Inquiry Into Digital Content #1b: Samples of Different Media for Creativity In Digital Storytelling

Born Digital, In Video: Identities

What is a "Digital Native?"

Attribution: The Berkman Center for Internet and Society

I enjoyed the above video example of Digital Storytelling especially as it attempts to illuminate the permanence of items we choose to place into various online social media.  It has a consistent presentation format, a neat piece of xylophone music and a clear textual message.  The series of digital images/photographs were clearly and deliberately chosen to narrate a story with a particular message or viewpoint.  The music builds in association with the time-lined imagery and gives a sense of adventure, activity, and constant movement and change: neatly echoing the message.

This digital story records the changes in online identity of one supposed "Digital Native" as she develops and alters her looks, interests, and emotional and intellectual personality.  As the creators metaphorically summarize, " Her identity is a performance and social media platforms are her stage."  The video also concludes that despite the ongoing personal changes that develop with age and maturity, all previous identities remain in their wake: they all exist online at the same time.

Representing research in this digital manner, with carefully selected visuals and related text, tells a particular story: the recording presents one telling of the story, or one perspective/viewpoint toward the public-ness of much of our digital world and interactions within it.  The "authors" of this narrative hold a definite stance toward the social-media world and the situation of individuals within it: they have also made particular choices regarding the best way to share the results of their study and the conclusions they have reached. And so, the video expresses a particular understanding of the experience of others and self. It illustrates the power of digital multi-media to communicate meaning.  In addition, by uploading to a public platform there is a possibility that the message is received by many and  in many disparate places.

 Born Digital, In Video: Learners
Playground 2.0: Video Games and Learning

Attribution: The Berkman Center for Internet and Society

This example of digital storytelling uses the Prezi online application to create an interesting mix of text, images, and non-linear progressions to tell the story of the increasing use of online games as social and learning spaces.  Discussion forums allow players to collaborate on designing new games, share ideas,  consult on strategies, and explore each participant's online creations. As the video producers claim, here we experience how "play and learning go together."

These videos belongs to a collection of such interpretations produced by interns at The Berkman Center at Harvard University.  The task was to create a set of videos to accompany and represent each chapter or topic of the John Palfrey and Urs Gasser book, Born Digital.  Each video is available on the Born Digital, In Video site where students' own perspectives and experiences are digitally narrated.  The creators are represented as Reporters in the Field.

There are amazing examples of digital storytelling techniques as well as amazing stories to watch and listen to--some will make you cry--here at the Center for Digital Storytelling

I'll close this post with an amusing, clever example of very effective use of a simple combination of gentle music, video, and vocal narration: It underscores the power of the oral storyteller to this day!  I loved the careful choices of color setting in the background for most of this video and just a few inserts that help to underline the message. You'll love this!

The Thumber from Nathan Ross on Vimeo.

 There are many web resources for samples, examples, and useful connections referencing digital storytelling, whether as research narrative or purely a sharing of ideas and the like, such as:

Center for Digital Story Telling at URL http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

Digital Storytelling at URL http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/

The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling at URL http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

Creative Narrations: Multimedia for Community Development at URL http://www.creativenarrations.net/stories

Inquiry Into Digital Content #1a Faces of the Narrative

 

TEDTalk: Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

According to Clay Shirky we are currently experiencing the "largest increase in expressive capability in human history" (TEDtalk, June, 2009).  We can receive instantaneous news and spread such news worldwide.  We are all able to be producers as well as consumers of ideas in the digital media landscape which, as Shirky states, encourages us to create our own social media communication rules, albeit somewhat informally.  Hence it is interesting that we can create digital stories using still and moving images; recorded and text-ed poetry, rhyme and prose; and sound effects and music to construct our meanings, hopeful that others will understand the intent of the communication; but this is not guaranteed.  Through such mediated attempts can we effectively convey the relationships, emotions, and feelings evoked by the storied events?  Using such media platforms as YouTube, are we really trying to recapture an earlier oral culture from a long-ago time, particularly as it pertains to a Western social and cultural history? 

