Ok, folks, so here we are at the end of the term. Below are your instructions for the final project. We covered much of this during our last class session but here it is in print. Please feel free to post questions in the comments section.
Your final project will consist of two parts:
1) An individual OR group digital project (this can be video, or audio, or a wiki, a website, a gallery of images, or whatever else — we will generate some ideas in class) that somehow engages some of the ideas, concepts, or thinkers we’ve been discussing in class.
You might, for example, make a short movie that explains the Creative Commons, or a multimedia tutorial on Manovich’s theory of new media, a brief radio program around the idea of “the medium is the message.” Be creative. Take a chance. If you need to borrow audio/video equipment or need help with software, etc. please do not hesitate to let me know. I will do what I can to help you through this process. We’ll discuss all this in detail in class.
2) An individual (you only) 5-8pp essay that discusses, in detail, the process of creating your final project as well as on the ways in which it speaks to our readings and the broader themes of this class.
Consider the following in composing your essay: (You don’t need to address every single one of these, but use them in composing your essay).
Why did you choose to do approach your project the way you did? Was this a group or individual decision? In either case, describe the process of coming up with your project idea and with your initial plan. What role did your teammates play in the initial planning?
Which concepts or broader topics did you reference or address in your project? Why? Why did you choose your particular topic or concepts? How does your project speak to, draw on or engage them? What, in other words, does your project say about the ideas you chose to explain, satirize, revise, mock, etc.?
How does your project engage our readings? How did any of the assigned readings influence your thinking about your project and how you carried it out? Which readings were especially useful? How and why? Feel free to discuss, if briefly, any specific ideas from our readings that you feel influenced you.
Discuss the process of carrying out your project in as much detail as possible. What was the planning like? If you shot video, where did you shoot and when? Who was involved in the shoot? Why? What role did everyone play? What were some of the challenges you encountered? Did you have to deviate from your original plan? Why? How? How did that affect the end result? What happened after you shot your footage, made your images, recorded your audio, etc.? Who did what? What was the post-production process like? Did you encounter any snags along the way?
How and to what extent does the project you turned in resemble the one you had in mind when you first started working on it? Why do you think that is? Did you end up with something you did not expect to end up with? How might you explain that? Does it offer any insights for similar projects you might undertake in the future?
You get the idea. We will brainstorm some in class as well.
Both parts of this assignment are due at the start of our final exam session on Monday, May 21.
This is a take-home exam due at the start of class on Wednesday, April 4th. I will not accept late exams. No exceptions. Really.
Respond to 3 of the 6 questions below as thoroughly as you can. Each of your responses should be approximately 2-3 double spaced pages in length. Be sure to address every part of each question you choose.
1. What does McLuhan mean by “the medium is the message”? Be sure to explain clearly and thoroughly what that famous phrase could mean and use at least two examples from our readings and class discussion to back up your assertions. Feel free to use authors other than McLuhan in making your argument.
2.Raymond Williams famously critiqued Marshall McLuhan for the latter’s “technological determinism,” an intellectual approach that sees technology as a central driving force in the development of a society and its cultural values. Discuss William’s take on the development of television as a critique of technological determinism. How does Williams see the relationship between a society and its technology? Use examples from the text to back up your arguments.
3. In your essay, define “cognitive surplus” and discuss what it has to do with peer production and the Internet. Be sure to use lots of examples to illustrate your points. Use at least one example that DOES NOT appear in Shirky’s book.
4. Some have argued that governing intellectual property with traditional copyright law in the digital age amounts to, in McLuhan’s words, “trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools — with yesterday’s concepts.” Influential thinkers like Lawrence Lessig and others have proposed Creative Commons licensing as a viable 21st Century alternative to copyright. What is CC licensing and how does it work? What advantages does it offer over copyright in respect to digital work? In your opinion, does CC licensing offer a viable approach to “today’s job” of effectively addressing intellectual property concerns as they pertain to the sharing of digital media?
