[Digital] Expression

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

http://ift.tt/13RP5z6

By now many of you have seen the new Holiday advertisement from Apple, “The Song.” It follows in the wake of last year’s Apple Holiday ad that brought many people to tears (at least the ones who appreciate Apple). This year’s ad follows a similar, but perhaps less controversial path — a young woman discovers a recording made by her Grandmother for her Grandfather presumably before he is deployed for the war. The discovered recording is on a record — you remember those things, right? I could go on, but here it is …

I liked the ad instantly for a lot of reasons — I am an Apple fan and have been since the very early 80’s, so it is easy for me. But, the thing that I really liked was how much it leaned on the notion of digital expression. The last 10 years of my work has been focused on a couple of core concepts and one of them is the notion of digital expression as a new form of scholarship. This line of thinking actually came to life to me many years ago while working as a part of an Apple advisory board called, the Digital Campus. My assertion was that it wasn’t enough to just sell students technology tools, instead we need to combine the tools with new forms of pedagogy, physical spaces, and support to create an eco-system that can systematically support digital expression as a form of scholarship. Actually, if you’ve ever heard me give a talk, I typically wrap up with the following slide …

Screen-Shot-2014-12-18-at-8.47.05-AM-1nr7hsl-1024x544

Recently I watched the behind the scenes production of, “The Song” made by Apple. Take a look and notice the use of a specific type of technology enhanced creation space.

Last week I came across a story for the One Button Studio concept that we built at Penn State as a piece to our Media Commons initiative. Many of you have heard me talk about that studio and the ideas behind it. I am trying to get our first one built here at Stony Brook to advance our focus on digital expression as a form of scholarship. We have to see that the physical space is part of systematically supporting that notion — you need to craft a value chain of sorts. Faculty development, pedagogical awareness, instructional design support, and physical spaces that can enhance, inspire, and promote digital expression across multiple curricula.

I say this knowing full well that our students are creating more digital artifacts of their learning every single day. I also know that more and more of our faculty are interested in assigning new types of assignments that are pushing our students to have new skills to tell new kinds of stories. Connected to that are the skills we as technologists need to grow to help develop that eco-system. Just like in, “The Song” we need to pair the technology with inspiration, create forward facing spaces that promote this type of work, and deliver platforms that can easily promote the idea that digital expression is in fact an important part of the teaching and learning landscape in higher education.

Vía Cole W. Camplese http://ift.tt/13RP7H3

[Digital] Expression

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

By now many of you have seen the new Holiday advertisement from Apple, “The Song.” It follows in the wake of last year’s Apple Holiday ad that brought many people to tears (at least the ones who appreciate Apple). This year’s ad follows a similar, but perhaps less controversial path — a young woman discovers a recording made by her Grandmother for her Grandfather presumably before he is deployed for the war. The discovered recording is on a record — you remember those things, right? I could go on, but here it is …

http://youtu.be/WRsPnzcZ1VY

I liked the ad instantly for a lot of reasons — I am an Apple fan and have been since the very early 80’s, so it is easy for me. But, the thing that I really liked was how much it leaned on the notion of digital expression. The last 10 years of my work has been focused on a couple of core concepts and one of them is the notion of digital expression as a new form of scholarship. This line of thinking actually came to life to me many years ago while working as a part of an Apple advisory board called, the Digital Campus. My assertion was that it wasn’t enough to just sell students technology tools, instead we need to combine the tools with new forms of pedagogy, physical spaces, and support to create an eco-system that can systematically support digital expression as a form of scholarship. Actually, if you’ve ever heard me give a talk, I typically wrap up with the following slide …

Slide

Recently I watched the behind the scenes production of, “The Song” made by Apple. Take a look and notice the use of a specific type of technology enhanced creation space.

http://youtu.be/77hi9SuKfiI

Last week I came across a story for the One Button Studio concept that we built at Penn State as a piece to our Media Commons initiative. Many of you have heard me talk about that studio and the ideas behind it. I am trying to get our first one built here at Stony Brook to advance our focus on digital expression as a form of scholarship. We have to see that the physical space is part of systematically supporting that notion — you need to craft a value chain of sorts. Faculty development, pedagogical awareness, instructional design support, and physical spaces that can enhance, inspire, and promote digital expression across multiple curricula.

I say this knowing full well that our students are creating more digital artifacts of their learning every single day. I also know that more and more of our faculty are interested in assigning new types of assignments that are pushing our students to have new skills to tell new kinds of stories. Connected to that are the skills we as technologists need to grow to help develop that eco-system. Just like in, “The Song” we need to pair the technology with inspiration, create forward facing spaces that promote this type of work, and deliver platforms that can easily promote the idea that digital expression is in fact an important part of the teaching and learning landscape in higher education.

#SBUDoIT CIO Briefing 2: Did You Know

/ Cole Camplese / 10 Comments

It is a little later than I had hoped to get it out, but here it is … the second CIO Briefing podcast. This five minute podcast will share some behind the scenes commentary on the production of the 2014 holiday greeting video as well as short updates on governance, SUNY 2020, a presentation I did for SteerCo called, “Beyond Gmail,” and a shout out for some great work being done at the new Stony Brook Arena. Enjoy and please leave comments, questions, and feedback — it is all very much appreciated!

