The Wikipedia and Education

The raison d'etre of the Wikipedia, an Internet based Encyclopedia, is the democratisation, pragmatisation of knowledge through circumventing the hierarchical nature of knowledge in the traditional sense. However, it is critically debatable whether the self-claimed Encyclopedia could be termed as one. True, it does provide a vast spectrum of information about topics under the sun, however a close scrutiny does question whether it subscribes to the provision of Encyclopediac knowledge or simply dubitable factual information. The few positive characteristics give a glimpse and challenge the notions of an Encyclopedia in a traditional sense. Its self-claims are that it is a non-profit organisation and democratic. It supposedly considers the views of H.G. Wells and Frederick Hayek who promoted the notion of social principle of knowledge through 'world brain' which presupposes collaboration and an ahierarchical basis to knowledge against the classical Descartian concept which informed the European Enlightenment. In reality, the democratisation comes only at the stake of rigorous scholarship. The wikipedia begins with not too benign a beginning. It is afflicted by the problem of gender and anonymity. Only a mere 2% of its registered users contribute towards the wikipedia, 80 % of its users are male, operating along the post modernist principles, it sacrifices the notion of Truth and beset with the problem of research and factuality. It rings with the post modern strain that "Truth could be anybody's". Its merit for Educational use ought to be examined thoroughly but its various links and reference citations could be useful. The wikipedia is not in the classical sense an encyclopedia but a few notches underneath it.

The Library - Participatory

Question: What is the potential of the Web 2.0 in a radical conception of the Library and School and can these institutions enable the normative possibility of emancipation.The Web 2.0 act as a platform which allows the interconnectivity and interactivity of the proliferated range of content in the World Wide Web. It thus facilitates communication, information sharing, interoperability and collaboration for users, and development of services and applications through social-networking , video-sharing, wikis, blogs and folksonomy sites. In this manner it has become an 'architecture of participation'.Such a participatory architecture has implications for the Library and through employing instructional technologies in Education to enhance learning.
The idea of 'architecture of participation' resonates with Jenkins notion of 'convergence culture'. Jenkins three central concepts 'media convergence', 'participatory culture' and 'collective intelligence' descriptively explain the cultural logic of media and how media congruity has occured.
Similarly The Web 2.0 can be viewed as a convergence culture with a critical function in the Library and for Instructional technologies. The technological and cultural shifts have changed the relationships between technologies, market, genres and audiences to the level in which human communication and learning can be furthered and facilitated.
However, particpation leads to critical questions such as the digital divide. Can every individual access information in the converged borderless culture and hence the idea of 'participation gap'. The 21st Century Library and Schools can address the critical issue of participation and fill the normative role of democratic rights egalitarianism through the concerns of emancipation through education.
It is the Library and Schools central role in enhancing the democratic culture through the technological and cultural shifts affecting communication world wide. The issue of 'participation gap' is crucial therefore to the institutions of culture and learning.

