A Little Bit Of Pre-term Perspective (Beloit and YouTube)

Beloit College put out its annual mindset list this week. The purpose of the list is to act "as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation." Beloit uses the list as a way to help their faculty get inside the heads of the incoming freshmen and to explicitly recognize that some of the cultural touchstones of a 50 year old professor are not the cultural touchstones of an 18 year old student.

For 18 year olds coming to college this year, Beloit notes, for example, that IBM has never made typewriters and there has always been GPS. Beloit just about killed me last year when they noted that the Soviet Union had never existed for those freshmen. This year, in turn, it suddenly hit me that the incoming freshmen were 11 years old when 9/11 happened. How much do you remember from when you were 11?

If that is not enough perspective for you, then check out the video made by the always incisive Dr. Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State University:

"The Machine Is Us/ing Us" And Other Mind-blowing Videos From Michael Wesch

Michael Wesch is an anthropology professor at Kansas State University and he has, over the last several years, with nothing but creativity and his student's efforts, put together some of the most thought provoking short videos on the web.

Many people are already familiar with Dr. Wesch's work but in case you aren't, you should start with the five minute video, "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" (seen below)...



There are at least two other videos that are worth watching. The first is Dr. Wesch's incredible collaborative effort with his students called "A Vision Of Students Today". This 4+ minute film is a real eye-opener for anyone who teaches college students or for anyone who is about to send a student off to college.

The final and most recent Wesch production is his hour long lecture at the Library of Congress titled "An Anthropological Introduction To YouTube" (I saw it first mentioned on the DataMining blog). Make sure you have a full hour to devote to it. Once you start it, you will not want to stop watching.

Dr. Wesch also has a good blog called Digital Ethnography.