Diver has a close-encounter with a Porbeagle shark off the coast of Maine—as well as the video to prove it.
Thank you Barbara Sawhill for helping my phobia extend further up the East Coast of the US into those cold and frightening New England waters.
Not sure if this is a digital story per se, but I am sure it rocks!
Image credit: Laser Bread’s “Boba Invoice” via Mikhail Gershovich on Twitter
Note: I’m cross-posting this here as well as on the ds106 course blog for two reasons. 1) It pulls widely from Andy Rush’s unbelievable Digital Video resource blog/site, and I figured this would be a great thing to highlight for anyone working with video in or out of the classroom. In particular check out the “Fast, Cheap, and Under Control” –it’s like Xmas for teaching video. 2) I had problems with the video portion of ds106 last semester, and was hoping for some feedback. This is the first of a three (actually four assignment) video run. I’ll be blogging all of them, and feedback is welcome.
For this assignment I am going to ask each of you to select several scenes from your favorite films (or one of your favorites), and edit them together and comment on some of the filmic elements of the scenes? Why do you like these scenes? What strikes you about them? What makes them good cinema? Is there a subtext at work in this film? In short, I want you to comment on the scenes as a narrator explaining to your audience explaining what you find important about the scene, and why.
If you want more specific example of what I m talking about, here is a commentary of the 1978 zombie films Dawn of the Dead I did a couple of years ago.
The Shining Commentary from Jim Groom on Vimeo.
I’ll also be working on a new version for the The Shining over the next few days as well.
And now, how do you do this? Take the jump for some recommendations. Continue reading
My digital storytelling class is about to embark on the wonderful world of video story telling, and I found a beautiful example from my favorite new HBO series, Eastbound & Down. I don’t know why I like this show so much, but the character matchup of Kenny Powers and Stevie Janowski just crack me up to no end. Anyway, I wonder if I can work in an assignment to try and make the cheeziest video possible, using this as the model.
Image credit: Anne Elder/Bullet)
We’ve been having some growing pains on UMW Blogs recently, namely it’s been getting more and more popular. So much so, that I think it’s fair to say we’ve seen it grow well beyond our capacity, and I have to admit part of that is my fault. I’ve encouraged UMW’s The Bullet (the student newspaper), EagleEye (the faculty newsletter), and several other high traffic sites to come on board over the past year or so. And given the use has only grown for just about every department, administrative office, and Tom, Dick, and Harry across campus, it’s no wonder I’m kinda sitting here saying how about that, we did it! (That one’s for you, Dora.) It’s a good feeling, but at the same time it is also time to admit the system is bigger than what DTLT can do, and we have to adjust accordingly, and I’m sure we will very, very soon.
In the meantime, what’s been interesting though is that we’ve had more downtime than usual over the last few days (which coincided with me being sick as a dog with bronchitis–suck it!) because reporter Linley Estes of UMW’s student paper The Bullet published an article about 15 UMW students who were busted in connection with drug dealing, which subsequently has become quite possibly the most popular article on UMW Blogs ever. With more than 6000 views and over a 140+ comments in three days for that article alone, it’s become both the highest profile and most polarizing issue on campus this semester yet (though I would much rather have students become even a fraction as rabid about the looming 25% tuition hikes). The article used the full names of the accused students, as well as their hometowns and a few of their mug shots. All of which led to a heated battle in the comments on the article made up of basically two camps: those who don’t think the student paper should have published names and images of the accused students, and others who believe it is part of the fifth estate’s responsibility.
What’s more, a number of articles in today’s Bullet follow up on the story, everything from a staff editorial on the Bullet’s coverage to an editorial on the distasteful way the paper dealt with the “drug story” (as it is now being referred to). What was most alarming though, was this news article about the harassment of Linley Estes, who was the author of the article that led to all the controversy in the first place. The harassment was directly linked to the article, and came in the following form:
Following her recent Bullet article about on-campus drug arrests, junior Lindley Estes has been harassed via e-mail and Facebook, but the message that scared her the most was the note taped Monday afternoon to her off-campus apartment door.
The note read, “Karma’s a bitch, And SO ARE YOU.”
Estes alerted the Fredericksburg Police Department, who conducted the drug arrests and investigations.
“The scary thing wasn’t the note, but that they knew where I lived,” Estes said.
It’s a crazy moment here at UMW, but not so much because of the drug bust. Rather, it’s the battle over the availability of information, and the impact this has upon all of us. Linley Estes is a reporter, she reported what happened at UMW, and now it seems she needs to be protected from those folks who would have us believe that the university is a low stakes playground for middle class kids. This is where we live, this is what we do, and while I’m personally more of a legalize drugs and get this bull shit over with type of guy, threatening a reporter for doing her job is insane. And it is a reflection of just how deeply screwed up our culture is when it comes to the idea of controlling information, and protecting those in power.
