January 30, 2008
Dueling Videos: Scholar Creates Remix of Another Academic's YouTube Hit
Mark C. Marino wanted to respond to a scholar’s video that was causing a buzz on YouTube. So he made a video of his own, remixing the original as a critique. The dueling videos might point to a future in which scholarly arguments take place in visual rather than written form.
The four-and-a-half-minute video that sparked the discussion was produced by Michael L. Wesch and the 200 students in his cultural-anthropology class at Kansas State University (which we wrote about back in October). The work presents startling statistics about college life; students hold up signs that read, “I bring my laptop to class, but I’m not working on class stuff,” “I spend 2 hours on my cellphone” per day, and “I will be $20,000 in debt after graduation.” The statistics were drawn from a survey of the 200 class members—a small sample for a video titled “A Vision of Students Today.”
The video was a mega-hit on YouTube, with more than 1.4 million views and more than 6,000 comments. That’s a lot, even by the chatty standards of YouTube. In fact, the video was the most-discussed on the entire site in October, when it was posted.
When Mr. Marino saw it, though, he was struck by the fact that the 200 students shown are surprisingly lacking in racial diversity—most are white—and he felt that the statistics might not be true for students beyond that one Kansas classroom. In his remix, he replaces several of the statistics from the original video with some of his own, including “I am on the winning side of the digital divide” and “I will meet eight people of color this year.” His version, called “(Re)Visions of Students Today,” was posted on Martin Luther King Day.
Mr. Marino, a lecturer in the writing program at the University of Southern California, said in an interview on Tuesday that the video took him a couple of days to make. He decided to do that rather than just post a comment, so that his viewpoint wouldn’t get lost in the thousands of other responses. He even noticed that someone had already expressed a similar reaction to Mr. Wesch’s video, but that the comment had been largely ignored.
“My little video certainly hasn’t caused a tidal wave, but it has caused conversations on various blogs and message boards,” Mr. Marino said. Besides, he added, “it would be harder for me to show people what I saw in Wesch’s video just by writing it out.”
Mr. Wesch said in an interview that he was excited when he saw Mr. Marino’s video. “I didn’t read it as a critique, but I saw it as adding to the discussion we wanted to spark about the state of education,” he said.
Mr. Wesch wrote a reaction to the remixed video in his blog, in which he says that at one point in planning the original video, students had discussed mentioning race. “We felt like in some ways the race issue is such a hot issue that it might draw attention away from some of the other points we were trying to make,” he said. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday January 30, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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What a bunch of spoiled brats!
If these kids spent less time they spent on Facebook and more time actually READING, they might learn something!
Did it ever occur to them that the onus is on on the student to show up, pay attention, and do the work?
The professor cannot learn for you.
Stop your whining and open a book!
— Cynthia Jan 30, 09:59 PM #
“The dueling videos might point to a future in which scholarly arguments take place in visual rather than written form.”
What I noticed most about these two videos was how excluded I felt from this scholarly discussion. As a vision-impaired person, I saw students holding blurry, illegible signs. Signs that were legible passed too quickly to be read by my slow, remaining vision. I saw the lack of contrast: dark text against dark backgrounds; light text over light.
Most of all, what I saw too clearly was how technology excluded me. Is this the future of scholarly discussion? The free and open exchange of ideas?
Maybe we should care less about technology “saving” us, and more about technology changing us. Change us in way that would allow those like me to participate in a scholarly discussion.
— Herbert Morgan Jan 30, 10:06 PM #
Herbert,
You make such a strong point about the ways in which even pieces which challenge inclusiveness also exclude, possibly through their very choice of (or use of) a medium. You are also demonstrating the use of text to show us how you saw our videos.
I should note that Michael Wesch has posted a transcript of the text from his video, and I plan to do the same. We also have higher resolution versions of our videos for download.
Nonetheless, your critique certainly still holds. We want to broaden the conversation, not limit it to those with certain prerequisites (class, background, gender, physical traits). Thank you for these comments.
— Mark Marino Jan 31, 02:45 AM #
I think you are all missing the point. You can try to force students to learn by the old ways of chalkboards and large reading assignments, etc, but it doesn’t mean they will. You can lead a dog to water but you can’t make him drink. If you want to entice the students into truely being engaged, you have to meet them on their level and engage them in the ways they are already engaged. In another 20 years, if you are still doing transparencies and chalkboards it better be in a history of teaching class. What’s more important, the matrial or the method? Too many folks (both faculty and administration) are too attached to their method and therefore students aren’t getting the material.
— John Jan 31, 09:05 AM #
John, et al.,
Be careful not to fall so in love with your new shovel that you forget to dig the hole.
— Comm Prof Jan 31, 10:00 AM #
Totally genius response. Creating a cheap mashup to respond to the techno-optimism. It’s good to see an English prof demonstrates how these lamentations on the plight of middle-class white America teens (best solved by banishing chalkboards, of course) are pretty solipsistic.
Nicely done Mr. Marino!
— New Media Prof Jan 31, 01:32 PM #
What’s a “mashup”? What’s a “remix”?
— Lee Jan 31, 05:29 PM #
I don’t think that the statistics and statements written by the students in the videos should be ignored. Sure, this information is disturbing and uncomfortable. We don’t like the idea (especially if we are teachers) that students feel like their instructors don’t know them, don’t care about how well they’re being trained for their future, and that they may not prefer the more traditional teaching tools. It is, however, important to consider these feelings and to do our best to respond.
I am a high-school English and English as a Second Language teacher. I work in a school that has a predominately low-economic population (72% free/reduced lunch). The other unusual aspect of our student body is that we serve just as many European Americans as we do Hispanics.