For those who are discomforted by the freedom and seeming organic nature of such practices, perhaps we have become less trusting with the idea of story coming from within us and around us; less convinced of our own storytelling abilities and doubtful regarding the value of sharing lived experiences and thoughts about the world around us.  Maybe we have been conditioned by the top-down nature of our past experiences: used to the division between experts (who supposedly have something of worth to impart) and the rest of us (who receive the wisdom of others, as it relates to various contexts).  I like Shirky's statement above, as it re-establishes and relocates the power of the word or narrative within us all.  We each have the right to express ideas, opinions, interpretations, reflections and the like, in our attempts to story the historical moments: whether they are shared moments in the larger world history, or the individual and personal ones of our lives and interactions with others.  As participants in a socio-cultural movement,  it seems that we are gaining confidence and audacity in sharing that which we value and assume others will too. 

In An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube, by Michael Wesch   we see some of this reclaiming of story power in action: people making their own mark in the storied digital landscape.  There is evidence of participants ensuring the human-ness, once more, of what could be actualized as a very distant and disconnecting media experience.  Although, it is interesting that several of Wesch's students do appear to miss the immediate visual of a person, rather than an inanimate object, to share conversational ideas with: a receiver of the communication that is obvious and able to respond, say, with facial expressions, murmurings, and encouragement.  Finding ways to bridge such communication gaps is challenging: several of my colleagues addressed this issue by positing a changing social/community landscape that presents an alternate communication context that we are slowly adapting to, and accepting of.   


Interestingly, the growing use and manipulation of common elements such as music/sound, facial expression/body language, intimacy of voice/body language and the choice and placement of visual supports speak to the increasing need for skills in the Fine and Communication Arts.  These literacies embrace the common elements that speak to us "out there" in the digital landscape.  The very video that Michael Wesch and his students produced is a testament to the power and mastery of using stills, action, music, textual effects, and more to support the calm voice of explanation and proffered viewpoint for us, the audience, to consider.


Rotman and Preece describe YouTube as allowing "users to calibrate their participation and interaction levels--alternating between viewing the site's content passively and actively communicating with other users" (The 'WeTube' in YouTube: creating an online community through video sharing, in Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 6, no. 3, 2010, p. 318). Their qualitative grounded theory research study,

seeks to understand whether YouTube users employed the social tools of the site to create and maintain a lively online community, or do they act independently of each other, posting videos with little regard to possible future interaction with their peers. (2010, p. 318)

They conclude that their selected group of YouTube users almost unanimously feel that it is a valid community and is a platform for communication and interaction rather than a broadcasting application: However, there was agreement that many individuals and groups, both commercial and not, did utilize YouTube and similar digital video sharing platforms for that exact purpose (p. 330). They found that "the thread which runs through all the video posts is the feeling of companionship, the ability to create meaningful relationships and practices, and even a sense of emotional attachment to 'their' site" (p. 330).


Mark Wesch and Rotman/Preece used qualitative approaches to their research and both use a form of narrative to present and represent their research and results. Wesch and his students embed their research into active participation in the digital culture that is under investigation and represent their study by documenting the story of the experiences: a situated activity.  Rotman and Preece explore the digital community using and sharing the stories of the participants from their particular vantage points: their narratives. For example, one fascinating interpretation of community in YouTube was storied as:

 I like to call this a spiderweb, because everyone interacts with each other, and everyone is a sender and a receiver. In this entire community there are smaller communities, smaller different topics and interests that they share with each other. So this is me, right here, and I interact with all these different groups...I participate in a community. (User-22, p. 324)

Both studies appear to hold to the description of narrative as stated by Barrett and Stauffer:

It is viewed variously as "story," as a "mode of knowing" and constructing meaning, and, more recently, as a method of inquiry." At times it is all of these simultaneously. Perhaps the most enduring description and understanding of narrative is as "story," an account to self and others of people, places, and events and the relationships that hold between these elements. (2009, p. 7)

