The Flip Camera is No More

Luckily, the Media Commons has been exploring a move to iOS devices for mobile video recording (and editing and photography and research and ARGs, and…) because the latest news from Cisco could have been devastating.  The networking company has decided it no longer actually wants to be into consumer electronics and is nixing the popular Flip line.  Since our standard Media Commons model is almost entirely based on Flip cameras at the moment, this will certainly force us to move even more quickly towards an iOS-flavored future.  Just glad we’ve already started the groundwork…

For Example

I mentioned the other day how excited I was for the new apps that bring Apple’s iLife suite to the iPad 2.  Well, it looks like a band has gone and recorded the first album entirely with GarageBand on the iOS.

As Wired reports, Ultramod has put together an indie-punk “record” using nothing for recording and editing but the $5 app and the $500 iPad.  The result, Underwear Party was produced for tens of thousands less and is already for sale for $10 online.

What did Ultramod think of this stripped-down process?

“I see [the GarageBand app] as an everything-combined-into-one package,” said Max “Bunny” Sparber, The Ultramods’ lead singer. “Both new musicians and professional musicians are going to be very surprised with what they can do with it.”

I couldn’t agree more.  Listen to a track to see just what this inexpensive solution can do.

(From my iPad blog)

Learning from the Students

Today brought me to the Altoona campus for three project advising sessions with Heather Eckels’ history courses.  One really interesting aspect of her teaching is that she asks students in small groups to find a current event relating to controversial social issues and present it at the beginning of class. The first fifteen minutes of each period are devoted to this presentation and a conversation led by the student group, which prepares questions they would like their classmates to think on.  

I was particularly taken with this interview clip presented with questions regarding copyright, artists’ rights and the legality of profiting from a post-modern mashup of others’ works.  I have been a Girl Talk fan since for years but had never bothered to actually look up an interview with Greg Gillis, who creates an eloquent analogy:  we’d have a lot more painters if paint was being given away on the streets.  Does make you think, doesn’t it?

User Services Conference 2011

I attended my first – and last, as it’s now defunct – User Services Conference today with my Media Commons partner in crime (if you define crime as massive caffeine consumption at the complementary coffee bar) Hannah Inzko.  Held at the Penn Stater, the event was a chance for those who support the end users of PSU’s technology resources to come together and discuss how services are offered and how offerings can be improved.  We broke in to teams to discuss topics like “keeping current with new technologies” and “doing more with fewer resources” after a panel presentation on what support means.  It was very back to basics and a good way to spend a rainy (and then sunny) Monday.  Big thanks to Hannah for talking me into tagging along!

Evolution of Social AI

io9 asks the question “What can science fiction tell us about the future of social media?” by first defining social media as any communication that can be easily repurposed and shared without being tethered or hindered by a static form.  In that way, the entirety of our online content is social.  This realization serves to underline just how dramatically vast the body of this mostly un-studied cultural force really is.

As part of a panel at SXSW, futurists, bloggers and authors from the world of Science Fiction were brought together to discuss what lessons our stories of the coming years can teach us.  A common thread throughout the conversation was the unintended establishment of a permanently stored record of an increasingly blurred set of identities for each individual.  By contributing to a collective dialogue through reposting, commenting, sharing, etc we are each always leaving a record of ourselves in an internet overmind – no matter what facet of ourselves is operating at that time of the day.  Where do we go when the lines between personal and professional, work and family, home and afield, student and teacher blur to indistinction?  And how do we reconcile the statements made on and off the clock when they all aggregate in a single feed?

[…] citizens of this society […] have taken back user control by inventing new internal organs which are constantly negotiating privacy settings in every social situation.

– article author, Annalee Newitz discusses The Quantum Thief

The quote above sounds far-fetched but you could switch “organ” out for “context-aware mobile device” and arrive at our current point in time.  Will we develop even more ways of dealing with the need to continually censor and compartmentalize as more and more of our lives is permanently stored and readily accessible?   Will it matter to the next generation?  Already, I care very little about what others know of me and share to the point of consternating my significant other on a regular basis.  Will this be the new normal for society when the newly minted adults that are currently high school and college students take the reigns of a world that has always been social?

DML Wrap Up: Stuck in DC

The DML conference wrapped up yesterday, but so did my in-room internet so I had planned on writing up my final thoughts once I arrived back home in State College.  However, I find myself now writing them up at a new Hilton here in DC.  More on that in a moment…

Day three of the conference was really a winding down sort of affair.  In talking with Shivaani Selvaraj from Penn State Harrisburg, I learned there was at least one relatively interactive session – the HTML5 workshop she attended that was put on by the Mozilla foundation.  Overall, though, it seemed that the last day of the conference was dedicated to bringing together ideas discussed throughout and doling out the appropriate thank yous to everyone who helped make it happen.

The closing keynote did offer some interesting tidbits.  Presented by Muki Hansteen-Izora, most recently of Intel’s health technology wing, the session focused on ways that technology solutions can be designed to benefit human communities and their endeavors.  From work done in the early 90s with getting inner city youth online to his recent work finding ways to use algorithms to improve the lives of aging people in their own homes, Muki embodies a way of using technology and design to give back to humanity at large.

One thing that intrigued me from the wrap up keynote was the idea of turning a resource for a specific group into a larger communal center.  Would it be possible to make the Media Commons at some campuses a space that not just students could use but also disadvantaged individuals from the local fabric?  How would something like that work, if it’s even doable?

Unfortunately, an item that did not follow me back from Long Beach was the weather.  Instead of flying in to State College tonight from Dulles, I found myself delayed, then circling the airport, then returning to Washington and suddenly attempting to find a hotel last minute and a shuttle to take me there.  I suppose it’s better than taking a prop plane (or cab) into a sudden March blizzard but I might feel a little less exhausted if I didn’t get up at 4:00 am PST before this happened!

DML Conference Day Two

The first full day of conferencing at DML 2011 kicked off today in Long Beach and it certainly gave off a much more organized air than yesterday’s upside down workshop and keynote affair. I began my day in the Novel Content track with a panel discussion of the ways in which new modes of learning are being explored at several different levels from K-12 in suburban Wisconsin to textbook publishing to higher education.  Ideas of literacy were the primary focus, chiefly the concept of integrating “knowledgeable others” into the roster of accepted classroom information sources. Of particular interest to ETS was a staggering bit of information from the K-12 realm where a new game design course garnered enough buy-in from 9th through 12th graders to merit a full eight sections during its first year.  The EGC will certainly have a large pool of interested students in the coming years if this is a national trend.

Next was a panel on living a Networked Public Life curated by danah boyd.  I was probably the most starstruck at this session and for good reason.  danah brought together researchers who were discovering ideas of persona, celebrity, access and agency from diverse groups like Bay area tech professionals, Appalachian Queer youth, Australian aborigines and Indian mobile phone users.  My big take away from this session actually came from the work of Mary Gray with LGBT young people in rural environments, though peripherally.  I realized that there were lessons to be learned that are directly applicable to how I – and the Media Commons – interfaces with rural campuses in western PA.  Specifically, how we approach and assume values imposed by urban-oriented media and media creation.  Having myself grown up in a very rural place, I do know that it’s highly important to many of these communities to be identified as local and to be part of the familiar as opposed to be an outsider or anonymous.  It will certainly be a point to remember going forward with building MC communities at our less city-centric locations.

The day rounded out with a session on Emerging Platforms that covered the OLPC efforts in the West Bank, Twitter use in Philadelphia area elementary schools, inner city learning initiatives in San Francisco and New York and research from ETS’s own Heather Hughes.  Later, I made my way to the plenary panel which prompted a feisty backchannel discussion about pop culture in education, privilege in creating learning ecosystems and licensing for music from Requiem for a Dream.

If you are starting to gather that DML is a really varied (and vaguely disjointed) conference, you are headed in the right direction with your assessment.  

