Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Some first "Do it Together" digital media creations from our Summer Course in Newfoundland
The past few weeks we have been working with the summer cohort in the Masters program we contribute to in Canada. This is the "unpedagogy" course we describe in chapters in our recent "Literacies" book and in the new edition of "New Literacies" (due out any day now).
In the first face to face weeks the cohorts self select into small teams and jointly create a media artifact they have no previous experience of creating. Most students have done very little or no prior digital media creation to speak of. While they are creating their media they closely document the process by which they (learn to) create their media. The comprehensive data sets compiled by each team (field notes, screen captures, chat transcriptions, photographs, etc.) are analysed and discussed during the second face to face week, at the end of which they submit a formal report of their inquiry.
Three of the groups have posted their work to YouTube and we have included them in this post. One group did a Lego Stop Motion Animation set to a medley of songs by the local Newfoundland band, Great Big Sea. Another group trawled Machinima archives to create a "dance off" between antagonists in World of Warcraft. The third group lived out our worst nightmares and took on
flash animation from scratch, using a free downloaded flash program (Vectorian Giotto). They survived and lived to tell the tale.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Point of View: World Wide Web vs Wild Wild West
The stakes are raised.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Murdoch, she wrote: May the tables keep turning
It's not often these days I find much in the establishment media to take some joy from, but it certainly gives a bit of a lift to be able to share in the sentiment of statements like Joe Nocera's op ed piece in the New York Times about the tables turning on Rupert Murdoch
Is it too much to hope that there is yet more seedy stuff down there to find its festering way to the surface and, maybe, even do some serious damage to monstrosities like Fox News and the rest of the garbage the Murdochs serve up as the worst of the information age?
I'd like to think there was hope, but meantime I'm enjoying the table turning that has happened to date.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Looking for a job? iCivics is looking for a literacy specialist with instructional design training
Under a grant from the Next Generation Learning Challenges, iCivics is developing interactive, game-like tools that will help middle school students connect evidence, claims, and reasoning to produce well-structured and reasoned arguments. They’re looking for someone with experience in instructional design, especially in new media. Find a full job description here.
