Asperger's Conversations

Is Neurodiversity the new Multiculturalism?

I continue to marvel about how small the world has become due to the web.  Yesterday I did an interview with a newspaper from Chile (La Tercera) who found me because of an interview I did with Psychology Today...and so on.  As boundaries between countries evaporate a kind of information assimilation is taking place...sort of like how all shopping malls across the U.S., Canada, Mexico all look the same...same stores, same clothes. 

I wonder if the next frontier in diversity or "multiculturalism" might not be moving beyond the color of your skin or one's ethnicity, but instead "neurodiversity."  We are all neurologically unique...some of us have funny brains, some serious, some have autism or Asperger's.  In other words, there is real diversity in how we process information.  And, a challenge for the future is for people to understand this and to become interested in how we are different, and to appreciate those differences:

 

Obama and the new media

My friends know I don't have a television, so they know when I come over to visit I'm going to eat it up.  Give me some news...where's CNN?  But I'm always left disappointed:  I hear more from "talking heads" and narrators, but not from "original source material."  Youtube and google gives it to me.  Just saw this today...where else can I see a candidate speak for, well, his entire speech?  Well, there's local cable access, college/community radio like WKNH here in Keene, and the net, including sites like elmcity.info.  Just caught this one and went wow!

My Students are Bored: What about Edupunk?

Collaboration, conversation, blogging, social networks, twitter.  Most profs on campus still use overhead projectors or "chalk talk."  I polled my students about being bored the other day...only one out of about 50 said they were not bored "most of the time" in their college classes (I didn't include mine in the poll!).  Even powerpoint and BlackBoard are now boring.  The recent Chronicle, with a boost from the NY Times,  mentions Edupunk as a new way out.  I'm always up for change...no matter how punishing the "start up" costs.   Let's not use the word "maverick" here...but it's clear that Education types are not giving us innovations in learning...it's coming from upstarts across disciplines who are not afraid to give up a bit of control for the sake of exploring new ways to learn.  Hirst's video sets the tone: