Category: ITCC

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Finishing Up the Semester with a Big Thank You

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It has been an incredible semester.  We’ve opened an amazing building that thousands of people have already used, submitted one grant and are working on another, created a new First-Year Seminar that 7 of us will teach next fall, opened a new Digital Knowledge Center with students helping other students with technology questions, begun a process of assessing where our students are and would like to go regarding digitally enabled learning, created a new major in Communication and Digital Studies, and so much more.  I’ve also taught two classes, advised dozens of students, and started a new section of the team-taught, inter-institutional Century America class with my colleague from UNCA, Ellen Holmes Pearson.

My dual roles as Professor of History and American Studies and as the Special Assistant to the Provost for Teaching, Technology, and Innovation has been made possible by a network of amazing people at UMW. This post is just an attempt to document that network in the most basic way and to say thank you to each of them.

  • My colleagues in the new Teaching, Technology, and Innovation Unit that I now oversee.
    • Mary Kayler, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation
    • Jim Groom, Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies
      • Lisa Ames, LMS Administrator & eLearning Specialist
      • Martha Burtis, Director of the Digital Knowledge Center
        • Student tutors of the DKC
      • Ryan Brazell, Instructional Technology Specialist
      • Tim Owens, Assistant Director of DTLT
      • Andy Rush, Coordinator of Academic Media Production
    • Leah Tams, Admin Assistant
    • Cartland Berge, ITCC Building and Digital Auditorium Manager
  • The ITCC Building Committee — who designed the building over a six year period (and many of whom have stayed on as part of the Building User’s Group).
    • Rosemary Arneson, University Librarian
    • Jack Bales, Reference Librarian
    • Martha Burtis, Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies
    • Hall Cheshire, Interim Chief Information Officer
    • Gary Hobson, Capital Outlay Director
    • Nina Mikhalevsky, Professor of Philosophy
    • Allyson Moerman, Associate Vice President for Finance and Controller
    • Cedric Rucker, Dean of Student Life
    • Leonard Shelton, Associate Capital Outlay Director
    • Jerry Slezak, Director, Information Technology Support Services
    • John Morello, Associate Provost (committee chair)
  • The many other people in the other units in the ITCC
    • Gwendolyn Hale, Writing Center and Writing Program Director
    • P. Anand Rao, Associate Professor of Communication and Speaking Intensive Program Director
    • Amanda Rutstein, ITCC Office Manager
    • Deb Hovey Boutchyard, Director of Network & Communication Services
    • David Dean, Director of Data Center Services
    • The whole team of IT Support Services
    • Keith Mellinger, Director of the QEP
  • The many people in Capital Outlay, Facilities, UMW Police, Housekeeping, and Emergency Management and Safety, especially Joey Straughan.
  • Jonathan Levin, Provost
    • The Deans and Associate Provosts of the Academic Affairs Council
  • My patient colleagues in the History and American Studies Department, who have put up with my being away from the halls of Monroe more than I first envisioned.
  • Debra Schleef, Steve Hanna, and others outside my department who have listened to me talk endlessly about security, contractors, and building management issues,
  • The students in my US History in Film and History of the Information Age classes, who reminded me constantly of the mission of the institution and why I love teaching.
James Farmer on ITCC Media Wall

James Farmer video created by UMW students displayed on the new ITCC Media Wall — See http://jamesfarmerlectures.umwblogs.org/ for video.

I have so many people to thank, so my apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone.  But it should be clear that if I had a good semester, it’s because I work with a large, amazing network of colleagues.  So thank you all.

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Dedicating the Information and Technology Convergence Center

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I was honored to be asked to speak at the ribbon-cutting and dedication of UMW’s amazing new ITCC (aka the Convergence Center).  [For a great time-lapse of the building being built…]

Picture by Anand Rao

My brief remarks are posted below.

 

Let me offer my own welcome to all of you and my thanks for coming this afternoon.

I want to start by offering some much-needed “thank yous” to people involved in this project.  Thank you to my fellow ITCC Building Committee members for all their efforts in dreaming up a new space in which people could work. Thank you to the architects and designers at HEWV for turning that dream into a vision.  Thank you to UMW’s Len Shelton and Joey Straughan and W.M. Jordan’s Frank Bliley for their efforts in making sure that the vision became a reality.  Thank you to Provost Jonathan Levin and Vice President Rick Pearce for stepping up with the resources necessary to operate the building.  Thank you to the new residents of the building for working with each other to ensure the space becomes all it can be.  Thank you most of all to John Morello, for shepherding this project from conception to creation.  It is not a stretch to say this building would not be here today were it not for his leadership. Let’s give him a well-deserved round of applause.

Edward Burger, the president of a small liberal arts institution in Texas recently said, “There are only two branches to this job: No. 1, make sure students are getting the most profound, life-changing, life-enhancing educational experience they can, and, No. 2, make sure that 100 years from now, whoever’s sitting in this chair will have the resources so he or she can do the exact same thing.” [“A Professor in the President’s Chair: Pushing for a ‘Friendly Revolution’ – People – The Chronicle of Higher Education — http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professor-in-the-Presidents/148527/]

Now I haven’t ever sat in President Hurley’s chair, but it seems clear to me that this Convergence Center addresses both of these goals.  The first is perhaps obvious to anyone who has walked around it. [And if you haven’t, please take advantage of the tours that will be offered after this ceremony.] Simply put, the opportunities for transformational experiences for students exist throughout the space.  Less obvious is how constructing a building contributes to (rather than subtracts from) an institution’s resources.

And the answer to that is that it is buildings like these that bring in new students, buildings like these that inspire faculty, buildings like these that engage staff, and buildings like these that attract donors.  The Convergence Center introduces the UMW community to a wide array of technologies and opportunities that simply haven’t existed before, and in a format that doesn’t exist at other schools.

Now, much has been made in the press in recent years of the potential for technology to alienate people from each other.  This technology-rich building contradicts that claim.  With its classrooms and collaboration spaces, with its communal furniture and its multiple centers of student support, with its formal and informal gathering spaces, this building is a physical manifestation of the institution’s emphasis on–no, the centrality of–the relationship between people: faculty and student and staff — the relationship between teachers and learners, mentors and mentees.  Yes, it is a technology-enabled building that supports our digital spaces, but it does so to further enable the personal connections that are at the center of knowledge creation and at the core of the deeply collaborative experience of learning.

It is also a manifestation of UMW’s leadership in the field of digitally enabled creativity.  It is an institutional commitment to the future of teaching and learning, a future in which we see even more than before the melding (a convergence) of the curricular and co-curricular in one space.  This building represents the future of UMW while maintaining the commitment to students, to individual and group exploration, and to a variety of learning techniques.  The building itself, with so much glass, surrounding Campus Walk itself, is also an acknowledgment of our responsibility as a state institution of higher learning to be outward facing, to be transparent in what we do and what we have to contribute to the region, the nation, and the world.

So, to students, faculty, and staff of the University of Mary Washington: welcome to your new home on campus.

Thank you.

 

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Co-creating a syllabus with students

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I’m teaching my History of the Information Age course again this fall.  This is the course where I send the students a skeleton syllabus and we fill it in together.  We will work together to pick the topics to focus on, many of the readings to complete, and the digitally rich assignments by which we will explore the history of broadly defined Information Age (cave paintings to today).

We will also get to do so in the soon-to-be completed Information and Technology Convergence Center‘s Active-Learning Classroom.  We also will be able to take advantage of the building’s green-screen-equipped recording studio, the audio booth, the editing computer stations, and the other cameras and recording equipment that can be checked out and used.

ITCC Active Learning

From http://provost.umw.edu/teaching-spaces-in-the-convergence-center/

I’d welcome any suggestions of assignment ideas, discussion starters, readings/videos that I can bring to the class.  Other comments, including smart remarks, are welcome as well.

