Category: NMCC + UO Events

November Prof Pick: Andrew Bonamici

1Andrew Bonamici is Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Program Development at the University of Oregon Libraries. During 2015-2016, Andrew served as interim Director of Special Collections and University Archives. Beginning Fall 2016, he now serves as interim head of the library’s Digital Scholarship Center.  Andrew is a member of the UO’s Educational Technology Advisory Committee and the Disabilities Issues Administrative Council, and serves as the UO’s insitutional representative to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), He holds the AMLS degree from the University of Michigan School of Information, a BA in Music History and Theory from Marylhurst University, and is a fellow of the 2005 Frye Leadership Institute.

For this month’s feature “I would like to focus on twitter, which I find ever-useful as an alert service with links to interesting and important articles and websites.”

Twitter launched in 2006 as a microblogging service, designed from the beginning to function with mobile phones using the SMS (Short Message Service) application. The protocol allows 160 alpha-numeric characters in an SMS message. The developers subtracted 20 characters to allow for a username, hence the original limit of 140 characters per tweet. The  Wikipedia entry is worth reading for additional background on the platform’s development, growth, management, controversies, etc.

There’s no denying that celebrities,  politicians, and corporations make extensive use of twitter for promotional purposes. In the higher education environment, however, twitter can be highly useful as a source for links and connections to interesting and important articles, websites, organizations, people, and communities of practice inside and outside of the academy.  With care, the signal-to-noise ratio can be tolerable.

The list below is a small sampling of the accounts I follow –

UO Departments

Many UO schools, colleges, departments, programs, and administrative units have twitter accounts. Look for the twitter bird icon in the A-Z index. For starters:

People, including UO colleagues and alumni

Other Digital Scholarship Centers

Professional Organizations, Publications, and Communities of Practice

Wait, there’s more…..

 

NMCC Top Ten Fall Resources

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So many resources, so little time!  Take a moment over winter break explore these fun – and practical – websites, links, and programs that came through our inbox this fall!

1. Rhizome Artist Interviews – an ongoing series and full archive of interviews with artists who have a significant body of work that makes use of or responds to network culture and digital technologies.

2. Net Art Anthology – a rotating online exhibition that will re-stage and contextualize one work per week for the next two years, retelling the history of net art from the 1980s through the present day.

3. NMC Technology Outlook for Cooperative Extension – explores emerging technologies and forecast their potential impact expressly in Cooperative Extension programs. Nine key trends, nine significant challenges, and twelve important developments in educational technology are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving university leaders and faculty in both public and private funding organizations a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

4. Scholars at Play – A Gaming Podcast – a new podcast co-hosted by three students from different departments at Vanderbilt University, created as a space for critical discussion of games, following the model of university seminars that usually focus on films, books and the like. Each episode brings together objects and readings to talk about contemporary gaming culture. Intelligent and fun!

5. Radio Heart: or, How Robots Fall Out of Love – the new volume of poetry from University of Oregon’s own visiting professor in Women’s and Gender Studies Department – Margaret Rhee, a poet, scholar, and feminist new media artist. Link goes to a podcast interview and information page.

6. Digital Literacy: an NMC Project Strategic Brief – commissioned by Adobe, this special report explores the advancement of digital literacy in in higher education and how to best prepare students for the demands of the global technological economy.

7. How to Reform Technology – exploring the changing the culture and practices of the big tech companies and how to approach technology and ethical reform in the same conversation. How will reform happen, and by whom will it be lead?

8. A Conversation on the Criticism of Technology – searching for the means to create technology criticism that follows other forms of cultural criticism, based in thoughtful consideration and analysis instead of suggesting technological change is problematic, or something to be resisted, in order to find opportunities to better understand ever-evolving social and cultural relationships to technology.

9. The Sonic Dictionary – a growing collection of sounds and exhibits created by students at Duke University and collaborating institutions. Explore their featured sounds and exhibits.

10. The Download : a Rhizome commission series that considers posted files, the act of downloading, and the user’s desktop as a space of exhibition.

 

Video Game Studies Lecture Series

Curious about the kinds of events NMCC sponsors?  Mark your calendars, take a break from dead week, and check out this great event, created by our very own Women’s and Gender Studies Professor Edmond Chang – the first of three talks that will take place throughout the rest of this academic year.

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visit Professor Chang’s website and previous talks for more information:

http://www.edmondchang.com/

“What’s New in Video Game Studies,” Think.Play, 10/5, 7 PM, Straub 251, UO

NMC Virtual Town Hall Meeting

 Mark your calendars for this unique opportunity!

December 1st @ 2pm -3pm Central Daylight Time  —  Free for All

Building on the discussions from the latest NMC Town Hall meeting at the 2016 NMC Summer Conference, we invite you — our community of learning innovators — to participate in the NMC Next > Virtual Town Hall Meeting. This discussion is a part of our NMC Next Initiative, which was created so NMCers can guide us into our next phase of transforming education by proposing new ideas and recommendations. Since June, the NMC has been working to identify untapped benefits for the members of our community. We recently conducted a survey that tasked our C-LAB (Campus Leaders Advisory Board) to dive deep into our membership structure, highlighting its strengths and helping us gain insight into areas of growth to add value to our community. The mission of the NMC is to surface innovative and progressive approaches to teaching and learning through the exploration and use of emerging technology — in order to do so, we need to continue to foster an open, inclusive dialogue.

