doing

For praxis in the subject, things to do, things that need to be done

Reading 04

Adrian Miles

Now we turn towards the pre-history of the World Wide Web, with maverick genius Ted Nelson’s early self published work on hypertext (when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first protocol for the Web he was familiar with some of Nelson’s ideas), the even earlier and very famous “As We May Think” from Vannevar Bush, which is of interest not so much for all the predictions but for thinking about a machine that lets connections to be made between media things, and then the much more recent, populist, writing of David Weinberger who outlines some simple ways to think about the Web and how it has inverted what there was before. The Weinberger extract is long, but not difficult, but I’d read the other two first as these have both directly influenced the vision of those who first built the things that the Web is, and relies upon.

Extract from: Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1: The Report On, and Of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow’s Intellectual Revolution, And Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom. Sausalito: Mindful Press, 1992. Print. (PDF)

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013. (PDF)

Extracts from: Weinberger, David. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. New York: Perseus Books, 2002. Print. (PDF)

Changes to Assessment

Adrian Miles

At the symposium this week it was agreed to make a change to assessment. The final essay task now:

This task can be completed in pairs or individually. If a complete draft of the writing (minimum 1200 words) is submitted to your teacher by Friday September 26 you will receive a bonus of 5 marks. Work that is done in pairs is expected to be more sophisticated (writing, ideas, use of media, references) than work that is done individually.

The entire task, with the new addition, is available under the assessment menu of the course blog.

Reading 03

Adrian Miles

Another vanity moment for Adrian Miles:

  1. Miles, Adrian. “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.” Screen Education Autumn.45 (2007): 24–30. (pdf)
  2. “Chris Argyris: Theories of Action, Double-Loop Learning and Organizational Learning.” http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 July 2013. (pdf)
  3. Graham, Paul. “The Age of the Essay.” Paul Graham. http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html N.p., Sept. 2004. Web. 11 Aug. 2013.(pdf)

A Take Away Idea

Adrian Miles

Let’s introduce the concept of the ‘take away idea’. Each of the readings, even where they seem to cover a lot of ideas, theories, arguments, and so on, are written around a basic idea, concept, or problem (that is three ways of describing the same sort of thing). They are writing directly to something that the author feels the need to think about and think through.

(Think of the readings not as explanations of something, but as people using writing to think about an idea. This is a much more productive way of approaching essays and chapters and other material than thinking their role as writing is to explain something to, or for, you. Their role, in the first instance, is to let the author think out something. Approach them in the same way, and they become invitations to think along with them, rather than road maps detailing what is already known.)

So, the ‘take away idea’. Each of the readings can be thought to revolve around and respond to some kernel that matters. The take away idea is, to begin with, not you figuring out what this might be (but by all means go for it), but is your take away idea. What is the one key thing that matters to you from what you read, or hear? Why?

01 Reading

Adrian Miles

Miles, Adrian. “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.” Australian Screen Ed 41 (2006): 66–9. Print.

This is available as a pdf.

It is to be read by the second lecture. While reading it make a note of any questions (and I mean any) that you have as the second lecture will be based on our answers to your questions. To help frame questions you might use a simple prompt such as “I don’t understand ……” or, “could you please explain ……..”.

2014 Creative Critical Essay

Adrian Miles

Value: (40%)

due: Friday October 24

This task can be completed in pairs or individually. If a complete draft of the writing (minimum 1200 words) is submitted to your teacher by Friday September 26 you will receive a bonus of 5 marks. Work that is done in pairs is expected to be more sophisticated (writing, ideas, use of media, references) than work that is done individually.

Submission

Due to unforeseen technical problems with how some email is trapped by a ‘pre’ google filter (postini) we are not using email submission (too many disappear into the postini trap). So to submit please print on to paper, include the URL on the page, and hand in with a cover sheet in the usual way to building 9, level 4, submission bin.

email your individual teacher with the URL of the blog page that contains your essay.

