Reflecting on the fall 2009 term

Egads. What a great term this was. A friend of mine once described talking with a friend of his who was a blues guitarist. He went to watch him perform, and noticed that he did not seem to pay much attention to his guitar-playing while he played. He mentioned this perception to his friend after the show, and his friend concurred. He said when he had gotten to a point where he didn't have to think much about playing the guitar, this meant that he was able to start thinking about the audience, which in turn meant that he had begun his career as a performer.

Something like this happened to me this term as a teacher. It's actually been gradual, as I have gotten more and more accustomed to working with first-year students at this very unique institution, but this term the trend went all the way through to a phase-change. Previously I was having to pay quite a bit of attention to the course materials, assignments, etc. in order to see what was working, what was not working, how to assess the students' work, how to make changes in the right places and for the right reasons, how to make sense of the school as a context, etc.

This year I still think about and work on those things, but when I go into class those types of things are in the background and I am there to do one thing and one thing only: to be with the students. This produced great delight for me, and I think it's quite analogous to the guitar-player and his becoming a performer: for the first time I was able to do the technical parts of teaching fairly easily, and I could therefore focus on and enjoy interacting with the audience. I guess, if the analogy holds, this means I've began my career as a teacher this term, even though I've technically been teaching for quite some time (part-time prior to three years ago, full-time for the past three years).

The syllabus for this term's course is online in website-form at: http://sites.google.com/site/dma20092110/

A highlight for me is the course description, because it reveals a major part of how I resolved some of the technical issues of teaching in a Liberal Arts department at a Fine Arts institution. This is online at: http://sites.google.com/site/dma20092110/description

There were many examples of good student work this term -- in conversation and in the making and telling of digital-stories. The previous post in this blog recounts one of the strikingly good conversational moments. Here are links to just a few of the many good examples of digital-stories (a more complete collection will be posted on the ongoing student-work showcase website): Rachel's story, Erik's story, Samm's story, and Nick's story. I'm beginning to do some initial research into ways to hook up an exchange of digital-stories with an art college somewhere in a different culture.

My ongoing contra-Cartesian approach of paying attention to the physical environs of the classroom as much as the synaptic/conceptual content continues to bear fruit. This term I subtracted three computers from the room (leaving a total of 25, which is still a very ample number for the space and the class), I added a set of wooden benches for flexible seating, and added a table in one part of the room with no computers and enough room around it for moving the wooden benches in and just talking. The only things on this table were wooden building blocks, and it was amazing how well these worked to facilitate conversation. By the way, conversation was the main theme of the course, so none of the physical arrangements made to facilitate just talking were in any way separate from course goals.

Ah, I'd be remiss to not mention that I did direct instruction re: conversation, which included introducing a taxonomy of transactional, transformative, and transcendent varieties of conversation. This was the explicitly Liberal Arts (L.A.) part of the course. Part two was focused on applying the L.A. skills of conversation to consideration of a selected group of 'luminaries' in the L.A. field of Media Studies (including Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Mimi Ito, and a few others).

Part three of the course was all about digital-storytelling, but this had been prepped and staged from the first day of class, when I introduced my own digital-story about a favorite professor of mine who exemplified the Liberal Arts for me. So in telling this story I got to introduce an example of a digital-story and also do the Liberal Arts instruction that I wanted to do. The professor in question, W.B. Macomber, was the person who introduced me to the idea that the real gold in education was to be found in conversation. I also introduced other content-ful examples of digital-stories early on in the term. One by Mark Everett (an indie rock musician of some note) who that talks about his famous-physicist father, Hugh Everett, and his groundbreaking concept of parallel universes. This topic had a lot of traction. People really enjoyed talking about it.

The only changes I am going to make for next term are to tighten up the format of the digital-stories project. The tightening up will take three forms. First, I will open up multiple tracks to completion. i.e., some people work better starting with images and adding storyline. Others are quite comfortable writing first and adding pictures. Second, I will specify a single production algorithm from beginning to end, in order to avoid some of the confusion that occurred when I allowed people to do their audio and video production work on their own equipment. Third, I will do more direct instruction on storytelling. This term was my first time through on this assignment, and I am not a storyteller, so I did my best to introduce what the Center for Digital Storytelling has to offer re: storytelling (which is quite good as source material). But next term I will be introducing a video interview I did with Julian Semilian on editing (which is a huge part of storytelling) and I hope to get some other expert help as well. I have a couple of contacts to work this angle.

