Community Media - Interactive World

In this blog I offer thirty-one critical responses to the current fashion for participatory projects and methodologies. While my main focus is grounded in playing devil’s advocate to the evangelical exponents of participatory video, I am very open to being shot down - or at least engaged - in counter-dialogues. (Either through the comments section below, or privately by email). Please attribute all quotations from this unpaid work. It is my life. Please also excuse the rhetorical tendency to exaggerate; I’m not using this blog to craft a highly nuanced critical essay.In other work I have addressed problems with, and potential solutions to collaborative models of work. Also, I’m still working through a projection of what comes after the promise of participation... The participatory field is admittedly quite fuzzy, since arts projects in the community may be quite vague about their intended modes or levels of participation; engagement evidence is notoriously ...

Exams are increasingly selected as the 'gold standard' in the debate about raising academic standards. Compared to coursework, exams are relative quick and easy to assess. They are also free from the issues of plagiarism and other forms of cheating that have proliferated in coursework. Indeed, my research shows that with the right money ($100) it is now very straightforward to purchase online a plagiarism-proof, first class, or A* Essay. In that context I believe that we will be seeing greater reliance on exams in the future, and more of them will be marked by machines in a move toward improved technological efficiency of the educational production line. Their place in the system is secured. In my view, examination procedures involve a special kind of discipline and they operate as a regime, such as that which we might encounter in a prison. Foucault was not wrong when he linked knowledge and power at an institutional level. And exams are also a theatre of persecuti...