Digital Ethnography Thinking About the Future of Student Learning

Continuing on again in our thread about technology, community,democracy and new forms of idea sharing.....
Such creative work and progressive communication I believe is very much related to the relative health of our educational systems and our society.

The video "A Vision of Students Today" is an example of digital ethnography created by Michael Wesch Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology along with the 200 students enrolled in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University in Spring 2007. According to Wesch, the project began as a brainstorming exercise, thinking about how students learn, what they need to learn for their future. Students wrote the script, and made suggestions for survey questions to ask the entire class. The survey was administered the following week.
Wesch then took all of the information from the survey and organized it into the final script portrayed in the video which was filmed over one 75 minute class period.
The introduction was filmed a month later. It is inspired by Marshall McLuhan's ideas as they apply to education.
(edited for this blog, source "Digital Ethnography, Kansas State University at:


http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/

SEE the video project "A Vision of Students Today at Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

The Sufferings of Panic and the Physical Diagnosis two Themes in Video Performances

PANIC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFm8wL1yjKs

PXDX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSnYR22fKpQ

Focus on health and film, movement, rhythm, dance and sound

I would like to share with you today two contrasting Youtube Video clips (above) both on health themes.

Panic Portrayed in Brilliant and Unsettling Dance Performance

In the first unsettling clip (see above) panic is embodied and portrayed in this brilliant dance and film animation work by young 21 year old UK filmmaker Megan Kieran. Warning, you may want to "stop it" and so you should, this is how effective the dance is in conveying its message.

Choreographing the Physical Exam with Sound, Movement, Rhythm

The second video, PXDX , combines sounds and movements in a choreographed and rhythmic statement about the physical exam. PxDx (medical shorthand for "Physical Diagnosis"), a collaboration between medical students Mark Goldin and Dana Kotler, weaves the sounds and images of the physical exam with rhythm and choreography to create a unique performance of physical diagnosis in action. Score created by Mark Goldin, entirely using recorded sounds of the physical exam. Also starring Ari Gladstein and Evanthia Roussos.

The physical exam in action, a serious subject about an important diagnostic process delivered with rhythmic style and more than a little humour. CM

Disability Culture, Art, Activism Featured in Shamelessly Successful Film by Bonnie Sherr Klein

"Art, activism and disability are the starting point for what unfolds as a funny and intimate portrait of five surprising individuals. Director Bonnie Sherr Klein (Not a Love Story, and Speaking Our Peace) has been a pioneer of women's cinema and an inspiration to a generation of filmmakers around the world. SHAMELESS: The ART of Disability marks Klein's return to a career interrupted by a catastrophic stroke in 1987. Always the activist, she now turns the lens on the world of disability culture, and ultimately, the transformative power of art.

Joining Klein are a group of artists with diverse (dis)abilities.Humourist David Roche is taking his one man show off-Broadway, The Church of 80% Sincerity, in New York. Poet and scholar Catherine Frazeeis navigating a jam-packed schedule of teaching and speaking engagements. Dancer, choreographer and impresario Geoff McMurchy is producing KickstART!, an international festival of disability art. Sculptor and writer Persimmon Blackbridge is creating mixed mediaportraits from "meaningful junk".

"What the critics are saying about SHAMELESS:

"What emerges in SHAMELESS is an intimate look at five artists, all dealing with attitudes towards disability, all finding their way through a culture that views them with revulsion or even suggests they would be better off dead. Klein manages to pull it off, amazingly, without a hint of sentimentality."Matthew Hays, The Globe and Mail

"Other films of this genre are hopelessly influenced by the"us-and-them" approach. Bonnie has done a tremendous job of allowing the viewer in without putting the subjects in a circuscage."Lisa Bendall, Former Editor of Abilities Magazine, and Author. "

See a brief Youtube Video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQlYt_eVmdM

More information about SHAMELESS:

www.nfb.ca/shameless

Bonnie Sherr Klein's SHAMELESS: The ART of Disability

See it Sunday, May 13 at 5PM PT and 8PM ET on BRAVO (Canada only)