Some ways to keep on!

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An online journal to keep your hand in for issues that have come up in our class! http://www.firstpersonscholar.com

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LAST DAY! Learning, sharing, making, doing, thinking, acting

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Thursday 12 December, LAST DAY! Learning, sharing, making, doing, thinking, acting

·       LEARNING ANALYSIS DUE & PRESENTED; LOGBOOK 4 DUE; website splash page and data. (And anything you haven't already turned in). All in hard copy in class and electronic copies to gmail. 

On our last day we will share with each other our thoughts on how what we know has changed during our time together.

You will get a written evaluation from me as I look through all your work for the semester. It will come on email, at the email address I have from Testudo's roster. Be sure to check that email to see it and your grade for the semester. I will do my best in the evaluation to share my interest in your work and to offer suggestions for the future. And I would be delighted to see you next term to discuss this class or anything else! I have enjoyed our class so much, and appreciate all of you! 

Passing some sweetness around....

Today we begin for everyone with some exercises, to help us focus and make it a bit easier to share what we have done in the learning analysis. Today each person will speak and offer their own unique sense of traveling through the argument or story of the course. Our personal feelings are, of course, a special part of this. But do think of this primarily as an intellectual sharing of analysis as well as of any careful personal details. Celebrating each others' work and our own, and especially thinking together today about the knowledge we each bring into being is the collective project here, our feminist reconceptualization. So listen as carefully as you speak, because active listening is as necessary to collective thought. If someone else says something you intended to say, then -- thinking on your feet -- find another something to say that is a unique bit of your own work instead. 

Focusing exercises for presenting: 

EVERYONE:

1) find your favorite paragraph in the learning analysis. Put a star next to it.

2) write down what you are most proud of in this paper.

3) put an arrow next to the place you think best describes the argument of the course.

4) write down your favorite reading and be prepared to say what element of its ANALYSIS made it special for you.

PICK ONE OF THESE TOO:

=write about a moment in the course where everything seemed to come together for you.

=write about a moment outside the course where you realized you were using something you had learned in the class.

=write about a moment when you discovered something new about how you were included in the argument of the class. 

WHEN IT IS YOUR TURN TO SPEAK:

pick out four of these to share. Focus on analysis -- of the course, readings, experiences, realizations -- especially, although feelings and politics have important places too. Be mindful of the time -- we want to allow time for everyone in the class to speak today -- give some real details: don't be too general. Do show off the hard thinking you are capable of. Make sure what you say is special and unique.

And may we keep running into each other, over and over, in friendship and connection and intellectual community and joyful living!

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Bateson and learning? reality? how things are connected?

 

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UMD is closed today, Tuesday 12/10/2013

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The University of Maryland College Park is closed today, Tuesday 12/10/2013.

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WE WILL MEET ON THURSDAY AS SCHEDULED FOR LAST DAY OF CLASS! 
NO GRADE WITHOUT LOGBOOK 4! TURN EVERYTHING IN THEN DUE ON THE LAST DAY, AND ANYTHING YOU'VE MISSED CAN BE TURNED IN THEN TOO!

BRING HARD COPIES TO CLASS!

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wishes for you!

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Loving our media ecologies and lives of hope and planetary possibility. 
How to Make a Seed Bomb: http://www.greendiary.com/seed-bomb1.html

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Tuesday 10 December, MORE!! Share Feminism/s, how? with whom? with what fiero?

·       Bateson, “Theory” from Steps (electronic reserves) or here. 

·       Vared, “Beyond Barbie” read the whole thing now (electronic reserves) 

How do Bateson and Vared, from much longer again, put what we have done in the class into context? How might they help you frame your learning analysis? Why could they be helpful?

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What is a double bind? why might it matter to us?





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Bateson and learning? reality? how things are connected?



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Thursday 12 December, LAST DAY! Learning, sharing, making, doing, thinking, acting

·       LEARNING ANALYSIS DUE & PRESENTED; LOGBOOK 4 DUE; website splash page and data. (And anything you haven't already turned in). All in hard copy in class and electronic copies to gmail. 

On our last day we will share with each other our thoughts on how what we know has changed during our time together.

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going meta?

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MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarden website
Creating your own computer game is child's play (2008) 
Invent to Learn : check out this book!!
Katie's Transmedia Ecologies Learning 

The fourth section of our course:

>>>HOW WE CARE FOR AND WITH PLAY

Put the sections together.... how?

>>>WHAT DOES FUN REALLY MEAN?
>>>GATHERINGS: WITH PROCESSES, THINGS, BEINGS AND DISTRIBUTED POSSIBILITY
>>>MAKING REALITY MATTER, MATTERING REALITIES

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Tuesday 3 December, Share Feminism/s, how? with whom? with what fiero?

·       Explore and review and admire and model what folks have done at NYMG! Bring in printouts of your favorite posts, with thoughts about how these connect with your projects for A Gathering and Gaia, and effects on your own website.

·       PREPARATION FOR THE LEARNING ANALYSIS: do you have questions? You should have started.

What do McGonigal, Reed, and Flanagan have to teach us about the issues raised in the other books that we might have missed if we hadn’t read their work?

Thursday 5 December, Prototyping: website creation and curation

·       YOU HAVE A WEBSITE!

Our fifth “flipping the classroom” Thursday! You MUST BE PREPARED so we can spend our time MAKING THINGS! What are you curating on your website? How does it include what you have learned in this class?