 

VERSION 0.9

HIST 471D7: History of the Information Age
Fall 2014
ITCC 237
11-12:15 TR
http://infoage2014.umwblogs.org/

Jeffrey McClurken
E-mail:  jmcclurk@umw.edu
Twitter (@wheresthechair/@jmcclurken)

Course Description

This readings seminar will explore the history of communication, media, new media, and the digital age.  We will begin with an investigation of the various definitions of the Information Age, then move into a discussion of the historical & technological foundations of information production, computing devices, and communication and networking tools.  We will explore the social and cultural history of information production and consumption from cave paintings to the Internet, from analog computational machines to handheld computers.  The course will generally be based in the history of the US, but, given the transfer of technology and the increasing ability of these technologies to transcend geographic regions, it will logically range more widely as appropriate.

 

Departmental Course Goals and Objectives

This course will help students build upon a range of skills, including the ability to make discipline-specific oral presentations to groups; the ability to utilize technological resources in research, data analysis, and presentation; the ability to communicate in a group setting; and the ability to read critically primary sources and modern authorities.  This course also counts in the History Major and the Digital Studies Minor.

 

Honors Program Objectives

As part of the Honors Program, this course also will help students to formulate an academic argument with appropriate research documentation; articulate the value of the goals of the honors program as it relates to the liberal arts as an multidisciplinary, systematic approach to knowledge; apply specific academic solutions to broader, interdisciplinary fields of study; integrate multiple viewpoints involving different cultures and/or perspectives.

 

Course Requirements

What should these be?

Non-negotiable parts include: Students are expected to attend all classes, read all assigned texts, post regularly to the individual blogs, participate in class, and help lead two weeks of class discussions.  Students are also expected to contribute to the creation of a public, digital timeline/database of popular representations of the information age and add materials to it all semester.

However, negotiable is whether or not we should also do formal presentations of projects, what student contributions to the timeline/database might be, even other ideas for assignments we might come up with.

In my initial brainstorming, the timeline/database components, additions, projects potentially included:

 

 

 

Obligatory turn things in on time notice: Projects are due at the start of class on the day they are due.  Projects are considered late if turned in anytime after the start of class on the day they are due.  Late items will be penalized one full letter grade or, after 24 hours, not accepted.

Texts/Sources

In the Bookstore – 4 Core texts are in the bookstore

  • Downey, Gregory John, American Historical Association, and Society for the History of Technology. Technology and Communication in American History. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 2011.
  • Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon, 2011.
  • Rosenzweig, Roy. Clio Wired: The Future of the Past in the Digital Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
  • Winston, Brian. Media Technology and Society: A History From the Telegraph to the Internet. Re-issue. London: Routledge, 1998.

Other Readings as determined by class, at least some of which are online

Discussions

Students are expected to attend all classes having read the material.  Class participation includes actively participating in these daily discussions.[1]  Each of you will also be expected to co-lead group discussion with another person (or persons) during two weeks, including opening discussion activities.  THAT MAY MEAN HELPING TO CHOOSE (ADDITIONAL) READINGS FOR THOSE WEEKS.  I encourage those leaders to meet with me ahead of time to talk about how to choose readings and/or facilitate discussion for their particular week.

Blogging

Create a new (or use a preexisting) UMWblog/Domain of One’s Own WordPress site by Sept. 1. Narrating your reactions to the reading, your experiences planning, researching, and implementing your projects as part of the class timeline/database via your blogs is a central part of the class and a way for me to measure your effort, your creativity, and your progress as digital scholars. Blog about your problems as well as your successes. Be sure to comment on each other’s blogs and help each other out. This is a community of people going through similar efforts that you can tap into, so do so. Weekly posts & comments are a minimum expectation of the class.

Final Grades

Final grades will be determined based on a combination of factors, some determined by me and some determined by the class as a whole at the start of the semester.  The non-negotiable parts are class participation (including two weeks of co-leading discussion) worth 40% and on performance on blog posts worth (at least) 10%.

The other 50% of the grade will be divided (as decided by the class) between projects added to the timeline, formal presentations of projects, or other items as suggested by the class.

[Unsatisfactory mid-semester reports will be reported for anyone with a grade of D+ or below at that time.]

