Here are some thoughts, mostly embryonic, about possible independent projects:

1) I’ve been working on incorporating simple digital tools (online searches and PowerPoint/Prezi presentations) into a dramaturgical pedagogy with my theatre classes. I’m just trying some things out this semester, but I think that there is more to be developed here, including some kind of formatting that students can plug their information into so that they don’t spend too much time on form rather than content.

2) Since I will be on a Writing Fellowship next year (location TBD), there may be opportunities to develop something in that context. I’m especially interested in the ideas of active learning and critical learning from James Paul Gee’s video game pedagogies.

3) I’d love to work on a mapping project related to my own research into the movements of scenic designers around Europe in the seventeenth century.

4) My department has an image database that is constantly growing but not widely utilized. It might be useful to see how it might better serve student need and try to optimize it.

5) A central location that collects freely available theatre images, films, and sound files is something that I know I would have liked to have when I was starting to teach, so maybe putting something like that together.

6) There are large number of my colleagues in theatre who don’t know what tools CUNY makes available to us, or how to use them particularly well. I could coordinate a few workshops on CUNY tools particularly for Theatre students.

7) I’m just branching out into mapping (I’ve done a little using ArcGIS) but I’ve found that learning tools tend to focus on examples that don’t work for the humanities (optimal locations for businesses, density of certain professions). I’d like to see (put together once I’ve developed stronger skills) a workshop focus on mapping for the humanities, with an emphasis on how we can gather our data and get it into the appropriate file format because often we can’t pull from readily available sources. I’d also be interested in learning more about open source GIS, since it isn’t dependent on institutional access.

8)Two possible ideas for the “ethnography of technology” option: a review of instructional technology in introductory theatre courses, or an investigation of the methods and effectiveness of an ongoing Twitter project in CUNY undergraduate acting classes started by some of my colleagues.