A year after their self-titled first release, Carbondale, IL’s  Wei Zhongle released their second album, Raised High/Brought Low on April 9th. Guitarist and vocalist Rob Jacobs writes and arranges the music for this five-piece consisting of guitar, drums/percussion, bass, and two clarinets. The sound is reminiscent Aksak Maboul, or somewhere between Sun City Girls and Philip Glass, inspired by Eastern music and philosophy but essentially modern. Their first album had a close, delicate and detailed quality to it, more akin to jazz. One could easily imagine being comfortable in the acoustic environment it created. Raised High/Brought Low has a much larger and otherworldly quality. Whether Jacobs’ compositions are a result of the various lineup and instrumentation changes, or if the changes came first and Jacobs composed for what he had is unknown, but irrelevant. He seems to have done his inspiration justice.

The music has a totally foreign feeling to it. To Westerners it may sound like Eastern music, but to Easterners it would likely sound like Western music. This music transplants you and makes you listen to it on its terms. The clarinets, played by John McCowen and Jon Goodman, are always together, reacting and playing off of each other, creating a busy blur of notes. The sum of their melodies giving birth to new melodies, the negative space of their rhythms giving birth to new rhythms. A collective consciousness out of two independent but reactive minds. The percussion, performed by Sam Klickner explores a wide textural palette, at times sounding huge, at other times intimate. The wide textural range evokes an ancient feeling, before a certain few percussive sounds had become typical. Carly Lappin’s low hum on the bass fills the gap between all the instruments, a gravity to keep everything together (but I will say her voice is missed). Jacobs’ nasal vocals are sometimes more in rhythm with the clarinets, and sometimes more in rhythm with the rhythm section, led by his organic, harmonic guitar playing. Each instrument’s affect on the others is constantly shifting.

Raised High/Brought Low has a very free feeling to it. The composition and playing are not lazy, but it doesn’t sound like any of the players were whipped into Olympic consistency for this record. Allowing some organic roughness to show takes the record to greater heights, effectively adding a striving human element to it. To me, there is an interplay between the two clarinets and everything else. The clarinets play busily and childlike around the massive, timeless and spiritual landscape created by the percussion, guitar, and bass through their ceaseless ebb and flow, rich with texture and harmonics. Jacobs’ vocals being wholly in rhythm with the land as its shaman. It’s like two children witnessing and failing to understand a pagan ritual. Far from home, they at times sit in silent observance, at times they are entranced and swayed by the shamans utterings, at times their minds race in fear. Unaware of, but affected by, the depth and gravity around them. A fable about modern humans living in varying ignorance of the force of nature.

Jacobs and the other members keep themselves busy with other pieces and solo projects. Jacobs and Klickner play together in the improvisational ambient band Suffering Bastard, often with McCowen on saxophone. Jacobs has numerous solo releases, and McCowen just released a recording of an original clarinet quartet, which he and Goodman play on. Goodman also plays in Gremlins, a clarinet and bass clarinet duo. Wei Zhongle goes on tour May 9th, playing 17 shows between Illinois and the east coast.

-AJB

If so, what would this mean to teachers and students? What would this mean for teaching and learning? These were interesting questions posed by Rob Jacobs around the possibility of crowdsourcing education.

Recently, social media innovator Tom Hulme  spoke at a conference in Brisbane on the topic, in which he stated that crowdsourcing is not a new phenomenon and has been around since the industrial revolution. However, its popularity gained traction in 2006 thanks to journalist Jeff Howe and the internet.  According to Howe, crowdsourcing happens when an organisation takes a job that was once performed by employees and outsources through an open call to an undefined audience of people.

Hulme says crowdsourcing has evolved from a mere transactional model to something much richer – the ability to open up and engage our ‘customers’ (or stakeholders) in the process of delivering our product or service.  This means that instead of just being users of our product or service, the ‘customer’ can now have a meaningful input into ‘how’ the product or service is made or delivered.

If we transfer this idea into the education system – this has vast implications not only for how educators’ network, collaborate and learn but how we approach learning and teaching in today’s world.

In Jacobs’ blog he explains how a educator’s typical network use to look like this:

Alec Couros

Now in the 21st century, it looks more like this:

Alec Couros

Crowdsourcing has enabled the ability to collaborate in unprecedented ways.  As Jacobs puts it:

The person is the portal to the network. The person is an autonomous communication and collaboration node. Each member can potentially leverage not only their network, but also the network of others who are in their network. This principle is known as Metcalfe’s Law. The number of potential connections between nodes grows more quickly than the number of nodes. The total value of the network where each node can reach every other node in the network grows with the square of the number of nodes. In other words, when members connect their networks, it creates more value than the sum of networks independently.

Director of the UK’s Innovation Unit, Valerie Hannon provides an example of a crowdsourced education model, which she calls a ‘learning eco-system’.  This model has far greater connections with the professional and wider community.

In her research she came across an innovative web based organised called ‘School of Everything’, founded on the principle that everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to teach.  The website connects up those who want to learn with those who want to teach. The SOE’s premise is that learning is personal and starts not with what ‘should’ be learned but what a person is interested in – so they build a tool to help anyone in the world learn anything, and teach anything, how and when it suits them, by putting them in touch with each other and not institutions.

This is but one example of the possibilities of how crowdsourced education can broaden the way we ‘do’ schooling today and into the future for the benefit of both students and teachers. It is an idea which cannot and should not be dismissed out of hand because it mentions “customer or stakeholders”.

As I have written previously schooling is no longer the centre of the education process, it is now but one option of many places to go to learn. The challenge is to explore how to best respond and be open to adapt in doing so

Judy Lash Balint

JERUSALEM–Last month when I was visiting Seattle, I had the opportunity to take part in a “hearing” of the Olympia Food Co-op whose board had voted to boycott Israeli products. The 15,000 Co-op membership had not been consulted and some of them were upset–not that they were pro-Israel, they were ticked off that the Board had not consulted the members before they launched the Co-op into progressive history by becoming the first co-op in the nation to boycott Israel.

More of that later. In another part of Washington state–the charming, quiet community of Port Townsend–another Israel boycott was brewing. This time however, saner voices prevailed and Jewish activists from all over the state, led by the Seattle StandWithUs group, together with a flurry of letters and op eds in the local paper, resulted in a “no” vote on the boycott last night.

The PTLeader reports:

The Port Townsend Food Co-op board Tuesday voted 4 to 2 to reject a proposed boycott of products made in Israel.

After listening to more than 50 co-op members speak passionately for and against the proposal, the board approved a motion stating that the proposal was inconsistent with the co-op’s boycott policy.

The board concluded that policy does not allow the co-op to take a stand on issues involving countries.

“We are not in the business, fundamentally, of adjudicating international issues,” said board member Rick Sepler.

“That is [just] not the business the co-op is in,” said board member Steve Moore, adding, “It is not why we were elected.”

StandWithUs NW director Rob Jacobs credits the “good people” in the local community and local opponents of the boycott who reacted strongly and quickly, and called for anyone in the Port Townsend area to come to the co-op and shop for Israeli products.

Their actions and the positive results should stand as an example to other communities facing the onslaught of anti-Israel tactics.

*
Balint is a freelance writer in Jerusalem, who posts regularly on her blog, Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times.

The End of the Revolution is more than a study of the new China. It is also a captivating study of the effects of global capital on a nation. Many of the situations described by Wang Hui could easily be describing the situation in almost any nation that is part of the neoliberal world of the twenty-first century. In addition, it is a discussion of the meaning of modernity in the world of capitalism and a convincing argument that the world of neoliberal economics is a world whose mechanics thrive best under authoritarian governments. According to Wang Hui, democracy is not a beneficiary of this economic system, but a hindrance that the financial world believes it must undermine to survive. Furthermore, it is Wang’s contention that China is the ultimate laboratory for hypothesis.

What about that protest in Tienanmen Square? Did it represent a true desire for democracy? Wang says yes, it did. However, like so many grassroots popular uprisings around the world, the symbolism of the moment was appropriated by some of the same powers that the original protest opposed for other purposes… This is the nightmare of modernity Mr. Wang boldly questions.

Can the phenomenon Wang calls modernity exist together with democracy? What about political freedom and personal freedoms not defined by the marketplace? It is the opinion of the author and millions of others that they can but will require a fight by those opposed to the domination of the market… The discussions Wang Hui presents are discussions that all of us should be having.

Read the full article here.

Rob Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground.

Wang Hui is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the former editor of Dushu, China”s most influential literary journal. He participated in the Tiananmen protest of 1989 and is the author of China’s New Order. He is a contributor to One China, Many Paths.

And be sure to check out the video if you haven’t seen it yet! Just click the picture below to view!!

It started with a tweet from Dean Shareski about his post Rules aren’t the answer. He pointed to another amazing  TED talk, by Barry Schwartz  on “Practical Wisdom is the blending of Moral Will and Moral Skill” and Rob Jacob’s post great synopsis of it.

Dean’s post talked about devising organizations that are focused on responsibility rather than accountability.  Accountability infers rules. Responsibility infers caring. This struck a chord with me.

I have been debating for a while, with colleagues and students, about “authorities” trying to make rules for everything we do and think. I particularlydislike it when people use the excuse “that there was no law/rule that made me do or not do something.” Often it was patently obvious that the consequence of their actions could have been foreseen, if the perpetrator had stopped to think for a moment. (It is not far removed from the “I was only following orders” excuse!)

Sometimes it may take more effort but thinking is necessary to the human race and it sets us apart from our pets. Thinking requires us to take some responsibility for our actions and this also applies to our learning. There is not always a simple solution, or even just one solution, but each individual needs to think about the problem/issue/etc. and work through to find their own meaning and understanding. This of course doesn’t mean that there should be no laws or rules at all but how much micro-managing is needed for a community to function. Rules imposed from above are not always understood, agreed to or followed.

This is what we need to be teaching our students as well. They need to be capable of the higher order thinking so they do not become sheep, mindlessly following the loudest/most outspoken/most colourful people. They need to be able to think and make decisions for themselves so that they do not become pawns for others to manipulate or victims of the mindless group. They are the future. They will have to develop opinions, be able to debate the merit of their beliefs and form ideas based on the best possible facts/information available to them. Our students need to learn to do this now, whilst they are here in our schools.

I have been arguing against our federal government’s proposed internet filter (that sets out to save us from ourselves) because, yet again, it can be used to abrogate all responsibility. It does not/ cannot protect us from everything and, sooner or later, the users will have to understand and take responsibility for their own digital footprint.

To be good digital citizens, our young people will need to have thought about, discussed and developed an understanding of this media. It is that exploration and discussion that is what we need to allow now, whilst we are there to help them. It should not be the case that we ban or filter out everything, just  in case they find something that is not pleasant. Lets teach them how to deal with it if it happens and be open about what it means to be a good digital citizen, not just make more rules for them to follow without any thought or understanding.

Have a look at the video and find out about what it means to be a wise person.