Chris Lott

[Your intrepid reporter is somewhat hampered by only being able to see the left 1/3 of the on-stage screen]

Bronwyn Stuckey – Mashup for Quest Atlantis Teacher Community – Virtual world environment with a game structure for curriculum delivery. They’ve created a rich backstory for the “Atlantis Community.” Built on the ActiveWorld platform—only slightly similar to Second Life. Designed for the intersection of education, entertainment and social community. Different kinds/levels of involvement: questers at the center, then teachers, facilitators and “buoys.” There are facilitated engagements as well as “missions” performed in-world. For more info: bestucke@??  – to explore: http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/public/pdInfo.pl

Jackie Gerstein – Creative Web Tools For and By Kids - “Technology and hands-on are our future” : unscripted testimonial from children participating in the activities. Doing before teaching. Students take on role of stewardship of their learning… so they can introduce themselves (and they do). Each student has a wiki page… and the first thing the kids want to do is to create their own identities. Students pick their own tools, Jackie facilitates the process. Learning goals are established by the students themselves… they find links to support their activities and investigative tools to analyze and synthesize what they’ve found. Kids-to-Kids. Then they produce a presentation to share what they’ve learned using a variety of Web 2.0 tools. Somem tools: wordle, ticlets, dipity, tikatok books, mystudio. Unintended consequences included making global connections.

Virginia Kuhn – Documentary is the New Black: Filmic Textbooks in the 21st Century Classroom – they have students who are not cinema students, despite it being a school of cinematic arts. These students do a multimedia thesis project in their discipline (biology, etc). See http://iml.usc.edu/. Course: IML 340 – The Praxis of New Media. Students could work on a small “seed” project that would inform or be part of their final multimedia thesis. Documentary project: Iraqi Doctors: On the Front Lines of Medicine… were looking at a way to finish the documentary, so they combined the IML 340 class with the documentary project. Students did research according to their areas of disciplinary interest to contribute to the project. See http://hurricane.usc.edu/iml340/ – Jerry Mander in the Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television argued that books were better than film because film was ephemeral and temporary and bounded/insulated. With new technologies, that is no longer as true. More skills are needed: editing, composition, etc.

Marie Carianna – Maya Language Learning from Guatemala to Tulane – Project based on a language course taught at Tulane. Q’amnil – self-paced, flash based, produced with native speakers, works in Spanish and English, online and in CD form for those without connections. Two units so far, each with multiple topics. Daily activities, writing dialogue and singing dialogue. Exercises include basic listen/hear/pick exercises + say the phrase, record and compare their pronunciation/utterance with a model. Production involved five trips to Guatemala in the summer, post-production in the Spring and Fall.  Crew of four people: two pedagogists, two videographers. Do a lot of work with local folks and local production crew members.

Li Zhu and Michael Beahan – Jones Media Center, How Do I? – Jones Media Center is more than just free access to Photoshop and scanners. Used media to promote the media center and help people understand what they actually do and what is available to them. Not just promo video, but instruction video for using the center and tutorial videos for equipment and facilities. Short videos (none longer than 90 seconds) deal with the same questions that arise again and again and help teach self-reliance. As a student/intern making the videos, Li Zhu learned the applications and equipment (and gained real world skills) at the same time as doing. Published using Dartmouth YouTube Channel and Dartmouth Facebook page. Recruit the next intern: “Get paid to present at NMC, Monterey Bay, California!”

Kate Borowske – Library on a Stick and On the Air – The stick isn’t just for food anymore. Works with MFA students writing for children and young adults… low residency programs, two months on-site per year. Provides intro to library services while on campus, but need/desire for more info on how to use the tools for creative and academic work. Created toolbar, online workshops and recorded workshops. IE (and Firefox?) Toolbar that provides access to databases, library catalog, state system information, WorldCat, ebooks and full text resources, lit crit resources, and direct access to library site. Created toolbars using Conduit, which is easy and quick to create and modify the toolbars, which are updated in real time. Created a series of four online, synchronous workshops (using Elluminate Live) based around the functions of the toolbar (because databases and the like all start looking the same after a while) using slides and web tours. Finally, recorded the workshop sessions (remember to start recording!), which are available on the library web site 24/7.

Larry Johnson – The NMC’s Hakone Project: New Life for Second Life – Where NMC was born: August 24, 1992 event (sponsored by Apple), senior executives from large media companies gathered in Hakone, Japan. The topic of the meeting was convergence: telephone + computer. At the time they predicted many new channels would emerge for sharing and purveying content. Also discussed the convergence of television and computers, interactive television. When they built a new home for their virtual conferences they chose to honor this early meeting by modeling the space after Hakone.

Paul Iwancio, Aaron Wiedele, William Shewbridge – Taking Digital Stories on the Road – Word had gotten around about their storytelling activities, so they were faced with a unique challenge: how to capture stories from a good chunk of 800 alumni at a conference… in two days. So they came up with the idea of a “story booth.” They were able to capture 60 stories in those two days. Logistic craziness. Things that helped: scouting the location and figuring out how to deal with what they were given. Brought in their own gear, including a backdrop. Created a schematized interview process with a signup sheet: but who would do the interview? Used undergraduates, who got a real-world experience and got to interact with alumni… they also had interviewees interviewing each other! Distribution: integrated into a rebuild of their web site, scattered around pages and in a central pool, distribution via DVD and YouTube. Future projects: homecoming, campus retreats, oral history.

Morgan Reid – Talking to our Computers? Transcribing Interviews 2:1 – Everyone told Morgan he was crazy to even attempt this. The problem: how to transcribe recordings for analysis. Could use a transcription service, but expensive. Looking for fast, cheap and good. 2006: Voice Wreckognition (Microsoft experiment). Tools: high quality audio, low-no noise. Simultaneous translation—revoice from a live recording. Compared live transcription with revoice. Live demonstration: test file, express scribe (any text editor), dictate 1.2.1, good audio quality in data file, good quality microphone, really good audio isolation. And the live demo worked! Accurate and fast. Sweet.

Jared Bendis – Teaching the Elephant to Walk Itself: Self-Generating Pachyderms – Digital Case, a digital library. In other words, an archive. A historical library. Almost no user interface in this archiving system. Tech people say: that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. So Jared “consulted the wheel of media solutions” and the winner was: Pachyderm. Existing process: 1. Log into your accvount. 2. upload your assets. 3. create your screens. 4. Publish. But users didn’t want to author at all… so how about using Pachyderm as an output standard, generating presentation from a database using design rules for the output rather than authoring. So authorship is in the curation of the collection… a good database makes a good presentation. What’s next: new rule systems to play with the database. And please, join Jared’s mob wars group on Facebook.