David Silver, Green Media Studies Talk 5/28 12-1:30

David Silver

Creating a Campus Farmstand:
the Landscape of Green Media Studies

Arts & Administration Friday Forum
12-1:30 pm 249 Lawrence Hall

David Silver is an associate professor of media studies and environmental studies at the University of San Francisco where he teaches classes on media history, digital media production, and green media. David co-directs USF’s Garden Project, a freshmen living learning community built around an organic garden on campus.

In 2007, USF students and professors transformed a derelict ROTC training site into the Garden Project, an organic garden. Now a flourishing testament to students’ dedication to growing food and community at USF, the 1/8 acre urban garden produces everything from apples to artichokes, and provides an inspiring space for students, staff, librarians, and faculty to experience and explore organic and sustainable gardening techniques. Beginning this year, each week Garden Project students harvest fresh produce from the garden and offer it through the campus farmstand in the middle of campus. Students also prepare homemade soups, salads, breads, and desserts featuring one or more ingredients from the garden.

In this Friday Forum, David Silver will share early experiences and observations about the Garden Project, the campus farmstand, and garden-based learning.
http://silverinsf.blogspot.com/

New Voices for New Media: UO Student Conference 6/2

Wednesday 6/2
2-5 pm, Lawrence Hall 241

• ACCESS, INFORMATION, AND BOUNDARIES: HEATH BUNTING AND NEW MEDIA ART
John Bogaard, Art History

• THE PUBLIC SPACE OF TELEVISION – UTOPIAN IDEALS OF VIDEO ART AND THE INFLUENCE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES
Ashley Gibson, Art History

• AT-HOME 3D PRINTING AND THE RETURN OF A CRAFT UTOPIA
Stacy Jo Scott, Art

• DYSTOPIAN VISIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL ANXIETY IN THE WORK OF TACITA DEAN
Michaela Rife, Art History

• INFORMATION AS AGENCY: THE ‘HYPERMODERN’ AS FERTILE HABITAT FOR A DATA-CENTRIC EXPERIMENTATION LAB
Tali Purkenson, Art History

• FACE/INTERFACE: ANN HAMILTON’S PINHOLE PORTRAITS
Sonja Dahl, Art

5/28/10 deadline to crowdsource “Hacking the Academy”

Can submissions for an edited volume on digital scholarship be compiled in 7 days, relying on a Twitter hashtag? We’re in the middle of that week now, and the hashtag is #hackacad. This project is being organized (unsurprisingly) by the savvy and effervescent Center for History and New Media.

If you have anything to contribute (or know someone who does) to the latest understanding of the following topics in digital scholarship, submit it via @#hackacad by midnight EST 5/28/10.

Table of contents/topics:

* Lectures, Classrooms, and the Curriculum
* Educational Technology
* Scholarly Societies and Conferences
* Scholarly Communication, Journals, and Books
* Academic Employment, Tenure, and Scholarly Identity
* Departments and Disciplines
* Libraries
* Miscellaneous

It’ll be interesting to see how fast the submissions are winnowed and produced into the open-access book. (Don’t blink.) Read on for hackingtheacademy.org’s synopsis.

Wired Humanities Project “Virtual Oaxaca” recognized by NEH & NMC

The Wired Humanities Project, in collaboration with Dr. Jonathon Richter (Center for Learning in Virtual Environments), Professor Gabriela Martínez, and graduate students Alina Padilla Miller and Yasmin Acosta-Myers, has received news from NEH that WHP has won a Digital Dissemination and Impact supplemental grant to underwrite the creation of “Virtual Oaxaca” — a map-based, three-dimensional space in Second Life (and, later, Open Sim).

WHP will be adding still images, videos, drawings, and curricular materials to the various spaces they create ( archaeological sites, artistic communities, museums, and the ethnobotanical garden), enabling their preservation and dissemination.  This is part of WHP’s NEH-funded Summer Institute, but also a step toward their vision of a Virtual Americas project.  The Smithsonian Latino Center, MERLOT, and the New Media Consortium are WHP’s national partners in Virtual Oaxaca, while the local partner, CLIVE, is housed in the UO’s Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE).

