You are cordially invited to participate in an exciting and un-paralleled learning and development opportunity this fall, a networked new media faculty development seminar titled “Awakening the Digital Imagination.” The seminar will be organized and supported by Dr. Gardner Campbell, our excellent colleague and new media scholar – Director of  the Baylor University Academy for Teaching and Learning. (Visit Gardner’s blog here).The central hub of this collaborative event is the Baylor ATL in collaboration with the New Media Consortium. 

As background from Gardner:

“… the seminar began [in its first iteration] as an experiment in faculty development at Baylor University in the spring of 2010. A small group of faculty, staff, and graduate students met once a week to discuss an essay in The New Media Reader. The goal was to move beyond the endless “tech churn” of applications, websites, and digital tools to a higher understanding of the concepts, visions, and history that have brought us to what Clay Shirky calls “the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race.”  You can visit the spring seminar’s web home here.

This networked seminar will afford us the opportunity to engage in the conversation with other individuals, colleges, and universities through a variety of media tools and with a weekly local seminar in sync with the Baylor sessions.  Asynchronous interactions will occur via those tools including blogging and resource aggregation and sharing; as well as discussion in an online forum.  Synchronous conversations with colleagues from Baylor and other participating institutions are a strong possibility.  As in spring, the dialogue for the seminar will center around weekly selections from The New Media Reader (Wardrip-Fruin, N. & Montfort, 2003). Copies are available in the University Bookstore. 

While some details are still being worked out, the seminar begins September 8. The seminar syllabus is available online now. We will run our local sessions parallel with the Baylor sessions Wednesdays, 4:00 – 5:30 in the IT Conference Room, Admin. 102.

Please note that (with the exception of the cost of the reader) the seminar is free! If you would like more information please contact Cindy Jennings, director of Instructional Technology, at 864.503.5470 or cjennings@uscupstate.edu. If you would like to participate in the seminar, indicate so by Friday, September 3.

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