Grading Scale

A Unusual Excellence 93 or higher=A; 90-92=A-
B Distinctly Above Average 87-89=B+; 83-86=B; 80-82=B-
C Average Quality 77-79=C+; 73-76=C; 70-72=C-
D Below Average Quality 67-69=D+; 60-66=D
F Failure, No Credit 0-59=F

 

Accommodations

The Office of Disability Resources has been designated by the University as the primary office to guide, counsel, and assist students with disabilities. If you receive services through the Office of Disability Resources and require accommodations for this class, make an appointment with me as soon as possible to discuss your approved accommodation needs. Bring your accommodation letter with you to the appointment. I will hold any information you share with me in strictest confidence unless you give me permission to do otherwise. If you have not made contact with the Office of Disability Resources (540-654-1266) and need accommodations, I will be happy to refer you. The office will require appropriate documentation of disability.
Contact Downing Newcastle for more information.

Honor Code

I believe in the Honor Code as an essential, positive component of the Mary Washington experience.  You should know that if you cheat or plagiarize in this class, you will fail, and I will take you to the Honor Council, so do not do it.  On the other hand, I also believe that having friends or family read and comment on your writing can be extremely helpful and falls within the bounds of the Honor Code (assuming the writing itself remains yours).  If you have questions about these issues, then you should talk to me sooner rather than later.

Topics & Readings

Class Calendar

Week 1 — Introduction — Week of August 25

— What is the Information Age?

— Planning the semester – What topics will we focus on? What assignments will we complete?

By the weekend:

  • — Set up a Twitter account (or use an existing one) and follow me (@jmcclurken) and/or your classmates and/or some of the scholars from the DH Compendium.  When you tweet about our class use the hashtag #InfoAge14.
  • — Install a WordPress blog on your Domain of One’s Own account or UMWblogs.
  • — Add your blog to the class blogroll using the add link widget on this blog.  [Use Twitter to ask Dr. McClurken or a classmate for the password.]
  • — Write and publish first blog post on why you’re taking the class and what topics/assignments you want this semester.

 

Week 2 — Introducing New Media tools and an overview of the history of information/communication — Week of September 1

Tuesday:  DTLT visit and start of timeline/database project

Reading –Thursday:  Downey, all; Winston, Intro

 

Part I – Print (and its predecessors)

 

Potential topics:  Cave paintings, African Drums, art, written language, coffee houses and print culture, universities, printing press, newspapers, oral tradition, plagiarism/citation/rise of the footnote; photography

 

Week 3 — Week of September 8

— Topics:  Newspapers, Magazine, Books

Reading — Tuesday:   Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, Chapter 4

            Thursday: 

 

Part II – Early Networked Communication 

Potential topics:  Postal Service, Telegraph/telephone, rise of modern journalism

 

Week 4 — Week of September 15

— Topics:

Reading — Tuesday:  Winston, 19-66

            Thursday:

 

PROPOSALS FOR TIMELINE/DATABASE PROJECTS DUE TO ME BY SEPTEMBER 22

 

Part III—Broadcasting 

Potential Topics: technological, cultural histories of Film/Radio/TV; advertising, rise of mass media; propaganda

 

Week 5 — Week of September 22

— Topics:

Reading — Tuesday: Winston, 67-146

            Thursday:

 

Week 6 — Week of September 29

— Topics:

Reading — Tuesday: 

            Thursday: 

 

 

 

 

Part IV – Information in the Digital Age

Potential topics:  Early Computers (Human Computers, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace); Role of war/military in creation and spread of information/computing technology (WWII, Cold War, ARPANet); Rise of the mainframe and then personal computers; Doug Engelbert and the Mouse; the creation/expansion/commercialization of the Internet; Women and Computing; Pop Culture treatment of the digital age; Hackers and Hacking Culture; Video Games; cell phones/smart phones/tablets; the wiki phenomenon; Coding/Programming; images/video in era of access to creation tools; Information Theory; Information Overload; Satellites/cable/fiber optics; identity in the digital age

 

Week 7 — Week of October 6

—    Topics: Early Computers

Reading — Tuesday: Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”; Winston, 147-242

