dmlcentral.net
Teaching, Texting, and Twittering with Obama
With the first year of the Obama administration officially coming to a close, educators have been thinking about how the president’s online presence could be used for both civic education and media literacy purposes. Obama came into office with the promise of delivering web-based participatory democracy or “Government 2.0” to citizens. But I have found myself arguing that Obama’s “embrace” of online practices was actually quite limited, when it came to the messages he was promulgating. I am also not alone in wondering if online commenting and voting really constitutes democratic engagement.… more
An Emerging Theory: Things Rule
The international conference on Digital Arts and Culture is often a place for previewing coming theoretical trends in digital scholarship. Long before the formation of separate conferences for the Electronic Literature Organization and the Digital Games Research Association, DAC was at the forefront of interactive literature and game studies. This year’s DAC conference, “After Media: Embodiment and Context,” included a prominent “Interdisciplinary Pedagogy” theme led by digital artist Cynthia Beth Rubin that tried to make connections between the cutting-edge, sophisticated theory that the conference represented and the more mundane practical challenges posed by instructional technology and augmented classroom learning. One of the plenary speakers, Ian Bogost, summed up the mood at DAC succinctly on his Twitter feed: “Things rule!” Bogost has become known internationally as a proponent of a radical contemporary philosophical school known as “speculative realism” or “speculative materialism," and several talks at the conference reflected aspects of this revolutionary thing-centric attitude.… more
On Gaming, Politics, and Reform
As the new year rolls around, like many political science professors, Kareem Crayton is thinking about the possible repercussions of next year’s 2010 census and what he calls the “opening skirmishes” of the partisan fight over “who’s going to be counted” and where the boundaries of congressional districts should be drawn for the next decade. However, since working on the civic education website, The Redistricting Game, with a team of interactive media designers at the University of Southern California, Crayton’s attitudes about collaboration within the academy and participation in broader political conversations probably differ somewhat from those of his more traditional peers who still communicate their ideas about systems of representative democracy only through scholarly publication in print media. Crayton suggests that The Redistricting Game could also inspire average voters to play a more creative role in legislative problem-solving. “All the ideas about transforming our political system don’t need to emanate from the state house or the university.”… more