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Involving Students in Digital Storytelling: A NERCOMP SIG Event

Posted October 12th, 2007 by Kevin Wiliarty, Wesleyan University
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The notion that education liberates runs deep in the digital storytelling movement. Small wonder then that liberal arts educators take such an interest in the project. Anyone planning to use digital storytelling, however, faces a number of non-trivial challenges, some logistical, some pedagogical, some bureaucratic:

  • How does one run/structure a workshop?
  • Who are good candidates for participation?
  • What tools should participants use?
  • How, if at all, will the stories be published?
  • What about copyrighted content?
  • How might digital storytelling be incorporated into a syllabus?
  • Can digital stories be 'scholarly'?
All of these questions surfaced to varying degrees over the course of the SIG.

CFP: Currents in Electronic Literacy's upcoming issue, "The Commons"

Posted October 4th, 2007 by Justin Tremel, University of Texas at Austin
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The editors of Currents in Electronic Literacy (an MLA-indexed, peer-reviewed e-journal) seek manuscripts for its upcoming issue, themed "The Commons." The manuscripsts should address the role or the relevance of the cultural commons for those working, teaching, or living in a mediated age.

The Cult of the Amateur

Posted September 22nd, 2007 by Cheryl A. Casey, New York University
2 Comments | 1596 Page Views
Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture. New York: Doubleday/Currency, 2007. 228 pp. Hardcover $22.95. ISBN 978-0-385-52080-5

Andrew Keen insists he is neither anti-technology nor anti-progress. Yet this veteran of the dot com era begins his recent book, The Cult of the Amateur (Doubleday/Currency, 2007), sounding much like a high-culture snob pooh-poohing the vulgar masses for having appropriated the Web as their own and, in the process, wreaking potential destruction on our economy, culture and values. Keen's polemic hints less at neo-Luddite dissent than at an underlying bitterness and resentment--at his own gullibility at having been so easily sucked into the Internet dream, and also at those who have taken the technology out of the hands of professionals like himself ("I almost became rich" [p. 11], he confesses in the beginning of the first chapter). Drawing on 19th-century evolutionary biologist T. H. Huxley's "infinite monkey theory," Keen fears what lies ahead when the masses are empowered with far-reaching technology. As the author describes it, Huxley's theorem asserts that if infinite monkeys are provided with infinite typewriters, one of these monkeys will eventually create a masterpiece. Keen updates and reverses the theorem, replacing monkeys with humans and typewriters with networked personal computers; and "instead of creating masterpieces, these millions and millions of exuberant monkeys--many with no more talent than our primate cousins--are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity" (pp. 2-3). By the end of the introduction, a reader would have just cause to feel a bit insulted.

But if you haven't tossed the book out the window just yet as one extended tantrum--and are willing to patiently look past the author's continued candor on the infinite monkey metaphor--you begin to encounter a number of points that are likely to give you pause, possibly in alarm.

MacArthur Foundation Commits $50 Million to Digital Media and Education

Posted October 19th, 2006 by David Green, Knowledge Culture
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Building on its substantial work in this arena already the MacArthur Foundation has just announced a five-year program to fund "research and innovative projects focused on understanding the impact of the widespread use of digital media on our youth and how they learn.” Although geared toward the 8-18-year-old population, the project could have implications for college media education.

A white paper by MIT's Henry Jenkins is also released today to mark this announcement.

NERALLT Fall Meeting to discuss New Modes of Communication

Posted September 29th, 2006 by Mary Morrisard-Larkin, College of the Holy Cross
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The next NERALLT meeting, Virtually Anything: Modes of Communication, will take place on Thursday and Friday, October 26 and 27, 2006 and will be hosted by Thomas Hammond at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.  

This meeting will examine the generational shift occurring in young people, regarding the use of communication and collaboration technologies by these "digital natives.” How will their social and learning styles shape instructional language technology and pedagogy for the next generation of students?

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