I'm also developing websites for four elective courses which should fill out the offerings in the field of Media Studies now that DMA has become fairly stable as a foundation. These additional course websites (I have one in progress for a Theory and Practice of New Media Art course that I will be teaching in the spring term) will be something I share with students in the DMA course (I'll share all of the websites, even though the courses won't be offered immediately, in order to let students know about some directions that they might be able to build on if they are interested in the field of Media Studies.

All in all this was an amazingly good term for me, and I get to give a presentation called Play Language like a Musical Instrument about the course, digital-storytelling, and Liberal Arts education, at the Lilly Conference on College Teaching in February. This will be great fun, and I am certain to get interesting feedback because this is an audience of folks who are keenly interested in undergraduate education.

This seems important

In class today the conversation took a very interesting turn towards the end of the session. It had been back-and-forthing about whether or not the internet is a negative impact on human relationships and communication. Good points were made on each side. I think this constituted a good transformational conversation (using the transactional, transformational, transcendent framework here). Then toward the end the idea of negotiation was introduced --in the context that when something new comes along there are always gains and losses that must be negotiated. Then after that the concept of balance was introduced --which, like negotiation, moved the conversation beyond back-and-forthing. In complexity-theory terms we witnessed a phase-change. In the typology of conversation framework, we saw the conversation move from transformational to transcendent. But (and this is the part that seems most important to me) is that negotiation and balance are both dialogical concepts. Negotiation implies a dialog between at least two parties. And balance implies a dialog between two different elements or positions.

Method then Principles then Issues

Our method --conversation-- is now well-established via our uncovering of the Liberal Arts. If we uncover the Liberal Arts the gem of conversation is revealed. If we cover the Liberal Arts the gem of conversation is buried under information. As noted in the course introduction, the need to uncover rather than cover the Liberal Arts is acute when it comes to designing a BFA degree. There is no time for everything, unless everything is defined --as James Webb Young does-- as method and principles. Here is what Young says: "Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up of what Dr. Robert Hutchins once called rapidly aging facts. Principles and method are everything." (James Webb Young (1965). A Technique for Producing Ideas. New York, NY: Macgraw-Hill). So, our method is sound in general, and in particular it is keyed to the context of teaching and learning in the Liberal Arts at an art school.

This week we began gathering principles within the field of Media Studies by reading summaries of luminaries from Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong to Lev Manovich and Mimi Ito. Part of the goal for next week is to then use the method of conversation and the principles of Media Studies luminaries to illuminate contemporary issues. We have five categories of issues:

1. Censorship, Freedom of Speech, and other legal issues
   
2. Global Communities and Communication, and Generational Differences
   
3. New Trends (including trends in how people learn)
   
4. Security, Privacy, and related issues
   
5. Internet Business, and related issues
   

Next week each one of the five small-groups in each section of the course will lead a whole-group discussion on one of the above categories of issues.

Meanwhile, in homework, we will be shifting our attention to the third main part of the course, namely digital storytelling. We will take a brief break (no class on Friday for the MWF section, and a shortened class on Thursday for the TR sections) in order to take a step back and clear our hearts and minds before we launch into writing and producing "meaningful first-person narratives" in digital form.

The term continues to unfold really well I think. I am very impressed with the students, and I think the structure of the course is holding its own. There are some folks who feel that the scores they have received thus far on the quizzes are not indicative of their effort or learning, so this weekend I will be doing some data-crunching (meaning I will ask my fourteen year old son who is a math whiz to help me) to see if scores/grades need to be curved.

Other than that, all of the indications I can pick up seem to be good, and I'm excited about the small-group led conversations coming up next week and the digital storytelling work/play after that. I still have some work to do to structure and pace the storytelling part of the term. I want to make sure the requirements, due dates, and grading criteria are very clear. Likely this means creating an overall rubric divided into sections/parts of the process.

Electric Soup

Well, I also like to refer to computers as boxes of water, so don't worry about the title of this post. Hopefully it will become clearer after you read this and after we have discussed Media Studies, McLuhan et al, etc.

As noted in the preceding post, we've covered the Liberal and Fine Arts in one and a half weeks --not bad! Nah, with a tipping of the proverbial hat to Michael Apple we have uncovered the Liberal and Fine Arts in one and a half weeks. Once uncovered, these grand edifices reveal themselves to be settings or stages for different forms of conversation to take place. But what it the point? In part, as in the Scheherazade story, the aim is to keep the conversation going! In part, as in the life of Socrates, the point is to keep the conversation going because in conversation nothing less than Truth itself is revealed. Uncovering just begins the process.

