Topics in Digital Media – Fall 09

We are reaching the end of our journey(s) and now we want to extract our experience in a constructive way. You have worked to tag your posts and we can already reflect on the topic trends in the tag-cloud and through the (often somewhat obscure) “Possibly Relevant Posts” feature. In these coming two weeks we will all work together to start and complete the New Media Embed Program. For those of you who are fishing for a better grade, this is your bonus round, so leadership and good work on this class assignment will be appreciated and rewarded.

The New Media Embed Program (a manual)

This one is a group assignment. And by group I mean the whole class. We are going to write a manual for the new media researcher, based on the experiences and themes we have gathered in this class, all in wiki format. I have deliberately not structured the wiki as I want to see how will you guys work together to make the structure emerge from the group activity. What we can expect to have in a manual like this might be (just suggestions, you are welcomed to come up with other ideas):

• Topics we discussed through readings: trust, community, CBPP, open source, social software, network theory, interface, fun, the long tail, representation/simulation, control, remix culture, game theory, copyright laws, net neutrality…
• Topics we discussed in class: mash-ups, twitter, religion, Google Wave, Facebook activism, music business, crowdsourcing…
• Do’s and Don’t for conducting a networked research, posting, commenting, tagging, podcasting, vodcasting, screencasting, interviewing, using rich media, embedding yourself in a media environment, choosing a starting destination…
• Best practices for travelogues
• Recap of key travelogues conducted through the semester.
• What does “New Media” or “Digital Media” stand for anyway?
• You name it…

To get started:

• Log in with your username/password from the blog (if you’re not already logged-in, check under the ‘Personal tools’ sidebar)
• Learn the MediaWiki syntax (if you don’t already know it)
• To start a new page simply write its name after the tdm/wiki/index.php/_______ and then, when it says the page does not exist yet, edit it to bring it to life.
• Make sure to link between the pages using this syntax [[Page_Name]] or link to external links (including our blog) using [http://www.somesite.com the text you want to be linked]
• When saving, write what was the content of your change, so we can easily track it
• Use the talk pages to coordinate when it makes sense.
• Track changes through the new sidebar on the blog or through RSS feeds.
• Enjoy…

Some Tips:

• We need structure, try to work on the main page to formalize the architecture of the travelogue
• Feel free to link to currently non-existing pages like that: [[Trust]] if you think it makes sense for someone (maybe even you, but not necessarily you) to write them, and then for someone else to help edit it.
• Work on pages together, start something, make some subheadings that you think should be filled by someone, invite them to help you, even comment on their posts with something like: “Hey Gordita, I started this page on our wiki about Twitter and I thought you might have a lot to add to it” – that way the wiki will collaboratively evolve.
• Check out the History pages to see what edits have been made on a page.

* I’m expecting each of you to make at least 35 edits this week, or in other words, make sure you edit so much that you stop counting. This wiki is what we leave behind this class and will be what you take with you from it.

Required Reading:

• The Impending Demise of the University by Don Tapscott
• MyUniversity.com? Personalized Education and Personalized News by Cass Sunstein
• Melissa’s summary + your comment on it

Recommended Viewing:

• My University.com, My Government.com: Is the Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy? presentation by Cass Sunstein
  (you can play it in the background, it’s not very visual)

For Melissa:

• Read the articles and view/listen to the presentations
• Optionally Highlight and annotate the reading to help its accessibility for the rest of you.
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, ideally running some threads between them.
• Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class.
• Think of questions to lead off the discussion
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.