One of the most rewarding things I have gotten to do the last few years (and this may be a blog post lacking mention of SPLOTs, hah!) has been teaching co-teaching the Networked Narratives open course with Mia Zamora.
In first version in 2017, Mia was present with the class at Kean University and I was remotely beamed in (thought I did make a surprise visit); students blogged, tweeted, created digital art, and experienced creating alternative personas in our mirror world in response to some characters who appeared to have “hacked” the class. In the 2018 version, I taught the Kean class remotely (with big help from 2017 students who were my TAs) and collaborated with the parallel class Mia taught in Norway during her fellowship there.
In 2019, like Arnold said, “we’ll be back” and we are gearing up for another dual taught approach with Mia on the ground and me beamed in.
We still use the metaphor of Digital Alchemy, but in light of what seem like dark times of mistrust, we hope to put those skills to use in putting some more light out there. So the theme is tentatively “Digital Alchemy for the Post Truth Era”.
Like before, we are designing our course not around a rigid syllabus but a flexible “spine”.
We will again have Studio Visits and maybe Bus Tours too, media activities from the Make Bank, more creative Daily Digital Alchemies (this start up again Wednesday this week), plus activities Mia and others put to use in Equity Unbound.
One new angle we are considering is making much more use of web annotation with hypothes.is. It was always something we wanted to do more of, but it always seemed like “one tool too much” when introduced mid-semester. So we are going to look at using it not only for annotating readings, but also as maybe more of a discussion space then twitter. It really seems ideal as something alchemists might do on the web- leave notes in the margins, clues, messages, doorways.
Okay, there is a lot that is still bubbling in NetNarr lab, but we launch on January 22. If you want to join in new or again, make your way to the Labyrinthus – the “choose your own path” for getting twitter, hypothes.is, and blog lined up, and get setup, connected.
Some are ready for this…
And like always, the open path is full of minimal to maximal participation.
#netnarr Alchemy is BACK… well it really never went anywhere, I still smile seeing the twitter bots of past students stull chattering away.
Featured Image: Another one I spotted in the LIbrary of Congress Free to Use Chrome Extension, I liked the idea of a great team, and took some liberty editing a Library of Congress public domain image of Capt. Til. Huston & Bill Donovan, Yanks
I packed up my old duffel bag, slung it over my shoulder, and trudged up the gang plank of The Good Ship Arganee. Avast, ye sailors on the internet seas!