The Scheherazade story may be doubly important to us because it concerns storytelling as well as keeping a conversation going. I'll quote below part of the Wikipedia entry on the story for those unfamiliar with it:

"The frame tale goes that every day Shahryar (Persian: شهريار or "king") would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. This was done in anger, having found out that his first wife was betraying him. He had killed three thousand such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter.

In Sir Richard F. Burton's translation of The Nights, Shahrazad was described in this way:

"[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."

Against her father's protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dinazade, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe as Scheherazade told her first story. The night whiled away, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle of the story. The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time, as dawn was breaking. So, the King spared her life for one day to finish the story the next night. So the next night, Scheherazade finished the story, and then began a second, even more exciting tale which she again stopped halfway through, at dawn. So the King again spared her life for one day to finish the second story.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the finishing of last night's story. At the end of one thousand and one nights, and one thousand stories, Scheherazade told the King that she had no more tales to tell him. During these one thousand and one nights, the King had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had had three sons with her. So, having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he spared her life, and made her his Queen."

One possible moral to the Scheherazade story is that as long as people are talking, as long as the conversation is going forward, no physical violence is taking place. This would apply directly, for example, to diplomacy but it also has more subtle forms: as long as people are talking (whether its about what's for lunch or what the boundaries should be) there is no war. Or, in the then-trendy parlance of child-raising advice, when my kids were toddlers the oft-repeated mantra was "use your words." :) Perhaps one could speculate as well that on the purely plus or positive side, conversation may also be an ounce of prevention in relation to the ills of violence.

Macomber would I think have had a lot of wonderful things to say about the Scheherazade story, since it combines conversation, a focus on life itself, and eros. Speakin' again of Dr. M., one of my favorite passages in Plato's Symposium occurs right at the beginning of the dialogue. It recounts a conversation between Socrates and Aristodemus, and concerns the overarching value and importance of just keeping the conversation going; everything else will just takes its rightful place:


"He [Aristodemus] said that he met Socrates fresh from the bath and sandalled; and as the sight of the sandals was unusual [Socrates was known for bare-footedness], he asked him whither he was going that he had been converted into such a beau:-

To a banquet at Agathon's, he replied, whose invitation to his sacrifice of victory I refused yesterday, fearing a crowd, but promising that I would come to-day instead; and so I have put on my finery, because he is such a fine man. What say you to going with me unasked?

I will do as you bid me, I replied.

Follow then, he said, and let us demolish the proverb: "To the feasts of inferior men the good unbidden go"; instead of which our proverb will run:- "To the feasts of the good the good unbidden go"; and this alteration may be supported by the authority of Homer himself, who not only demolishes but literally outrages the proverb. For, after picturing Agamemnon as the most valiant of men, he makes Menelaus, who is but a fainthearted warrior, come unbidden to the banquet of Agamemnon, who is feasting and offering sacrifices, not the better to the worse, but the worse to the better.

I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my case; and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person, who "To the feasts of the wise unbidden goes". But I shall say that I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make an excuse.

Two going together, he [Socrates] replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an excuse by the way.

This was the style of their conversation as they went along. Socrates dropped behind in a fit of abstraction, and desired Aristodemus, who was waiting, to go on before him. When he reached the house of Agathon he found the doors wide open, and a comical thing happened. A servant coming out met him, and led him at once into the banqueting-hall in which the guests were reclining, for the banquet was about to begin. Welcome, Aristodemus, said Agathon, as soon as he appeared-you are just in time to sup with us; if you come on any other matter put it off, and make one of us, as I was looking for you yesterday and meant to have asked you, if I could have found you."

The key line for me is "Two going together, one or other of them may invent an excuse by the way." In my read or interpretation Socrates is pointing out that the conversation itself is what matters, not the party, so everything will turn out fine if they just proceed together, talking and walking. One will invent an excuse as to what they'll say about Aristodemus arriving uninvited, but whether or not the excuse will be granted doesn't really matter either. Turning around and walking back to town together would be just fine, too. Kind of puts it all in perspective for me.

So, arguably, thus far in our class we've uncovered the importance of conversation. Now the task is just to keep the conversation going, keeping the conversational campfire burning by adding to it. The other purposes of college? We'll invent an excuse for those :)

We'll have a chance to review and discuss the lists we created of the 'elements' or 'ingredients' of a good conversation. So we'll continue our conversation about conversation just a bit in this way.

