Growing the New Technopolis

Hello to all and congrats to Doug for the UNC iTunes U launch. 

Also, to Mike for his great work and outreach.

We now have 57 judges from around the country, including 4 from overseas: singapore, fiji, scotland and south africa.

We’ll be shifting over into the judging phase in a week or so.

Stay tuned for more details…

bob

Taking a moment to count the blessing here in Nashville, TN. Mid-day on a Tuesday. Mid April.

Here’s to a beautiful, fulfilling Spring to the GNT team of Doug and Mike and everyone else.

We are about to begin harvesting the media for the Podcast Tournament. This is a relatively new project in a dynamic and emergent field. Some of what’s to come has been foreseen and anticipated, while we undoubtedly will encounter unexpected challenges that will test the mettle.

A lot of what we do is done on faith: A kind of if we build it they will come kind of DIY approach. We have extended our growth into two new states. Every day new partners for the journey emerge and engage. In some ways, GNT is a kind of patriotic affirmation. A way to create the good news (intentionally) as an option to having to settle for the bad news. Keeping this position viable without lapsing in sentimentality or the maudlin is a challenge and why poetry is so hard to do well.

In this work, I have learned so much about what is possible. About resources appearing when one least expects them. About looking past personal and professional disappointments and adapting to innovations that never seem to stop morphing.

About how much we know and how much we don’t know.

How can we evolve our individual and collective thinking and doing to serve the greater good of all involved?

And how do you measure that?

Superb Surpise

Tell all the truth

but tell it slant

success in circuit lies.

Too bright for our infirm delight

the truth’s superb surprise

as lightning to the children eased

with explanation kind

the truth must dazzle gradually

or everyone go blind.

 -Emily Dickinson

Sometime poetry is the only way to get it said. So thanks and praise be that we have it to use. On the most basic level we have between us as community–language–it is all about the code. A sometimes mythic (and always meta-!)  combination between what we say and how we say it. Jazz to the Music. Poetry to the Word.

Play through the changes.

sounds like a vegas gig. well, we’ve been covering some ground of late.

quickly: the Tennessee Campus Compact has been formally created and hallelujah! Thanks to TNNC Director Mani Hull for her efforts  on our behalf. Also, to Tennessee State University president Dr. Melvin N. Johnson for leading these efforts to their fruition. It’s a great feeling.

Also– the DMSC moves forward in support of an ecology of innovation that can converge a unique blend of academic technology and engaged scholarship. Digital citizenship. Digital fluency. Our product: Digital Media Enterprise.

We promote professional development in higher education and community, bridging the academy and industry.

website: www.tnsandbox.com

This is quite good.

Have to say i’ve been flummoxed by two new book purchases off Amazon (web 1.0), both by Henry Jenkins of MIT. CONVERGENCE CULTURE and FANS, BLOGGERS, AND GAMERS. Doug turned me on to him, and I have been tracking him ever since (see post below). Jenkins bedazzles, his mind working through those pages in a hybrid style of rigor and ease. His references are far-ranging and his insights drill very deep. An intimidating combination to encounter. One idea echoes with the characterization of curriculum theorists,Ralph Tyler and Hilda Taba: Tyler is characterized as a top-down model of education and curriculum design, and  Taba is depicted more as a bottom-up model.

 This depiction echoes Jenkins’s idea of Convergence: Corporate Convergence (top-down) and grass-roots convergence, (bottom-up). Where the two meet is the floating needle of our culture. The tipping point meets the long tail.

 Is the idea of convergence culture distinct from emergent culture? Or do we have another hybridization of terms? The application of these terms to 21 century media (web 2.0 and 3.0) fascinates and continues to compel.

 Jenkins will be a guide for some time. So very much he has digested and recast as perspective on this churning churn we are all trying to stir. The blend of lazer intellect and humanity is pretty much irresistable. Yielding the field to him. And signing off…

Using this as a template, any institution can substitute their regional, state, local compacts, along with partnering local school systems and agencies.

Well, we’ve got TSU assets ready to submit to ETSU’s iTunes U for Sandbox Tournament Spring 07. We collected, from a cohort of seven classes creating 30 assets, an asset for each of the five categories.

