Engaging #citizenrelay reporters? Scotland, we need your help!
On Monday we held the first stage of training for the #citizenrelay project; an ambitious attempt to follow the Olympic torch relay across Scotland during two weeks in June, capturing the alternative stories of the games, the stories that you wouldn’t usually hear out in the mainstream media, and producing an national archive, connecting communities and beginning to construct a Scottish network of citizen reporters for future activities, events and festivals beyond 2012. The video above gives an idea of some of the ideas and discussions that were had between ourselves about how we just might make this happen. In …
Reflection: Education for the crisis? Notes from #e4c, 29th March
This blog post has been burning in my head since last week, feeling (rightly so) equally troubled, inspired and generally itchy about the whole subject area so excuse me if I get all ramble-y in places, I’m still working this out in my own head. Last week I was invited along (with around 40 others) to be part of a discussion group that was looking at education for the crisis. There were some people there who are good friends, people who I had never met but been following for twitter (in some cases, for years), some who I had came …
Week 9: I’m not going to class tomorrow, and I’m the teacher…
I’m in Scotland at the moment for other-work-related things. Which means I can’t be in class for teaching commitments tomorrow. But taking a page out of the Jon Hickman school of teaching, I am not going to be around either. Which should be bad, I should arrange something for the 2nd years in the same way I am for the 1st years, who are getting one of those online classroom discussions via our VLE, moodle. All the technological sophistication of a chatroom in the early 1990s. But that’s e-learning for you. But it’s 10.50pm on a Monday night (at the …
Project: Stories and Streams, week 8: #media2012 as an assignment brief revisited
After the classroom restructuring in the previous session, this week was used to define the #media2012 west midlands brief for the remaining alternative media and web production (AM and WP) students to take them through the processes to complete their final 100 percent portfolio task due in May. The brief The AM&WP cohort will now be working together as a group (rather than part of an online journalism investigation) and will form the basis of the #media2012 west midlands hub for during the Olympics and Paralympic Games. In this task, each member of the group is given a title and …
Project: Stories and Streams, Week 7: Events-based learning: the west midlands #media2012 hub
When I started working on the Alternative Media and Web Production (AM&WP) module late-2010, it was with the intention of working towards embedding citizen journalism and the Olympic Games as a priority topic and theme for the module. It begin with #mc539, which then evolved into #MED5008, a course within another – online journalism. The first 6 weeks, my AM&WP students worked within groups of online journalists as multimedia producers that supported the ongoing investigations around the Olympics or Education areas. The first investigations were as follows: Are West Midland Universities really doing enough to prevent student’s dropping out? Student …
Publication: The Imaginary SXSWi:If SXSWi is a Dream, Then How Do We Wake Up From It?
An article that I coauthored with my colleague Jon Hickman from BCU has been published in the special edition of FlowTV journal for SXSWi. FlowTV is a critical forum on television and media culture published by the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Flow’s mission is to provide a space where the public can discuss the changing landscape of contemporary media. The article itself is a critique of the perceived value of UK participants citing proxy attendance of mega-events as a reason for public funding – that is, when individual’s argue that personal attendance at a trade fair is beneficial …
Project: Stories and Streams, week 5. “The module is not what I expected.”
A couple of days ago, I reflected on the move towards a student -led curriculum on the alternative media and web production course that I am running at BCU. Since the change of class structure this year to a ‘stories and streams’ format, some of the common issues that I have faced has been questions relating to the expectations of what the module might look like – and importantly, what it might cover. I’ve skirted around the issues in a few of the previous posts, but I think today was a real break through in terms of how I take …