5. Nick Carr argues that the Internet has essentially rewired our brains, changing the way we process information. In your opinion, is Carr right? If so, is this a necessarily negative development? Provide concrete examples in support of your arguments.
6. Given all our class discussion and everything we’ve read so far, what is “new media,” what makes it different from “old media,” and why is this difference important? Though much has been written about this, this question is about your understanding of the term “new media.” Be sure to provide evidence in support of your arguments.
"My mind is going. I can feel it."
Below, as promised, is a video of Clay Shirky speaking at Baruch in 2010. His talk is essentially a distillation of both Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus. Some of his arguments here will be very familiar.
Read this influential 2006 blog post by Jay Rosen entitled “The People Formerly Known as the Audience” (Shirky refers to it) and consider Rosen’s assertions that we, everyday folks, can now take control of the production of media content and are no longer merely consumers beholden to professional “media people.”
In your blog post, discuss to what extent you’ve observed this change in the control of media production in your own community, among your peers, in the mass media, or anywhere else. Is Rosen right? How can you tell? Use one or two specific examples to illustrate your points.
To receive full credit for this assignment, please also comment on AT LEAST 2 other responses to this prompt by your classmates. This post and your comments are due by the beginning of class on Wednesday.
For this assignment, you’ll need to create something (an image, a video, or audio), share it, and briefly reflect on the experience of making and sharing it. Here it is in detail:
1. Create something: Take an interesting photo, make an image macro (a LOL Cat, for example) with a meme generator (memegenerator.net is a good one, there are many others — Google is your friend), record or upload audio using SoundCloud, upload or record a video on YouTube, etc. etc. This can be anything at all: a picture of your cat, a meme, a recording of you whistling — it doesn’t matter as long as you made it. Be creative. Show us something interesting.
2. Write a blog post in which you a) embed your creation and b) reflect briefly on the choices you made and on the process of creating it. If you made an image, you can embed it by clicking the “Upload/Insert” button above the box where you enter text to write your post. (Detailed instructions for working with images, including uploading an image from a URL are here.) If your creation is a video on YouTube, simply paste the YouTube URL into your post. If you’re working with SoundCloud, use the embed code the site gives you and paste into your post. If you run into trouble embedding, feel free to email me and to ask the B@B admins for help.
In your brief reflection, be sure to explain why you chose to make the thing you made and to discuss the process briefly. What did you do? How did you do it? Why did you choose to do it that way?
This post is due any time before 12:00pm on Tuesday, March 12. Please post any questions in the comments section below.
Your blogging assignment for next week is this:
After you’ve read at least the first two chapters of Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus, write a blog post in which you connect an idea or story from the reading to your own personal experience with social media. In other words, use something you fine interesting in the first two chapters as a springboard for an anecdote from or a reflection on your personal experience that somehow relates to Shirky’s arguments. You might, for example tell a story from your experiences that illustrates Shirky’s idea of the feedback loop (ch. 3), or take issue with his arguments about TV consumption (ch. 1), or even reflect n the concept of cognitive surplus in light of something you’ve shared online.
IMPORTANT: this post needs to be more about you than about Shirky. Use him as a starting point but make sure that whatever you talk about comes from your own experiences. In some ways, this is a lot like your first post on your social media use in that it is about you.
The post is due by Monday, March 5. Please post questions in the comments section or email me. Don’t forget to categorize your post “blog assignments.”
This time, you have a choice of one of two prompts. Choose one. Don’t do both. (Unless you really want to.)
1. How-To: Create a tutorial for doing something — anything you are good at. Give your reader step by step instructions for doing something, be it baking cookies, playing a game, making a computer program do something, using a smartphone app, knitting, finding information — something you know how to do well that you can teach others to do as well. It need not be related to technology or social media.
Your tutorial can be either written instructions or a video of you going through the steps. Videos need to be embedded in your blog post. If you choose the video option, write a few sentences explaining why you chose your subject matter. If you’re doing something computer related, use screenshots for your images. Instructions for taking screenshots are at the site linked below.
An example of a simple text tutorial that you can follow if you wish is my recent post on adding a CC license to your blog. Another simple one is here. Here’s another. There are lots of examples on the internet so do a google search for “tutorial if you’d like to see other examples. If appropriate to your topic and you choose to do a video, you can use Jing, a free screencast tool.
2. Adventures in Wikiing: Create a Wikipedia account and then do something on the site: create an article, edit an article, participate in a discussion on an article’s or user’s Talk page — whatever you want. Keep an eye on the changes or contributions you made (you can learn a lot by looking at the history of a post) and then write a few paragraphs describing what happened and reflecting upon it: what did you do on Wikipedia for this assignment? Why? What happened? Why? Did anyone respond or change what you did? Did someone comment on it on a Talk page? What are your impressions of this experience?
You may want to take screenshots of your changes or article in case they are deleted. Heres how to take a screenshot in Mac, Windows, and other devices.
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Remember to categorize your post “blogging assignments.” You may also wish to add tags to your post.
As always, post questions or comments in the comment section below.
This blogging assignment is due by Monday, 2/27.
Some of you may choose to add a Creative Commons license to your site. Before you do that, however, understand what a CC license will do and what you’re getting into. The Creative Commons site offers a pretty good explanation of what CC is and what it means to licence your work CC. This article from WIRED UK on why they went with a CC license might be helpful as well. Here’s a bit on what what it means for YouTube to adopt CC licensing.
Now to business:
While some themes include a widgetized area for something like a CC license, the easiest way to add one to most themes is as follows.
First, visit the CC site, click on the green “Choose a License” button and select the license you’d like. Once you do that, you will be able to choose the style of CC license button you’ll have on your site and will be able to copy the code that’s been generated for you.
Select and copy the code to your clipboard. Next, go to the dashboard of your site (make sure you’re logged in.) In the menu on the far right, click on “Appearance,” and then select “Widgets.” That should take you to the widget page. On that page, look for a button that says “Text.” Click and drag that all the way to the right sidebar where you should see other widgets that appear on your site.
Once you do that and put the text widget where you want it, click on the down arrow icon to the right of “Text.” This will allow you to paste your license into the text widget. It should look something like this:
Once you’ve done this and clicked the “Save” button, your CC license button will appear in your sidebar or footer or wherever you chose to put it. Please post questions of corrections in the comments.
Our next reading is chapter 7 of John Gallaugher’s Information Systems. The chapter addresses social media and Web 2.0 and can be found here. You can navigate the sections of the chapter in the left hand sidebar.
Prompt for second blogging assignment:
This is an open topic post (that means you can write about anything) with one small constraint: your post must begin with an idea from the assigned chapter of Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media. In other words, take an idea discussed by Manovich, say, one of his 5 principles of new media or the 6 assertions about new media he complicates at the end of the chapter, and riff off of it. You might discuss ways in which you agree or disagree with Manovich on a particular point, provide additional examples in support of his argument, offer counter-evidence to an assertion he makes, dig deeper into the examples Manovich offers, build on what he says about the movies and the digital, ask a question and then present a possible answer, discuss your overall impressions of his argument so far and consider how it fits or doesn’t fit your own ideas about what makes new media “new,” etc., etc. If you need ideas, let me know.
Be sure to assign your post to the “blog assignments” category. It is due by Monday, 2/20
Double spaced, standard 12pt font (Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, etc.), approximately 2 pages.
Due Wednesday, Feb. 15 in class.
The assignment:
Choose a short passage (1-3 sentences) from one of the assigned readings (McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage and excerpts from Understanding Media), Williams, or Manovich) that you found particularly interesting, illuminating, provocative, or otherwise significant and write a brief essay discussing your interpretation of this passage and why you think it is important to your understanding to the central arguments. Please include your passage at the top of the page and be sure to note the author and the source, including page number.