 You can view the tournament’s process at www.tnsandbox.com

We’re working on program model build-out, which is fascinating and exciting. The TN Sandbox was nominated for a Technology Innovation award offered by Campus Technology magazine. Doug and I will be attending their national conference July 30-August 2. I will include the submission text in my next post.

challenge or inspiration:

How best to engage 21st Century learners with emergent technologies? Hypothesis:  A replicable-to-desired-scale curriculum based on active learning in educational technology and deployed by pedagogy of service learning and civic engagement. Adaptable to any subject area, the model evolves the ideation of technology through reconceptualization of digital assets as learning objects. In short, the challenge is: how to create a digital media production company in any learning community?

key beneficiaries:

Participating students and faculty in Tennessee Board of Regents and University of Tennessee systems, as well as community partners; model seeks to open higher education  to general public in Tennessee, as all podcasts (and subsequent digital assets) are available to the public through the open iTunes U archive on East Tennessee State University’s website, with a special emphasis on bridging the digital divide in underserved rural and urban communities through Service Learning pedagogy.

Project results:

Using Zoomerang survey to gather data, model increased directed learning outcomes in all fields of study, created opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations; allowed learning to occur around the clock and the globe, not specifically in the confines of the classroom. Initiating dissemination of educational tech through service learning and civic engagement best practices built bridges between higher ed institutions and surrounding community stakeholders, thus fostering learning communities in underserved rural and urban settings in
Tennessee.

suprises and aha moments: 

Epiphany 1: The existing readiness factor (without knowing it) of insitutions, corporate partners and community partners to engage diruptive technologies to create 21^st century learning opportunities.

Epiphany 2: Recurrent, reiterative visions of scalability dancing in the our heads.

Epiphany 3: scaling initiative to national level, leveraged by strategic partnerships with Campus Compact, Campus Technology, Apple and other corporate, institutional, and educational partners to create a quality-controlled Youtube or NCAA of 21^st Century competetive scholarship.

Technology choices:

Zoomerang survey software

Audacity and LAME mp3 encoder

Apple Garageband

Apple
iTunes
U.

reasons for technology choices: 

Bridge digital divide in a state ranked in the lowest percentile range nationally in educational outcomes and per-student expenditures by offering availability to students, faculty and community partners. Maximize least costly resources for project for partners with limited budgets, while assuring high-quality resources for production of quality digital assets and products.

next steps:

Program will expand to include both audio and video digital assets and reusable learning objects. Program will triple sponsor donations to 27,000.00 to facilitate expansion.

Program will also double the number of
Tennessee institutions. New York, New Jersey and
North Carolina are partnering for 07-08 school year. Based on experience with Tennessee State University HUD HBCU  program, “Growing the New Technopolis,” detailed in websites below, extend to public schools as replicable k-20 model.

advice 

Trust a chaotic propogation; from that, others will likewise trust the chaos.  In fact, incorporate chaos into program development in order to ‘stir’ the churn of disruptive technologies and their continued proliferation. Follow a simple, three-tier approach to digitizing traditional scholarship for re-purposing:

1. Digital Content Creation

2. Website creation for content archiving and delivery

3. Leverage social networking resources to create traffic

4. Utilize Service Learning Civic Engagement pedagogy to faciliate technology and knowledge transfer to underserved learning communities.

Additional info: 

Dr. Clark Maddux:

Tennessee
State
University Literature, Service Learning and Technology website:

http://faculty.tnstate.edu/hmaddux/Friendship/friendship.html

Dr. Clark Maddux:

Tennessee
State
University Technology Integration in Curriculum:

http://faculty.tnstate.edu/hmaddux/resources/tips.html

University of
Tennessee Podcast Tournament website:

http://volcasting.utk.edu/tournament/

East Tennessee State University iTunes U. website  

            http://www.etsu.edu/itunesu/index.jsp

Tennessee
State
University and

University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill blog

            http://thenewtechnopolis.edublogs.org/

Doug and I presented at the 2007 TLT Conference on Friday, March 23. We received great feedback from our community digital media arts centers presentation from North Carolina School for the Arts and others. The Conference was packed with outstanding presentations which provided much food for thought. In particular, Appalachian State University’s preso on virtual worlds was powerful. Collaboration between TSU and UNC-Chapel Hill continues to develop through conversations with Paul Jones of ibiblio.

Again, anyone interested in convergence of Civic Engagement and Educational Technology should consult the Tennessee Sandbox site at:

www.tnsandbox.com

More later!!