This would align with Bruner's idea that we humans are naturally drawn to story: we use the narrative arts to help us make meaning of the world and our place in it. It is a comfortable and effective communicative and interpretive mode of being (2009, pp. 8-9). Richard Kearney, (2002), says that historical and fictional narratives relate to each other, which produces a practical wisdom that can respect the singularity of situations and the universality of values (p. 143). This would seem to support the shift toward the use of narrative in inquiry and the idea that we should be cognizant of why and how particular parts of such narratives are combined in any particular way (Barrett and Stauffer, 2009). It suggests a coming together of two ways of knowing: the logico-scientific and the contemplative search for meaning.


References:

Wesch, M. (2008). An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch

Barrett, M. S., & Stauffer, S. L. (2009). Narrative inquiry: From story to method. Narrative inquiry in music education (pp. 7-17). Springer Science and Business Media.
http://www.springerlink.com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/content/uu15578688737084/

Shirky, C. (2009). How social media can make history. Video on TED.com
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

Kearney, R. (2002). On Stories. Thinking in Action Series. New York, NY: Routledge


Rotman, D. & Preece, J.(2010). The "WeTube" in YouTube: creating an online community through media sharing. Intl. Journal of Web-Based Communities 6(3) 313-333 
http://www.danarotman.com/publications 

Thoughtful Chunk 11: Adaptive House or Adaptive Human?

 

 

The Adaptive House as a Schoolhouse around 1926

Professor Michael Mozer, from the Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, created a so called adaptive house. That is, Mike Mozer bought an old building and redesigned it to be alert and responsive to his activities within it: turning lights on and off and adjusting heating as it monitored his movements, for example. The following video was hosted on Extreme Homes and in it Mike Mozer chronicles the transformation. He tells of the history behind the decision to attempt the creation of this “Neural Network House”—a type of computer system that learns.

At Mike Mozer's website view several videos that demonstrate some of the networked system in action. According to Norman (2007) the neural network operating system is "designed to mimic the pattern-recognition and learning abilities of human neurons, thus the human brain" (p. 119). Norman asks whether this house is actually smart or intelligent but Mike Mozer says that adaptive is a better descriptor as it changes or "improves" its behavior in response to preferences that Mozer indicates: it "learns" what Mozer will expect. Some of these adaptive learnings can be viewed on the linked site above.


Interestingly, Norman mentions that Mozer would often remember that his house was anticipating his arrival at a certain time and dutifully would be preparing the appropriate ambiance, as it were: Mozer would consequently feel somewhat obliged to get home! Hence my title questions that asks which is adapting here--the house or the human? 


Does this example signify what we could expect as more and more "adaptive" paraphernalia enters society? Imagine excusing yourself from further conversation with buddies due to the "Assistant Robot" who is running your bath at that particular time! Must get home! As Norman recognizes, this would become onerous: he exclaims "This house sounds like a real nag" (p. 121). In truth, this conundrum occurs as this house and other such "robotized" systems are actually unable to read the human mind--which can be unpredictable and even nonsensical at times. Norman would describe these incidents as exemplifying the lack of "Common Ground" (pp. 49-55). In his words:


The lack of common ground is the major cause of our inability to communicate with machines. People and machines have so little in common that they lack any notion of common ground. People and people? Machine and machine? That's different: those pairs function quite well. People can share with other people. Machines can share with other machines. But people and machines? Nope. (Norman, 2007, pp. 50-51) 

I'm just not sure what choices we will make, or even should make, as we continue to advocate for, and develop, supposed intelligent or smart technologies: will we opt for adaptive technologies or adaptive humans?

Thoughtful Chunk 10: Weird And Wired--Just a coincidence? I think not!

