This week in LIS 201 (week 05)

Week 05: The global network society

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

• Networks of cities

This week I will distribute a list of terms and essay questions to study which will help you prepare for our first in-class exam next week. (I will probably distribute these on our course news feed.)

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• William Lazonick, “Globalization of the ICT labour force,” in R. Mansell et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (2007).
• Christian Sandvig, “Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain,” in L. Nakamura et al. eds., Race after the Internet (2012).
• Jan A.G.M. van Dijk,"Social structure" in The Network Society(2006).

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• If it's your week to write a 500-word article critique, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.
• Finish the final draft of paper #1.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#7 and #8) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Turn in a printed final version of paper #1.
• Review for first midterm exam.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

No online activity this weekend. Study for your exam next week.

The dangers of automation?

Interesting review today at The Verge that relates to our lecture this week — a new book on the dangers of automation by Nicholas Carr, called The Glass Cage:

He paints a scary picture. Planes are crashing as pilots are lulled into a stupor by autopilot. Financial markets flirt with disaster as traders place too much faith in algorithms they barely understand. Doctors are acting like robots themselves as they rotely click through prompts on diagnostic and billing software. And something more ineffable is taking place, Carr worries, as automation subtly cuts us off from the world.  [...]  Carr takes a broad approach to automation, so any technological abbreviation of a task would qualify. Google’s auto-completing searches automates inquiry, Carr says, while legal software automates research, discovery, and even the drafting of contracts. CAD automates architectural sketching. Thanks to an explosion in computing power, more and more things are getting automated, and Carr worries that it’s all combining to degrade our skills and insulate us from the world. "When automation distances us from our work," Carr writes, "when it gets between us and the world, it erases the artistry from our lives."

Check out the review here and tell us what you think, if you have a moment.

This week in LIS 201 (week 04)

Week 04: The postindustrial service economy

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

• Depression to deindustrialization

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Isaac Asimov, “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014,” New York Times(16 August 1964).
• Thomas J. Sugrue, "'The damning mark of false prosperities': The deindustrialization of Detroit," in The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996).
• Laurence Veysey, "A postmortem on Daniel Bell's postindustrialism," American Quarterly 34:1 (1982). 
• Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano [chapters 1-3] (1952).

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• If it's your week to write a 500-word article critique, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.
• Complete your peer reviews of your fellow students' paper #1 drafts, posted as comments on their pages of the discussion section wiki.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#5 and #6) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week you'll explore the Prelinger Archives, which contains thousands fantastic vintage educational and corporate promotional films, some of which deal with information and communication technology. Many of these films are in color with sound, and most are short (15 or 20 minutes).

• Search the Prelinger Archives for the most interesting vintage film for a 21st century class on the "information society" that you can.
• Please note: Within each discussion section, every student needs to find a different film to post! This means you need to see what's already been posted in your section to avoid duplication! (Students who do this assignment earlier might have an easier time of it.)
• Post a link to your film on your discussion section blog and make an argument about why this film is useful to students of our modern information infrastructure -- what can we learn from the film you found?
• Watch at least one of your fellow students' suggested films and post a comment with your reaction.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

This week in LIS 201 (week 03)

Week 03: The electromechanical control revolution

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16

• The control revolution and modernity

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• James Beniger, "The Control Revolution," in Albert H. Teich, ed.,Technology and the Future (1990).
• William Cronon, "The busy hive," in Nature's Metropolis (1991).
• Simon Head, "The rise of the reengineers," in The New Ruthless Economy (2003).

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• If it's your week to write a 500-word article critique, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.
• Post your rough draft of paper #1 to your personal wiki pages (create a separate subpage so that your peer reviewers can just "comment" at the bottom).

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#3 and #4) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Your TA will set up peer review groups ( 6 students in each) and post these on your discussion section wiki in case you forget.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week you are going to explore some historical news databases.

• Pick a term relating to the modern information society  -- ” "world wide web" or "computer" or "cell phone" or "digital divide" or ... well, use your imagination. The only constraint is that you can't pick a term that one of your fellow sectionmates has used (so it is in your interest to do this assignment early!)
• Try to find the earliest journalistic use of this term in three different historical newspaper databases provided by ProQuest: the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
• Now take the same term and try to find its earliest use in three different scholarly article databases: ProQuest, Project Muse, andJStor.
• Write a brief post on your section blog about the ways in which your term was first used, and whether it still has the same meaning today.
• Visit another student's post and comment on what they found out about the term that they explored.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

The costs and benefits of sponsoring literacy learning

Here's a short analysis piece from the New York Times that illuminates some of the issues that Deborah Brandt's article from this week tried to analyze: the costs and benefits of sponsoring literacy learning, especially across communities and school districts that vary widely in their wealth and resources:

People disagree, quite strenuously, on the best curriculum for teaching children to read. But all participants in the reading wars agree on some other things: Early reading is crucial — a child who does not read proficiently by third grade will probably fall further and further behind each year. American schools are failing: two out of three fourth graders don’t read at grade level.

And they agree on something else: any reading curriculum works better if children who are struggling get the chance to work, one on one, with a tutor. [...]

The problem, of course, is that very few principals can afford it. A single teacher dedicated to individual tutoring can work effectively with a small number of children each week. How many teachers would be needed to help all struggling students? The schools where tutoring is most needed, moreover, are those that can least afford it.

Is there a cheaper substitute that’s still effective? Health care in places where resources are short benefits from task-shifting: moving jobs to the lowest-trained and lowest-paid people who can do them well. That way, the expensive professionals can concentrate on the things that only they can do.

Resources are always short in education. So it is welcome news that two recent studies show that task-shifting tutoring programs can work on a wide scale — and that scale can be achieved relatively affordably.

Check out the whole piece and tell us what you think in the comments.

Should everyone read Harry Potter?

An interesting post over at Scientific American connects to many of the print culture themes we discussed in lecture this week:

For decades it's been known that an effective means of improving negative attitudes and prejudices between differing groups of people is through intergroup contact – particularly through contact between “in-groups,” or a social group to which someone identifies, and “out-groups,” or a group they don’t identify with or perceive as threatening. Even reading short stories about friendship between in- and out-group characters is enough to improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups in children. A new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that reading the Harry Potter books in particular has similar effects, likely in part because Potter is continually in contact with stigmatized groups. The “muggles” get no respect in the wizarding world as they lack any magical ability. The “half-bloods,” or “mud-bloods” – wizards and witches descended from only one magical parent – don’t fare much better, while the Lord Voldemort character believes that power should only be held by “pure-blood” wizards. He’s Hitler in a cloak.

Check out the whole post and tell us what you think in the comments.

This week in LIS 201 (week 02)

Week 02: Print culture and literacy

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 09

• Print culture and literacy

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Deborah Brandt, "The means of production: Literacy and stratification at the twenty-first century," in Literacy in American lives (2001).
• Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, "A framework for the history of publishing and reading in the United States 1880-1940," in Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 4 (2009).
• Ted Striphas, "E-Books and the Digital Future," in The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control(2009).

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• If it's your week to write a 500-word article report, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.  An article report should briefly summarize the main argument of the article, and then pose a question or comment in response. You will also want to say a little something about the author of the article and the way people responded to it. What can you find online about the person who wrote the article? Can you find any online reaction to the article? (It probably came from a book, and you can probably find book reviews.)
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms (which will have been previewed in lecture)
• Two four-minute student speeches (#1 and #2), one on each of the readings (and two two-minute student extemporaneous responses).  Your TA will designate a classmate to record your presentations on digital video. The recording will be either emailed to you or uploaded to your discussion section wiki (which you'll be joining this weekend). After watching the recording, you must email your TA with one substantive way in which you could improve your delivery.
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Discuss tasks and strategies for writing assignment #1. (Rough draft due on wiki by start of next week's discussion.)
• Discuss the written presentation grading metric.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week you'll learn how to use your discussion section wiki:

• Please click here for a wiki tutorial
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

This week in LIS 201 (week 01)

(Each week I'll post a reminder from the syllabus of upcoming assignments and activities.)

Week 01: Introduction to four information societies

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 02

Lecture meets this week at 11am in Humanities 2650 for 75 minutes.   Students are expected to attend all lectures and to take notes. By the Friday after each in-person lecture, I'll upload a PDF version of any slides I showed in lecture to our Box site (and link the site to the lecture title). We may also experiment with lecture-capture technology to record the live lecture experience; if this works, I will provide links to those videos as well. Any student seen Facebooking, shopping, chatting, gaming, or otherwise multitasking with a distracting non-class activity in lecture will be asked to close their laptop  -- even if you are typing notes at the same time.

• Introduction to the course

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

Buy your course reader from Student Print and read the articles below. Each week, you need to have your readings completed by the time you get to discussion section, in order to be able to discuss them with your TA and fellow students. We will quiz you on selected terms from the readings as well, which will be revealed at the end of each lecture.

