Share This Course!

By now you’re all likely familiar with the tremendous earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.  The death toll is still unknown; in fact, the infrastructure of Haiti has been so substantially damaged it’s hard to know what is going on there.

This situation is identical to one just under two years ago, when a large earthquake struck the Sichuan region of China.  Buildings and bridges collapsed; for several days no one could get in or out.  An intrepid reporter from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation hiked into Sichuan carrying a satellite videophone and transmitted some of the first images back to the rest of the world.

The communications network has collapsed in Port-au-Prince; mobile phones, though ubiquitous, do not work.  The cell towers have come down, and the wires which bring power to those towers have come down as well.  Amazingly, there is some Internet service; individuals have been using Skype to communicate with the world beyond Haiti’s borders.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world collectively holds its breath and wonders how it can help.  Requests have flown by in the conventional media – broadcast and print – for donations to the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, WorldVision, and so on.   But, as was the case with Sichuan (or lately, any great disaster) the hyper-connections which tie is so closely to one another have become the major channel for information, for news, for sharing the burden of need.  Twitter has more on-the-ground information about Haiti than the New York Times – so the Times creates a Twitter list of individuals in Haiti.  Big media can reinforce and amplify our hyperconnectivity, creating a virtuous cycle which puts all of us into the loop.  We are all witnesses. We can all reach out and help.

It’s customary for teachers to leave their students an assignment when leaving the classroom for any significant period of time – work that extends the students’ skills while keeping their intellects honed and ready.  In that spirit, I am requiring that all of the students taking Share This Course! begin a project I’ve named ‘Assignment: Share’.

The goal of ‘Assignment: Share’ is to become more conscious of all the ways we use digital media to share our experiences. We share links, we share documents, we share photos, we share videos, we share music, we share movies, we share just about anything that can be digitized, stuck on a server somewhere, and presented via the Web.  In a very real sense, the Web and digital sharing are identical.  I’d like you to make this explicit in your own practice.

For the next ten days – that is, until Christmas Eve – every one of us (including myself) is required to share at least one bit of digital culture, every single day. This is a holiday time of year, there’s lots of media floating around.  Perhaps there’s that photograph of you sitting on Santa’s lap, or eating the perfect latkes at a Chanukah dinner, or some Christmas lights that look very beautiful/garish/trippy.  Or an article you read that changed your life in some meaningful way.  What ever it is, share it, and tell us briefly why you’re sharing it.  This sharing of culture is the foundation of Share This Book, so we must grasp it ourselves before we can explain it to others.

I will be opening a new thread every day from now until Christmas Eve, for that day’s sharing.  This assignment starts today, right now. Don’t be afraid, don’t be shy.  Everything is interesting.  Everything deserves to be shared.