This is an opportunity for your voice to be heard. The discussion is open to all. Let’s shape the future of learning together!

*click here to register and save your space!*

New NMCC Course!

Before you register for Winter term, don’t forget to double check our pre-approved courses, featuring this new one from the SOJC!

lead_960J410/J510 Algorithms and Automation
Time: Tues-Thurs, 10-11:50 a.m.

Welcome to an era of algorithms. What we read and watch, our social connections and relationships, even decisions about jobs, bank loans, and insurance—these and other facets of our world are increasingly influenced by mathematical models and the big data and automated systems behind them. There is a long history to technology, automation, and computerization. But never before has the algorithm, as a sociotechnical system, been so front and-center in conversations ranging from media and politics to friendships and dating. This course helps students explore the social, cultural and ethical dimensions of algorithms, automation (bots), and emerging forms of artificial intelligence so as to scrutinize their uses (and abuses) in everyday life. While the math underlying algorithms is the purview of computer science, this course focuses especially on “public relevance algorithms” like those used in social media, with the goal of understanding how they are designed, deployed, and implicated in questions of media and society. Ultimately, this class seeks to equip students to think about and act toward algorithms in more critical and productive ways.

Welcome New NMCC Students

NMCC welcomes seven new students from CAS, SOJC, AAA, and Law to our collaborative community of new media scholars!

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Aaron Bjork: MFA Candidate, Art

Working extensively with visual digital media for the past decade, Aaron completed a BFA in Graphic Design at the Art Center College of Design in California and is interested in theory of digital technology. In his work, he is primarily concerned with examining the individual psychic impact of the constant stream of digital stimuli that plays such a large part in modern culture.

Ellen Gillooly-Kress: PhD Candidate, Theater Arts

Ellen’s research interests are focused on the intersection between analogue and digital practices in the theater. After receiving her MA in Theoretical Linguistics from the University of Oregon, her practice has begun to explore the boundaries of film and interactive media when interacting with bodies in live performance, believing that the analogue and the digital do not have to be in opposition.

Theodore Harrison: PhD Candidate, Media Studies

Theo completed his undergraduate and graduate work in Communication Studies at CSU Sacramento, where his participation in the McNair Scholars Program guided him towards the field of Media Studies. His research focuses on how minority media representations function in American society, specifically how they interact with and impact minority populations.

Makoto Kurokawa: MS Candidate, Conflict & Dispute Resolution

After studying law in both the United States and Japan, earning her LL.M Masters of Laws? from the University of Oregon, Makoto is back for more, focusing on intellectual property rights and the incompatibility between U.S. copyright laws and East Asian cultures. She believes the field of new media provides an opening to this issue of cultural differences – particularly in the world of movie production – which needs to be acknowledged.

Bonnie Sheehey: PhD Candidate, Philosophy

Bonnie received her MA in Philosophy here at the University of Oregon and is interested in applying her chosen methodological approach in philosophy to the analysis of new media and digital culture. She hopes a deeper understanding of new media and technology practices will inform her teaching in the ethics of these realms, and would like to study the practices of media archaeologists and how changes in technology impact perceptual and ethical interactions.

Natalie Wood: MFA Candidate, Art

Though Natalie does not directly engage with new media as a subject matter, technology as a physical medium is integral to her work. After graduating with a BFA in Studio Art from Brigham Young University, she began exploring the ways in which using technology as a material can enhance the meaning of finished product and is eager to participate in community discussions on the expanding role of new media and its influence.

Alexander Wurts: MFA Candidate, Art

Alex is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the ways new media influences artistic disciplines and the role it plays in our culture at large. He earned his BFA in Studio Art from Austin Peay State University, and in his own practice explores the aesthetic, political, and sociological impact of digital culture, hoping to create a dialogue that engages with the implications of the increasing presence – and increasing complexity – of technology in daily life.

Visiting Artist Lecture Series: John Divola

John Divola – The Landscape and Things in the Way

Thursday, October 27 – 6pm            Lawrence Hall, rm 177

John Divola is a contemporary visual artist who works in photography, describing himself as exploring the landscape by looking for the edge between the abstract and the specific. Although the physical subjects that Divola photographs range from buildings to landscapes to objects in the studio, his concerns are conceptual: they challenge the boundaries between fiction and reality, as well as the limitations of art to describe life. Divola is from Southern California, and his imagery often reflects that locale by including urban Los Angeles or the nearby ocean, mountains, and desert. He currently lives and works in Riverside, CA. Divola has taught photography and art at numerous institutions including California Institute of the Arts (1978-1988), and since 1988 he has been a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside.