Studio Agenda

From Studyplace

Contents 1 Studio Meetings 2 February 26th Meeting — Summary in Brief 3 February 19th Meeting — Summary in Brief 4 February 12th Meeting — Summary in Brief 5 February 5th Meeting — Summary in Brief 6 January 31st Meeting — Summary in Brief 7 Initial organizational meetings

[edit] Studio Meetings

For Spring 2008 the Studio has the project of designing and developing itself. To begin, the Studio exists only in conception as a nascent potentiality. As such, it recursively creates itself. Perhaps that engagement in recursive self-creation is an axiom of education, a starting point for the historical and philosophical foundations of education.

• We formally meet Tuesdays, 7:30 to 9:10, physically in 214 Zankel Hall — NB: New Location — or virtually via Acrobat Connect (http://connect.acrobat.com/studyplacestudio)
• Informally, we can 'meet' using IRC, on the #studyplace channel on the irc.freenode.net server (go). For more information see Help:StudyPlace IRC

Remember that on a wiki, everyone can edit, amplify, and change anything -- feel free to exercise that possibility. In wiki-speak "to edit" denotes a far-ranging activity, spanning everything from correcting a typo to creating a new page with a small treatise and links all over the place on it.

We will develop our agenda as we go along, with items for the upcoming meeting in the box to the right and summaries of past meetings inserted below, with the most recent at the top descending to the oldest at the bottom, blog style.

[edit] February 26th Meeting — Summary in Brief

• Participants Pollyanna, Daniel, Jeff, Lauren, Eric, Jamie, and host, Robbie, were present in Room 214 Zankel, and Sharon attended through acrobat-connect. General discussion focused on the notion posited by Robbie of how one might navigate the vastness of the digital world, whether it be through Studio work, research, chat rooms, digitally posted articles, etc., to map meaningful connections and add intrinsic intellectual worth to one's personal scholarly pursuits.

• Jeff voiced the concern about maintaining a semblance of authorship when sharing work in-progress in such a public domain. How might one get recognized for his contribution and/or protect a fresh idea from being usurped by someone else?

• Robbie put forward the concern of how we, as scholars, might more effectively wade through the tremendous range of material that we have access to. The concern being that while we have easy access to so much material, the enormity of the information goes well beyond our grasp and the likelihood of our getting to the information that might best inform our work seems to be getting more and more remote.

• Jeff suggested that in the next week we each give some thought to how we might determine quality in a digital studio.

[edit] February 19th Meeting — Summary in Brief

• Our Studio met in 214 Zankel (present: Jonah Bossewitch, Jeff Bremick, Anthony Greene, Aaron Hung, Robbie McClintock, Sharon Pierson, Pollyanna Rhee, Antonios Saravanos, Lauren Siket, Eric Strome, Cameron Walker-Miller, Jamie Knowles). Due to a little hurdle with the technology in the room, Robbie was unable to connect to an outside line to enable remote participants to join us through acrobat connect.

• One of the Studio groups, History and Education, had already met and Eric provided a brief summary as to what their tentative plans were. This included an agreement for each participant to primarily focus on his or her individual research while also reading a shared book to discuss as a group when they met again. They agreed to meet every two weeks. Other groups reported that their meetings were forthcoming.

• In keeping with our studio experimentation of participating in a common experience of scholarly research – each representing different disciplines, areas of interest, and at varying points in our doctoral studies, among other differences – we shared our favorite Internet sites, search engines, and general methods of initiating preliminary research. Eric created a list of what was offered and added it to the Studio site.

• There was general discussion around availability of published works on the Internet and access to various archives, as well as how collections are stored and then made available.

• Robbie suggested that it might be helpful to create a map of the different source and search sites (referenced as to commercial sites, such as Amazon), capturing the varied approaches used to enable ease of research, and then ranking them in terms of usefulness and efficiency.

• Thinking seriously about languages from a specialist’s points of view, Robbie suggested that it would be interesting to map resources available in different languages to determine which sites might be better utilized in the original language, as apposed to using only those sites that are presented in English. For many specialized pursuits in humanities and social sciences, you would be best served reading it in the original language. Asking the question from a generalist point of view, will English be the language shared by scholars from this point forward, or are there generally other language resource sites that are better than what’s available in English. What are they? What’s the trajectory of this?

• Robbie hopes by summer to have a set of tools that we would be able to reference and use and which we would continue to build.

[edit] February 12th Meeting — Summary in Brief

• The weather on the 12th was miserable — an inch or two of slippery snow and a heavy overlay of sleet and rain. Nevertheless, everyone attended, half in person (Jeff Bremick, Jamie Knowles, Lauren Siket, Cameron Walker-Miller, Jonah Bossewitch, Pollyanna Rhee, and Robbie McClintock) and half via Acrobat Connect (Matt Curinga, Anthony Greene, Daniel Hendrickson, Aaron Hung, Sharon Pierson, Cochran Pruett, Antonios Saravanos, and Eric Strome). The meeting got underway slowly as participants arrived both in person and online somewhat sequentially and Robbie (never that good with an agenda) got distracted by the technology.
  • Marshall McLuhan sends this observation from his perch above or below (he leaves it to each to decide where to situate it) —

