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significant scholarly achievements
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Over the past year, my scholarly activities have developed two skillsets, video making and web making, and the research needed for the content and context of the videos and webs. These activities fit the new handbook's section 4.5.3.3.1 Types of Scholarship as noted here and detailed in my portfolio.
The best way to learn how to use a tool is to use it. This year, I continued to shoot video of student presentations in a variety of settings under a range of sub-optimal lighting and sound conditions. I used the Sony Handycam that I have been using for several years and that will hold me in good stead for another couple of years.
In all my courses, the students make formal presentations.
I used to tape every second of every presentation until I wasn't learning any more about taping in the Lecture Hall. Starting in Fall 2006, I taped very second of only the first presentation in each course. After that, I taped only a portion of each student's presentation, usually to feature especially effective and ineffective moments. That still ended up being dozens of hours of video to process and manage.
Fall 2005
MKT 425 - final presentations in Lecture Hall
Spring 2006
MBA 600 - five in-class presentations; final presentation in Lecture Hall
WRT 200 - final presentation in Lecture Hall
MBA 504 - one in-class presentations; final presentation in Lecture Hall
MBA 604 - final presentation in Lecture Hall
Summer 2006
MBA 624 - final presentation in class (Lecture Hall not available)
Fall 2006
MBA 600 - first two classes; two in-class presentations; one press conference in
TV studio; final presentation in Lecture Hall
ENG 200 - two in-class presentations; final presentation in Lecture Hall
GEN 230 - two in-class presentations; final presentation in Lecture Hall
MBA 604 - final presentation in Lecture Hall
For the two videos listed below, I taped about fifteen hours of video this year on location in Clarence and Alden. I worked with Bill Jobling and Donna Ioviero of Clear Light Studio and Mary Kozub, an art teacher at Alden High School. I also shot an hour of video at Kelly Schultz Antiques in Clarence.
”Garden of Earthly Delights”, promotional video catalog, for Clear Light Studio, Clarence, NY, 2006
”Courtyard Sculpture”, WNY art-in-the-schools documentary video, for Alden (NY) Central School District, (in progress)
I want to gain the fluency with video that I have with words. I need to further develop my skills in production and editing.
All my course materials, including the "textbook", is on RicciStreet.net or linked to it. As a result, I spend much of my day filtering online material to link to as well as write the textbook, so to speak. As one example of dozens, in the summer 2006 MBA 624, the students debated a series of narrow propositions about intellectual property. To make sure they didn't miss anything in their research, I provided them a long page of commentary and links to all the material they would need to write an informed debate position.
This web "page" would print out to 37 ink-on-paper pages. The key here is that my page was written after the course started and tailored to those students and the discussion we were having in class. If I taught this course again, I would probably use this page again, but I would edit it, perhaps substantially, especially by updating the links and tailoring my comments to that new group of students.
The web at ClearLightStudio.com serves two purposes. It provides a web presence to a local small business and it provides a living case study for my MBA 604 Marketing Through New Media course. In that sense, it is instructional material, and I use it often in class for examples.
Learn more about microwebs. [ link to portfolio ]
Medaille
Internationalization Initiative <
http://toLearn.net/mi2/ >
OpenIraq.net.
No longer available, but here's the graphic I made for the welcome page.
curriculum
development wiki (no longer available)
my
professional portfolio <
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/ >
this
self-evaluation <
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/
nysc-aaup.org (offline during transition to new domain name and new server)
It was originally constructed as a proof-of-concept prototype. If I knew what would become of it eight years later, I would have designed it different for ease of maintenance and ease of re-structuring. It has outlived its usefulness, but I'm not sure what to do with it.
I want to have webs on my server that will draw traffic and be linked to. That will happen only if they provide useful information in an interesting manner.
As usual, I try to be as self-sufficient as possible. Rather than use proprietary software and third-party sites, I use open source software and my own server.
For example, when I heard about blogs and wikis, I went to third-party sites
like Blogger.com and Wikipedia.com to learn how the software works. Rather than
being a user and signing up with a vendor like Blogger.com or Mediawiki.com, I
always want to move a level up the food chain. On the Web, that usually means
being a publisher and enabling users, in my case, students. So this year I
upgraded my TikiWiki installation to version
1.9 and installed my own blog publishing software.
The wiki was used by my MBA students so that they could experience the
collaborative work environments bec
oming more common in organizations. The wiki
was also used by two curriculum development efforts in the Business Department.
Now that those activities are over, I took down the wiki in order to free up
space on my server.
For blogging software I installed WordPress's "state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability."
These two software packages overlap in functions and features. The TikiWiki installation has the core wiki application supplemented by a wide array of ancillary software, including blogs. The WordPress blogging software lets the blog function as the content management system for as large a static web-site as I would like.
