Dinner & A Movie Event at Greater Allegheny
Media Commons hosted a new kind of event at the Greater Allegheny campus last night. Entitled “Dinner & A Movie”, the evening get together was an effort to use a film as the starting point for a conversation with faculty and staff about digital media in the classroom.
Hannah Inzko and I started things off with a brief introduction to the evening’s main feature, PressPausePlay. Then, participants spent 80 minutes exploring the conundrums of signal vs. noise, craft vs. radical democratization and other implications of the digital media revolution that has steeped our current cohort of students. When everyone has the tools to make art at their fingertips (through spaces like Media Commons and at home), what does it mean to be an artist? And how do we engage with these creators in the traditional classroom?
Conversation followed over a tasty dinner spread provided by the campus catering staff and included faculty from History, Art, Criminal Justice as well as the Library on campus and at Penn State Beaver. Greater Allegheny’s chancellor, Dr. Curtiss Porter also made an appearance and we had a great discussion about upcoming project ideas for his Civic Engagement course.
Dinner & A Movie was a fun collaboration between Media Commons and head librarian at Greater Allegheny, Courtney Young (to whom we are so grateful). It’s also an offering that we’d love to try out at other campuses across the Commonwealth this coming Fall semester. Let us know if you’re interested!