I'll also introduce or reiterate the whammy alignment of conversation, media, and electricity. They are all in-between, in-the-middle, connection-powered, and ontologically difficult to pin-down so to speak. We tend to see 'things' not the connections between things. Yet what is more important to us than relationships? Why is it that it seems difficult for us to stay focused on what really matters, even when its obvious?

Well, there are various stories to tell that might account for this. We could tell a story about our culture's objectve notion of truth, for example (and note that objective has the word object embedded in it) so we are already predisposed to see objects or things rather than the relationships between or among things. I mentioned this in regard to Betty Edwards' book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in which she includes an uncanny exercise in which drawing everything but the object itself (in other words drawing all of the spatial relationships around and within an object results, voila, in a drawing of an object. I also mentioned this in relation to Thich Nhat Hahn's zen exercise of noting that literally everything is present in a piece of paper other than paper itself. It's all in the relationships.

There are exceptions to our focus on objects rather than relationshps --the green or ecology movement, for example, calls attention to relationships, but here too we have to consider how much resistance and marginalization occurs in regard to such movements.

So I want us to consider and talk about a collection of 'in-the-middles' entities including conversation, media, and electricity --and how these all tend to be seen as non-entities (and thereby marginalized).

Here are a few slides I used in class to try to convey the importance of in-betweens:



I also want us to talk about the Fine Arts in particular the aesthetic way of knowing as perhaps situated in-between spirituality and intellect, in the realm of emotion mainly, and about the conversation with the self and others that constitutes Art being in some ways focused on emotion. Art connects us to ourselves, to others, to humanity, to the beauty of life. We sometimes say that Art moves us, and this is an emotional term that may refer more precisely to moving us into relationship (again with ourselves, with others -- i.e., we now in some ways know Hugh and Mark Everett and something about ourselves possibly as well from having viewed the Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives story). So Art may be aligned in particularly strong ways with the other in-betweens. This perhaps calls for a sound bite: Art is electric, baby! If electric, then it is also the glue that holds stories --and/or any form of artwork-- together. What would the Parallel Worlds story have been without the father-son relationship and its inevitable emotional resonance? For me it probably wouldn't have 'held together' as a story, at least not nearly as well as it did. I mean the concepts and so forth are interesting in themselves, but the holding power of the story for me was in the relationship line.

AND I have located this fantastic video of an MIT professor talking about electricity as a glue --"which holds the world together" (well okay, along with gravity in some cases :) By the way this MIT prof is having a great conversation with nature, and he lets us in on it. Also, BTW and/or FYI, in regard to my including science stuff in DMA, this is itself indicative of the interconnected, relationship-based age we live in.

Yours is the first generation to practice interconnectivity. Please keep talking on the internet. Please keep producing and posting content on the internet. (Don't do any of these things while driving, though). Your concrete experience may help provide a basis one day for greater, and much needed, attention to be paid to the relationship, interconnections, and other in-betweens.

Weird and Sticky

Surprisingly (to me anyway) the DMA course in all its sections and varieties seems to have achieved lift-off quickly. After only a week and a half of courses and homework, I feel as though a great deal has been accomplished.

• We basically completed the work on the Liberal and Fine Arts that I wanted to accomplish, and I did a quick (and again unanticipated) summary of this in class on Thursday (for sections 02 ad 03) and Friday (for section 01). Here's a link to the summary presentation slides.
  
  
• We have also done a reasonable amount of transition work/play from thinking about the Liberal and Fine Arts to thinking about Media Studies and digital media (which are the areas into which we are now turning our attention). In particular our work/play on and in conversation --which was the main theme of our work on the Liberal and Fine Arts-- makes a beautiful segue to talking about the internet. Several students mentioned that in some ways more conversation now occurs online than face-to-face, and also mentioned that in texting and IMing there is often some time taken to compose a thought; this is seen in partial contrast to face-to-face conversation, which strikes some as utterly instantaneous (no time or space for forethought). Very interesting this! We'll be talking more about online communication and related topics next week.
  
  
• We've also done a fair amount of transition work/play to thinking about digital-storytelling. By watching the Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives movie --which is a classic example of a "meaningful first-person narrative" told in digital media-- we got to pay close attention to an example of the genre. Next week we'll look at additional examples. I'm hoping that this has enabled folks to begin at least thinking about possible stories they would want to tell.

