Program for Friday
October 14, 2011

9:30-11:30 am
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue

Book/Ends?: Rethinking Scribal in the Digital Age [P; DF; PD]
Michael Pettinger (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)
Elaine Savory (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)
Dan Visel (Institute for the Future of the Book)
Moderator: Oz Frankel (The New School for Social Research)
This panel discussion address important interactions between scribal and digital media. Presentations address the publishing history of an AngloSaxon manuscript, Junius 11, the "postmodem" in scribal form in the work of Caribbean poet Kamau Brathwaite, and the work of Ted Nelson, U.S.inventor of hypertext, left frustrated by the Internet's abandonment of his vision. Each of these very different examples provides important evidence of the complex evolution of conventions over time and in different places with regard to the delivery of language and images, whether it be from oral to scribal, or scribal to digital. Digital media changes fast, which can leave data marooned on obsolete software or hardware, whereas the book lasts as long as paper and ink, (like Anglo-Saxon manuscripts). But widespread digital delivery of text is so quick and relatively cheap that there are understandably constant rumors of the death of the book as a popular artificact. This panel will generate grounded discussion of a very important cultural interface in our time, framed by the history of other changes in transmission of information.

10:00 am - 12:30 pm
Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th St., 5th floor

Opening Remarks: Stephanie Browner (Dean, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)

Emerging Learning Environments [P; DF; L]

Michael Wesch* (Kansas State University)
From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Building New Learning Environments for New Media Environments - The new media environment can be disruptive to our current teaching methods and philosophies. As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information and knowledge. They need to move from being simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able. This “knowledge-ability” is not simply a skill set as implied by the “21st Century Skills” movement, but a way of being in-the-world in which people recognize and actively examine, question, and even re-create the (increasingly digital) structures that shape our world. Knowledge-ability must begin with the recognition that new media are not “just tools” but new ways of relating to one another that entail disruptive changes in economic, social, and political structures. This presentation explores what knowledge-ability needs to be, why it is important, and how education can and must change to foster the forms ofknowledge-building, epistemology, and self-understanding we need.

Data Literacy and Cultural Analytics
Lev Manovich* (Software Studies Initiative, UC San Diego)

The joint availability of numerous large data sets on the web and freetools for data scraping, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing enable potentially anybody to become a citizen data miner. But how do we enable this in practice? What are the necessary elements of “data literacy”? How do we inspire students in traditionally non-quantitative fields (art history, film and media studies, literary studies, etc.) to start playing with big data?

One the limitations of the existing popular data analysis and visualization tools is that they are designed to work with numbers and texts – but not images and video. To close this gap, In 2007 we havee stablished Software Studies Initiative (softwarestudies.com) at University of California, San Diego. The lab’s focus in on development of new visualization methods particularly suited for media teaching and research. In my presentation I will show a sample of our projects including visualization of art, film, animation, video games,magazines, comics, manga, and graphic design. Our image sets range from 4535 covers of Time magazine to 320,000 Flickr images from “ArtNow” and “Graphic Design” groups, and one million manga pages.

In September 2011 we released ImagePlot - free software tool that visualizes collections of images and video of any size. I will discuss how we use Image Plot in classes with both undergraduate and graduate students to create collaborative projects which reveal unexpected cultural trends and also make us question our existing concepts for understanding visual culture and media.

10:00-12:00 pm
Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., room 510

Shifting the University: Tactics to Revamp Sites of Institutional Learning [DIYU; PD]
Catherine Dumas (State University of New York, Albany)
Megan Fulwiler (The College of Saint Rose)
Jennifer Marlow (The College of Saint Rose)
Kim Middleton (The College of Saint Rose)
When DIY platforms that celebrate peer-to-peer learning, participation, and consumer-created content are domesticated within existing educational institutions, then, existing models of knowledge and production are reified and reproduced. The presenters theorize the modern university as one comprised of an array of sites, each of which offers unique opportunities—as well as obstacles—for imagining how digital media can transform learning practices. Each presenter will identify a specific site for intervention and institutional revamping: the classroom, the library, online textbooks, and administration, and offer site-specific strategies for enacting and embedding a critical consciousness of contemporary knowledge production. Finally, the presenters will engage the audience in a whiteboard brainstorming session in order to produce a “toolkit” of specific practices and tactics for shifting institutional structures vis-à-vis the DIY and Edupunk cultures that proliferate just beyond the university walls.

11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St., 2nd floor

Collaborative Student-Centered Pedagogies for Cross-Disciplinary Mobile Apps [DF; PD]
Laura Gillespie (University of Baltimore)
Julie Gilliam (University of Maryland)
Betsy Nix (University of Baltimore)
Anastasia Salter (University of Baltimore)
This panel will share different case studies that exhibit collaborative student-centered pedagogies for mobile apps. In one case, three mobile applications for public history learning were researched and developed by students, which reflect both cross-disciplinary collaboration and outcomes, and themselves can be used as learning tools in and outside the classroom. Another case will share the development process of an augmented reality game framework for historic sites and design framework for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. A third case involves both instructors and students in the field of social work who develop a collaborative resource center incorporating information and tools for note-taking and learning in assessment, diagnosing, treatment-planning, intervention, research methods and clinical supervision. The content is designed on a mobile platform for easy integration into real-world settings and allows for the individual student to build a resource structure that extends and reflects their own learning and cognition processes.

12:00-2:00 pm
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue

Free iPads!?: Scalable Digital Pedagogies for Undergraduate Education [G; PD]
Hasan Elahi (University of Maryland)
Tiffany Holmes (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Elizabeth Losh (Sixth College at UC San Diego)
Adam Trowbridge (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Jessica Westbrook (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
This panel will debate the pros and cons of new courses of study that aspire to engage digital pedagogy with the goal of establishing computer literacy and social engagement. Contemporary digital pedagogy incorporates contemporary teaching strategies and novel learning tools. New courses designed to teach computer literacy often feature collaborative learning, intellectual problem solving, rigorous assignments, direct links to global contexts, as well as effective assessment and reporting to improve outcomes for students. The purpose of the panel is to define digital literacy for undergraduate students, share curricular assignments and methods, and examine the varied ways in which such literacy requirements either dilute or enhance undergraduate education. Each member of the panel will provide a case study of an educational course, or set of courses that aims to enhance digital fluency in an expanded undergraduate population, followed by a discussion and brainstorming session focused on how to enhance classes that demand students to expand their own notions of computer literacy.

12:00-5:00 pm
80 Fifth Avenue, room 802

Scrapyard Challenge [DIYU; W]
Jonah Brucker-Cohen (Parsons The New School for Design)
Katherine Moriwaki (Parsons The New School for Design)
The Scrapyard Challenge Workshops are intensive workshops co-developed and co-led by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki where participants build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded “junk” (old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets, etc..). So far the workshops have been held 46 times in 14 countries, on 5 continents with 3 different themes including the MIDI Scrapyard Challenge where participants build simple musical controllers from discarded objects and “junk”, DIY Wearable Challenge where they create wearable tech projects from used clothing, and the DIY Urban Challenge where they work on public space interventions and other projects. The MIDI Scrapyard version includes a mini workshop where participants build simple drawing robots or “DrawBots” with small, inexpensive motors, batteries, and drawing markers that can also be connected to Serial or MIDI interface. At the end of the day or evening, the workshop participants have a small performance, concert, or fashion show (depending on the workshop theme) where they demonstrate and present their creations together as a group. No electronics skills or any experience with technology is necessary to participate in the workshops.

Workshops require additional registration at no extra cost.

Please visit HERE to register.

12:30-2:30 pm
Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., room 510

Mobilizing the Shift: Edu-Factory and The Struggle Over Knowledge in An Age of Cognitive Capitalism [DIYU; PD]

George Caffentzis (Midnight Notes)

Max Haiven (Edu-Factory Collective)
Elise Thorburn (Edu-Factory Collective)
Our task to chart the ways the “knowledge economy” and “cognitive capitalism” and to follow and network struggles within and beyond the university have fundamentally reshaped the university as a political, economic and social institution and space. Today, in a digital age while the factory has not disappeared (indeed, it has globalized) the university has become one of the most important sites where social, economic and political power convene to shape the world, and where new struggles crystallize. Edu-factory aims to locate digital(izing) teaching and learning within this paradigm shift and to outline the ways cognitive capitalism both preys upon and opens up new spaces for digital creativities and affinities. The panel discussion seeks to open a window onto some of the common struggles educators and students are facing as the introduction of new technology changes the game in and around what we once knew as the university. This panel will convene a variety of perspectives on struggles within the knowledge factory from members of the Edu-Factory Collective and their theoretical and political allies and interlocutors. They will be joined by other members of the Edu-Factory Collective from around the world via video-conference link who will share short reports on their struggles in places including Italy, Tunisia, India and China.

1:00-3:30 pm
Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th St., 5th floor

From The Digital Public Library to The Media Art Archive [P; DF; L]

John Palfrey* (Harvard Law School)

A Future for Libraries - In an era of Google and Amazon and ubiquitous mobile devices, there are doubts about whether we need libraries anymore. The physical spaces that hold books and other materials in analog formats seem quaint and, worse, perhaps a waste of money. Never before have we had greater need for libraries and librarians than in the digital-plus age, a hybrid era in which the big challenges include navigating the enormous amounts of information, of varying quality, in which we can get swamped. This talk will argue that we need to build a digital public library in America that will join together with other such national digital libraries around the world, and which will support public and private libraries alike as we remake them for a new age of information, creativity, and access to knowledge.

Oliver Grau* (Danube University Krems, Austria)

Media Art Needs Histories and Archives-New Perspective for the Digital Humanities - Over the last thirty years Media art has evolved into a vivid contemporary factor, Digital Art became the art of our time but has still not arrived in the core cultural institutions of our societies. Although there are well attended festivals worldwide, well funded collaborative projects, numerous artist written articles and emerging database documentation projects, media art is still rarely collected by museums, not included or supported within the mainframe of art history and nearly inaccessible for the non northern public and their scholars. Thus, we witness the erasure of a significant portion of the cultural memory of our recent history. It is no exaggeration that we have to face a total loss of digital contemporary art and that works that originated approximately 10 years ago can normally not be shown anymore. The aim of the talk is to create an understanding that the present image revolution, which indeed uses new technologies and has also developed a large number of so far unknown visual expressions, cannot be conceived without our image history.

Rolf Hapel* (Aarhus Public Libraries, Denmark)

Rethinking the Public Library in the Networked Society - The public library has for decades been said to be on threshold of extinction. The challenges are obvious, digitization and broadband penetration, mobility in exchange of knowledge, e-books and e-readers, social technologies and software are all potential threats to the traditional business model of the public library. Based on Danish experiences this talk will highlight some of the models for the development of public libraries, relevant for the 21st century society and show examples of innovative services and transformative processes and practices founded in a paradigm of societal awareness combined with cutting edge technologies.

1:00-2:00 pm

80 Fifth Avenue, room 529

Storytelling, Interactivity and Engagment: A Introduction to The Mother Road [DF; L]

Erin Reilly (University of Southern California)

This short talk will share Reilly's personal story of traveling cross-country on Route 66 as the catalyst for developing The Mother Road, a travelogue platform that explores the relationship between curation and user-generated content. Authored tour guides combine with travelers' tales geo-tagged to the logation to learn of its foklore or anecdotes, historical or hysterical, and the people that make up the place. This is an exploration into transmedia storytelling and encourages users to learn how to map a transmediea story and build on the sttories that came before. And in return, more fully understand how their contributors add value and hel[s shape the paces we traverse.

