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Unusual Commencement Speech offers $100,000 through Flash Philanthropy
The following column was featured on
the national blog of the Social Media Club on May 4, 2013
University professors hear a lot of commencement speeches. But one I heard this weekend was unlike any other I’ve ever experienced.
By combining the power of digital media, passion for philanthropy, and mobile technology,graduating students at Queens University of Charlotte helped the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation give away $100,000 on the spot during their commencement speech. The experiment was the brainchild of graduation speaker Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president of Knight Foundation.
During Newton’s address, the audience watched three videos from Communities in Schools, Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, and Loaves and Fishes. In the videos, representatives from each Charlotte-area organization explained how they would use a $50,000 grant from Knight Foundation. Graduates were then invited to text in their votes to decide which organization would receive the grant.
Graduates awarded the grant to Communities in Schools, and the other two organizations were awarded $25,000 grants by the foundation.
For the campus community, the event demonstrated the ability of individuals to make a difference in their communities through digital technology. “Remember the night that your lives were both noble and digital,” Newton remarked to the graduates. Even on a night of celebration of their own successes, the Class of 2013 were reminded to give back to their community.
Queens and Knight Foundation have a partnership established in 2010 with the naming of the James L. Knight School of Communication at the university. The school has a special endowed mission for strengthening digital and media literacy in the Charlotte community. The partnership has created the website digitalcharlotte.org and launched the new online Journal of Digital and Media Literacy.
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Staying Current in Social Media Education
The following article was featured on
the Social Media Club’s national Social Media Education blog
on February 19, 2013:
As a professor who studies digital media, many people often ask me how I stay current in the field. Studying social media and digital media can be a tricky business in that new things are always being added to the market and new strategies proliferate for employing tools that exist.
In my practice, staying current is about three different components: Keeping up with the newest developments, experimenting with digital tools, and innovating in the classroom.
Keeping up with the latest tools
Keeping up with the latest tools is about finding a tool that will curate information so that I can most easily access and process it. You might be surprised that, for me, this tool is the (relatively old) standby, RSS. RSS, or real simple syndication, was developed to deliver information from the web to people who subscribe to that information. For example, most blog sites are equipped with RSS feeds which allow a user to subscribe to the blog and have the blog material delivered in a variety of formats.
I use the RSS reader in Google Reader to manage my subscriptions so that I am staying up to date with the most current research and trends in digital media. For me, though there’s a catch. I find the process of logging to access the content to be a little clumsy on my mobile devices. Instead, I need a more convenient way to digest this information on the go. I found two tools that make that simple. First, I often read blogs in between other things that I’m doing during my day when I have my phone available. On the iPhone, the Feeddler appbecame a great resource for me to manage the blogs and podcasts that I plans to read or listen to. The app alerts me when there’s new posts to read and I can quickly scan through the titles of the posts to see which ones capture my interest or relate to my learning. Second, sometimes I prefer to read posts in a more magazine-like style, especially on my iPad. In that case, I turn to Flipboard. Flipboard takes the RSS information puts it into a visual display like a magazine that you can scroll through by turning pages and clicking on articles to read the most recent updates.
Both Flipboard and Feeddler use Google Reader as their source of information, so all of the material that you read on any of these three tools syncs with the others. Therefore, when I mark items that I’ve read in Feeddler, they are also marked as “read” inside Google Reader and Flipboard. I also find it valuable to be able to share an article using Feeddler or Flipboard through Twitter, email, or other vehicles that allow me to connect these articles to my students and colleagues.
Experimenting with digital tools
When I read about a new digital tool that looks interesting, I usually try it. Often, this classifies me as an “early adopter” of technology among my colleagues. But through this willingness to experiment, I’ve tried out a variety of social media tools (as well as other digital media tools) in the classroom. My students have experimented with Facebook,Twitter, Foursquare, Pinterest, Storify, MindMeister, Goanimate, Audacity, and a variety of iPad and iPhone apps, to name a few, that allow them to connect to me and to each other in the classroom setting. Some of the links embedded above will take your articles I’ve written about these specific experiments.
Innovating in the classroom
For me the leap from experimenting in the classroom to innovating in the classroom comes at a point of confidence with the digital tool that I’m using. In a classroom experiment, I’ll try out the digital tool to see what might work what might happen and how students respond to the tool and its uses. Then, innovating with the tool in the classroom is about taking a tool and applying it to the course work in a way that generates learning for students. This is a widely unstudied body of knowledge in research literature mainly because the tools and practices are so new. As we move forward into an age of digital teaching and learning, researchers of instructional design should be able to consider the ways that innovations in digital technology can shape classroom learning.
In our graduate program in communication at Queens University of Charlotte for example, our faculty are innovating with the ways that media technologies can be used in the graduate classroom. Sometimes our students knew more than the professors about these technologies but other times the professors are introducing students to technologies being used in ways that they had not envisioned. And students are constantly making the connections between the major theories and concepts presented in the program, and the application of digital tools to those concept. This is the kind of work that will enhance and create opportunities for better and more sophisticated research into technology innovation in a variety of settings.