"In Understanding Media I explained the differences between the hot and the cold, the former having a wide bandwidth and high definition and the latter being low in bandwidth and sparse in definition. The hot is filled out, intense, and leaves little to be completed by participants through the use of their imaginations, while the cool gives participants hints, feints, and clues, requiring them to fill out what is being said and what is going on. It's after my time, but I nailed the technology you used. Online meetings are way out with Miles, very cool with those weird little pictures and voices from all over jumbled together through one skinny call, and relative to it, meeting face-to-face is extremely hot. To have fifteen people talking together, the smaller half wanting to steam away in that little room and the rest, each shivering alone out in the cold, just isn't going to work. You can't balance the hot and the cold that way, no more that you can stick one foot in a simmering stew and another in ice water and claim on balance to be snug and comfortable. If you are going to mix hot and cold media, one or the other needs to be dominant — a few hovering at a distance in a hot meeting via their cool connection or a meeting taking place essentially through the cool connections with perhaps two or three sitting together in a room, but not so much interacting with each other, but each separately with those far away through the cool connection. You should know better. Reread my book!"

• After a good deal of hemming and hawing, the full group broke more or less into three sub-groups, the initial fruits of which are visible on the Participants Page.

[edit] February 5th Meeting — Summary in Brief

• In sum, conversations continued to explore, explain, and strategize about the digital studio, its various resources, broad audience, embedded links, and rich possibilities. Experts on wiki programming were present, new users shared fresh experiences, and reflections were shared on readings.

• In attendance – Lauren Siket, Antonios Saravanos, Pollyanna Rhee, Eric Strome, Cameron Walker-Miller, Anthony Greene, and Robbie McClintock in 322B and Sharon Pierson and Matt Curinga via connect.acrobat.

• Matt suggested that we set up an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) as an additional means for communicating with one another, getting to know each other, and providing another channel for informally posing questions and/or seeking support/help.

• Robbie suggested that cameras would be shared for those participants who attend the Studio meetings remotely, adding a visual to the voice on the line.

• In the future, it is hoped that each of the Studio participants will be able to initiate a conference, so that mini conferences might take place as needed.

• Hetland’s, Studio Thinking and Schön’s, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, were discussed briefly. A few themes mentioned included: the notion of engaging in the “Studio habits of mind” – a readiness to join others as we share work in-progress, a courage to share work not yet polished, and a sensitivity to offer critical feedback kindly and constructively; the concept of “knowing-in-action” where our knowing is reflected in the action, the idea that spontaneous or automatic action might lead to a surprise outcome, which in turn gets our attention and stimulates a “reflection-in-action,” perhaps demanding deeper reflection. And so it might be with our studio participation, exploration, experimentation -- recognizing that each of us is at a different level of expertise, different point of study, and different perspective of scholarship while all sharing the common interest in engaging with others through the Studio.

• As we craft our User pages, be aware these are in the public domain. These might serve as a place for a personal syllabus which would be fluid.

• We started talking about the academic tools we use in our work and how we use them.

• Robbie again welcomed and encouraged participants to add comments, revisions, works, insights, etc., on the site. This Studio has no fixed requirements – be opportunistic and use it in whatever ways it would be productive for the totality of work.

[edit] January 31st Meeting — Summary in Brief

• In sum, meeting time was spent learning to navigate through the site, learning to communicate with off-site participants, as well as experimenting with “sharing” the host screen so we could all be looking at a common page.

• In attendance - 4 students present in 322B and 2 by using connect.acrobat and by phone (the access phone number is displayed after clicking the telephone icon).

• The 2 readings were cited, Hetland’s, Studio Thinking and Schön’s, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, and Professor Robbie McClintock requested that studio participants read these selections as a heuristic stimulus and post his/her reflections as to how these concepts might be applied to our studio participation – activities, goals, resources, etc.

• Robbie asked that each studio participant create a user page, which will be used to share work in progress. A cursory page is fine at this early stage. The idea is to engage in the studio, recognizing that practical application and participation will grow our user ability and skill levels.

• Robbie offered a suggestion to use Zotero as a bibliographic program that allows great flexibility and efficiency.

• As we focus on our respective research, we can use the Studio as a sharing site and our metaphorical filing cabinet.

• Our next meeting time was set for Tuesday, February 5th, 7:30 to 9:00 in 322B. In addition to discussing the readings, we will also allow time for troubleshooting any problems.

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[edit] Initial organizational meetings

• Thursday, January 24, 2008: 214 Zankel Hall

Purpose: Organizational meeting for those interested in the studio who were not able to participate on January 22nd.

• Via the Internet — Thursday, January 24, 2008: 4:30 @ http://connect.acrobat.com/StudyPlaceStudio (follow on screen instructions)

Purpose: to learn how to use the net meeting resources for the studio and to clarify and discuss whatever needs clarification and discussion.

• Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 7:20 to 9:00 — Organizational meeting for anyone interested, especially those registered in A&HH4078 (Technology and education in Western history).

• Standing meetings — Tuesdays, 7:30 to 9:00, 322B Thompson Hall. Join in face-to-face or via netmeeting @ http://connect.acrobat.com/studyplacestudio.