The common tools enabling the blogs and wikis are the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language to query that database and assemble web pages for display in a browser. All of them are running on a Linux operating system and get to the world via the Apache web server, all open source software. The installation and customizing take a level of technical knowledge that is not common among non-IT faculty. When I say "installed" the wiki and blog, I don't mean what I do as a consumer: insert a store-bought CD and click through the usual screens. That's proprietary software. I use open-source software, which means I download -- never any $$ -- a lot of files and folders, I know where on the server to put them, and then I edit the underlying software code to make it do what I want it to do. As a model of lifelong learning, I have gone up some steep learning curves with some of this technology.
I spend a lot of time online keeping up with the latest developments in network cultures, networking and social life, and network governance. Many researchers, especially older one, come to the Internet from cultural studies and ethnography. However, I see Time magazine making user-generated content the Person of the Year -- finally recognizing the most of the content on the Internet is and always has been produced outside of a hierarchical business organization. I am most curious about media networks and agree with Geert Lovink of the Institute of Network Cultures/University of Amsterdam) that what network culture studies needs is a "language of new media."
I have become comfortable using the Sony Handycam video camera.
I have become more comfortable with using the lapel and shotgun mics.
Feedback on the Garden video confirms my own perception that my camera work compares favorably with what is seen on cable channels such as Home & Garden TV or the Food Network.
The Garden video has two glaringly weak technical areas: the audio is often too hard to hear over the background of the fountains and the titling is amateurish.
In technical terms, I learned how to install two types of software, blogs and wikis. In the process, I learned a lot about their code and how it functions. The more I learn about software, the more similar and the more transparent it becomes.
In terms of using the wiki in the classroom, I learned that students are reluctant to edit each other's writing, that is, to collaborate at the sentence and paragraph level.
Information design feedback from students using Ricci Street reinforces how little I know, indeed, how little any of us knows, about how to effectively structure information in non-linear spaces, when information includes sights and sounds in addition to words. Through the rest of my lifetime, we will still be in the incunabulum stage, just beginning to sense our new world.
I can't pay attention to every new thing that develops online. However, I seem to be able to maintain a place on the cutting edge of the more popular developments such as blogs and wikis. The feedback: the blank looks and misunderstanding from colleagues and students who have not yet heard about whatever it is I'm learning about.
Next up: the semantic web.
more professional production techniques:
increased attention to lighting and sound
I need to start using the lighting rig available at the New Media Studio.
more
selective recording
While learning how to use the video camera, I recorded much more than I needed to.
more professional post-production results
I need to learn how to use the titling feature of my video editing software.
To take my web making to the next level, I need to:
increase
my
proficiency with style sheets
begin
learning Flash's scripting language
I need to either redesign Ricci Street or replace it with something new.
sabbatical creates need for research to write scripts and storyboards for my
video / web projects.
continued
attention to network cultures
increased
attention to international topics, especially European and Dutch
|
Learn more about how these how these shorter term objectives fit into: |
Over the next two years, I intend to produce several videos, some as one-to-many productions, others as interactive learning opportunities. Knowing my work habits, I will work on shorter, smaller projects and I will work on several of them at the same time.
Currently, one video -- documenting a local artist-in-the-school
project -- is in post-production. I expect to finish it during the spring.
Looking ahead, I have tentatively chosen three topics (in need of snappy titles), two of
which feature Western New York attractions and one that can be used by our GEN
230 Creative Expression students:
biking along the Niagara River
the Devonian fossils of the south branch of Smoke Creek
the patterns of art
I see these developing into three microwebs, that is, small single-purpose webs
with their own domain names as opposed to being part of an all-purpose web such
as Ricci Street. The microwebs will have video embedded in them as well as
interactivity, especially the patterns-of-art web.
pre-production: research, script, and storyboards (spring)
production: video shooting (summer); document, still image, audio acquisition
(fall)
prepare
for post-production and webmaking: new laptop and editing software (fall)
To do this project well, I need a new laptop and some software. My current
laptop will be in its fourth year of service by then and will be unable to run
the new Microsoft operating system or the video editing software built for it.
The new laptop would, I expect, come out of the regular department budget, and I
will apply to the Faculty Development Committee next fall for the software that
I still need.
The video post-production and microweb-making will be done in the Netherlands,
where I am planning to live from January to August 2008 while on sabbatical.
Use more CSS (cascading style sheets) in my webs.
Start learning the scripting language in the Flash authoring environment for creating interactive websites rich with video, graphics, and animation.
Keep learning about information design.
I need to do the rest of the research that will let me write the scripts for the three planned webs.
biking along the Niagara River
This research can be done online and at the Historical Society.
the Devonian fossils of the south branch of Smoke Creek
This research can be done online.
the patterns of art
I hope to engage the other GEN 230 faculty in brainstorming sessions that will let me design a useful web site, video, interactive Flash learning environment.
I am also beginning to learn Dutch.
I will continue to keep up online with the latest technologies and developments in network culture / media network studies, for which I need no additional resources. I may ask Faculty Development Committee for funds to attend a conference, New Network Theory, in June 2007.
modified: January 2007
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/2006/scholarship.htm