Awakening the Digital Imagination: A Networked Faculty Development Seminar

This week is the opening meeting of the New Media Faculty Seminar for participants at Baylor University (as well as other groups forming at other institutions-- see the Networked Seminar Directory. In this podcast, we talk again with Gardner Campbell about the seminar and what will happen in this first meetup.

The readings for this seminar are from the New Media Reader (since the seminar is based around key essays, Gardner most strongly states "the textbook is required" -- you can purchase it for less than $40 on Amazon). Because many of you may not have the book yet, most of the readings this week can also be found online.

For the launch of the seminar, the first reading is from the preface to the New Media Reader -- Inventing the Media, by Janet Murray (excerpt available as PDF). 

For networked participants, please join the online discussion forum, introduce yourself, and as you read Murray's opening that aims to balance the "Humanist" and "Engineering" perspectives of the authors featured in the the New Media Reader , take some time to share your reflections on the forum and/or via twitter (use the #nmfs10 hash tag, please!).

The group at Baylor will also be viewing the "classic" video on Web 2.0 and education-- Michael Wesch's ground breaking YouTube video, Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us

Please consider this your invitation to participate in “Awakening the Digital Imagination,” a networked New Media Faculty/Staff Development Seminar for Fall, 2010, led by Dr. Gardner Campbell of Baylor University. If you’d like to investigate the history of ideas about networked computing, rise above the endless churn of gadgets and websites, and read some fantastically visionary essays ranging from video art to teleconferencing to comics, this may just be the seminar for you.

The seminar began as an experiment in faculty development at Baylor University in the spring of 2010. A small group of faculty, staff, and graduate students met once a week to discuss an essay in The New Media Reader. Most participants reported deeper engagements with the creative possibilities of new media for teaching and learning generally, as well as a greater sense of confidence in their own abilities to make sense of the accelerating changes surrounding us. You can read one eloquent account of the outcomes here: http://jacquelynduke.blogspot.com/2010/05/after-class.html

Thus was born the idea of a networked seminar, in which individuals or groups at colleges, universities, and other interested organizations in higher education have their own weekly seminars roughly in sync with the Baylor seminar, with blogging and other resource sharing  (Delicious, Flickr, Twitter, etc.) aggregated both locally and in an online portal. Local seminars meeting on the same day and time will have the possibility for synchronous interaction, but as long as we all stay in sync from week to week with the readings, we’ll have the opportunity for meaningful asynchronous interaction in an online forum. We can also link to each other’s blogs, interact around Delicious/Twitter/Flickr streams, co-create podcasts, etc.

Here at the NMC we assisted in opening this seminar up to a larger, distributed audience who read the same readings and participated in online discussions in a web-based forum. We recorded conversations with gardner each week as a recap of the seminar activities- see the final podcast for a summary of the first networked seminar.

In this first podcast, we talk with Gardner about the first seminar and then about the makeup of the new seminar participants at Baylor.  He describes the participating options available for other groups whi will be running local seminars at their institutions (see the Network Directory) as well as the ideas on how to integrate social media connections between the different groups.

This year, the seminar at Baylor begins the week of September 8. You can find the syllabus at http://gardnercampbell.wetpaint.com/page/Baylor_NMFS_F10. A summary of the design and recommendations for the networked seminars is at:
http://gardnercampbell.wetpaint.com/page/NMFS_Network_Design_F10. 

The changes we are living through are highly disruptive, but they bring with them enormous opportunities. Tom Haymes of Houston Community College, one of our networked sites this term, put it very well indeed:

Most of our discussions around technology … tend to focus on tools (Blackboard, laptops, etc.) rather than getting to the heart of the many ways that technology is changing the world. The implications of these changes are at least as sweeping as anything we've seen since Gutenberg, if not Homer. We need to be talking about these kinds of issues as educators.

If you would like to participate, Gardner highly recommends purchasing your own copy of The New Media Reader (although a good number of the readings are available online) and markig it up voraciously with a highlighter. Follow or contribute related messages/resources in twitter via the nmfs10 hashtag.

Stay tuned to http://www.nmc.org/nmfs for the network activity. 

Following the last meeting of the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning at Baylor University, we had one more conversation with Gardner Campbell to summarize the last session and to talk about what might lie ahead.

The last discussion was based on the reading of Scott McCloud's "Time Frames" found on pp 711-736 of the New Media Reader (not available online, the book  is well worth a purchase!). The session facilitators, Tim and Scott,  had arranged a visuals and videos that were shown, including McCLoud's TED Talk on Understanding Comics.

Gardner shared how well the group resonated with the ideas of the McLuhan Mistake, and appreciated the new form of reading- no one seemed to have an issue that the last reading was "just a comic".  

Another subtle touch by facilitator Tim Logam was an arranging of media on the screen in the seminar room into a series of "frames" including web content, videos, the Skype window with Alan Levine calling in from California.

Gardner shared some highlights of this first time seminar and compared it to his experience teaching it as an undergraduate class. He outlined his planes to "scale it up" in the fall, and is interested in identifying other institutions that would like to from their own group and participate in the seminar readings and engage in online discussions and other connections enabled by network tools. If you are interested in joining us for another round of the New Media Faculty Seminar, please look for a post soon at Gardner's blog  or contact us  to let us know your interest.

Where has the time gone? This week is the last gathering for the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning convened by Gardner Campbell at Baylor University. In this podcast, we recap the previous two sessions as our schedules did not click for podcast last week, and prelude to the topic for this week's seminar discussion.

Gardner and I first took a tangent that includes, off all people, Elvis, as the King was used as part of a recent presentation Gardner made at the University of Mary Washington. This was a reprise, but also a redo, of a presentation he had done in 2005, and Gardner reflects on how much has changed, as his first version was pre-YouTube and pre-twitter, and he shares how much richer the available media that he had available (and how in 2005 he could not even rely on having an internet connection to present with). 

The reading for two weeks ago was Sherry Turkle's look at the psychology of game play in Video Games and Computer Holding Power (pp 499-513 in The New Media Reader; also found online as a full excerpt from the New Media Reader site). This essay touched on the issues of immersion and even addiction with computer games, which still holds although in the era Turkle wrote this, the popular game was Asteroids  (if you want, you can play this online, no quarters needed). We did not mention it, but there has been some interesting discussion after Roger Ebert's assertion that video games could never be art.

The reading for last week was Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society found online at http://deschoolingsociety.digress.it/learning-webs/). and Gardner highlighted the provocative suggestions Illich makes for changing the institution of school.  

The reading this week, unusual in form  is Scott McCloud's "Time Frames" found on pp 711-736 of the New Media Reader (not available online, the book  is well worth a purchase!). We talked about how after reading some challenging essays in this seminar, the closing one was a "comic"- and how that statement really underestimates the power of communication that McCloud creates in a new media form beyond the book. Session facilitators Tim Logan and Christopher Hansen have some interesting angles on this reading, and have posted a set leading questions on the seminar forum.

Here we are in April, looking ahead to our last four weekly podcasts connected to the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning being coordinated by Gardner Campbell that is in its 10th week at Baylor University, but also includes others who have been participating remotely.

This week, for a month Gardner jokes about April being the "cruelest" month. In our podcast, he described last week's conversations surrounding the pair of essays by Brenda Laurel, The Six Elements and the Casual Relations Between Them and Dramatic Interaction in a Small World,  found on pp 563-573 in the New Media Reader  (available as a PDF from the the Media Reader web site). As in the last few weeks, the discussion at Baylor was led by two of its participants, this week Megan and Sandy. The seminar conversations revolved in Laurel's premise of describing human-computer interaction in terms of Aristotelian drama, specifically the idea of computers having "agency." Gardner described an interesting thread about the notion that a computer experience can be "beautiful".

Seminar participants also wrestled with the question of would our relationships with computers were not framed by using them initially in the scope of work. Gardner indicated how this flowed well into a discussion of games.  The seminar facilitators shared some game experience via YouTube clips such as ones from Halo 3, and how that platform is sometimes used as a place to create media, like the Red vs Blue series or This Spartan Life  that conducts talk shows created in a game space.

As a group, they watched a YouTube clip from World of Warcraft about Leeroy Jenkins, an internet meme for a comic character  who tragically yells out his own name when rushing into battle, ruining his team's strategy. Questions surrounded the intense nature of a short video inside view of a complex environment, and the influence of first person shooter perspectives in video games manifesting itself in movies like Cloverfield. The seminar participants also talked about the influence of social connections via gaming, which were not really as present in the games described in time of Laurel's essay.

Tis week's reading goes deeper into games with Sherry Turkle's look at the psychology of game play in Video Games and Computer Holding Power (pp 499-513 in The New Media Reader; also found online as a full excerpt from the New Media Reader site).

Welcome to the next installment of our weekly podcasts connected to the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning taking place at Baylor University, but also involving others who have been participating remotely. In this session, Gardner Campbell shares some enthusiastic summary of last week's seminar discussions and again points to what is happening this week.

Last week's reading was Bill Viola's Will There be Condominiums in Data Space?, found on pp 463-470  of the New Media Reader (which can be found online as a PDF document). As Gardner described the session, it was extremely enhanced by what all of the participants brought to the discussion as well as the facilitation by David H, including showing Viola's piece The Reflecting Pool 

David also moved the group through the types of environments described by Violas, from the fixed branching to the matrix model (using a web site for the latter) to the more open "spaghetti" like structures demonstrated by David via Google Earth using the overlays for ancient Rome. Gardner also shared how wide the discussion ranged, from the danger of losing transformational potential  of new media to a lack of imagination and also into areas of academic stature and tenure not always recognizing the whole space of creative thinking Viola outlines.

We then discussed the possible meanings of Viola's closing story of "The Porcupine and the Car" although it seems a topic that leaves always room for more discussion and interpretation. Gardner's excitement was palpable as he also shared an animated discussion among the participants.

This focused on the idea of infinite storage might be seen not as a negative thing of overwhelming proportion, but how we might "become better stewards of each other as we think about ways to empower each other, to be able to archive those things that are meaningful to us. The more that these things are archived, the greater the chances that we will actually begin to appreciate what each of has to bring, and we'll have ore opportunities to learn from each other, to respect what it is that someone else has made that we would not have thought of."

The reading for this week is a selection of two articles by Brenda Laurel -- The Six Elements and the Casual Relations Between Them and Dramatic Interaction in a Small World,  found on pp 563-573 in the New Media Reader  (available as a PDF from the the Media Reader web site). Gardner foreshadows this as a viewing of human computer interaction as a form of theater, of Aristotelian drama.

We returned this week for our regularly scheduled podcasts covering the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning taking place at Baylor University, but also involving others who have been participating remotely. This week Gardner and I were joined by seminar participant Tim Logan, who provided us a review of this past week's discussions (Gardener was out ill last Tuesday).

The most recent discussions covered two essays from Marshall McLuhan, excerpts from The Galaxy Reconfigured and The Medium is the Message (from Understanding Media) which are found on pp193-209 in the New Media Reader. You might be able to browse parts of The Galaxy Reconfigured in Google Books and there is a PDF for Understanding Media). Tim shared that most of the focus was on the Medium is the Message essay, where the group came to some consensus after turning the focus to "the medium is a message" and how the tendance is to let the content mask what the message really is. The seminar talked a bit about McLuhan's idea of the press as tribal consciousness, noting how wide what we might call "the press" now that anyone can be a publisher.

Seminar participants also made the connections in the reading provided by this week's facilitators, Platos' Allegory of the Cave and we discussed the interesting connections to McLuhan's medium/message thesis.

The reading for this week is video artist Bill Viola's Will There be Condominiums in Data Space?, found on pp 463-470  of the New Media Reader (which can be found online as a PDF document). Viola asks some provocative questions about the whole and the sum of its parts, and in the end presents a question asking us if we are the car or the porcupine.