Medium: Ecological & Critical

As I embark upon making sense of the act of blogging, this very Blog itself is a basis for ruminations and self-reflexivity. It seems strange to ask the question what is a Blog? Hitherto I have taken it for granted and regale in the ability to put my views into the open and to share it with the class. What I can see through my eyes, the product of my thoughts and I sitting here hammering away at the computer key pad. Rather a mysterious affair to dwell upon. I had had not thought of making meaning of Blog as a Medium before and only vaguely had sensed its potential.In order to understand it there must be some gravitas and legitimation, sociological and epistemological as it pertains to Information Science and Literacy.
The Blog is contained in a nebulous territory, both in its intrinsic structure in its outward manifestation. As I can produce and view myself the surface, there is a vast sub structure laying covertly in the sub caverns of the Internet and the Web. Hence the Blog is only one of the various media which are available for one's use and expression.I begin with Postman's postulate that the medium is a metaphor which moulds thought which intertwines questions of information, education and epistemology. So is McLuhan's idea about the dynamic reciprocity between creation of machines in a society creates which demands reconfiguration of perspectives and thoughts. These media ecological views are a starting point for my own thinking pertaining to the Blog as a Medium.However, Postman's cultural critique is deterministic demonstrated by his analysis of the 'Age of Explosion' based on the 'sovereignty of the printing press' as well as the Telegraph enabling a possibility of a 'unified American discourse' but becomes irrelevant as source of information, because society is divorced from its very social and intellectual context.
Boyd's ‘Blog as a Medium’, has critical and media ecological perspective. She demonstrates the problem of defining a Blog to understand Medium meaningfully. Conceptions of the Medium are irreconcilable than how social Bloggers themselves view the blogging phenomenon. She concludes that a Medium such as a Blog "is not a self-descriptive term".Various definitions reflect predominant corporate and marketing interests, as a computer mediated genre of Information Communication, which can be "evaluated in content and structure"; the linear Social and Information Science researcher's description of the blog which "frame" their research objectives; or the several mass media definitions.These conceptual, semantic or analytical definitions obscure what the Medium and do not show a critical depth. Thus the "intent" of the individuals who "practice and act" is undermined. It is this phenomenological ground of the social practitioner which provides the critical framework for the understanding of the Medium. The Blog is at once a Medium, a creative and individual product of the blogger.
In McLuhan’s term, the Medium as a Blog is an "extension of man". Not the technologies but the social constructivist and creative moments define the Medium in which all textual and oral, corporeal and spatial, and public and private borders are eliminated.The sociologist Fuller also views how important media ecologies are in understanding media dynamics although the term is 'susceptible to interpretation'.Fuller argues the problem of studying Medium as an isolated feature and suggests that the complex manifestations of media through their forms and organizations should be looked at. Aesthetics and politics as key dimensions underpinning the study towards exploring the relationships between form and practice of media thus it is a critical exercise. In this way, the materiality of the media processes can be explored via the relationship between the production of culture (media artefacts) their integration into cultural life and subsequently as knowledge through hermeneutics and discourse. Fuller’s theory includes critique and power to understand media and particular Blogs.Fuller challenges the linear-discursive standardisation method applied to make an object meaningful to a subject. Although standardisation may manifest meaning of an object, culturally and aesthetically it redresses its potential and scope. Thus to frame a Medium in a uniform way will curtail its understanding. Medium such as a pirate radio station, photographs, Cctv web images demonstrate the powerful interplay of politics, ethics and aesthetics domains in media ecology. Fuller argues that media ecological perspectives, help to understand the complex layers of technologies, software designs, legal framework through their "dynamic mulitiplicity" demonstrated through patterns of action of society.An individual seeks to find her own self through the media, will resist the overarching layers of technology owned by corporations and their institutional and ideological modus operandi. The autonomous subject seeks empowerment by resisting those very technologies and media she is using within the framework of media ecology in order to subvert and become a creative subject through any Medium.In summing up, my own understanding of the Medium Blog was enhanced when examined through interdisciplinary glasses such a literary theories (structuralist and post structuralist), media ecological, cultural theory and sociology in order to appreciate its radical potential in education and literacy. Hence I take a Blog to be a media ecological and critical Medium. In terms of the Medium's application as a pedagogical tool, it appears to hold great potential for educators who employ technology to enhance learning. By affirming the student as a subject and allowing the development of the literary creative processes, it would permit the phenomenological and critical approaches which Boyd and Fuller both underline above.

Critical Literacy: The Radical Illiterate Returns

In my second blog, I shall introduce the profound impressions of Paulo Freire on my outlook on education, a beacon in the world of philosophy of education. The principles he carefully adumbrated have given the spark to innumerable teachers and learners in ways of developing the human mind and gaining experiences through the phenomenon of educational literacy. Through and through, Freire's educational philosophy exudes the humanism based on critique. In this way, as many have found and so have I, that education is a process which can truly invoke change, not only cognitively but intellectually. His principles have given voice to the voiceless. From my second reading of his text the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, my ideas are reinforced with his full vision.
I shall also examine Elborg's thought provoking ideas as he suggests the employment of Freirian pedagogy to the Library, in particular to what he terms Information literacy.
Finally I shall draw the implications and discuss how relevant the theory of critical pedagogy is to the field of Library Science. I still remain the radical illiterate as there is a lot to learn yet.
Freire applies important philosophical principles as the basis for his theory of critical pedagogy centred upon existentialism and phenomenology. For Freire, Education has a telos, namely freedom, what he calls 'liberation'. The pedagogy he propounds to underlie his philosophy of education is 'critical' by which he sees to make education in societies an important process of change. This process must be critical in order for the learner to understand the world and make meaning. The critical function of education based on transformational dialectics encompasses Sartre's theory of consciousness which Freire's terms the relationship between I and the Not-I. Thus in critical pedagogy 'otherness' is pivotal towards any educational transformation. The idea of otherness is a central plank in the critical philosophy of education which applies social-psychological principles, particularly social-interactional, to develop the learner's self-hood. Critical Literacy therefore implies the development of complex cognitive tools built within the educational pedagogy framework with social, psychological, cultural and philosophical perspectives and empathy.
Freire similarly suggests the combination of thought and action, philosophy and praxis as a basis of educational transformation. He calls the banking concept of education which limits learning through instrumentalist approaches in classrooms. It is a pedagogical paradigm which imposes ideas upon learners not allowing awareness and criticism to develop in the learner's minds. In the banking concept, ideology is covertly hidden within educational methodologies which leading to passivity and subtly laying it dormant in the learner's mind. Whereas critical pedagogy based on dialectical method allows the opportunity for critical engagement which leads to uncovering the ideology, questioning its basis and problematising it. The logical outcome of the application of the banking concept pedagogy is the systematic replication of dominant ideology of a particular group and its vested interests thereby re-establishing the political and cultural status quo in the wider society. This can be racial, cultural, ethnic, religious, economic or any ideology. Whereas the starting point for critical pedagogy is the understanding of the learner's ontology and historical situation, as well as her social and economic conditions. Understanding this, the teacher then leads the learner to seek authenticity and freedom. In the Aristotelean sense politics and the political world are realities which the critical pedagogy fully takes into account. Two important issues underpin the critical pedagogy. The function of criticism is fundamentally social and the role of culture is to create new subjectivity (Eagleton). Both inform the view of critical educational method.
The principles of critical pedagogy are highly relevant to the cultural environment of the Library, to which Elborg employs the term Information literacy. Libraries are not 'neutral cultural spaces' Elborg alleges rightly. He critically identifies the reductionist banking model of education with its sterile and passive universe of information and culture taken largely for granted leading to prescriptive approaches in several structures of the library's institutional hierarchy. The very structure of the library, its acquisition and storing of knowledge, cataloguing and classification, reference services and management suffer the passivity of learning through information.
Elborg calls for a new approach in the libraries moulded upon the principles of Freirian critical pedagogy. This approach demands the librarians to understand and employ these principles through 'extensive' knowledge of pedagogies, cultures and discourses of the communities of higher education, affirming the information seeker's historical background and ontology. This awareness would similarly be able to problematise the socio-cultural direction of the library and view its cultural and political roles. Hence it moves away from the prescriptive nature of seeking knowledge in the libraries to more engaged and critical modes.
Information literacy in this manner would thus provide epistemological and critical foundations for the central questions of technology, discourse, knowledge and identity of the community which lay at the heart of the library. Otherwise, the banking model of Information literacy would divorce students as agents from their social, psychological, cultural and economic contexts. This is reflected in Howard Gardiner's theory of 'multiple intelligencies' which takes into account the cognitive standing of each learner, rather than privileging a group of students with a blanketed model of intelligence to compare others with.
The significance of literacy in society cannot be understated as Bourdieu attests that "students accrue cultural capital through education". But what literacy is prioritised, whose cultural capital becomes privileged in society and which are marginalised, lead to the pedagogical question whether a student's 'primary discourse' is affirmed or challenged and excluded by the educational institutions.
In the library, information also embodies a 'Grammatical Dimension' through its communication mode, i.e. the organisation and structure of information itself in such forms as MARC, and Subject Headings. It also therefore begs the question what information is privileged over others within seeking of knowledge through grammar and technology sophistry.
An added component to Information literacy could be the value of games which Gee claims provide the context for literacy practice and gameplay, through the immersion and interactive digital environment as a mode for achieving literacy. He suggests three key contexts in which video games act as a pedagogy for literacy through semantic domains where meaning can be situated and literacy can occur.
To sum up, I argue for espousing Freire's Critical pedagogy and Elborg's Information literacy, as a basis for the Reference Library, a place where knowledge is sought. Reference in the library is through and through a political act, where any small query has a significant educational validity in the learner's mind. It cannot be dismissed as a factual or negligible question. The questions anticipate a full-fledged critical pedagogy, taking into account the learner's stand point of her 'primary discourse'. It is a moment upon which Brunerian scaffolding takes place and leads on to the possibilities and presaging of further structuring. Libraries and reference in particular are places where a life long learning and love of knowledge can be inculcated. These can be later built for the seeking of the Good, the Beautiful and Truth. Reference can be a liberating moment.

1st Blog- The Illiterate Blogger Sets Out

This is a first attempt at a blog. My ignorance is my forte, quest for a meaningful world, my telos. Such levels of technological illiteracy does not pale nor damp my quest. Technology- which I have never used that extensively, has given me ample space of silence. Even without technology, not poorer have I been as the mind can never rest and it seeks to venture through distant horizons in order to open and reach them. If I cannot reach, atleast I tried. My eyes have gazed at the space above in the blue orb and stars. They have not been focused on to the deeper and darker space within the web. For my premier try at a blog, I ruminate upon how the social and the symbolic are constantly bridged, never do we as humans take the skewed view of one forsaking the other. From the lofty heights of the experience of oneself within one's place in the universe, to the rudimentary interactional social ground of day to day life, a vast bridge is intellectually spanned. Education is central to this. Within the spanning arc, meaning is not given but is sought, discovered and shared. No one can own or claim it, but we can create meaningfulness and share it. The giveness of meaning, is the ossification of ideology structured in the mind. To uproot the ideology would take the entire span of one's life, or perhaps never. Hence one can die in ignorance through the claims to ownership of meaning. To understand what is human, is to jettison all claims to meaning. From the radically-illiterate-itinerant in New York 2nd February 09