Summary: We're losing the art of conversation. Nobody talks to eachother any more. How many times do you hear that? That behaviour is something folklore professor Jerry Pocius observes daily. He's also observing the results in the lack of proper interviewing skills in students. So, in order to get back to the basics of conversing and observing that is at the heart of folkloric research, the iphones, Blackberries, all those electronic gadgets will have to go. Fo three weeks, anyway. It's a pilot project Pocius starts in the fall semester. That's when seven of his students will go offline in Keels, Bonavista Bay, for a crash course in meeting people, talking to them and documenting it.