You can find hundreds of YouTube videos of Bill Viola's works - Gardner recommends Ocean Without a Shore from the Venice Biennale 2007  

It is Spring Break this week at Baylor University, so in this week's podcast with Gardner Campbell about the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning we review last week's discussion, but the next meeting won;t take place until March 16, giving our participants a bit more time to dig into Marshall McLuhan.

The last seminar meeting at Baylor was a discussion of Personal Dynamic Media by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg (pp 393-403 in the New Media Reader (found online as a free excerpt of The New Media Reader) and this was the first one facilitated by a seminar participant. Some of the active discussion points was on how the authors cast the computer as a creative tool, using music metaphors as well as the notion of the computer becoming a tool in which its users can create new tools. This is manifested today in projects like Scratch from MIT. The group also wrestled with the implcations of a focus on children, in speculating if there were suggestions that adults have "too much real responsibilities" to engage in child like exploration (a notion that Gardner nor I buy into!).

Gardner also highlighted an interesting post in the discussion forums , where Chris Hansen connected the article's idea about external media acting as a feedback mechanism to thinking, something that he works into the way he teaches writing (plus others chimed in to help find the mysterious missing last page of the article in the book!)

For the next seminar session (and remember you have an extra week to digest the reading), we move to  two essays from Marshall McLuhan, excerpts from The Galaxy Reconfigured and The Medium is the Message (from Understanding Media) which are found on pp193-209 in the New Media Reader. You might be able to browse parts of The Galaxy Reconfigured in Google Books and there is a PDF for Understanding Media).

Known for the oft repeated, but perhaps little understand phrase "the medium is the message", McLuhan can be a bit "out there" on ideas, but Gardner suggests there is a lot of power and influence in McLuhan's work.

Or for a lighter view, we shared fond memories of the scene in Annie Hal l where Woody Allen pulls McLuhan in from the side to silence the loud critic behind him in line at the theater ("If life were only like this" is rather meta).

In this installment of our series of podcasts with Gardner Campbell we check in on the Faculty Development Seminar: New Media as a Platform for Integrative Learning he is leading at Baylor University. Last week brought another unexpected surprise in that a winter storm dumped enough snow in Waco to close the campus ion Tuesday, so the seminar participants were asked to continuw their discussions of the New media Reader readings in the online seminar forum and their own blogs.

The reading for last week was Ted Nelson's Computer Lib / Dream Machines (pp 301-338 of The New Media Reader and is also available online as an excerpt from the book) and was again one that the participants had different experiences in interpreting. And Nelson has some strong words about the system of school, which Gardner drew a connection to the controversy published last week in the New York Times about the basketball program at SUNY Binghamton.

Looking ahead to this week is a reading centering on another visionary, Alan Kay, who in 1968 was present at Doug Engelbart's Mother of All Demos, an experience which strongly influences Kay's subsequent work in pioneering the concepts of the powerful personal compueter- a break from the then focus on mainframe / centralized computing.

Published in 1977, Personal Dynamic Media by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg (pp 393-403 in the New Media Reader (found online as a free excerpt of The New Media Reader) describes the idea of the Dynabook the forerunner of today's laptop computer. Yet the brilliance of Kay's vision, was the idea that this machine was not solely for the use of engineers and scientists, but something children could learn to use and create things. This was a device not solely for consuming information, but perhaps even a tool that anyone could use (like Ted Nelson's idea) to create, and perhaps a tool that could create new tools.

Gardner shared how Kay's focus on computers as a tool for learning was strongly influenced by both Seymour Papert and Jerome Bruner. We discussed how all of these people we have been reading about were successful not as lone inventors of things, but scaffolding the work of others, and more so in the creators of ideas. Gardner related this to the the power of environments that promote the "circulation of ideas"as described in Steven Johnson's book Invention of Air. 

This is the first week that the Baylor discussions will be facilitated by one of the local participants. It was Gardner's hope to solicit some of the virtual participants to sign up to help for one of the upcoming sessions (edit the course wiki to sign up). There has been a valuable flow of discussion between the Baylor and the external participants on the discussion forums.

Also, for reference, see this overview of the History of the Internet