Category: Teaching and Learning

Demo video screenshot - reading more with Kindle accessibility features

How I’m reading more – and maybe better

Kyle

I read a paper in my cognition class a couple years back that kinda blew my mind.

In “How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds,” Edwin Hutchins makes the argument that a whole bunch of representational technology helps a flight crew “think” as a single system. The cognition in this system is socially shared and spatially distributed across the roles and procedures of pilot and copilot as well as the dials, displays, and other controls that they work with.

That’s an idea that would appeal, I think, to Bruno Latour, the theorist whose book Reassembling the Social* has more recently been rocking my world. Like Hutchins, Latour believes it’s silly to talk about human agency in a way that robs the objects we create, think with, and increasingly depend on of the significant part they play in our lives.

As a researcher studying religious meaning-making, I find these thinkers’ ways of looking at artifacts appealing. Bibles, icons, prayer beads, bread and wine—the role they play in our spiritual lives is really powerful and has the mark of a kind of presence that, like Latour, I don’t want to dismiss:

In addition to ‘determining’ and serving as a ‘backdrop for human action,’ things [i.e., objects] might authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit, suggest, influence, block, render possible, forbid, and so on. (p. 71)

My ongoing dissertation study of a faith-adjacent nonprofit whose foster youth mentor teams gather each week in parks and coffee shops all around a large metropolitan area is helping me see this point even more clearly. Basketballs, Uno cards, and cute animals all play a part in this organization, as do the Instagram posts and newsletter reflections that tell the stories of how teams use these physical objects—and so many more—to practice and signify unconditional love.

Tapestry, as I call them, is changing a lot of lives, including mine. In my case, how could they not be, given how much of my time and energy is devoted to thinking and theorizing about them?

I’ve been spending some of that time and energy a little differently, lately. And that, dear reader, is why I have a recommendation for you, plus a technology hack that makes my new practice a little easier and cheaper.

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I’m a pretty slow and undisciplined reader, which is a major liability when you’re working on a dissertation. I know I need to be reading more.

But I am a very attentive and agile listener: hence the pastoring, and also the podcasting.

Thus, it has totally revolutionized my reading and research life to get the hell away from my “desk,” i.e., wherever I’m sitting with my laptop checking my email too often, and learn by listening. (I’m just realizing that I’ve talked about this “lace up and listen” approach before).

I’ve been doing serious miles reading more while walking and running around the beautiful city of San Francisco, much of which I still haven’t explored (despite ample inspiration from the likes of a writer who’s walked every neighborhood*, plus delightful albeit fictitious characters like this programmer-turned-baker* and this designer-turned-decoder*). And since I’ve also started surfing, I now have added time for reading more on my once- or twice-weekly round trip to Pacifica (where these adorable surfers were back out in force on Saturday).

You probably know there are decent apps out there for reading PDFs aloud. These have been pretty helpful for me on this journey.

I ended up going with Voice Dream, which has good tools for keeping files organized. I also like that you can double tap on the text to move the “voice cursor” directly to a section where you want the narration to recommence. Unfortunately, it’s only available on iOS. Looks like NaturalReader, another pretty well rated one, is available for iOS and Android.

A tool I’d already been using for listening to long reads from online publications is Pocket, which as a bonus is now owned by Internet do-gooders Mozilla. Pocket’s a great tool even if you don’t have this eccentric desire to have someone else read to you.

Here’s the trouble: in my field, I need to be reading more actual books. I read almost exclusively on Kindle, though I’ve been delighted to discover the occasional book I need available as an audiobook. (I recommended the excellent audiobook of For White Folks Who Teach In The Hood* a couple newsletters ago.)

The problem is, audiobooks are rare in both academia and in mainline protestant religious publishing, plus when they do exist they’re understandably expensive—good audio is hard to make. So to really get the most out of learning by listening, I finally had to figure out how to get my iPhone’s accessibility features to read from me directly from the Kindle app.

It is not a super pleasant experience, as I suspect anyone who reads with a screen reader surely knows. I’m sure some of this also has to do with Amazon not wanting to discourage us from buying content on Audible.

(If you create online content, I hope this post will double as a call to attend to your content’s accessibility features.)

In any event, it is indeed possible to get your Kindle to read books to you. And it is possible to get used to the experience, even if the book you’re reading is full of pull quotes (as in Dear Church*), tables (as in Discourse Analysis Beyond the Speech Event*), and citations/footnotes (as especially in the writing of my new BFF, Latour). I know I’m dropping a lot of book links here, but I’m reading more than I have since seminary, y’all!

Let me walk you through it:

(Here’s a similar demo someone else made for Android.)

I’d love to hear from folks who find this possibility exciting, or who have similar reading/listening workflows. Perhaps I’m even weirder than usual in my willingness to slog through academic texts via robot voice and a finicky interface. Please don’t hesitate to tell me if you think that’s the case and I’ll just move the hell along.

What I know is that the need to be reading more books has been holding back my scholarship and probably my religious leadership for a long time. (For example, I listened to big chunks of Battered Love* preparing for my recent sermon on Hosea 1; I’m not sure I’d have read as much of it without this new technique.)

I also know that Hutchins and probably even Latour would probably believe me when I say that I think I’m remembering what I hear at least as well as what I read, especially when I’m walking around San Francisco. I can remember the neighborhood I was jogging in when I had a breakthrough in understanding Latour, the same neighborhood (though running in the other direction) as when I heard Renita Weems on the marriage metaphor in a way that went on to inform my sermon.

There’s something about mapping the books I’m reading onto the geography of the city that is helping me make connections I’m not sure I otherwise would have.

Plus it feels good to “read” with my whole body and not exclusively with my eyes and my note-taking fingers, especially as I continue to study religious organizations who stress getting out of their buildings and out into their neighborhoods.

* Disclosure: Affiliate links.

kids and screens

Beyond alarmism about kids and screens

Kyle 6 Comments

If there’s one thing I learned in my history of communication class, it’s that the introduction of new technologies is usually met with a strange cultural cocktail of utopianism and alarmism.

It’s at once hilarious and disturbing to hear people responding to the social disruption ushered in by the telephone* or even the chalkboard. Reading accounts like these has made me as suspicious of moral panic as of moral triumphalism or moral indifference.

It was with that formation and a whole lot of eye-rolling that I read (some of) the recent package of “kids and screens” stories from the New York Times claiming, as Pamela Paul put it, “the people who know the most about tech are the ones who want the least tech for their kids.”

(Incidentally, the preview text for the article in question is “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones,” from a former administrator at Facebook. If quotes like that aren’t a warning sign of lazy thinking all around, I don’t know what is.)

In a tightly argued piece in Columbia Journalism Review, education reporter Anya Kamenetz called the stories “howling missed opportunities,” which seems generous given her subsequent characterization: “They were lacking relevant research, they drew misleading conclusions, and some of the anecdotal evidence they cited contradicted the central hooks of the stories.”

If you know about Kamenetz’s recent book, The Art of Screentime*, you’d be right to want to interrogate her possible biases and blind spots. Doesn’t she have a vested interest in devices’ possible redemption?

Sure, but there are good reasons to be frustrated with writer Nellie Bowles’ reporting of these pieces and to trust Kamenetz’s rejoinder. For my part, I’m convinced by Kamenetz’s conclusions in large part because I’m familiar with a lot of the rigorous research she cites. She reached out to one of my scholarly heroes in this core statement of her argument:

[S]trict approaches aimed only at limiting screen time aren’t the most effective. You have to be a role model and engage alongside your kids, a notion that the Times stories largely skirted. As Mimi Ito, a foundational scholar of teens’ online lives, tells me, “With anxiety stoked by fear-inducing media stories, and shamed by their peers, parents grasp for simple authoritarian solutions often against their kids’ interests. But when parents take the time to appreciate and connect with their kids’ digital interests, it can be a site of connection and shared joy”—and a way to mentor kids to discover their own creativity.

If piling up researcher pull quotes or citations isn’t your preferred approach to convincing others or yourself, consider more closely the complex path of critical engagement rather than faux-critical prohibition.

The former—advocated by Ito (see HOMAGO online or in print*), boyd (see It’s Complicated online or in print*), Kamenetz and others—passes a kind of smell test that my college calculus professor called “conservation of effort”:

If an approach to solving a problem seems to too easy, it probably is.

It’s just as easy to let nannies be the phone police (if you can afford them, of course) as it is to over-rely on techno-wizardry for keeping kids entertained. (Though let’s cut it out with the shaming that happens on the kids and screens front. Actually, let’s cut it out with shaming.)

We shouldn’t be surprised that the most effective approaches to teaching and learning, to forming strong values and good habits, to growing relationships and community, are the ones that take the most time and effort to practice.

That’s true in the fraught world of kids and screens, and just about everywhere else.

Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

*Disclosure: Affiliate links.

Curating resources - curation guidelines

Guidelines for curating religious resources

Kyle

Note: I created these guidelines for curating religious resources while on the staff of the Center for the Ministry of Teaching (now Lifelong Learning) at Virginia Theological Seminary, in collaboration with Robbin Brent Whittington and the Center for Spiritual Resources. Since the CSR is no longer in operation, I have obtained permission to republish them here under a Creative Commons license.

Suggested attribution: “Guidelines for curating religious resources” by Kyle Oliver (CC BY 4.0)

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There are so many free and low-cost resources online for people who teach religion and theology or are responsible for faith formation in religious communities. How do you decide what to share?

Curating resource collections is now a big part of the job description in a wide variety of spiritual and religious vocations. Here are some sample criteria for making sure you pass along the good stuff.

You’ll notice that the values implicitly and explicitly represented in these guidelines correspond to a Mainline Protestant sensibility and my particular groundedness in the Episcopal/Anglican tradition. Feel free to adapt as appropriate for your context.

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Audience appropriateness — Resource demonstrates obvious utility to one or more core audiences: individual seekers; participants in Christian formation programming at home, at church, at camp, or online; group leaders; and school or congregational leaders.

Theological sensitivity — Resource creator(s) share a commitment to a broad and generous Mainline Protestant/Roman Catholic perspective. Resource shares the good news of God in Christ while “respecting the dignity of every human being.” Mainline Anglican/Episcopal resources are especially appropriate.

Biblical groundedness — Resource demonstrates an explicit or implicit engagement in the Bible and other significant Christian texts. Resource creators model a hermeneutic that allows for a variety of interpretations based on recognized and transparent methods of Biblical scholarship.

Lifelong faith formation — Resource affirms, explicitly whenever possible, a commitment to lifelong growth in the knowledge, service, and love of God in the context of intentional Christian communities shaped, often but not always, by baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Holy Eucharist/Communion).

Social justice — Resource strives to represent humanity in its full diversity, including of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical and mental abilities, socioeconomic status, and place of residence—recognizing that gospel values make no accommodation to oppression. Resource seeks to transcend or at least acknowledge the necessarily limited perspective of its creator(s).

Liturgical awareness — Resource includes strategies for incorporation in or inclusion alongside the liturgies/worship traditions of the church, or includes standalone prayers or liturgies/worship services. Not all users will be concerned with this criterion, but Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics in particular tend to approach formation through the lens of worship (lex orandi, lex credendi–praying shapes believing) and the context of liturgical seasons.

Editorial responsibility — Resource creators and curators value attention to the details of usage and grammar, web design, and copyright compliance. Curators (and creators when the creator submits an original resource) are committed to “signing” their posts with initials linking each contribution to the appropriate collaborator’s bio.

Practical value — Resource encourages users to be “doers of the word, and not merely hearers” (James 1:22) and engages the “how” of mission and ministry and not just the why. Use of action-reflection models of practical theology is especially appropriate.

Non-expert accessibility — Resource avoids unnecessary religious, pedagogical, and technological jargon and can be used by expert and novice practitioners.

Image credit: Valentin Antonini via Unsplash.

Playing Catch (-Up)

Kyle

In honor of yesterday’s beautiful weather and the associated (and long overdue) first game of catch, I checked out a couple of baseball blogs today.

Perhaps I’m too much of a Turnbow apologist, but I think this guy is partially misplacing the blame for today’s Brewers loss. I was only listening to it on the radio, but it seems like base-running mistakes really cost us a chance to take the lead in the bottom of the eighth, which could have kept us in it. Nevertheless, I think Brewers Bar looks worth reading, so I’ve added it to the new Sports links at right. (Speaking of sports blogs, did you see this? I’d like to hear more about Cuban’s viewpoint, which sounds a little hypocritical but is perhaps only superficially so.)

In other news (since I’m still just getting slammed at work and need to knock at least one story off the old ToBlog queue before I lose all my momentum), congratulations to Professors McMahon and Murphy on their recent teaching awards. Watch for Insights‘ interview with Regina Murphy in the next edition. I was there for the brown bag and thought she covered some really interesting stuff.

In the meanwhile, here’s some wisdom from McMahon:

“He inspired me to think of students as ‘candles to be lit, not vessels to be filled,'” she says. “I think of myself not as a conduit for facts, but as an exuberant tour guide introducing students to the joy of problem-solving and learning about the world around them.”

We need more exuberance.

New Insights Online

Kyle

I linked to the March edition of our College of Engineering’s Teaching and Learning Insights newsletter last month, mostly because I’d written a piece for it. But it would be a shame if I didn’t pass the April link along as well. This issue rules.

In particular, check out the feature about my friend and sometime collaborator Laura Grossenbacher and her work on WAC (that’s Writing Across the Curriculum, not Western Athletic Conference) in engineering. This project’s got it all–interdisciplinarity, technical writing, authentic learning, and more. So I guess by “it all” I mean “stuff I’m interested in.” If you are too, check it out.

There’s also a write-up of our journal club‘s most recent article and a piece on using blogs for assessment. Geez, they’re productivity tools, assessment tools, brainstorming tools…makes me wonder why it took me so long to get back in the blogging game.