Change of Title and Recent Activities

I decided to change the title of this blog to better reflect my various projects and activities in new media, interdisciplinary/"metadisciplinary" thinking, and research activities.

In August as part of the Preterm Seminar series, I taught a section within a massive linked course (9 different sections and instructors) based on Benjamin Barber's book Jihad vs. McWorld. My section examined music and media influences prevalent in western culture and the impact within the Islamic world.

This fall semester I am teaching an honors seminar with a colleague in Communication titled "Digital Media, Art and Social Change". Reading Postman, Henry Jenkins (Convergence Culture), Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs), and taking a serious look at social computing practices and virtual worlds. This seminar continues in the winter semester with students defining projects and doing more hands-on activities.

We just added a new media course for winter semester called "HyperMedia and the Semantic Web". While I expect a modest enrollment of around 7-10, this course will provide a creative space for the new media minor students to work more with interactive web programming (Flash) and address many of the new Web 2.0 tools and techniques (blogging, podcasts, wikis, user-generated submissions, etc.).

I am writing this while attending the Association for Technology in Music conference in Salt Lake City. Lots of presentations on the topic of social computing and Second Life. Interesting stuff...