Consider the following questions and use them to help you formulate a response; you don’t have to answer every one. What does the passage mean? Does it mean something different on its own than it does in the context of this essay? Why? How are the ideas in the passage related to the author’s main argument? What can you say about the meanings of individual words, particularly the technical terms? Do particular words have more than one meaning in the sentence? Try to really dig into the quote you’ve chosen — look at it as closely as you can.
Some Tips:
- Before you start writing, take some time looking at your quote, taking notes, looking up words, or whatever else you need to do to formulate your argument. Try to have some sort of idea of what you will say before you start writing. Good planning is a large part of good writing.
- Support your arguments with evidence from the text, your own experiences, or other relevant sources. Make sure you back up your assertions.
- Don’t worry about impressing your reader with fancy vocabulary and sophisticated syntax; big words and convoluted sentence structure do not necessarily make good writing. Don’t use a thesaurus and make sure that you know the meaning of each word you use. Work to get your thoughts across clearly and accurately rather than to impress your reader. Substance is much more important here than style but proofread carefully and avoid careless mistakes.
- If any of this is unclear, or if you think you might have misunderstood the instructions, be sure to let me know. You can post a question in a comment if you’d like or email me.
As I noted on the syllabus, the posting you do on your blog and the comments you leave on others’ posts count towards your participation grade. So, if you have not done so already, please create your own Blogs@Baruch site and share your URL with me. Instructions for doing this are here.
I am asking all of you to post regularly over the course of the semester. Please post a response to the prompt below by the end of the week. Keep in mind that your blog is your own corner of the web and you may post to it as often as you like.
I also ask that you read and comment substantively on others’ posts. The more you comment, the richer the blogging experience will be for everyone. I am not going to require you to comment a specific number of times but will suggest that you should try to comment at least two or three times a week. If you are someone who tends not to speak much during class discussion, commenting frequently is a great way to make up for that and ensure that your participation grade does not suffer. I’ll say more about commenting in class.
At this point, you’re probably wondering what it is you will be blogging about. Rightly so. So here’s our current blogging prompt:
The Prompt
For your first post, I’d like you to consider the significance of social networks in your own experience online — to reflect on your own exposure to and experience with online social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Spotify, Steam, etc.
Please pick one social network and spend some time discussing how you came to use it, how it has or has not been useful to you, what potential you see in your use of it, or what conclusions you might draw about social networking based on your own experience and the experiences of others you are close to. If you have an interesting anecdote regarding your use of a social networking service, please share it. Some of the best blog posts are stories from their authors’ personal experiences.
If you do not use social networks, please tell your readers why not and spend some time developing your reasons. If you have a story that illustrates why you don’t use or don’t trust social networks and social networking as a practice, be sure to tell it.
Please feel free to include videos or images or other media in your post.
VERY IMPORTANT: Please be sure to select “blog assignments” in the list of categories on the right before you publish your post.
Before you write: Keep in mind that your post is not a term paper. It should be more exploratory and open ended (not to mention shorter). Your post’s goals are to 1) enable you and your readers to play around with new and interesting ideas and 2) to generate conversation rather than present a finished, polished argument. I don’t expect you to have all the answers, but to move towards finding them. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers questions.
I am happy to discuss post ideas with you so if you are stuck and don’t know what to post about, let me know and we can brainstorm together. If you have questions about the blogging assignment in general or any aspect of the prompt above, feel free to ask it in the comments to this post.
A Note on Blogging: A blog is a kind of online journal or diary. Blog posts are usually less formal and more conversational than the sort of academic writing you are typically asked to do. There is more room for creativity and experimentation here than in the typical academic paper in no small part due to the fact that you can easily incorporate various media — still images, video, or audio.
Your audience and purpose are different here as well. You’re writing not for a professor to whom you hope to demonstrate mastery of your subject matter, but sharing ideas with a broader audience — your “readership” — who, in this case consists of your classmates, me, and whoever happens to visit your site and read your post. Keep in mind that your writing to this blog is public — don’t be surprised if you get a comment form someone not enrolled in this class.
Try to have fun with your posts and comments. Keep in mind that your blog is your own space to publish stuff you create. Make it a home on the web. Take pride in it.
