Response 1 – TaylorP

Response 1B– Jack Lampinen & Tyler Rollins

The New Media curriculum is poorly structured, communicated about, and executed.

There needs to be student intervention in the creation process of said curriculum. There is no way for UMaine faculty to obtain an absolute understanding on what sort of impacts their individual agendas have on each student, because they cannot see how each agenda stacks on top of the student like the student can.

Top 3 Strategies

Tap Into Local Networks

To tap into local networks means to engage the nearby people or environment to solve a problem, whether it is social, technological, or ecological.

The UMO student body is a resource to be used for this project. Students are more often than not waiting for the next opportunity to join some sort of movement.

Distribute and Connect Information

To distribute and connect is to break up a problem into parts that can be solved by decentralized people or computers and then connect their results to piece together a solution, whether evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence or a cure for AIDS.

We need to use communication in order to solve this problem. The lack of communication is the problem in the first place, and this is a wide-scale problem, that affects a wide-scale amount of people, and there needs to be a connection. To achieve this, a social network page could easily be setup to connect all or most New Media majors in order to discuss and connect our ideas.

Mobilize People

To mobilize is to energize people on the streets or other public spaces, especially using mobile devices such as smartphones or tablet computers like iPads.

Taking advantage of technology to spark an interest and compassion in people to solve this problem should be fairly easy.

As for reaching our audience… we’re at an advantage because there are a lot of students in the New Media department who have experienced the strife that comes with it, so making our audience understand and develop a passion for the problem should be mostly done already. The real challenge will be organizing this energy into something that means something and can accomplish something.

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Honestly this article confuses me so far and is almost frustrating to read. It feels like it is reaching so hard for a point that really doesn’t exist and like most of the things we have done in class so far, it feels like it is trying to give me something to be mad about when it really isn’t necessary. Before reading this article I had never not thought of the newspaper, magazines, or television as forms of mediums. I mean I guess I understand that the technical definition would say more that the ink that is printed onto magazines or newspapers is the medium but I think this article is being so critical of that. I think partly though that this article is opening my eyes to things I really never gave a whole lot of thought to before reading this. I have taken communications classes and such but I have never before heard that there are only three communications mediums that exist. Not to mention, if you asked me going into this major what I thought New Media was, my answer would be so far gone from this article it almost makes me feel like a fool for not knowing more about the technical details beforehand. What I previously defined New Media as was the newer generations media, such as developing apps for iPhones and creating extremely interactive art pieces, websites, and learning to be flexible with the technology that is constantly upgrading. I thought this major was more about sticking out and being able to keep up with the ever changing media and having classes that are much more modernized versus classes that have been taught the exact same way for the past 100 years.

EXERCISE 1: WHICH IS THE NEW MEDIA SOLUTION?

Ian Larson wanted to help preserve the Passamaquoddy language from extinction.

B) Distribute laptops with video cameras to schoolkids in the Passamaquoddy community, and ask them to record their grandparents telling stories in Passamaquoddy. Upload these to a Web site along with the grandparents’ definitions of particular words used in the story, and make these words searchable via a tag cloud

Personally I think this is the better option since you can forever keep the video and not only preserve the memories of the grandparents through video but also hear how someone with a native tongue can speak a certain language versus some translator dictionary. Ask anyone who has ever learned a second language that it is considerably easier to learn through a person who has it as their first language to help direct you versus just reading words on a page and hoping you’re putting them together correctly.

Evan Habeeb wanted to make people aware of the beauty of abandoned buildings.

A) Assemble a film crew and visit abandoned homes, factories, and other buildings. Bring lights to illuminate these spaces dramatically, and record ambient sounds like dripping water. Edit the footage onto a DVD to create a compelling account that documents these relics for posterity, and distribute copies to historical societies across the state for their collections.

First of all the second solution is just stupid because thats how you end up with abandoned houses just covered with stickers so you can’t even see the house yourself for all that it is when you go and are just left to see photos a photographer took from before the house was vandalized. I think the answer A is good simply because you can capture the “beauty” of the house without disrupting or corrupting it. The second solution is a good thought to have a code you can scan to see photos of the house but to present the idea that there are stickers everywhere left behind by travelers is foolish.

Ryan Schaller and Jason Walker wanted to help people understand the many layers required to create a computer-animated film, including wireframe, textures, and light effects. As a case study, they created an animation depicting a cartoon archeologist digging for ancient artifacts.

A) Design and build a touch-screen interface that allows viewers to “rub” away layers of the film with their hands to reveal previous stages of the animation as it plays.

I think this option is very user friendly but also present the information of them creating it all while making it a user choice to watch it or not. I think that this will keep the watcher involved and curious and this almost reminds me of some sort of installment I would see in a museum. The only real problem I see with the second option is the user is forced to watch all pieces of the process individually compared to the much more effortless “rub” away idea that lets the person see the deeper parts of the video at their own discretion.

Danielle Gagner wanted to renovate the waterfall fountain under the skylight in the middle of the University Union, which had fallen into disrepair.

B) Use Google Image Search to download photographs of natural bodies of water such as streams, rivers, and the ocean. Combine these with nature footage from sources like National Geographic and the Discovery Channel to create a multichannel video installation that projects images of flowing water and rippling waves onto the fountain, which has been covered with theatrical screening. Supplement the moving images with the sound of a babbling brook emanating from surround-sound speakers mounted on the ceiling.

I think this would be the most interesting way to turn something broken into an art exhibit and almost add a little projection mapping into it. It would be easy to change and almost adjust with the seasons to have it project something else each time and I think instead of one simple fix of redoing the plumbing this gives them a chance to create something bigger and more interactive out of it.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS ARE BORING

How can you help educational writers make use of appealing formats like comic books?

I think the best way to help out comic books in this situation is almost turn them digital. More kids now than ever have iPads or iPhones. What I picture is turning the technology into a much more interactive way of being able to read these. For example if in a comic book, if you used the 3D touch feature to “push” on the screen over a comic image, it might turn to life or start playing a video of what happened in that scene instead of a still image. Or even potentially have it read the comic out loud and then have the videos play at relevant parts.