1:30-3:30 pm

Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St., 2nd floor

Publishing Disruptions: Extra-Institutional Publishing Tools [DIYU; PD]
Morgan Currie (University Amsterdam/Institute of Network Cultures, The Netherlands)
Sam Gould (Red76/School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston/Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art)
Amanda Hickman (Document Cloud)
Michael Mandiberg (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
Simon Worthington (Mute Publishing)

To address what Geert Lovink calls the ‘sublime stagnation’ of academic publishing,this panel will present new platforms and tools for authors interested in publishing outside of traditional academic infrastructures and in exploring more open formats and licenses. This panel demonstrates that in addition to being practical instruments, new methods of publishing can provide a proactive critique of existing institutions and information channels. The panel will focus on how scholars and educators can work with producers beyond academe to develop tools suitable to their needs, and to consider the political importance of these alliances. The discussion will therefore consider ‘open’ vs. proprietary publishing flows, including software and the legal instruments that shape the life of a text. Panelists will share information on how scholars can engage with programmers, designers, artists, and IT administrators.

2:30-4:30 pm
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue

Open Education: A Student Perspective [DIYU; PD]
Lula Brown (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)
Melissa Campbell (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)
Dorry Funaki (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)
Roman Kudryashov (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)
Hanna Sender (Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts)

Current technologies have lined students up in bated anticipation for a truly open university. But in order to accept Open Access, Open Education or Open Learning we must first recognize the distinctions between having access to information and having access to an understanding or education of something. How we learn has become just as important as where or what we learn. The option of learning is abundant on the Internet, yet the possibilities of education are crushed within the broken system. An open university does not only apply to the idea of free and accessible information – it applies to the openness in its participants.

The panel will discuss their experiences with open access in the classroom and the university from the students’ perspectives. By looking at personal anecdotes as well as other institution’s precedents {MIT’s OpenCourseWare, The Berlin Doctrin) the panel will examine questions such as: Where has it worked? Where is lacking? What assumptions are being made by both teachers & students when it comes to digital proficiency? Should we be using open materials exclusively?

Questions of practicality and cost will be addressed. A hardcover textbook is often several hundred dollars. But if we had the ability to print on demand an edition that is relevant to our studies for fewer than fifty dollars then the entire educational textbook system would change. Websites like scribd.com provide ondemand texts, yet the legality of their use is questionable. Is it a professor’s imperitive to provide free and legal access to materials? Or is the ‘access’ in the hands of the students? Do the students think the school should make a financial investment, even if it means a tuition increase?

By examining the cultural history of Open Education the panel will address why open access and open education are so crucial in the university setting, and how they want to see it implemented in the context of their own education.

2:30-3:30 pm

80 Fifth Avenue, room 529

Capturing and Making Public Hopes and Fears for ICT [P; DF; L]

Janna Anderson (Elon University/Imagining the Internet Center)

The Pew Research Center has a longstanding research project focused on The Internet and American Life. Pew Internet is currently fielding the 5th in a series of surveys on the internet. This year, the survey contains expert-informed qualitative questions about technology's future influence on such areas as youth and human potential, higher education, and money. The sessionw ill present highlights of trends in key technology indicators over time and will invite audience participation in a discussion of the current survey's eight topics. Participants will also be invited to take the survey themselves, where their responses will inform the broadly disseminated Pew research report later this academic year.

