Probes and Questions
McLuhanisms all. Throughout our recent trip in Britain, I was struck by the prescience of my former teacher Marshall McLuhan in such media phenomena as the texting ecosystem of the airport lounges or private-made-public mobile chat in the village shop. McLuhan’s keen observations about media continue to inform my thought: how technology is an extension of the body, how the information glut necessitates pattern recognition, and how the variables of media act upon each other simultaneously to accelerate change.
Professor McLuhan was the most famous presence at my alma mater, St Michael’s College, University of Toronto. So I would be remiss if I did not use this space to celebrate his one hundredth birthday, albeit two months late, and relate his work to teaching today.
The Laws of Media
McLuhan would encourage all teachers, but particularly those interested in media and information literacy, to probe and question each time new media lightens or darkens our lives. We should especially try to understand his final insights, formulated with son Eric before his death, concerning what he called the four laws of media. I will try to paraphrase them here:
- What does new media enhance, that is, improve, actuate, or accelerate?
- What will new media reverse to, that is, change its character when pushed to the limits of its potential?
- What earlier phenomena is retrieved because of new media, that is, what older context, action, or service is brought back to fuse with the new form?
- What phenomena is obsolesced, that is displaced or made irrelevant by the new media?
The Tetrad
What frightens some about the pace of technological change may be the apparent chaos that seems to ensue. From computers tablets reminiscent of ancient school slates, to social networks that may foster the unsocial invasion of privacy, our anxiety rises. In school settings, this continues to cause some to exhibit unteacherly behavior such as banning cellphones, wasting money on plagiarism software, and underusing board-wide networks.
This may be a response to or cause of media flipping when "pushed." I find this quite natural and a very Taoist idea: that a thing by its very nature contains its opposite and reverses at its logical conclusion or apogee.
Application to Teaching
We can apply McLuhan’s four laws to teaching. For my example, I’ll apply them to the concept of the learning commons changing the role of the school library:
Enhancement. What does new technology improve in school library settings? How does a digital learning commons actuated through the collaboration of teacher and teacher-librarian accelerate learning of all kinds?
Reversal: What will new digital devices, such as tablets and cell phones, flip into when their potential has been reached? Has printed text reached the end of its usefulness as an information medium or has it reverted to earlier graphic or oral forms?
Retrieval: How has the storage of traditional texts and media forms been assisted by cloud technology? How is the traditional role of the librarian as mediator and collaborator brought back within physical and virtual learning commons spaces?
Obsolescence: What should school libraries simply ‘give up’ in order to thrive, not merely survive? What do the following look like in a learning commons-based school library: storytelling, the book report, staff workshops, and the library newsletter.
Further Probes
Make up your own questions and answers together for your own village, local or global. Marshall would approve, I think. To help, you might simultaneously probe the following websites, even though he never got to surf the web as we have come to know it.
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