(Unsure how closely you should be reading these? The professor has posted two annotated examples of readings, to show what he highlights when he reads through them.)

• Greg Downey, "Introduction: Communication meanings and social purposes," in Technology and Communication in American History(2011).

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

Just make sure to read through this web syllabus.

DISCUSSION SECTION MEETING

All discussion sections meet this week; consult your schedule.  Students are expected to attend all in-person discussion sections. If you are absent from section, you must email your TA within 24 hours of the missed section. If you are absent from two discussion sections in a row, you will receive a concerned email from the professor. After that we will refer your absence to the Office of the Dean of Students!

• Meet your TA and your fellow students in person! (Your TA may have you create a "table tent" to help everybody learn names.)
• Discuss the syllabus and grading.
• Your TA will assign you to specific weeks and readings for your prepared oral presentation and your written article critique. (You won't know when you'll be called upon to do your extemporaneous oral presentation.) These will all be listed on your section wiki (which you'll join next week).
• Discuss techniques for effective oral presentations.
• Discuss the oral presentation grading metric.
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

Nearly every weekend you will have online homework and writing.  This weekend, after your first section meeting, you'll learn how to use your discussion section weblog. 

• Please click here for a detailed weblog tutorial.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

Important deadlines for Fall 2014

All of these deadlines can be found at the Office of the Registrar web site.

Friday, September 5, 2014
Last Day to Enroll without $25 Late Initial Enrollment Fee except Specials and Guests.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Last day to drop courses or withdraw without DR or W grade notation on Transcript

Friday, September 12, 2014
Last Day to Add your first class without Departmental & Dean's permission - All Students
Last Day to Add Courses without Departmental approval - All Students
Last Day for 100% tuition adjustment on dropped classes.
SPECIALS AND GUESTS ONLY: Last Day to Enroll without $25 Late Initial Enrollment Fee

Friday, September 19, 2014
Last Day to pay tuition and fees without $100 Late Payment Fee

Friday, September 26, 2014
Last Day for 50% tuition adjustment on dropped classes
Last Day to Apply for Pass/Fail Privilege - Undergrads/Specials/Professionals
Last Day to Convert from Credit to Audit - Undergrads/Specials/Professionals

Friday, October  31, 2014
Last Day to Drop courses - All Students
Last Day to apply for Pass/Fail Privilege - Graduate Students
Last Day to Convert from Credit to Audit - Graduate Students

Friday, November 21, 2014
Last day to withdraw without academic penalty- Undergrads/Specials/Professionals

FIG partnering with LIS 201 this Fall

Each year at least one "First-Year Interest Group" or "FIG" partners with LIS 201.  Here's our FIG for this year:

Internet and Society

The main course of this FIG, “Information Literacies in Online Spaces” (LIS 301), explores information and digital literacies needed by today’s online consumers and producers.  Topics include “new literacies,” media education, digital divides, information quality, and online risks. To investigate these issues, we complete four case studies: Wikipedia, blogs, online video, and online video games. Issues to be covered include access (digital divides, power relations in online communities, regulation), analysis (assessing credibility, evaluating risks, analyzing representation) and production (video making, blogging, game making).

The course engages students in key debates and research related to information and digital literacies, relates concepts covered in the other FIG courses to students’ own experiences, and develops digital literacies and production skills. The three courses that comprise this FIG prepare students with reading, writing and analytical skills that will be useful across the humanities and social sciences.  Past students have gone on to major in journalism, communication arts, economics and computer sciences.

Digital Studies Certificate - All three courses on this FIG count toward the Digital Studies Certificate. To qualify for the Certificate, students complete 15 credits that include one Core course and four additional Topical courses. LIS 201 is one of the Core courses, and LIS 301 and Com Arts 346 are Topical courses. By completing this FIG, only two additional courses are needed to qualify students for the Certificate. (Note: one of the additional courses needs to be in the area of visuality in digital design and the other needs to be in either the area of Digital Practices or the area of Digital Information Structures.)  Please see the website for more information about the Certificate: digitalstudies.wisc.edu

Getting ready for Fall 2014

Hi folks.  I'm in the process of revamping the syllabus and web site for our Fall 2014 iteration of LIS 201 (the seventh time the class has been held at UW-Madison).  We have some great graduate student teaching assistants working on the class this year: Tammy Mays, Andrew Lang, Rebecca Pettyjohn, and Molly Anne McBride.  Here are their discussion section assignments:

