Getting serious?

Title: Critical Themes in Media Studies--Open Call for Proposals Date:
2012-01-15
   Description: The graduate students of the Department of Media
      Studies and Film at The New School are pleased to announce a call for papers and projects to the 12th annual Critical Themes in Media Studies Conference, taking place April 13-14,2012 in New York City.
The Media Studies Department at the New School, a ...
   Contact: criticalthemes@gmail.com
   URL: criticalthemes.net
   Announcement ID: 190168
   http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=190168

   Title: Teaching Digital Media special issue of Transformations:
      The Journal of Inclusive Pedagogy and Scholarship
   Description: Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship
      and Pedagogy, a journal that invites college teachers to take
      pedagogy seriously as a topic of scholarly writing, announces
      the publication of a special issue, Teaching Digital Media,
      Mary McAleer Balkun, Guest Editor. The issue showcases the wor
      ...
   Contact: transformations@njcu.edu
   URL: web.njcu.edu/sites/transformations
   Announcement ID: 189872
   http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=189872

 Title: Critical Information: Mapping the Intersection of Art and
      Technology
   Location: New York
   Date: 2011-12-03
   Description: CRITICAL INFORMATION: MAPPING THE INTERSECTION OF ART
      AND TECHNOLOGY A GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE SATURDAY, DECEMBER
      3, 2011 SPECTACLES OF DISINTEGRATION KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY NOTED
      WRITER AND SCHOLAR McKENZIE WARK Conference Panels: 10:00am
      3:30pm 132 West 21 Street, 7th floor, New York City Keynote
      ...
   Contact: criticial.information.sva@gmail.com
   URL: www.criticalinformationsva.com/schedule-2
   Announcement ID: 189864
   http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=189864

   Title: CFP: Virtual Identities and Self Promotion Area for the
      PCA/ACA National Conference
   Location: Massachusetts
   Date: 2012-04-11
   Description: CALL FOR PAPERS FOR VIRTUAL IDENTITIES AND SELF
      PROMOTION AREA AT THE PCA/ACA 2012 National Conference Boston
      2012 April 11-14 Virtual Identities and Self Promotion aims to
      examine, explore and critically engage with the issues
      surrounding creating a sense of self in online environments. We
      invite s ...
   Contact: consilje@lewisu.edu
   Announcement ID: 189774
   http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=189774

DMA redesigned for 2011-2012

This year I once again reshuffled the deck, moving towards a form for the DMA course that ties it more firmly into the first-year experience by enhancing the composition-studies aspect of it (so that it complements the English composition courses first-year students take). Early indications are that the redesign is working.

In addition to the move to formalize a first-year experience for students, several changes in context are affecting and improving the course. For the first time there is some official collaboration going on between instructors/disciplines in the Undergraduate Academic Program to establish an electronic portfolio system for students. The experiment is starting with first-year students, who are creating online portfolios using Google Sites and adding artifacts to their sites from the DMA course and also their English composition courses.

UNCSA is also getting tooled up administratively to offer courses online starting in the summer of 2012, and this too is affecting the DMA course design, moving it towards a form that will play well over the internet. The design has been tightened up by making units-of-study and weekly agendas that are more discreet and modular than they have been in the past.

The number of face-to-face meetings has been reduced by 50% in order to accommodate more students in the course sections now that we are on a two-semester rather than tri-mester system. This has assisted the move to an online form, and has also improved the pedagogical aspects in some ways. I have found myself crafting tight meeting agendas which make the most of face-to-face time, and crafting online presentations as part of the content resources for the course. In a curricular sense this 'hybridizing' of the course also makes sense given that I want students to learn how to work online as well as they socialize online, and practicing their online work skills is a good way to do this.

I have the honor this term of two colleagues sitting in on different sections of the course. Joe Mills, an English instructor, and Margaret Mertz, director of the Kenan Institute for the Arts, are each offering valuable feedback and involvement. Thanks to Margaret I also had a visit and chat with members of the Kenan Institute's board of directors about the course and its role in the program and School.

