The Danger Of apparent understanding ,

Key issues:
1-Inaccuracy of information.
2-Cross cultural misunderstanding.

I enjoyed watching Ted talk by Doug Pitt, He had a very good critique of western culture: we want to fix the world and we have a superior sense of understanding of what is wrong with the world. We more than often end up hurting the people we want to help. There is no worse example than the war in Iraq that destroyed and is still destroying a country that we thought we could turn into a democracy overnight.

I am very conscious of people mistaking information for understanding. In the age of google it is very easy to read a few pages and think we understand a situation. I heard a long NPR  show about non profit organizations in Haiti (20,000 nonprofits) during the last 20 years and how little effect they have had on the poor country.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/28/172875646/what-happened-to-the-aid-meant-to-rebuild-haiti

As Mr. Pitt explained, technology can amplify information whether it is good or bad. So in the age of immediate global and accessible information, we need to develop a  a slow reality based on checks and balances before we rush into action.

I also read Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age, which ties very well to Networked Public. I am alarmed by the youth's lack of participation in public life. "A big decline in interest in the news and public affairs, accompanied by falling trust in the press—both of which occurred before the rise of the Internet. (I would blame the press, rather than youth, for this trend.)"(Bennett page 5)
This along with confusing information could be dangerous for the future of democracies and humankind.

Our education systems and our way of life are removed from many realities, for example, most of our schooling does not cover agriculture as it is practiced in America today. Our schools make farming into some Disney-like fantasy. Our children or adults have never been to a mega farm and/or seen the chemicals that go into farming, or worse have never seen a slaughterhouse. Yet our politicians want to pass a farm bill most of us have no understanding of or interest in. This may  explain why young people don't vote or watch the news.

Some tools and techniques that can help:

1-Young people creating their own media as in Indymedia.

"Sometimes those technologies enable large and more sustained political networks, as in the formation of Indymedia, a global political information network. Indymedia was created through the distribution of open source software enabling the production and sharing of information by young activists under the motto: Be the Media" (Bennett page 9)

2- Young people using alternative communication as in Twitter.I just saw this report on Al Jazeera America. About Twitter use among young African American which indicated a higher rate than Whites I think this may be a sign of independence from main stream media .http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/06/african-americans-and-technology-use/


For human beings to be informed in a deep and visceral way we need to have full experiences. Also before we start another war it may be good to visit a hospital and ask injured veterans what is war like before we think it is another computer game or heroic Hollywood movie. Statistics and information don't compare to personal and emotional experiences.

Finally, I still think the digital age is still too young to judge. We still have to go to a physical space to vote! May be if voting becomes digital, from an operational perspective, then our younger people will participate from a place of comfort.

refrences:

Doug Pitt's video "Technology, nonprofits, and the emerging world" 


Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age W. Lance Bennett

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/28/172875646/what-happened-to-the-aid-meant-to-rebuild-haiti

Khader's Blog for week 3

Very popular internet "Man Evolution" diagram!

Left to right evolution diagram. Full of cultural and idea bias. Still very evocative and not exactly scientific .

Chapter three of Reading Images examines many methods used to organize visual information. Images could be organized by a classification process. As in, items in a catalog of tools, or organized as a family tree. These graphic representations could take a life of their own and the graphic structure of the organization becomes the message (i.e., the family tree).

The complex tools I am learning from the course can help me in how I choose to lay out images, whether in a chart format or in bubbles. This has an influence on how the reader receives the message. The context of these images adds another layer of interpretation. These messages tend to have an emotional effect on the reader.

In the image at the top of this blog I use a "Temporal Analytical Process" as itemized in page 94 by Reading Images.

The example below is of the Madrid subway system.  The designers use a very rational method of information display. No hierarchy, all stations are same size, and specific lines are color-coded.  The map is very abstract and the designers decided not to show geography. Just a clear diagram.  

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/es/mad/madrid-map-small.gif

In  our textbooks there are assumptions that texts and images are purely rational. I believe that our experience and our emotions are part of our ability to tell a story weather via images or text. Even maps, where the authors claim are objective images could trigger emotional reactions if this map happen to be of a contested area between two different ethnic groups. In page 86 of Reading Images I enjoyed reading Jim McCellan (McCellan , Observer Life Magazine , 21 September 1994 p. 62) the Image of an organized atom as an icon for the 20th Century an era of order and how that is different from our era of network culture that has no beginning or end or central authority. Of course physicists now are realizing that the image of the atom we used in out text books was theoretical and is not not accurate.

