where to draw the line?
One of the things I’ve been thinking about with regards to personal cyberinfrastructure, is where to draw the line defining where an individual should be focusing their energy.
The #ds106 model draws the line just above the LAMP stack. But that’s an arbitrary selection. It could just as easily be pushed down to the hardware level – students will acquire (or build, or design) a server and then install (or build, or design) an operating system etc…
Or, the line could be pushed up, above the software layers altogether, where students focus only on content and creating stuff. This is where the line is drawn with hosted services like WordPress.com or Blogger.
I’m not saying one line is necessarily better than the other, but we need to be aware that the decision of where to place the line defining expectations is arbitrary, and may be different in other contexts. A CompSci course may well have students writing their own OS, database, or applications. A PoliSci course may use a hosted (or campus-provided) blogging platform so that students can focus on the course rather than the bits that run stuff.
Maybe it should not be a question for the teacher or the educator to decide; but for the student. What do you expose them to? Your diagram is excellent for that. Tell them the problems and risks and then focus on whatever you have time for. Tell them to learn the other stuff on their own, or find a class that teaches them what they are interested in.
We are not going to stop technophilia or technophobia. To those of us who are heavy weights, who understand the whole gamut — lots of stuff seems uninteresting and mundane. To a newbie they might attempt to grapple with all of it and find their limitations for themselves… and perhaps that should be one of the lessons of the course. That you are dependent on all these corporations, and society. That you are a helpless individual… and is that what you want etc. That in order to create art you have to tread on top of the pyramid; under all these other layers that other people control… and how that affects you, society and culture.
The image is brilliant — and I’ll be using it to talk to my students about the “stack.” If nothing else, I want to reveal the notion of the stack to them and get them to think about where and why these lines are drawn. For some, they may discover that they belong deeper in the stack than they thought. Others may continue to “tread on top of the pyramid” (as Sami says), but will have made that choice for themselves rather than having it thrust upon them.
Yet shouldn’t educators be doing some gentle pushing? If your students take a look at the stack and all but a few decide they fall squarely at the top due to their preconceptions of it all, where is the challenge? There are times where making students uncomfortable can end up being a very positive experience. We’re already seeing quite a few of the UMW students say “Wow that was no doubt hard, but I made it work and this is actually a lot of fun.”
Another thought that occurred to me, for a CS student building a blogging platform of their own in LAMP on a server they built and manage likely is ART to them.
Tim — I definitely feel like it’s my job in DS106 to be pushing my students to think about their place in the stack. Hopefully, by my requiring them to build out their cyberinfrastructure, some students will find value and rewards experimenting in spaces that are uncomfortable.
I believe one of Jim’s students actually is building his own blog instead of using WordPress. Whether or not he considers what he’s doing art, I consider it an act of creative expression, and that’s an amazing choice for him to make.