3:00-5:00 pm

Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., room 510

Verb Lists - Knowledge Done Again [DIYU; W]
Trine Friis (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Sidsel Nelund (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

The workshop explores the physical aspects of learning and the relationship between bodily interpretation and text. By translating seminal texts on learning into literal body movements, the presenters wish to physically unfold the discourse of the current focus on learning in art. As learning processes and institutional power relations are changing these years it seems pertinent to investigate how these changes effects our bodily behavior. The aim of the exercise is to reflect upon the expectations that such a focus demands of our bodies and of our physical performance by asking: what type of verbs is in power (active, passive, fast, slow)? How do these verbs shape the actions of our bodies? The actions of the workshop is developed verb lists, which will be handed out and undergo a number of transformations during the session. Participants will be divided into two groups and will physically enact the verbs. The enactments will be video recorded and swapped with the other group, which will observe the movements and compile a new list of verbs based on the enactments. As such, the workshop will oscillate between text and movement, thought and action, theory and practice. By the act of reframing knowledge into literal body movements and inviting the participants to go through this process, presenters hope to create a reflexive and critical discussion about the tactile side-effects of what has been coined ‘the educational turn.’

Workshops require additional registration at no extra cost.

Please visit HERE to register.

4:00-6:00 pm

Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St., 2nd floor

The Library in Your Pocket: Library Tech Development and DIY Learning [DIYU; PD]
Kim Dulin (Harvard Library Innovation Lab)
Linda E. Johnson (Brooklyn Public Library)
Deanna Lee (The New York Public Library)
Shannon Mattern (The New School)

Libraries, in their dual – and often precariously balanced – commitments to cultural uplift and cultural outreach, have long been, at least in theory, places of self-directed, DIY learning. Yet as materials once available only in the stacks have become ever more accessible in people’s homes and in their pockets, libraries’ strategies for cultural outreach, and for supporting patrons’ self-education, have evolved. Meanwhile, international organizations are using technology to bring libraries to regions of the world where they had been scarce. And many of these initiatives are creating new opportunities for patrons to do things with or contribute to material in libraries’ collections. This panel examines how three different institutions – a public library, an academic library research unit, and a global aid organization – are helping to reshape the information ecosystem and creating new roles for themselves within it.

4:00-7:00 pm
80 Fifth Avenue, room 529

Libraries, Access to Knowledge, and Self-Learning: From the Library of Alexandria to aaaaarg.org [DIYU; ST]

Moderator: Joseph Heathcott (The New School for Public Engagement)

Christine Madsen (Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services)
This short talk will specifically address the role of the library in the history and future of DIY learning. The library has long been one of the most important centers for DIY learning, but is currently under threat (closures, budget cuts), stemming from a general misunderstanding of what it is that libraries do. If this image of the library as a ‘warehouse of information’ or ‘storehouse of knowledge’ persists, though, they will cease to be useful and essentially die. The presenters will discuss the bright future that is awaiting libraries if we think of them instead as dynamic institutions for unstructured learning. Libraries (both public and academic) are spaces for the creation of something new—they are places that should focus on people, not on content. This presentation will include brief examples of innovative libraries that represent a bright future as well as a few cautionary tales.

Henry Warwick (Riverson University, Toronto, Canada)

This talk will explore how an eBook collection such as the one described in The Alexandria Project (basically an organized hard drive filled with eBooks that is traded through trusted sub rosa networks), could positively impact a DIY education system for independent scholars. Matters of the ethics of academic publishing, as academics are already paid to produce research, will be brought up. Also, curation and canon building are important – where such a system creates its own canons through fields of interest and preference, and how it operates in concert with online libraries, especially systems like archive.org, AAAAARG.ORG, and avaxsearch.com/avaxhome.ws. The theories and ideas being generated in the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Movement will be used as a lens for discussion in this regard as The Alexandria Project and A2K theory sit at the heart of much DIY education.

Suzanne Lettrick (G.L.E.A.N.)

This short talk synthesizes research from many disciplines (i.e., neuroscience, architecture, education, and technology) in order to understand how environment affects human physiology, and how this, in turn, propels the mechanism of learning within human beings. Research shows that a learner’s engagement with his or her environment sculpts the brain; therefore, it is important for societies to seriously contemplate this fact and to craft environments that spark intrinsic learning mechanisms and that promote desired, and aligned, learning goals. The research is synthesized to articulate a new, outrageous architecture for learning so we can envision how such a space would function and look if it were created in alignment with the biological ways that humans construct knowledge. This public space for learning—which is a radical replacement proposal for today’s outmoded library—links all current forms of environment in order to facilitate immediate, integrated, and immersive learning for people worldwide.

