Syllabus

Class meets Wednesdays, 4:15 – 6:15 PM, in Room 7314.

Skills sessions run 6:30 – 8:30 PM on Wednesdays and some Thursdays in the library computer labs (see specific details on each date below).

All students should register for accounts on the following sites: CUNY Academic Commons, Twitter, and Zotero. Remember that when you register for social networking accounts, you do not have to use your full name or even your real name. One benefit of writing publicly under your real name is that you can begin to establish a public academic identity and to network with others in your field. However, keep in mind that search engines have extended the life of online work; if you are not sure that you want your work for this course to be part of your permanently searchable identity trail on the web, you should strongly consider creating an alias. Whether you engage social media under your real name or whether you construct a new online identity, please consider the ways in which social media can affect your career in both positive and negative ways.

Non-digital readings for the course:

Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Douglas Rushkoff, OR Books, 2010

Week 1: Jan 29 – Introduction to the course, faculty, students

  • Intro/bios: faculty and students
  • Review of syllabus/requirements
  • Week-by-week breakdown
  • Wikipedia assignment
  • Proposal Abstracts
  • Final Project
  • Blog posting
  • Weekly commenting
  • Signing up as class motivators
  • Discussing use of online tools (Academic Commons)
  • Public, private, anonymous
  • Digital teaching and learning
  • New Media methods
  • Collaboration
  • Want vs Need
  • Scope Creep and Minimally Viable Product
  • Incorporating Failure into your process (Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.)
  • Learning how to learn
  • Skills Workshops, and the need to go (to avoid the bad kind of failure)
  • Wikipedia intro (user accounts, edit tab, basic BB Code)

Assigned: Introductory project ideas in blog post

Saturday, February 1 – Art+Feminism Wikipedia Editathon

Michael is co-organizing a series of Art+Feminism Wikipedia Editathons, with around 20 locations worldwide. You are welcome to join Michael at the event at Eyebeam in Chelsea, or join Maura at the event at the Brooklyn Museum. This is not a required workshop, but it will be an early view into editing Wikipedia, and an example of the kinds of non-traditional organizing and para-scholarship that is possible as one of your options for the Independent Study.

Week 2: Feb 5 – Contexts and Practicalities

In this class we will explore ways of thinking through and analyzing a project before it begins and look into issues that can arise depending on the way in which the project realized.

Context Thinking about the What, Where, When, Why and How before you begin a project. The four little B’s (build, buy, borrow, beg). Which one is the right fit for your software project? When starting any software project this often the first consideration. Do you build it your self, buy it off the shelf, use free and open source software (borrow) or use some of the free web services out there (beg)?

Reading: Chris Stein, Contexts and Practicalities
This post is a reading in itself and provides links to the other readings for the week. There are a lot of links and you won’t need to read through and analyze every article thoroughly. They are there to help give context, support and detail to the arguments made in the post.

Workshop 1: Feb 5, 630-830, Room C415B, Wikis/Wikipedia 1

Led by Ann Matsuuchi, Wikipedia Campus Ambassador
Covering: user and article talk pages, signing comments, page history, creating and linking diffs

February 12 – NO CLASS – Lincoln’s Birthday

Week 3: Feb 19 – What does what OR How to get things done

Assigned: Project Abstracts

Less is more is both an aesthetic principle of modernism and a functional spec of agile development. Agile development has a long history. It takes its most recent, and quite popular form in Ruby on Rails, 37Signals, and their Getting Real PDF. We will look at what it means to make less.

Every tool has a specific use. You can use a tea kettle to hammer in a nail, but you really shouldn’t. We will discuss some of the basic tools, and languages, and what each is used for.

Readings:

Guests: Past ITP students to talk about their Independent Study projects: Naomi Barrettara, Hadassah Damien, Sonia K. González (maybe), and Laura Kane (by Skype).

Motivators: Kelly, Silvana

Workshop 2: Feb 19, 630-830, Room C415B, HTML

Led by Jared Pike

Week 4: Feb 26 – Online Learning and Teaching

DUE: Add one well cited paragraph to an article related to your research. Submit a diff of your work to both Michael and Maura’s talk page. If you didn’t make it to the Wikis workshop, please watch this video, and do this training.

Assigned: Collaboratively written Wikipedia article

Readings:

Related background readings (things to look at if you’re so inclined; also resources for future use)

  • “Modest Changes, Revolutionary Possibilities: Distance Learning and the Future of Education,” Gary Natriello, Teachers College Record Volume 107 Number 8, 2005, pp. 1885-1904 [1]
  • “What Makes the Difference? A Practical Analysis of Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Education,” Yong Zhao, Jing Lei, Bo Yan, Chun Lai & Sophia Tan, Teachers College Record Volume 107 Number 8, 2005, pp. 1836-1884 [2] (article preprint)
  • Educating the Net Generation (2005), Diane and James Oblinger (eds.) [3] (especially “The Student’s Perspective” [4] and “The New Academy” [5])
  • Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2004), Anderson & Elloumi (eds.) [6]; Chap.2 [7], Chap. 5 [8], and Chap. 14 [9]

Motivators: Pelz & Ugoretz: Aleksandra, Ian; Smale & Bessette: Pamela

Workshop 3: Feb 26, 630-830, Room C415B, Wikis/Wikipedia 2

Led by Ann Matsuuchi, Wikipedia Campus Ambassador
Review of material from Wikis/Wikipedia 1, wiki projects, best practices.