We live in the age of big data and information over load. Humans survived millions of years of evolution by learning how to read visual clues fast. We find it much easier to look at a chart that can graphically give us a sense of what to do. This age will require us to produce better descriptive graphics that can explain complexity and may help lead to appropriate action. What comes to mind are environmental problems and how hard it is for simple human mind to understand all the issues at hand. Is it the cars? The coal plants? Overpopulation? Plastics? Nuclear leaks etc.  Which one do we need to take care of now? Or which country is the largest polluter? 

Notice in image below how grouping and color help us see continents . This image requires still clicking the links and zooming to see the list of countries below so one get deeper understanding. In the digital age we can use features like zoom.  

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2#img-1

In my class last week I was teaching history of architecture and wanted to illustrate the relationship between nature and design and I used these two images. One was a color picture of a lotus flower and one was an ancient Egyptian engraving as an architecture decorative element.

Notice I designed this illustration for western language readers who read left to right!

Also there is no scale to show how big the stone engravings are or context of the engraving. As powerful as images are in clarifying an idea, I am learning that there is more to pay attention to.  

I am a big Ted talks junkie!, I like to learn by listening and seeing. I ended up listening to the talk twice TEDxNYED - Henry Jenkins - 03/06/10.

Jenkins observations were positive and exciting, I love the idea that people are using platforms that were designed for commercial and entertainment purposes as tools for fighting for social change. The global connectivity and the ability to stay anonymous allows activists in repressive regimes (or in dysfunctional democracies) to organize and work with a large number of people to possibly change the world.

It is very helpful to be able to join any online group that shares common interests and build a viable community. I think these tools can be very effective, but I believe that occupying public space is still vital for change. 

I once belonged to an online forum for Sketch Up (3D Software) users. I became friends with people I never met and sometimes the forum shared many ideas outside the specified purpose of the site. In one example an Iraqi architecture student who lost his chance to continue college (due to the war) asked what do and where to go finish his education. An Israeli forum participant suggested an architecture school in the West Bank where I grew up!

I am not sure what Mr. Jenkins's definition of participation is, and if his statistics have details that back that definition. 

I post many videos on YouTube that I think have no value to human culture (some are good). I hope we can encourage participatory culture with young people and maybe  teach them how to be effective participants in the classroom. 

Finally as a student and a teacher I am not understanding the Three Dimensions of Literacy and Technology.   I understand how we learn at different levels and have different intelligence, but what is the difference between Operational and Cultural?   Are we only talking about texts?  Is he talking about critical thinking?

How do we teach and encourage that? 

I am still expecting authors who want to talk about visual theory to have better visuals?    If Green's theory is important I want to learn it. I hope my asking questions will lead to a larger discussion.

  

References :

TEDxNYED - Henry Jenkins - 03/06/10

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge.  

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2#img-1

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/es/mad/madrid-map-small.gif

Green, B.  Graphical representation of GREEN's approach to literacy. Downloaded from https://moodle.esc.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=821667

  

Week Two Reading Images Represented participant vs Interactive participant

I was excited to order Reading Images,The Grammar of Visual Design by: Kress and van Leeuwen. I have spent the last twenty-five years of my life in the art and design worlds. I studied art and architecture history and had close friends who were artists and art therapists. They introduced me to Rudolf Arneheim and his work image and meaning and other writers and ideas about reading art and images. As teacher, I encourage my students to express their ideas through the use effective drawings. I teach them Visual Literacy. I talk to them about line types and how lines evoke different readings. I teach them that image composition and directions of display tell stories and engages viewers. I want them to learn how to “read” buildings. I am looking forward to document these ideas and have them to my students in the future. My understanding had been based on experience and instinct, so to get these ideas in a book was important to me.

When the book arrived, I judged by its cover! I thought a book on visual grammar needed to have much stronger images on the cover that have universal meaning (i.e. art works from ancient cultures or drawings by Picasso) or have been produced by a graphic artist who has mastered the grammar of art and design.
I am very interested of the ideas about image and signifier and that new understanding challenged my assumptions about meaning of visual signs. I thought that the visual language had a universal meaning but reading Chapter Two made me aware of how society and culture assign meaning to symbols and images and how the meanings change with time. I wonder if the meanings of images are becoming more universal due to the communication revolution and due to Google images.

