Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Digital Literacy and Me

Apologies for not posting with the right method last week! I'm all sorted out now so here is a proper blog post about my digital literacy. Will be listening and watching yours too! 


Podcast debrief

I've never put together a podcast before so I was really looking forward to this assignment. All I have to say is... I'm so glad it's done! Some important lessons I learned:

1. Making something look easy is really difficult. 
It takes scripting, practicing, recording, image gathering, piecing together, editing, and polishing before you have something that is still pretty amateur. I am far too embarrassed to admit how many audio recordings I did (and how long it took me). Weaving together something that looks and sounds natural is a really tough challenge. I think I hacked some of the technical things to make it work, but that's all behind the scenes.... 

2. Five minutes is both long and short.
When I started this project, I thought five minutes was plenty of time. It was far longer than most Youtube videos and considering the attention span of viewers these days, I thought it would be sufficient. I ended up cutting out half my script to keep within the timeframe. It was hard to provide a solid overview and examples of community building in this one segment. 

3. I love the social aspect of digital.
It wasn't until I reflected on my experimentation and involvement over the last decade that I really realized how many tools and platforms I've tried and enjoyed. I left a lot of them out as well! I have to say that they all did teach me something - some completely changed my habits and others were great for tips and tricks. I think my achilles heel is in the areas of audio and video - I am not used to hearing my own voice or being recorded. I'm going to have to practice this moving forward. 

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Digital Literacy & Me

Hi and welcome to Assignment 1



My Digital Literacy Journey:




In the podcast above I mention a highlight of my digital literacy journey was having a co-authored paper accepted for presentation in New York at the Media Ecology Association Conference.  If you have interest in the e-book and it’s impact on the publishing industry please take a look at my latest blog post “Teresa and Judith’s Excellent Academic Adventure” where either our paper or a newly released video of the occasion has been provided (Video prepared especially for this assignment!).  A paper on Transformational Leadership, which focused on the new NAIT CEO, also received a story in NAIT Techlife Magazine.  Lastly, the Telephone Historic Centre appreciated our group project which explored  “The Role of the Telephone in Edmonton as an Expression of Civic Identity”, a small excerpt on their website under “University Study”.  Lastly, I also enjoy doing interviews when the media call on NAIT for a Public Relations perspective on a news story. 

Putting the Podcast together:

Putting together the podcast was truly an adventure.  It is a good thing that I am a stubborn woman.  I thank YouTube for some great videos tutoring me on how to build a podcast in GarageBand.  I also found a blog post on the topic with very clear directions and a step-by-step approach with pictures.  I found the easiest part was laying down my voice track.  The challenge came in layering in all the sound effects, which all have different volumes.  I sourced the sound effects from the Internet, iTunes and GarageBand the timing and sound volumes were an all day challenge.  Thanks also to Jess for bearing with me as I figured out how to post all of this into the class blog. 

My preferred means of communication is always face-to-face, but as my podcast mentions I have been establishing my “brand” across a number of social media platforms, so please connect with me in your preferred way:

Email:  Sturgess@nait
Twitter:  @Teresa_Sturgess
LinkedIn: Teresa Sturgess
Skype: Teresa Sturgess
Or heck, just call me: 780-471-7635






Sunday, January 27, 2013

Week 4: History of the Book

As you know, we changed our schedule by a week so although we're technically in week 4, we're looking at the topics listed in week 3.
Image from Octave Uzanne, The End of Books. The University of Adelaide.


It’s not just about the printing press! The history of the book presents us with a complete, observable communications revolution. The historical record allows us to examine the whole of a vast socio-cultural, political, and economic change over a period of some three to five hundred years (depending on whose perspective you prefer). By following the developments in manuscript and print book production, tied to the changes in the technologies used to produce those texts, we can also chart the various changes in social organization, politics and economics. 
“Can books only exist in the paper-printed media? Can the text be separated from paper to be reused as a book through digital media? Is such a discussion relevant to the subject of books?”

Some key ideas to consider:
  • the history of the book
  • the end of books (!?)
  • the net_reading/writing_condition
  • What are some current views about the emergence and diffusion of media?



Given our chat last week, I thought you would all find this recent article interesting:



It's the end of books as you knew them: E-books out-sell hardbound for the 1st time

Summary: Get ready to bid adieu to your local bookstore -- if you're lucky enough to still have one! -- as e-books sales surpass hardcover book sales for the first time.

EBooks out sell hardbound for the first time.
EBooks out sell hardbound for the first time.
If you follow the book trade, you knew this was coming. E-books, no matter whether you read them on an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, or your iPad are selling like crazy. We may complain about their high prices and even take eBook publishers to court for their prices and hardware lock-in, but we love our e-books. In fact, we love them so much that for the first time adult eBook sales were higher than adult hardcover sales.