So it's really been quite a start IMO --which is a very good thing because we will need additional time to learn the needed technical-skills which will accompany the continued development of our conversational-skills when we move into writing and producing our digital-stories (things like setting up a website for work purposes, learning to use audio and video tools, etc.).

I'm now anticipating that we will move through the Media Studies materials in relatively short order, much as we did with the Liberal and Fine Arts materials, and again this opens up some interesting options. One of the things that came out of our conversations today and yesterday about conversation --noted above and also in response to the question "What are the ingredients or elements of a good conversation?"-- was that this may be a very fun set of DMA sections to jump into online communication with, in class and as possible homework, and compare it to face-to-face conversation.

I'm in the process of generating a kind of master-list of elements identified by all of the sections as crucial to good conversation. This will be an interesting list, and will range from items such as mutual respect to a more open-ended sense of just specifying the basics or foundations (talkers willing to listen and listeners willing to talk) and seeing what happens. This alerts me to the complexity/chaos element or dimension of conversation: in some ways part of what makes conversation such a good thing is that we're not really sure where it will go. This is part of its creative charge. I may show the complexity video clip in class to support and illustrate this point.

Next week we get to talk about Marshall McLuhan and electricity. Conversation and electricity have a lot in common (or so I will propose). Both connect things, and both have an unexpected and often-unnoticed element of 'stickyness' or 'glue' to them. I'll have to find the resource I have on the glue function in electricity. Hopefully the conversations we will have on the luminaries of Media Studies will play well.

Speaking of play, I mentioned in a couple of sections that a couple of years ago I made and posted a short video of me juggling while talking about my early experience of UNCSA. For those interested, here's a link to the video.

Gossip Column?

Calling this 'Instructor's Blog' is maybe a mistake. If I called it a gossip column I'd probably get more readers. I mean, did you SEE what so and so wore to class today???

Then again, there is something to be said for truth-in-advertising. This really isn't a gossip column I guess, after all. But things jumped off very nicely in Section 01 today in terms of the conversation.

The seemingly consensus choice seemed to be to talk about the parallel universes concept. Interestingly, the desire seemed to be to talk about the concept, not the movie -- very heartening, this. I was then further heartened to see the conversation sizzle and pop first of all with lots of examples related to the parallel universes idea, which I will try to list below:

• Movie: What the Bleep Do We Know (Veoh preview)
• Movie: Sliding Doors (IMDB site)
• Three movies by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu
  -- Amores Perros (IMBD site)
  -- 21 Grams (IMDB site)
  -- Babel (IMDB site)
• Movie: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (IMDB site)
• Book Series: Choose Your Own Adventure (Wikipedia site)
• Interactive story/games series: Nancy Drew (Mysterynet site)
• Zen author: Thich Nhat Hahn (Wikipedia site)
• Movie: Slaughterhouse Five (Wikipedia site)
• TV series: Connections (Wikipedia site)
• TV series: Futurama (Wikipedia site)
  
• Movie: A Sound of Thunder (IMDB site)
• Movie: Primer (IMDB site)
  

The conversation generated three areas of focus or strange attractors:

1) the parallel universes idea, which implies a sort of radical compartmentalization -- any decision creates a split that creates two universes. There was some discussion about what would constitute a 'decision' in this regard, the possibility of infinite universes, intersecting universes, being able to peer or peek into one universe from another, relationship of this to multiple personas and other possible everyday forms of parallelism.

2) the everything is interrelated or interbeing idea, which implies a radical connectedness of all things. I found it very interesting that the conversation generated this strand.

3) the observer involvement idea, which holds that when we look 'out there' at the universe(s) we ourselves are inevitably 'in the picture.'

But more importantly, DID YOU SEE what so and so wore to class today?!!

On Wednesday section 01 will start with the question of what ethics and morality might look like if the parallel universes idea turned out to be true. The last 25 minutes of the Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives movie will also be shown in class.

All of this work has potential bearing on the conception and production of digital stories later in the term. We had some discussion about what autobiography, or a play, etc. would look like if it were informed by the idea of parallel universes.

A quick note also that today's conversation illustrated a point raised on the first day of class; namely, students come to college now with information already in hand, and the skills to find additional information on their own. Most of the information today in class was delivered by students, in this case in the form of ideas and thoughts related to parallel universes, and also in the form of related works.