Listen to a fascinating podcast of Noel Sharkey talking about 

ethical issues in the Robotics field at 

www. parliament.uk

Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics and AI at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, tells of the rise of robots. He expresses concern about the serious impact that the use of various robotic technology may have on the way we behave toward each other and conduct ourselves in the world. He feels that much of these ethical dilemmas are imminent as, for example, it is now 90% cheaper to make say, a robot, than it was in 1990.

Reaper photograph from silicon.com

For Sharkey there are four particular areas of concern regarding the use of robots: policing, the military, childcare and elder care. As an example he points to the use of distantly operated missile carrying planes, such as the Reaper. He emphasizes how wonderful it is that so many robots have been designed and are operational in defusing bombs, currently in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, but cautions about the growing proliferation of non-human-manned weaponry. Apparently, totally automated robotic weaponry is an imminent reality. I am particularly concerned by 

Sharkey's observation that the idea of "swarming" is being touted as a way of efficiently and effectively actualizing robotic police and/or military units on duty. Whilst this may reduce injury and death to real police and soldiers, one has to wonder how much easier it will be, and is in some cases already, to decide to act aggressively toward others. The human tendency to hesitate, question, and brainstorm alternatives will be removed somewhat.

According to Sharkey,

"The deployment of the first armed battlefield robots in Iraq is the latest step on a dangerous path - we are sleepwalking into a brave new world where robots decide who, where and when to kill" and he concludes this article with "It is imperative that we create international legislation and a code of ethics for autonomous robots at war before it is too late." (Sharkey in The Guardian, 2007)

Sharkey considers the increasingly attractive notion of using robot child-care and robot care for the elderly--what he calls "service robots"--an area that also requires immediate legislation. As he illustrates,

"These types of robots can be controlled by a mobile phone or from a PC, allowing input from camera "eyes" and remote talking from caregivers. Sophisticated elder-care robots like the Secom "My Spoon" automatic feeding robot; the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses; and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot, used for reminding people to take their medicine, are already in widespread use." (Sharkey for University of Sheffield, 2008: British Scientist Warns We Must Protect The Vulnerable From Robots. ScienceDaily). 

However, there is no international guidelines or legislation in place. Sharkey urges scientists and engineers to be thoughtful in their work and to consider ethical problems that can arise.

Sharkey reminds us that children and the elderly could be left without human contact for long periods and social isolation does have psychological effects.

At the same time, the possibility of allowing our elderly to maintain some independence and remain in their own home for longer are aspects from the positive side of these issues. The following video demonstrates some of these positives: From an ongoing joint project of several US universities you will meet a Nursebot in the making(2008).

 

 

For Norman (2007), the positives would be a victory for the science of design, as in "The deliberate shaping of the environment in ways that satisfy individual and societal needs" (p. 171). As Norman explains,

"We need a new approach, one that combines the precision and rigor of business and engineering, the understanding of social interactions, and the aesthetics of the arts" and that we need to realize that "smart machines are all about interaction, symbiosis, and cooperation, both with people and with other smart machines." (P. 173)

So, I ask you: "Weird and Wired"--are these two words related by more than their anagram-ness or, is it pure coincidence? 

As I say, I think not!

Thoughtful Chunk 9: Visualizing Data--Look, See, Understand

Hans Rosling uses the power of visuals, animation,and digital tools to create a context or platform for the understanding of statistical data. Watch an amazing BBC broadcast documentary hosted by Hans Rosling about the impact of using simplified graphical representations of local and global data to promote change and greater understanding of information.

Download  Gapminder and use the provided data sets in teaching or for your own edification: it is a fabulous application and is made freely available because "Gapminder is a non-profit foundation based in Stockholm. Our goal is to replace devastating myths with a fact-based world view. Our method is to make data easy to understand" (Hans Rosling, Co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation)

Here global trends in health and economics come to vivid life:

Here Hans Rosling effectively uses visuals to posit the impact  

that acquiring a washing machine can have on different parts of the world.

Here Hans Rosling uses the power of visuals to debunk pervasive 
myths about the status of the 'developed' versus the 'developing' world:

Our class Media Wiki has many connections to valuable information and resources concerning the wise use of various media elements.

