It's hard to believe that school started here in Chicago five weeks ago. We (me and my co-Lead Teacher) have been busy working on several fronts to get the Technology Program going at Dvorak. We have our laptop cart set up with 30 MacBooks, and are going to the selected classes twice a week for about an hour at a time.
We have been focusing on basic computer skills and getting the students used to using FirstClass, the sprawling server-based application provided by CPS to its students. FirstClass provides not only a safe email client for the students, but also discussion areas, calendars, file storage, link libraries and more.
We are also working on getting the new website set up (dvoraktech.org), trying to get all of the existing equipment in a working state, working w/ the teachers on incorporating their laptops and LCD projectors into regular instruction, figuring out for ourselves how the new gizmos work, and more.
Open House is coming up in a few days, and we need to put together a little show to demonstrate what we have accomplished so far...
jd
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Using technology to build community
Technology is a powerful tool for hooking people together -- for building community. I'm collecting ideas for projects that our students could do that will
(a) include talking to people in the neighborhood and/or investigating the Dvorak neighborhood's environment
(b) include reflecting on and analyzing the information collected
(c) include assembling the research and analysis into a presentation that can be shared via the Internet.
For example, the students could collect an oral history from our neighborhood's elders, and create a library of podcasts.
Or students can do a survey of plants and animals in the neighborhood and build a website of the natural history of North Lawndale.
Or...
Post your ideas!
jd
(a) include talking to people in the neighborhood and/or investigating the Dvorak neighborhood's environment
(b) include reflecting on and analyzing the information collected
(c) include assembling the research and analysis into a presentation that can be shared via the Internet.
For example, the students could collect an oral history from our neighborhood's elders, and create a library of podcasts.
Or students can do a survey of plants and animals in the neighborhood and build a website of the natural history of North Lawndale.
Or...
Post your ideas!
jd
Ideas for using technology at Dvorak
Do you have ideas about how we can use new technologies at Dvorak? Computers in the classrooms, digital cameras and audio recorders, blogs and wikis, MySpace, websites...
The list of possibilities is long. I'd like to hear your ideas.
jd
The list of possibilities is long. I'd like to hear your ideas.
jd
My educational philosophy
I believe that everyone is capable of learning. We are human beings. Because we are human beings, we have a brain. Except is rare cases, because we have a brain we can think. Because we have a brain, we can think. Because we can think, we can learn, we can figure things out, we can create. And because we can do these things, we are all capable of doing great things.
I believe that education is both a right and a responsibility. We are social beings. Part of being social means educating our children. As part of the community, our children have a right to be educated. But with education also comes the responsibility to give back to the community. We have the responsibility to take our learning and apply it to making our communities and our planet better places.
While every child can learn, I also understand that each child is unique. Each child has his or her own way of learning. As an educator, it is my responsibility to help that child be successful in the classroom. Learning should be a joy.
I believe that technology has a place in the classroom, but it should never be more than just a tool. Technology should help the student learn, period. And so it is important to recognize where it has a proper place, and where it doesn't. It must never be an end in itself, and certainly never get in the way of learning. Technology is not a magic bullet that will solve all of our educational problems. It can, however, be a powerful tool to help children learn and think, to learn important new skills, and to help them express themselves in creative new ways.
Your comments will be appreciated...
jd
I believe that education is both a right and a responsibility. We are social beings. Part of being social means educating our children. As part of the community, our children have a right to be educated. But with education also comes the responsibility to give back to the community. We have the responsibility to take our learning and apply it to making our communities and our planet better places.
While every child can learn, I also understand that each child is unique. Each child has his or her own way of learning. As an educator, it is my responsibility to help that child be successful in the classroom. Learning should be a joy.
I believe that technology has a place in the classroom, but it should never be more than just a tool. Technology should help the student learn, period. And so it is important to recognize where it has a proper place, and where it doesn't. It must never be an end in itself, and certainly never get in the way of learning. Technology is not a magic bullet that will solve all of our educational problems. It can, however, be a powerful tool to help children learn and think, to learn important new skills, and to help them express themselves in creative new ways.
Your comments will be appreciated...
jd
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Six Degrees of Separation
Science Friday did an interesting program on January 25, 2008 on the validity of the "six degrees of separation" idea put forth by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. The program features skeptic Judith Kleinfeld and Steven Strogatz (author of Sync. The story was prompted by Discover magazine's story, If Osama's Only 6 Degrees Away, Why Can't We Find Him?". Kleinfeld is more interested in the human, anthropological dimension -- why do people sieze on the theory? Why do people want to believe the theory? Strogatz does an admirable job defending the math and the theory. Kleinfeld is good about reminding us that real world networks have certain constraints or laws or conventions that they obey, and when we are dealing w/ social connections that there are historical or political dimensions that we should be cognizant of.
