Our 2010 TLT Faculty Fellows have been announced! Please join me in welcoming Sam Richards, Ann Clements, Laura Guertin, and Richard Devon. In the coming days project descriptions and introductions will appear. It is going to be a great summer!
Just a quick pointer to our own Same Richards' Ted Talk and its availability from the TED Talks website. I saw Sam was being promoted on the front page and thought it would be good to capture it here. His talk is excellent and well worth the time spent. Check out, "A radical experiment in empathy."
Something I didn't add in my last post is that this TLT Faculty Fellowship has tapped me into outcome in a way that generally eludes me. For whatever reason, I don't put outcome and assessment at the forefront of my thinking and class design. That's odd, I realize, but "learning" and "critical thinking" are things that I just assume happen in my classroom and I just never put energy into figuring out how to improve them. More to the point, over the past twenty-five years students have consistently said that they "left my classes with their heads spinning with new ideas" and so I never saw the need to focus on assessment in my course design. As to those students who did not say this, I just assumed that they were jaded curmudgeons and there was no reaching them. Convenient....yes...I know.
But as I've entered head first into course design I've been able to see the ways in which I don't even understand assessment and outcome, let alone focus on it. And so this has been a bright spot among all of the other bright spots of the summer. What DO I want my students to get out of an assignment? It's not enough to just think it's cool (even if it is cool); putting some thought into how the assignment will land in the laps of students and what they'll do with it can greatly enhance the likelihood that they'll think it's as cool as I do. And if that happens, then I've got them where I want them. It's amazing how the basic principles of pedagogy 101 have escaped my understanding and application for so many years. What a knucklehead I can be...but at least I can laugh at myself.
But as I've entered head first into course design I've been able to see the ways in which I don't even understand assessment and outcome, let alone focus on it. And so this has been a bright spot among all of the other bright spots of the summer. What DO I want my students to get out of an assignment? It's not enough to just think it's cool (even if it is cool); putting some thought into how the assignment will land in the laps of students and what they'll do with it can greatly enhance the likelihood that they'll think it's as cool as I do. And if that happens, then I've got them where I want them. It's amazing how the basic principles of pedagogy 101 have escaped my understanding and application for so many years. What a knucklehead I can be...but at least I can laugh at myself.
So I jumped on the TLT Faculty Fellows blog to see what's happening in people's lives and how projects are unfolding and I realized that I haven't visited in a few weeks. I'm inclined to say "sorry about that" except it's the very nature of the work and vision of the TLTers that leads me to have so little time to document what I've been up to. Let me explain.
Every new idea creates about five others and somehow when I find myself in a room with technology-teaching visionaries like Allen, Jeff, and Erin, the ideas that get tossed out into that room are never the ones that call for simple cosmetic changes; they're the ones that dismantle the foundations of systems. And each new technological marvel only opens the doorway to others. And there is never enough time to just learn and apply one new program (e.g., Voice Thread)...and so I find that I have to go out into the WWW and learn things on my own. Let's see: iMovie, Illustrator, Fireworks, advanced HTML coding, Voice Thread, GarageBand, Soundtrack Pro, Word Press, etc. This list keeps getting longer and longer.
And at issue is that these skills don't just begin and end with my SOC 119 class. I've been working on a fund raising project with colleagues in Pittsburgh and Haiti and Laurie and I have made several short videos using iMovie to help that project along. It always seems like it's going to be simple when I/we begin something like that, but it never is. So after several trips to Sparks or Pollock or Pattee we finally got some results that were pretty cool. And my point is that these new skills that I'm learning are being put to use in so many different venues that I have very little time to reflect upon them.
Here's a video that Laurie threw together to recruit Middle Eastern students for our West Meets Middle East Project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PoaV13P8eE
One one hand this looks like a very simple video. And it is for someone who has knowledge of Final Cut Pro or iMovie. But we've never made a video and we wouldn't have had the vision or the courage to jump into it without this TLT Faculty Fellowship this summer. And that's just one video. Here's another we made for our Haiti fund raising. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv8T3Yot3Xc
This one was a bit more complex and Laurie won't win any awards for style (it really is her work). However, with photos I took in Haiti coupled with a song written by my cousin along with the courage to make mistakes and supported by the wonderment of a seven-year-old to figure things out, we have a video that works for our needs and we didn't have to find someone else to do it. So rock on for that.
This entire experience has blown open my doors of experimentation and I'm ready to really have some fun in January when I return to the classroom. But for now, it's back to work because tonight I'm trying to tweak our PSU blogs template. There's got to be a way for me to put the World in Conversation logo up there....
Every new idea creates about five others and somehow when I find myself in a room with technology-teaching visionaries like Allen, Jeff, and Erin, the ideas that get tossed out into that room are never the ones that call for simple cosmetic changes; they're the ones that dismantle the foundations of systems. And each new technological marvel only opens the doorway to others. And there is never enough time to just learn and apply one new program (e.g., Voice Thread)...and so I find that I have to go out into the WWW and learn things on my own. Let's see: iMovie, Illustrator, Fireworks, advanced HTML coding, Voice Thread, GarageBand, Soundtrack Pro, Word Press, etc. This list keeps getting longer and longer.
And at issue is that these skills don't just begin and end with my SOC 119 class. I've been working on a fund raising project with colleagues in Pittsburgh and Haiti and Laurie and I have made several short videos using iMovie to help that project along. It always seems like it's going to be simple when I/we begin something like that, but it never is. So after several trips to Sparks or Pollock or Pattee we finally got some results that were pretty cool. And my point is that these new skills that I'm learning are being put to use in so many different venues that I have very little time to reflect upon them.
Here's a video that Laurie threw together to recruit Middle Eastern students for our West Meets Middle East Project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PoaV13P8eE
One one hand this looks like a very simple video. And it is for someone who has knowledge of Final Cut Pro or iMovie. But we've never made a video and we wouldn't have had the vision or the courage to jump into it without this TLT Faculty Fellowship this summer. And that's just one video. Here's another we made for our Haiti fund raising. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv8T3Yot3Xc
This one was a bit more complex and Laurie won't win any awards for style (it really is her work). However, with photos I took in Haiti coupled with a song written by my cousin along with the courage to make mistakes and supported by the wonderment of a seven-year-old to figure things out, we have a video that works for our needs and we didn't have to find someone else to do it. So rock on for that.
This entire experience has blown open my doors of experimentation and I'm ready to really have some fun in January when I return to the classroom. But for now, it's back to work because tonight I'm trying to tweak our PSU blogs template. There's got to be a way for me to put the World in Conversation logo up there....
With Sam and Laurie's faculty fellow project, we reconceptualized their Race Relations Project and have gotten back into the design of their SOC 119 course. It's a massive undertaking. They aren't teaching it again until Spring, so we have some time to work things out.
There are 720 students in the class. Last year, 2/3 of them participated in small group (about 15-person) discussions and the other 1/3 didn't have groups. Instead, those 240 students were asked to participate in the course blog. As we've been talking in our team meetings, we kept coming up with good ideas - but ideas that would work best within the small group discussion sections. So I asked if there was another way of setting up the course so all students could be in discussions sections.
The main problem is simply a matter of logistics and finding enough group leaders. As the class has been run before, there were 32 sections of the course, each with two discussion leaders who participate in two different discussion groups. So that means they need to coordinate the work of 32 discussion leaders to cover 2/3 of the class. Bump that up to covering all students would mean that you need 48 sections and 48 discussion leaders.
Another model that we discussed to cover everyone would be to only have the groups meet every other week - so team leaders A and B would work with four sections:
Week 1: no meetings
Week 2: Sections 1 and 3
Week 3: Sections 2 and 4
Week 4: Sections 1 and 3
Week 5: Sections 2 and 4
...
We also talked about reducing the class size from 15 to 12, to make it easier to get everyone involved in the conversation. Then, during the weeks that those students aren't meeting, they would be doing something online that is both personal and related to the class such as posting a picture of their neighborhood to a group blog for their small group section.