Finally, in a contextual sense, my own practice is officially expanding into offering electives. I am now full-time teaching rather than 2/3 teaching and 1/3 technology consulting. This has enabled me to devote time to framing and developing electives that build on the foundations of the DMA course. This term I am offering Theory and Practice of New Media Art (NMA) and all indications are that this course is working well. Next term I will be offering an elective based on Marshall McLuhan's work. Some of the special projects that I have tried to work into the DMA course --i.e., the focus on contemporary journalism and Wikileaks, the focus on the global village and Montagnards, the focus on digital storytelling, etc.-- can now be selectively developed into electives.

Lots of good and interesting developments.

Anthropology, Journalism, Documentary, and Videography

The items listed in the title to this post are the emerging touchstones for the ongoing development of the DMA course. As a result, on the technical side of things, I am going headlong into video, including some fun work making mashup pieces. Find below one I made on the topic of uncanny home (this topic was posed as a prompt in a Make group I am participating in.

Uncanny Home from Bob King on Vimeo.

Global Village Revisited: spring term-project 2011

After two weeks of preparatory/organizational work --involving sharing and discussing background materials in Anthropology and Media Studies, becoming familiar with this term's theme (which intersects McLuhan and Montagnards along the lines of Global Village Revisited), and establishing our workflow routines-- we are, as of today, officially under way.

It seems official today because we had our first direct interaction between participants in DMA this term and members of the Montagnard Dega community living in the Greensboro NC area.  On the UNCSA end of the Skype call, we introduced ourselves and talked with two Montagnard Dega women, both of whom were engaging, kind, and delightfully honest and forthright. My friend and colleague of 15+ years, Andrew Young, did a masterful job of introducing the Montagnard Dega women to us, and facilitating our interaction with them.

We asked questions ranging from what they missed about their home culture in Vietnam, how it came to be that they settled in Greensboro NC. We also asked Andrew Young how he came to be interested in Montagnard Dega culture. In each instance the responses were enlightening and informative.

In the wake of this meeting I found myself energized and full of ideas. The responses to our questions seemed to hint at directions for us to explore that would be much different, and much more interesting, than writing reports about the history of the Montagnards, the music, etc. This is not to say these pursuits are uninteresting. They are in fact very interesting. Rather it is to say that in the context of an outside-in or autobiographical variant of anthropology, which we are inventing/reinventing in this course, we can include history and so forth much more meaningfully if these things have a personal/interpersonal entry point, and a trajectory more closely allied to social networking.

Here is a sample of the ideas that came to me (in email format, either email written to me, or in response to email I received) that resulted from our Skype-based videoconference:

First, a couple of links to wonderful resources were sent to me by Aaron Ross:

http://blog.ted.com/2010/10/20/meet-jr/


http://the99percent.com/articles/7008/JR-on-Art-Experimentation-and-Keeping-Your-Freedom


My response to Aaron:

Aaron, thanks so much for this share. We could do a copy-cat (okay, an homage :) to this guy's brilliant strategy and put images of Montagnards in our environment. You've probably seen the free software tools that allow an uploaded image to be gridded out in 8.5 X 11 for easy printing with a regular printer, so we would be able to do this basically cost-free. Lots to think about. Thanks again!  Bob

A relay to Andrew Young:

Andrew, the student who asked about your path shared a couple of great links with me (see above).  There are free software programs out there we could use to make giant posters using standard 8.5 X 11 paper, which would make it possible to do something like what is depicted in the video. These are the kinds of things that, as you mentioned, young artists bring to the table.

A further thought sent to Andrew Young:

A couple of years ago I worked with students on digital-storytelling projects. The Center for Digital Storytelling was my source for this.

Basically, their model is to bring in groups of folks for two-day work sessions, during which time they (the organization's staff) would help each person script and edit a short personal narrative, speak and record it, and make a short video (using still images or sometimes images and short clips) that would use their spoken-word audio recording as the video voiceover. Now that I think about it, the CDS process started with with the gathering and selecting images part, since they discovered these often sparked memories and storytelling. The heavy-lifting in the process swirled around writing and editing the story scripts. Their goal was to boil the narratives down to the bone.

When I did this with students I just adapted the model to my circumstances, spreading the work out over several weeks rather than doing a two-day intensive experience, and each person had to script, tell, and produce their own story.

I think it could be interesting to start with the photo project (get large images of Montagnards made and installed in the UNCSA environment). This would give a digital-skills angle to image work, and also would give a particular cast and rationale to the ethnographic field work students might do.

Then we could work on digital storytelling projects (which for me would cover audio and video skills). The images, and the digital stories, could then be self-published on your blog or wherever, and used to get some notice by the organizations and/or granting agencies you guys are in contact with and/or need to produce reportage for. Possibly UNCSA becomes a co-signer on a future grant application? Lots of possibilities up here in the blue sky.

Anyway, we could use the media lab classroom I teach in as the place to do the production aspect of the stories. The media lab space is deserted in the afternoons, and only my sections meet in the room in the mornings, so we'd pretty much have it available 9-5 every day. Weekends are also available. Voice and video recording could be done wherever by whomever.

I guess I'm thinking some of the Montagnards might enjoy and benefit from working directly with my students on projects such as these. Rather than standing around awkwardly wondering what to say when they meet, they could simply get down and do some work together. Sort of like cooking and eating a meal, only more extended in time and with a different focus.

We could talk about how this might play out --we could pair up a small group of students with a Montagnard to work on his or her story. We could also pair them one to one, and each person could help the other with their story, etc. --using whatever combination of email, skype, meetings in the media lab, etc., to carry the projects forward.

Here's an example of a digital story that is posted on the Center for Digital Storytelling website: http://www.storycenter.org/stories/index.php?cat=8

Re: meal+music event, the house across the street from my building is called Academic House (I might have pointed this out when you were here?), and it comprises a reasonable place to have a gathering (we have our faculty meetings there, etc.) and it also has a kitchen, a deck/porch (for possible music-playing and listening), and it's a space we control so it would be easy to schedule it. I spoke to the dean about looking for a space with a kitchen, and he suggested we just use the AH, so it's already approved. So we may have a solution to the 'where' question as regards the shared meal and music event.

Studio-model teaching and brain-based learning

I've been undergoing contract-renewal review, including some pretty intense scrutiny and criticism of studio-based teaching. Much of the criticism swirled around the fact that I often have music playing in the studio while we're working. I responded to this criticism initially with research on studio-based teachers which found that, without exception, such teachers took on a "DJ" role as part of their work. The interesting part was that this selecting of music was not found to be random or willy-nilly in the least. Rather it was a carefully considered part of the environment, done with sensitivity and intentionality. In some ways, this seems to me to support the notion that emotional indicators are much more important in teaching than is usually recognized. I see things like music as contributing to the affective domain or side of the classroom, and I think we are just in the beginning phases of getting some good research on the importance of affect and its role in how the brain works. 

Anyway, re: the criticism of my playing of music was pointed towards the idea that it would be distracting to the students. First of all I do ask folks to let me know if if is giving them problems. Second of all it's likely a stretch to think that young people will be distracted by it. Third of all I am not even asking students to read or pay attention to a lecture while they are in class. They are working on media projects. They are doing studio-based and studio-type work while in class. I ask them to read on their own for homework. Whether they do this to music or not is up to them. I certainly can't control it.

But this flagging of music as distracting connects also to a more serious line of criticism now being broadly directed against the use of digital media. This is the line now being developed by folks like Nicholas Carr, and popularized in books including The Shallows. It's out there, and it's the latest in a line of critique that is, well, pretty shallow.

So I was glad to see a program on NPR reporting on a study done in France that took a different tack on the whole issue of multi-tasking and distraction. In my view, as is the case with much science, it provides a start at interjecting common sense into this debate.

The researchers found the brain actually is set up much like a parallel processor, with what the author calls "two frontal lobes" which I assume means two distinct sides, since most pictures and verbal descriptions refer to the frontal lobe as a singular structure. Anyway, according to the researchers the brain has two frontal lobes (or one frontal lobe with two distinct sides), which makes it possible for humans to pursue up to two things at once by assigning a different task to each lobe or side. Subject to interpretation is whether or not this is a good thing. 

My general approach is to stay with the descriptive part of the science. The study, in my interpretation, just seem to say that the brain has two lobes or sides that in fact work together --either separately or 'in parallel', or as a team or 'serially'-- in carrying out the complex work of the brain. This would seem to be the news the scientific study put out there for interpretation.

Two lobes are better than one, it would seem, based on the French study: the dual structure of the brain enables it to assign resources selectively and proportionally to working on one or two tasks at a time. Presumably, if a given task, goal, or situation is perceived by the brain as having an extremely high reward associated with it, it allocates a preponderance of its resources --drawing on the available resources of both of its frontal lobes, even-- to that task. Conversely, if a situation is perceived by the brain as having two complementary goals, perhaps with complementary/synergistic and mutually inclusive high rewards (i.e., one affect-oriented goal and one cognitive-oriented goal), then it works on both tasks and goals at once, and should.

If the brain had only one frontal lobe, or a one-sided one, it would presumably have to process everything serially, one single task after another single task, or first an affect-oriented goal, then a cognitive-oriented goal, and so forth. The result would be a less complex brain, a less efficient brain, and ultimately, I guess, a brain that would be different from a human brain. 

Along this line of interpretation, education structured around the exclusive use of serial-processing might be thought of as inhumane (arguably the Puritans tried this), as might education structured around exclusive parallel-processing (the possible tyranny of the open classroom comes to mind in this regard). It would seem to me that 'brain based education' would involve learning how to apply and/or blend parallel and serial processing, just as flexibly and intelligently as the brain itself seems to do. Humans seem to be learning all the time, sometimes one thing at a time, sometimes two things at a time. So, some activities or courses might appropriately feature serial processing, other activities might appropriately feature parallel processing. 

However, the study reports, the brain is simply overloaded by three tasks or three goals at once, because it only has two frontal lobes (or two sides to its one frontal lobe) to work with. In many instances the brain does well to divide its resources to make progress on two goals at once; in other instances the brain does well to combine its resources to focus on one task. Not an either-or, in other words, in my interpretation. 

My hope would be the more research along the lines of the French study will be done. It seems to me that it's very rare that the human brain is doing only one thing at a time. In the laboratory setting described in the study, a second task was "introduced" to subjects. But outside of the laboratory, it seems likely to me that much of the time the brain is doing two things, and the article I think suggests that's usually fine, and self-regulated by the brain itself. I do think we need to be more complex and nuanced in discussing things like multi-tasking and distraction. What if multi-tasking and distractability turn out to be adaptive and important? I think it's more a matter of finding a balance between doing one thing at a time, and doing two.

In the DMA course I think I put into effect a good balance. I combine activities of singular focus with activities of dual focus, and I think I do a good job of creating a good mix for learning.

Studio-model pedagogy: adding critique to the mix

I've been working to institute studio-model pedagogy in the context of the Digital Media for the Artist course for quite a while. In fact I started with that idea in the fall of 2006, my first term teaching at UNCSA, but I ran into numerous roadblocks that had little to do with the model and much to do with me coming to know my audience and context. Now that I have some aspects of those critical factors better accounted for in my design, the studio-model is clicking.

It was my own experience with the studio-model as a visual art student that keyed it in for me. The atmosphere and structure of studio art classes was something I really enjoyed. People were motivated and going about their work. Instructors would give an occasional presentation or demonstration for the whole-class, but otherwise they circulated about the studio, pausing to look at and/or comment on the efforts of individuals. In sum, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and also learning a great deal. This is what I sought to re-create as an atmosphere or ethos in the DMA course.

The situation presented some differences that were somewhat troublesome. First, the DMA course is required, hence people are not always motivated to take the course. So I have to work pretty hard to: 1) make it as interesting as possible, and 2) structure it so folks who are not motivated (and even ones who are) do not end up with structure-hunger; given that the environment of UNCSA is in general highly scheduled; chill--space can easily be interpreted as fill-in-with-something-else space).

Second, more than an occasional presentation is needed to get the content across to students (in short there is more to teaching a course like DMA --in terms of needing to introduce conceptual and procedural content-- than there is in teaching studio art courses).

BUT having said that, there are striking similarities as well. The person-at-their-easel is fairly comparable to the person-at-their-computer. By definition, both environments invite hands-on and project-driven approaches. So, I have done whatever I can in the way of aligning the physical space with the studio ethos, playing the role of DJ in providing suitable background music (which virtually almost all studio-based teachers report they do), and keeping the atmosphere open yet structured.

