In my last post I discussed how I have been using the iPhone and Blogger to spark interactive discussion in one of my psychology classes. In this post I want to highlight another useful feature of the iPhone to support a class blog: The iPhone’s YouTube capability.

When you begin your teaching career you generally share, due to your youthfulness, the pop-cultural sensibilities of you students. You watched the same sit-coms and movies. You listen to the same music.

But as time passes (I’m now in my tenth year of teaching) you begin to notice that this shared sensibility begins to fade. For instance, when I started teaching I would often illustrate a point by referring to a Seinfeld episode. But ten years later I get blank stares when I make these same references. Unless the students are sitcom aficionados they no longer “get” Seinfeld references. And this makes me feel very old. How can I keep my lectures and class discussions hip and culturally timely?

Before I answer that question, let me address why I think this is important in the first place. My goal when I connect class material to pop-culture isn’t simply to improve student rapport, to be perceived as “cool.” Of course, those aren’t terrible outcomes, but they are not directly related to the intellectual objectives of the class. Rather, my reason for connecting class material to pop-culture is to create an associative apparatus for my class. Let me explain.

One of my teaching goals is to get my students to see the world through my class. That is, as they consume cultural products — popular TV shows, movies, books, graphic novels, magazines — I want them to associate what they find there with the facts and theories they encounter in my psychology class. I call this an associative apparatus, a mental filter that allows the student to connect their lives with my class.Of course, my ultimate goal is to create a critical and not just an associative apparatus. I want my students to move beyond simply associating ideas — noting connections — to begin the process of allowing those ideas to mutually critique each other. But before critical thinking can occur the associative apparatus needs to be in place. Connection precedes criticism.

In short, creating connections between class content and pop-culture has important pedagogical goals. The connection allows the college course to become a filter and a lens on the world, with all its profundities and trivialities.

But like I said, I’m getting older. And as time passes it is getting harder and harder for me to connect my class material to the media currently being consumed by my students. So what should I do? Spend hours and hours watching movies, surfing the Internet, reading graphic novels, or checking out the top albums on iTunes? I must admit that I do engage in quite a bit of this. I’ve become, as I’ve aged as a teacher, a bit of an anthropologist when it comes to my students. I’m investigating a culture I don’t quite share.

But the iPhone, Blogger, and YouTube provide a creative alterative to pop-cultural anthropology. In short, if you’re struggling to make class/culture associations why not turn that job over to the students? For example, in my class blog the students can get points each week for linking to online materials that illustrate a point made in the class. Again, the goal here is to create an associative apparatus, to get my students to see their world through my class. Not surprisingly, students often link to YouTube material, clips from movies, the Daily Show, Colbert Report, SNL skits, and sit-coms. As this semester has progressed, each week I’ve been repeatedly surprised by the freshness, quality, and hilarity of the links the students have posted. Each week the entire class is viewing a wide variety of pop-cultural illustrations of class content. Routinely we begin classes laughing, enjoying, and praising the students who have surprised us during the week with a particularly smart, relevant, or funny link. And best of all, the students are making the connections!

How does the iPhone support this use of the class blog? Recall from my earlier post that I am using the iPhone to become a near constant presence on the blog, trying to respond very quickly to student posts. This speed of response keeps the students checking the blog multiple times a day. Obviously, with many of the student postings linking to YouTube, the YouTube browsing capability of the iPhone allows me to view student video links almost anywhere I might find myself. Again, this allows me to check and respond to the quality of the student post — even a YouTube link — when I find myself for hours at a time away from the computer.

So, thanks to iPhone, Blogger, and YouTube, I can finally put my Seinfeld references to rest. That is, of course, unless I’m talking to someone my same age…