For Edward Tufte, a guru of information design, the choice of how to display information can be a life or death matter. He uses the example of the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster in which seven crew members died to show how the design of the chart, which related launches to dates not to temperature, had hidden the important information that may have changed this terrible outcome.  For Tufte, "There is all the information necessary here to have saved the Challenger astronauts" (Tufte, as quoted by Phil Patton for the New York Times, 1992). He continued by demonstrating a more efficient, meaningful, and accurate way to chart the information, with the essential data--damage most often happened at low temperatures in the past, and this launch had been activated at the coldest temperature ever compared to the chart--clearly available!

Tufte admonishes that "Content-light splashy graphics, or 'chartjunk' are bad" and that "Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information" (Christopher Bonanos in Culture Pages, 2007). However, given the amount and variety of visual and presentation tools available to all of us today, I wonder whether we have gained enough visual and information literacy to appreciate the finer points that Tufte advocates. It seems that there is far more care and thoughtfulness needed in our digital world, as evidenced by many a website. For example, what is the information to be gleaned from here?

However, I am taken by this interactive graphical Universcale from Nikon that illustrates the idea of "scale" using a very innovative graphical interface. I wonder if Tufte would approve?

There is such a plethora of ideas "out there" regarding the manipulation of graphics, icons, images, etc., that can be wisely and artistically combined to help scaffold cognition both on and off the web. Below is the popular Periodic Table format that has been, in and of itself, usurped for use in many a presentation of information. In fact, Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel of Winterhouse Institute ,which is focused on design education, express concern about such utilization of that which is associated with astounding and outstanding intellectual work, and they worry that visual design tempts us to under utilize intellectual and academic inquiry or worthy social investigation and the like.

As they say,

Often though, we see voice expressed less as an act of subversive will, and more as a staging of false identity: this work says a lot about designers wanting to be artists, using "design" as a weak metaphor for "art" and expressing their personal experience without practical context or intellectual foundation. (Helfend & Drentell, 2003)

It was informative to read through their presentation given at the  AIGA  (national professional design organization) National Design Conference: The Power of Design in Vancouver, 2003. As you continue reading through this presentation, you will see samples of the many uses the periodic table design template has been used for. Continue reading and you will see a different slant from a design perspective: an actual re-designing of the original, familiar template. Here then we see truly creative and informed minds at work!

Again, I wonder whether Tufte would agree.

Link to the Interactive Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Thoughtful Chunk 8: Blended Epistomology

John Seely Brown closing keynote address at the 

New Media Consortium (NCM) 2010 conference

And a creative visual that encapsulates key thoughts from J. S. Brown's presentation above:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Rachel Smith

 

Yet again we encounter the creative use of graphics and playful text that serves to attract our attention, grab our interest as users, and that hopefully presents some insight regarding content: enough that we may want to delve further.

According to their website the New Media Consortium was founded in 1993 in order to:

 "explore and promote innovative applications of technology to teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. The organization's history parallels the emergence of multimedia, the Internet, the world wide web, online video, and the mix of technologies loosely called Web 2.0, and now is poised at the frontier of new innovations like social networks, serious games, virtual worlds, and the semantic web" 

Mimi Ito opening keynote address at the  New Media Consortium (NCM) 2010 conference titled: Learning with Social Media: The Positive Potential of Peer Pressure and Messing Around Online.

In her session Mimi Ito speaks to the power of social media to promote peer-based learning. She also talks of the ability of today's technologies to allow access to experts, learning resources and sharing with the online community. Her criticism is of the education community and its seeming reluctance to embrace such powerful learning. This presentation supports and exemplifies aspects of John Seely Browns ideas around peer learning and the power of social learning and creating.

And another creative visual that encapsulates key thoughts from Mimi Ito's presentation:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Rachel Smith

I wish I could create such wonderful accompanying graphics in my teaching! Wouldn't that be something?

