Monday, February 24, 2014

Week 5: putting thinking and making back together

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WEEK FIVE: 25 & 26 Feb: SOME CHANGES!! PLEASE NOTE! 
• the usual Tuesday meeting cannot take place this week due to unanticipated problems. please come to some part or all of the Wednesday meetings instead! 
•W 1-3:30 (WDS 2101C)
•W 4-5:30 (26 FEB at the fireplace area across from THE COMMON, UMUC)

RETURN HERE FOR WEEK SIX SCHEDULES @ UMD! Click HERE for Davidson's MetaMOOC around which this course revolves. 

A one-time unique experimental course for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and all! Customizable for level, credit, schedule, forms of presence! Contact Katie King (katking@umd.edu) for details! 

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Katie's Field Notes, Tuesday 25 February 2014
Fifth Week: Making Things Happen & Assessment/s

REMEMBER: asked students to find out about Quest to Learn and to come in with ideas about rethinking university "from scratch."
START OFF PROTOTYPING THIS 
SHOULD WE WATCH AN INSPIRING BIT TOGETHER? WHICH ONE? 

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<<5.1: "Pedagogical Principles">>

ALWAYS SOMEONE BEHIND THE CAMERA: “boxed” or what other term would be good? “behind the camera,” unfocused, outside the frame, ??? INFRASTRUCTURE, ALL THE PEOPLE REALLY NEEDED 

ATTEND TO WHAT IS HAPPENING AND AROUND. handing out, messing around, geeking out — not the FANCY stuff.

digital literacy, modeling unlearning, rethink “liberal arts” (humanities? posthumanities, COMPOSTING humanities?! scientific humanities Latouring)


WHAT YOU COUNT IS WHAT YOU VALUE!!! Me? notice and attention to: recognizing and reflecting on: naming for students to attend to and care about and for:
=risk-taking
=sorting across authoritative/alternative knowledges
=working out and also questioning our women's studies important and prescriptive moralizings: ethics, politics, careabouts 

VIDEOS!! WHAT ABOUT THEM? 
peopling, presence and controlling the “whelm” (over and under whelm?) redo, close reading? distant reading both? visual

I resist them: they are TOO SLOW!! for me! I prefer reading to pop in and out time and attention wise: I have more “control”? can use in more ways?

SCROLL VS. CODEX FORMATS! how to move around in: redo but from where? practices?



ANXIETY NIGHTMARES ABOUT CLASS PREPS ALL NIGHT!
could not map out entirely beforehand. having to do week by week, as do many students too. makes for anxiety and troubles with pacing and other obligations.

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<<5.2: from critical to creative>>
love this trajectory and play

CRITICAL THINK! not end, but beginning for action. 
(my worry/irritation at “critical” everything now; even as sympathetic to intentions)

MAKING!!! what counts as? on website….
>>DIGITAL AIDS QUILT AND BALSAMO!! just here
could use for class discussion point with comparisons this week. Put up personal stuff with pics. 

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Sent on email to friends:

"Just had a great time with Anne Balsamo here, who gave a talk about her digital memorial projects, including this app: AIDS Quilt Touch app:

Here is Jaye's panel in its block: 


And you can add comments if you want:


I confess to a bit of fantasy attaching my embroidery, admittedly outsized!" 


According to Balsamo two interesting things are happening now: panels made quite a while ago are arriving at the Names Project, about one per day, from folks who made them earlier but wanted to keep them, at least this long, with all their affective meaning for the makers. 

The other is that there is a growing possibility that the Names Project will begin a kind of “repatriation” project, to RETURN panels to makers. I didn’t quite grasp all the details on this: mind must have wandered, so I am not sure how much I am making up with my memory here. But my understanding is that the desire to make sure all the panels get proper curation and care, increasingly labor-intensive, motivates this possibility. If they are all digitized then they can exist together virtually, since they can no longer ever exist together otherwise: they are distributed in warehouses and there are too many to display together any longer. 

She was eloquent on many questions that this scale of public memorial raises and how complicated any responses to these could be. As well as how this models other instances of huge crowdsourced data/material culture collections could be, and data as material culture too. Some discussion of “bit-rot,” a term I had never heard before. So digitizing is not at all any sort of guarantee of longevity of artifact/s. 

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SOMETHING WE ARE MAKING: REAL LEARNING & SOCIAL CHANGE.
notice too my current mantram coordination artifacts for complex systems. 

>>CI-BER billions of electronic records
urban renewal documents digitized: find yourself online
big board. 



>MAKING DATA MATTER: Davidson students digitizing data for big board to add to these records. 
TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS — academic and community: for policy.
prosperity without distraction of community of poorest members

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<<5.3: students lead>>
how do shape and share in the moment of it all?

>>Field Notes created by students: details by students of how to make class student led. 


HOMEWORK 
>>Surprise Endings > DukeSurpise
how to think about “human nature”
students come up with own syllabus
mini-courses on topic
student led website

SO OKAY AFTER SPRING BREAK, HOW TO OPEN UP A STUDENT LED CLASS?

professor led to student led? how all at once?

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<<5.5 (couldn’t get the vid in order, fat fingers and not able to redo?) ASSESSMENT AND TESTING>>

2002: codified first national ed policy: No Child Left Behind. bipartisan standards and standardization 

me: NOTICING STANDARDS AND STANDARDIZATION AS NOT SIMPLY CONNECTED think boundary objects and cycling and tailoring and non consensual consensus 

cd: “the method has taken over.” closing and privatizing RATHER THAN MAKING BETTER! salary punishments. teaching to test. tests not comprehensive in content: how to make sure what you value is what you count

me: RATHER THAN WHAT YOU COUNT IS WHAT YOU VALUE: OR GOOD METHODS ARE THOSE EASILY ASSESSED! 

cd: ag. summative testing. for “formative testing” 



Me: ??? the test makes something new? itself creates an experience that is good in itself too? is that what this means?

cd: FAIR?? =/= the same? how we measure? how do educators feel about testing? <me: comparing to tests in Harry Potter> everyone gets sick. anxiety replaces learning. From cd’s See It book: different test during month: students figure out how to use what they have learned during year for a year end project to make a change in the world. <me: comparing to HP experiences in the DA: teaching each other for what is coming> 

BADGING: alternative certifications: what we are good at that is skillful and useful but not “academic” per se. 
<me: cf hanging out etc> REWARDS FOR ALTERNATIVE KNOWLEDGES! 

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<<5.4: diversity is OS>>
love the concept! queer OS, jarah and others

HASTAC: diversity and difference are not deficits
John Hope Franklin Center & Institute when cd was VP. Historian on Brown case. “enough presence of blacks to tell history US accurately.” 

not accurate: cf. people required to work the systems and infrastructure, but who has been boxed for what reasons? 

LISTENING TO INTERVIEW on AirPlay WHILE SETTING UP FOR THE DAY. 

Digital Youth Network
<how if at all connected to the Ito book and UCB projects?>
social learning network: 

how do we support our mentors? RECIPROCITY: help folks to help you to help more and keep on helping and supporting and making.

badging: they are connectors in infrastructures:
AH! coordination artifacts for complex systems!! “image file with stuff in it” as with boundary objects full of affect and memory and stuff. 

increases trust in learning: “ratchet up,” leveling up? agile learning throughout your life should count. Also about who you are and where you worked this out. Qualification inside the badge, richer, higher standard for assessment, indicator of trust. CONNECTORS. LEARNING PATHWAYS. SEE PORTFOLIO. 

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thinking of making a little field notes book to bring in today if possible. 



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