(update march 5, 2009: added white whale's jason pontius and donald tetto as class guests for march 10; added a link to assigned readings for that day)
i'm teaching two new special topics courses this spring. one of them is digital media production. classes begin january 27.
digital media production
Tues & Thurs, 1:30 - 3:15 pm, Cowell Hall 325
Professor: David Silver
Office hours: Tues & Thurs, 10-11 am, Kalmanavitz 141
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu
Digital Media Production is a special topics course designed around making and sharing digital media. In the next fifteen weeks, we will make digital media using facebook, twitter, flickr, blogs, google maps, online video, yelp, zotero, google docs, and wikipedia. Readings and discussions about digital media culture and theory will accompany our production and participation. On Tuesdays, we will discuss the readings. On Thursdays, we will demo our work. If you have no new work on Demo Day, do not come to class.
Learning Goals (in order of increasing importance):
1. To learn a bit about digital media culture and theory;
2. To learn a lot about digital media modes of participation;
3. To learn how to use digital media creatively and effectively;
4. To learn how to use digital media collectively and collaboratively; and
5. To learn how to learn new tools quickly and independently.
Course Schedule
Week 1
Tuesday, Jan 27
o Introduce ourselves, distribute syllabus, and discuss course expectations.
Thursday, Jan 29
o Kathleen Parker, Mainstream Media on Life Support, Washington Post, January 2, 2009.
o Clive Thompson, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy, New York Times Magazine, September 5, 2008.
o Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic, July/August 2008.
Week 2
Tuesday, Feb 3
o Sherry Turkle, Can You Hear Me Now? Forbes, May 5, 2007.
o Zachary McCune, noe web day - 24 hours w/o the internet.
o Jenna Wortham, The Value of a Facebook Friend? About 37 Cents, Bits blog, January 9, 2009.
o Selections from Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self, 2002.
o Alan Sipress and Sam Diaz, A Casualty Of War: MySpace - U.S. Military Blocks Popular Web Sites, Cutting Ties to Home, Washington Post, May 15, 2007.
Thursday, Feb 5
o Demo Day: facebook
Week 3
Tuesday, Feb 10
o Lee and Sachi LeFever, Twitter in Plain English, Common Craft, March 5, 2008.
o David Pogue, Twittering Tips for Beginners, Pogue's Posts blog (New York Times), January 15, 2009.
o Laura Fitton, Twitter is my Village, Pistachio, January 10, 2009.
o Corey Flintoff, Gaza Conflict Plays Out Online Through Social Media, NPR.org, January 6, 2009.
o Craig Colgan, How Frozen Peas Started A Movement: Cancer Patient's Blog Builds Web Community, LoudounExtra.com (Washington Post), January 10, 2008.
o Xeni Jardin, Tweethearts: blogger proposes to nerd girlfriend over Twitter, she tweets back acceptance, Boing Boing, October 10, 2008.
o Lindy Brown, Twittering Libraries, fall 2008.
Thursday, Feb 12
o Demo Day: twitter
Week 4
Tuesday, Feb 17 (Guest: Brenda Hough, MaintainIT Project & PhD student, Library and Information Management, Emporia State University)
o Stacy Schiff, Know it All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? The New Yorker, July 31, 2006.
o Yochai Benkler, Open-source Economics, Ted Talks, July 2005 (Video: 17:53).
o Ira Glass, On good taste ... This American Life (Video: 5:20).
Thursday, Feb 19
o Demo Day: flickr
Week 5
Tuesday, Feb 24:
o Paul Boutin, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004, Wired, November 2008.
o Andrew Sullivan, Why I Blog, The Atlantic, November 2008.
o Gabriel Cohen, You Talkin’ to Me? New York's Brash, Boisterous Blogosphere, New York Times, January 9, 2009.
o Tom Coates, (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything... plasticbag.org, September 3, 2003.
o Shaun Huston, Why I was Tweeting while this blog lay dying, Short-Circuit Signs blog, December 22, 2008.
o Amanda Lenhart, Adults and Social Network Websites, Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 14, 2009.
Thursday, Feb 26:
o In place of Thursday’s class, you are required to attend and document at least two films in USF’s Human Rights Film Festival that runs from February 24-26th.
Week 6
Tuesday, March 3
o Henry Jenkins, Why Heather Can Write, Technology Review, February 6, 2004.
o Sharon Otterman, Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace, New York Times, November 21, 2008.
o Eugenio Tisselli, "thinkflickrthink": a case study on strategic tagging, 2009.
Thursday, March 5
o Demo Day: blogs
Week 7
Tuesday, March 10 (Guests: Jason Pontius (president/creative director, White Whale) and Donald Tetto (developer/jack-of-all-trades, White Whale)
o Readings here.
Thursday, March 12
o Demo Day: google maps
Week 8
Tuesday, March 17
o Fred Endres and Kent State University, Newsroom Convergence: A Shotgun Wedding?, 2009.
o Read a healthy selection of the San Francisco Foghorn.
o Listen to at least one hour of KUSF and/or KDNZ.
o View a healthy selection of clips from USFtv.