This NEH grant follows the news that WHP won the national New Media Consortium contest for a free sim island in Second Life through the end of September. This is where Virtual Oaxaca will be built, to gather photos, video clips, and curricular materials from teacher-participants  during the Oaxaca NEH Summer Institute, July-August, 2010.

MLA Promotion & Tenure Guidelines for Digital Work

Just in from HASTAC:

The MLA Committee on Information Technology (CIT) invites faculty, administrators, and graduate students to join a discussion about the evaluation of digital work for tenure and promotion. The MLA CIT is proposing revisions to the MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages, which are designed to help departments and faculty members implement effective evaluation procedures for new models of scholarship and teaching.

Review the guidelines and the committee’s comments at
http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital
, and share your thoughts, concerns and experiences with the evaluation of digital work. Scroll to the bottom of the page to read the comments and to add your own. MLA members, use your  member information to login to the site. Non MLA faculty/administrators/students may also comment on the Evaluation Guidelines; they simply have to register as a nonmember at
http://www.mla.org/nm_registration&xurl=guidelines_evaluation_digital
.

If you want to see P&T credit for being a digital scholar, make your voice heard here.

NEH Bridging Cultures through Film

On May 18, the NEH announced a new funding program, Bridging Cultures through Film: International Topics. This program supports projects that examine international and transnational themes in the humanities through documentary films. The first biannual deadline is July 28 2010; the second, January 5 2011.

Bridging Cultures through Film: International Topics offers two levels of support for documentary films. Filmmakers can apply for either development or production funding. Awards are for 1-3 years–up to $75,000 (development)  or $800,000 (for production).

See the earlier post on Bridging Cultures for more information about this 2010 NEH initiative.

UODS Work in Progress talks:Friday 5/14 12-1:30, McKenzie Collaboration Center

Join us for our final spring Digital Scholar work-in-progress session on Friday 5/14 in the McKenzie Collaboration Center. You’re welcome to pack a lunch in.

Stephen Fickas, Computer and Information Science

Using Virtual Environments to Make Smart Phones Smarter

Steve Fickas is interested in personalized computer applications, with a specific interest in cell-phone applications. He has been doing some pilot studies using a virtual environment (VE) to do assessment.  Users are asked to carry a cell-phone while exploring the VE. Using log data from the VE, the exploration app on the phone is tailored to the user. Steve will report on a study completed in Winter quarter on this topic.

______________________________________________________________________________

Anthony Hornof, Computer and Information Science

Interleaving Perceptual and Motor Processes in a Time-Critical Dual Task as Revealed through Cognitive Modeling and Eye Tracking

Project website:
http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/cm-hci/Multimodal/

Some mission-critical jobs require complex multitasking: air-traffic control, emergency vehicle dispatching, and power plant operation. Human-computer interfaces intended for life-critical and time-critical complex multitasking need to account for a person’s ability to monitor and respond to multiple information sources in parallel.  Yet little practical scientific theory explains human abilities, limitations, and strategies for multimodal multitasking.
This project is developing a science for predictive modeling of human abilities to integrate across multiple modalities to accomplish multiple tasks in parallel.  The project is developing scientific theory with rigorous, detailed, high-fidelity computational cognitive models of carefully collected human data, including detailed eye movement data, for tasks that are positioned between the lab—for high resolution tasks and data—and the real world—to insure practical application. The modeling emphasizes the role of central executive cognitive processing (decision-making) for managing perceptual processing, moving the eyes, and coordinating motor responses to interleaved task demands.  This project will benefit society by providing theory that can be put to practice in the design of safe and effective mission control centers, subway dispatching centers, emergency rooms, and computer systems for vehicles.

McKenzie Collaboration Center: 175 McKenzie Hall

Info: Sean Sharp ssharp@uoregon.edu Robert Long rohilong@uoregon.edu