Week 5: Mar 5 – Collaboration

Reading:

Guests: CUNY Academic Commons Team

Motivators: CF & Crit Art Ensemb: Karyna, Jared; Gold/Gorges: Silvana

Workshop 4: Thursday Mar 6, 630-830, Room C196.02, WordPress 1 (install and config)

Led by Patrick Smyth

Week 6: Mar 12 – Extra Institutional Learning

Guest: Douglas Rushkoff, Technology as Classroom: the media environment as pedagogy
NOTE: Different time/location: 3:45, C202; we will reconvene after the seminar to discuss other course readings, ending at 6:30

Most conversations about technology and education concern how to use computers in the classroom. And while software and connectivity may enhance many courses when used appropriately, their deeper value may be in the example they provide of how different technologies influence learning, interaction, and thought. What are the biases of the technologies we are using, and how can we interrogate those biases from within the environment they have created? Can the digitally enabled classroom become a laboratory through which we can develop our critical faculties about technology?

For our post Rushkoff conversation, please take a look at the following links:

Readings:

Motivators: Rushkoff: Kelly, Edupunks & Outliers: Josh, Aleksandra

Workshop 5: Mar 12, 630-830, Room C196.03, CSS

Led by Jared Pike
CANCELED – will reschedule

Suggested Lecture: March 13, 2014, 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Mushon Zer-Aviv “Disinformation Visualization”, NYU ITP, 721 Broadway, 4th Floor, http://itp.nyu.edu/sigs/news/event-disinformation-visualization/

Week 7: Mar 19 – Mid-semester project conversation

Workshop of your abstracts

Suggested Reading: Nathaniel Rich, “Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine,” New York Times, 2013

Workshop 6: Thursday Mar 20, 630-830, Room C196.02, WordPress 2

Led by Patrick Smyth

Week 8: Mar 26 – Student Blogging/Collaborative Authoring

DUE: Wikipedia Article

Reading:

Guests: City Tech OpenLab Team

Motivators: Christina, Jared

Workshop 7: Mar 26, 630-830, Room C415B, Mobile App Development Basics

Led by Damon Baker, faculty member in Entertainment Technology at City Tech

Sunday March 30th, Unconference: Experiments in Extra-Institutional Learning.

Details, co-organized by Michael

Week 9: Apr 2 – Open Access, Open Educational Resources (future of the textbook), and Images

DUE: Wikipedia Article

Reading:

Guest: Emily Drabinski, Radical Teacher Editorial Collective

Motivators: Josh, Adam

Workshop 8: Apr 2, 630-830, Room C415B, Open Journal Systems (OJS)

Led by Anne Donlon

Week 10: Apr 9 – Applied Free Culture

Readings:

  • Lewis Hyde, from Common As Air, selections
  • Lawrence Lessig, “REMIX: How creativity is being strangled by the law”, from The Social Media Reader, (ed. Mandiberg)
  • Michael Mandiberg, “Giving Things Away is Hard Work: Three Creative Commons Case Studies,” from The Social Media Reader, (ed. Mandiberg)
  • Fred Benenson, “On the Fungibility and Necessity of Cultural Freedom,” from The Social Media Reader, (ed. Mandiberg)
  • Fred Von Loehman, “Your Intermediary Is Your Destiny”, from The Social Media Reader, (ed. Mandiberg)
  • xtine burrough, Let’s Go Crazy: Teaching Media Literacy with Remix Practices
  • Eric Faden, A Fair(y) Use Tale.

Motivators: Hyde/Lessig: Ian, Benen./Mandi./Loehman: Adam, burrough/faden: Hamad

Workshop 5 (rescheduled): Apr 8, 630-830, Room C196.02, CSS

Led by Jared Pike

Apr 14-22 – BREAK

Week 11: Apr 23 – Failure

Readings:

Motivators: Gabriel/Burkun: Hamad, Teaching & Failure: Christina

Workshop 9: Apr 23, 630-830, Room C196.03, Statistics/Data/SPSS/R

Led by Christina Shane-Simpson

Workshop 10: Apr 24, 630-830, Room C415B, Data Visualization Basics

Led by Micki Kaufman

Week 12: Apr 30 – The future of the internet, NSA, and censorship

Reading:

Motivators: Zittrain/Grimmelman: Pamela, Karyna, Wu/Bilton: Hamad

NO APRIL 30th workshop – Zhu/Ng talk

Week 13: May 7 – Presentations

Week 14: May 14 – Presentations

Week 15: May 21 – Presentations

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