Monday, August 24, 2009

digital media production (fall 09)

this fall, i'm teaching a special topics course called digital media production. classes begin tuesday, august 25.


digital media production
Tues & Thurs 10:30 - 12:15
Professional Studies 227

Professor: David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 9 - 10 am & by appointment

Digital Media Production is a special topics course designed around creating, sharing, and collaborating with digital media. Students will make digital media using facebook, twitter, flickr, yelp, blogs, google maps, transmedia, and kiva. Readings and discussions about digital media history and culture will accompany and inform our production and participation.

Learning Goals:
1. To learn how to use digital media creatively and effectively;
2. To learn how to use digital media collectively and collaboratively;
3. To learn how to learn new tools quickly and independently;
4. To learn about digital media history and culture; and
5. To experiment with the intersections among digital media and social justice.

Required Texts/Costs:
o Jessica Abel and Ira Glass, Radio: An Illustrated Guide (Chicago: WBEZ, 2008) - $5 (includes shipping)
o flickr pro account, $25
o One loan, via kiva.org, which will be returned in full.

Calendar:

Week 1: Introductions
Tuesday, August 25
o Introduce ourselves, distribute syllabus, and discuss course expectations.
Thursday, August 27
o Clive Thompson, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy, New York Times Magazine, September 5, 2008.
o Rachel Dry, What Would Warhol Blog? Washington Post, August 16, 2009.
o Clay Shirky, How social media can make history, Ted Talks, June 2009.

Weeks 2-3: Social Media and Facebook
Tuesday, September 1
o Lee and Sachi LeFever, Social Networking in Plain English, Common Craft, June 27, 2007.
o danah boyd and Nicole B. Ellison, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1).
o Kate Miller-Heidke, Are You F*cking Kidding Me? (Facebook Song), YouTube
Thursday, September 3
o Amanda Lenhart, Adults and Social Network Websites, Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 14, 2009.
o Justin Smith, Exclusive: Discussing the Future of Facebook with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Inside Facebook, June 3, 2009.
o Stephanie Clifford, Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal, New York Times, July 30, 2009.
o Chadwick Matlin, Facebook Cornering Market on E-Friends: Fight to Own Social Media Heats Up, Washington Post, August 16, 2009.

Tuesday, September 8
o Demo Day: Facebook
Thursday, September 10
o David Gauntlett, Participation culture, creativity, and social change, YouTube, November 12, 2008.
o Due: Facebook Project

Weeks 4-5: Identity, Community, and Twitter
Tuesday, September 15
o Lee and Sachi LeFever, Twitter in Plain English, Common Craft, March 5, 2008.
o Sherry Turkle, Can You Hear Me Now? Forbes, May 5, 2007.
o Ben Parr, HOW TO: Retweet on Twitter, Mashable, April 16, 2009.
o Mashable, How #FollowFriday Works
o Virginia Heffernan, Hashing Things Out: How Hashtags are Remaking Conversations on Twitter, New York Times Magazine, August 7, 2009
Thursday, September 17
o Corey Flintoff, Gaza Conflict Plays Out Online Through Social Media, NPR.org, January 6, 2009.
o Evgeny Morozov, Think Again: Twitter, Foreign Policy, August 6, 2009.
o Steven Johnson, How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live, Time, June 5, 2009.

Tuesday, September 22
o Demo Day: Twitter
Thursday, September 24
o Tim Lemke, Athletes open up in Twitter arena, Washington Times, May 26, 2009.
o Rick Maese, With Twitter's Arrival, NFL Loses Control of Image Game, Washington Post, August 2, 2009.
o Jennifer Van Grove, Michael Vick Signs with Eagles: NFL Players Tweet Reactions, Mashable, August 13, 2009.
o Jay Fienberg, I'd really wish someone with a muted trumpet would walk by right now and play something dusky.
o Due: Twitter Project

Weeks 6-7: Images, Public/Private, and Flickr
Tuesday, September 29
o Lee and Sachi LeFever, Online Photo Sharing in Plain English, Common Craft, January 9, 2008.
o Virginia Heffernan, Sepia No More, New York Times Magazine, April 27, 2008.
o Michael Kimmelman, At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus, New York Times, August 2, 2009.
o Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, Part II, Time Magazine.
Thursday, October 1
o Ira Glass, On good taste ... This American Life (Video: 5:20).
o Amparo Lasén and Edgar Gómez-Cruz, Digital Photography and Picture Sharing: Redefining the Public/Private Divide, Knowledge, Technology & Policy, August 2009

Tuesday, October 6
o Demo Day: Flickr
Thursday, October 8
o Noam Cohen, Historical Photos in Web Archives Gain Vivid New Lives, New York Times, January 18, 2009.
o Eugenio Tisselli, "thinkflickrthink": a case study on strategic tagging, 2009.
o Due: Flickr Project

Weeks 8-9: Free/User-Generated/Exploited Labor and Yelp
Tuesday, October 13:
o No Class (Fall Break)
Thursday, October 15
o Stacy Schiff, Know it All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? The New Yorker, July 31, 2006.
o Stephen Baker, Will Work for Praise: The Web's Free-Labor Economy, Business Week, December 28, 2008.
o Eric Karjaluoto, Is Tim Ferriss acting like an asshole? ideasonideas, August 11, 2009.

Tuesday, October 20
o Demo Day: Yelp
Thursday, October 22
o Rob Walker, Handmade 2.0, New York Times Magazine, December 16, 2007.
o Kathleen Richards, Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0, East Bay Express, February 18, 2009.
o Deborah Gage, S.F. Yelp user faces lawsuit over review, San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 2009.
o Due: Yelp Project

Weeks 10-11: Words, Images, Video, Sound, Links, and Blogs
Tuesday, October 27
o Tom Coates, (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything... plasticbag.org, September 3, 2003.
o Andrew Sullivan, Why I Blog, The Atlantic, November 2008.
o Paul Boutin, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004, Wired, November 2008.
Thursday, October 29.
o Michael Wesch, An anthropological introduction to YouTube, presented at the Library of Congress, June 23, 2008 (Video: 55.33).

Tuesday, November 3
o Demo Day: Blogs
Thursday, November 5
o Scott Rosenberg, Putting Everything Out There [Justin Hall] from Say Everything.

Weeks 12-13: Place, Movement, and Google Maps
Tuesday, November 10
o Spend a significant amount of time exploring: Oakland Crimespotting, Hillary Rodham Clinton in Africa, PhillyHistory, Fallen Fruit
Thursday, November 12
o Gabriel Cohen, You Talkin’ to Me? New York's Brash, Boisterous Blogosphere, New York Times, January 9, 2009.
o Malia Wollan, The Big Draw of a GPS Run, New York Times, August 19, 2009.
o Rex Sorgatz, A Data Point on Every Block: An Interview with Adrian Holovaty, Fimoculous, February 14, 2008.

Tuesday, November 17
o Demo Day: Google Maps
Thursday, November 19
o Due: Google Maps Project

Weeks 14-15: Digital Storytelling, New Literacies, and Transmedia
Tuesday, November 24
o Jessica Abel and Ira Glass, Radio: An Illustrated Guide (Chicago: WBEZ, 2008)
o Henry Jenkins, Why Heather Can Write, Technology Review, February 6, 2004.
o The Extended Reality of Cross-Media Storytelling, Power to the Pixel, February 4, 2009.
Thursday, November 26:
o No Class (Thanksgiving)

Tuesday, December 1
o Demo Day: Transmedia
Thursday, December 3
o Demo Day: Transmedia

Week 16: Giving, Getting Back, and Kiva
Tues, December 8
o Demo Day: Kiva

This class has no final exam.

Grading:
20% - Reading quizzes and in-class assignments
20% - Class and online participation
20% - Demo Days
40% - Projects

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. If you have no new work on Demo Day, do not come to class.
5. Publish work under your own name.
6. Starting August 27, no drinking out of non-reusable containers in class. Be creative with your thirst-quenching solutions.

8 comments:

Infinite Tasks said...

I enjoyed looking over the dates of the materials on your syllabus calendar, David! I think there's 1 from 2003, 1 from 2004, 2 from 2006, maybe a couple from 2007, the rest from the last 18 months. That's some up-to-date work you're developing with your students!

I'm pleased to say that one of the books I'm teaching (Lee Konstantinou's Pop Apocalypse is a 2009 pub.

I think this shows something interesting about our approaches, though. Since most of the materials you depend on are transient, the outcomes seem more tied to method and practice. In my case, the outcomes remain textually based.

I'm glad our students have these multiple forms of literacy to learn!

david silver said...

hey Jeff - thanks for the comment! i like how you describe my syllabus as "up-to-date work." i agree but by including some "older" works - from, gasp, 2003!?! - my syllabus may come off as less than current to other digital media teachers and profs. for me, and hopefully my students, while the tools and techs seem to be changing by the week, the Big Ideas are a bit less transient.

wouldn't it be great if all USF syllabi were online? then we could compare what colleagues teach and better advise our students to take this class or that class.

Infinite Tasks said...

Hmmm, so where do I post my syllabus in order to, as you say, share/give away? I can't really put it on my blog, as that group of folks (Infinite Jest readers) couldn't really care, nor could my students care about my writings on David Foster Wallace. Your suggestions are welcome.

Btw, your comment that in terms of digital media classes, you're reaching back in time has me ROFLMAO.

david silver said...

USF connect allows users to place files and documents that can then be accessed via the web. once in USF connect, go to USFfiles. if this is something that may interest you, let me know. if i remember correctly, it's a bit unintuitive at first but then it make sense.

but once you post it, how will you let folks know about it? that's the question. it might be interesting to post a quick link on your blog to the syllabus. after all, you're getting so many comments on your posts which means folks are interested in your ideas. wouldn't they be interested, by extension, in your classes? let me ponder more ...

Anonymous said...

Re: the Stacy Schiff piece, your class may be interested in Jimmy Wales's recent thoughts on that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=311104766&oldid=311087810

Anonymous said...

actually, this is a better url, with context. Wales's comment is at the end of the page.

http://tiny.cc/04V0k

david silver said...

thanks Anonymous for the comments and links to some relevant readings. i will have my students read jimmy wales' response upon finishing the Stacy Schiff piece. thanks!

David Gauntlett said...

Hi David

Google Alerts has belatedly pointed out to me that my 'Participation Culture,...' video was one of the things your students were looking at recently.

I am flattered to be included!
I would also be very interested to hear their comments or feedback.

The course looks really interesting!

Best wishes

David