What is the Parachut<e>? This semester, the Director and Assistant Director of the Writing and Communication Program here at Georgia Tech approved a pilot program for a learning technology that I have been helping to design and build for the last several years. <emma> is a learning management system that… Continue reading
On the eve of his return to Canaan, your biblical namesake, Jacob, wrestled with an angel until daybreak. What force is your greatest challenge on your journey to “The Promised Land?” You walk into the room and take a seat before a firing squad of six interviewers. For an arduous… Continue reading
‘Write a reflection piece on this last term.’ That sounded like a reasonable task and one I would be able to knock out quickly – in the midst of trying to finish marking and prepare to fly home for the holidays (if anyone has any suggestions what I can get… Continue reading
This semester I taught a course on collaborative consumption. According to Rachel Botsman, who coined the phrase in What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, collaborative consumption has emerged from “digital interactions” that have enabled consumers to “experience the concept that cooperation does not need to come at… Continue reading
At the end of the semester I like to take some time to look back at the classes I just taught and evaluate how they actually turned out. It always feels like a leap of faith to me, trusting that the syllabus I created in the quiet summer months and… Continue reading
For the end of the Fall semester, I challenged six Brittain Fellows to give me a reflection on the difficulties and the triumphs experienced in their courses. What follows is a series of meditations on a wide variety of pedagogical subjects: from presentations of student projects to theories of student… Continue reading
Students who went to these labs encountered fields of knowledge that they did not know existed. Continue reading
My class this semester revolved around the idea of people, material artifacts, and information that are “born digital.” As my class blurb explains, “for people, this means that they are born into, and have only ever known, a world that prioritizes all forms of digitization; for materials and information, it… Continue reading
On November 18, the Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program hosted the Fall Communication Colloquium in which two Brittain Fellows presented on work their students have been doing in class this semester. The presenters did such a wonderful job generating discussion during the sessions (a link to an archive of… Continue reading
Last month, while attending a Caribbean Island Cultures conference held at the University of Guyana in Georgetown, Guyana, I was jolted out of my usual polite conference attentiveness when a series of papers suddenly shifted away from the usual focus on such traditional island cultures as Storytelling, Carnival or post-colonial… Continue reading
In addition to my other responsibilities as a Brittain Fellow, I have also been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to serve as coordinator of DevLab, the Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program’s Research and Development Lab. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be bringing you… Continue reading
On November 18, the Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program hosted the Fall Communication Colloquium in which two Brittain Fellows presented on work their students have been doing in class this semester. The presenters did such a wonderful job generating discussion during the sessions (a link to an archive of… Continue reading
To mark Open Access week, on Thursday, October 21, Georgia Tech’s Library and Information Center sponsored a panel, “Expanding the Reach of Your Research: An Open Forum on Authorship and Your Intellectual Property.” Evans Harrell (School of Sciences, Mathematics) facilitated, and TyAnna Herrington Continue reading
Zach Whalen is Assistant Professor in the English, Linguistics and Communication Department at the University of Mary Washington, where he teaches courses in video games, the graphic novel, media studies, and electronic literature. He is co-editor (with Laurie Taylor) of Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games. I… Continue reading
This semester, I have been using YouTube as a pedagogical tool while also reading about views on the worth of this site and others like it in the classroom. These experiences have given me a good sense of the ideals that we as teacher-scholars bring with us in our encounters… Continue reading
The Future Media Fest emphasized, for me, the increasing tension between the public sphere and private enterprise or, in other words, the struggle between corporate profit and public good over the move to more collective forms of identity. In my first post, on the Startup Technology Showcase, I looked at… Continue reading
Last week, I found it difficult to relate to the other attendees of Georgia Tech’s FutureMedia Fest 2010; in fact, I failed to connect with them rather spectacularly on many levels. Moving back and forth between academia and a considerably more commercial environment is jarring. I failed to share the… Continue reading
The Digital Media Skills panel underlined the importance of communication skills for all students looking to get jobs in media and technology. Eric Berger argued in his introduction that, in the future, communication will be the skill employers will look for when hiring. Most of the panel agreed. Rebecca Burnett… Continue reading
Does a virtual world require “real” morals and ethics, or do virtual worlds demand virtual ethics? What does an ethics of the virtual look like? Continue reading
The afternoon panel on “Social Media for Collective Intelligence” emphasized some of the benefits and challenges of the emerging form of collective intelligence to marketing and journalism. Collective Intelligence or “the wisdom of the crowds” depends upon a group of people providing collective answers to questions or problems. David Clinch,… Continue reading
At today’s panel on the Future of Advertising and Marketing at FutureMedia Fest, panelists noted some public confusion about the infringement of privacy that is incurred when personal information is tracked through cookies and sold to advertisers for marketing purposes. In the long run, they argued, targeted marketing will enhance… Continue reading
All of the members of Future of Advertising and Marketing panel were in absolute agreement: targeted online advertising is not “Big Brother.” Tracking cookies and other technologies that allow for online ads to be customized for individual users, like the stuff that tells your browser to show you car ads… Continue reading
How can crowdsourcing and social media applications be used to provide more personalization over media content? That was the focus of the Startup and Reception Technology Showcase, which featured several new companies exploring the odd middle-ground between collaboration, control and privacy. Continue reading
24 hours of video per minute That’s the rate at which digital footage is being uploaded to YouTube, according to Michael Jones’ opening keynote presentation at Future Media Fest. Jones, who is Chief Technology Advocate at Google, cited the number as part of his argument that digital communication technology is… Continue reading
During the week of October 4, Georgia Tech will play host to Future Media Fest, a conference that bills itself as “an interactive mash-up of talent, ideas, trends and technology.” This event promises to provide a glimpse at some emerging technologies and social formations involving digital media, including social media,… Continue reading