It wasn't even close. The Association of American Publishersreported that in the first quarter of 2012, adult eBook sales were up to $282.3 million while adult hardcover sales came to only $229.6 million. In last year's first quarter, hardcover sales accounted for $223 million in sales while eBooks logged $220.4 million.
So where are the eBook buyers coming from? The answer is trade and mass-market paperbacks. Trade paperback sales fell from $335-million to $299.8-million. That's a drop of 10.5%. Mass market paperbacks sales had it even worse. They plummeted $124.8-million to $98.9-million in the same quarter last year. That's a fall of 20.8%.
The conventional wisdom had been that e-books would eat up hardbound book sales. That's not happening. Instead, while e-books will certainly by year's end be the most popular book format, it's paperback books that are really taking a hit. Perhaps that's because when you're buying a hardcover, you're buying not just a story, but an artifact, an object with more value than just as a way to get to the story.
Be that as it may, e-books are clearly the wave of the future. As someone who loves bookstores, libraries and has a few thousand physical books of his own, this is one wave I'm not entirely happy about. After all, e-books can be deleted, locked away by Digital Rights Management (DRM), or even edited from afar.
Don't get me wrong. I love the ease of purchase and use of e-books. My Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet goes everywhere with me and I have e-book applications on every device I own. Let's not forget though, as we rush to e-books faster than a bored housewife running to buy her copy of Fifty Shades of Grey--the soft-porn novel which has accounted for over 50% of all trade paperback book sales in recent weeks—that we're also going to lose such simple pleasures as lending a friend a good book.







Was There a Reading Revolution in the New American Republic?

Professor Robert Gross explores the history and historiography of book history and reading in pre Civil War America. This lecture was originally given at the University of Toronto in the fall of 2008.




Sunday, January 20, 2013

Week 3: The Beginning of Hypertext and the Web


What is "new" about "new media"?




What are the characteristics, both technical and social, of new media? 
How does new media transform and "remediate" earlier media practices?


As noted in the lecture notes, here is an excerpt from Bolter and Guisin's Remediation:

Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. The MIT Press, 1st edition.
 (excerpts selected and titled by course instructor)

Immediacy and Hypermediacy


Immediacy is our name for a family of beliefs and practices that express themselves differently at various times among various groups, and our quick survey cannot do justice to this variety. The common feature of all these forms is the belief in some necessary contact point between the medium and what it represents. For those who believe in the immediacy of photography, from Talbot to Bazin to Barthes, the contact point is the light that is reflected from the objects on to the film. This light establishes an immediate relationship between the photograph and the object. For theorists of linear-perspective painting and perhaps for some painters, the contact point is the mathematical relationship established between the supposed objects and their projection on the canvas. However, probably at no time or place has the logic of immediacy required that the viewer be completely fooled by the painting or photograph. Trompe l'oeil, which does completely fool the viewer for a moment, has always been an exceptional practice. The film theorist Tom Gunning (1995) has argued that what we are calling the logic of transparent immediacy worked in a subtle way for filmgoers of the earliest films. The audience members knew at one level that the film of a train was not really a train, and yet they marveled at the discrepancy between what they knew and what their eyes told them (114-133). On the other hand, the marveling could not have happened unless the logic of immediacy had had a hold on the viewers. There was a sense in which they believed in the reality of the image, and theorists since the Renaissance have underwritten that belief. This "naive" view of immediacy is the expression of a historical desire, and it is one necessary half of the double logic of remediation. (pp. 30-31)
As a counterbalance [to immediacy] hypermediacy is more complicated and various. In digital technology, as often in the earlier history of Western representation, hypermediacy expresses itself as multiplicity. If the logic of immediacy leads one either to erase or to render automatic the act of representation, the logic of hypermediacy acknowledges multiple acts of representation and makes them visible. Where immediacy suggests a unified visual space, contemporary hypermediacy offers a heterogeneous space, in which representation is conceived of not as a window on to the world, but rather as "windowed" itself—with windows that open on to other representations or other media. The logic of hypermediacy multiplies the signs of mediation and in this way tries to reproduce the rich sensorium of human experience. (pp. 33-34)
The logic of immediacy has perhaps been dominant in Western representation, at least from the Renaissance until the coming of modernism, while hypermediacy has often had to content itself with a secondary, if nonetheless important, status. Sometimes hypermediacy has adopted a playful or subversive attitude, both acknowledging and undercutting the desire for immediacy. At other times, the two logics have coexisted, even when the prevailing readings of art history have made it hard to appreciate their coexistence. At the end of the twentieth century, we are in a position to understand hypermediacy as immediacy's opposite number, an alter ego that has never been suppressed fully or for long periods of time. (p. 34)
In all its various forms, the logic of hypermediacy expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a "real" space that lies beyond mediation. Lanham (1993) calls this the tension between look at and looking through, and he sees it as a feature of twentieth-century art in general and now digital representation in particular. (p. 41)

Media Con(Media)tent


Again, we call the representation of one medium in another remediation, and we will argue that remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media. (p. 45)
The digital medium can be more aggressive in its remediation. It can try to refashion the older medium or media entirely, while still marking the presence of the older media and therefore maintaining a sense of multiplicity or hypermediacy. [ . . . ] This form of aggressive remediation throws into relief both the source and the target media. (p. 46)
Finally, the new medium can remediate by trying to absorb the older medium entirely, so that the discontinuities between the two are minimized. The very act of remediation, however, ensures that the older medium cannot be entirely effaced; the new medium remains dependent on the older one in acknowledged or unacknowledged ways. (p. 47)
[ . . . ] remediation operates in both directions: users of older media such as film and television can seek to appropriate and refashion digital graphics, just as digital graphics artists can refashion film and television. (p. 48)

What is New About New Media?


Our primary concern will be with visual technologies, such as computer graphics and the World Wide Web. We will argue that these new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media. Digital visual media can best be understood through the ways in which they honor, rival, and revise linear-perspective painting, photography, film, television, and print. No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media. (pp. 14-15)

The Reality of Remediation


The process of remediation makes us aware that all media are at one level a "play of signs," which is a lesson that we take from poststructuralist literary theory. At the same time, this process insists on the real, effective presence of media in our culture. Media have the same claim to reality as more tangible cultural artifacts; photographs, films, and computer applications are as real as airplanes and buildings.
        Furthermore, media technologies constitute networks or hybrids that can be expressed in physical, social, aesthetic, and economic terms. Introducing a new media technology does not mean simply inventing new hardware and software, but rather fashioning (or refashioning) such a network. (p. 19)






SEED QUESTIONS - Please Post Comments Here


Q1. After reading Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” think about Bush as being considered the “father” of hypertext (although he did not coin the term). To what extent can we see his concept implemented in the World Wide Web that for many people defines their notion of hypertext? What are the differences?

Q2. Andries van Dam encourages us to approach hypertext as a new medium and not copy “old, bad habits.” What are some news ways to think about hypertext? How might we use hypertext in publishing, in writing, in thinking?


Q3. Joe Levy, in 1993 said: “if information is available, then any (authorised) person should be able to access it from anywhere in the world.”What implications does this thinking have to our own notions of publishing and the current online environment? You can use examples from your own experience.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Guest Lecture Neil Baldwin


Note from Jess:

 Neil Baldwin is a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Montclair State University. A native New Yorker, he received his PhD in Modern American Poetry from SUNY/Buffalo. He is a widely-published cultural historian and critic. His most recent book is The 25th Protocol(Washington House, Inc./Amazon Kindle, 2010). Dr. Baldwin also serves as Co-Chair of the NYU Biography Seminar. He is currently at work on a biography of Martha Graham.



I would like to thank Neil (who is also Director at the Creative Research Centre - read the blog here) for participating in our course all the way from New Jersey. 



*****************************


Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

As you read this, it will become evident how I arrived at this question.

[A note before we begin. The carefully-selected links herein are integral and elucidating components of my lecture; I urge you and your students to follow them.]

Some analog decades ago, I taught a Masters course at NYU graduate school called What Was Modernism? The seminal work required was a 1936 essay by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) called The Work of Art in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility. This is a visionary must-read for all inhabitants of this day and age under the delusion that our fantastic technological voyage is unique.  If you haven’t read it already, you can do so right now, right here: The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility.

One of Benjamin’s crucial pedagogical beliefs – I want to get this on the table at the beginning because this is a class, and we are all teachers and students alike – was the necessity for children – yes, children – to be exposed as early as possible in their education to Anschauungsunterricht, which means “instruction in perception and intuition.”

Now hold that thought, as I give you another key WB insistence, that “The sphere of authenticity [The Aura] eludes technological – and, of course, not only technical – reproduction.” 


In his melancholy mode, Benjamin is saying that as technical facility makes reproduction/publication of art works [and this includes literature for my purposes] feasible and more widespread, the original will lose its ‘aura’: authenticity - heart, if you will.

The increasing accessibility of art to a larger mass of audience changes the nature of its value – makes it more “popular.”