DML Conference Day One: Day in Reverse

At least that’s how I’d term this first day of the Digital Media & Learning Conference in Long Beach.  After traveling for what felt like an eternity yesterday, today’s laid back pace was welcome – at least at first.  Registration started at 8:00 am on the second floor here at the Hilton with workshops following at 9:00.  Each session was paired with four others, making choosing a track somewhat difficult, as many interesting title ran concurrently.  This promoted quite a bit of room-hopping which did make the conversations between participants a bit difficult, as it seemed like quite a few attendees were plotting their escape midway through each two hour block.  

My morning session on “Designing for Designers” was a good cross section of the participant backgrounds in attendance, though.  In just my circle were two grad students studying social media and youth culture, a project manager from Google, a curriculum developer for a K-12 initiative, an media space coordinator from Singapore and a LA-based social advocacy programming producer.  I learned a lot about how each of these different people thought of the questions we were asked, which included such topics as “how to negotiate designer vs. content creator rights in communities.”  While I looked at this from a physical space perspective (Media Commons installations), the K-12 developer saw it as it related to the classroom, the Google employee saw it as online products and services, the woman from Singapore saw it as how interactive exhibits were developed, etc.  And our session organizers from MIT’s Scratch project saw it as something entirely different, making providing an answer a bit of a challenge.

The conversations held between sessions with fellow attendees made up for the awkward workshops, though and the delightful keynote from Alice Taylor – former gaming content coordinator for Channel 4 – really made the day worthwhile.  In fact, the entire welcome session this evening really connected the dots on how the day was conceived and made sense of the disparate tracks and presenters in each workshop.  I hate to be traditional about it because I know what the conference organizers were going for by structuring the day as freeform as it was, but I would almost have preferred the day’s last formal session to be its first.  In talking with other participants, I am not alone in this sentiment.

Oh well – onward into the first day of official lecture sessions tomorrow.  If they are a fraction as compelling as Alice’s, I’m going to be pleased this time tomorrow.

Forum on Media + Gaming

It’s been just over 24 hours since the Forum on Media + Gaming wrapped up at Penn State Harrisburg and I have had some time to think about what worked so well at this event.

The aspect of the Forum that was pivotal to it going so great was the location.  The Penn State Harrisburg campus was an ideal spot for bringing together participants from York, Mont Alto, Altoona, Lehigh Valley and Hazleton as well as Harrisburg itself and University Park. Attendees were primarily from Harrisburg (62.8%) and University Park (23.3%) with York and Altoona sending 9.2% of visitors and Hazleton and Berks adding another 4.6%.  Of these attendees, 30.2% were faculty, 55.8% staff, 7.0% administration and 4.7% students.

The Morrison Gallery was a really beautiful space that afforded us a blank canvas to create an inviting “conference in the round” with screens on all side of the participants.  Seating faculty and staff at circular tables in the center of the room encouraged conversation while the student art on the walls and gallery lighting kept the creative process at the forefront of discussion.

Despite less than ideal weather, 32 people made it to Penn State Harrisburg for the 9:00 am kick off.  We were lucky to have the Chancellor, Dr. Mukund Kulkarni deliver opening remarks which included much enthusiasm about the future of technology and for opportunities to pilot new strategies for teaching and learning via the Media Commons and EGC.  Afterwards, Chris Millet shared a run down of the latest Media Commons stats and talked about the educational trends we are investigating and the upcoming tools that we see taking them into the classroom.

The faculty panel really started the conversational aspect of the day. This panel gave not just the three panelists (Sherry Robinson from Hazleton, Peter Linehan from Mont Alto and Suzanne Shaffer from York) a chance to talk about their own use of tech in education but also plenty of opportunities for audience questions and feedback.  The subtitle of the Forum foreshadowed “The Commons in Conversation” and this portion really delivered on that promise.

Much more conversation followed an engaging presentation by Chris Stubbs about the Educational Gaming Commons. Chris focused on ways in which games, game-like elements and the general concept of gamification can improve and embellish the existing classroom experience – as well as how the EGC can help to plan and foster these efforts.  Clickers were employed to gauge knowledge of specific interest in the EGC’s offerings before and after this segment.

Participants were then asked up out of their seats to get hands on with the new technologies that had been presented earlier on.  Justin Miller demonstrated the fast-maturing One Button Studio and fielded questions about its implementation while Chris Stubbs continued the dialogue started during his presentation from moments before.  I detailed the current iOS pilot program and handed out iPod touch devices to interested attendees as well as providing ideas for how the gadgets might be used.  Other Media Commons staffers – Hannah Inzko, Carla Rapp, Lauren Beal and Trace Brown – were on hand to talk with faculty and staff throughout the Hands On session.

It must be said:  the benefit of having the generous and far-reaching assistance of Instructional and Information Technologies Director, John Hoh as well as that of Mike Lackey in ITS and JoAnn Coleman in Capitol Catering on the ground at Harrisburg leading up to the event cannot be underestimated.  Without a doubt, the Forum on Media + Gaming would not have been nearly as successful from planning to execution without them.

There were two changes I would have made from a planning point of view.  First would have been to place the faculty panel seating in a slightly more visible spot for attendees at the farthest table.  Second, I would have asked that lunch start fifteen minutes after the end of the Hands On session, not thirty (though the half hour break did allow for informal interaction and impromptu explorations of the lovely Harrisburg campus library).

Overall, the event seems to have been a success with entirely positive feedback from attendees who shared their thoughts in person.  I look forward to hearing from participants via the web-based survey that was shared with them last night – as well as seeing their own reflections on the event and other “mctg” tagged media appear on the Forum’s collaborative corkboard.

Update: Your Feedback

I wanted to share the feedback that the Media Commons has received so far on the Forum on Media + Gaming.  Nine individuals have let us know what they thought about the event (about 28% of participants) and the general opinion is that the Forum was a success.  First, the numbers:

1. We asked you how you felt about the quality of the planning of this event in areas of Organization, Pacing, Venue, Web Presence, Communications and Refreshments on a scale of Excellent, Good, Okay, Poor and Very Poor.  Respondents chose either Excellent or Good for all areas.

2. We also asked attendees to share their opinion of the quality of the day’s events at Harrisburg, including the categories Relevant Information, Interesting Information, Varied Presenters, Appropriate Topics and Clear Logistics.  Choices for these questions ranged from Strongly Agree through Strongly Disagree.  In all but one category, responses were positive, primarily Strongly Agree.  Only one response was Neutral for all categories.

3. Finally, we asked our guests to rate what they thought of each component of the Forum agenda.  The choices were again Excellent through Very Poor and the responses were almost entirely positive, with only two people choosing Okay in all categories.

In addition to these metrics, we received some good comments that will be helpful in structure future Forum events, including tips on how to better lay out the space as well as ideas on timing and agenda topics.  The most important feedback was pulled from the question “Would you attend this event in the future?”, to which 100% of respondents replied “Yes”.  All in all, very encouraging indeed as we move towards the next Forum on Media + Gaming at Greater Allegheny on April 4th.

To all of you who have submitted feedback, thank you very much.  It’s not too late to contribute – just visit the online survey!

I’d Have Been All Over This

School children in the UK were greeted with an amazing sight on a recent morning:  a crashed UFO.

On arriving for classes, the Kingsway primary school students were greeted by a debris field on the playground (one supposes nothing sharp or radioactive) and personally greeted by the alien occupants in their classrooms.

As a child (and even now), I would have been enthralled by this day of learning.

The event was put together in order to encourage creative writing and imaginative thinking within the school. 

The pupils will now write their experiences from the day for a school newspaper to be published and distributed throughout the local community.

By partnering with a local acting high school – and giving its students a role as the extraterrestrial visitors – the activity generated a creative opportunity for both actors and writers that they will not soon forget.  It was also a truly interactive learning experience that reminds me of the simulated space mission I got to be a part of as a Penn State junior.

(This Is Lincolnshire)