Michael Wesch Has Done It Again!

I just read Everything Is Miscellaneous myself and loved it. This is such a great representation of the concepts.

Jenny Holzer on YouTube

Video of a Holzer projection of the words of JFK and Theodore Roosevelt from the Kennedy Center onto Roosevelt Island in Washington, DC. September 2007.

Thanks to Jim Groom at bavatuesdays.

Finding a Light

In the Chronicle of Higher Education this morning, there is a review about a self-published book on teaching by Joe Hoyle, a David Meade White Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the University of Richmond. According to the review, it is a surprising source of some valuable insights on the college classroom. The full text of the book is available through his website. It's also available for $5. I'll print out a copy and put it in the TLC. Might be worth a look.

If Wikipedia Was Printed...

Thanks to Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog, I found this visual representation of how much shelf space Wikipedia would actually take up in a Library. Bottom line: 1250 volumes.

Image was created by Nikola Smolenski and is available at Wikimedia Commons.

Test Your YouTube IQ

How many of these do YOU recognize?

New YouTube Course at Pitzer College

Just read an article at Inside Higher Ed this morning about my alma mater, Pitzer College, and Alexandra Juhasz's new course, “Learning From YouTube.” I'm not sure the actual YouTube videos will be that exciting, but the course itself seems like a fascinating experiment. It reminds me a bit of early video art. Here's a link to their channel.

Otis 2.0

I began experimenting this summer with creating a web 2.0 wiki at Otis so that everyone could simply add a link to their own blog or wiki on a list. Very shortly, I realized that the wiki should be broadened to include discussions and listings of tutorials among other things for the TLC. In other words, a more interactive space related to teaching-- particularly teaching with technology.

That wiki is now available. Editing by anyone within the Otis community. You are invited to contribute.

Otis Instructional Technologies Wiki

New Info Lit Video

The Teaching Learning Center is experimenting with creating YouTube videos to help teach info lit skills for freshmen in particular. Our most recent one features our own extraordinary art history Professor, Parme Giuntini discussing some of the criteria useful in determining whether the information found in periodicals is scholarly, popular, or professional. Although not really scripted, she has worked closely with me for years on teaching info lit skills to students in the first year required art history course. She spoke extemporaneously for 55 minutes and we edited it down to 10. James Olech, a recent Otis Fine Arts grad did the shooting and editing on the video.

This method of teaching Info Lit skills hold promise. We'll see how students like it this fall.

Our YouTube Channel is at: http://www.youtube.com/user/OtisCollege
You can also download the videos through the Apple Music Store iTunesU link.

Design Expertise Meets Creative Commons

An effective presentation created by Karl Fisch became a powerful video with the help of Scott McLeod and has now been transformed into an even more compelling video. Thanks to Xplane for their design expertise. This is a fantastic model of beneficial collaboration through creative commons.

Compare the new version of Did You Know/Shift Happens with the older version.

Older version:

Quote from the video: "The original version of this presentation was created for a Colorado (USA) high school staff of 150 in August of 2006 to start a conversation about what our students need to be successful in the 21st century. By June 2007 it had started more than 5 million conversations around the world."

For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com

Le Grand Content

You can use Powerpoint to answer all the questions of the universe including the meaning of life. Who knew?

Insomnia and Student Videos

At the NMC conference, Apple screened the winner of their video contest for students where all videos were made in 24 hours. Phenomenal. View them here: http://edcommunity.apple.com/contest/contest.php

YouTube as Learning Platform

Today I've been exploring instructional videos that are available on YouTube. There are a phenomenal number of really excellent ones. The two I've embedded here about wikis. The first explains what a wiki is and why you would use one. The second shows how to edit with Wikimedia which is the wiki software we use at Otis and the one used by Wikipedia.

History of You Tube

Thanks to the Digital Ethnography Blog.

Copyright and Fair Use.

I LOVE this!


Goes well with this classic...

Women in Art

Does this actually teach anything about art history?

Great Example of Flash Animation

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

Via Bryan Alexander

Great RSS Tutorial

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

The Information Literacy Equation

Great slide show that Debra found. Notice also that it comes from SlideShare, a fabulous web tool.

Otis Faculty: Get Your Website Now!

For a long time, Guy Bennett wanted us to find a way for Otis faculty to easily make their own webpage or site.

Happily, the new Portfolio system turns out to be perfect for this. Just look what Guy created! http://ospace.otis.edu/gbennett/

He needed a place to put things that he refers to in EVERY class without having to upload them repeatedly in the LMS. His site now includes resources he likes to recommend to his students such as online books and links to his own published writing. He could also put his resume or CV if he wished. He can now add to it or change it as often as he wants.

The e-portfolio system (called Spots by our vendor, Digication) is extremely flexible and allows you to upload all types of content as well as customize the interface with your own images and header. Each “spot” has a unique URL which links directly to your site. The templates are nicely designed and extremely easy to use. You could do it on your own, but if you would like assistance, Heather Cleary offers workshops through the TLC and is available for individual consultations.

Ready to try? Simply go to ospace.otis.edu, login with your Xnumber and password, and click on the CREATE button. Then share yourself with the Otis Community!

NEW! Otis College Channel on YouTube

Using Fletcher Jones Foundation funding, over the past year, the TLC has been working with faculty to create podcasts and make them available on the Otis iTunesU site.

Recently, we have also begun to experiment with creating videos of faculty demonstrations for courses and putting them up on YouTube (in addition to iTunesU). To that end we have created an Otis College Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=otiscollege

At present, you will find several videos there. One is Bob Mackie talking about why he likes working with Otis fashion students. There are others by Foundation faculty member, Christian Mounger, demonstrating “Value Step Scales Using Graphite.” More to come. Please subscribe to this channel.

Marc Meredith started a YouTube Channel quite awhile ago called Otis Admissions with some excellent videos from the Ben Maltz Gallery as well as student interviews. Eventually he will migrate those videos to the more inclusive Otis College Channel.

Many Otis students have put their own work on YouTube and tagged them “otis college.” They are really fun to watch.

By the way, Marc also has been creating an interesting blog called, The “O” Observed. Well worth a look!

Speaking of blogging, many faculty are also experimenting with blogs and wikis for classroom use. You’re welcome to take a look at some other Otis’ experiments within the world of Web 2.0 by clicking here. The TLC is also blogging at TLC Notes.

This is an exciting time for Otis as we watch its web presence spread into social networking sites.