So with the reduced class size and the one-on, one-off structure, we would actually need 30 group leaders. Math as follows:
720 students/12 students per section = 60 sections
(60 sections x 2 discussion leaders/section)/ 4 sections per discussion leader = 30 discussion leaders
[Yay - Math to the rescue. Now I feel good about my engineering degree.]
There are actually other people involved as well. Currently, they have five people who visit the discussion sections randomly to do a kind of quality control. Sam was thinking that he might want to increase this to 10 people - so he has some people available to monitor the group blog spaces.
So how does Sam afford a staff of 40 for one course? All of them are doing this work as part of a higher-level sociology course. It's a fantastic idea that I've seen work elsewhere, like in BBH 146 (intro to human sexuality) and through several examples presented at the NCAT conference, which is about large course redesign. It's a great educational experience for the students who act as peer mentors, combining a leadership opportunity with higher-order thinking about the content and issues that come up in the discussion sections.
Another consequence of this design is that we now have an interesting use case. The idea is to use the Blogs at Penn State platform to manage 60 section-based group blogs. So automatic (once-daily) syncing with course section membership would be necessary, along with the ability to add additional people like the group discussion leaders, who would have admin access. None of these should be run out of students' personal space, so we'd need to set up departmental space for these sections as well. And they should be semester-specific, so students who participate in Spring 2011 continue to have access, but don't interfere with students in the same section number who are taking the course in Fall 2011.
It will be a challenging situation, but as is the case with previous faculty fellow projects, the experimental use of our tools helps to shape our thinking about how they are used and how we need to modify them.
There are 720 students in the class. Last year, 2/3 of them participated in small group (about 15-person) discussions and the other 1/3 didn't have groups. Instead, those 240 students were asked to participate in the course blog. As we've been talking in our team meetings, we kept coming up with good ideas - but ideas that would work best within the small group discussion sections. So I asked if there was another way of setting up the course so all students could be in discussions sections.
The main problem is simply a matter of logistics and finding enough group leaders. As the class has been run before, there were 32 sections of the course, each with two discussion leaders who participate in two different discussion groups. So that means they need to coordinate the work of 32 discussion leaders to cover 2/3 of the class. Bump that up to covering all students would mean that you need 48 sections and 48 discussion leaders.
Another model that we discussed to cover everyone would be to only have the groups meet every other week - so team leaders A and B would work with four sections:
Week 1: no meetings
Week 2: Sections 1 and 3
Week 3: Sections 2 and 4
Week 4: Sections 1 and 3
Week 5: Sections 2 and 4
...
We also talked about reducing the class size from 15 to 12, to make it easier to get everyone involved in the conversation. Then, during the weeks that those students aren't meeting, they would be doing something online that is both personal and related to the class such as posting a picture of their neighborhood to a group blog for their small group section.
So with the reduced class size and the one-on, one-off structure, we would actually need 30 group leaders. Math as follows:
720 students/12 students per section = 60 sections
(60 sections x 2 discussion leaders/section)/ 4 sections per discussion leader = 30 discussion leaders
[Yay - Math to the rescue. Now I feel good about my engineering degree.]
There are actually other people involved as well. Currently, they have five people who visit the discussion sections randomly to do a kind of quality control. Sam was thinking that he might want to increase this to 10 people - so he has some people available to monitor the group blog spaces.
So how does Sam afford a staff of 40 for one course? All of them are doing this work as part of a higher-level sociology course. It's a fantastic idea that I've seen work elsewhere, like in BBH 146 (intro to human sexuality) and through several examples presented at the NCAT conference, which is about large course redesign. It's a great educational experience for the students who act as peer mentors, combining a leadership opportunity with higher-order thinking about the content and issues that come up in the discussion sections.
Another consequence of this design is that we now have an interesting use case. The idea is to use the Blogs at Penn State platform to manage 60 section-based group blogs. So automatic (once-daily) syncing with course section membership would be necessary, along with the ability to add additional people like the group discussion leaders, who would have admin access. None of these should be run out of students' personal space, so we'd need to set up departmental space for these sections as well. And they should be semester-specific, so students who participate in Spring 2011 continue to have access, but don't interfere with students in the same section number who are taking the course in Fall 2011.