DIS 302 W 9:30-10:45AM 4322 Sewell Social Sciences - Molly Anne McBride

DIS 303 R 9:30-10:45AM 2121 Mosse Humanities Building - Rebecca Pettyjohn

DIS 304 F 11:00AM-12:15PM 4212 Helen C. White Hall - Andy Lang

DIS 305 W 1:00-2:15PM L185 Education Building - Tammy Mays

DIS 306 R 1:00-2:15PM 2101 Mosse Humanities Building - Tammy Mays

DIS 307 F 2:30-3:45PM 2261 Mosse Humanities Building - Molly Anne McBride

DIS 308 W 4:00-5:15PM 4281 Helen C. White Hall - Rebecca Pettyjohn

DIS 309 W 2:30-3:45PM 2241 Mosse Humanities Building - Andy Lang

(And as the faculty member in charge of the course, I'm teaching the DIS 301 section on Thursdays from 11am-12:15pm.)

Check back on the first day of classes for the final syllabus and reading list.  And thanks for taking the course; we are going to have fun and we are going to learn a lot!  Cheers, GREG

One more extra credit opportunity

When this class began I mentioned to you all that even though it was titled "the information society," I was going to refuse to give you an easy definition of that term, since the whole point of the class was to consider all the diverse and sometimes contradictory aspects of technology, knowledge, and social life that might fit into that concept.  Well, anyway, here we are at the end of the semester and I wonder if you have any better idea of what "the information society" is all about than when you started.  

It would be easy for me to ask you to write a 250-word blog post arguing for one particular definition of "the information society" for 0.5 points of extra credit.  But in this class we don't take the easy way out.  No, we push ourselves to imagine and communicate in new ways.  So here's your extra credit challenge:

(1) Draw a picture that encapsulates your view of "the information society."  Be creative.  Maybe use some color?  "Picture" means anything visual; diagrams or graphs or comics are all OK.  Labels and arrows and stick people are fine.  So what if you aren't an artist?  You don't have to be Lynda Barry to do this.  But I do want it to be hand-drawn.

(2) Digitize that picture (scan, photograph, hand-trace using a digitizing stylus, whatever) and upload it in a post to your discussion section weblog.

(3) In that same post, write a 250-word explanation or justification of your picture (you didn't think I'd let you get away with not writing, did you?).

This is worth 0.5 points of extra credit if you get it done by the end of this week, or Friday December 13 at 5pm central time.  

This week in LIS 201 (week 15)

Week 15: Student presentations

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10

• Each TA will submit one student presentation for screening before the whole course. You may bring snacks if you like.
• Last fifteen minutes: Fill out overall course evaluation (professor leaves room).

HOMEWORK BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Work on your multimedia book review and bring your questions to section.
• If problems with your slide show were discovered when screened by your TA, fix them and repost.  You must have a working slide show to receive credit for the assignment.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: Make-up quiz! (Only if you missed one of the regularly-scheduled quizzes with an excused absence.)
• Workshop for the final analytic, multimedia book review.
• Last ten minutes: Fill out discussion section evaluations (TA leaves room).

This week in LIS 201 (week 14)

Week 14: SECOND MIDTERM EXAM

EXAM ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 03

• Same format as last exam.

READINGS BEFORE DISCUSSION

• None.  (Not yet, anyway.)

HOMEWORK BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Begin work on your multimedia book review.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• Continue to screen the remainder of the slideshow presentations and discuss them.
• Discuss strategies for multimedia book review project.
• Graded paper #2 handed back to students.
• Graded exam #2 handed back to students.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

For your last online activity, you will reflect on your own online experience in this course.

• The "hybrid" or "blended" course approach of LIS 201 — combining in-person lecture, in-person discussion section, and online activity and writing — is an increasingly popular mode of educational delivery in higher education. Do a web search and see if you can find a few other examples of hybrid/blended courses, either at UW-Madison or at other universities. How do these examples differ from our approach in LIS 201?
• Think about your own experience with this course. For example: Did the online portions connect with the in-person portions? Did you feel that you were a more effective student in the physical world or the virtual world? Were you able to learn more about your fellow students from online or offline (face-to-face) interactions? Do you feel more comfortable now with online resources like blogs and wikis than you did before taking this course? Should UW instructors increase their use of online components in courses, or should we proceed with greater caution?
• Finally, think about the substantive material from the lectures and readings on the information society that you've worked with all semester long. Did the course lectures and readings bring a better perspective to your own online experiences, both in this course and in your personal life? Or another way of thinking about it — would online course components work differently in a course that wasn't all about the online world of information?
• Write up your findings and your reactions on your discussion section weblog. Be honest, it's OK.
• Comment on at least one other student's posting.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

Proud of your Ignite presentation? Submit it to the Digital Salon!

