silver in sf

what i eat and drink in a day project

2012-02-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

what i eat and drink in a day project for green media

1. photograph everything you eat and drink in one whole day.

2. select your best photos and upload them to flickr.

3. title and tag all your photos. put them into a set. be creative with all aspects of this project. make it interesting.

4. sometime before class on thursday, february 9, post a thick tweet that includes a link to your project.

5. in class on thursday, be prepared to demo your work.

rules:

a. steps 1-4 must be complete prior to class on thursday.

b. if you have no work to demo, do not come to class.

twitter assignment

2012-01-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

twitter assignment for students enrolled in green media

1. if you have not yet joined twitter, join twitter.

2. create a profile. in either your user name or bio (or both), use your real name.

3. make your profile public. if you already have a twitter account that is private and wish to keep it that way, create a new account for this class.

4. find and follow all members (students and professor) of our class. also follow GleesonLibrary. although you are not required to follow ITweetUSF, you'd be a fool not to.

5. get into the habit of checking twitter at least once a day.

community garden outreach (spring 2012)

2012-01-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

Community Garden Outreach
Environmental Studies 145
Thursdays, 12:45 – 4:25 pm, in the USF Garden

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues 1 – 2 pm & by appointment
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Community Garden Outreach introduces students to ideas, skills, and practices in ultra-local, urban-based food production and distribution. Through course readings and discussions, harvesting in the USF garden, running the campus farmstand, and working on group projects, students will gain first-hand knowledge of and experience in ultra-local, urban-based food systems.

Learning Outcomes
1. Develop practical skills in harvesting, preparing, preserving, and distributing food;
2. Gain hands-on experience in designing, implementing, publicizing, and administering the campus farmstand;
3. Learn how to collaborate creatively and effectively.

Course Schedule
This course meets once-a-week for fifteen weeks. Approximately one-third of our class periods will be spent discussing assigned readings and films, sharing ideas and progress on group projects, and brainstorming our next farmstand. Another one-third of our class periods will be spent in cooking and homesteading workshops in the community kitchen at St. Cyprian's Church (2097 Turk Street). A final one-third of our class periods will be spent setting up, administering, documenting, and breaking down our campus farmstands.

Grading
33% - Quizzes, homework, in-class assignments, weekly reflections, and class participation.
33% - Participation in and contribution to campus farmstands, including designing, setting up, publicizing, preparing food, administering, documenting, and cleaning up.
33% - Individual contribution to group project. This includes: selecting a topic that sustains your attention for a semester; working with other team-members in a collective and generous manner; and devoting at least four hours a week to your project.

Attendance Policy
Missing class, or attending class unprepared, will significantly affect your final grade. If you do miss class, contact a classmate to find out what we discussed in class and ask to borrow his or her notes. Then, do the same with a second classmate. After doing this, if you have questions about missed material, visit me during office hours or send me an email.

Rules
1. No late work accepted.
2. No drinking out of non-reusable containers during class.

green media (spring 2012)

2012-01-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

MS 301: Green Media
Tues & Thurs 9:55 – 11:40 am
Lone Mountain 350

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues 1 – 2 pm & by appointment
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Green Media is an advanced production media studies course devoted to making media about making food. In this class, we will learn how to combine words, photographs, video, and social media to tell and share compelling stories about food and food production. Along the way, we will explore different meanings of food, food politics, and connections between food and culture.

Learning Outcomes
1. Learn how to use social media to make and share engaging stories about food and food production;
2. Develop a unique, creative, and compelling voice within your media work; and
3. Learn how to collaborate creatively and effectively.

Course Texts/Costs
o All readings are free and online, available for free via Gleeson Library, or available for free outside my office.
o Students are required to purchase a flickr pro account ($25/year).
o Throughout the semester, students will accrue a number of food-related costs, including homework assignments involving shopping at local farmer’s markets and purchasing ingredients to cook or bake class-related assignments.

Course Schedule
On Tuesdays, we will discuss readings, films, and videos about food, food production, food politics, and food and culture. All readings/viewings will be assigned at least a week prior to being discussed. On Thursdays, we will have social media workshops in class, cooking workshops in the kitchen at St. Cyprian's Church (2097 Turk Street), and Demo Days – class periods when students demonstrate their green media. There is no final exam.

Grading
Quizzes, homework, and in class assignments - 20%
Class and online participation - 30%
Projects - 50%

Attendance Policies
o Missing class, or attending class unprepared, will significantly affect your final grade.
o If you do miss class, contact a classmate to find out what we discussed in class and ask to borrow his or her notes. Then, do the same with a second classmate. After doing this, if you have questions about missed material, visit me during office hours or send me an email.
o On Demo Days, a completed assignment is your ticket to ride. If you have not completed the assignment, do not come to class.

Rules
1. No late work accepted.
2. No drinking out of non-reusable containers during class.

media fast, take two; or, final exam for intro to media studies

2011-11-29T18:15:00.000-08:00

1. sometime between today, tuesday, november 29, and monday, december 5, stop using all modern media. you can read books and magazines and papers, but stop using media that is electronic or digital. no iphones, no facebook, no text. no computers, TVs, or radios. no CD players, digital cameras, or tape recorders. mark the time your media fast begins.

2. continue your fast for as long as possible. go longer than your first fast.

3. when your absence from media becomes dangerous, impossible, or unbearable, return to them. note which device you broke your fast with and record the time.

4. calculate how long your media fast lasted.

5. take some time -- a few hours, a day -- to reflect upon what happened.

6. in no more than two pages, share your findings. be sure to include connections with at least two readings from intro to media studies.

7. once you have finished your two-page essay, copy your favorite part - a sentence, a few sentences, a paragraph - and paste it as a comment to this blog post. you can comment anonymously, with an identifiable nickname, or with your full name - your call. If you do comment anonymously, be sure to notify me so i can make sure you fulfilled this part of the assignment. (i will give a brief demo on commenting to blogs in class on thursday.)

8. bring your final essay to class on tuesday, december 6. make sure your name is on it.

tip: think about the timing of your media fast and strategize accordingly.

leveling up with gene yang at san francisco public library

2011-10-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

great looking event - and extra credit opportunity for intro to media studies students - at san francisco public library:

saturday, november 5, 1-2:30 pm.
latino/hispanic community meeting room b
main library, lower level

media fast homework assignment

2011-10-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

1. sometime between thursday, october 27 and monday, october 31, stop using all modern media. you can read books and magazines and papers, but stop using media that is electronic or digital. no iphones, no facebook, no text. no computers, TVs, or radios. mark the time your media fast begins.

2. continue your fast for as long as possible - the longer, the better.

3. when your absence from media becomes dangerous, impossible, or unbearable, return to them. note which device you broke your fast with and record the time.

4. calculate how long your media fast lasted.

5. take some time -- a few hours, a day -- to reflect upon what happened.

6. in no more than one page, share your findings. make sure your name is on the page and bring it to class on tuesday, november 1.

tip: think about the timing of your media fast and strategize accordingly.

mid-term 2 study guide

2011-10-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

Mid-term 2 for Intro to Media Studies covers all the assigned readings, lectures, and guest lectures from September 27 to November 1. The test includes 33 multiple choice, true or false, and fill-in questions. You have the entire class period to take the test.

In preparing for mid-term 2, you should read and understand the following:

Steven Lubar, “Radio,” in InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions (Houghton Mifflin Co, 1993), pp. 213-241.

Reyhan Harmanci, Battle over KUSF’s Future Rages On, The Bay Citizen, March 19, 2011.

Sami Grover, Cutting-Edge Animation & Video, Made in Off-Grid Treehouses, Treehugger blog, July 20, 2011.

Robert A. Rosentone, “The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age,” in Marcia Landy (ed), The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media (Rutgers University Press, 2000): pp. 50-66.

Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos, “Television and the Power of Visual Culture,” Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 7th edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010), pp. 143-171.

Joseph Turow, “Understanding the Strategies of Media Giants,” Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 4th edition (Routledge, 2011): pp. 192-223.

You should also review your class notes and be familiar with the following:

* early amateur radio and DIY culture
* radio's development into a consumer product
* radio and advertising
* radio and war
* the current state of KUSF
* Trout Gulch
* How-to Homestead
* Professor Kaiser's lecture about film and memory
* mainstream films construction of historical worlds
* early television sponsorship
* quiz shows
* the economics of reality tv
* threats and challenges to television
* the basic strategies of Disney, News Corp, and Google
* Professor Silver's lecture on Bob Dylan.

Also, review notes from class discussions of popular music projects and student media fasts.

Friendly reminder: consider studying and discussing this material with a classmate or small group.

#occupywallstreet homework

2011-09-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

During class on September 13, we discussed the current issue of Adbusters magazine, including their project #occupywallstreet.

Yesterday, September 27th, I asked students whether they thought #occupywallstreet had actually happened. Most of you said no. Then I asked if you thought it was still going on. Even more of you said no.

Your homework for Thursday, in addition to the reading on KUSF, is to answer the following three questions:

1. What's happening with #occupywallstreet?
2. What was the source or sources you used to find out what's happening?
3. Why did you use this source or sources?

You should be able to fit your answers within one-third of a sheet of paper. Your homework is due at the beginning of class.

mid-term 1 study guide

2011-09-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

Mid-term 1 for Intro to Media Studies covers all the assigned readings and all the lectures from August 25th to September 15th. The test includes approximately 30 multiple choice, true or false, and fill-in questions and one brief (1 page written) essay. You have the entire class period to take the test.

In preparing for mid-term 1, you should read (or listen to) and understand the following:

J. Charles Sterin, “Early American Newspaper Publishing,” from Mass Media Revolution, pp. 96-101.

Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos, “Magazines in the Age of Specialization,” Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 7th edition, pp. 280-303.

Tom Standage, A special report on the news industry: Bulletins from the future (especially The people formerly known as the audience; and The Foxification of news), The Economist, July 7, 2011.

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Late Night "Thank You Notes" From Jimmy Fallon, NPR, May 23, 2011 (45 minutes).

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Covering "Tainted Justice" And Winning A Pulitzer, NPR, May 3, 2010 (38 minutes).

You should also review the syllabus and your class notes and be familiar with the following:

* 10 elements of new media
* early stages of US newspapers
* the relationships among the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, literacy, and newspapers
* the relationships between news and technologies
* why newsrooms matter
* journalism and justice ("tainted justice")
* magazines as mass media
* muckrakers
* jacob riis
* magazines and gender
* magazines and specialization
* magazines and visual culture
* magazines and consumer society
* the relationships between transportation and media

Also, review notes from class discussions of Adbusters and Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.

Friendly suggestion: consider studying and discussing this material with a classmate or small group.

introduction to media studies, fall 2011

2011-08-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

Introduction to Media Studies
Section 01: Tues & Thurs 9:55-11:10 am, Cowell 106
Section 02: Tues & Thurs 12:45-2:00 pm, Cowell 106

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 2-3 pm & by appointment
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Introduction to Media Studies introduces students to the field of media studies in general and media studies at USF in particular. Throughout the semester, we will read, listen, watch, research, discuss, create, and write about the printing press, newspapers, magazines, books, comics, the telegraph, popular music, radio, telephones, film, television, cable television, computers, computer games, the internet, social media, and mobile devices.

Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students will:
1. Be able to explain the key developments and social actors of media history, from the printing press to social media;
2. Be able to explain how these key developments were and continue to be embedded within larger cultural, economic, political, and social conditions; and
3. Become more familiar with USF media studies professors and Gleeson librarians and their different approaches to studying and making media.

Calendar
Tuesday, August 23
Introduction, distribute syllabi.

Thursday, August 25
Prior to class, listen to: Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Late Night "Thank You Notes" From Jimmy Fallon, NPR, May 23, 2011 (45 minutes).

Tuesday, August 30
Read: J. Charles Sterin, “Early American Newspaper Publishing,” from Mass Media Revolution (Allyn & Bacon, 2012), pp. 96-101.

Thursday, September 1
Read: Brooke Gladstone, Discussion with Steve Coll and Matthew Yglesias, On the Media, February 20, 2009; and How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City, Journalism.org, January 11, 2010; and listen to: Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Covering "Tainted Justice" And Winning A Pulitzer, NPR, May 3, 2010 (38 minutes).
Guest in morning section: Professor Teresa Moore (Media Studies & Journalism, USF)

Tuesday, September 6
Read: Tom Standage, A special report on the news industry: Bulletins from the future (This includes: A little local difficulty; Reinventing the newspaper; The people formerly known as the audience; Julian Assange and the new wave; Coming full circle; and The Foxification of news), The Economist, July 7, 2011.
Guest: Professor Michael Robertson (Media Studies & Journalism, USF)

Thursday, September 8
Read: Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos, “Magazines in the Age of Specialization,” Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 7th edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010), pp. 280-303.

Tuesday, September 13
Purchase and read, cover to cover, the current issue of Adbusters magazine.

Thursday, September 15
Read selections from Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (University of California Press, 2010).

Tuesday, September 20
Mid-term 1

Thursday, September 22
Field trip to Gleeson Library to see Monsters on the Bookshelf exhibit.
Guest: J.H. Everett, visual storyteller and writer who has worked with the Jim Henson Company.

Tuesday, September 27
Read: Steven Lubar, “Radio,” in InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions (Houghton Mifflin Co, 1993), pp. 213-241.
Guest: Joe Garity, Reference Librarian and Media Studies Library Liaison, Gleeson Library

Thursday, September 29
Read: Jennifer Waits, Radio Station Field Trip 9 - University of San Francisco's KUSF, Spinning Indie blog, February 3, 2009; Jennifer Waits, Students Hold Wake for KUSF, Radio Survivor blog, March 25, 2011; and Reyhan Harmanci, Battle over KUSF’s Future Rages On, The Bay Citizen, March 19, 2011.
Guest in afternoon section: Professor Steve Runyon (Media Studies and KUSF, USF)

Tuesday, October 4
Read/Watch: Sami Grover, Cutting-Edge Animation & Video, Made in Off-Grid Treehouses, Treehugger blog, July 20, 2011; Anastasia Van Wingerden, Home Haircut, How-to Homestead, 2011 (4 minutes); and Melinda Sk8, Sk8 Sisters on the Farm, How-to Homestead, 2009 (2:15 minutes). Also, spend some time with How-to Homestead and be ready to discuss.
Guest: Professor Melinda Stone (Media Studies, Film Studies, and Environmental Studies, USF)

Thursday, October 6
Robert A. Rosentone, “The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age,” in Marcia Landy (ed), The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media (Rutgers University Press, 2000): pp. 50-66.
Guest: Professor Susana Kaiser (Media Studies and Latin American Studies, USF)

Tuesday, October 11
No class: Fall Break

Thursday, October 13
Guest: Alex Hochman, Assistant Director of Career Services, USF

Tuesday, October 18
Read: Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos, “Television and the Power of Visual Culture,” Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 7th edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010), pp. 143-171.

Thursday, October 20
Joseph Turow, “Understanding the Strategies of Media Giants,” Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 4th edition (Routledge, 2011): pp. 192-223.

Tuesday, October 25
Watch selections from Martin Scorcese, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005; 208 mins).

Thursday, October 27
Popular music group projects due in class.

Tuesday, November 1
Media fast assignment due in class.

Thursday, November 3
Mid-term 2

Tuesday, November 8
Read: J. Charles Sterin, “New Media,” from Mass Media Revolution (Allyn & Bacon, 2012), pp. 194-215.

Thursday, November 10
Read: Ashley Parker, Twitter’s Secret Handshake, New York Times, June 10, 2011 ; and Tina Rosenberg, Crowdsourcing a Better World, New York Times, March 28, 2011.

Tuesday, November 15
Read: Malcolm Gladwell, "Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted," The New Yorker, October, 2010; Henry Jenkins, Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2007; and Eli Pariser, Beware online "filter bubbles," Presentation at TED 2011.
Guest: Michael Stevenson, lecturer and PhD candidate at the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam.

Thursday, November 17
Read: Rob Walker, Inside the Wild, Wacky, Profitable World of Boing Boing, Fast Company, November 30, 2010; Phillip Mlynar, The Cool Kids: Cool with Recording for Mountain Dew, SF Weekly, July 27, 2011; and Kim Severson, Neighbor, Can You Spare a Plum? New York Times, June 10, 2009.