Edward Remus (Platypus Affiliated Society)

The public library system implies a contract of cultural and intellectual access: An individual enjoys the right to access a physical copy of almost any work for a limited period of time, and – ideally - said individual will never face copyright as a barrier of access. Digital media vastly expands the horizons of freedom of access to knowledge and culture as digital copies can be reproduced infinitely and enjoyed by millions simultaneously. Yet our social contract has not been substantially renegotiated to unleash the emancipatory potentials of the shift from print to digital. Studies suggest a kind of Napster moment for ebook piracy while the publishing industry learns from the record labels’ mistakes. The Left found itself nonplussed by Lawrence Lessig’s exclusion from the circles of power and by the dubious implications of Google Books. Robert Darnton’s Enlightenment-infused mini-manifesto inspired misplaced hopes that the Digital Public Library of America might evolve into a struggle for radical overhaul on the scale of William Fisher’s Alternative Compensation System.

5:00-7:30 pm

Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue

The Future of Learning: Academic Publishing, Peer to Peer Grading and Text Books [DIYU; L]

Geert Lovink* (Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam)

Do-It-Together: Digital Publishing Experiments at the Institute of Network Cultures

- Just as its enthusiasts say, the digital revolution has empowered individuals to create and publish their own content through cheap, easy-to-use tools and platforms. But there are a few complications. To explore this perplexing landscape - and reacting to the often slow and conservative arena of academic publishing - the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures (INC) has developed a number of publishing series of its own. This lecture gives an overview of INC's practice-based research into different publishing strategies: free newspapers, open access journal software, a book series in collaboration with a traditional publisher (NAi), digital typography experiments, print-on-demand offerings through Lulu and the Expresso Book Machine and various reading platforms from pdf and HTML 5 to e-pub and Scribd. This initiative is ultimately a political project: perhaps to confound older systems that are starting to crumble anyway, while in the meantime building alternative, sustainable models for free cooperation and knowledge production.

Manu Kapur (Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Interactive & Digital Media in Education: Stories from Singapore - This talk will sample Singapore’s efforts on leveraging interactive and digital media for education in formal and informal settings. Through a series of examples and case studies taken from both research and practice, some of the key opportunities, achievements, challenges, areas for improvement, and future work will be discussed.

Cathy Davidson* (Duke University)

The Future of Learning - Using cutting-edge research on the brain and learning, this talk will explore how the phenomenon of “attention blindness” shapes our lives, and how it has led to one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: Although we email, blog, tweet, and text as if by instinct, too many of us toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century, not the one in which we live. We can change that. Approximately fifteen years into industrial-era management science, the medieval university began its rapid metamorphosis into the modern twentieth-century research university. Now, fifteen years after the commercialization of the Internet and the World Wide Web, we are at an optimal moment for reconsidering these fundamental institutions for our own era. This talk asks how we can use technology as an engine of transformation. This talk helps us to think in historical, theoretical, and practical ways about how, as individuals and institutions, we can learn new ways to thrive in the interactive, digital, global world we already inhabit.

5:30-7:30 pm
Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., room 510

In, Against and Beyond the Institution [DIYU; PD]

Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu, Wales, UK)

Josie Fraser (Leicester City Council, Children’s Capital, UK
Richard Hall (De Montfort University, Leicester, UK)
Mike Neary (University of Lincoln, UK)
Joss Winn (University of Lincoln, UK)
The panel discussion addresses researchers, policy makers, practitioners and activists who have a genuine interest in investigating approaches to educational provision and learning inside of, against, and beyond formal institutional provision. These approaches are framed by the current European social, political and economic landscape. The panel will allow conference and at-distance attendees to review and critically explore a range of current projects and approaches across educational sectors. At-distance participation will be encouraged and facilitated. Panelists are working across a range of sectors (school, university, life-long and adult learning; practice, research, and policy) and will discuss their current work and experience of developing alternative educational practice, spaces and pedagogies, within, against or beyond those provided by recognized educational institutions.