It will be a challenging situation, but as is the case with previous faculty fellow projects, the experimental use of our tools helps to shape our thinking about how they are used and how we need to modify them.
I very much enjoyed the sessions this morning. After my talk I had the opportunity to speak with a few folks and realized that on at least one issue I inadvertently conveyed a message that is the opposite of what I believe. I did not intend to say that faculty must be "dynamic" in their classrooms. In fact, I think that instructors need to fully be themselves when they are teaching and that they need to draw on their strengths. If someone is an amazing communicator and has a way with words and language but is uncomfortable anywhere but standing behind the podium, then he or she should build on what is clearly a strength -- in this case their ability to communicate effectively.
I would say that if we want to keep students engaged, then we should not fight with what is. In our world, "what is," it seems to me, is that students will tune out after a short period of time. We can fight it or we can do something to bring their minds back into the room every twenty minutes or so (e.g., show a YouTube clip) that fits with our lesson. We can fight it or we can go with it. Moreover, and this is entirely my opinion, what works for me is to touch the edgy side of life. Students rarely respond negatively so long as it's not gratuitous. There has to be a lesson in whatever it is I do in the classroom or students will call me out. They do NOT want to be entertained; they want to learn. I have been pleasantly surprised by how many times students iterate that learning is more important than entertainment.
If there are any other issues that people would like to address, feel free to start an exchange.
I would say that if we want to keep students engaged, then we should not fight with what is. In our world, "what is," it seems to me, is that students will tune out after a short period of time. We can fight it or we can do something to bring their minds back into the room every twenty minutes or so (e.g., show a YouTube clip) that fits with our lesson. We can fight it or we can go with it. Moreover, and this is entirely my opinion, what works for me is to touch the edgy side of life. Students rarely respond negatively so long as it's not gratuitous. There has to be a lesson in whatever it is I do in the classroom or students will call me out. They do NOT want to be entertained; they want to learn. I have been pleasantly surprised by how many times students iterate that learning is more important than entertainment.
If there are any other issues that people would like to address, feel free to start an exchange.
The "World in Conversation" team has spent the past few weeks examining and envisioning the future of the Race Relations Project. Now that we have the overall concept worked out and have created some visual elements to go along with it, we'll be spending some time looking at activities. How can we create physical and virtual spaces for these conversations to happen? What can we do to trigger them? How can we revise what Sam and Laurie have done in the past to take advantages of social media? Here is a start on some of those ideas (I may not have the activities completely right, but you'll get the idea):
Sam used to do an activity where he would have a group of people in the front of the class who represent different minority groups (disability, body size, race/ethnicity, etc...) and then invite students to have their picture taken with the person who their parents would least like to see them bring home as a partner. Students were asked to show the picture to their parents and then write about their parents' reactions. I think it's a really interesting experiment that could lead to a lot of reflection about who you are, who your family is, and an overall examination of prejudices. This activity wasn't perfect though: some students thought that it was intended to make them say things about their parents that weren't true while others received threats from their parents after seeing the pictures. Because of those issues, Sam hasn't done the activity in a while, but I think it could be revived as part of a choice of activities. In other words, students could do this one or they could choose a different option.
During the last meeting, we had a discussion about the small group meetings that are part of the SOC 119 course. Sam and Laurie said that students in these groups talk about where they grew up, but other students in the class don't really have a sense of what that means. So we thought that one activity could involve students taking pictures of the house that they grew up in or something else that represents them like "five pictures from your neighborhood" or "how my family spends a Sunday". With students' permission, this could be used as part of a data visualization component, where the photos could be clustered by factors like race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, geographical location (PA, NJ, NY, CA, etc...), urban/suburban/rural, etc... That could reveal both similarities and differences within and among groups. But more importantly it's a way to get students involved because the class would be discussing their families, their neighborhoods, and their traditions.