Thursday, March 19 (Guest: Alex Hochman, Assistant Director, Career Services Center)
o Demo Day: professional portfolios
Week 9
Tuesday, March 24: SPRING BREAK
Thursday, March 26: SPRING BREAK
Week 10
Tuesday, March 31
o Michael Wesch, An anthropological introduction to YouTube, presented at the Library of Congress, June 23, 2008 (Video: 55.33).
o Graham Meikle, “Whacking Bush: Tactical Media as Play,” in Megan Boler, ed., Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times (MIT Press, 2008): pp. 367-382. (Accessed through Gleeson Library Reserves.)
o Perez Hilton, We All Made a Difference! PerezHilton, November 16, 2008.
Thursday, April 2
o Demo Day: online video
Week 11:
Tuesday, April 7
o Field trip: class meets for lunch at a place selected by us (with help from yelp).
o Stephen Baker, Will Work for Praise: The Web's Free-Labor Economy, Business Week, December 28, 2008.
o Deborah Gage, S.F. Yelp user faces lawsuit over review, San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 2009.
o Students responsible for finding and sharing at least two other Yelp-related readings.
Thursday, April 9 (Guest: Alice Marwick, PhD candidate, Media, Culture and Communication, NYU)
o Demo Day: yelp
Week 12
Tuesday, April 14
o Topic/s and readings generated by students
Thursday, April 16
o Demo Day: decided by students
Week 13
Tuesday, April 21
o David Parry, Wikipedia and the New Curriculum: Digital Literacy Is Knowing How We Store What We Know, Science Progress blog, February 11, 2008.
o Whitney Matheson, Ahoy! Delve into these pirate picks, USA Today blog, December 4, 2008.
o Anne-Marie Deitering, discovery and creation and ... lies! info-fetishist blog, January 3, 2009.
o Michael Feldstein, The Pirate Hoax, e-Literate blog, December 20, 2008.
o Mills Kelly, You Were Warned, edwired blog, December 18, 2008.
Thursday, April 23
o Demo Day: zotero
Week 14
Tuesday, April 28 (Guest: Sara Bassett, Membership Services Assistant, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and recent USF alumnus)
o Lawrence Lessig, "Fair Use Elaborated,” Lessig blog, August 23, 2004.
o Lawrence Lessig, "Constraining Creators," section from Freeculture (2004).
o Cory Doctorow, "Scroogled," Radar, September 12, 2007.
o Justin Cone, "Building on the Past," 2003 (Video: 2:00).
Thursday, April 30
o Demo Day: google docs
Week 15:
Tuesday, May 5
o Marshall Poe, The Hive, The Atlantic, September 2006.
o Selections from Alan Ziajka, Legacy & Promise: 150 years of Jesuit education at the University of San Francisco (Association of Jesuit University Presses, 2005).
Thursday, May 7
o Demo Day: wikipedia
Week 16
Tuesday, May 12
o Ian Parker, Absolute Powerpoint: Can a software package edit our thoughts?, The New Yorker, May 28, 2001.
Thursday, May 14
o Demo Day: wikipedia, two
This class has no final exam.
Grading:
25% - Quizzes and in-class assignments
25% - Homework projects
25% - Class and online participation
25% - Demo Days
If you are concerned about your grade, you can request a meeting with me anytime during the semester.
Rulez:
1. Read all assigned readings prior to class.
2. In class, listen to and learn from everyone.
3. No late work accepted.
4. Starting January 29, no drinking out of non-reusable containers in class. Be creative with your thirst-quenching solutions.
7 comments:
Do you think your students will come into this class already having a good deal of facility with these tools?
I hope you can share some of the class's creations!
anonymous - thanks for your comment.
on the whole, no, i do not think they will arrive to class with experience with these tools.
i predict that all of them will know and be very comfortable with facebook. all of them will have read wikipedia, but few, if any, of them will have contributed to wikipedia. similarly, many of them will have read yelp but never contributed to yelp.
there's always one or two or three students who are super wired and experienced in web 2.0 tools. but for the most part, it's been my experience - and the experiences of others, both at and outside USF - that with the exception of facebook few of our students are using these kinds of tools.
i hope to share, and i hope my students will share, our experiences throughout the semester!
i see "Read a healthy selection of the San Francisco Foghorn." is in the syllabus :-) looking forward to the bump in traffic :-). We are looking for all types of DMP students to get involved. Let them know to contact me if interested. Talk to you soon!
I'm glad you're going to discuss Mills Kelly's blog post “You were warned” and the Edward Owens / Last American Pirate hoax.
The student who created the hoax Wikipedia entry had their Wikipedia account blocked over this. Wikipedia policy considers the creation of hoax pages as a form of vandalism. There is a clear Wikipedia guideline prohibiting it.
At least one other named Wikipedia account and an anonymous IP address user were also blocked over this incident.
Further, Professor Kelly's institution, GMU, has a “Responsible Use of Computing Policy” which appears to prohibit the use of GMU computing facilities to violate other internet site's policies.
Professor Kelly has explicitly denied “requiring” his students to vandalize Wikipedia. Because it's his word against his student's statement, he may be technically correct that it wasn't a course “requirement”. Nevertheless, it seems fairly well established that his class vandalized Wikipedia under his direction, care and supervision.
I'm glad you're going to talk to your students about this. Believe me, I'm not a totally humorless BOFH. As a long-time network abuse specialist, I can spot the lulz when a departmental dean directs his class to vandalize another internet site. Your students will LOL too.
Hi David,
Just discovered you, your blog, and your classes. My company's beginning the redesign of the USF Web site— we should probably talk, right? I'd be thrilled to invite you and your students to participate somehow. I've emailed you under separate cover.
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