It is true that students who can afford technology seem to enjoy their laptops and I-pods, yet I have found that what students respond to best is interpersonal communication. They thrive when they are noticed and cared for…when their opinion counts…when we remember what they like and what they hate…when we can relate to their problems at home and at school…when we cheer for them, not scheme against them…when we prefer to spend time with them…when we get to know their families…. With this sort of dynamic, students are more than willing to work hard to do well (even if we don’t have anything to work with but a whiteboard, books, and paper).
— Shelly Staniec Feb 3, 11:44 PM #
“He decided to do that rather than just post a comment, so that his viewpoint wouldn’t get lost in the thousands of other responses.” and “…it would be harder for me to show people what I saw in Wesch’s video just by writing it out.”
Dr. Wesch could have also written those words, about another video and author, almost one year ago. On January 31, 2007, Wesch posted his now famous video response “Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us” to another YouTube video by Jeff Utecht, titled “Web 2.0.” In our discussion of these works, my graduate students and I refer to this as a “veply” or video reply.
Mark Marino and Michael Wesch offer us compelling examples of the power of new media commentary. The veply has spread to old media as well, and is not only a video to video response. In September, 2007, the NY Times published its first video letter to the editor, a video commentary on an earlier op-ed print piece by L. Paul Bremer.
— Prof Brovey Feb 4, 04:05 PM #
Technology is one of many educational TOOLS. While a brick can be used to smash in your neighbor’s car window, it could also be used to build a house for a needy family. In the wrong hands, technology can hinder the educational process, BUT, in the right hands, it can lend to building a whole new world of understanding. I am the technology teacher/coordinator for K-8th grade students at a charter school. My 6-8th grade students have individual laptops that they are assigned to, and many of them bring them home at night. We have systems of monitoring the laptops during class in place and consequences for misuse. At the college level, it would be up to the professor to decide the rules for his class, but ultimately it is the students who are responsible for their actions. The students who are FaceBooking it during class are the same type of students who were doodling in their notebooks instead of listening to their professor 10 years ago. For schools who are motivated, money is no longer as much as an issue as in the past for implementing technology. By taking advantage of grants, setting up labs using thin clients and Linux, using open-source software, etc., technology is much more readily accessible to students. Teachers at my school make sure that students know the basics, such as looking up a word in a physical dictionary, but once this skill is mastered they move on to using the electronic dictionary on their laptops. Why? Because it saves time AND because it prepares them for how most of them will be looking up words during the remainder of their lifetime anyway. I definitely agree that students need to develop social skills away from the computer, but as the work place continually becomes more and more digital, it is important that students know how to communicate in the digital world as well. Technology is often pushed because it is the new and cool “thing to do.” This is a blatant misuse of technology. Technology needs to be integrated with the curriculum when it is the BEST way to go about teaching or learning something.
— Ashlee Copper Feb 10, 07:44 PM #
I am under 25 and grew up with a computer mouse in my hand. My father is an electronics repair specialist for the University of Idaho, and our household has had numerous computers in it for years. I’ve actually been very grateful of my computer knowledge. It has allowed me to do spectacular things. I can bring insects into the classroom and make them appear as large as dinosaurs. I can obtain music from around the world and introduce children to a world of varying cultures. The possibilities with technology are endless. Yes technology can be used in negative ways, but it doesn’t have to be. Take for example the comments about playing games, or other things on your computer during class. If the class was engaging, informational, and the teacher was better students wouldn’t want to use their laptops. I’ve used technology to find guest speakers for classrooms, or to find clubs that could bring in live animals for a special unit.
I think that the biggest issue here is change. People in general don’t like change. Especially when its change concerning something they have been doing for so long. So this technology craze introduces a change to customs, and that throws some people for a loop. You can’t say, in this case either, that with time people will adapt to it, because with time technology will grow and change some more, and I think this is why people struggle so much with it.
I did like the (Re) Vision video, because I think it brings to surface a good point about diversity. It was a good spin off!
— MH Feb 10, 09:39 PM #
The students in this class are voicing via their text messages what they think of coursework and its purpose. Fortunately, they are young and haven’t yet been able to make the connection between process and result. Unfortunately, some are choosing to invest their energy in something other than the task at hand. I’m sure their parents would be disappointed to know that they are paying thousands to have their child act disrespectful and waste time in the expensive college environment.
I acknowledge that there are far more technological devices to bring into the classroom environment than there was twenty years ago. I know that many of these devices can have both educational and entertainment purposes. In this video it shows that both the students and the instructor need to make changes. I don’t think this video is representative of what school means to this generation. I think it represents that they have a lot left to learn. Even though they have the means to purchase these devices and parade their ownership of them in the classroom doesn’t make it right to use them as they are. I am sure that there are students in the class who could not afford some of these items and are pleased to have the opportunity to obtain an education.
This generation may think that all their important events should take place using some kind of technology, but technology fails more often than the weather closing a university. In fact, while in the process of working on this assignment I had my own technology issue and I just spent four hours on the phone with Dell.com. Needless to say, I am extremely happy that my educational device and its connections are working again. So, technology is one of the tools educators should use for teaching and learning, but I wouldn’t toss out books as sources of information.
My daughter is a college sophomore and I know that she learned a lot about taking responsibility for her successes and failures during her freshman year. Believe me she uses technology. However, when she discusses what she desires in a class it isn’t technology. She dislikes the Polya math courses because she needs an instructor to teach her the concepts and to be able to assist her when she is confused. In fact she is retaking another Polya math course. Expensive, yes, but the course involved so much technology she couldn’t learn what she needed to be successful.
— Sandra Feb 14, 10:32 PM #