Transmedia Learning
July 8, 2007
In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins spends a chapter describing how the creators of The Matrix engaged storytellers in many different media to tell complimentary parts of the entire Matrix story. Playing the video games, reading the comic books and watching The Animatrix extended the story with some overlaps to the movies.
In the May/June 2007 issue of EDUCAUSE Review, Carie Windham makes suggestions to faculty considering podcasts for their classes in her article “Confessions of a Podcast Junkie“. One particular suggestion struck me:
Offer something more: For the professors who have implemented podcasting technology, the most common concern they hear from their peers is that students will stop showing up to class if the material is downloadable. In reality, they say, the opposite is true. The trick, students say, is to make sure that there is something to gain by attending class and downloading the lecture. Podcasts should add a new perspective or offer supplemental material. If lectures are podcasts, faculty should use classroom time to facilitate discussion, demonstrate models or simulate problems. “You’re going to gain something out of the classroom experience — it’s that personal lecture experience,” says Maier. “You get comments from other individuals, and examples are brought to the table by other parts of the class.”
This reminds me too of the e-mail that’s sent out a day or two after each installment of the BBC radio show In Our Time is recorded. The host, Melvyn Bragg, extends the story of the broadcast by sharing the conversation he and his experts had before and after the show.
By using different media to discuss the subject in complimentary - and not redundant - ways, faculty can create an engaging and complex learning environment that, like The Matrix or In Our Time, lets the learner build the bigger picture.
Technorati Tags: creativity, EDUCAUSE, information fluency, learning, podcast, students, teaching, technology, transmedia
Social Networking and Network Stress
July 2, 2007
NetworkWorld has a cover story on the stress that social networking sites like MySpace put on DNS servers. Pages on MySpace point to content all over the internet, causing browsers to perform dozens, sometimes hundreds of DNS lookups per page. That combined with the popularity of social networking sites has threatened the performance of DNS servers. Some, including the Department of Defense, have blocked access to these sites.
The article includes comments from Travis Berkley, supervisor of LAN support services at the University of Kansas. Faculty, staff and students generate an average of 20,000 visits a day. Kansas didn’t have to update their DNS servers, though. They’re running BIND version 9 software, which apparently handles the load comfortably. The article also notes that Kansas limits how much internet bandwidth students can consume from their rooms, which probably also helps. Does limiting bandwidth reduce the number of DNS lookups? Other than slowing the rate at which pages are loading, I would think this would be true only if the limited bandwidth caused students to use the internet less.
The challenge is that more social networking sites are coming, many integrating new kinds of media. Just yesterday I received an invite from Intellagirl (thanks!) to Pownce, yet another social networking site. Pownce is like Twitter: you create a network of friends, all of whom can read and respond to short messages, or microcontent as Bryan Alexander calls it. Twitter restricts you to 140 characters; I’ve never made use of TinyURL until I met Twitter. Pownce seems to allow longer messages. They also allow for other types of microcontent, including links, events and files.
I’m waiting for my social network to sign up for Pownce. At this moment I have fewer than five friends there, and that’s not enough to sustain conversation. If you’d like an invite to Pownce, let me know and I’ll send an invite so long as I have any left.
One annoying bit about Pownce is the inline advertising. Pownce inserts advertising messages at random points in your message stream. Not good. I can pay $20/year to make the ads stop, but unless my social network decides to use Pownce over Twitter, I’m more likely to abandon Pownce.
Another bit about Pownce that I’m not crazy about is the Pownce client. They’ve built an application to deliver Pownce content to my desktop, but it runs on a new Adobe technology called AIR. I don’t know why I had to install the AIR framework to get my Pownce content, but the real issue is that Pownce doesn’t seem to be opening their APIs. That means there won’t be any innovation around the site other than what the company comes up with itself.
Hopefully they’ll get smart and open up their APIs. In the meantime I’m keeping an eye open, hoping to be impressed, but ready to walk away if it doesn’t tip.
Technorati Tags: Pownce, social software, socialsoftware, technology, Twitter, web
Welcome, President Ayers
July 1, 2007
The Times-Dispatch had a profile of our new President, Edward Ayers, earlier this week. Today President Ayers writes about the strengths and directions for the University as he takes the reigns. His reflections are juxtaposed to two others who assume leadership roles at other institutions in the region.
It’s really going to be a few weeks before President Ayers is on campus full time. But I am exited to see where he wants to go, and how I can help. For now, I’m focusing on the new school year and how we in The Center, along with our colleagues in the Library, can engage the faculty in discussions on the scholarship of teaching and learning, learning spaces, and IT fluency.