No one threatened Anne Elder after she reported on the suspect who ripped off a purse in broad daylight from a UMW student’s parent during Parents’ Weekend (what a PR nightmare for UMW—it really can’t catch a break). And why? Well, because it wasn’t a student who did it, it was a 30-something black male, and you know the rest of that story in the media don’t you? You’ve certainly heard it enough. No one was crying for clemency for the accused in that article, and no one seemed to care that they didn’t protect his identity and hometown. No one in the UMW community cared about him one lick. Now, in this particular story there is a push for clemency for the accused—a push to save the students from some of the public embarrassment and guilt by publication. And I have to say I am all for clemency for the accused in relationship to drug charges—in fact I am for clemency more generally (what I mean by clemency here is not necessarily pardon, though that would be good, but rather disposition to be merciful), for I think US culture is far too martial to begin with, and when it comes to drugs it’s insane. What I would really like to see is that we as a community at UMW make an attempt to distribute that sense of mercy and “the benefit of the doubt” mentality more equally and also that we refrain from trying to kill the messenger, in this case Linley Estes. What a mess!
I went searching for some real solutions to our education problems in this country, and I am glad to say I think I found at least one solution: Box Tops for Education. Let’s face it, partnering with larger corporations like General Mills to start really funding our school systems is the future (well, actually, it’s also the present and even the past given this campaign has been alive and well since 1996). Team up with your favorite brand and enjoy a nice bowl of Cocoa Puffs while at the same time helping to fund a playground for your school.
This whole thing is deeply depressing, can you ever imagine seeing a “Box Tops for War” campaign? Out priorities are all fucked up. We’ve ghettoized public education in this country to the point that we have invited commercial interests into our learning institutions to lock in brand loyalty as a means to ensure our schools get just a little more than the bare necessities. We’ve pimped our students and their families before they even left the learning gate. How can this be a solution to anything, no less the foundation of democracy?
Luke Waltzer’s recent post on educational technology and digital humanities brings up some important points that needed to be articulated. It seemed to me that educational technology was being subsumed by the idea of digital humanities, which is something that didn’t sit too comfortably with me given I’m not a Ph.D. and we all know the only difference postsecondary institutions cannot tolerate when it comes to tenure is a diversity of degrees. What I have enjoyed about edtech is that it allowed me to thrive despite the degree, and also provided a freedom that was not so rigidly defined by a field, area, or discipline. For the last several years I helped constitute the field, because so few really cared to. Simply rolling with the punches, testing out possibilities, and writing about the process openly was all it took. But what Luke brings to the fore, and makes all too clear for me is that edtech seemed constantly embraced with the crisis that faces higher ed. A crisis of resources, funding, and the ghettoization of academic labor more generally. On top of that there was a sense in edtech that if you could reinvent the means of delivery and sharing with open source publishing platforms, you could start to challenge and problematize some of the larger issues in higher ed that are made all too apparent with systems like BlackBoard. Luke illustrates this beautifully:
Blackboard is itself an embodiment of the university culture that Neary and Winn rightly find so troubling: students cycle through a system that structurally, aesthetically and rhetorically reinforces the notions that education is consumption, the faculty member is a content provider, the classroom is hierarchical, and learning is closed. Less and less though do we have to convince listeners that open source publishing platforms and the many flowers they’ve allowed to bloom can create exciting possibilities in and beyond the classroom; we can show them link after model after link after model after link.
And it seems that through a critique of course management systems and LMSs, we could enter a larger discussion about the university, open education, sharing, teaching, etc. And while not necessarily experts on any or all of these things, the playing field seemed level. Opportunity to converse and dialogue about all these issues seemed ripe. What’s more, the question of empowering students through their space and online identity was made not only possible, but rather easy with these new publishing paradigms. What we started to realize is that a few motley edtechs could try and manifest a real and meaningful break from the institutional drug addiction that was the LMS, providing a new conceptual space to imagine teaching, learning, publishing, and even playing—devoid of any one idea of scholarship as a top-down approach.