CALL for SUBMISSIONS -- DIGITAL SALON 2014

Fall deadline: Friday, December 11, 2013.

Submission form: go.wisc.edu/digitalsalon

The UW-Madison Libraries and DesignLab will host the fifth annual Digital Salon, a one-week exhibition of digital media projects by UW undergraduate and graduate students from Sunday, April 6 through Saturday, April 12, 2014.  This exhibition of new media projects showcases artistic and research-based projects that take digital form or rely heavily on information technology in the production process. Work might include podcasts, experimental videos, animations, graphic essays, websites, blogs, multimedia installations, posters, etc.  

• Digital Salon projects will be curated by a committee of UW-Madison faculty and staff 
• Projects will be exhibited in College Library's Open Book Café and online
• The Curation Committee will recognize best projects in several categories. 

Work from previous exhibitions can be visited online: uwdigitalsalon.blogspot.com

This year, there will be two rounds of submissions, one in the Fall and another in the Spring.  The Fall deadline is Wednesday, December 11, 2013 and students will be contacted around January 21, 2014 to let them know whether their project has been selected for inclusion in the Digital Salon exhibition.  The Spring deadline of March 12, 2014 is intended to increase participation from students in spring courses.  Both Fall and Spring submissions will be included in the April 6-12, 2014 exhibition. 

For more information visit the Digital Salon website at go.wisc.edu/digitalsalon or contact digitalsalon-l@library.wisc.edu.

Looking for a Spring 2014 course?

Here is a suggestion for students now registering for Spring 2014 courses.

LIS 351: Introduction to Digital Information
TuTh 8:50AM - 9:40AM plus computer lab
Professor Eschenfelder

Description: A three credit service learning course developed for Digital Studies certificate students and non-computing majors where students will learn to create websites and understand how they work across computers, phones and other digital devices, understand and build databases, learn how search engines work behind the scenes, and work with a real client to learn project management and build communication skills.

Who should take this course?
    People interested in learning about information technologies to solve problems and help people.  (No prior technological expertise required!)
    People who are interested in solving information overload and information access problems.
    Digital Studies Certificate students looking to fulfill their "Digital Information Structures (I) or "Digital Media Practice  (P) requirement for the Digital Studies certificate.
Priority registration for Digital Studies certificate students
Learn more at www.digitalstudies.wisc.edu.

CHANGE IN EXAM SCHEDULE

LIS 201 students: 

You've been working hard all semester and I appreciate it.  Today after lecture your wise TAs convinced me that a small reward might be in order.  So ...

LECTURE IS CANCELLED ON TUESDAY NOVEMBER 26, meaning

THE SECOND MIDTERM WILL BE POSTPONED UNTIL TUESDAY DECEMBER 03

Of course, now you have to study for the exam over the Thanksgiving holiday, though!

P.S. As a small concession, I will NOT be releasing the exam terms this Friday, but will release them next Tuesday at the latest.  

Have a safe and happy holiday next week,

GREG

This week in LIS 201 (week 12)

Week 12: Sustainable information infrastructure

LECTURE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19

• We'll consider the global environmental impact of the information society.

READINGS BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Chris Carroll, "High-tech trash," National Geographic Magazine (2008-01).
• David Owen, "The efficiency dilemma," The New Yorker(December 20, 2010).

HOMEWORK BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Post your five-minute slideshow presentation to your personal wiki page. This must be a working presentation; in other words, once your TA downloads it and clicks on it, it should open up and play with both images and narration.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• You will begin to screen the slideshow presentations and talk about them.
• Your TA will save some time at the end of class to discuss the upcoming second midterm.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week you will review and revise your previous blog postings to think about the online "voice" that you have developed over the course of this semester, and how that differs from the voice you construct for yourself through written and print materials.

• Go back through your discussion section blog and copy out every single entry you have posted for these weekly online assignments all semester long, pasting them all into a single word processing document, one by one, with the title and date indicated for each entry.  (You don't have to include the comments you left on other students' blog posts -- just your own main blog posts.) 
• Then go through and proofread this big compendium of blog posts.  Check all of your spelling and grammar.  Make sure you have written in complete sentences all the way through.  Add paragraph breaks if appropriate.  And make sure you have correctly spelled/identified any authors' names you have reference. Your goal is ZERO MISTAKES.
• Format this blog post compendium document as a regular writing assignment -- with 12-point Times or Times Roman font, one-inch margins, and double spacing -- and print it out so you can hand it in to your TA at the next discussion section.  You will want to read over it one more time in printed form, because you will probably catch some last-minute typos if you do. 
• Finally, write a NEW blog post back on your discussion section blog discussing how you have presented yourself through your online writing in the class so far, and whether that is the same way that you present yourself in other aspects of your scholarly career in LIS 201 (eg. in person in discussion section, through your formal written assignments, and/or through your work on exams).  Which of your self-presentations is the most "true" or the most effective?  Which showcases your talents the best? 