TOPIC PROBLEM

Network literacy is not merely knowing about this, it is doing it. It is in this doing that we can understand that literacy is an applied knowing, or if you prefer a knowing through doing.… It is being comfortable with change and flow as the day to day conditions of knowledge production and dissemination, and recognising that all of this may change, and appear differently in six months. What underlies such change, however, are the principles of distributed content production and sharing, folksonomies, trust networks and having access to skills that let you collate and build with these varieties of content and knowledge….. Network literacy means recognising that there are no longer canonical sources and having the skills to find what it is you think you want, of being able to judge it, and then of being able to incorporate this, in turn, into your knowledge flows. Finally, networked literacies are marked by your participation as a peer in these flows and networks — you contribute to them and in turn can share what others provide.

Miles, Adrian. “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.” Screen Education Autumn.45 (2007): 24–30.

Take any of the ideas/concepts/arguments in this statement to investigate and think about the possible implications of this for you as a future professional media maker. For example, what might you need to know about? How might this affect how you make media? Consume it? How it get used? Distributed? Could the media in itself (what sort of thing we currently mean when we say ‘media’) change? In other words take something from this to think about what it might mean for you as someone who will influence our future media.

DESCRIPTION

This essay is to be published as a page or pages on your blog or as a standalone web page/s published via themediastudents.net website.

It is to include:

  • text
  • image (photos or drawings)
  • video and/or audio

The essay is to be around 1,500 words in length. It does not have to conform to traditional academic requirements and so can be

  • personal
  • use “I”
  • finish with questions rather than answers
  • be exploratory in its thinking and argument/s

However, it is still an essay which means the work must:

  • make an argument
  • explore or think about and with an idea or ideas
  • use evidence
  • appropriately cite that evidence

An essay is not an opinion piece, it is informed by research and thinking. This makes an essay critical, which doesn’t mean it criticises something negatively but that it interrogates ideas and assumptions to see what they are, what they are made of, and where they might take you. An essay is then a place in which you think through something, rather than reporting on what you already know or understand. This task is inviting you to treat your writing and making as more like a laboratory, where you state something, then think about what it means, its consequences or implications. In other words follow the idea where it leads you…

(If it at all helps imagine an idea as being some sort of thing and through writing and making you are prodding, poking, testing, querying what sort of thing it is. Bit like being a scientist, but with words.)

The essay can consist of more than a single page. The image/s and video/s and/or audio that you use are expected to contribute to the ideas being explored. They might reflect an idea, reinforce or endorse it, or provide a prompt or point of departure for your own thinking.

2014 blog assessment

Adrian Miles

Value: (30%)

Due: End of week six, Friday, August 29

DESCRIPTION

The blog that has been established on mediafactory.org.au is yours. It is/can be/has to be used for other subjects through out your media degree. For media students we intend to keep your blog for life (so you can keep using it after you graduate).

In Network Media your individual blog is the key place for you to discuss, note, record, document, discuss, argue about, reflect upon, interrogate, critique (can I stop yet?) what you do. Making, reading, classes, things you notice out and about.

In this subject the intent is to make contributing to your blog as simple as possible using whatever digital resources you have available, so that it can become part of your everyday network practice.

For this assignment you will print five blog posts, attach your blog audit table, and write a short essay to demonstrate how you have used your blog, to date, in networked media. These five posts should provide evidence of how you have

  • engaged with the readings to date
  • engaged with ideas raised in lectures and classes
  • put into practice specific technical skills that have been introduced
  • written or otherwise documented other things that are not just the set tasks from network media

The essay should discuss how you have used your blog to date this semester. What has been good about it? Bad? What has surprised you? Do you think it has helped you? How? Why? How would you like to use it for the rest of the semester? Why?

Academic writing is an argument that makes evidence based claims. We’re less concerned with the form (essay, song, poem), than with the integrity and quality of these three things.

Good writing is clear and explicit in how it answers these questions. The emphasis is on your critical thinking evidenced in your writing through the ideas you explore and how you use evidence. This is not an essay about being a blog fan (or not). If you don’t enjoy it, why? If you do, why? Good work uses more than opinion to make claims it relies on evidence.

SUBMISSION

Print the blog posts. Attach them to your essay. Attach your completed blog audit form. Submit (yes, on paper) with the usual cover sheet with your teacher’s name clearly on the cover sheet. The program name is your degree, the course is called Network Media, the course code is COMM2219, the lecturer name is Adrian Miles, the tutor/marker’s name is the name of your class teacher.