Michael Wesch’s June 2008 Library of Congress presentation: “An anthropological introduction to YouTube“
Chris Dede, in his article, Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology and Faculty, draws on Howard Rheingold’s work, which, in part, predicts a future based on “mediated immersion”, where “[m]embers of the same physical group may have very different personal communities as their major sources of sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity.” In a few weeks we’ll take a closer look at virtual worlds and their implication, if any, for our future teaching and learning, but I wonder, if for now, we can make any connections between the mediated environments Chris Dede envisions and the kinds of communities that form around online videos? How has this recent (YouTube first launched in 2005) ability to connect and communicate beyond traditional limitations of time, geography, language and culture started to inform and influence our own teaching and learning, if at all? I strongly encourage you to watch Michael Wesch’s video above as a way to get our discussion started.
