Why should I care about culture when teaching with technology?

This question has loomed in the back of my head after reading Angela Haas’ piece and Martin Lucas’ piece regarding technology and culture. As the teacher, from what cultural framework am I working with technology? Doing so, what assumptions am I making about technology and culture and my students? How does this affect the projects that I assign? How does that influence the values I try to demonstrate through learning goals? And even the larger, looming question: how is culture related to technology?

The wampum: is this technology?

Haas’ “Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice” and Lucas’ “The Virtual Cutting Room” both led to the questions that I pose above and while they do not necessarily answer all of the questions directly they provide critical insight to help guide and better inform my questions. Specifically, Haas’ piece focuses on the cultural impact American Indians had on technology as multimedia workers and intellectuals. For her, American Indians use of the wampum “has the potential to re-vision the intellectual history of technology, hypertext, and multimedia studies” (p. 78). Yet, what does the claim that American Indians were multimedia workers and the claim that the wampum, which are basically shell beads, is a technology have to do with teaching with technology? Well, nothing directly but it does begin to raise questions that relate to how teachers value certain technologies, how society at large labels what is and what is not considered ‘technology’, and the impact those choices have when teaching with technology to our students. Thinking about this Haas’ piece I was immediately drawn to an assignment typical to a FYW course. The remix assignment asks students to take an essay that they previously created and to “remix” it in a different form for a different purpose. The task of remixing is rhetorical in nature and thus applies tremendously well to a freshman writing and rhetoric class. However, without fail this assignment tends to freak students out who do not consider themselves “technology savvy”. These students tend to assume that they need to have the best software, a Mac computer, excellent editing skills, and (of course) think they need to make a movie. And while many teachers attempt to combat these assumptions and encourage students to really stretch their understanding of what a remix is and it’s “dependency” on technology, most students still struggle with that need for impressing with fancy graphics, transitions, and over-the-top production. It is the Haas piece that I think really hits at these underlying assumptions – what technology is and what makes technology great is determined by cultures. Students at Big Ten institutions then connect this idea of technology to that of Western, Elite Cultures. The connection is clear. Yet, what as teachers can we do to begin to shift this perspective?

Well, the piece by Lucas in Learning Through Digital Media attempts to provide activities to answer this question. Here, Lucas breaks down the power structure of technology. Cultures have power. Here in the U.S. we are one of the largest, if not the most, dominant and controlling cultures. Western values today can be found everywhere and resistance to these Western values in non-Western countries are clear as well (especially with revolts occurring during the Arab Spring). And Lucas attempts to unpeel this link between power and culture writing, “one cannot help but feel that the fact that most media productive tools come from a handful of very larger corporations” (p. 205). Understanding this, Lucas uses videos from the Educational Video Center (EVC) as tools to begin to unpack those power relations and invite students to question the link between culture, power, and technology. In his courses Lucas asks students to “contemplate the history of technology as a set of complex social interactions that are historically determined” and to do so, these students watch videos produced by EVC that challenge power and technology structures. Doing so invites critical perspectives on technology and begins to “pull the rug” under students and their understanding of technology.

While I am still mulling over and developing answers to some of those questions that I posed at the beginning of this post, I really appreciate the tools offers by Lucas and plan to incorporate a video or two into my class before introducing the remix assignment. I hope this will help to resituate student’s understanding of what technology is and help generate discussion around what makes a good remix. For me, a great remix is not using great technology but using great rhetorical skills to shift and repurpose a previous essay.  Drawing on the work of Haas and Lucas, I am hopeful that I will be better positioned to challenge my own and my students work with technology. (Now to only incorporate all of these ideas into a syllabus/project description….)