Tuesday, November 22
USF alumni panel featuring:
o Aaron Dias-Melim, Marketing Associate, Square, Inc.;
o Travis Hayes Busse, Production Manager / Assistant Booker, Thee Parkside;
o Sara LaFassett, Interactive Media Specialist, Saint Mary's College of California; and
o Joseph Montana, Marketing Media Coordinator, Rickshaw Bagworks.

Thursday, November 24
No class: Thanksgiving Break

Tuesday, November 29
Read: Zadie Smith, Generation Why? New York Review of Books, November 25, 2010.

Thursday, December 1
Review for final.

Tuesday, December 6
Final

Grading
30% -- Quizzes, homework, in-class assignments, and group projects
20% -- Mid-term 1
20% -- Mid-term 2
30% -- Final

Attendance Policies
1. Missing class, or attending class unprepared, will significantly affect your final grade.
2. If you do miss class, contact a classmate to find out what we discussed in class and ask to borrow his or her notes. Then, do the same with a second classmate. After doing this, if you have questions about missed material, visit me during office hours or send me an email.
3. On days that assignments are due in class, a complete assignment is your ticket to ride. In other words, if you have not completed the assignment, do not come to class.

Rules
1. No late work accepted.
2. No drinking out of non-reusable containers during class.

cool class alert: community based urban agriculture: design and management

2011-08-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

cool class alert!

Ever wonder where your food comes from? Ever want to see a giant carrot grow from a tiny seed? Looking for a great community of students who share a love of food? Are you ready to get your hands dirty this fall semester? Consider taking Community Based Urban Agriculture: Design and Management (ENVA 130).

In this fun and engaging class, students will learn about composting, seed starting and building community all while learning the real skills for living a more sustainable life. We will work in the garden every Friday and harvest a bounty of delicious food. As the warm fall weather rolls in, we hope to see you in the garden!

Community Based Urban Agriculture: Design and Management meets Fridays from 11:45 am - 3:25 pm and is taught by Justin Valone.

a ten-day trip to north carolina

2011-07-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

sarah, siena, and i recently returned from a ten-day trip to north carolina. we stayed mostly in hickory, where sarah's friend and college roommate pattie, her husband dan, and their daughters kenzie and maya live. good times for all, including the girls.

for three days, i bolted to nearby asheville. with help from a USF faculty development fund award, i was able to spend time with the black mountain college museum + arts center collection at ramsey library at the university of north carolina asheville.

black mountain college, or BMC, was a small liberal arts college that existed between 1933 - 1957 in the blue ridge mountains in western north carolina. the focus of black mountain college was the education of the whole human being.

for its time - and for our times - black mountain college was massively experimental. faculty owned the university. all students, faculty, and faculty families lived on campus, where they ate together in the dining hall and danced together on saturday nights. there were no grades. classes were not mandatory but once enrolled, students - as well as professor - were expected to be fully prepared and participatory. at the center of the curriculum was arts because arts encourage students to focus, create, engage, and cooperate. students were included in nearly all meetings and committees, even those responsible for faculty hiring and firing. the responsibilities of running the college were shared by all.

i am especially interested in BMC's work program. black mountain college combined formal studies and physical labor. in between classes and coursework, students - and sometimes faculty - cleared the hillside for pasture, waited tables in the dining room, maintained campus roads, hauled coal, dug ditches, collected field stones for masonry work, served and cleared four o'clock tea, and, miraculously, designed and built a building.

my main interest is the farm on black mountain college. in particular, i am interested in the history of the farm and its changing role within the college and its work program. i am interested in the farm work - who taught the skills? who organized the teams? who did the work? i am also interested in the farm's output - what was grown? which animals were raised? who got the food? and finally, i am interested in how the farm was used as a creative and collaborate space for student and faculty learning.

black mountain college is primarily known and remembered for the remarkable faculty, visiting faculty, and students it attracted. a partial list includes josef and anni albers, ruth asawa, john cage, robert creeley, merce cunningham, willem and elaine de kooning, buckminster fuller, alfred kazin, jacob lawrence, charles olson, arthur penn, robert rauschenberg, and m.c. richards. new and important things happened here - bucky fuller would attempt his first geodesic dome, john cage would stage the world's first "happening," and merce cunningham would form his dance company.

because of this, black mountain college has received plenty of attention. there's martin duberman's black mountain college: an exploration in community and mary emma harris' the arts at black mountain college. there's cathryn davis and neeley house's documentary fully awake: black mountain college and the black mountain college project. and then there's the über archive, the black mountain college collection at the state archives in raleigh, north carolina.

after three days in asheville, i said thanks to sally klipp, special collections librarian at ramsey library, and drove back to hickory. then, pattie, dan, kenzie, maya, sarah, siena, and i drove to blowing rock for a few days in a log cabin in the mountains. fun, watermelon, and good food were had by all.

before we left, i asked pattie when the best times are to visit north carolina. "april and october," she answered without hesitation. thinking of my sabbatical a year from now, i said, "cool - we'll be back then."

first USF garden work party of the summer

2011-06-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

yer invited!

please join us for the first USF garden work party of the summer. no gardening experience necessary. all ages welcome.

where: USF garden, turk & tamalpais (directly west of parking lot)
when: sunday, july 3, 11 am - 4 pm
what: garden work party! solar oven demos! free food! fun people!

please bring a dish to share. all volunteers are encouraged to bring home fresh garden goodies, including veggies, herbs, and fruit.

see you there.

(garden sketch by lizzie roeble; flyer design by brittany rowles)

summer to do list

2011-05-27T10:44:00.001-07:00

paper 5 for golden gate park first-year seminar

2011-04-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

Paper 5 for Golden Gate Park

1. In Paper 4, you selected a topic related to Golden Gate Park and your major (or prospective major) and wrote a paper about it. In Paper 5, you have two options: a) significantly expand upon the ideas discussed in Paper 4; or b) select a new topic (and clear it with me) and write a paper about it.

2. Include at least four new sources. Do not use the first four sources you find. Use the best four sources you find.

3. Your paper must be between 7-8 pages, including a bibliography, either in MLA or APA.

4. Integrate as many as possible writing skills and techniques discussed this semester in Rhet 195. This includes: introducing your topic; using credible and legitimate sources; summarizing outside sources (recall the "believing game" strategy); selecting and integrating quotations effectively ("quotation sandwiches"); differentiating between what others say about your topic ("they say") and what you say ("I say"); introducing a naysayer; and answering the "who cares?" and "so what?" questions.

5. As always, edit carefully.

6. Be ready to share elements of your work with classmates. Also be ready to read your classmates' work and provide constructive and creative feedback.

7. Paper 5 should be the best paper you write for this class.

8. Paper 5 is due in class on Thursday, May 5. No late work accepted.

summer undergraduate research assistantships with the USF garden

2011-04-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

The USF Garden Project is currently seeking 2-3 undergraduate research assistants for summer positions in the garden. The RAships run from May 20, 2011 - August 25th, 2011.

Research assistants must be able to work at least 10 hours a week and be prepared to undertake a variety of jobs in the garden. RA duties include:

1. Serve as teaching assistant for Urban Ag summer course (taught by Justin Valone);

2. Plan and plant summer garden beds;

3. Maintain garden - weeding, watering, oversee irrigation, manage compost;

4. Work with Upward Bound students (1-2 hours/week for 5 weeks) teaching garden skills;

5. Harvest and deliver garden goodies to Booker T. Washington Community Service Center's food pantry every Thursday;

6. Plan, manage, and implement weekly community work days - publicize work days, organize group tasks, and hold open garden hours; and

7. Plan and prep autumn garden beds for fall classes.

Interested USF students must email a letter of interest to David Silver with a CC to Melinda Stone and Justin Valone no later than Tuesday, April 26. In your letter, please describe your qualifications, state your availability for summer, and tell us why you want the job and why you are the best person for the position. Decisions will be made by end of April.

(photos taken by USF garden project student lily rothrock)

food and culture project for green media

2011-03-24T17:34:00.000-07:00

food and culture project for green media

1. select, research, and cook a dish that means something to your family, culture, and/or heritage.

2. enlist a family member to help you cook - or help you learn how to cook - your dish. your family member can be anyone - a mother, a father, a grandparent, a great grandparent, a cousin, an aunt, an uncle, a brother, a sister, or anyone else related to you. although the family member does not need to live near you, s/he does need to be accessible via communication (phone, Skype, email, letters, carrier pigeons). ideally, the family member you select should be someone you enjoy learning from and spending time with.

3. using words and photography, document your cooking process in the form of a blog post, flickr set, or video. be sure to include a recipe. you may use up to 20 photos - no more. if you are making a video it must be under 2 minutes long.

4. at least one of your photographs must be of your family member or of the communication between you and your family member.

5. your goal with this project is to tell two stories - one about the relationship between food and culture and one about the relationship between you and your family member. this part will not be easy. be creative.

6. once finished and certainly by class on tuesday, april 5, tweet your food and culture project. Be sure to include a link and #greenmedia somewhere within your tweet.

7. bring your dish to class on tuesday, april 5. bring serving utensils, a plate, a bowl, a fork, a spoon, and your appetite.

paper 4 for golden gate park first-year seminar

2011-03-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

Paper 4 for Golden Gate Park

1. Select any topic related to a) Golden Gate Park and b) your major (or prospective major) and write a paper about it. Be sure to select a topic that truly interests you.

2. Find and use at least three outside readings. As discussed in class, your readings must be from credible and legitimate sources.

3. At some point in your paper, you must introduce a naysayer. For this part, I highly encourage you to re-read Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's chapter, "'Skeptics May Object': Planting a Naysayer in Your Text," in They Say / I Say.

4. Also at some point in your paper, you must answer two questions: "Who cares?" and "So what?" For this part, I encourage you to re-read Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's chapter, "'So What? Who Cares?': Saying Why It Matters," in They Say / I Say.

5. As decided collectively in class, your paper is to be between 3-5 pages - no more, no less.

6. Edit carefully. If I find three or more errors - spelling, grammar, typos - I will stop reading your paper, return it to you, and ask you to re-edit and re-submit.

7. Sometime between now and class on Tuesday, April 5, tweet the topic of your paper. Be sure to include the #rhet195 hashtag in your tweet.

8. Paper 4 is due in class on Tuesday, April 5. No late work accepted.

the horse sculpture in the WPA horseshoe pits in golden gate park (1955 and today)

2011-03-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

in 1937, artist jesse s. "vet" anderson completed two bas-relief concrete sculptures - "horse" and "horseshoe pitcher" - overlooking the WPA-funded horseshoe pits in golden gate park. in 1955, "horse" looked like this:

today, "horse," like so many of today's federally-funded programs that benefit everyday people, looks like this:

food media person project for green media

2011-03-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

food media person project for green media

1. select someone - anyone - who makes food media and prepare a 5 minute presentation about that person. your presentation must feature some kind of media - a television show clip from youtube, video, blogs, photography, a book - made by that person.

2. i suggest you select someone you strongly like or dislike. selecting someone you're indifferent to will make this project more difficult.

3. in your presentation, share what you like or dislike about your food media person. be sure to address what you like about their tactics and techniques as well as their personality and style.

4. make sure your presentation is under 5 minutes and does not include powerpoint.

5. sometime between now and class on thursday, march 10, tweet about your food media person. Be sure to include the #greenmedia hashtag in your tweet.

6. on thursday, march 10, be ready to share your presentation in class.

paper 3 for golden gate park first-year seminar

2011-03-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

Paper 3 for Golden Gate Park

1. Select any topic you wish related to either the Midwinter Fair of 1894 or the Japanese Tea Garden. You are required to choose a topic that interests you.

2. Research your topic. You must have at least three sources: one from our class readings and two from outside our syllabus. As discussed at length in class, your sources must be legitimate.

3. I highly encourage you to walk into Gleeson Library, make a left, and head to the Reference Desk. Share your topic with a librarian or library staff and see what happens.

4. Keep in mind that everything we do in this class is cumulative which means by now I expect you to know how to introduce your topic, how to summarize your sources, and how to select and integrate quotations into your argument.

5. In this paper, I am especially interested in your ability to differentiate what others say about your topic ("they say") and what you say about your topic ("i say"). Consider re-reading Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's chapters “‘Yes / No / Okay, But’: Three Ways to Respond” and “‘And Yet’: Distinguishing What You Say from What They Say” (pp. 55-77).

6. Edit carefully. If I find three or more errors - spelling, grammar, typos - I will stop reading your paper, return it to you, and ask you to re-edit and re-submit.

7. Sometime between now and class on Thursday, March 10, tweet the topic of your paper. Be sure to include the #rhet195 hashtag in your tweet.

8. Paper 3 is due in class on Thursday, March 10. No late work accepted.

first friday farmstand

2011-03-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

please join the garden project living learning community this friday at harney plaza for good food and fresh produce. first friday farmstand offers homemade meals made with fresh veggies, fruits, and herbs grown in our organic garden on campus. lunch will be served from 12-2 or until the food runs out. bring yer own bowl and receive a half-priced soup or salad!

menu includes: happily harvested garden greens, potato leek soup, veggie sandwiches on homemade bread, veggie quesadillas, collard dolmas, garden tea, and a to-be-determined dessert. friday's farmstand will also feature salves and tinctures made by garden project students during a homestead workshop with sarah duscoe of the wellness place.

this farmstand is in sponsorship with robin kuehn, a history major at USF and garden project student during 2009-10. this summer, robin is participating in a 4,000 mile bike & build ride across the US with stops to help work on affordable housing projects. half of friday's farmstand proceeds will go to support robin's summer quest.

garden salad with herbed vinaigrette

2011-03-01T08:51:00.000-08:00

lunch project for green media

garden salad with herbed vinaigrette

1. from a garden, a farmer's market, or a grocery store, select some greens for a salad. remember: the more diverse your ingredients, the more delicious your salad. for this salad, i harvested a selection of mixed mesclun lettuce, arugula, and (for the vinaigrette) some fresh herbs.

2. wash and rinse greens and herbs and set aside.

3. get your ingredients for the herbed vinaigrette ready. this includes: red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, a shallot, and fresh herbs.

4. in a small bowl, put 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar. add 1-2 pinches of salt and whisk. add 2-3 shakes of ground black pepper. whisk.

5. add 2 cloves minced garlic and/or 1 diced shallot.

6. whisk in 1-2 teaspoons of dijon mustard.

7. whisk in, a tablespoon at a time, 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil.

8. optional but highly recommended - add 1-2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh herbs. depending on season and access, consider using any or all of the following: basil, marjoram, oregano, parsely, savory, tarragon, and thyme. whisk.

9. place the herbed vinaigrette at the bottom of a large bowl. place the lettuce greens over the vinaigrette. place anything else - diced avocado, chopped hard boiled egg, walnuts, you name it - over the greens and mix your salad.

10. if possible, eat your salad outside with others.

11. when making the vinaigrette, consider doubling or tripling the recipe - sealed in a jar and placed in the fridge, the vinaigrette can dress a week's worth of salads.

lunch project for green media

2011-02-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

lunch project for green media

1. today in class, we decided who would make what:

2. using words and photography, document your preparation process. be smart and be creative. take more photographs than necessary (so that you can select your best shots later) but don't let your photography get in the way of your cooking.

3. select between 5-10 photos and make either a flickr set or a blog post.

4. make sure one of your photos documents where you got one or some of your ingredients.

5. make sure one of your photos documents all of your ingredients ready to cook or what one of our readings called mise en place.

6. make sure at least one of your photos includes a human being who is not you.

7. somewhere within your flickr set or blog post, provide a recipe for your dish. include a recipe title, ingredients, and directions. consider your audience carefully.

8. as discussed in class, what i want to see in this project is some soul, some kind of voice, something human.

9. once finished and certainly by class on tuesday, tweet your lunch project. Be sure to include a link and #greenmedia somewhere within your tweet.

10. bring your dish to class on tuesday, march 1. bring serving utensils, a plate, a bowl, a fork, and a spoon.

a talk for admitted students

2011-02-19T00:00:00.000-08:00

today, i'm giving a talk to recently admitted students to USF. with luck, my talk will go something like this:

update! here's some pics from the talk:

paper 2 for golden gate park first-year seminar

2011-02-17T08:46:00.000-08:00

Paper 2 for Golden Gate Park

1. In our readings and class discussions, we have focused on the early history of Golden Gate Park as well as the crucial role of William Hammond Hall. For your second paper, I want you to write, in no more than three double-spaced pages, about any aspect of Hall.

2. Keep in mind that everything we do in this class is cumulative which means by now I expect you to know how to introduce your topic effectively and how to summarize your sources.

3. In this paper, you are required to use at least two sources: Raymond H. Clary's Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years: 1865-1906; and Gray Brechin's Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin.

4. Although I expect a fascinating, well-written, and well-edited essay about Hall, what I am most interested in is your ability to select and integrate quotations effectively. Please consider re-reading Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's chapter, "'As He Himself Puts It': The Art of Quoting," and definitely revisit your notes on Tuesday's class discussion of "quotation sandwiches."

5. Edit carefully. If I find three or more errors - spelling, grammar - I will stop reading your paper, return it to you, and ask you to re-edit and re-submit.

6. Sometime between now and Thursday, February 24, tweet the topic of your paper. Be sure to include the #rhet195 hashtag in your tweet.

7. Paper 2 is due in class on Thursday, February 24. No late work accepted.

my new gardening intern

2011-02-12T19:27:00.001-08:00

breakfast project for green media

2011-02-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

breakfast project for green media

1. working solo, in pairs, or in groups, cook, bake, or prepare something suitable for breakfast or lunch. bring your meal to class on tuesday, february 15, and share it with the rest of us.

2. using photography, document the preparation process. upload your photos to flickr, tag and title them, and put them into a set.

3. somewhere within your flickr set, provide a recipe for your meal. as we discussed in class, be sure to include a recipe title, intro, ingredients, and instructions.

4. be creative.

5. once finished and certainly by class on tuesday, tweet your recipe. Be sure to include a link and #greenmedia somewhere within your tweet.

6. in addition to bringing your meal to class on tuesday, bring your own bowl or plate, fork, and serving utensils.

update!

breakfast project was successful and extremely delicious. enjoy our recipes!

stephanie bruno's Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

kate darden's zzzzuuuuucccchhhhiiiinnniiiii pie!

jaime giacomi's Weekend Brunch

liz lauer's The Most UNHEALTHY Breakfast You Could Ever Eat...But Also The Best

sophia miles' Best Banana Bread Recipe

brittany rowels' The Absolute Best Cinnamon Rolls Ever

nick ryan's Breakfast Project

tracy sidler's Lemon Curd and Cranberry Scones

david silver's scones stuffed with caramelized red onions and brie

matt steinbach's Salsa with a Kick, Grandma's Pico de Gallo

chris williams' Blueberry Lemon Zest Breakfast Bread

calling all USF environmental studies students!

2011-02-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

are you an environmental studies major at USF?

have you written an academic paper that takes an interdisciplinary approach to an environmental problem or issue?

have you worked on a project that improved the environmental performance and livability on the USF campus and surrounding area?

if so, please consider applying for one of our two annual awards.

Gary Snyder Outstanding Paper Award

This award is named after the poet, essayist and environmental activist Gary Snyder. The award will be awarded annually through the Environmental Studies Program to the best academic paper that takes an interdisciplinary approach to an environmental problem or issue.

All senior environmental studies students graduating no later than December 2011 are encouraged to submit their best paper related to the environment. Besides criteria such as content, style, organization, argumentation, grammar and spelling the committee will look in particular for papers that show evidence of the interdisciplinary nature of Environmental Studies.

In order to compete for this award please submit your best paper (10-15 pages) by 1 April 2011 to Professor Kuperus (gkuperus [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu).

Green & Gold Award

The Green and Gold Award recognizes an Environmental Studies student whose ideas and initiatives have improved the environmental performance and livability on the USF campus and surrounding area. The Green and Gold Award celebrates projects that reduce our collective environmental footprint, foster eco-literacy, engage diverse communities, and/or demonstrate sustainable best practices outside the classroom.

In an essay no longer than 500 words, students should explain their project, discuss some of the Environmental Studies principles informing the project, and highlight tangible evidence of the project's impact. Please submit your essay by 1 April 2011 to Professor David Silver (dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu).

homework assignment for green media

2011-02-03T23:13:00.000-08:00

Homework assignment for Green Media

1. Read Mark Bittman's Chop, Fry, Boil: Eating for One, or 6 Billion, New York Times, December 31, 2010.

2. In the article, Bittman provides recipes for three meals - a stir-fry, a chopped salad, and a basic combination of rice and lentils. select and cook one of these meals.

3. Document the preparation process with photographs. Take more photos than you need - that way you can edit through them and select the best shots. Don't let your photography get in the way of your cooking.

4. Upload your photos to flickr, title them, tag them, and put them into a set. Make sure your set has between 3-10 photos - no more, no less.

5. Once finished, and before class on Tuesday, tweet about your flickr set. Be sure to include a link and #greenmedia somewhere within your tweet.

paper 1 for golden gate park first-year seminar

2011-02-03T09:01:00.000-08:00

Paper 1 for Golden Gate Park

1. In the last two weeks, we have read and discussed the first two chapters of Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. In "'They Say': Starting with What Others Are Saying," we learned how to introduce our thesis and connect it to a larger conversation; in "'Her Point Is': The Art of Summarizing," we learned about the "believing game" when summarizing and how to direct your summary towards the topics of your paper.

2. Also during this time, we read and discussed three chapters from Raymond H. Clary's Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years: 1865-1906. In particular, we learned about some of the early negotiations and developments of the park as well as some of its key players.

3. For paper 1, use the writing moves from They Say/I Say to discuss one aspect of the early history of Golden Gate Park. You are free to select any aspect as long as you use material from Clary's Making of Golden Gate Park. Your paper should be three pages, typed, and double-spaced.

4. Although you will have plenty of opportunities this semester to explore creatively and in depth the past, present, and future of Golden Gate Park, the purpose of this paper is less about the park and more about highlighting your understanding and mastery of the writing moves discussed in They Say/I Say.

5. I expect and require you to thoroughly edit your paper. If I find three or more errors - spelling, grammar - I will stop reading your paper, return it to you, and ask you to re-edit and re-submit. When editing your paper, please consider reading it out loud. Also, consider swapping your paper with another student or students and edit each others' work.

6. Paper 1 is due in class on Thursday, February 10. No late work accepted.

twitter assignment #1

2011-01-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

twitter assignment for students enrolled in golden gate park and green media

1. if you have not yet joined twitter, join twitter.

2. create a profile. in either your user name or bio (or both), use your real name.

3. make your profile public. if you already have a twitter account that is private and wish to keep it that way, create a new account for this class.

4. find and follow all members (students and professor) of our class.

5. get into the habit of checking twitter at least once a day.

community garden outreach (spring 2011)

2011-01-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

Community Garden Outreach
Environmental Studies 145
Fridays 11:45 am – 3:25 pm
Hayes Healy Formal Lounge

Professor Melinda Stone
Office: Kalmanovitz 120
Office Hours: Wed 10 – 12 & by appointment
Contact: stone [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu / 422-5755

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 3 – 4 pm & by appointment
Contact: [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Community Garden Outreach introduces students to environmental, cultural, social, political, and philosophical issues that circulate through and around food production, preparation, and distribution. Through readings, guests, and class discussions, students will learn about sustainable and unsustainable systems of food production. Through field trips, homestead workshops, and our on-campus farmstand, students will engage directly with various sustainable food practices. This service-learning course is offered in tandem with Justin Valone’s Urban Ag II and both are part of USF’s Garden Project living learning community.

Learning Goals:
1. To continue managing – effectively and collaboratively – the campus farmstand;
2. To develop advanced skills in preparing, preserving, and distributing food; and
3. Through field trips to San Francisco/Bay Area urban farms and gardens, to explore first-hand some of challenges and opportunities in urban agriculture.

Course Schedule:
Friday, January 28
Re-introductions

Friday, February 4
First Friday Farmstand

Friday, February 11
Field trip to Little City Gardens
Prior to field trip, read Chloe Roth, Little City Gardens makes a go of urban agriculture in San Francisco, SFGate, April 29, 2010; and Robert Selna, Urban agriculture: S.F. considers allowing sales, SFGate, December 23, 2010.

Friday, February 18
Homestead Workshop: Making Herbal salves, oils, teas and tinctures with Sarah Duscoe
Prior to homestead workshop, read: Sarah Holmes, Western Herbalism, September 11, 2000; Matthew Wood, The Three Basic Principles of Traditional Western Herbalism; and Jane E. Brody, Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You, New York Times, January 26, 2009.

Friday, February 25
Garden Guests: Daniel Tucker and Anne Hamersky
Read selected chapters from Amy Franceschini and Daniel Tucker’s Farm Together Now: A portrait of people, places and ideas for a new food movement (2010).

Friday, March 4
First Friday Farmstand

Friday, March 11
Field trip to UCSC Farm
Prior to field trip, read Patricia Allen and Martha Brown, Sustainable Agriculture at UC Santa Cruz, CASFS.

Friday, March 18
SPRING BREAK

Friday, March 25
Homestead Workshop: Foraging with Justin Valone
Readings TBD.

Friday, April 1
First Friday Farmstand

Friday, April 8
Garden Guest: Heather Hoag
Readings TBD.

Friday, April 15
Field trip to Garden for the Environment
Read: Can City Farmers Make a Living? Activist Eli Zigas on the Challenges of Urban Agriculture, Good, January 11, 2011.

Friday, April 22
Good Friday: No class.

Friday, April 29
Garden Guest: Marco Perez Navarrete, Permaculture Institute of El Salvador
Read selections from Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Melville House, 2008).

Friday, May 6
First Friday Farmstand

This class has no final.

Course Grading:
Weekly Reflections - 40%
Farmstand Participation - 40%
Classroom Participation - 20%

Rules:
1. No late work accepted.
2. In class, on field trips, and during farm stand, no drinking out of non-reusable containers.

green media (2011)

2011-01-22T07:03:00.000-08:00

Green Media
Media Studies 301
Tuesday & Thursdays 12:45 – 2:30 pm
Education 319

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 3 – 4 pm & by appointment
dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Green Media is a media studies production class devoted to making media about making food. In this class, we will learn how to use social media to research, prepare, document, and share a selection of dishes and meals. Along the way, we will explore different meanings of food, the history of television cooking shows, connections between food and culture, and strategies for seasonal cooking.

Learning Outcomes:
1. To learn how to use social media to make and share media about making food;
2. To develop a unique, creative, and compelling voice within your media work; and
3. To learn how to collaborate creatively and effectively.

Books:
o Kathleen Collins' Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows (Continuum, 2009).
o Novella Carpenter's Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Penguin Press, 2009).
o Although you will be able to complete your assignments with a free flickr account, you are strongly encouraged to purchase a flickr pro account for $25/year.

Calendar:
Tuesday, January 25
Introductions.

Thursday, January 27
Read: Patricia Harris, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin, “Food & Life,” from The Meaning of Food, pp. 1-59. Twitter Workshop.

Tuesday, February 1
Read: Kathleen Collins, “Stirrings: Radio, Home Economists, and James Beard,” from Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows, pp. 13-43.

Thursday, February 3
Read: Collins, “La Cuisine and Canned Soup: Dione Lucas vs. Convenience,” from Watching What We Eat, pp. 44-68. Flickr Workshop, Part 1

Tuesday, February 8
Read: Mark Bittman, Chop, Fry, Boil: Eating for One, or 6 Billion, New York Times, December 31, 2010. Flickr Workshop, Part 2.

Thursday, February 10
Demo Day: Breakfast Project

Tuesday, February 15
Read: Collins, “Julia Child and Revolution in the Kitchen,” from Watching What We Eat, pp. 71-100.

Thursday, February 17
Read: Brother Rick Curry, S.J., “Making Bread,” from The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking, pp. 11-21; Molly Katzen, "An Illustrated Guide to the Baking of Yeast Bread," from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, pp. 86-95. Wordpress Workshop.

Tuesday, February 22
Read: Collins, “The Me Decade and the Galloping Gourmet” & “Cultural Capital and the Frugal Gourmet,” from Watching What We Eat, pp. 101-155.

Thursday, February 24
Demo Day: Baking Bread Project

Tuesday, March 1
Read: Collins, “A Network of Its Own,” from Watching What We Eat, pp. 159-185.

Thursday, March 3
Read: Collins, “Good Television” & “‘Democratainment’: Gender, Class, and the Rachael-Martha Continuum,” from Watching What We Eat, pp. 186-231.

Tuesday, March 8
Read: Collins, “Evolution: How Did We Get Here and What’s On Next?” from Watching What We Eat, pp. 232-252.

Thursday, March 10
Demo Day: Food Person Project

March 15 & 17
SPRING BREAK

Tuesday, March 22
Read: Patricia Harris, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin, “Food & Culture,” from The Meaning of Food, pp. 61-105.

Thursday, March 24
Read: Sandra Cate, “‘Breaking Bread with a Spread’ in the San Francisco County Jail,” Gastronomica, Summer 2008, pp. 17-24.

Tuesday, March 29
Demo Day: Food and Culture Project

Thursday, March 31
Watch: Food, Inc.

Tuesday, April 5
Read: Lisa Miller, Divided We Eat, Newsweek, November 22, 2010.

Thursday, April 7
Read: Michael Pollan, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, New York Times Magazine, August 2, 2009.

Tuesday, April 12
Read: Elizabeth Kolbert, Green Like Me, The New Yorker, August 31, 2009; and Rachel Laudan, “A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love Fast, New, Processed Food,” Gastronomica, February 2001, pp. 36-44.

Thursday, April 14
Demo Day: Lunch Project

Tuesday, April 19
Read: Kim Severson, Neighbor, Can You Spare a Plum? New York Times, June 10, 2009; Fallen Fruit, “Take Back the Fruit: Public Space and Community Activism, from Food, edited by John Knechtel (MIT Press, 2007).

Thursday, April 21
No class.

Tuesday, April 26
Guest: Marco Perez Navarrete, Permaculture Institute of El Salvador. Readings TBD.

Thursday, April 28
Demo Day: Seasonal Dish Project

Tuesday, May 3
Read: Novella Carpenter, “Turkey,” from Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, pp. 1-98.

Thursday, May 5
Read: Carpenter, “Rabbit,” from Farm City, pp. 99-184.

Tuesday, May 10
Read: Carpenter, “Pig,” from Farm City, pp. 185-269. Guest: Novella Carpenter.

Thursday, May 12
Demo Day: Last Supper Project

This class has no final exam.

Grading:
Quizzes, homework, and in class assignments - 30%
Class participation - 20%
Projects - 30%
Demo Days - 20%

Attendance Policy:
Missing class, or attending class unprepared, will significantly affect your final grade. If you do miss class, contact a classmate or two to find out what we discussed in class and ask to borrow their notes. After doing this, if you have questions about missed material, visit me during office hours.

Rules:
1. No late work accepted.
2. No drinking out of non-reusable containers during class.

golden gate park (spring 2011)

2011-01-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park
First-Year Seminar
Harney Science Center 143
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:55-11:40

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanavitz 141
Office hours: Tues & Thurs 3-4 pm
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Golden Gate Park is a First-Year Seminar that explores the history, built environment, popular narratives, and mixed uses of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Through readings, class discussions, and library workshops, students will develop a broad and keen understanding of the park; through field trips, students gain valuable on-site experience in and with the park. An accelerated writing seminar, Golden Gate Park fulfills USF’s Core A2 requirement.

Learning Outcomes
In this class, students will learn:
o How to read, analyze, and summarize complex texts from multiple fields and subjects;
o How to develop interesting research questions based on outside research and individual interests;
o How to use Gleeson Library and online tools to find relevant material from a range of sources and disciplines;
o How to write, edit, revise, and polish clear and compelling essays that, when necessary, keep with the conventions of academic and/or professional discourse; and
o How some sand dunes called the Outside Lands became Golden Gate Park.

Required Text:
o Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, 2nd Edition (W. W. Norton, 2009)

Course Schedule:
Week 1:
Tuesday, January 25
Introductions.

Thursday, January 27
Read: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, “‘They Say’: Starting with What Others Are Saying,” in They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (or TSIS), pp. 19-29. Twitter Workshop.

Week 2:
Tuesday, February 1
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘Her Point Is’: The Art of Summarizing,” in TSIS, pp. 30-41; and Raymond H. Clary, “The Birth of American Parks,” in Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years: 1865-1906, pp. 1-5.

Thursday, February 3
Read: Clary, “The Beginning of Golden Gate Park” and “The Visionary Plan of William Hammond Hall,” in Making of Golden Gate Park, pp. 11-27.

Week 3:
Tuesday, February 8
Field trip: Conservatory of Flowers

Thursday, February 10
Paper 1 due in class. Library Workshop.

Week 4:
Tuesday, February 15
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘As He Himself Puts It’: The Art of Quoting,” in TSIS, pp. 42-51; and Clary, “Politics in the Park,” in Making of Golden Gate Park, pp. 33-43.

Thursday, February 17
Read: Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, pp. 80-89.

Week 5:
Tuesday, February 22
Field trip (with Peter Novak, Vice Provost for Student Life): National AIDS Memorial Grove. Prior to field trip, read: Christopher Pollock and Erica Katz, “The Eastern End,” in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories, pp. 12-49; and "About the National AIDS Memorial Grove."

Thursday, February 24
Paper 2 due in class. Library Workshop.

Week 6:
Tuesday, March 1
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘Yes / No / Okay, But’: Three Ways to Respond,” in TSIS, pp. 55-67; and Clary, “Midwinter Fair,” in Making of Golden Gate Park, pp. 110-125.

Thursday, March 3
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘And Yet’: Distinguishing What You Say from What They Say,” in TSIS, pp. 68-77; and Pollock and Katz, “The Music Concourse,” in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, pp. 50-79.

Week 7:
Tuesday, March 8
Field trip: The Music Concourse and The Japanese Tea Garden

Thursday, March 10
Paper 3 due in class. Library Workshop.

Week 8 (March 15 & 17)
SPRING BREAK

Week 9:
Tuesday, March 22
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘Skeptics May Object’: Planting a Naysayer in Your Text,” in TSIS, pp. 78-91; and selections from Christopher Pollock’s Golden Gate Park: San Francisco's Urban Oasis in Vintage Postcards.

Thursday, March 24
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘So What? Who Cares?’: Saying Why It Matters,” in TSIS, pp. 92-101; and Sally B. Woodbridge, John M. Woodbridge, and Chuck Byrne, “Golden Gate Park & Vicinity,” in San Francisco Architecture: An Illustrated Guide to the Outstanding Buildings, Public Art Works, and Parks in the Bay Area of California, pp. 197-205.

Week 10:
Tuesday, March 29
Field trip: The de Young Museum

Thursday, March 31
Paper 4 due in class. USF Roundtable featuring Shawn Calhoun (Gleeson Library); Alex Hochman (Career Center); and Charlene P. Lobo Soriano (First Year Student Services).

Week 11:
Tuesday, April 5
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘As a Result’: Connecting the Parts,” in TSIS, pp. 105-120; and Clary, “The Great Disaster,” Making of Golden Gate Park, pp. 156-169.

Thursday, April 7
Read: Graff and Birkenstein, “‘Ain’t So / Is Not’: Academic Writing Doesn’t Always Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice,” in TSIS, pp. 121-128.

Week 12:
Tuesday, April 12
Read: James R. Smith, “California Midwinter International Exposition – 1894,” in San Francisco's Lost Landmarks, pp. 111-126.

Thursday, April 14
James R. Smith, “Playland at the Beach,” in San Francisco's Lost Landmarks, pp. 44-53.

Week 13:
Tuesday, April 19
Graff and Birkenstein, “‘But Don’t Get Me Wrong’: The Art of Metacommentary,” in TSIS, pp. 129-138.

Thursday, April 21
Paper 5 due in class. Library Workshop.

Week 14:
Tuesday, April 26
Read: Josh Sides, “The Unspoken Sexuality of Golden Gate Park,” in Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco, pp. 123-140.

Thursday, April 28
Read: Wikipedia entries for Golden Gate Park; Conservatory of Flowers; AIDS Memorial Grove; Music Concourse; and Japanese Tea Garden.

Week 15:
Tuesday, May 3
Read: Philip J. Dreyfus, “Greening the City,” in Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco, pp. 67-100.

Thursday, May 5
Paper 6 due in class.

Week 16:
Tuesday, May 10
Field trip: The Beach Chalet and Ocean Beach. Prior to field trip, read: Pollock and Katz’s “Facing West,” in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, pp. 112-125.

Thursday, May 12
Reflection Paper due in class.

There is no final exam in this class.

Grading:
Paper 1 - 10%
Paper 2 - 10%
Paper 3 - 10%
Paper 4 - 10%
Paper 5 - 10%
Paper 6 - 10%
Reflection Paper - 10%
Class participation - 15%
Field trip participation - 15%

Attendance Policy:
Because this is an accelerated writing seminar, attendance is crucial. Students are expected to attend each class and field trip, have all readings finished prior to class or field trip, and be ready to participate in class discussions. Missing class, or attending class unprepared, will significantly affect your final grade. If you do miss class, contact a classmate or two to find out what you missed and ask to borrow their notes. After doing this, if you have questions about missed material, visit me during office hours.

Academic Integrity:
Plagiarism is using another person’s words and/or ideas without giving appropriate credit. Plagiarism is a serious violation of academic honor and personal integrity and can result in failing an assignment, being removed from this course, or even being asked to leave USF.

Rules:
1. No late work accepted.
2. In class and on field trips, no drinking out of non-reusable containers.

the mighty silver family

2010-10-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

project two

2010-10-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

project two for digital media production.

1. think of something that interests you. it could be a band, a band you're in, a cafe, cooking, dancing, DIY, facebook, family, fashion, film, food, justice, money, music, newspapers, philosophy, photography, poetry, politics, religions, san francisco, science, sports, surfing, tv, video games, or anything else you choose.

2. take many photographs of that thing. select your favorite.

3. upload the photograph to flickr, title and tag it, put it into a new flickr set, and title the set.

4. take some time - a few hours, a day, a few days.

5. then, take some more photographs of this thing that interests you. upload them to your already existing flickr set. title and tag the photographs. at this point in the project, your flickr set should include 3-5 photographs.

6. when finished and before class on wednesday, october 27, tweet it. be sure to include a link to your flickr set.

7. in class on wednesday, october 27, be ready to demo your work.

8. keep in mind that you will be adding new photographs to this flickr set throughout the rest of the semester.

rules and suggestions:

a. follow all directions.

b. be sure to select something that truly interests you. if after a few days you are no longer interested in photographing that thing which days ago fascinated you, start over and select a new topic.

c. if you have no work to demo for wednesday's demo day, do not come to class.

flickr assignment #3

2010-10-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

flickr assignment #3 for digital media production.

today in class, i shared some observations about your photographs of gleeson library, or flickr assignment #2, and briefly discussed some examples that i thought really worked: bryce's Midterm Week; yakuri's UFO?!; evelyn's comment on yakuri's Dizzy Stairs; chris's Great comic book selection at Gleeson!; and quincy's set PR6023.A93 J64. exciting work, folks!

for flickr assignment #3, i want each of you to:

1. do it again.

2. this time, be careful to follow all steps: limit yourself to 3-5 photos, tag them, title them, and add one or some or all of them to the Gleeson Library at USF flickr group.

3. last time, i encouraged you to include human beings in your photographs. this time, i required you to include at least one human in at least one of your photos.

4. consider including librarians and library staff in your photographs.

5. following today's creative commons lecture by shawn calhoun, think about and set your creative commons license on your flickr account (go to "Your Account" and select "Privacy and Permissions"). have questions? use twitter to ask your fellow DMPers, me, or shawn for help.

6. once finished and before class on friday, tweet about it. be sure your tweet includes a link to your flickr set.

rules:

a. follow all directions.

b. if you have no work to demo for friday's demo day, do not come to class.

flickr assignment #2

2010-10-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

flickr assignment #2 for digital media production.

1. take photographs of gleeson library. you can take photos of anything - the outside or the inside, in the stacks, in the atrium - just make sure your photos include gleeson. select 3-5 of these photographs and upload them to flickr.

2. make a set. title the set.

3. become a member of the Gleeson Library at USF flickr group. add one or some or all of your photographs to this group. keep in mind: by adding to the group, you are allowing gleeson library to feature your photograph on their web site.

4. tag your photos. be smart and creative with your tags.

5. once finished and before class on friday, tweet your set.

tips:

a. consider including human beings in your photographs.

b. take lots of photographs and decide later which 3-5 pics you'll use.

c. you can use your 3-5 photos to tell a story but you certainly don't have to. just make sure your photographs are interesting.

project one assignment: transmedia storytelling

2010-09-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

project one assignment for digital media production.

we spent most of last week talking about transmedia storytelling. on monday, we discussed the matrix; on wednesday, we discussed henry jenkins' chapter "searching for the oragami unicorn: the matrix and transmedia storytelling"; and on friday, we shared and discussed other forms of matrix-related transmedia. by now, you should have a basic understanding of what transmedia storytelling is and how it works. now's the time to make some.

1. working individually or in groups, design and launch a transmedia story about USF. your story can be about anything as long as it is interesting and relates to USF. you are free to explore - and free not to explore - any of the topics we brainstormed in class on friday.

2. your transmedia story must unfold/be told through at least 5 platforms: twitter, flickr, our class blog, USFPool (which we will learn how to use in class on monday), and 1 other platform of your choice.

3. the 5 platforms must be linked/connected. be creative and thoughtful with your connections.

4. make links from your USF story to the stories of at least 5 other DMP students. be creative and thoughtful with your connections.

5. whenever possible, give your readers opportunities to comment and contribute to your story.

rules:

a. follow all directions.

b. if you have no work to demo for friday's demo day, do not come to class.

kiva assignment

2010-09-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

kiva assignment for digital media production.

1. start an account with kiva.

2. take some time to explore and understand kiva.

3. using kiva, make a $25 micro-loan to an individual or group. do not make a random micro-loan - make one that means something.

4. tweet it. include a link.

5. in class on friday, be prepared to demo your work.

rules:

a. steps 1-4 must be complete prior to class on friday.

b. if you have no work to demo, do not come to class.

twitter guest panel in DMP

2010-09-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

last friday in DMP, we had a twitter guest panel, featuring shawn calhoun (@GleesonLibrary), char lobo soriano (@itweetUSF), and thomas listerman (@usfca).

first up was shawn, head of access services at USF's gleeson library, who shared some of his experiences tweeting for gleeson. shawn talked about using twitter to notify followers about library news and materials, build a broad and diverse community, and share knowledge about free, open-access tools and resources. shawn also raised the fascinating question of whether or not to tweet about the shortcomings or limitations of one's own organization.

next up was charlene, associate director of USF's first year student services, who brings to her presentations the same energy she brings to her tweets. charlene talked about developing your own voice on twitter and suggested the best voice is your true voice. she talked about reaching out to and engaging with USF students in general and first year students in particular and she shared some of her strategies for building community.

the last panelist was thomas, USF's advancement e-communications manager, who approaches twitter as one tool to get across other tools. he talked about using social media to reach out to alumni, students, and parents. he talked about maintaining a somewhat formal voice but linking out to and retweeting less formal material. he also talked about using twitter as a kind of campus calendar and, like shawn and charlene, talked about building community.

"learning how to use twitter," i told my DMP students the first day of class, "is totally easy. developing a voice on twitter - now that's another story." after this excellent panel, i hope they got a good taste of that story.

twitter assignment #2

2010-09-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

twitter assignment #2 for digital media production.

1. by now, you should be on twitter, familiar with the basic functions of twitter, and following all members of our class.

2. also by now, you should be in the habit of searching for and following all people whose work (writings, video, web) is assigned each week. for this week, you should be following @scottros (scott rosenberg) and @jasonpontius (jason pontius). you should also follow this week's guest panelists: @GleesonLibrary (shawn calhoun), @itweetUSF (char lobo soriano), and @usfca (thomas listerman). if after a week you find their tweets less than amusing, by all means unfollow them.

3. reply to at least one tweet. any tweet. make it good.

4. retweet (or RT) at least two tweets that you think are relevant to members of digital media production. re-read that last sentence. although i encourage you to use twitter in any way you see fit, here i am asking you to retweet stuff that relates to what we are discussing and exploring in class. important: one of your RTs must be old school style and the other must be via the way supplied by twitter. be ready to discuss the pros and cons of each RT method - or any other methods you use - in class.

5. learn how to use bit.ly. use it with at least one tweet. be ready to discuss the pros and cons of bit.ly and tinyURL in class.

6. when appropriate, consider using the hashtag #dmp10 in your posts.

7. in order to get credit for this assignment, steps 1-6 must be complete by 9 am on friday, september 10.

flickr assignment

2010-08-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

flickr assignment for digital media production.

1. take some time walking around campus and/or its immediate surroundings. find a place (or places) that has meaning for you - somewhere you find beautiful or miserable, inspiring or daunting, a place that makes your mind soar or makes your heart go boom boom boom. or just find a place you think is cool.

2. take some photographs of this place (or places). before you snap a picture, put some thought into what you are trying to capture. take as many photographs as you want.

3. if you do not already have a flickr account, create one. if you have an interest in photography, seriously consider opening a pro account ($25/year). if not, sign up for a free account.

4. upload 3-5 of your favorite campus photographs from your camera or phone to flickr. make sure you title each photograph.

5. put your photographs into a flickr set. be sure to title your flickr set.

6. once finished - and no later than 9 am on friday, september 3rd - tweet about it. include a link to your flickr set so that your classmates and people who follow you on twitter can see your work.

7. in class on friday, be prepared to demo your work.

rules:

1. follow all directions.

2. give yourself some time with this assignment. flickr is not overly difficult but it's not overly simple.

3. keep in mind that the goal of this assignment is not to take the greatest photograph ever of USF or san francisco - you have a whole semester to accomplish that! instead, the goal of this assignment to get you up and running on flickr.

4. if you have not completed the assignment by friday, do not come to class.

5. finally, if this assignment isn't fun, you're doing something wrong.

twitter assignment

2010-08-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

twitter assignment for digital media production.

1. if you have not yet joined twitter, join twitter.

2. create a profile. in either your user name or bio (or both), use your real name.

3. make your profile public. if you already have a twitter account that is private and wish to keep it that way, create a new account for this class.

4. find and follow all members (students and professor) of our class.

5. search for and follow all people whose work (writings, video, web) is assigned each week. if after a week you find their tweets less than amusing, by all means unfollow them.

6. post at least one tweet!

7. all of this must be complete by midnight on ~~wednesday~~ thursday.

8. please get into the habit of checking twitter at least once a day.

digital media production (fall 2010)

2010-08-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

this fall, i'm teaching two classes. one of them is digital media production, or DMP. classes begin august 25, 2010.

digital media production
MWF 10:30-11:35 am
Cowell Hall 313

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanavitz 141
Office Hours: MW 9-10 am
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Digital Media Production is a production course designed around creating, sharing, and collaborating with social media. Using tools and platforms like twitter, flickr, blogs, iPad, kiva, Creative Commons, youtube, yelp, USFPool, and Wikileaks, students will explore participatory media, digital storytelling, transmedia, co-authorship, user-generated content, and collective intelligence. Readings and discussions about digital media 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; and
3. To learn how to learn new digital media tools quickly and independently.

Course Texts/Costs:
o All readings are either free and online or free via Gleeson Library.
o Although you will be able to complete your assignments with a free flickr account, you are encouraged to purchase a flickr pro account for $25.
o In early October, we will be field tripping to see The Social Network in a local theater which will cost approximately $10.
o All students are required to make at least one $25 micro-loan, via kiva.org, which will be returned in full.

Calendar:
Week 1:
Wed, August 25
o Introduce ourselves, the course, and course expectations.
Fri, August 27
o Read/Watch: Clive Thompson, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy, New York Times Magazine, September 5, 2008; and Ira Glass, On good taste … (Video: 5:20), This American Life, August 12, 2006.

Week 2:
Mon, August 30
Read: Steven Johnson, How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live, Time, June 5, 2009; Rachel Dry, What Would Warhol Blog? Washington Post, August 16, 2009; and Peggy Orenstein, I Tweet, Therefore I Am, New York Times Magazine, July 30, 2010.
Wed, September 1
o Read: Jennifer Woodard Maderazo, Flickr Changes Lives, Launches Photog Career, MediaShift, August 2, 2007; and Chris Colin, Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com, SF Gate, September 29, 2008.
Fri, September 3
o Demo Day

Week 3:
Mon, September 6
o No class: Labor Day
Wed, September 8
o Read: Scott Rosenberg, Putting Everything Out There [Justin Hall], from Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters (2009); and Jason Pontius, On Blog Themes, Dwell, July 12, 2010.
Fri, September 10
o Guest panel: Shawn Calhoun (@GleesonLibrary), Thomas Listerman (@usfca), and Char Lobo Soriano (@itweetUSF).

Week 4:
Mon, September 13
o Read: Ken Auletta, Publish or Perish: Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? The New Yorker, April 26, 2010.
Wed, September 15
o Read/Watch: Frontline/World, Uganda - A Little Goes a Long Way, PBS, October 31, 2006; and additional Kiva readings TBA.
Fri, September 17
o Demo Day

Week 5:
Mon, September 20
o Prior to class, watch The Matrix (1999) and be ready to discuss it.
Wed, September 22
o Read: Henry Jenkins, "Searching for the Oragami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling," in Convergence Culture (2006), pp. 95-134.
Fri, September 24
o Read/Watch at least one other piece of Matrix-related transmedia (including but not limited to Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions, the web comics, the anime, the computer game, or the massively multiplayer online game) and be ready to share your understanding of it in class.
o Project 1 due.

Week 6:
Mon, September 27
o Student-generated readings on Creative Commons, part 1.
Wed, September 29
o Student-generated readings on Creative Commons, part 2.
Fri, October 1
o Demo Day

Week 7:
Mon, October 4
o Read/Watch: Ethan Zuckerman, Listening to global voices, Ted Talks, July, 2010; and danah boyd, Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace, Apophenia blog, June 24, 2007.
Wed, October 6
o Read: Farhad Manjoo, How Black People Use Twitter: The latest research on race and microblogging, Slate, August 10, 2010; Jessica Faye Carter, A Response to Farhad Manjoo's "How Black People Use Twitter," Jessica Faye Carter blog, August 12, 2010; and Scott Poulson-Bryant, How One Black Person Responds to "How Black People Use Twitter," Scott Topics blog, August 13, 2010.
Fri, October 8
o Field trip to see The Social Network (2010).

Week 8:
Mon, October 11
o No class: Fall Break
Wed, October 13
o Watch: Michael Wesch, An anthropological introduction to YouTube (Video: 55.33), presented at the Library of Congress, June 23, 2008.
Fri, October 15
o Demo Day

Week 9:
Mon, October 18
o Read: Kathleen Richards, Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0, East Bay Express, February 18, 2009.
Wed, October 20
o Read: Stephen Baker, Will Work for Praise: The Web's Free-Labor Economy, Business Week, December 28, 2008; Eric Karjaluoto, Is Tim Ferriss acting like an asshole? ideasonideas, August 11, 2009; and Stephanie Clifford, Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal, New York Times, July 30, 2009.
Fri, October 22
o Read: Rob Walker, Handmade 2.0, New York Times Magazine, December 16, 2007.

Week 10:
Mon, October 25
o Brainstorm Know Your Digital Rights exhibit.
Wed, October 27
o Build Know Your Digital Rights exhibit.
Fri, October 29
o No class: David out of town.
o Project 2 due.

Week 11:
Mon, November 1
o Student-generated readings on music and social media, part 1.
Wed, November 3
o Student-generated readings on music and social media, part 2.
Fri, November 5
o Guest lecture: Bennett Grassano, Director of Development, Kiva.org. Readings TBA.

Week 12:
Mon, November 8
o Read: Raffi Khatchadourian, No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency, The New Yorker, June 7, 2010.
Wed, November 10
o Read: Jay Rosen, The Afghanistan War Logs Released by Wikileaks, the World's First Stateless News Organization, PressThink blog, July 26, 2010; also read 2-3 of the links Rosen includes in his blog post and be ready to share your understanding of them in class.
Fri, November 12
o Demo Day

Week 13:
Mon, November 15
o Read/Use/Explore: Everyone Says They Have the Best Pancakes in San Francisco, Gridskipper, October 4, 2007; James Barron, Taking a Walk Through J. D. Salinger's New York and Walking in Holden's Footsteps, New York Times, January 28, 2010; A Peek Into Netflix Queues, New York Times, January 8, 2010; Frank Jacobs, Sense of POPOS: Secret Spaces of San Francisco, Big Think blog, January 27, 2010.
Wed, November 17
o Read: Rob Reed, 10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World, tonic, July 31, 2010; and Victor Keegan, Meet the Wikipedia of the mapping world, Guardian, February 4, 2010.
Fri, November 19
o Read/Use/Explore: Kim Severson, Neighbor, Can You Spare A Plum? New York Times, June 10, 2009; Roxanne Webber, New iPhone App Finds You Free Fruit, Chow, January 12, 2010; and Seasonal Ingredient Map, Epicurious.
Week 14:
Mon, November 22
o Read: John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972), pp. 7-34.
Wed, November 24
o Read: Robert Harrison, "On the Lost Art of Seeing," from Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (2008), pp. 114-124.
Fri, November 26:
o No class: Thanksgiving Break

Week 15:
Mon, November 29
o Read: Steven Johnson, Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social, New York Times, June 18, 2010; Henry Jenkins, Why Heather Can Write, Technology Review, February 6, 2004; and Tracy Seeley, Slowing Down My Own Monkey Mind, Tracy Seeley's Blog, July 17, 2010.
Wed, December 1
o Read/Watch: Clay Shirky, How cognitive surplus will change the world, Ted Talks, June 2010; Nicholas Carr, Does the Internet Make You Dumber? Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2010; Adrian Higgins, We can't see the forest for the T-Mobiles, Washington Post, December 15, 2009; and The Slow Media Manifesto.
Fri, December 3
o Read/Watch: Jane McGonigal, Gaming can make a better world, Ted Talks, February 2010; and Michael S. Rosenwald, FarmVille, other online social games mean big business, and bonding, Washington Post, August 3, 2010.

Week 16:
Mon, December 6
o Read: Jaron Lanier, World Wide Mush, Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2010; and Caterina Fake, Participatory media and why I love it (and must defend it), Caterina.net blog, January 19, 2010.
Wed, December 8
o Class party
o Project 3 due.

Course Grading:
Reading quizzes - 10%
Homework assignments - 10%
Class participation (this includes student-generated reading exercises) - 20%
Demo Days - 10%
Projects (3) - 30%
Know Your Digital Rights exhibit group project - 20%

Course Rules:
1. No late work accepted.
2. If you have no new work on Demo Day, do not come to class.
3. Whenever possible, publish your work under your own name.
4. Starting Friday, August 27, no drinking out of non-reusable containers in class. Be creative with your thirst-quenching solutions.

community garden outreach (fall 2010)

2010-08-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

i'm teaching two classes this fall. one of them is community garden outreach which i'm co-teaching with melinda stone. classes begin august 25, 2010.

Community Garden Outreach
Environmental Studies 145
Wednesdays 11:45 am - 3:25 pm
Hayes Healy Formal Lounge

Professor David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Mon and Wed 9 – 10 am & by appointment
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu

Professor Melinda Stone
Office: Kalmanovitz 120
Office Hours: Tues 10 am – noon & by appointment
Contact: stone [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu / 422-5755

Course Description:
Community Garden Outreach introduces students to environmental, cultural, social, political, and philosophical issues that circulate through and around food production, preparation, preservation, and distribution. Through readings, films, and class discussions, students will learn about sustainable and unsustainable systems of food production. Through field trips, homestead workshops, and an on-campus farmstand, students will engaged directly with various food production, preparation, preservation, and distribution practices. This service learning course is offered in tandem with Justin Valone’s Urban Ag I and both are part of USF’s Garden Project living learning community.

Learning Goals:
1. Discuss some of the key contemporary issues revolving around food and food production;
2. Develop practical skills in preparing, preserving, and distributing food;
3. Design, implement, and manage the campus farmstand;
4. Create and distribute farmstand recipes that engage and educate the campus community; and
5. Demonstrate effective and creative collaboration.

Book:
Michael Pollan’s Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, 1991.

Course Calendar:
August 25:
In class we will introduce ourselves, the course, and course expectations. At the end of class, we will field trip to the Upper Haight Farmers Market. Your homework, in addition to your weekly reflection, is to visit the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on either Thursday, August 26 or Saturday, August 28.

September 1:
Discussion about farmers markets and our farmstand. Class guests will include a few past Garden Project students who will share their experiences with running farmstand. Class will also include a visit from Sarah Klein, who will help us assess our kitchen and garden. Keep in mind: On Thursday, September 2, we will have our 1st campus farmstand!

September 8:
Prior to class, read Mollie Katzen's "Useful Tools," from The New Moosewood Cookbook, pp. xvi- xvii; and Joan Dye Gussow, “Is It Worth It?” from This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, pp. 200-214. Full kitchen/cooking day with Sarah Klein. At the end of class, be ready to commit to particular tasks for this semester's farmstand.

September 15:
Prior to class, watch Food, Inc., which we will discuss in class. We will end class with a discussion and early assessment of our farmstand.

September 22:
Prior to class, read Michael Pollan’s “Introduction” & “Two Gardens,” pp. 1-34, which we will discuss in class.

September 29:
Prior to class, read Joseph Radabaugh's "A History of Solar Cooking," "Designing & Building Your Own Solar Cooker," and "Building the SunStar," from Heaven's Flame: A Guide to Solar Cookers, pp. 1-4, 71-110. Homestead workshop: Solar Ovens and Sour Dough Crackers.

October 6:
Prior to class, read Molly Katzen's “An Illustrated Guide to the Baking of Yeast Bread,” from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, pp. 86-95; Mark Bittman's Making No-Knead Bread (Video – 4:58), New York Times, December 29, 2006; and Brother Rick Curry, S.J., “Making Bread,” from The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking, pp. 11-21. Homestead workshop: Baking Bread.

October 13:
We will not have our regular Wednesday class this week in preparation for our field trip to Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC), on Friday and Saturday, October 15-16.

October 20:
Prior to class, read Kim Severson's “Neighbor, Can You Spare A Plum?” New York Times, June 10, 2009; Fallen Fruit, “Take Back the Fruit: Public Space and Community Activism,” from Food, edited by John Knechtel, pp. 94-103; Roxanne Webber's 10 Ways to Barter for Food, Chow, August 6, 2009; and Pollan’s “The Harvest,” pp. 137-149. Homestead workshop: Green Media.

October 27:
Prior to class, read Pollan's “Compost and Its Moral Imperatives,” pp. 66-75. Homestead workshop: Canning.

November 3:
Prior to class, watch Chet Bentley's Elixir of Life, from How-to Homestead (2010); and David Owens, Brittany Rowles and Reece Snyder's Jerusalem Artichokes, from How-to Homestead (2009). Homestead workshop: Gleaning & Preserving.

November 10:
Prior to class, watch Ruth Stout’s Garden (23 minutes); Close to Nature Garden (24 minutes); and Garden Song (28 minutes). Be ready to discuss the three films in class.

November 17:
Prior to class, read Pollan's “Weeds Are Us,” pp. 98-116. (Important: Field trip to GFE has been postponed until spring semester) Field trip to Garden for the Environment.

November 24:
No class: Thanksgiving

December 1:
Prior to class, watch Dirt! which we will discuss in class.

December 8:
Wrap up first semester and prepare for Vision Day, Thursday, December 9.

Grading:
o Weekly 1-page reflection papers - 25%
o Classroom, field trip, and workshop participation - 25%
o Farmstand participation - 25%
o Creating and distributing farmstand recipes (Students enrolled in 2 units will be required to create – either individually or collectively – 2 farmstand recipes; students enrolled in 4 units will be required to create 4.) - 25%

Please note: Students enrolled in 2 units will be expected to work at least 2 hours a week towards our campus farmstand; students enrolled in 4 units will be expected to work at least 4 hours a week towards our campus farmstand.

Course Rules:
1. Starting September 1, no drinking out of non-reusable containers in class and during farmstand. Be creative with your thirst-quenching solutions.
2. In class, on field trips, and during farmstand, try your best to listen to and learn from everyone.
3. No late work accepted.

yesterday in santa cruz, siena turned one

2010-07-12T18:27:00.001-07:00

we love you siena - very, very much.

front yard tomatoes (and siena!)

2010-07-03T07:17:00.001-07:00

(click pic for larger size)

summer reading list

2010-06-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

each year, roy christopher collects summer reading lists from a few friends and publishes them on his blog. this year's a dandy. here's my contribution.

***

for as long as i can remember, nixon-related books have occupied the highest shelf on my parents' book collection - books like john dean's blind ambition and woodward and bernstein's all the president's men and the final days. a few weeks, while visiting my mom, i reached up to the top shelf and plucked down the final days (simon & schuster, 1976). it's the story of a criminal, crooked, crazed, paranoid, and totally incompetent president and the final months, weeks, and days of his reign. great summer reading!

a few months ago, at moe's books in berkeley, i traded three brand new academic books about digital media for one used copy of edward espe brown's the complete tassajara cookbook: recipes, techniques, and reflections from the famed zen kitchen (shambhala, 2009). what a great deal! i started reading and cooking from this book in late spring and will continue through summer and beyond.

as its title suggests, pam peirce's golden gate gardening: the complete guide to year-round food gardening in the san francisco bay area and coastal california (sasquatch books, 2010) tells northern californians what to plant, why, how, and when. it's my bible - especially in summer. i'm also reading gayla trail's grow great grub: organic food from small spaces (clarkson potter, 2010) for some wonderful and creative tricks and techniques.

this summer, i'm working on a new freshmen seminar called "golden gate park" which, if approved, will run next spring. to generate ideas and stimulate the old noggin, i'm reading, skimming, and scanning all kinds of wonderful books like raymond h. clary’s making of golden gate park: the early years: 1865-1906 (don’t call it frisco press, 1984); chris pollock and erica katz’s san francisco's golden gate park: a thousand and seventeen acres of stories (westwinds press, 2001); sally b. woodbridge, john m. woodbridge, and chuck byrne’s san francisco architecture: an illustrated guide to the outstanding buildings, public art works, and parks in the bay area of california (ten speed press, 2005); christopher pollock’s golden gate park: san francisco's urban oasis in vintage postcards (arcadia publishing, 2003); and hosea and nellie a. blair’s monuments and memories of san francisco: golden gate park (calmar printing company, 1955).

most of my summer reading, i suspect, will be read out loud, to siena, our 11-month old daughter, and revolve around stories about clever animals, being kind and curious, and going to sleep.

why i teach what i teach

2010-06-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

(video made by Madhouse Muse)

social media research assistantships (2)

2010-04-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Are you a USF student? Are you social media savvy? Do you want to use your social media skills to reach a wide audience?

We are looking for 2 paid summer undergraduate research assistants to broaden participation in The September Project, a grassroots effort to encourage events about freedom at all libraries in all countries throughout the month of September. Students will be expected to work about 5 hours a week from May 24 - August 24. Pay is based on USF student worker pay scale.

Responsibilities include:

* brainstorming and writing blog posts about participating libraries and librarians (blog);
* maintaining and extending our twitter stream (@septproject);
* maintaining and extending our google map of participants (map); and
* performing general research about local, national, and international libraries and librarians.

Successful candidates will not only have skills and experience with the kinds of social media the September Project currently uses, but also will have creative ideas for and curiosity about new ways to help the project grow and succeed.

To apply:

Submit a resume and cover letter outlining your skills and motivations for applying for this position. Please also include a URL that points to a blog post or other use of social media that you crafted and of which you are particularly proud. Send your application - no later than Monday, May 3rd - to Professor David Silver at the email found on this page. Decisions will be made by May 10.

These social media research assistantships are made possible by USF's Faculty Development Funds (FDF).

getting students' bodies and ideas into libraries: a talk for minnesotan librarians

2010-04-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

tomorrow, i'm giving the opening talk at ARLD Day, sponsored by the academic & research libraries division of the minnesota library association. the title of my talk is "getting students' bodies and ideas into libraries." i plan to limit my talk to a particular nook of gleeson library and what university of san francisco students and librarians do with and within it.

exhibit 1: good food (designed by USF librarian sherise kimura)

exhibit 2: get graphic (designed by USF librarians debbie benrubi and kathy woo)

exhibit 3: election exhibit (designed by students enrolled in two sections of david silver's introduction to media studies in fall 2008)

exhibit 4: the reading fort (designed by students enrolled in david silver's digital literacy class in spring 2008)

exhibit 5: our dinner table (currently being designed by students enrolled in david silver's green media in spring 2010)

two summer paid research assistantships with the garden project

2010-04-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

The USF Garden Project is currently seeking two garden research assistants for Summer 2010 (May 24- August 24)

Garden research assistants will be responsible for caring for all Garden Project gardens, including the campus garden and Booker T. Washington garden. Care includes: watering, mulching, weeding, seed saving, harvesting and distributing vegetables; tending to the orchard and fruit vines; managing compost; and hosting any visitors to the garden, which includes scheduling and overseeing a once a week garden workday. 10 hours a week will be split between the two assistants based on their schedules. Pay is based on USF student worker pay scale.

If interested please email David Silver (dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu) and/or Melinda Stone (stone [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu) stating your interest by April 26. Please provide either a narrative and/or resume that reflects your experience related to this position. Decisions will be made by April 30.

lunch project assignment

2010-04-13T10:45:00.001-07:00

lunch project assignment for green media

1. research and prepare a delicious meal for lunch for this friday's class.

2. your meal must include at least one ingredient from USF's organic garden. as we discussed last friday in the garden, seasonal veggies ready for picking include arugula, lettuce greens on the south side of the garden, chard and green onions in the middle of the garden, and beets and beet greens towards the north side of the garden. you are also welcome to use the herbs located in the herb spiral. because the veggies "sold" at thursday's campus farmstand come directly from USF's garden, you are welcome to get your veggies and ingredients there.

3. prepare your delicious meal individually or as a group. pack as much soul as possible into your delicious meal.

4. bring your delicious meal to class on friday (april 16). also bring some kind of serving utensil. share your meal with others. also bring to class your favorite bowl (or plate) and fork (or spoon) so that you can sample other people's meals.

5. make a recipe for your delicious meal and share it online via the platform of your choice. regardless of your platform, your recipe must: a) use multimedia; b) be publicly accessible; and c) allow user comments. your recipes are due no later than sunday at midnight.

6. once finished, tweet your recipe.

stir it up - a talk @ sfpl

2010-04-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

later this evening, melinda stone and i will be giving a presentation at the main branch of san francisco public library. our talk is called stir it up - in the pot and on the web: making media about making food. it's free and open to the public and yer invited!

with luck, i hope to share ideas via a single flickr set:

if time permits, i also hope to share:

Daniele Dominguez's Vegan Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze
Kate Greenspan & Sophia Lorenzi's Soph's Loaf of Chocolate Banana Bread
Christina Hammill's No-Knead Bread
Samuel Hernandez & Peter Thoene's rosemary rock salt focaccia
Joel Weston's Blueberry-Lime Poundcake

hope to see you at the library!

google maps assignment

2010-03-23T21:59:00.001-07:00

google maps assignment for digital media production

1. learn google maps.

2. create a google map with at least three pins. the content attached to those pins is entirely up to you. experiment heavily with the design and layout of the pins.

3. when your map is ready, tweet about it.

4. in class on thursday, be ready to demo your map.

5. finally, find a USF student who currently has an internship or service project in san francisco. be ready to discuss the internship/project in class on thursday.

keep in mind:

a. the main thing i am testing is your ability to learn google maps with zero instruction from me.

b. i am also testing your ability to design and deliver digital content in strategic and creative ways. don't settle on your first or second idea.

c. if you have no new content to demo on thursday, do not come to class.

food person research project assignment

2010-03-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

food person research project for green media

1. select a person - local or global; living or non-living - who makes media about making food. your food person can be a celebrity or not.

2. research your food person's history. use at least 3 different sources.

3. analyze your food person's techniques. analyze her/his approach, content, methods, tone, style, experience, and preferred mode/s of media. analyze at least 3 pieces of media made by your food person.

4. consider your food person in relation to your own experience with making media about making food. are there elements of your food person's technique that you wish to emulate? avoid? go beyond?

5. your research can be presented in any media necessary - paper, blog post, video, you name it.

6. edit compulsively. make your project technically and technologically flawless.

7. at least 2 of your sources must be from gleeson library - either from the collection or via link plus. put another way, at least 2 of your sources need to be texts you can hold in your hands that you physically gathered from gleeson library.

8. your project must have a works cited section. you can use any bibliographic style you wish but you must use one.

notes:

a. if this were a traditional paper, double-spaced in word, it would be around 8-10 pages.

b. your research project should interest you and people who are not you.

c. if you are taking green media as a senior seminar, you must do 2 food person research projects. your second project must be turned in no later than the last day of class (may 7). plan wisely.

due: friday, april 2, by sunset.

novella carpenter visits USF

2010-03-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

last friday, urban homesteader and author novella carpenter visited USF. she met with green media and garden project students who are two-thirds finished reading novella's book, farm city: the education of an urban farmer.

novella began the day with my green media class. she asked my students question and they gave answers, and then my students asked novella questions and she gave answers. we talked about farm city, about urban homesteading, about raising, killing, and eating rabbits, about pop up farming, about interacting with the media, and about the role of the internet in today's urban ag.

around noon, we walked out of the education building, across the parking lot, and into USF's organic garden. while green media students showed novella the veggie plot we planted last week, i rounded up a few garden project students to give novella a tour of our campus garden.

after the tour, we surrounded a table full of food that students cooked, baked, and prepared for lunch - two loaves of homemade bread, a delicious soup, a garden quiche, a fresh garden salad, and a tasty rhubarb pie baked with rhubarb from the garden. it was a delicious feast.

with loaded bowls and plates, we took a seat in a circle, ate our food, and talked about farm city, about making homemade cheese and salami, about raising ducks, and about today and tomorrow's directions in urban ag. as novella writes on her own blog, "it made my heart sing to see these good citizens fired up about growing food." indeed.

as a teacher, the best part of the day was when garden project students took novella and green media students on a tour of the garden (captured so well by kate greenspan). it was cool to watch the mostly freshmen garden project students teach novella about our garden, but it was even cooler to watch them teach the mostly seniors in green media. students teaching students.

bake yer own bread - 9 delicious bread recipes from the students in green media

2010-03-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

last week in green media, the students and professor baked bread. although the assignment included some readings on bread-making, it included no hands-on instructions. "bake bread," i told my students, "and if you don't know how, learn."

in class on friday, we broke bread. we sampled each other's creations and shared tips and suggestions.

(2nd pic: erin venables)

as usual, students were required to make and share their recipes. together, the students created an online cookbook. enjoy.

Marco Abellera's Making Bread: Focaccia
Daniele Dominguez's How to Make Sourdough Bread
Kate Greenspan & Sophia Lorenzi's Soph's Loaf of Chocolate Banana Bread
Christina Hammill's No-Knead Bread
Samuel Hernandez & Peter Thoene's rosemary rock salt focaccia
Michael Kao's Bread Noobie
Kelli McCloskey & Joseph Montana's Bread Making
Erin Venables' Rosemary Garlic Bread
Joel Weston's Mama D's Italian Bread

urban ag panel at USF - this tuesday!

2010-02-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

yer invited!

URBAN AGRICULTURE in the 21st CENTURY
Where art, commerce, education, politics and generosity meet to promote city-grown food

Please join USF's Environmental Studies 450 capstone students and their professor Melinda Stone, as they host what promises to be an engaging panel on the state of urban agriculture on Tuesday, March 2 from 2 – 4 PM in McClaren Hall 252.

Panelist include:

Mei Ling Hui, urban agriculture contact for San Francisco’s Department of the Environment. (sfenvironment.org)

Amy Franceschini, USF art/architecture professor and main instigator behind SF Victory Gardens 2009+ and founder of Future Farmers. (futurefarmers.com)

Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway, co-owners/farmers of Little City Gardens in the San Francisco Mission District. (littlecitygarden.com)

Blair Randall, executive director of Garden for the Environment, San Francisco’s premiere education garden. (gardenfortheenvironment.org)

Tree, founder of the Free Farm Stand on 23rd and Treat Ave. in San Francisco. (freefarmstand.org)

bake a loaf of bread assignment

2010-02-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

bake a loaf of bread assignment for students in green media

1. in addition to our other readings for this friday, read "Basic White Bread – Ten Steps to Fresh-baked Goodness," from Sunset Cook Book of Breads; Molly Katzen, "An Illustrated Guide to the Baking of Yeast Bread," from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest; and Brother Rick Curry, S.J., "Making Bread," from The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking.

2. either individually or collaboratively, bake a loaf of bread. document the process.

3. bring your loaf of bread to class on friday, february 26. also bring a plate to class so that you can sample other people's loaves.

4. along with your loaf, bring a little something to accompany it (a bread accessory!) - honey, jam, herb butter, lilikoi flavored butter, cheese, lunch meat, an avocado, hummus, aioli, olives, you name it. to avoid duplication and to give us a sense of the feast that stands before us, tweet your bread accessory once you've decided on it. also bring a serving utensil for your bread accessory.

5. on friday, after we plant our garden plot, we will break bread together.

6. using multimedia and an online platform that allows readers the opportunity to leave comments, make a recipe and share it online. once finished, and certainly before sunset on sunday, tweet about it. be sure to include a link so that others can read your recipe.

rules:

1. do not be intimidated by this assignment. have fun with it.

2. no late work accepted.

friday's foraging fieldtrip

2010-02-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

garden project and green media students - this friday we'll be field-tripping to the inner sunset to forage for wild greens. we'll meet at the garden for the environment at 10:30 am sharp. don't be late. here are walking/biking directions and muni bus directions from USF to the GFE.

justin valone, of USF's garden project, will lead and teach us about foraging.

what should you bring?

1. comfortable shoes;

2. a bowl and fork for salad;

3. some kind of salad amendments - nuts, seeds, homemade dressing;

4. your thoughts and ideas about chapter one of novella carpenter's farm city; and

5. if it's raining, bring rain gear.

rules and recipes from green media's breakfast project

2010-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

the ground rules for green media's first project, breakfast project, were fairly straight-forward:

1. cook a delicious meal for breakfast.

2. bring the meal to class on friday, february 12. also bring some kind of serving utensil. share your meal with others.

3. also bring to class your favorite bowl (or plate) and fork (or spoon) so that you can sample other people's meals.

4. have a delicious (and collective) breakfast in class.

5. using multimedia, make a recipe for your meal and share it online via the platform of your choice.

6. once finished, and certainly before sunset on sunday, tweet about it. be sure to include a link to your recipe.

here's our breakfast recipes:

Marco Abellera's Pancakes
Daniele Dominguez's Vegan Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze
Christina Hammill's Mixed Fruit Salad with Feta and Mint
Sam Hernandez's Grapefruit In The Morning
Michael Kao's Corn Beef Hash
Sophia Lorenzi's Cinnamon Rollz
Kelli McCloskey's Bagels
Joe Montana's egg & cheese souffle
David Silver's fresh salad with a mustard vinaigrette
Peter Thoene's A Light Breakfast
Joel Weston's Blueberry-Lime Poundcake

our next project, lunch project, will require us to research and cook seasonal, regional meals from ingredients harvested from our garden plot. stay tuned.

breakfast project - fresh salad with a mustard vinaigrette

2010-02-14T11:59:00.000-08:00

for class on friday, green media students and professor were required to make a breakfast meal, bring it to class, and share it with others. we were also required to post online our recipes. here's mine.

fresh salad with a mustard vinaigrette

1. put a few cups of water in a sauce pan and bring to boil. place 2 eggs in boiling water and let cook for 15 minutes. take eggs out of water to cool.

2. get 1 large bunch or 1 big bowl full of lettuce. instead of using one kind of lettuce, consider using multiple varieties. for this salad, i used arugula, spinach, green leaf, romaine, and mustard greens.

3. wash salad greens in a bowl. use a salad spinner to dry the greens. if you don't have one, use a clean cloth towel to hand-dry the greens. you want your greens to be dry.

4. with your hands, tear the greens in half or in thirds and place in a large bowl.

5. for the mustard vinaigrette, you'll need the following:

6. pour the red wine vinegar in a small bowl. add a pinch or two of salt and pepper and stir until dissolved. add minced garlic (and, optionally, minced shallot). add dijon mustard. now add olive oil. whisk! taste it - does it need more salt? a bit more vinegar? experiment until the dressing is nothing less than delicious.

7. peel the hard-boiled eggs, cut them in small chunks, and add to the salad.

8. add the vinaigrette dressing to the salad and mix it all up. serve immediately.

flickr project

2010-02-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

flickr assignment for digital media production

1. we spent a significant portion of today's class taking digital photographs of USF. feel free to take more.

2. if you do not already have a flickr account, create one. if you have an interest in photography, consider opening a pro account ($25/year). if not, sign up a for a free account.

3. find and follow on flickr all DMP students and professor.

4. upload your photos of campus to your flickr account. title and tag all of the photos. be smart and strategic with your tags.

5. using no less than 5 and no more than 10 photos, make a flickr set. title the set. add a description to the set.

6. join the flickr group "USF photography and photographers."

7. revisit your flickr set of campus. add any - or all - of your photos to the "USF photography and photographers" flickr group. be aware that by adding your photo or photos, they can be featured on USF's web site.

8. once finished with steps 1-7, tweet about it. include a link to your flickr set so that other people can see your work.

9. use twitter to keep up with your classmates' work and visit and view their flickr sets.

10. comment on at least 5 photographs taken by 5 different DMPers.

rules:

1. follow all directions.

2. flickr project is due saturday, february 13, at noon. no late work accepted.

twitter assignment

2010-01-28T10:27:00.000-08:00

twitter assignment for digital media production, green media, and community garden outreach

1. if you have not yet joined twitter, join twitter.

2. create a profile. in either your user name or bio (or both), use your real name.

3. make your profile public. if you already have a twitter account that is private and wish to keep it that way, create a new account for this class.

4. find and follow all members (students and professor) of our class.

5. search for and follow all people whose work (writings, video, web) is assigned each week. if after a week you find their tweets less than amusing, by all means unfollow them.

6. please get into the habit of checking twitter at least once a day.

green media (spring 10)

2010-01-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

in spring, i'm teaching three classes - two of them new. one of the new ones is green media. classes begin friday, january 29th.

Green Media
Fridays 9:40 am-12:25 pm (and some lunches, too)
Education 104 (and sometimes in the Garden)

Professor: David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 10:30-11:30 am & by appointment

Green Media is a special topics production class devoted to making media about making food. Throughout the semester, students will plan, plant, tend, and harvest a veggie plot in USF's organic garden; research, cook, and share a selection of seasonal, regional recipes; and eat, experience, and experiment with real food. Further, using social media like twitter, flickr, facebook, blogs, and video, students will make and share media about growing, cooking, and eating food. Finally, students will work collaboratively to design and build two food-related exhibits in Gleeson Library.

Learning Goals:
o to learn how to plan and plant a garden;
o to learn how to research and cook 3-4 seasonal, regional, and delicious meals;
o to learn how to use social media to document the planting and preparing of food;
o to learn how to work collaboratively; and
o to become more aware of and in tune with seasons.

Book:
Please purchase Novella Carpenter's Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Penguin Press, 2009).

* All other course readings are either free and online, available outside my office, or available at Gleeson Library.

Calendar:
Friday, January 29
Discuss the syllabus and course expectations. Visit our garden plot. Begin using twitter.

Friday, February 5
Read Patricia Harris, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin, “Food & Life,” from The Meaning of Food, pp. 1-59; Michael Pollan, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, New York Times Magazine, July 29, 2009. Watch Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray, Window Farms (Video - 1:38), November 3, 2009. Library workshop with USF librarians Debbie Benrubi and Sherise Kimura.

Friday, February 12
Read Maggie Gosselin, Sarah Klein, and Jessica Prentice’s “San Francisco Bay Area Local Foods Wheel”; Localvore Network, California availability guide; selections from Pam Pierce’s Golden Gate Gardening: The Complete Guide to Year-Round Food Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area & Coastal California; Allison Arieff, “Hive Minds: As Honeybees around the world vanish, one Bay Area biologist is enlisting an army of backyard gardeners to help figure out why,” Sunset, August 2009, pp. 54-56; and Maira Kalman, Back to the Land ... And the Pursuit of Happiness, New York Times, November 26, 2009. Plan our garden plot. Begin using flickr. Due in class: Breakfast Project.

Friday, February 19
Read Novella Carpenter, “Turkey,” from Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, pp. 1-98; Field trip with Justin Valone to forage for wild greens and stinging nettles.

Friday, February 26
Read “Basic White Bread – Ten Steps to Fresh-baked Goodness,” from Sunset Cook Book of Breads, pp. 8-9; Mark Bittman, Making No-Knead Bread (Video – 4:58), New York Times, December 29, 2006; Brother Rick Curry, S.J., “Making Bread,” from The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking, pp. 11-21; Molly Katzen, "An Illustrated Guide to the Baking of Yeast Bread," from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, pp. 86-95; and Lulu McCllister, How to Make a Delicious Omelet Using Wild Foods. Watch Giselle Kennedy, Brew (Video - 13:50), How-to Homestead, 2009; and Sergey Yazvinsky, One Minute Apple Pie (Video - 1:29), Serious Eats, September 10, 2009. Bake a loaf of bread. Begin blogging.

Friday, March 5
Read Novella Carpenter, “Rabbit,” from Farm City, pp. 99-184; and John Emerson, Neo Gardenism, Social Design Notes blog, June 15, 2009. Library workshop with USF librarians Debbie Benrubi and Sherise Kimura. Join garden guest Novella Carpenter, author (Farm City) and urban homesteader (Ghost Town Farm), for lunch and discussion.

Friday, March 12
Read Patricia Harris, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin, “Food & Culture,” from The Meaning of Food, pp. 61-105; Keith McHenry, The Story of Food Not Bombs (Parts 1-4); and Sandra Cate, "'Breaking Bread with a Spread' in the San Francisco County Jail," Gastronomica, Summer 2008, pp. 17-24. Join garden guest Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs, for lunch and discussion.

Friday, March 19:
SPRING BREAK (No Class)

Friday, March 26
Read Novella Carpenter, “Pig,” from Farm City, pp. 185-269; and Ian Frazier, The Cursing Mommy Cooks Italian, The New Yorker, January 11, 2010, pp. 34-35. Due in class: Media-Food Person Research Project.

Friday, April 2:
GOOD FRIDAY (No Class)
Read Tina Peterson, "Bringing Up Baby (Carrots), Gastronomica, Fall 2008, pp. 55-59. Watch Deborah Koons Garcia’s The Future of Food (Video - 1:28:51); and The Meatrix (I, II, and II 1/2).

Friday, April 9
Read Douglas Quenqua, To Harvest Squash, Click Here, New York Times, October 28, 2009. Watch expertvillage, How to Grow Squash in a Vegetable Garden (Video - 2:44), October 24, 2008; Melinda Stone, The Humanure Cycle (Video: 8:27), How-to Homestead, 2008; and a healthy dose of River Cottage. Visit, play, and be ready to discuss in class FarmVille. Due in class: Lunch Project.

Friday, April 16
Read Kim Severson, Neighbor, Can You Spare A Plum? New York Times, June 10, 2009; Emma Brown, Changing How We Live and Eat, One Fig at a Time, Common Dreams, February 2, 2009; Fallen Fruit, "Take Back the Fruit: Public Space and Community Activism," from Food, edited by John Knechtel, pp. 94-103; and Roxanne Webber, New iPhone App Finds You Free Fruit, Chow, January 12, 2010. Visit and be ready to discuss in class City Fruit Tree Mapper; Neighborhood Fruit; Fallen Fruit; and Urban Edibles.

Friday, April 23 (David out of town)
Read Elizabeth Kolbert, Green Like Me: Living without a fridge, and other experiments in environmentalism, The New Yorker, August 31, 2009, pp. 70-74; Ten websites that will help you eat with greater awareness, Culinate blog, August 10, 2009; and Megan Gordon, Eat, Read, Look: Food Websites Worth Your Time, Bay Area Bites blog, January 18, 2010.

Friday, April 30
Read Rachel Laudan, “A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love New, Fast, Processed Food,” Gastronomica, February 2001, pp 36-44; Caitlin Flanagan, Cultivating Failure: How school gardens are cheating our most vulnerable students, The Atlantic, January/February 2010; Angela McGregor, Cultivating Conversation: How Caitlin Flanagan has got us all thinking out loud, Cornell Garden-Based Learning blog, January 27, 2010; and at least two of the essays McGregor links to. Discuss semester’s successes and shortcomings. Brainstorm final party.

Friday, May 7
Read Mark Andrew Boyer, Is a Food Revolution Now in Season? Yes, It Is, OrganicNation.tv blog, September 4, 2009; Sarah van Gelder, 8 Ways to Join the Local Food Movement, Yes! Magazine, February 13, 2009; and Remi Bouvier, Vallicans Guerilla Gardening Skate (Video - 6:00), Eggheads blog, November 2, 2009. Due in class: Last Supper Project.

This class has no final exam.

Grading:
20% Class and Garden Participation
10% Breakfast Project
10% Lunch Project
10% Last Supper Project
20% Media-Food Person Research Project
20% Seasonal Foods Library Exhibit Group Project
20% Food & Culture Library Exhibit Group Project

* If you are curious or concerned about your grade, you can request a meeting with me anytime during the semester.

Rulez:
1. Read all assigned readings, watch all assigned videos, and visit all assigned web sites prior to class.
2. In class, in the garden, and in the kitchen, listen to and learn from everyone.
3. No late work accepted.
4. No drinking out of non-reusable containers in class.

community garden outreach (spring 10)

2010-01-12T16:47:00.000-08:00

i'm teaching three classes in spring - two of them new. one of the new ones is community garden outreach. classes begin friday, january 29th.

Community Garden Outreach
Fridays 1:30-5 pm
Hayes Healy Formal Lounge and in the Garden

Professor: David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 10:30-11:30 am & by appointment

Community Garden Outreach is a 2-unit hands-on and seminar class held in conjunction with Justin Valone’s Urban Ag class. Through gardening, harvesting, foraging, cooking, eating, reading, reflecting, and discussing, we will explore social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental issues around food, food production, and food distribution. In addition to continuing our educations as gardeners, we will work online with social media to document our garden activities and offline in groups to organize and implement various food distribution projects. Further, through life competency sessions led by Golden Venters, students will reflect upon and discuss their processes of intentional change, contemplation of self, and inter- and intrapersonal abilities. Community Garden Outreach is part of the Garden Project Living Learning Community.

Learning Goals:
o To learn more about organic gardening, urban agriculture, and community food production;
o To learn how to use different kinds social media to document the planting, preparing, and sharing of food;
o To learn how to work collaboratively to design and organize community food distribution projects; and
o To learn how to bake bread.

Books:
o Novella Carpenter, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, 2009.
o Michael Pollan’s Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, 1992.

Calendar:
Friday, January 29
Last semester, through your work in Melinda Stone and Justin Valone’s fall 2009 courses, you’ve learned a lot about gardening, urban agriculture, and food production. The majority of today’s class will be spent bringing the professor up to speed with your individual and group projects and progress. We will also discuss the syllabus, course expectations, and your spring internships.

Friday, February 5
Read Barbara Kingsolver, “Called Home,” Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, pp. 1-22. Begin using twitter. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.

Friday, February 12
Read Michael Pollan, “Made Wild by Pompous Catalogs,” Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, pp. 205-228, and Maggie Gosselin, Sarah Klein, and Jessica Prentice’s “San Francisco Bay Area Local Foods Wheel.” Brainstorm & discuss our three food distribution projects: Campus Farmstand, Food Not Bombs, and Dean’s Dinners. Begin using flickr.

Friday, February 19
Field trip with Justin Valone to forage for wild greens and stinging nettles.

Friday, February 26
Read Novella Carpenter, “Turkey,” Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, pp. 1-98. Begin blogging. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.

Friday, March 5
Read Novella Carpenter, “Rabbit,” Farm City, pp. 99-184. Prepare garden tour and meal for class guest Novella Carpenter, author (Farm City) and urban homesteader (Ghost Town Farm).

Friday, March 12
Read “The Story of Food Not Bombs (Parts 1-4).” Watch “Food for Bombs – Nigeria." Prepare garden tour and meal for class guest Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs.

Friday, March 19:
SPRING BREAK

Friday, March 26
Read Novella Carpenter, “Pig,” Farm City, pp. 185-269. Discuss internship progress. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.

Friday, April 2:
GOOD FRIDAY

Friday, April 9
Read Michael Pollan, “Planting a Tree,” Second Nature, pp. 150-175. Brainstorm and discuss documenting the building of the garden kitchen.

Friday, April 16
Read Michael Pollan, “Green Thumb,” Second Nature, pp. 117-134. Cook with Chef Jean-Marc Fullsack to prepare Food Not Bombs meal.

Friday, April 23
Read Elizabeth Kolbert, “Green Like Me: Living without a fridge, and other experiments in environmentalism,” The New Yorker, August 31, 2009. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.

Friday, April 30
Read Michael Pollan, “The Garden Tour,” Second Nature, pp. 229-258, and Matt Hickman, “40 farmers under 40: Readers’ choice,” Mother Nature Network blog, September 24, 2009. Discuss semester’s successes and shortcomings. Brainstorm final party.

Friday, May 7
Prepare a delicious garden meal for the final party. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.

This class has no final exam.

Grading:
o Class participation - 25%
o Social media participation - 25%
o Food distribution group projects - 25%
o Student Internships - 25%

If you are curious or 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 and in the garden, listen to and learn from everyone.
3. No late work accepted.
4. No drinking out of non-reusable containers in class.

happy birthday siena, you're a half year young!

2010-01-11T08:16:00.000-08:00

happy birthday siena, you're a half year young!

i remember six months ago, about an hour before you arrived, the midwife looked out the hospital window and exclaimed out loud, "look! a rainbow!" i peered out the window and saw a curving column of colors stretching from one side of san francisco to another. all of us, even your mommy, stopped our labors for a moment to see the rainbow. and then the midwife exclaimed again, "now let's have this baby!"

do you remember, siena, your first three months? do you remember all the sights and sounds of your new home? do you remember your colic? your inconsolable crying? your all-night bouts of fussiness? we do. what bravery you showed those first few months.

did you know, siena, that you weren't the only brave one? do you remember that while you were bravely fighting colic, your mommy was bravely fighting postpartum depression? we do. and do you remember, siena, how family and friends rallied around us like a village? we do.

do you remember, siena, about two months ago when auntie jewlee, mommy's sister, moved from colorado to california to be your nanny? we do.

do you know, siena, how often your mommy and daddy talked about you before you even arrived? do you know how much we talk about your future? but most of all, do you know, siena, how happy and proud we are of you in the present, this day and all days? we do.

happy birthday siena, you're a half year young!

digital media production (spring 10)

2009-12-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

in spring, i'm teaching three classes. one of them is digital media production. classes begin january 26, 2010.

digital media production
Tues & Thurs 8:30 - 10:15 am
Education 304

Professor: David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 10:30 - 11:30 am & by appointment

Digital Media Production is a production course designed around creating, sharing, and collaborating with digital media. Using tools and platforms like facebook, twitter, flickr, yelp, blogs, google maps, and kiva, students will explore ideas of digital storytelling, transmedia, co-authorship, and large-scale collaboration. 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; and
4. To learn about and participate within the intersections among digital media and social justice.

Required Texts/Costs:
o All readings are either a) free and online or b) will be made available for free in the library and outside my office.
o Although students will be able to complete their assignments with a free flickr account, you are encouraged, especially if interested in photography, to purchase a flickr pro account for $25.
o All students are required to make one $25 micro-loan, via kiva.org, which will be returned in full.

Calendar:

Tuesday, January 26
o Introduce ourselves, distribute syllabus, and discuss course expectations.
Thursday, January 28
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.

Tuesday, February 2
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, February 4
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 Lori Aratani, When Mom or Dad Asks To Be a Facebook "Friend," Washington Post, March 9, 2008.
o Kevin Bankston, Facebook's New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Electronic Frontier Foundation, December 9, 2009.

Tuesday, February 9
o Demo Day: Facebook
Thursday, February 11
o Henry Jenkins, Why Heather Can Write, Technology Review, February 6, 2004.
o Samantha M. Shapiro, Revolution, Facebook-Style: Can social networking turn disaffected young Egyptians into a force for democratic change? New York Times Magazine, January 22, 2009.
o Ira Glass, On good taste ... This American Life (Video: 5:20).

Tuesday, February 16
o Lee and Sachi LeFever, Twitter in Plain English, Common Craft, March 5, 2008.
o Ben Parr, HOW TO: Retweet on Twitter, Mashable, April 16, 2009.
o Mashable, How #FollowFriday Works
o Marko, Twitter Etiquette: 7 Common Sense Rules for Twitter, Twitter Tips blog, December 20, 2009.
o Virginia Heffernan, Hashing Things Out: How Hashtags are Remaking Conversations on Twitter, New York Times Magazine, August 7, 2009
Thursday, February 18
o Steven Johnson, How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live, Time, June 5, 2009.
o Michael Wesch, An anthropological introduction to YouTube, presented at the Library of Congress, June 23, 2008 (Video: 55.33).

Tuesday, February 23
o Demo Day: Twitter
Thursday, February 25
o Noam Cohen, Refining the Twitter Explosion, New York Times, November 8, 2009.
o Stan Schroeder, How Twitter Conquered the World in 2009, Mashable, December 25, 2009.
o Adrian Higgins, We can't see the forest for the T-Mobiles, Washington Post, December 15, 2009.

Tuesday, March 2
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, March 4
o Noam Cohen, Use My Photo? Not Without Permission, New York Times, October 1, 2007.
o Noam Cohen, Historical Photos in Web Archives Gain Vivid New Lives, New York Times, January 18, 2009.
o Jennifer Woodard Maderazo, Flickr Changes Lives, Launches Photog Careers, MediaShift blog, August 2, 2007.
o Chris Colin, Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com, SF Gate, September 29, 2008.

Tuesday, March 9
o Demo Day: Flickr
Thursday, March 11
o Gina Trapani, Geek to Live: Flickr Advanced User Guide, Lifehacker blog, February 15, 2006.
o Adam Ostrow, Flickr2Twitter: Flickr Enters the Twitter Stream, Mashable blog, June 30, 2009.
o Ben Parr, 5 Impressive Mashups of Twitter and Flickr, May 11, 2009.
o Try out iMapFlickr.

Tuesday, March 16: SPRING BREAK!
Thursday, March 18: SPRING BREAK!

Tuesday, March 23
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.
Thursday, March 25
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, March 30
o Demo Day: Yelp
Thursday, April 1
o Stacy Schiff, Know it All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? The New Yorker, July 31, 2006.
o Rob Walker, Handmade 2.0, New York Times Magazine, December 16, 2007.

Tuesday, April 6
o Scott Rosenberg, Putting Everything Out There [Justin Hall] from Say Everything.
Thursday, April 8
o Tom Coates, (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything... plasticbag.org, September 3, 2003.
o Doree Shafrir, Would You Take a Tumblr With This Man? New York Observer, January 15, 2008.

Tuesday, April 13
o Christian Kreutz, Maptivism: Maps for activism, transparency and engagement, Crisscrossed blog, September 14, 2009.
o Christian Kreutz, 6 innovative grassroot mashups for transparency, Crisscrossed blog, May 5, 2008.
Thursday, April 15
o Mark S. Luckie, 7 Unique and innovative maps, 10,000 Words blog, October 21, 2009.
o David Sasaki, Maps for Social Change and Community Involvement, Idea Lab blog, April 24, 2009.
o Rex Sorgatz, A Data Point on Every Block: An Interview with Adrian Holovaty, Fimoculous, February 14, 2008.
o Try out Green Maps.

Tuesday, April 20
o Demo Day: Google Maps
Thursday, April 22:
o Collaboration Workshop

Tuesday, April 27
o Henry Jenkins, "Searching for the Oragami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling," in Convergence Culture, pp. 95-134.
Thursday, April 29
o The Extended Reality of Cross-Media Storytelling, Power to the Pixel, February 4, 2009.
o Why So Serious? Marketing Overview
o Welcome to a World Without Oil
o Stefanie Olsen, Provocative politics in virtual games, CNET News, March 28, 2007.

Tuesday, May 4
o Alice Rawsthorn, Winning Ways of Making a Better World, New York Times, August 30, 2009.
o Frontline/World, Uganda - A Little Goes a Long Way, PBS, October 31, 2006.
o Martin Plaut, Internet loans swing towards US, BBC News, June 10, 2009.
o Erick Schonfeld, Four Years After Founding, Kiva Hits $100 Million In Microloans, TechCrunch, November 1, 2009.
Thursday, May 6
o Demo Day: kiva

Tuesday, May 11
o Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, July/August 2008.
o David Carr, The Fall and Rise of Media, New York Times, November 29, 2009.
Thursday, May 13
o To be determined.

This class has no final exam.

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

If you are concerned about your grade, you can request a meeting with me anytime during the semester.

Rulez:
1. Read all assigned readings and view all assigned videos 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 January 28, no drinking out of non-reusable containers in class. Be creative with your thirst-quenching solutions.

graduation day

2009-12-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

at this year's graduation ceremony, USF's school of business and professional studies gave craig newmark, founder of craigslist, an honorary degree. i had the pleasure of introducing him.

my remarks looked something like this:

Back in 2007, there was a guy named Sean who owned a home in San Francisco. A nice home, near Chinatown, with one problem: the attic. The attic was full of rats. Based on a tip he received from a hardware store, Sean filled the attic with peanut butter-flavored cubes of poison. The idea was that the rats would eat the cubes, become extremely thirsty, and scuttle out of the house. The rats did indeed eat the cubes, but instead of getting thirsty and leaving for a drink, they died. Now Sean’s attic was full of dead, stinky rats. So Sean did what millions of other people do - he posted to Craigslist. In exchange for ridding his attic of dead rats, he offered 5000 CDs from his personal music collection.

I find this story fascinating for three reasons. First, it is amazing that a significant transaction - dead rats for 5000 CDs - can take place without a single dollar bill exchanged. No cash register was needed. No paypal. No shopping mall.

Second, this simple exchange requires a complex trust between two people. It requires civility. It requires human beings treating human beings like human beings.

The third reason I love this story has nothing to do with Sean, or the rats, or the 5000 CDs. It’s about what happens when many, many people use Craigslist. Craigslist was started as a hobby by Craig Newmark in early 1995. Today, more than 35 million viewers in 55 countries use Craigslist. Now, when people use Craigslist, they seldom pay for classified ads, and when people don’t pay for classified ads, it is difficult for newspapers, at least in the United States, to exist. In this way, and in many other ways, Craigslist is what we in media studies call a disruptive technology. Craigslist is a game changer. It disrupts the existing order.

In this way, Craig Newmark and Craigslist are quite similar to USF. After all, the motto of USF is not "Educating minds and hearts to make a lot of money." Nor is the motto of USF "Educating minds and hearts to maintain the status quo." The motto of USF is "Educating minds and hearts to change the world." Change the world. Be disruptive.

Today, we honor Craig Newmark, the entrepreneur who founded Craigslist. The University of San Francisco is proud to honor Craig for his success at directing technology to promote "a common good that transcends the interests of particular individuals or groups." The University does, therefore, confer upon Craig Newmark the degree of Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto. Given this eighteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand and nine, and of the University, the hundredth and fifty-fourth, in San Francisco, California.

to the graduating class of 2009 - congratulations and may you be disruptive.

the herb garden

2009-12-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

the herb garden in the front yard is beginning to take shape.

(click on the image for a larger view)

retiring RCCS

2009-12-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

in fall 1994, i began grad school in american studies at the university of maryland, researching and teaching about a new and obscure technology called the internet.

it was a perfect time and place to study new media. at maryland, i was able to work with and learn from john caughey, debra deruyver, katie king, bob kolker, myron lounsbury, ed martini, jo paoletti, kelly quinn, jason rhody, ben shneiderman, mary corbin sies, martha nell smith, donald snyder, and ellen yu borkowski. it was awesome.

what wasn't awesome was the larger academic community, or lack thereof. in those days, one would be lucky to find a single panel on "cyberspace" or the "world wide web" at an academic conference or to find a single article in an academic journal. these were the old days - before conferences like digital arts and culture (or DAC, first held in 1998) or the association of internet researchers (or AoIR, first held in 2000), before internet clusters like the berkman center for internet and society (established in 1998) or the oxford internet institute (established in 2001). back then, academic interest in the internet was building, but an academic community was hard to find.

in fall 1996, i enrolled in an independent study with myron lounsbury. the goal of the independent study was to build a web site which in turn would help foster a community, an online community, that would connect scholars and students interested in studying the internet. i began by collecting relevant course syllabi and conference calls - the two key ingredients for any emerging field of study - and posted them on the web site. i called the site the resource center for cyberculture studies, or RCCS, and launched it on december 8, 1996.

a few months later, i received a review copy of wayne rash, jr.'s politics on the nets: wiring the political process. i found the book interesting, wrote a review of it, and in july 1997 published the review on RCCS. the idea behind RCCS reviews was simple: review books about contemporary media and culture from any and all disciplinary persuasions. i decided RCCS would review books because, first, books often contain interesting, well-developed ideas and arguments, something a new field of study needs and thrives on, and, second, books, unlike web sites which began to multiple and remix at an alarming rate by 1997, are finite in number. the book reviews quickly became the heart of RCCS.

a month later, fellow maryland grad student will winton's review of gary g. gach's writers.net: every writer's essential guide to online resources and opportunities generated a new feature: the author response. shortly after publishing winton's review, i received an email from gach who was excited to see his book reviewed but eager to explain his side of the story. i invited the author to write a response, he did, and the author response was born. when it worked well, the book review + author response fostered a rich and ripe dialogue - a conversation between reviewer and reviewed.

in 1998, a new feature appeared: multiple reviews of a single book. having received a new batch of books in need of reviewers, i distributed a call for reviewers to various lists. when multiple scholars asked to review richard lanham's the electronic word: democracy, technology and the arts, i asked the publisher for an extra review copy. they said yes, i assigned the book to two reviewers, and the multiple reviews feature was born. later, RCCS would routinely feature two, three, four, and even five reviews of a single book. coupled with an author response, these multiple reviews offer multiple perspectives into a complex topic.

from the start, the book reviews and author responses were free and publicly accessible. they were also written by a range of scholars - from graduate students in their first years to full professors in their last years - representing all kinds of fields and disciplines within the arts, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology. refusing a single disciplinary orientation, RCCS included them all.

on december 1, 2009, i published the last (and excellent!) set of RCCS book reviews and author responses. although there will be no more new reviews and responses, the existing ones will remain online as a free and publicly accessible archive.

it's been a nice run. for help along the way: a big and long-lasting thanks to my maryland peeps who helped launch RCCS; a big, big thanks to john klockner and alex fedosov who helped host and configure RCCS; and a massive thanks to nectarine group who helped redesign RCCS.

but most of all, thanks to the hundreds of reviewers who contributed their time, labor, and good ideas to RCCS and to the readers who took the time to read a review or two.

new (and last) set of reviews in cyberculture studies (december 09)

2009-12-01T08:09:00.000-08:00

each month, RCCS Reviews pumps out free, full-length reviews of books about contemporary media and culture. this month, RCCS Reviews features 10 reviews of 8 books with 4 author responses. books of the month for december 2009 are:

Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary
Author: N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008
Review 1: Pramod K. Nayar
Review 2: Luis Amate Perez
Author Response: N. Katherine Hayles

Global Capital, Local Culture: Transnational Media Corporations in China
Author: Anthony Y.H. Fung
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2008
Review 1: Hanna Cho
Author Response: Anthony Y.H. Fung

Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination
Author: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Publisher: MIT Press, 2008
Review 1: Viola Lasmana
Review 2: Jentery Sayers
Author Response: Matthew Kirschenbaum

Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet
Author: Christine L. Borgman
Publisher: MIT Press, 2007
Review 1: Denise N. Rall

Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond
Editor: Eduardo Kac
Publisher: MIT Press, 2006
Review 1: Yazan Haddad

Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools
Editor: Byron Hawek, David M. Rieder, Ollie Oviedo
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2008
Review 1: Brenda Berkelaar

Technology in a Multicultural and Global Society
Editor: May Thorseth, Charles Ess
Publisher: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2005
Review 1: Delia D. Dumitrica
Author Response: Charles Ess and May Thorseth

Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software
Author: Christopher M. Kelty
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2008
Review 1: Tim Jordan

enjoy.

learning to look and listen

2009-11-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

this semester's digital media production class, or #DMP09, has been among the most creative and collaborative i've ever taught. the combination of easy-to-use social media like twitter, flickr, and facebook with the creativity and curiosity of the students has made for a prolific semester. but between my making media mantra - "create, collaborate, share!" i bark to my students, "now do it again! and again! and again!" - i took extra steps this semester to encourage them to simply look and listen.

over the course of the semester, we've taken campus field trips to spots with spectacular views. first, with help from twitter, we met in kalmanavitz 499, overlooking main campus, where many of us began looking at our campus for the first time.

later in the semester, we hiked up lone mountain and met in the president's conference room, a room with a gorgeous view of the city and the bay.

and yesterday we climbed the steps of st. ignatius church, all the way to the bell tower, to get new perspectives of the campus and city we call home.

i'm immensely proud of DMP09 students' abilities to create, collaborate, and share. i'm equally proud of their growing abilities to look and listen.

USF's web site joins the 21st century

2009-11-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

before:

after:

cool.

new reviews in cyberculture studies (november 2009)

2009-10-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

each month, RCCS Reviews pumps out free, full-length reviews of books about contemporary media and culture. this month, RCCS Reviews features 13 reviews of 9 books with 5 author responses! books of the month for november 2009 are:

Ambivalence Towards Convergence: Digitalisation and Media Change
Editors: Tanja Storsul, Dagny Stuedahl
Publisher: Nordicom, 2007
Review 1: Fiona Martin

Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage
Author: Axel Bruns
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2008
Review 1: Verena Laschinger
Review 2: Alan Razee
Review 3: Erin Stark
Author Response: Axel Bruns

Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times
Editor: Megan Boler
Publisher: MIT Press, 2008
Review 1: J. Patrick Biddix
Review 2: Mary K. Bryson
Author Response: Megan Boler

Displacing Place: Mobile Communication in the Twenty-First Century
Editor: Sharon Kleinman
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2007
Review 1: Kevin Douglas Kuswa
Review 2: Katheryn Wright
Author Response: Sharon Kleinman

Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis
Editors: Amelia Sanz, Dolores Romero
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007
Review 1: Sara Humphreys

Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity and Authenticity
Author: Martin Hand
Publisher: Ashgate, 2008
Review 1: Jen Ross
Author Response: Martin Hand

Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970
Author: Christophe Lécuyer
Publisher: MIT Press, 2005
Review 1: Judith Otto

Moving Cultures: Mobile Communications in Everyday Life
Authors: André H. Caron, Letizia Caronia
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007
Review 1: Erin Jonasson
Author Response: Letizia Caronia and André H. Caron

New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion
Author: Rich Ling
Publisher: MIT Press, 2008
Review 1: Kathrin Kissau

enjoy. there's one more month's worth where that came from.

tuesday's homework

2009-10-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

as discussed in class yesterday, tuesday's homework for digital media production is as follows:

READ: Gabriel Cohen's You Talkin’ to Me? New York's Brash, Boisterous Blogosphere; Malia Wollan, The Big Draw of a GPS Run; and Rex Sorgatz's A Data Point on Every Block: An Interview with Adrian Holovaty.

LEARN: google maps. this part of the assignment is optional: you have the option to learn google maps now or later.

LOG OFF: a) visit one place, restaurant, park, bar, store, water fountain, lake, cafe, bookstore, bus line, church, alley, or any other thing or place in the city of san francisco; b) soak it in; and c) collect, compile, and create a flickr set that includes the following information:

(be sure to tag your photos dmp09mapproject)

have a nice weekend.

yelp homework assignment

2009-10-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

yelp homework for digital media production

1. create a profile on yelp. using your full, real name is optional.

2. write a yelp review about something or someone in san francisco.

3. when thinking about what makes a good review, consider reading some yelp reviews to get a sense of the style, tone, and flavor.

4. once you have posted your yelp review, tweet it. be sure to include a link from your tweet to your review. your tweet is due no later than monday night.

5. this assignment is not very demanding. therefore, do it really well.

new reviews in cyberculture studies (october 2009)

2009-10-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

each month, RCCS Reviews pumps out free, full-length reviews of books about contemporary media and culture. this month, RCCS Reviews features 8 reviews of 5 books with 3 author responses!

books of the month for october 2009 are:

20 Questions About Youth & the Media
Editor: Sharon R. Mazzarella
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2007
Review 1: Molly Swiger

Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body
Author: Kim Toffoletti
Publisher: I.B. Tauris, 2007
Review 1: M. Beatrice Bittarello
Review 2: Birgit Pretzsch
Review 3: Nicholas Yanes
Author Response: Kim Toffoletti

Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging
Author: Shayla Thiel Stern
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2007
Review 1: Andrea J. Baker
Author Response: Shayla Thiel Stern

Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice
Editor: Charlotte Hess, Elinor Ostrom
Publisher: MIT Press, 2007
Review 1: Colette Wanless-Sobel
Author Response: Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess

Queer Girls and Popular Culture: Reading, Resisting, and Creating Media
Author: Susan Driver
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2007
Review 1: Lisa Justine Hernández
Review 2: Alison Miller-Slade

enjoy. there's a wee bit more where that came from.

flickr assignment

2009-09-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

flickr assignment for digital media production

1. by now, all of you have a flickr account. you know how to create sets and tag photos in flickr.

2. visit keri smith's everything i've consumed today. spend some time with it. consider sharing it with a friend, roommate, or classmate and having a conversation about it.

3. for one whole day (or 24 hours), photograph everything you consume. upload your photos to flickr, create a set, provocatively title the set, and strategically tag the photos. use as few or as many photos as necessary to tell a compelling and comprehensive story about your one day's worth of consumption.

4. in doing this assignment, be responsible and exercise good judgement with what you do and do not document. keep it real, but also keep it smart.

5. once your flickr set is finished, thick tweet it, making sure to include a link in your tweet to your flickr set.

6. on tuesday, october 6, demo your flickr set in class. during your demo, encourage, listen for, and receive suggestions on how to make your flickr set even better. it is your responsibility to solicit feedback. if you have no new work to demo, do not come to class.

7. in a one page, single-spaced essay turned in at the beginning of class on thursday, october 8, discuss your project, making sure to address two topics: a) what you learned about your own consumption behaviors from doing this project; and b) how you changed, altered, or otherwise improved your project as a direct result of what one or more of your classmates said during demo day. failure to alter your project and discuss this alteration in your essay will set your grade back considerably. no late work accepted.

front yard veggie plots in our hood

2009-09-25T21:53:00.001-07:00

(click image for larger size)

twitter assignment

2009-09-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

twitter assignment for digital media production

1. if you have not yet joined twitter, join twitter.

2. create a profile. use your real name. make your profile public.

3. find and follow all members of digital media production class.

4. search for and follow all people mentioned in all of our previous readings. this includes people who wrote the articles, people mentioned in the articles, people who made the videos, and people featured in the videos. you are free, of course, to unfollow any or all of these people, but only after first following them for a few days and reading through portions of their archive.

5. keep in mind that we will be using twitter extensively and in many different ways throughout the semester. the goal of this assignment is to get all of us up and running and connected with one another.

6. reply to at least one tweet.

7. post at least one RT.

8. post at least one #followfriday.

9. on tuesday, we will discuss in class the difference between thin and thick tweets. post at least one thick tweet. make it good.

10. in no more than a one-page single-spaced essay, discuss why you created your profile the way you did, introduce one person you follow, and explain why you find her/him interesting.

rules: a) on tuesday, september 22, be prepared to demo your work. demo whatever you wish to demo but be sure to include a discussion of your profile, one person you follow, and one thick tweet. if you have no work to demo, do not come to class; and b) your one page paper is due in class on thursday, september 24. no late work accepted.

hints: if you are an experienced twitter user, use this assignment and class to up your skills. if you have not yet used twitter, give it a chance before declaring it silly. finally, read and follow all the directions included in this assignment.