In fact, being in educational technology gave me the opportunity to approach the idea of scholarship a bit differently. I learned how to present differently, publish differently (namely to my blog—often and regular sharing my work freely), and think differently about how I, as instructional technologist, was more than just staff (or maybe staff as somehow always already less is the issue more generally ), I was a thinker in my own right. But being a thinker didn’t necessarily mean I should have to reproduce the same “proof” of my value as a professor at UMW. Why should I? I’m not a professor, I’m something else. But the recent move to theorize alternative academic careers (ed tech being one of them) suggests that we very well may need to meet the same standards as professors, and in many ways become them without the same benefits of tenure, autonomy, and built-in pay grades. What’s alarming about this to me is that the idea of alternative academic careers as a movement (#altac for short on twitter) is a direct result of the disinvestment of higher ed, and the disappearance of jobs in the humanities more generally. So, by creating the idea of #altac, we reinforce a traditional approach to how we do our work, and as we all know, it ultimately re-inscribes the same realities of answerability for those of us outside of the sacred sphere of tenure. So, in short, it demands the same work and production out of this emerging breed of hybrid, administrative (often contract labor—like myself) which given the nature of the market will lead to many of the same demands on this new field as there are on professors currently, with none of the security. A popular trend for the neo-liberal university, get more for less. And what makes it even worse, the vision is being consecrated in the name of creating a new field of discourse rather than preserving the vestiges of an established one.
Fact is, I really do believe that the market will make my position that much less valuable in the near future. The more educational technology, and all the other #altac careers, becomes overly professionalized, the more we’ll find that we are working in a more controlled field with fewer options and an eroding sense of freedom. I guess it’s the natural flow of capital, especially given the fact that grad schools are still producing Ph.D.s by the boatloads even though well paying jobs in academia are fewer and further between. All of which brings me to my last point, and one Luke delineates brilliantly—while the humanities are worse off than ever financially (SUNY Albany to cut its language, classics, and theatre departments?) there is actually a fair amount of “legitimacy, funding, and visibility” for the digital humanities right now. And what’s more, there are even a few tenure-track jobs! Which is great for the field, but seems to distort the state of the humanities within the academy more broadly. How can the digital humanities exist outside of the crumbling infrastructure of funding and support for humanities that abounds in the U.S. right now?
I don’t know, I’m with Luke, this is a hard issue, and almost impossible to separate myself from personally. I too want to see something more than a new manifestation of the old university in digital clothes, but at the same time the push for reform and change from within seems to be the most anemic of all approaches. And as much as I want to side with open education, and the approach of OERs and open content, I see the problems abound there as well (but I’ll save that for another post). What I want to see is some real experimentation outside the order of academies and institutions. A networked approach to learning and sharing that is centered around empowerment of the learner through learning. This can’t be impossible, there has to be a way at this that is different. More and more I think an approach to deschooling, or unschooling, my wife and I are currently working on (or not depending how you look at it) may be one way to think through my confusion, because frankly I’m tired of arguing and fighting with digital humanists and OER folks. Let them do their thing, there is no crime in that and there are great things happening in both fields I’m sure. What is clear to me is that I need to find another way, and Luke’s frame makes for a powerful and poignant snapshot of where we are in the ed tech movement, and where we need to go. And Stephen Downes’s recent post in the Huffington Post points out this direction rather clearly:
But if we focus our attention on the needs of learners, all learners, they are not served either by cutting the system to the barest of bare bones or handing of the reins over to the private sector. There is no secret sauce or pixie dust that will repair an unsustainable system. If we want to ensure that learning is provided to all, we need to rethink the basic premises of the education system.
I think this is right, and one way at this is doing it personally through my own attempt to rethink how my kids should be “educated,” and how these new technologies and peer-to-peer pedagogies (both local and distributed) might help us rethink the basic premises of the education system. I understand this is a privilege, but I also understand it’s one that comes with both a certain amount of sacrifice and honest interest in what could be a real alternative. A sense of wonder that is not predefined by expectations and the refusal to acquiesce to mediocrity in public education at the expense of possibilities—all the while recognizing how vital a solid public alternative is, and must be, for any pretense to democracy—the great lie underlying the American educational system right now.
Just a little bit ago UMW education professor George Meadows asked me to come into his class on Monday (this coming Monday, October 18th) and talk about weirdness and the web. I think that is a topic I can handle, and it fits the nature of his course quite well. In fact the full course title is: “Critical Thinking and the Internet: Writing about Weird Things” (now there is a brilliant course title). George is no stranger to danger, or having fun for that matter, and he asked me if I might be able to concentrate on conspiracy theories and the web during my guest visit. Such a request immediately made me think of the “precious bodily fluids” scenes from Dr. Strangelove, but then I started thinking about online conspiracy theories and started to sputter. 