Chapter One of the book was clear and made sense to me. When I started reading Chapter Two I felt so lost and I thought the basics of semiotics needed to be explained better so I looked it up on YouTube and Found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgxTKUP_WI&index=1&list=PL73o0LtCCd_-3XUsalGLfe2JB-2UJqeSS

or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkp8dUWywor

this excellent lecture on graphics :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4b7qXbRHTM

Another problem I had with the book is that I found the authors rely heavily on contemporary Australian diagrams and ignore other cultures images and graphics. Also all graphics were in black and white. I am a big fan of Russian constructionist art and El Lissitzky’s constructivists picture “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge loses it effect with out color.

I thought changing “object” and “element” in art and image to “participants” made the concepts more confusing than they need to be. I understand that act of making image and reading the image are intertwined. To make things worse, the image on page 45 ( fig 2.1 the British used guns) was so small and very hard to read. It make the entire comparison and discussion on the value of abstraction hard to follow.

With advent of the internet and smart phone and digital screen everywhere. the Social meaning of images will probably become more universal. Emojis are on everyone's cell phone and that could be a unifying force for visual literacy.  

Week One: New Literacies, Khader's Reflections

I am very interested in how literacies are changing . I am a teacher and I advocate visual literacy and sometimes struggle with how little attention my students pay to drawings. Most of my students revert to the mode of drawing they had when they were in Kindergarten so they draw stick figures for the rest of their lives. When I worked as an architect I had same problem with clients who could not "read" architectural plans and were too embarrassed to admit their visual illiteracy.  I am glad that we are reading (Reading Images, the Grammar of Visual Design.  Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen)

 “The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives” (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9).  Even though I read this article several times, I found it hard to understand exactly where the author was going. I was hoping for more concrete examples to illustrate his ideas.  As a heavy internet user and a technology and design teacher, I have spent plenty of time on social media, reading internet articles and few blogs. I would like to visit more blogs by young people and see what specific methods they use to format text. I see many examples of that on Facebook. What I see mostly on Facebook are stark images and a few evocative words that promote one idea or another. I noticed that with these memes that one cannot express more than three sentences, and many people "like " and "share." It seems to me that social media websites have too much information and to compete for attention, posts need to be very short and act like a billboard sign on a highway.

As a bilingual Arabic- and English-speaking person, I am also interested in  the relationship between new media, new literacy, and democracy. I was very excited about Arab Spring and how it could not have happened without New media. It is interesting to note that 27% of people in Egypt are considered illiterate. It is unfortunate that the Egypt experiment ended badly.
I found chapter five of ( Literacies Social, Cultural and Historical Perspectives. Lankshear and Knobel)  enlightening. I think the discussion on the meaning of citizenship and literacy is relevant in every democracy. I am wondering if our US literacies are failing to produce engaged citizenry. I often ask my students up to high school, "What system of government  do we have? " and most often they don't know!

A few weeks ago, I saw this image on a friend's website and thought it was positive and worth sharing:  

Later that day, a few of my smart friends said "Are you sure that the pope said that?"

I then I used Snopes to fact-check and realized my post was not factual.

I realized then that impulse to share emotionally charged memes can be dangerous in the dissemination of  ideas.

I am a visual  learner and find much easier to understand complex ideas if they are supported by rich images and illustrations, but I still believe that traditional texts and time-honored storytelling are important foundation for deeper comprehension.

my first post

This is my first blog:

I will use this blog to participate in NEW MEDIA AND NEW LITERACIES Class discussion.

First below is my BIO:

Khader Humied was trained as an architect and has worked in NYC and Westchester and Rockland Counties during the last 12 years. He taught himself woodworking skills and began the adventure of furniture making. His special interest is designing buildings that are green and sustainable, simple and effective. For the last seven years he has been teaching architecture and design   to children and young adults. Helping Children understand the  to built environment and using his skills to inspire children to be connected to the design world around them.
He teaches college courses of Computer Aided Design. AutoCad and Sketch Up.

My Children Website:  www:wizlab.orgyou can see Khader's lighting fixtures here: http://www.metaformstudio.com/
you see architecture design here:  http://visualsimplicity.weebly.com/See my adult design class: http://sketchup106.weebly.com/