In talking with a colleague recently, though, I realized I was missing a major opportunity to add conversation into the pedagogical mix. I am a huge fan of conversation-based pedagogy, yet the studio-model seems to not invite it; project-based learning seems to be a much better fit.  Yet in my recollections of studio-based environments as a learner, there was always informal conversation during class (which I allow and encourage in DMA as well) AND there was also semi-formal conversation at the end of each session around putting the day's work on display and having a discussion-based critique. The instructor would offer feedback, sometimes on individual pieces, sometimes re: group characteristics (i.e., everyone needs to work on texture, etc.), and students would enter into the conversation. It was also a very powerful indirect teaching to simply see one's own work next to other's who were working on the same assignment. I mean a lot of metacognitive, self-evaluative work took place in that space without the teacher having to say anything.

So this is my aim for next term and beyond is to introduce critique into my studio-matrix in DMA, by projecting and talking about different pieces of student work-in-progress. I think this represents the last piece of the puzzle for me. It solves problems related evaluation, communication, and structure. I now comment on the blogs that students create to address the homework aspects of DMA by reading, so they get feedback on their conceptual work and on their completed media projects, but by instituting critique I will be able to comment on the in-studio work students do, and their in-progress work on their media projects. I will of course continue to enjoy the banter and fun of spending time in-studio with them.

Looking beyond DMA (to other virtual worlds)

I frequently think about the contextual or program aspects of DMA. For example, I wonder where, if anywhere, the DMA course fits into the context of the Undergraduate Academic Program (which is the equivalent of an abbreviated Liberal Arts portion of the BFA degree students work towards at UNCSA). That's one type of questioning I do --but don't get the wrong idea. This is not an existential, angst-filled line of questioning, it's an enjoyable part of my reflective process, and it feeds my design and re-design process.

As noted in the previous post on this blog, which focuses on the work of Andrea Lunsford, and in other posts where I recount aspects of what I'm doing with the course, I have assembled a cluster of provisional answers to the above pleasantly existential line of self-questioning. The cluster boils down to this:

I basically see DMA as a composition course devoted to helping students advance their skills in reading/decoding/interpreting and writing/encoding/creating in a variety of media including but not limited to text. At its base, I see DMA as a 21st century composition course which teaches and combines the skills and tools of the theoretician, rhetorician and technician.

I also do a different, futuristic type of questioning. Assuming DMA and media studies could one day become a focus, area-concentration, or minor for some students at our institution, what advanced-level courses would build well on it? Along these lines I am always on the lookout for clues to how folks are building successfully on the foundations of a rhetoric-based approach to education (that's the Lunsford piece) to capture and advance some of the insights and knowledge-product options new-media makes available to all of us.

Several new-media related electives have been offered at our school, including a course on Generative Art (co-taught with my esteemed colleague Dean Wilcox), another one entitled Theory and Practice of New Media Art (which I offered solo), and one currently underway called Virtual Worlds (also co-taught with Dean Wilcox).

At the recent NC Symposium on Teaching Writing I met a pack of people with clues about the future --even about the possible future of our own Virtual Worlds elective, in that they mentioned ideas, references, and software with potential to augment our VW course next time it's offered. The panel of presenters (whose varied perspectives are represented below in audio recordings) focused attention around the title Virtual Worlds: Pedagogies of Play.

Their perspectives vary nicely from theory-centered looks at virtual worlds to technically-centered looks. I would underscore, though, that all of the presenters blended theory and technology --which also underscores Tom Boellstorff's notion in Coming of Age in Second Life that we are in an age of techne, an age in which thought and technology are conjoined.

The symposium sessions were not being recorded or archived, so I made my own 'bootleg' audio recordings (using a first-gen, now-antique iPod with a microphone attachment) of the presentations. The recordings, each preceded by a short annotation, are embedded below.

Stephanie Boluk insightfully and provocatively traces the historical arc of the Little Red Riding Hood story from early oral beginnings to a recent computer game treatment:



Patrick LeMieux describes a fascinating array of game genres emerging in non-commercial, artistic, and/or DIY sectors, and says a bit about tools/platforms that students can use to create their own examples:



Patrick Jagoda focuses in a very astute and engaging way on the intellectual capacities that professors can help students build, in order to help them optimize their now-direct and pervasive involvement in the production and sharing of media-infused knowledge-products:



Victoria Szabo insightfully describes the critical skills students need in order to engage in media decoding and encoding with maximum awareness and impact, and uses examples from a series or cluster of courses devoted to the history of virtual worlds:



A question and answer session includes yours truly asking about the possibility that while professors may aim for things like transdisciplinarity, students may be inhabiting post-cognitive universes, characterized more by affective markers: