Tracking lessons for the next year
I am so so inspired by 52 Cups of Coffee, a tumblog I stumbled upon one night.
I don’t want to rip off the exact idea, but I think I will consciously make an effort in fall, in Calgary, to connect with at least one person a week and make one observation or gain one insight from such connection, hopefully learning something that is related to one’s pursuit of higher ed.
Getting together with academics
It’s darn hard to find a time to meet with my fellow colleagues who are Arts faculty members at the university where I work.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint and track a few down to solicit feedback and input re: embarking on graduate studies in Humanities.
So far, no luck in getting calls returned or emails followed up on.
It’s sort of a complaint, but also a realization about my personal character building: I’m going to have to learn to be persistent without feeling guilty about “bothering” anyone, become bolder and more confident about reaching out (even if it means numerous calls/emails) if this is indicative of what it’s like in academia.
It’s not a criticism: just an observation about the busy-ness of faculty lives between their classes, marking, research, conferences and personal lives that make it hard to respond to every inquiry they probably get from budding master’s students and course takers.
Being a modern day student in the digital age
Another big thing I took out of this class was that I’m not a good electronic student. I love technology and using gadgets and software for lots of things in life but I found it hard to organize my notes, sources, page references, etc electronically and retrieve the items I needed easily when I needed them. My method from 15 years ago was jotting notes from each article in a notebook with a numbering system indicating which article and when writing the draft paper I would use the numbers to indicate which article/source and flip back and forth between my paper and my notebook. I think that’s it: the visual layout and the easy look here and there of the old way that I found frustrating on my one laptop on which I have to flip between windows – yes, even with the Apple expose and keyboard shortcuts – to get to the place where the source notes are vs. where the paper was. Now if I had a 21′ display, maybe that would make it easier since I could have both open side-by-side. In any case, the digital paper prep was just NOT happening for me.
Well, it was my mistake in trying to go ALL digital from the get go instead of slowly testing out what worked for me before delving into my term paper. In the end, I am happy with the end result but it took a LOT longer than it should have.
Via This is part of my experience of writing a term paper as I had shared on my other blog. It’s something I’m definitely going to be working on: how to better research, prep, take notes and retrieve them, electronically.
I don’t like the idea of having to rely all the time on my computer(s) to retrieve information, because I’ll be relying on the technology as much as on my own organization/collation skills, but I think it’s one way we are moving, if digital library collections is any hint.
Crazy library days and nights
In the Mass Media and Canadian Society class I am taking, we have this maximum 10-page essay due for class. That’s max 10; thus, it could be less.
But not having been in a formal university class for 10 years, I’m a bit rusty and nervous about doing well, so I REALLY got into the assignment - prepped hard, read a LOT, researched a LOT (it was really slow going at first), and wrote a LOT.
Overdid it, I think. My essay is now at 13 pages and I’m not even at the last section of what I wanted to say. I have way more sources than I ever remember using for an undergraduate paper the first time around. I am having real trouble cutting the paper down now to the given limits.
I’m spending way more time at the library than is warranted for an undergrad paper but it’s serious stuff: I’m getting back into the saddle again.
Back at the library, a different experience
Tonight I neglected Na-No-Wri-Mo (again) for a more pressing writing assignment: I sat at a university library cubicle working on a paper until 11:20pm. It was the first time in over a decade that I have a paper to write, and equally long since I sat at a campus library as a student.
It was sort of, but sort of not what I remember campus late nights to be like.
For one thing, it was REALLY REALLY quiet, almost empty of students to the immediate eye. My recollection of late nights at Sedgewick Library includes clusters of Asian students, many of them my friends, buried (or sleeping) in the cubicles or at the closed cafe round tables outside the main doors, until the wee late hours of the night, even during weekdays and non-exam times. The strongest indication that the library tonight was occupied by someone other than me was the incessant buzzing and pop-tune-ringtone of a cell phone that someone had left somewhere unattended and forgotten to mute. That kind of sucked.
That kind of technology was another difference. I was doing my research notes and paper outline on my MacBook, not a notebook and pen, while at the same time I was connected to the internet right under my fingers. I didn’t have to get up to use the library catalogue for one thing. The other was that I had the ability to communicate with friends and associates from that very cubicle. The connectedness was totally new -I was strongly reminded that way back then, if I wanted to locate a study buddy or set up a snack break or get a ride home, I had to leave my stuff and cubicle, walk around of step out of the library to physically search for my friend, or find someone else to ask if they’d seen my friend. No such thing as an SMS away. Tonight I was constantly linked with at least one of my circles of associates via TweetDeck, whose notification messages popped up from time-to-time on my screen while I was working. With my MacBook and phone on me, I was hyper-aware tonight that I was just a few keystrokes away from anyone who I might want to connect or chat with. I believe that the one other student I saw on the entire upstairs was deeply engaged in an instant-messaging session with someone when I passed her on the way to the bookstacks.
The other minor thing that was really different from Sedgewick is that food and drinks are TOTALLY allowed here. I had my aluminum mug of coffee with me, and here and there at different cubicles, I saw evidence of others’ snacking activities left behind. Not sure I like this difference (drinks? in a LIBRARY? near cloth-bound books and portable digital devices?…) but I benefitted from that tonight.
Similarities? The ratty chairs and cubicles that looked, well, old, like out of the 1970′s or something. They were relatively clean, minus the crumbs and some mug rim stains, but seriously, it looked like my old library. Mind you, my university has almost completed a second library building that is supposed to be uber-modern, Leeds-certified, and just gorgeous, if the architects’ representations are accurate, so in a few months I will be able to say that we have a contemporary library here as well.
Well, the bookstacks were the same as undergrad. Since it’s been ages since I was last reading for academic research and had been only using the public library, I was momentarily stumped by the catalogue numbering system that wasn’t Dewey decimal, the staple of public libraries that I’ve been going to for the last 30-odd years.
The last thing that was the same was the feeling of my mind racing as I scanned article after article, skimmed table of contents, jotting notes (though electronically) down, and the satisfaction of the haze of ideas coalescing into something more concrete that would make sense once I put them to the page.
(via Ah, a hearkening back to undergrad days « notes of chris)
(This post is a duplicate of one shared on my other blog)
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Twitter Tales: Twitter is about… Art
“I think one thing our audience has appreciated is that we don’t tweet solely about MoMA-related things, but rather things that we think our community would be interested in, whether it’s a Twitter tour at The Whitney Museum, a great website about design, or photos of an artist’s work.”
— @MUSEUMMODERNART
Sketching the Canvas
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City serves as an icon for education, exploration, and exposure to all forms of creative expression. As an institution, however, MoMA wanted to overcome the imposing reputation associated with their name. What was the face of MoMA? Was it a Matisse or a Picasso? Was it a Monet with a ContemporAsian film playing in the background all inside a Frank Lloyd Wright house? Most importantly, what did the public think it was?
MoMA created @MuseumModernArt in June 2008 to tackle these questions. The account began as a grass roots effort with the goal to give everyone behind-the-scenes access to the museum and its programs. Victor Samra, the manager of @MuseumModernArt, quickly became comfortable experimenting with different types of Tweets such as questions to the public, relevant art news, and innovative information concerning global events. He also chose to focus @MuseumModernArt around community, discussion, and sharing rather than using it as a more traditional marketing tool.
Tweet Cred
While there are many highlights of @MuseumModernArt’s history, two stood out right away: A MoMA member and passionate photographer came to the museum and photographed his stuffed monkey in various galleries. Victor tweeted a link to the photo set on @MuseumModernArt. People loved it so much that it became one of the account’s most retweeted posts.
Victor also tweeted a link to a story on The Onion about The Metropolitan Museum of Art allowing visitors to touch their works of art. Many followers didn’t realize it was a joke!
Paint By Numbers
Victor paid close attention to what resonated with followers through examining retweets and replies. In addition, he used the account as a listening tool by searching for relevant art terms starting with simple words such as “art” and “museum,” to get a feel for what people on Twitter were talking about. He looked at the replies to see what @MuseumModernArt fans wanted to know.
Victor also started conversations with fans, visitors, and institutions through replies and posting questions on the account. He sought out and followed a wide range of artists, organizations, and other notable people in the art world, thereby becoming a well-connected resource. This focus led to a strong growth in audience and engagement right off the bat. MoMA internally advocated the success, and soon, numerous specialists around the Museum started sending contributions to Victor. This added to the diversification of the content, making it not only about art, but also about connecting with people involved with architecture, design, drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, film, and multimedia. Increasing the variety of topics and providing specific content on each one opened up an entirely new audience for @MuseumModernArt, connecting the museum with users in each area of artistry.
Looking to the future, they plan to further integrate Twitter within the museum through tours and events, sparking conversation with their patrons during their visit.
MIT New Media Literacies for the 21st Century
The new skills for navigating the communication challenges of the 21st century include:
1) Play: the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving.
2) Negotiation: the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
3) Judgment: the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
4) Collective intelligence: the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
5) Networking: the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.
6) Appropriation: the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
7) Responsibility & Awareness: (this is not included in the original and is critical to wise decision making and privacy. Also ethics, responsibility, citizenship, along with issues of copywrite and plagerism)
8] Design & Design Thinking (this is not included in the original and is fundamental to 50%+ of communication online) To me, the failure of the MIT New media literacy list to include the above two is truly re-miss. Howard Garners 5 New Minds for the Future would suggest that at a minimum that Responsibility and Awareness belongs on the list–and given his passion for creativity and different modes of learning and thinking would include #8 as well (it could be the MIT project has a page which contextualizes these two issues–however the failure to prioritize them is a striking omission).
In fact, the MIT project has found them important enough to make major subjects and in the case of design thinking00-of their blog discussions–but Secondary list of new media literacy skills:
1) Performance: the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery. 2) Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
3) Distributed cognition: the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.
4) Transmedia navigation: The ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
5) Multitasking: the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. I think the simulation is probably important. Finally, multi-tasking isn’t as important given that students are teaching themselves–also there is a reasonable amount of scholarship to suggest that its a bad thing. Certainly simulation and some of the other skills/goals/objectives listed in this new media literacy list deserve some unpacking (I think 50% or greater of teachers would have no idea what 35% of this is talking about–it would spread/scale better if a single sentance were added to some to provide more context and direction) I think grouping skills together may serve to help teachers of the next generation to best implement these skills in lesson plans and various classroom offerings.
To learn more check out the New Media Literacy Blog (which does unpack some of the above issues surrounding social media literacy) and Teaching Tech Saavy Kids. Both the Project New Media Literacy and Teaching Tech Saavy Kids site offer social networking on a Ning-type website, including forums.
Please realize my aim is not to do away with or diminish the great research work of these new media scholars (Henry Jenkins, with Ravi Purushotma, Katherine Clinton, Margaret Weigel, and Alice J. Robison), but rather to:
1) have a re-calibrated focus on the issues that matter most to our students of tomorrow
2) to communicate clearly where the focuses of the project lie. For many scholars this list will be the first, last, and only reference to these guiding principles.
3) provide clear(er) communication instead of jargon, loaded language, and solipsism.
4) re-orient some of the less important or redundant skills on the list.
5) borrow on trends which are occurring, which the new media literacy rubric seems to leave out, which could cause it to be a stumbling block to true new media literacy
Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren't - Michael Schrage - Harvard Business Review
Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren’t