FOR MORE INFORMATION

• Leslie A. Byster and Ted Smith, "The electronics production life cycle: From toxics to sustainability," in Ted Smith et al., eds.,Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (2006).
• Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, "Ecological ethics and media technology," International Journal of Communication 2 (2008). 
• Matthew Power, "The solution: Bolivia's lithium dreams," Virginia Quarterly Review (2011).
• Tom Vanderbilt, "Data center overload," New York Times (14 June 2009). 
• UW-Madison Green IT resources
• Wisconsin electronics recycling law

Audio Issues?

For the Ignite presentation, I was not able to get my audio to play once I uploaded my presentation to the Wiki.  I don't know if anyone else had this issue as well, but if you did…

I found that if you

1) save the slide show as a movie

2) import this movie into iMovie

...then you can add songs from iTunes and record the narration on top of the powerpoint video using iMovie.  (This should also work with Windows Movie Maker.)  

I'm not sure if there is an easier way to get the audio to work when it is downloaded from the Wiki, but I just thought I would share!

This week in LIS 201 (week 11)

Week 11: Games, simulations, and avatars

LECTURE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

• Video games

READINGS BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Stephen Kline et al., "Electronic frontiers: Branding the 'Nintendo Generation' 1985-1990," Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (2003).
• Roger Stahl, "Have you played the War on Terror?" Critical Studies in Media Communication (2006).

HOMEWORK BEFORE DISCUSSION

• If it's your turn to write a 500-word article critique, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.
• Upload a working "skeleton file" of your slideshow presentation to your discussion section wiki, and make a link to your personal wiki page. This should be a PowerPoint file that has all the timings correct for the Ignite presentation, with 15-second auto-advance of the slides.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: Pop quiz? Maybe!
• Two student presentations (# 17 and #18) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).  These should be the last article speeches of the semester.
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Discuss your book slideshow project.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This weekend you'll explore the phenomenon of creating online characters representing human identity through textual or graphical means, called "avatars."

• Read this short selection from Neal Stephenson's early-1990s book Snow Crash in which the main character, Hiro Protagonist (get it?) visits an online world called the "Metaverse."
• Now visit the Second Life web site and download the necessary software to create an avatar of your own. Or if you're a member of another online community or online game (like "World of Warcraft") you may use an avatar from that system. (Or you may want to simply create a rather cartoonish avatar like the ones available on the Nintendo Wii system, which you can do here.)
• Read through this photoessay on people and their cyberspace avatars from the New York Times and think about the different ways that people choose to represent themselves online.
• Post a screen capture image of your Second Life, WoW, Wii, or other avatar to your discussion section blog, and write a bit about the process of creating this avatar. Did you try to represent yourself, or split from your real life persona? Was it easy to create an avatar, or did you feel limited by the range of options? How are race and gender and ethnicity and other markers of "difference" present or not present in your avatar?
• Take a look at the other avatars your fellow students have posted, and comment on at least one of them. 
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

• Sam Anderson, "Just one more game ..." New York Times (April 4, 2012).
• Edward Castronova, "Daily life on a synthetic earth," in Synthetic worlds: The business and culture of online games (2005). 
• Julian Dibbell, "A rape in cyberspace," The Village Voice (1993).
• James Gee, "Good video games, the human mind, and good learning," in Good video games + good learning (2007). 
• Brad King and John Borland, "Gamers, interrupted," in Dungeons and Dreamers: The rise of computer game culture from geek to chic (2003). 
• Stephen Kline et al., "Sim Capital," Digital play: The interaction of technology, culture, and marketing (2003).  
• Stephen Kline et al., "Origins of an industry: Cold warriors, hackers, and suits, 1960-1984," Digital play: The interaction of technology, culture, and marketing (2003).
• Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace, "The Death of Urizenus," in The Second Life Herald: The virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse (2007). 
• Kurt Squire, "Open-ended video games: A model for developing learning for the interactive age," in Katie Salen, ed., The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (2008).