Wishing our readers a very happy holidays and a splendid new year!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hat tip to Hillary Miller, via Facebook.

Click to See Full Size

According to The Gothamist, the flyer on the right was scattered around the campus of New York University last week.

The flyer announced NYU’s “In and Of the City Financial Aid Plan,” in which students who were unable to fork out 50k/year were told their families could save more than $43k annually if they instead attended CUNY.

Turns out the thing was a fake, produced by a group that calls itself “Students Creating Radical Change,” who “made up the flyer to encourage discussion about NYU’s treatment of its students, and to encourage students to question their university’s priorities.”  Essentially, the group protests that NYU does not provide sufficient financial support for its students, and focuses instead on expansionist behavior in the real estate market.

The letter to The Gothamist in which the students claim responsibility ends: “Oh, one other thing: we have nothing against CUNY. We just thought a ‘go to CUNY’ plan would make a neat flier. In fact, CUNY is facing its own financial problems these days – check out http://www.cunysocialforum.com/ for info on the student resistance to budget cuts and tuition hikes in the state higher-ed system.”

I might rant about the fetishization of protest embodied by this episode, which is more performative Yippie distractionism than the purposeful speaking of truth to power.  I might compare the postscript about CUNY to the utterances of folks who use phrases like “I have lots of black friends” or “I don’t mean to cast aspersions” when saying objectionable things.  I might snark about grammatical errors contained within the group’s statement, or attack the snobby implication that to go to CUNY is to slum it.

The fact of the matter is, especially in this economy, the group has a point (even if it isn’t really their point).  The cost of NYU is ridiculous, and is an education there really 8-10 times better than what one could get at CUNY?  From anecdotal evidence, applications for early admission to the Macaulay Honors College are up more than 30% from last year.  I think it’s pretty safe to say we’ll see an increase in CUNY and SUNY enrollments over the next couple of years.

So, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.  I’m not sure there’s that big a difference between an underpaid adjunct teaching a course with 40 students and and an underpaid adjunct teaching a course with 55 students.  Bring it on.

h/t BooneBGorges

I was recently inspired, no surprise, by a post on Jim Groom’s Bavatuesdays: “A Childhood Without Proof.” This was about as close to schmaltz as the right Rev. Groom comes, and being a sap myself, I appreciated both the content and the tone.

Jim, the 6th of 7th children, was aware of only one photograph of himself as a baby. One. But last week a Facebook friend from his old neighborhood tagged an image of him at 3. Jim’s post praises Facebook for being good at connecting people with the past, and at making the sharing of memories so much easier than it was just a few years ago. This would have been possible without Facebook; but it would have been more difficult, perhaps to such an extent that it wouldn’t have happened at all. There’s a powerful argument in there that connectivity tools don’t just impact the way that we relate to one another, but also can impact the way we relate to our individual and collective pasts.

This post was on my mind when I began playing with Google Street View, a component of Google Maps that offers street level views of particular locales. This isn’t a new tool, but Google has been steadily adding images as its van tours and shoots different localities (here’s a list of what’s been added). I was surprised to see that the neighborhood in which I grew up has been photographed. North Genesee Drive is of no great consequence — beyond being sandwiched between the neighborhoods that produced Magic Johnson and Malcolm X — but there it is, ready for your virtual tour.

I haven’t been back to my old neighborhood in years, and was pleased that I was able to recreate the bike rides and explorations of my youth, even if through a somehwat antiseptic, Googleized filter. There was no cutting through yards, lemonade sales, or bullies to run from. My memory can fill those things in. Mostly, it was pleasant to visit from my desk in New York.

Here’s a gallery of screen captures; click through for captions.

I recognize that this particular application of the tool appeals to me on a nostalgic level, and while that’s fine for personal blogging and Facebooking and all that, it’s hardly a pedagogical argument. The images above affect me and the kids I grew up with more than they’ll affect you.

But it’s also pretty easy to see how tools like this, free tools available from your desktop, can be integrated into college curricula. Studying the Lower East Side at the turn of the century? Compare the built environment of Hester Street from Jacob Riis’s photographs to images of the area on Google Maps. Use Google Maps to explore planning and architecture in urban, suburban, and exurban neighborhoods. What can we learn about Barack Obama from a virtual tour of Hyde Park? Find images of parks in three different European cities; how does their location and construction reflect their usage? Locate five “Chinatowns.” How are they alike or similar in organization? Writing a term paper on the Atlantic Yards? Use Google Maps to show how construction will restrict traffic. The possibilities are endless. Google Maps won’t tell us everything we need to know about any of these topics; but then, no single source will. A virtual tour of a street or a neighborhood can impart a sense of location and feeling that can augment other information on the path to knowledge.  (I should also note that Jim is also ahead of the curve on this).

In the movie below, I use Google Maps to recreate the walk from my home to Verlinden Elementary School. Yes, again, I know, the nostalgia trap; but I was struck by the sheer number of possible jumping off points for discussion, reflection, and investigation produced just by reliving that two block walk. There’s something exciting about an exploratory process that encourages one to explore even more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I get to tell Jewish jokes because I’m Jewish.  I get to tell snob jokes because I’m a historian.  I also get to tell instructional technologist jokes because I’m the Project Manager for Digital Learning (aka, “Blog Guy”) at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute.

So, I’ll let out a little secret: here’s where we get all those phrases we throw around that make most normal people feel like there’s a whole world out there they’ll never understand.  (hat tip Barbara Sawhill)