The podcast of the program is available at http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200801256.
jd
The podcast of the program is available at http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200801256.
jd
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Forms of capital and the human-nature relationship
[Below is a re-working of a section from a paper Speculative capital and the ecosystem of globalization. I've been thinking that forms of capital are key to understanding changes in the human-nature relationship in the capitalist era.]
Forms of capital and the human-nature relationship
Marx explained that Capital is not just forms that wealth takes, but that ultimately it is a social relationship. Money, or wealth, becomes capital when it is applied to its own self-expansion -- money used to make more money if you will. But in that process of self-expansion, capital describes a way that people are organized in the process of production. The social means of production are owned privately, through control of the production process one class accumulates the surplus labor of another class, this accumulated "dead labor" in turn is invested in expanded circuits of production. In the process, capital expands and the power and wealth of the owning class grows along with it, allowing capital, or the class that expresses it, to exert even more control over the production process, and to appropriate more surplus labor.
While capital is ultimately a social relationship, this relationship is expressed in the forms the dead labor takes: money capital, productive capital, industrial capital, merchant capital, and so on, depending on the role that it plays at different moments or stations of the circuit of capital. Likewise, capital takes different and new forms over time, as the means of production develop, the circuits of capital expand, the capitalist system matures, as the credit system deepens and becomes more complex, etc. For example, the forms that capital could take in the early days of mercantilism or agricultural capitalism are different than the forms that capital can take in the age of steam power or in the age of electronics.
The economy describes the overall interaction of humans and the environment in production and reproduction processes. The environment is the beginning-and-end of production, the original source of material and wealth, the economy is just a process of rearranging the environment. [One could cite Marx here I think, but is it necessary?] If we think of forms of capital as structures through which economic activity takes place, it follows that they are the means through which we interact with the environment -- the forms of capital also signify aspects of the human-nature relationship. Capital structures imply a particular relationship to the world.
Forms of capital -- as structures through which people interact with the environment -- I suppose these are really a subset of forms of property. Property relations also describe a particular relationship to the world. Once things become titled (in the legal sense, or deeded), i.e. owned, they also become "things", so to does the world, the environment. [Here Marx's lead-in to the discussion of the fetishization of commodities in Capital Vol I, Chapter I is relevant.] I think there are a number of writings that celebrate e.g. native American relationships and other original communist forms of social organization and (non)property to the environment.
Whether these things are held in common, shared, or bought and sold, or bought and sold on credit, or bought and sold -- not the things themselves, but as abstract pieces or shares, or not the shares, but the movement in price of the shares, and so on -- these qualities or degrees of relationship are mediated by social relations, and in the case of private ownership, at least in the "modern era", say from 1750 or so on, by capital structures. A worker, a family, even an enterprise interacts with and is integrated into the economy through capital forms which in turn will affect production or laboring, and through that the environment. Alienation to the economy (and the environment) is shaped by these capital forms.
For example, to take a current example with the so-called "housing bubble", a mortgage, which presumes a relatively developed financial system, allows a worker to acquire a home with "just" the down payment, but also requires the ongoing acquisition of cash to pay principle and interest; binding the worker into cash economy, i.e. commodity exchange. That mortgage can then be pooled with mortgages of other homeowner, and sold in the financial markets, attracting more capital for lending, reducing the cost of money (interest). This securitization allows mortgages to be extended to more borrowers, which feeds a housing boom (and allows more risk in economy). The expanded credit expands the market for new home construction, leading to urban sprawl, and with limited or non-existent mass transit, to the need for more cars and highways and fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gases; also habitat loss, which contributes to species loss; also consumption of forest products and minerals; and so on. There is no getting away from the environment.
Grain futures provide another example. They function in a similar way to credit, allowing an expansion of economy. But as Cronon (1991) points out, the grain futures requires at the same time an anonymization of nature, where the individual wheat plant tended by the individual farmer disappears as individual and is merged with the grain from other farms into carloads of a class of wheat. The capital structures facilitate a different degree of alienation from agriculture and nature. Cronon's analysis shows how this change is reflection of necessary changes in the production/transportation process if the economy is to take advantage of what rail technology makes possible.
