XplanaZine

We’ve all had those experiences where we were seeing a map of something familiar, but it was being shown in a way that made it unfamiliar. I remember seeing my first aerial map of some acreage my father owned and struggling to make sense of it. All of a sudden, my visual understanding of creeks, hills, and canyons was challenged by a different way of seeing those things.

Most of us have had similar experiences with topographical maps, X-rays, CAT Scans, and information bar charts. We carry around a notion of how something really is in our heads and then have that notion challenged when it’s shown to us from a different perspective.

It’s all about how we see things. Graham Wegner picked up on this in his recent post on visualizing learning networks. Actually “seeing” the information network and paths of knowledge that make up our learning can radically change the way we go about doing our work.

I was thinking about this when I saw a post on BoingBoing about a site called Cab Spotting. As the site says, “Cabspotting traces San Francisco’s taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible.”

I think that’s when the significance of perspective– seeing things differently — really hit me. It was with the line “It hints at trends that are otherwise invisible.” Before I saw the Cab Spotting map I might have assumed that I was seeing things pretty clearly. But then I was shown a new perspective on the same information and I did start to see invisible patterns. I started to see things differently.

This, of course is the nature of and reason for creating new maps or views of our worlds. These new views confirm or dismiss our previous assumptions about things, and they stimulate us to conjure up new hypotheses about the reality we are living.

In the physical sciences this happened dramatically with the development of the telescope and microscope. The same has happened over the last 150 years with other discoveries in biology, physics, medicine, anthropology, psychology, literature, and, yes, education. From the lecture halls of humanities to space-age laboratories and super computers, our current era of rapid-fire information and discovery has given us new maps and new perspectives.

Lately, in the edublogging sphere, we’ve seen and heard a growing discussion about “Telling a New Story.” The idea is that we need to move towards a different understanding of learning and a different form of instruction. In other words, we need a new map for education. I happen to embrace this call for change, but I’m also aware that I have a personal stake in the outcome of the argument. My writing, my business, and my teaching are all affected positively by the New Story and adversely by the Old Story. Unfortunately, that tends to make me less interested in seeing things from too many different perspectives.

But knowing that the real secret to understanding is gaining new perspective — is seeing things differently — I start wondering about what else I should be mapping. I look at Cab Spotting and visualized learning networks and I ask myself what other invisible things am I missing?

Perhaps, instead of spending so much time on the obvious, I should be spending more on what I am not seeing, what I cannot see, and what I have trouble imagining. I’m not sure exactly what that means in terms of education, but I do know that I plan to spend more time looking for new maps in the future, and opening my thinking to whatever new information those maps can reveal.

I think I’ll call it my personal treasure hunt.

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Human contact. Something every human yearns for — especially teenagers. Every free scrap of time morphs into time to jump in the car and drive to a friend’s house or a hang–out spot like a snow cone stand (my friends knew the exact day and time the local snow cone stands opened this spring). But, sometimes teenagers just can’t get out. Parents generally put time limits on our outings and there are plenty of times when you only have when you only have twenty minutes between events in your day, which leaves no time to hang out. Even worse, if you’re like me you could actually get grounded for a whole weekend. Thankfully, with Xanga, when you can’t be with your friends physically, you can at least browse their thoughts online as well share your own ideas.

Xanga is an online blogging site that now also allows you to accumulate a social network. With it, you can keep track of your friends’ lives by reading their latest posts, and get connected to people you haven’t spoken to in years (as long as they have a Xanga too). It’s a great way to keep updated on people’s lives and to share your own ordeals when you’re stuck at home with nothing to do. I first created a Xanga as an underclassman. I had no car and no cell phone so I resorted to the Internet as a way to stay connected with my friends.

I prefer Xanga to Myspace because it’s more personal. If people don’t know you, or don’t know someone else who knows you, then its really hard for someone to randomly happen across your site. Xanga mainly serves to connect you with an already established base of friends. Sure the friend base can be expanded as you get to know more individuals, but it’s nice to be semi–anonymous to the rest of the Xanga community.

The main attraction of Xanga for me and my friends is the ability to write and post your own thoughts and ideas, quotes and passages from books, or even pictures. You also get to read your friends’ posts, and comment on them. Xanga certainly helps us understand each other better — you learn to see people differently when you really understand where they are coming from and how they think.

Xanga is also an amazing resource for keeping in touch with friends. My friend Marisa and I stayed in contact through Xanga while she went to study in Hungary for several months. I also use it to keep track of all my former high school friends who are now in college. Between their tests and homework it’s nearly impossible to schedule a few hours of time with them, let alone spend hours on the phone sharing the infinite details of their lives.

Interaction with friends is necessary for friendships to continue, and Xanga is a great way to make that interaction happen. It works if you’re separated by continents, or simply stuck inside because of weather or punishment. I think it probably seems like time wasted to parents, but a good deal of the time teenagers spend on Xanga should be considered social interaction. While that may not seem like a huge thing to some parents, but believe me, it is.