Kansas State University

search

IT News

Tag: media

PressPausePlay, a documentary exploring creative democracy

Like no other time in history, we as a global society have been given the power to create, disseminate, and digest creative works that have escaped the old methods of creation and distribution. We have started to democratize how we create, share, and consume information and creative works.

The documentary “PressPausePlay” explores this era of democratized creation and explores the new creative landscape that is present and evolving, as well as examines the question of “Does democratized creativity cause ‘true talent’ to get lost in the noise of average?” The documentary can be viewed free via several different delivery methods, all of which are available at www.presspauseplay.com.

Spring break 2011 hours for MDC, IT Help Desk

The Media Development Center (213 Hale Library) will have restricted hours (afternoons only) during K-State’s spring break, March 19-26:

Saturday, March 19 — 1-5 p.m.
Sunday, March 20 — 1-5 p.m.
Monday-Friday, March 21-25 — noon-5 p.m.
Saturday, March 26 — 1-5 p.m.

Continue reading “Spring break 2011 hours for MDC, IT Help Desk”

IT newsletter updates

As a work-in-progress, the InfoTech Tuesday newsletter blog is undergoing many changes to better meet the needs and expectations of the K-State community. Many interactive features are available in this new Web 2.0 environment, and some features are being tweaked to define their potential. The latest changes:

  • A Table of Contents is being developed in response to readers’ input last week that they missed this feature from the previous format.
  • The Comments feature has been temporarily disabled while procedures are being developed for posting reader input.
  • Polls, which are easy to use in the new format, are being discussed as tools to identify readers’ needs and preferences.

In the meantime, readers are asked to send suggestions, comments, and viewpoints via the homepage sidebar under “Feedback”, the Contact Us page, or to TellTuesday@k-state.edu.

Latest YouTube videos by Wesch on technology, education

Michael Wesch, assistant professor in Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, continues to publish YouTube videos about the technology of media and how it’s changing lives. (His debut video “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” that went live in January 2007 became a worldwide hit and currently has 6,224,476 views.)

“I don’t think of (media) as content, and I don’t even think of it as tools of communication,” Wesch said in his June 23 presentation about YouTube at the Library of Congress (see “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” below).

“I think of media as mediating human relationships,” he said. “And that’s important, because when media changed, then human relationships changed. …And that’s why I wanted to suggest that we’re gonna have to rethink all of these things, including ourselves.”

See Wesch’s space on YouTube for these and more:

An anthropological introduction to YouTube is Wesch’s June 23 presentation at the Library of Congress. It includes more than 40 minutes of entertaining and insightful YouTube videos compiled by Wesch and his students to exemplify what YouTube is and how it is changing our world and views. (To jump to specific portions of the presentation, use the “More info” link in the right column to see an index of section topics and their timepoints.)

(added to YouTube July 26, 2008. Current viewings: 186,603)

A Portal to Media Literacy includes a PowerPoint presentation with Wesch’s signature mix of interesting facts and viewpoints. It targets the assumptions that govern standard education and knowledge acquisition — and how those assumptions have been negated by the ways that students and the public are using technology to acquire, create, and use information.

(added to YouTube July 10, 2008. Current viewings: 13,254)

A Vision of Students Today is a 5-minute video created by Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at K-State. According to Wesch’s overview, it covers “some of the most important characteristics of students today — how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.” His students researched, compiled data, and are silent signholders in the video, which document facts and numbers from the viewpoint of today’s college students.
(added to YouTube Oct. 12, 2007. Current viewings: 2,579,128)