4 Class Notes
- 4.1 Technology, Culture, Education (ITSF4026) (Summer A 2008)
- 4.2 Dynamics of Family Interaction (ITSF4034) (Summer A 2007)

[edit] Projects

[edit] Reading Guides

What started out as a personal intellectual endeavor might turn into something I'd share with the larger community. I'm setting off to do a whole bunch of "background reading" to fill out the missing pieces of history, philosophy and literature that I've always been interested in but never found a way of connecting. Using StudyPlace, I will try to document a real amateur's attempt to get into these massive disciplines as a way of exploring how laypeople can use technology to access bodies of ideas and thoughts that others have shared.

The first guide will be a Guide to the Ancient Greeks, which should keep me busy till 2015.

[edit] Technology Studio

I am in the Studio group that is currently looking at the cultural effects of technology and innovation. With that, I am interested in the social shaping of technology in society. My overall interest is in looking at the ways in which technology shapes social and cultural practices. I do not particularly subscribe to the view that technologies change human minds in any deep, cognitive way (what people used to say about literate vs. oral cultures), but that technologies can reconfigure our social practices and thus lead to different ways of doing and thinking about things. A good example is the shift that societies go from being more auditory and linguistic to visual over the past few centuries.

I look forward to explore this through several disciplines: history, science and technology studies (STS), anthropology, literacy studies, and, of course, education. For now, I'm looking through The Internet Galaxy by Manuel Castells, who has written extensively about the transformation of society by technology.

[edit] Common Knowledge Project

The Common knowledge Project originated as a discussion on whether there should be a set of core readings that all professional educators should be familiar with. Other professional disciplines, such as law and medicine, have their own set of readings that all lawyers and medical practitioners are expected to know. Creating such a set of readings for educators might be a way of transforming education into a "professional" field. However, this is likely to foster debates, both in support and in opposition of the idea.

Opposing the idea is the notion that this smacks of elitism. Since any kind of list is, by nature, limited, it is bound to exclude some readings over others. There is also the question of who gets to pick such a list, and what we do about the excluded ones.

In support is the fact that these kinds of lists already exist in unofficial forms. For example, anthropologists are probably expected to know the works of Mead, Ruth, Durkheim, Parsons, and Geertz. Each area of study has their own set of books and authors that students and faculty are expected to know, so it makes sense to make this more official. Having a core set of common knowledge does not necessarily mean that this set is immobile and unchangeable. If it is constantly up for critique and discussion, it might help transform the field in a more effective way.

Personally, I am leaning towards having a common reading list to begin the discussion, although I also favor that this list is not kept monolithic. I think this list should be a joint creation between faculty and students, both of whom will have equal say in transforming the list in the future. I think that a year-long course should be created that focuses on this list, and that one of the end projects should be a critical discussion on what should be kept and what should be replaced.

[edit] Suggested Readings for Common Knowledge

The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation by JACQUES RANCIÈRE
Mind, Self, and Society by GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
Democracy and Education by JOHN DEWEY
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School by NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
Thought and Language by LEV VYGOTSKY
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by THOMAS KUHN
Pegagogy of the Oppressed by PAOLO FREIRE
Discipline and Punish by MICHEL FOUCAULT
Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture by PIERRE BOURDIEU and JEAN CLAUDE PASSERON
Patterns of Culture by RUTH BENEDICT
Method and Measurement in Sociology by AARON VICTOR CICOUREL
The Dialogic Imagination by MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
The Culture Industry by THEODOR ADORNO
Language and Symbolic Power by PIERRE BOURDIEU
Noise: The Political Economy of Music by JACQUES ATTALI
Understanding Media by MARSHALL MCLUHAN
Orientalism by EDWARD SAID
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by JUDITH BUTLER
The Work of Nations by ROBERT REICH
Mind, Self, and Society by GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
Class, Code and Control by BASIL BERNSTEIN
Steps to an Ecology of Mind by GREGORY BATESON
The Postmodern Condition by JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD
The Tao of Pooh by BENJAMIN HOFF
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Asylums by ERVING GOFFMAN
Domination and the Arts of Resistance by JAMES C. SCOTT
Why Societies Need Dissent by CASS R. SUNSTEIN
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by BENEDICT ANDERSON
In Praise of Idleness by BERTRAND RUSSELL
A Room of One's Own by VIRGINIA WOOLF
Verging on Extra-Vagance by JAMES BOON
The Shopping Mall High School by ARTHUR POWELL, ELEANOR FARRAR & DAVID COHEN
The Wealth of Nations by ADAM SMITH
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation by JEAN LAVE & ETIENNE WENGER
The Interpretation of Cultures by CLIFFORD GEERTZ
The Practice of Everyday Life by MICHEL DE CERTEAU
Gödel, Escher, Bach by DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER
The Language Instinct by STEVEN PINKER
The Production of Space by HENRI LEFEBVRE
Homeless in the House of Intellect by ROBBIE MCCLINTOCK
Mythologies by ROLAND BARTHES
Children and reading tests by CLIFFORD HILL AND ERIC LARSEN
The Analects by CONFUCIUS
Cognition in the Wild by EDWIN HITCHINS

[edit] Articles/Chapters

Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In Writing and difference. JACQUES DERRIDA
Culture "as" disability. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 26(3). RAY MCDERMOTT AND HERVÉ VARENNE

[edit] Conferences

I'd like to use this space to invite others to brainstorm on possible panels or symposium for upcoming educational and technology related conferences. I'm interested in creating some for near year's AERA, which will be held in San Diego. Their deadline is in August 1st usually, so this is probably really early for some to start thinking seriously about it. Nevertheless, I'd like to open up the discussion now. Below are some possible themes: