New Days, New Ways

I've just finished the first week of a new semester of teaching both F2F and online classes. I've spent a lot of the time "out of the classroom" helping individual students get set structurally for the courses they're taking-- showing them how to make blogs of their own, walking them through the process of creating avatars in Second Life, helping them access podcasts, etc. As I've been doing it, I've been thinking of how different this is from the days when I first started teaching. Then the prep was stuff like "buy three textbooks that are in the bookstore" and "when you write a paper for me, type it double spaced so I have a place to comment".
I've become aware that, not only was the updating of ways to do assignments and dialogue with each other needed, but so are the examples I use in order to connect the course material with everyday life. In one of my Intro to Philosophy classes this week, for example, I was trying to explain the ancient Greek world in which Socrates' thought should be placed. I referred to Homer's Odyssey. Not one of my students had heard of it, much less read it. I explained it contained, among other things, Greek mythology. I asked what Greek myths they knew. Only one student had ever read a Greek myth. So I moved on to movies to try to illustrate my point, asking if anyone had ever seen "Clash of the Titans." No one had. I was feeling pretty frustrated, since what should have been a small point in building a worldview was taking so long for the class to connect with. Then it dawned on me to ask "Has anyone ever seen the Disney movie Hercules?" About half the class had. "Anyone ever play one of the Age of Mythology"videogames?" A few more hands went up.

So that's where I start this semester, needing to rethink not only the process of how students learn but also the examples that will connect with what they already know. Heraclitus is clearly right-- it's all change these days.

Heroes

While I was in England I finished watching the last few episodes of the wonderful science fiction TV series Heroes. It’s one of the most creative shows I’ve seen in year--who would have expected this from NBC?-- combining the feel of Marvel comic books and their everyday, imperfect heroes with a lot of mythic images and symbols and key issues currently being raised in current affairs and in science. The whole thing has got a real post-modern, global feel to it with characters living and interacting all over the globe and speaking their own native languages rather than everyone speaking English.

My favorite character is Hiro Nakamura, who lives in Tokyo and seems to have developed the ability to manipulate time and space. As the first season of the series goes on, it’s clear that Hiro (joined by his sidekick Ando) is clearly on a classical mythological quest, making one choice after another to become a real hero despite his feet of clay. And it doesn’t hurt that, late in the season, we meet his father, who is played by George Takei! I’m also intrigued by Mohinder Suresh, who is a university professor in Madras, India and is picking up on genetic research his father had begun and becoming aware of its ramifications.

I think it’d be possible to teach an entire course on mythology using the writings of folks like Joseph Campbell, classical mythologies of various civilizations, and two episodes of Heroes each week as illustrations of various themes and symbols in what the students are reading. I hope the second season stays as strong in this way as the first was!