The last bit for now: I think the first video-attendance-movie-experiment worked out well. I normally am not able to learn everyone's name until around mid-term (abysmal, I know, but there it is) and so having the video will help me for sure with that, and I hope it will help others as well, in knowing who's who in class.

Okay the very last bit: so the conversation today turns to quantum mechanics. Let's imagine how this might play out in the olden days. If this came up in a class discussion, someone with a whole lot of initiative and extra time (meaning no one :) might go to the library and look this topic up, check out a book, or maybe even think of taking a course someday on the topic (and then probably decide not to unless they were a Physics major because the class would likely be very technical). But today, if a topic like quantum mechanics sticks with us, all we have to do is turn around, log in, and get a fairly good variety of information and perspectives, some of which might be technical, some of it generally accessible to non-scientists.

First week of fall term

Okay, it was a short week --only two days of class meetings-- but I thought this week was a good start to the term. I'm excited about the direction the DMA class is taking, and glad to see that everyone seems open to the process-oriented nature of the plans I have set out. Of course I wonder if the plan will work --but ultimately I value the adventure aspects of teaching anyway, even if I sometimes have to endure some uncertainty associated with trying new things, so I'm willing to take the bad along with the good.

So anyway, this week we started a conversation about the medium of life, the Liberal and Fine Arts, Media Studies and digital media, and digital-storytelling.

The first part of the course will involve working on the Liberal Arts conversational skills of thinking, talking, and reading --with a particular emphasis on talking. The middle part of the course will involve talking about the field of Media Studies and digital media. Interspersed throughout these first two parts of the course will be readings about digital storytelling and examples of digital-stories (from the Center for Digital Storytelling and other sources). The third part of the course will be entirely focused on the fourth Liberal Arts skill --writing-- which in our case will mean 'writing' in a variety of media (text, image, audio, and video).

Throughout the term I will provide progress reports on: 1) learning the skills of the Liberal Arts, 2) familiarizing ourselves with key figures and principles in Media Studies, and 3) using digital media for highly creative and intellectual purposes. At the end of each week I will try to do a brief retrospective at where we've been along with a prospective view of where we're going.

For this week:

-- language itself (again in particular the conversational use of language) was introduced as the creative medium-of-choice for Liberal Artists. I mentioned that Liberal Artists play language like a musical instrument. In the coming week I will want to expand on this a bit to intersect with the concept of play as it relates to Fine Arts 'playing' of music, acting in 'plays', etc.

--I also mentioned (as noted above) that thinking, talking, reading, and writing are the skills of the Liberal Artists. In one section I also touched on the idea that higher education alludes to the vertical axis of learning, and as such points towards a need to develop deep understanding as well as higher learning.

--I hope to have conveyed a sense of the Liberal Arts as a skills-based, creative arena, not just a place where folks accumulate information and knowledge.

--We talked a bit about how formal education tends to take kids who are already skilled at talking and then promptly tells them to shut up (and sit still, of course). In the coming week I will want to expand on this by introducing the Katamari concept/metaphor/way-of-learning (dynamic and naturally glued, like with gravity-glue), complexity theory (in particular as it relates to conversation), and recent cognitive science research studies which strongly assert that the only way people learn is by building on what they already know (the scientific aspect of neural networks). With regard to conversation I also want to introduce my favorite quotes on this subject, and I think I want to have a conversation based on the question "What does it take to have a good conversation?" And, to explore perspectives on Macomber's point that everyone can talk about their brother-in-law but can't find anything to say in class. I mean is it possible that classroom conversations just haven't been conceptualized properly and practiced enough, or is it indeed the case that we have learned too well to sit still and shut up?

--With regard to the key figures and principles of Media Studies, I mentioned the need to friend
Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan in one of the sections, but this was just barely a start on this. Likely in week three or four we'll be talking about this area in depth.

--With regard to digital-storytelling I mentioned in a couple of sections that I agreed with Jordan Kerner that the cultural-youngers are in part being groomed to be the next generation of storytellers, and we began to look at an example of a digital-story in homework (the Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives movie, which is a fairly complex digital-story I would say and probably beyond what most of us will do with our stories, but a good example of the genre nonetheless). In the coming week we'll finish watching the 'Parallels' movie, and also look at a few examples from the Center for Digital Storytelling website. Either next week or the one after I want us to begin reading about digital-storytelling by assigning parts of the Digital Storytelling Cookbook that the CDS puts out.