One of the clever activities that some of my friends have participated in is a chance to see "Gay Acts" in a place like the Hub. They put fliers up all over campus for the event and by the time it rolls around, many of the students expect to see something explicit like a room full of same-sex students making out. What they actually see is a room of students who are doing their homework, watching TV, playing cards, reading the newspaper. It's shocking only because it is so "normal". But it makes the point. Make a "shockumentary" style video with the same content and put it on YouTube - that could go viral. It is a very liberal-seeming idea though, so again, it could be an optional activity.
The main student-oriented activities in the Race Relations Project are peer-lead discussion sessions. Although students talk to their instructor about these experiences, Sam and Laurie don't collect any data about each session and there is no follow-up activity. One idea that we had was to set up a kind of "confessional" video recording after each session, where students would have the opportunity to give their immediate reactions if they wanted to. This could be used to trigger other discussions. We're really not sure how these would turn out, but it's definitely worth giving this a try and seeing what happens.
That's it for now. We had some other ideas that I may post about later, but I'd be interested to hear what others think. Also Sam and Laurie: please correct anything here that is inaccurate.
Sam used to do an activity where he would have a group of people in the front of the class who represent different minority groups (disability, body size, race/ethnicity, etc...) and then invite students to have their picture taken with the person who their parents would least like to see them bring home as a partner. Students were asked to show the picture to their parents and then write about their parents' reactions. I think it's a really interesting experiment that could lead to a lot of reflection about who you are, who your family is, and an overall examination of prejudices. This activity wasn't perfect though: some students thought that it was intended to make them say things about their parents that weren't true while others received threats from their parents after seeing the pictures. Because of those issues, Sam hasn't done the activity in a while, but I think it could be revived as part of a choice of activities. In other words, students could do this one or they could choose a different option.
During the last meeting, we had a discussion about the small group meetings that are part of the SOC 119 course. Sam and Laurie said that students in these groups talk about where they grew up, but other students in the class don't really have a sense of what that means. So we thought that one activity could involve students taking pictures of the house that they grew up in or something else that represents them like "five pictures from your neighborhood" or "how my family spends a Sunday". With students' permission, this could be used as part of a data visualization component, where the photos could be clustered by factors like race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, geographical location (PA, NJ, NY, CA, etc...), urban/suburban/rural, etc... That could reveal both similarities and differences within and among groups. But more importantly it's a way to get students involved because the class would be discussing their families, their neighborhoods, and their traditions.
One of the clever activities that some of my friends have participated in is a chance to see "Gay Acts" in a place like the Hub. They put fliers up all over campus for the event and by the time it rolls around, many of the students expect to see something explicit like a room full of same-sex students making out. What they actually see is a room of students who are doing their homework, watching TV, playing cards, reading the newspaper. It's shocking only because it is so "normal". But it makes the point. Make a "shockumentary" style video with the same content and put it on YouTube - that could go viral. It is a very liberal-seeming idea though, so again, it could be an optional activity.
The main student-oriented activities in the Race Relations Project are peer-lead discussion sessions. Although students talk to their instructor about these experiences, Sam and Laurie don't collect any data about each session and there is no follow-up activity. One idea that we had was to set up a kind of "confessional" video recording after each session, where students would have the opportunity to give their immediate reactions if they wanted to. This could be used to trigger other discussions. We're really not sure how these would turn out, but it's definitely worth giving this a try and seeing what happens.
That's it for now. We had some other ideas that I may post about later, but I'd be interested to hear what others think. Also Sam and Laurie: please correct anything here that is inaccurate.
As the Sam Richards/Laurie Mulvey faculty fellow project has been progressing, we have begun working on some ideas for logos and site designs for the new World in Conversations project. At the end of the last meeting, we were all wondering what the best way would be to talk about these designs. Google Wave can be a bit confusing. Google Drawings is nice for one picture, but doesn't have a mechanism for threaded discussion.
Inspired by Matt Meyer, I tried using VoiceThread as a way to show what Hannah Halm had come up with. It was remarkably easy to create and share with the team. As you can see from the results below, the group was able to leave comments (mostly audio) and use tools to draw on the existing design.
One downside is that no one aside from me was able to add additional images - so as Hannah made revisions, she wasn't able to add them. Also, as Dave Stong pointed out, it's time consuming to listen to the comments versus being able to scan them as text. So ultimately, Hannah moved her designs to her own blog and I think that has been working out well. I still think that VoiceThread has a place as a team communication tool.
So the above still serves as a demonstration of VoiceThread, but if you want to see what Hannah is creating, the best place to look is her blog.
Inspired by Matt Meyer, I tried using VoiceThread as a way to show what Hannah Halm had come up with. It was remarkably easy to create and share with the team. As you can see from the results below, the group was able to leave comments (mostly audio) and use tools to draw on the existing design.
One downside is that no one aside from me was able to add additional images - so as Hannah made revisions, she wasn't able to add them. Also, as Dave Stong pointed out, it's time consuming to listen to the comments versus being able to scan them as text. So ultimately, Hannah moved her designs to her own blog and I think that has been working out well. I still think that VoiceThread has a place as a team communication tool.
So the above still serves as a demonstration of VoiceThread, but if you want to see what Hannah is creating, the best place to look is her blog.
So I need to say a couple of things right from the start. While the vast
majority of my ideas start out from some crevice deep inside of my cranial cavity, they don't get too far before Laurie (my wife, for those who don't know) shapes them into something presentable for the world AND infinitely more complex and nuanced. So in a way I just motivate her to think about some issue and then take her
thoughts public and out into the world...and then I get credit for being "innovative" and "forward-thinking" and sometimes "insightful." So reading Allan's
post makes me just a bit uncomfortable in that, while I am a "TLT
Faculty Fellow," every decision that I make will be run through Laurie
for her "approval" along the lines of, "Is this what you had in mind?"
So in many ways I'm very much the public face of a larger project that starts with our relationship and extends out into the many initiatives that we get off the ground by putting our heads together. This is why Laurie (and Gregory Collins -- a local videographer who has been doing some amazing work with us) will be accompanying me to the summer TLT meetings with Allan, Jeff, and Erin.
That said, Laurie and I were having a conversation the other night about how this TLT gig is going to blow our work out of the universe in which it currently resides. As Allan mentioned, whereas we proposed working with the SOC 119 class and having those changes spill over into the Race Relations Project, we are now going back to square one and starting with our very reasons for doing this work that we do in the first place. In fact, we're starting with the question "Why?" and it's best captured in this TED talk.
Our first step was to get a new web site that can be the umbrella site for all of our endeavors (www.worldinconversation.org). I am totally stoked and can't wait for our next meeting. I'm ready to rock this thing to new places.
So in many ways I'm very much the public face of a larger project that starts with our relationship and extends out into the many initiatives that we get off the ground by putting our heads together. This is why Laurie (and Gregory Collins -- a local videographer who has been doing some amazing work with us) will be accompanying me to the summer TLT meetings with Allan, Jeff, and Erin.
That said, Laurie and I were having a conversation the other night about how this TLT gig is going to blow our work out of the universe in which it currently resides. As Allan mentioned, whereas we proposed working with the SOC 119 class and having those changes spill over into the Race Relations Project, we are now going back to square one and starting with our very reasons for doing this work that we do in the first place. In fact, we're starting with the question "Why?" and it's best captured in this TED talk.
Our first step was to get a new web site that can be the umbrella site for all of our endeavors (www.worldinconversation.org). I am totally stoked and can't wait for our next meeting. I'm ready to rock this thing to new places.
On Thursday night all of out TLT Faculty Fellows (current and past) got together with project team leads at Otto's for an evening of food and conversations. It was the kind of evening that has left me wanting more time with these brilliant people in settings like this. How we work to make sure we create informal time together is a big goal of mine for this year ... building these connections between all of our Fellows is the next step in my mind. I had an amazing time getting to hear each of them talk about their own projects and start to build links with each other.
Check out the Flickr photo set to see more from the evening.