6:30-8:30 pm
Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St., 2nd floor

Learning in Public and The Knowledge Commons [DIYU; PD]
Matthew X. Curinga (Adelphi University)
Michael Mandiberg (College of Staten Island/CUNY)
Roddy Schrock (Eyebeam)
Ian Sullivan (Wikiotics)
This panel looks at the opportunities and challenges of learning in the digital commons, where learners study open materials and contribute original work back as part of their learning experience. Michael will look at the benefits and difficulties of teaching creatively with Wikipedia. Ian will discuss his Wikiotics project that is built on the simple premise that we, globally and collaboratively, can help teach each other all languages. Roddy will talk about his work at Eyebeam facilitating collaborative, creative projects. Matt will discuss the work he has done in the last year to create a new Masters degree in educational technology.

Several foundational questions inform this panel:

What strategies do we have to incorporate themes of "learning without a school" into traditional education institutions?
What specific ethical and privacy concerns should educators have when they require students to "work in the open"?
Is there a role for the teacher in the learning commons? What is that role?
Which existing technologies best support this type of work?

8:00-10:00 pm
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue

Introduction to DIY U and Case Studies in India and Spain [DIYU; L]
Anya Kamenetz* (Fast Company Magazine, Tribune Media)
Do-It-Together University: The Independent Learner In Community - Learner-centered approaches like DIY U are often caricatured as placing the learner in isolation. In fact the origins of the terms “university” and “college” both emphasize the importance of the group. This talk will explore the important relationships that must be negotiated by the independent learner both face-to-face and virtually: with mentors, with peers, with the broader society, and with themselves.

Ramon Sanguesa (Columbia University, Citilab, CoCreatingCultures)

Learning Digital: A Map of Old and (Possible) New Spaces - “The digital” has a key role in defining our present culture. Let's play with the hypothesis that “the digital” is a culture. Learning is different in the digital culture, not only by the tools and methods used to learn but also by the very nature of the knowledge learned. The difference in learning will be traced back to the plasticity and reflexivity of digital media. The talk will also reconsider the use of some perceptions about “access”, “connection”, “making” and “sharing” and other concepts commonly used in the digital learning world. Some experiences of digital learning spaces, such as media and citizen’s labs in Europe and other countries will also be described. The presenter will attempt to answer the question of how much these learning spaces reinforce, or weaken the promotion of a critical, digitally empowered citizenship. The presenter will also share some insights gained in an ongoing project to map different types of spaces where “the digital” is learned and sketch some preliminary features of new learning spaces that are increasingly fluid, diverse and mobile.

Nishant Shah (Bangalore based Center for Internet and Society)
Digital Outcasts: Social Justice, Technology and Learning in India - As we build worlds of ubiquitous and pervasive computing and connectivity, there is a special emphasis on how young people in and outside of formal spaces of education and learning, are building new structures of knowledge production and consumption. Referred to in short hand as ‘Digital Natives’, these power users of technologies often posit a universally viable identity that informs policy makers and pedagogues to build learning environments that presume digital fluency, literacy and acumen from young students entering spaces of higher education. In an attempt to counteract this idea of a universal digital native, the “Pathways to Higher Education” programme focus on ‘Digital Outcasts’ – students who have technological access but are not the techno-savvy, mainstream, power users whose lives are heavily mediated by technologies. It is located across 9 colleges in India, and works with the metaphor of mobility to look at articulating the axes of discrimination and social justice.

8:00-9:00 pm

Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., room 510

Tony Conrad (Avant-garde artist)

Program for Friday October 14, 2011

Program for Friday
October 14, 2011