MULTIMEDIA AND DIGITAL LITERACY ICS 139w 08/29/11

Assignment grading Bug in comments for Assignment 4 Can talk to Dmitri (or myself) about scores Rewrites due Wednesday Midnight ( directly to Joel) Other questions?

Slide Peer Critiquing Look over your partner’s slides and fill out the critique worksheet You do not have to give a full run of your presentation This is to check in and to get feedback on organization and aesthetics

Media Q: What is media? A: The plural of “medium”: the means for doing something The channel used for communication The material used for art etc.

Communication Media What methods / channels did you use to talk to people since our last class?

Communication Media Face-to-Face Phone Skype Chat / Instant Message platform specific instances? Letters (“snail-mail”) Video Chat Actions Other?

Dimensions of a Medium Richness “rate and quality” of information conveyed—the bandwidth number of channels, language variety, feedback available Mass vs. individual Private vs. public Asynchronous vs. synchronous Recordable vs. ephemeral

“Beyond Being There” Hollan and Stornetta, 1992 (CHI) “telecommunications research seems to work under the implicit assumption that there is a natural and perfect state -- being there -- and that our state is in some sense broken when we are not physically proximate” Can we have a medium that is better than face-to-face?

Multimedia Using more than one medium in communication Text + Images + Audio + Video + etc. How does multimedia improve communication? How does multimedia worsen communication?

Hypertext Hyperlinking as a form of multimedia Hyperlinking Simple, early form of multimedia Embedding text in other text, rather than one medium in another Non-linear, interactive writing (c.f. PowerPoint) Contextualizes text

Memex Vannevar Bush, 1945, As We May Think

Information vs. Communication Memex positions computers as information storage systems, not as communication mediums information&word2=internet+communication Consider: What are computers good at? What are people good at?

Digital Literacy “Digital literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, and create information using digital technology.” (cornell.edu) Being able to use technology Navigate digital information stores e.g., search the Internet and find information

Why Digital Literacy? What do we mean by “literacy”? Sci-Fi: Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (2006) An economy based on analyzing data “In almost all modern jobs, search and analysis are how we make our living” c.f.: Mechanical Turk

Finding Information Search engines The power of the key word Guessing what other people have written Appropriateness of resources Social Search

Scavenger Hunt! Work with a partner or individually Search for answers to questions on the Internet You will have 5 minutes – see how many you can answer!

Scavenger Hunt Debrief How well did you do? What questions were hard / easy? Why? What strategies worked well? (is this exercise at all interesting?)

Information Reliability Source of information? Potential bias? Is information (or even Truth) socially constructed? word---wikiality word---wikiality

Contributing to the Knowledge Base Internet: communally defined information store. Contribute to information storage to help others in the future Ethical responsibility to teach and inform Put your writing online! Benefits of collaborative writing (peer review)

Wikipedia One example of a knowledge base Reliability Search-ability Bias

Edit Wikipedia! Individually, look up one of your assignment topics in Wikipedia. To to find: An error Something that isn’t clear Something that needs clarification Make a change to improve the entry You are empowered to contribute to the public knowledge and to correct the mistakes of others. You have permission to add your input to collective knowledge

Conclusion Language and writing is a social process Information is socially constructed Writing is not just essays—variety of communication mediums Value of written communication Recordable, translatable, standard Goal: effective and efficient communication

Homework Prepare presentation for Wednesday! Turn in slides to EEE by Tuesday 5pm Assignments 4/5 rewrites due Wednesday Midnight directly to Joel Can talk to us about scores on papers Dmitri for Assignment 4 Joel for Assignment 5

Evaluations Take 5 minutes and fill out the EEE Evaluation What did you get out of this class? What worked; what didn’t work? What can I do to improve the class next year? (can also fill it out after class on Wednesday)