So capital structures can be an entry point for understanding the changing relationship to the environment. And inasmuch as the development of capital structures moves in a stage-wise fashion, in dialectical tandem with the development of the means of production and especially the means of communication and finance, they become another entry point for understanding how particular environmental forms or structures or relationships emerge at different stages of capitalism.
Next: speculative capital and the ecosystem of globalization
jd
Forms of capital and the human-nature relationship
Marx explained that Capital is not just forms that wealth takes, but that ultimately it is a social relationship. Money, or wealth, becomes capital when it is applied to its own self-expansion -- money used to make more money if you will. But in that process of self-expansion, capital describes a way that people are organized in the process of production. The social means of production are owned privately, through control of the production process one class accumulates the surplus labor of another class, this accumulated "dead labor" in turn is invested in expanded circuits of production. In the process, capital expands and the power and wealth of the owning class grows along with it, allowing capital, or the class that expresses it, to exert even more control over the production process, and to appropriate more surplus labor.
While capital is ultimately a social relationship, this relationship is expressed in the forms the dead labor takes: money capital, productive capital, industrial capital, merchant capital, and so on, depending on the role that it plays at different moments or stations of the circuit of capital. Likewise, capital takes different and new forms over time, as the means of production develop, the circuits of capital expand, the capitalist system matures, as the credit system deepens and becomes more complex, etc. For example, the forms that capital could take in the early days of mercantilism or agricultural capitalism are different than the forms that capital can take in the age of steam power or in the age of electronics.
The economy describes the overall interaction of humans and the environment in production and reproduction processes. The environment is the beginning-and-end of production, the original source of material and wealth, the economy is just a process of rearranging the environment. [One could cite Marx here I think, but is it necessary?] If we think of forms of capital as structures through which economic activity takes place, it follows that they are the means through which we interact with the environment -- the forms of capital also signify aspects of the human-nature relationship. Capital structures imply a particular relationship to the world.
Forms of capital -- as structures through which people interact with the environment -- I suppose these are really a subset of forms of property. Property relations also describe a particular relationship to the world. Once things become titled (in the legal sense, or deeded), i.e. owned, they also become "things", so to does the world, the environment. [Here Marx's lead-in to the discussion of the fetishization of commodities in Capital Vol I, Chapter I is relevant.] I think there are a number of writings that celebrate e.g. native American relationships and other original communist forms of social organization and (non)property to the environment.
Whether these things are held in common, shared, or bought and sold, or bought and sold on credit, or bought and sold -- not the things themselves, but as abstract pieces or shares, or not the shares, but the movement in price of the shares, and so on -- these qualities or degrees of relationship are mediated by social relations, and in the case of private ownership, at least in the "modern era", say from 1750 or so on, by capital structures. A worker, a family, even an enterprise interacts with and is integrated into the economy through capital forms which in turn will affect production or laboring, and through that the environment. Alienation to the economy (and the environment) is shaped by these capital forms.
For example, to take a current example with the so-called "housing bubble", a mortgage, which presumes a relatively developed financial system, allows a worker to acquire a home with "just" the down payment, but also requires the ongoing acquisition of cash to pay principle and interest; binding the worker into cash economy, i.e. commodity exchange. That mortgage can then be pooled with mortgages of other homeowner, and sold in the financial markets, attracting more capital for lending, reducing the cost of money (interest). This securitization allows mortgages to be extended to more borrowers, which feeds a housing boom (and allows more risk in economy). The expanded credit expands the market for new home construction, leading to urban sprawl, and with limited or non-existent mass transit, to the need for more cars and highways and fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gases; also habitat loss, which contributes to species loss; also consumption of forest products and minerals; and so on. There is no getting away from the environment.
Grain futures provide another example. They function in a similar way to credit, allowing an expansion of economy. But as Cronon (1991) points out, the grain futures requires at the same time an anonymization of nature, where the individual wheat plant tended by the individual farmer disappears as individual and is merged with the grain from other farms into carloads of a class of wheat. The capital structures facilitate a different degree of alienation from agriculture and nature. Cronon's analysis shows how this change is reflection of necessary changes in the production/transportation process if the economy is to take advantage of what rail technology makes possible.
So capital structures can be an entry point for understanding the changing relationship to the environment. And inasmuch as the development of capital structures moves in a stage-wise fashion, in dialectical tandem with the development of the means of production and especially the means of communication and finance, they become another entry point for understanding how particular environmental forms or structures or relationships emerge at different stages of capitalism.
Next: speculative capital and the ecosystem of globalization
jd
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