Thursday:

 

Week 8 — Week of October 13

— Fall Break — No class Tuesday, October 14

— Topics: Networks and the Internet

Reading — Thursday: Winston, 243-336; Rosenzweig, 179-202

 

Week 9 — Week of October 20

— Topics:

Reading — Tuesday:

            Thursday: 

 

Week 10 — Week of October 27

—    Topics: Web 2.0/3.0/18.0

—    Reading — Tuesday: Rosenzweig, 85-91 (CD-ROMs and textbooks)

            Thursday:

 

Week 11 — Week of November 3

— Topics:  Trust, Citations, “truth” in the Digital Age

Reading — Tuesday:  Rosenzweig, 28-50 (Historical Knowledge online); 51-82 (Wikipedia & History); 155-178

            Thursday:

 

Week 12 —Week of November 10

— Topics:

Reading — Tuesday:

            Thursday:

 

Part V – Looking forward

Potential topics: Copyright/open source/intellectual property; History in the digital age; Infographics; social networks in the age of Facebook; search in the age of Google; Artificial Intelligence; Crowdsourcing; Digital divide;

Week 13  — Week of November 17

— Topics:  History of Digital History and Its Future

Reading — Tuesday: Rosenzweig, xxi-xxiv, 3-27, 92-153, 203-236

            Thursday: Winston, 337-342

 

Week 14  — Week of November 24

— Topics:  Infographics and the Rise of Visual Literacy

Reading – Tuesday:

— Thursday — Thanksgiving — No Class

 

ALL PROJECTS DUE BY DECEMBER 1

 

Week 15  — Week of December 1

— Presentations?

Reading — Tuesday:

            Thursday:

Exam Period – Discussion of the semester – what worked and what didn’t.

 

Inspirations for this class and syllabus include:

 

 

Questions for students [These will guide our initial discussion as we fill in the syllabus together.]

1)     Which topics are you particularly interested in studying this semester?

2)     What sources would you add to the class resource bibliography (http://www.zotero.org/groups/infoage/items )?  [Note: we’re not going to read all of these.  This bibliography is a resource to draw from and contribute to all semester.]

3)     The central work of the class for the semester will be the creation of a digital timeline/database of popular representations of the Information Age and add materials to it all semester.  We’ll generate the list of dates/items together and then you’ll be creating additional pieces (either as individuals or in groups) that will be added to the timeline database.  So, what types of assignments/projects would you be interested in working on/doing?   What alternative ways might we use to construct/present what we’ve learned in and out of the class about the history of information? 

  1. I want to take advantage of the digital media resources on campus.  In particular, there are two resource-rich locations we should be thinking about.

                                                    i.     The Digital Media Lab in the History/American Studies department in Monroe.  We’ll have 3 iMacs and two Windows computer, with scanners, digital cameras, as well as basic and advanced image, video, and audio editing software.  What kinds of projects could we do with those tools? 

                                                  ii.     What projects relevant to our subject could we create with the full resources of the new IT Convergence Center?  [At a minimum, cameras, audio booth, video recording and editing suites.  What could we create for the digital signage in the building?  For the digital library gallery?  For the giant video wall?]

  1. What percentage of course grade should those assignments be valued at?

4)     I want to take advantage of the classroom we’ll be in.

  1. The new active-learning classroom in the ITCC that we will be in is built around the idea of group work.  In addition to the standard projector and screen, it will have LCD panels at small group tables around the room so students will be able to hook up their laptops and work collaboratively.  I’ve been thinking about having some discussion days start by splitting up into groups with a small topic assignment, giving you 15-45 minutes to work in groups, then asking you to present your results to the rest of the class. What classroom small group projects would you like to try?

5)     What do you think of the layout of the course schedule?  Do you want to spend more or less time on certain broad topics?

 

[1] To that end, for each class students should also prepare some notes on the reading (parallels, problems, factual questions, reminders of past readings, connections to ideas from other classes or from “real life”) so that they have those points in front of them for the discussion.  Although I have no current plan to collect these comments, I reserve the right to do so at some point during the semester.