George Station in a recent Google+ post pointed me toward an article about the Common Core that was a serious eye-opener.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Common Core enthusiasts continue to claim the Standards will facilitate “deeper learning” in the classroom and prepare our students for the college and career challenges of the 21st century.

Or more accurately, it revealed again a huge blindspot for all who are part of the Gutenberg Pause–we value text over all other media. We maybe ought not.

In a longer view, the dominance of text gave us the “Gutenberg Pause” . Any challenge to text’s hegemony is deeply distressing to some. It is to me, but not because I think text is superior. Rather it is distressing because I am not particularly good at using and being with other media. At least I am not as proficient with image as I am with text.

For example, I love the new annotation tool, Hypothes.is. I love the conversation that it enables amid the text universe, but it goes much further and enables “close reading” via video, picture, and animated gif responses. (Cf. below for example).

touches of sense…

They are wrong. He is wrong. She is wrong. I am wrong. You are wrong. It is wrong. It came from discussions, conversations, tangled monologues, challenges, squabbles, crossed swords, that alienating platform ended in feelings of hurt and hard words. Striving for moral high ground we crash Icarus wings flaming to Stygian mire.

If you view my annotations, you will see that I am learning how to respond to a close reading of the text with visual materials or mashups of visual and audio media. Still… Hypothes.is, as a tool, shows it’s bias for text and almost an animus against other media. Of course, my tool of choice for combining all kinds of media is zeega, but even it doesn’t allow for video (and likely never will).

Thanks for pointing me to the article, George. Loved the examples in the accompanying piece. Anybody want to annotate it with me? Go here if you do. If you haven’t used Hypothes.is before, go here, watch the video and sign up. I can send screenshot answers to questions if you need, @telliowkuwp or terry.elliott at gmail.com