I mean there’s the opportunistic “Google is making us Stupid” conspiracy theory, but I was thinking more along the lines of DARPA’s Total Awareness Initiative being run by the Information Awareness Office (read that Wikipedia article if you aren’t afraid of social networking just yet 🙂 ). And then there is the Russian Business Network—“You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy [on the internet]”—reputed to be responsible for a lion’s share of web-based crime, here is what the Wikipedia article has to say about RBN:
The Russian Business Network (commonly abbreviated as RBN) is a multi-faceted cybercrime organization, specializing in and in some cases monopolizing personal identity theft for resale. It is the originator of MPack and an alleged operator of the Storm botnet.
The RBN, which is notorious for its hosting of illegal and dubious businesses, originated as an Internet service provider for child pornography, phishing, spam, and malware distribution physically based in St. Petersburg, Russia. By 2007, it developed partner and affiliate marketing techniques in many countries to provide a method for organized crime to target victims internationally.
But the thing about both these examples is I think about them more as realities than in any perjorative sense that we currently characterize the term conspiracy theory. So, while I may still use them, I’ll be doing some research this weekend and was hoping some of you maniacs out there may have fun with this and point me to a few good examples. I particularly was hoping to get examples of internet-based conspiracy theories, preferably with links to websites and videos that promote or endorse the theory (flashing mailboxes and animated under construction GIFs are OK).
All that said, I’m also open to conspiracy theory sites like the Journal of 9-11 Studies—which has basically been trying to establish that 9/11 was an inside job for years—which is not specifically about internet-based conspiracy theories per se, but the sites and videos on this topic make it compelling nonetheless. For example, there’s the “WTC 7: The Smoking Gun of 9/11” video that argues that WTC building 7 was blown up after the fact:
So, what do you have? What weirdness can you dredge up for the bava? Because the bava is back, and the bava needs you!
TO ARMS! TO ARMS!
Another crazy diorama from the Natural Bridge Wax Museum, this time featuring Confederate soldiers recruiting for the “War of Northern Aggression” in nearby lexington, Virginia. This video says more than I ever could.
Find out more about me here.
The Art of Commenting
Image credit: Not in HD
In DS106 one of the things that I have been pushing harder than anything else is commenting on each other’s work. I want it to be honest, plentiful, and sustained. In fact, I have the same expectations of commenting as I do of blogging, and, as Alan Levine notes, “Commenting is sharing, and its easy. We all need to spend more time commenting.” (And we all know the cogdog practices what he preaches.) That is absolutely right, and the value and importance of commenting is so greatly underrated in the larger discussions of blogging and social media in higher ed. What’s more, a lack of concern with absence of commenting when using blogs in a course is often a sign that what you are trying to accomplish with “social media” and “networked learning,” could probably be achieved with any old media.
In my mind commenting is key to such an experiment as DS106, it’s a sign of both engagement, distributed sharing, and relationships outside of some central discourse of learning. With every comment, there is the possibility of a whole new conversation. It’s not lways the case, and not all comments are equal, but the expectation has to be established immediately in my mind. Be part of the community, even if somewhat forced and arbitrary as we often find in any given class at the beginning. We all have to move beyond the impulse to remain unengaged and do the minimum, without the willingness to to explore and discover how we learn out in the open you can not truly be a part of this course. The whole enterprise requires that we feed off each other’s ideas, we think hard about how we create for others, and both offer and respond to feedback regularly.
There have been very few of the over 7000 comments on my blog that I have not appreciated. In fact, comments have been, and remain, the lifeblood of my blog. And when they start going, or I am failing to get them, it tells me something. It tells me is that I am not commenting enough on other people’s work, I am not reading widely enough, I am not linking to other people’s work enough. Because comments are born out of a reciprocal sense of interaction, community, and respect. A relationship with an audience that is both present and mindful of your wok, and ready and willing to push you to more, by way of links, ideas, thoughts, and criticisms. All important, and all part of what makes this space more than simply “journaling.” It’s conversation, it’s relationships, and it’s a sense of community born through a holy trinity of characteristics the best blogs exude: personality, honesty, and thoughtfulness.
And this is exactly what I said to the ds106 internauts this evening: if you aren’t getting comments, than you aren’t commenting on the work of others enough. if you aren’t getting comments, than you aren’t linking to the work of others enough. And if you aren’t getting comments, than you aren’t engaging your audience enough. And I have no qualms with saying any of it, it’s part of what I expect of this class. Understand you are engaging an audience, understand you are part of a conversation, and understand you have to take responsibility for that fact. I can and will not comment for you, but I will engage you once you do.
One of the many things I have learned from ds106 thus far this semester is that comments are key. And the fewer you have on your blog, the fewer you’ve made on the blogs of others. And it has proven to be absolutely right when looking at the 28 blogs I am following regularly for this class. Those who comment get comments, those who don’t, don’t. and for me, that tells the tale better than anything else has thus far this semester.