Both of the above speakers advocate much more acceptance of social learning practices than are the norm, however much of what they advocate in the way of changes to practice require more than a pedagogical mind adjustment for teachers: the complete teaching and learning bureaucratic framework would need to accept radical re-situating. 


To be continued...

Thoughtful Chunk 7: Positives of Failure

Henri Petroski on Car Design 

After reading Drink Me: How Americans came to have Cup holders in their cars, by Henri Petroski (Slate, Washington Post, 2004),  I recalled the changes made to an original baby bike stroller. We were given such an item to use when riding with our grandson: admittedly it was second, third or even fourth hand but it was in great shape.

Everything was fabulous except for the fact that if it rained while we were on a ride somewhere, gradually the carriage would fill up with water while the child sat in it! Not only that, it was certainly a challenge to empty it too! The upgrade? It has two grommet holes in its base, beneath where the child actually sits, so that water can drain out! Marvelous! The added benefit: If you use it for carrying shopping instead, it too will remain dry!

Returning to the article mentioned above: Petroski contemplates the rise of the cup holder, so to speak, as a now essential feature in our cars. Imagine, he writes, trying to drink out of a cup as you rode in one of the early type cars! You just wouldn't consider it--too bumpy by far. However, eating and drinking in a parked car was part of the adventures of drive-in restaurants and theaters. Petroski posits that perhaps  the tray that hooked onto the side of the car window frame prompted the design of the now pervasive cup holder. He goes on to describe the many iterations of the cup holder design concepts and products and links these designs to the advent of new cup material and shape technologies. There are the amusing aspects too of cup holder designs that impede safe driving by obstructing controls and the fact that people apparently often want to know the number of cup holders provided before any interest is seriously shown in a particular vehicle! For Petroski, this is not quite correct: he maintains that it is the design of the cup holders, not their number, that can convince people to buy one vehicle rather than another! 

I am so amused by this article and want you to read his message of hope at its conclusion:

"But consumers can expect that cup holders will continue to be improved, like all made things. (One thing to look for is a spring-loaded flap that acts like the rubber ones found on so many cup holder designs: It keeps cups smaller than the holder from jiggling and rattling.) Meanwhile, drivers and passengers alike can still dream of one that will hold whatever size drink container they can buy at a roadside convenience store. This dream cup holder will not obstruct a single other thing in the car and will hold a cup steady on a rocky road. The future cup holder, one can further dream, will move under a cup being put down by a driver watching the road the way an outfielder moves under a fly ball. Truly visionary drivers might even fantasize of the robot cup holder that can move a cup into a hand groping in the dark." (Henry Petroski, 2004, Drink Me)

Actually, Petroski includes a quote from Donald Norman's 2004 book, Emotional Design, in which he criticizes an automobile design culture that "proclaims that the engineer knows best, and considers studies of real people driving their vehicles irrelevant" (p. 73).

In Form Follows Failure, Chapter 2 of The Evolution of Useful Things (1992), Petroski argues that the phrase "form follows function" is misleading and that in reality "form follows failure." This implies that a particular design for an item can be traced through the various problems of earlier iterations and finding out how each iteration tried to solve a problem from the one before. As he writes, the central idea is, "the form of made things is always subject to change in response to their real or perceived shortcomings, their failures to function properly" (p. 22). Products are, in other words, always on their journey toward perfection: each iteration is an approximation of the ultimate design-- hence the changes in design of the child bike carriage above! 

Of particular note for the development of our own products and their subsequent evaluation is the following from the same chapter:

"The distinctly human activities of invention, design, and development are themselves not so distinct as the separate words for them imply, and in their use of failure these endeavors do in fact form a continuum of activity that determines the shapes and forms of every made object." (p. 32)

Here is a design for a glass for drinking a lot: Glass Tank, designed  and manufactured by Kyouei Design. Any thoughts?

I have a thought! 

Let's drink to the Positives of Failure! Cheers!