Competition

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I’ve been testing Chromebooks quite a bit lately and after reading this review of an inexpensive Windows 8 machine versus a Chromebook I can agree with at least one overarching thought …

Here’s the bright side of the Chromebook vs. Windows battle. The longer it rages on, the better these modern Windows netbooks will get. This fight isn’t for our $200. It’s about keeping us plugged into Microsoft’s services and software rather than Google’s.

via HP Stream 11 Review: A $200 Windows Laptop That’s Worth the Price – WSJ.

Subscribing to my Podcasts

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

So while I didn’t post a new CIO Briefing last week like I wanted — the Thanksgiving holiday shortened week got in the way — I did want to point out that you can easily subscribe to the podcasts and have them delivered directly to iTunes. I assume this works with any podcast catching application … I will have to test it on my Android tablet when I get to it this week. All you have to do is copy the RSS feed, available from the “Meta” sidebar area on the right, jump over to iTunes and from the file menu, select “Subscribe to podcast,” and paste in the feed URL. It will then download the most recent episode and it should be set up to automatically receive new episodes as I release them.

Screen Shot 2014-11-30 at 3.39.03 PM

A hat tip to Mark Lang for asking the question.

#SBUDoIT CIO Briefing Podcasts

/ Cole Camplese / 6 Comments

Last week while hosting one of my Coffee with Cole sessions I shared a few items that I am working on and I got a somewhat surprising reaction. One of the people there said something to the effective of, “wow, I had no idea we were doing all of that!” I know I shouldn’t be surprised by that because I have so little time or opportunity to share all of what we are working on … it did, however, strike me as an opportunity to go back to doing something I really love doing — making podcasts to share with my team.

I remember back in 2005 when I became the director of Education Technology Services at Penn State I was using podcasts internally to help share the work of our team with both the outside world and internally. There was a method to the madness — we were launching our institutional podcasting service so I was also trying to promote the use of the technology in an interesting way. I remember getting good feedback from members of my team — they said things like, “wow, I had no idea we were doing all of that!” Sounds pretty familiar. Podcasting some thoughts and updates served to bring my team into a larger conversation at the organizational level, while still letting them focus on their specific work. That was a good idea then and I hope it is a good idea now.

The notion of sharing information is a tricky one. Quite a bit of what I am doing isn’t really all that shareable … a lot of it is either in-process thinking or stuff still in the negotiation process. That shouldn’t stop me from trying to connect some dots across DoIT though and so with that in mind, I am going to work to release a short audio update on a regular basis. This past week I released the first one using our private Yammer space and got a decent reaction from members of the DoIT team. I did have a couple people say that there are folks outside DoIT who might be interested in listening and since this first one doesn’t have an super secret stuff in it, I am including it below.

If you listen and have any thoughts about this notion, please share them in the comments.

I’m Teaching this Spring! Disruptive Technologies Stony Brook Style! #CDT450

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This spring I will be back in front of a class teaching, Disruptive Technologies (CDT 450: Topics in Computational Arts) for the first time here at Stony Brook. This is a class that I co-created and co-taught at Penn State as a graduate seminar with my great friend and colleague, Scott McDonald. This will be the first go of it by myself and I suspect it will be quite different not having my co-conspirator by my side … with that said, I have plenty ready to go. You can check out the course site and see what you think. The description the department provided is below. If you are a Stony Brook Undergrad, consider being part of this grand experiment!

An examination of current technologies that could be considered both as emergent and disruptive. The course is a combination of an examination of the way these technologies are used, an examination of the technologies themselves (looking “under the hood”), a dive into the scholarship of community, identity, design, and its interaction with disruptive technology. and creative re- (or miss-)application of the technologies. In other words—keeping with the automotive metaphor—we will not only kick the tires, but we will strip the whole vehicle down, understand how it fits together, and rebuild it with a new ability to see its potential. This course is designed in a “blended” model that will take advantage of all sorts of digital tools and online spaces. This course is different from your typical undergraduate course; it is approached as a grand experiment, which will evolve and grow over the semester, with on-the-fly changes to the design based on your work, thoughts, and feedback. Prerequisites: CDT 208 (MUS/THR/ARS 208) and one 300-level course from CDT, ARH, ARS, CAT, CS, EST, MUS, THR, or a course approved by cDACT Director.

Chromebook Thoughts

/ Cole Camplese / 29 Comments

This isn’t my first foray into the world of Google Chromebooks, but I am looking at them through a new lens after seeing some interesting things at the Gartner Expo last week. I will have lots to say about these things as I spend my time using it more and more. I am not yet committing to a 30 Day CB Challenge or anything, but I am considering it. I like the ease of use of the devices and I really like that they promote the use of Drive and the overall Google Apps for Edu suite we have in use here at Stony Brook.

ChromeBook

If I did do a challenge, I would want to invite an handful of participants to spend 30 days living on a CB as their primary machine. I’d love to have a few students, some faculty, and some staff to put these things through the paces and report on our collective experiences.

The overriding question is, can something as simple (and yet powerful) as a machine that runs really only a browser be competent as a work class machine. That is a worthy experiment that has been answered in other contexts, but not quite ours.

Until then I’ll be bouncing back and forth between this little device and my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. The immediate limitation I have discovered is that so far I haven’t gotten 1Password to work, but I am guessing a simple google result will help that. If you are interested in exploring this territory with me, leave a comment or come find me.