Which is to say that mass-culture depletes this magic, “strips the veil” from the ideal Thing Itself.

Don’t forget: this essay was written January 1936. 

Now, let’s flash forward to the January 2013 issue of ARTFORUM magazine, where there is an attenuated debate between Lauren Cornell, Curator of the 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub at the New Museum in NYC; and Claire Bishop, author of an essay on “Digital Divide: Whatever happened to digital art?”

This is more than a can of worms, not just in the so-called “art world” (whatever that means); it is a veritable vat full of worms.

The Cornell/Bishop debate about “new media” vs. “auratic, dead-tech, analog” art brings us to another issue, one that’s pertinent to your fabulously-rich course syllabus: This restless argument about the value of digital creations of all kinds in contradistinction to “real” art isn’t helping anybody.

Surely I am not the only content-provider/author/literary artist (if you will)/teacher/cultural citizen who thinks that we need to moderate, and mediate, this vestigial polarity.

[Now do you get the meaning of my lecture title?]

How amusing that I can invoke Marcel Duchamp’s words to help us resolve the battle. He said that a work of art needs to be known in order to be. Its existence depends upon “the artist on the one hand, and on the other, the spectator, who becomes the posterity.” I love that – “posterity!” The viewer’s contribution, Duchamp maintained, is equal in importance to the artist’s, because, as he also wrote, “It is posterity that makes the masterpiece.”

I do not want to tie all of these questions into a nice bow for you and your class. My goal here is to raise perceptual and evaluative points that I hope will lead to lively discussion.

That said, let me end with this personal admission: To me, as the Director of The [born-digital] Creative Research Center, the challenges going forward are not just about acceptance of the digital.

That proverbial train has left the proverbial station. I look back on my mission statement for the CRC that will be three years old this spring, and the term “born-digital” seems so antiquated now! I was so proudly proprietary ‘way back in 2009 that I was launching a Center that didn’t have to worry about concrete infrastructure…

…and nowadays, so what…? It doesn’t matter to “the digital” what I or you or anybody thinks about it.

We live with it, and it lives within us.

The exponentially bigger issue for you, and me, and your students reading this, is curatorial – selection and preservation:

What – in Walter Benjamin’s prophetic terms – do we choose to pay attention to, and why?

And then, concomitantly - what do we value – in art, in literature, in media - and why?

And then, once we have sorted out our preferences, and “likes,” what to put on Facebook, what to put on Instagram, what to add to our queue on Netflix, how do we maintain a sense of confidence in our choices - and the courage of our convictions that we are not missing out on something else?

All the best, as ever,
nb

Neil Baldwin, PhD
Director
The Creative Research Center of Montclair State University

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Assignment 1: Digital Literacy & Me


Weight: 20%
Objective & Procedure

  1. This assignment asks you to assess your overall literate practices and to present them in a podcast format. It’s designed to help you think critically about all aspects of literacy, and also to help you explore your experiences in an autobiographical genre
  2. How do you collaborate and build communities on the web? How have you done so in the past? How will you do so in the future? What aspects of your identity are available online? When did you first make a web page or blog? How has the web, and participation on online communities like Facebook, Blogger, or Twitter, shaped your life so far? 
  3. Assemble a collection of information related to your (trans)literacy life – images, links, video and any other forms of media and writing you’d like.
  4. Craft a narrative which explains and discusses your literacy autobiography experiences using the web and online applications (like Facebook, Twitter, Delicious) from the first time you can remember to today.
  5. Create a small podcast of at least three during which you present your literacy narrative in a way that takes advantage of the web as a medium. 
  6. Record and publish your podcast on http://audioboo.fm/ and then embed your podcast along with any other information (see step 3) to the class blog. 
  7. Title your blog post: Digital Literacy & Me, tag your post with “assignment 1, your name” (NOTE: do note include quotation marks in the tags).
  8. Include a brief 1-2 paragraph reflection on creating your podcast.
Rubric
  1. Introduction effectively draws the listener in. Provides relevant information and establishes a clear purpose engaging the listener immediately.  You note who is speaking, the date the podcast was produced, and where the speaker is located. (15)
  2. How well you create a narrative which presents your experiences using the web, discuss your involvement in online spaces and incorporate answers to the questions noted in steps 2 and 4. (30 points)
  3. How well you incorporate different types of media (sound, video, photos) and links to outside sources into your narrative. Do the images and other modes support your digital literacy experiences?  How well does the music add to the mood of the narrative? (25 points)
  4. How creative you are in presenting your material in ways which take advantage of the podcast medium ( i.e. how usable and accessible to your readers is your podcast = voice, clarity, pacing, creativity and grammar). (20 points)