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Practicing meta-cognition: what is it and why should we care? 
From Annenberg Learner: http://www.learner.org/faq/  

09_metacogb

 

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a week without class: of work ahead, and of meditations and celebrations....

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Tuesday 26 November, NO CLASS: WORK AHEAD DAY for Website & Learning Analysis

• Look at and download Instructions for the Learning Analysis: LOOK AT END OF SCHEDULE FOR INSTRUCTIONS TO SUBMIT!
• What are you curating on your website? How does it include what you have learned in this class? Could it be an on-going portfolio of your experiences?

• On the last day of class for the website you will turn in a screenshot or digital pic of your website main or Splash page, a drawing or screenshot of the structure of your site. You will give the url or web address, a few sentences about why you chose your platform and its best features for your purposes, and a bit about why you structured it as you did. 

Thursday 28 November, NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING BREAK 

Many meanings to Thanksgiving, this time and all times. In the midst of celebrations consider the histories of all entangled through these days....

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• Gaia: Worlding and feminist action

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Five technologies:
=reading power (radical semiotics, la facultad, ‘signifyin’
=deconstruction (coatlicue
=meta-ideologizing
=differential perception (nepantla
———————
=democratics, an ethical technology: mobilizes the previous four 

so that agencies can select tactics according to political situation

tactics such as
=integrationism
=revolutionary action
=supremacism
=separtism
=anarchism
=political defense of the human or redefinition of the human
=or even defiance of categorizing as “human”

all this becomes 

A PLACE-BASED ECOLOGICAL ACTIVISM 
IDENTIFYING POLITICAL & CULTURAL PLANETARY GEOGRAPHIES

Sandoval's differential consciousness & oppositional consciousness 

Sandoval essay on Google docs   

I highly recommend Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed too. 

Read ahead? Bateson article here. 

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Tuesday of Gaia, we will meet during class time to share our projects, displaying posters and handouts on the walls of our room, walk and talk one-on-one with each other, share questions, observations, excitements! On that Thursday, we will continue to work with the energy generated by the first day of the con, collectively coming up with reflective analysis and more ideas for what comes next!

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graded assignments: paper, poster, learning analysis, logbook, prototyping

Five kinds of assignments are required in this class:

• a research paper with visual handout for con display (enough handout print-outs for all in class), • a research poster for con display, documented with digital pictures (hardcopy in class, electronic to be emailed), • a final learning analysis, • a logbook, • some techno-crafty prototyping activities, some done during class.

The first three: paper, poster, learning analysis, allow you to position the work for the class in various frameworks, or knowledge worlds. In each of these you will work on research, analysis, and critical thinking. Some of this will be in traditional academic forms, some in emerging scholarly practices, but it is possible to combine these also with the techno-crafty delights cons have always shown off as well. And papers and poster projects may be be done with partners or individually, as you choose.

The logbook will help you organize your projects: when you started them, how many drafts you completed, who you worked with, where you are in what you have done, and what still needs to be done. It will be turned in four times during the semester (the first in time for early warning grades), and you won’t get credit for any assignments until the final version is turned in on the last day of class with the final version of the learning analysis. You can download a template for the logbook here. 

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• Gaia: Worlding and feminist action

Week of 19 November:

Gaia Union: peer to peer worlding: click image

“Gaia” is inspired by the environmental interests of FemCon, a feminist gaming convention in Umeå, Sweden. For Gaia you will create either • a paper & handout or • poster & pics (which determined by lot earlier, whichever one you did not do for A Gathering). You may work on these individually or with a partner.

With the help of Nardi, Pearce & Artemesia, or Taylor, you will analyze feminist processes of play, worlding and games as activist actions. You will either begin from • the most urgent feminist issue you care about, exploring gaming and/or virtual world practices that might speak to it; or you will begin from • your own most valued game or virtual world, and analyze its possibilities for the feminist values you most care to embody. ALWAYS make a point of connecting projects to class readings, activities, and discussions. ALWAYS use a standard model for citation and bibliography, even on posters. NOTICE how useful the website Not Your Mama’s Gamer will be here! You may also want to use the web to follow-up or look in greater detail at the kinds of worldings feminisms explore today and ways all of these are promoted in popular and scholarly media.

Remix additions: flip cameras at WMST: Papers and posters may include a range of media creativities, in addition to their analytic aspects. Media fandoms are known for creative work: drawing, mashups, remix, vids, machinima, and more. Any of these may be ADDED to a project if you like. Women’s Studies now has a library of flip cameras for video projects, and you can check one out for a week at a time on a first come, first served basis. Notice that these techno-crafty things are enhancements to the basic project, not a substitute for one, or the only platform! They must be accompanied by a paper or poster no matter what. This is an opportunity to enjoy media learning in alternative forms, but these additions are entirely at your own discretion and pleasure!

Exploring these topics and themes as if at a con means that by attending and listening we will all benefit from the hard work of everyone. Notice that both sorts of projects in both cons should be begun several weeks ahead of their due dates. Not only do you need this time to do any additional research or reading, but to get good grades you need to • write papers in at least three drafts, and • plan out posters carefully to demonstrate both the results of your research and also how you got to those results.

Obviously attending class faithfully and taking good notes will make all this work a lot easier. Lecture materials are displayed on the class website, to be reviewed at any time. In college courses ALWAYS use your projects to demonstrate how you uniquely put together, or synthesize, class readings, mini-lectures and discussion. Make a point of displaying that you are doing all the reading and attending all the classes. Doing this clearly and carefully will demonstrate that this is your own work, and ensure your credit for honesty and for real engagement with the course.

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