In order to syndicate your blog posts on this site, I need your URLs. Please post your URLs into a comment and share with us the title of your site, the theme you used, and why. Your comment might look something like this:
I’ve titled my site “Joe Blow’s Really Cool Site” and used the Pagelines Platform theme because I want to customize my site and the Pageline theme allows that without changes to CSS or other theme files. The URL is: http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/reallycoolsite.
You can make your URL a live link in your comment by using the following HTML tags in the comment:
<a href=”yoururl”>youururl</a>
Below are side A and B of The Medium is the Massage audio recording released in 1967 as a companion to the book by McLuhan and Fiore from the amazing ubuweb.com. It’s groovy. Enjoy.
The Medium is the Massage, Side A
The Medium is the Massage, Side B
Welcome to the online home of CIS3810: Principles of New Media. Make yourself at home, introduce yourself.
Here’s what you are in for:
Course description (from the About page).
This course will offer a survey of key ideas in media studies and will explore how interactive media technologies are changing the ways in which we communicate, consume, create, do business, learn, make knowledge, and act individually or collectively as citizens. We will approach new media from a cultural perspective, with a focus on how media technologies figure in practices of everyday life and in the construction of various social relationships and identities. We will work from a broad definition of “social media,” considering social network sites, smartphone apps, and online games, among other electronic media. We will likewise explore how interactive technologies enable us to become producers as well as consumers of content. We will approach the Internet as generative and will ourselves create and share various media including images, video and audio. We will, in other words, actively participate in the phenomena that we study.
Course Objectives
1) Students will be introduced to the key principles and theory of new media
2) Students will critically engage the development of computer mediated communication
3) Students will explore the social implications of the proliferation of new media as well as the ways in which they figure in and shape the practice of everyday life
4) Students will become familiar with and proficient with online tools, resources and techniques for production and sharing of electronic media including images, video, and audio.
Here’s to an exciting semester!
#CIS3810 on Twitter- Thank you for a fun, productive term, #cis3810. I learned a ton with you. mgershovich (Mikhail Gershovich)
- Did u know that no tv network no magazine group, no newspaper chain brings in more ad bucks than google? #cis3810 EddyEloi (Eddy Eloi)
- Microsoft to offer $15 Windows 8 upgrade, when you buy a Win7 PC http://t.co/0fV6AeIF #cis3810 wangchuktasur (Tenzin Wangchuk)
- http://t.co/XwZFKtaG lets you reverse an image to find where it originated -- #cis3810 TAnderson5190 (Tichina Anderson)
- @Forbes @savitz #cis3810 AnilPersaud1 (Anil Persaud)
- This is only a score-me-some-points tweet. Don't be madd. #cis3810 BryantCameron1 (Bryant Cameron)
- It is a d!^^# shame how the NY Knicks 6th Man, their best friend, thrifilingly becomes their worst enemy #CIS3810 BryantCameron1 (Bryant Cameron)
- The Internet’s Role in Your Personal Privacy http://t.co/rNuxaZ90 via @socialmediamom. #cis3810 Arije_H (Habeeb Arije)
- 12 Annoying Things About Your Website That Drive People Away http://t.co/Eha07LCP via @marketingprofs. #cis3810 Arije_H (Habeeb Arije)
- 19 ways to build relationship with blog comments: http://t.co/zYdwAH3q . #cis3810 Arije_H (Habeeb Arije)
- CIS3810 is Delicious
- In the Battles of SOPA and PIPA, Who Should Control the Internet? | Culture | Vanity Fair
- Welcome to the community | OpenCaching
- Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site
- FreedomBox Foundation
- PirateBox - David Darts Wiki
- The StoryBox
- Dead Drops | Un-cloud your files in cement! 'Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space.
- Stop Dave, I'm Afraid - YouTube
- Status Update: Employers Asking For Your Facebook Password Violates Your Privacy and the Privacy of All Your Friends, Too
- The Tattered Coat » The Shining, Redux
