NMC Summer Conference-Princeton University

A group from Alma College attended the NMC (New Media Consortium) Summer Conference (June 11-14) at Princeton University. Wow, what can I say in a few words about this experience? Seeing Princeton University for the first time was awe inspiring and a quasi-religious experience. Walking the halls and buildings of this fabulous monument to academia was truly moving and a fascinating couple days. And the town...downtown Princeton was glorious and our group made sure to take in some of the fine dining and great pubs.

The NMC is a dynamic organization and hosted a great event. You could feel the energy and enthusiasm of the attendees and the sessions and conversations afterward were outstanding.

Certainly one of the highlights was the closing keynote by Henry Jenkins from MIT. I can't think of anyone who "gets it" and better understands how new media technologies are transforming so many aspects of our culture and our world. I am really pleased that Alma College in now a member of the NMC and I look forward to more collaboration and interaction among NMC member schools and Alma.

Next year's conference will be in Monterey at California State University. Here is a short welcome video from the hosts for the 2009 Conference.

Check out some photos taken by attendees from the conference at http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/photos

By the way, I gave a morning pre-conference workshop on June 10 titled "QuickTime Revisited" which explored how QuickTime 7 Pro differs in some important ways from previous versions of QuickTime, particularly in areas such as capture/recording of audio and video and the apparent step backward with regard to interactivity. Participants were able to step through some hands-on activities and learn to caption video, create media skins, create mashups by extracting and combining tracks from different videos, and a few other fun exercises. I am compiling these tutorials in a web version so stay tuned for a link to the material.

A Look Ahead-Sabbatical

I have been giving a lot of thought to my sabbatical next year. I hope to be able to take the year to work primarily in Chicago and develop an advanced collaborative with other college new media programs, faculty, museums, libraries, media companies, and research centers.

I am convinced more than ever that the future success of the new media program at Alma College depends on our ability to be involved in partnerships and be a part of larger enterprises or "knowledge networks" with the common desire to understand how digital media technologies are changing the world around us and seeding innovation in teaching and learning. I am looking forward to meeting many that are involved in producing, researching, teaching, and applying digital media applications in print, film and video, television, web design, interactive media, and other channels of delivery.

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...

Subjects and Ideas for a Documentary

Use this forum discussion topic to continue the conversation begun this morning. Brainstorm some subjects and ideas for a documentary video project. Everyone is encouraged to make suggestions, advance new ideas, and provide comments or feedback. Recalling the Rosenthal reading (Writing, Directing, and Producing Documentary Films), pay particular attention to Chapter 6 (Shaping the Film) and the concept of the "key" or "handle" being explored. What is the angle you intend to use to approach the subject matter? How will this particular angle contribute to the interest and appeal to your intended audience?

NOTE: You can just click where you see the comments link to reply to this post.

End of Week One

After one week, NMS 210 students have gained some facility with XHTML and CSS layouts and styling. For each assignment, the students have been required to submit via our course management system (Moodle) and also all assignments have to be validated for both the HTML and CSS at w3.org.

One thing I want to cover next week is the principle of "inheritance" with CSS. I have noticed a lot of unnecessary and redundant code in the style sheets. Experimentation and troubleshooting a CSS page can be both rewarding and frustrating. The results, however, can leave a mess of useless code that should be cleaned up.

In the future, I want to develop some templates for common CSS techniques. For instance, many students wanted to include image switching or rollover effects without JavaScript. I think the background position changing technique works well but we ran into a few difficulties when trying to actually switch background images. We observed some odd differences in Firefox 2.0.3 and Safari for the Mac.

We will be forming the groups next week for the project phase of the class. There will be 4 groups and each group will develop a website. The Pine River contamination, the CAFO (Contained Animal Feeding Operation), campus security/emergency response, and the Great Lakes water supply will be the risk/crises topics addressed.

That's all for now.
rgr

First Day of Class

As we try and figure out how to use the blogging feature in Moodle, I thought it best to also keep this blog at blogger.com active.

We had our first meeting today and for the most part I think things went well. The COM 280 and NMS 210 students met as a group and reacted to the "risky" ideas for how the courses would be linked. Although I am sure we will learn some things as we go, there was general agreement that this "experiment" is well worth testing out.

On the technical end of things, we covered a basic introduction to web site organization, site management, Dreamweaver HTML authoring, and using web browsers for testing our sites. In particular, all the students now know how important it is to always test and test often. The Web Developer extensions for Firefox will come in very handy.

That's all for now.
rgr

First Post for NMS 210 Test Blog

I thought it might be interesting and fun to look more closely at blogging as I prepare for the spring term and NMS 210: Introduction to Digital Media. This year, the course is linked with Mike Vickery's class COM 280: Risk and Crisis Communication. I am excited to see some interesting projects develop as the students from both classes work together.

The NMS students will be getting a full dose of web and media design skills including HTML, CSS, JavaScript (mostly cut/paste), graphics, audio, video, and Flash objects, and in general exploring the challenges and methods to create media rich and engaging web content.

Should be fun!