On Tuesday, Jeff, Erin, and I met with Sam Richards to kick off his summer faculty fellow position with us. Sam brought along his wife, Laurie, who is the co-director of the Race Relations Project. He also brought along Gregory, a videographer who works for the RRP to create the videos that Sam has been posting to YouTube.
Sam is a force of nature. If you're unfamiliar with his work, this is one example of the kinds of topics he brings up in class and the way he encourages students to examine their own beliefs and place in the world:
... it's a little unnerving, but extremely engaging. This video isn't just the best of the best either - I went to his class on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues and it was a lot like this - It started off showing results of a class survey on the computer projectors while music was playing in the background (much like the warm up for a rock concert). And then during the discussion, he did a great job of getting me and the rest of the audience to think about our stance on these issues in a very personal and emotional way.
Sam's proposal for a faculty fellow position talked about Soc 119 class, "Race and Ethnic Relations", and what to do with the 1/3 of students who weren't part of the weekly discussion groups. So that's where we started, but we quickly moved on to reexamining the entire concept of the Race Relations Project, especially in light of Sam's other work that diverges from being purely about race and ethnicity. He also has some projects in process that cover other issues like LGBT topics, drugs, alcohol, sex, and "lifers" (people in prison for life). Sam would like to start lecturing on these topics so he can bring additional funding into the Race Relations Project. So we talked about needing a kind of umbrella brand for all of those topics.
At that point, Jeff said something to the effect of "it really sounds like you're talking about the world in conversation". That shifted things pretty quickly to this idea of "World in Conversation" - people talking to each other across the boundaries of geography, culture, race, class, etc... So we ran with that idea for the rest of the meeting and started talking about media integration, branding, shows, site structure, the outros of the new RRP video clips, partnerships, creating a foundation or non-profit, etc...
At one point, Laurie asked a little sheepishly, "Is this it? Do we need to work it all out today?" We reassured her that we have the WHOLE SUMMER to work through these ideas and select some things that we can accomplish in a couple of months. Step 1 accomplished: Sam registered variations of "worldinconversation.com" through his hosting service.
So that's what we have done so far. I'm very excited about working with Sam, Laurie, Gregory, Jeff, and Erin for the summer. I think we're off to a really great start.
Sam is a force of nature. If you're unfamiliar with his work, this is one example of the kinds of topics he brings up in class and the way he encourages students to examine their own beliefs and place in the world:
... it's a little unnerving, but extremely engaging. This video isn't just the best of the best either - I went to his class on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues and it was a lot like this - It started off showing results of a class survey on the computer projectors while music was playing in the background (much like the warm up for a rock concert). And then during the discussion, he did a great job of getting me and the rest of the audience to think about our stance on these issues in a very personal and emotional way.
Sam's proposal for a faculty fellow position talked about Soc 119 class, "Race and Ethnic Relations", and what to do with the 1/3 of students who weren't part of the weekly discussion groups. So that's where we started, but we quickly moved on to reexamining the entire concept of the Race Relations Project, especially in light of Sam's other work that diverges from being purely about race and ethnicity. He also has some projects in process that cover other issues like LGBT topics, drugs, alcohol, sex, and "lifers" (people in prison for life). Sam would like to start lecturing on these topics so he can bring additional funding into the Race Relations Project. So we talked about needing a kind of umbrella brand for all of those topics.
At that point, Jeff said something to the effect of "it really sounds like you're talking about the world in conversation". That shifted things pretty quickly to this idea of "World in Conversation" - people talking to each other across the boundaries of geography, culture, race, class, etc... So we ran with that idea for the rest of the meeting and started talking about media integration, branding, shows, site structure, the outros of the new RRP video clips, partnerships, creating a foundation or non-profit, etc...
At one point, Laurie asked a little sheepishly, "Is this it? Do we need to work it all out today?" We reassured her that we have the WHOLE SUMMER to work through these ideas and select some things that we can accomplish in a couple of months. Step 1 accomplished: Sam registered variations of "worldinconversation.com" through his hosting service.
So that's what we have done so far. I'm very excited about working with Sam, Laurie, Gregory, Jeff, and Erin for the summer. I think we're off to a really great start.