These three strategies are my way of keeping current with the changes in digital media technology and the ways they affect my classroom. We are all learners and, as a mutual learner with you, I’d love to hear about the ways that you stay current. You can contact me by leaving a comment here, by tweeting me at @JAMcArthur, or by going to my website and contacting me through one of the other channels there.
The Election has Facebook seeing Red – and Blue
The following article was featured on
the Social Media Club’s national Social Media Education blog
on Election Day, November 6, 2012:
If you’re like me, your friends on Facebook have been talking about the election.
I’m friends with supporters of President Obama and Governor Romney, and even a few who are advocating for Governor Johnson. But, I’ve been surprised by the variety of Facebook arguments that I’ve witnessed in the weeks leading up to the election. Most are heated debates championed by friends of friends who write passionately and with varying levels of grammatical prowess.
In my courses in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte, we’ve been discussing the role of Facebook as a gathering spot – not necessarily of like-minded individuals, but rather of friends, acquaintances, and peers. In our discussions, I’ve been thinking about the role of Facebook as a space.
Some argue that Facebook is a podium for expressing opinions. They liken it to a microphone that can be turned up to share ideas with people, or to try to persuade anyone who will listen. Thereby, users on Facebook could and should advocate for selected issues.
Others believe that Facebook is a dinner table around which friends are invited to gather. These folks suggest that dinner table conversations should avoid politics, sex, and money. Therefore, the socially aware Facebook user would refrain from discussing these topics.
Still others might argue that Facebook shouldn’t look like an podium or a dinner table, but something else all together.
As educators who are researching, reflecting on, and teaching about social media use, perhaps our job is to ask others to do the same. To pause. To reflect. To consider the messages we send, when we choose to use social media, and for what purpose. Our role is to lead the discussion about the power of social media and to harness that power for the good.
I’m happy to report that the banter on Facebook on Election day appears to have changed. My friends and acquaintances are posting pictures of their “I Voted” stickers. This kind of civic encouragement might demonstrate the actual power of the platform: to encourage each other to act as citizens.
John A. McArthur is an assistant professor of communication in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte. Connect with him online athttp://jamcarthur.com or on Twitter @JAMcArthur
Experimenting with Pinterest in the college classroom
The article below was featured on the Social Media Club’s Education Blog on September 17, 2012.
I embarked on another classroom teaching and learning experiment this fall on Pinterest. One hundred of our students at Queens University of Charlotte were dispatched into the venues and streets of Charlotte as student interns and volunteers during the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
The Knight School of Communication held a two-day learning conference before the convention, and then placed students with opportunities of all kinds. We had students on the podium committee at the convention, working with the foreign media press gallery, working in production for national broadcasts like ABC World News with Diane Sawyer and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, supporting local media outlets, and serving as hosts for the PPL, a venue dedicated to culture, arts, learning, and media both credentialed and not.
As one of the assignments of the course, each student was asked to chronicle his or her experience on Pinterest. Here are a couple of things we learned at the onset of our experiment:
Open Access
When we planned this assignment, Pinterest was an invitation-only service. We devised a plan to invite all of our class members, but, luckily for us, Pinterest moved to open access two weeks before our class. Each students was able to create a Pinterest account during the class and begin posting.
Real time posting
Pinterest isn’t really built for real-time posting. The mobile apps do not yet interface well with Twitter or Facebook, or services like Hootsuite that allow multiple posting at once. Many of our students privileged Twitter for current posts, choosing to then post their images to Pinterest at a later time when they were at their computers. Using the service myself, I found that posting a picture to Twitter was the easiest way to get it online from my iPad or iPhone. Then, I would move through Pinterest to pin my image by searching for it on the web. Pinterest could make this a lot more usable by allowing direct posting from its mobile apps.
Online Archive
Pinterest makes an excellent online archive. It is easy to navigate, shows all the images, and tracks where they came from online and who pinned wach image. It is a site built for compilation, and it works well.
Group Function
Over 100 people had access to post to our single Pinterest board. Despite the fact that Pinterest emailed every user every time any other user posted on the board, the service worked beautifully to combine all of these disparate voices on one page. This was the piece that gave me the largest amount of advance worry, not having seen or tried a board with a hundred pinners.
These are just some early observations. We plan to write an article about the experiment, detailing the plan, the assignment, and the results. It’s been a fun ride.
John A. McArthur, PhD, is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the James L. Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte (NC). Connect with Dr. McArthur at http://www.jamcarthur.com or on Twitter @JAMcArthur.
Queens students – and Charlotte – can go to school on DNC
Queens students – and Charlotte – can go to school on DNC
This column ran in the Charlotte Observer on September 30, 2011
on the opinion/editorial page.
The link above will take you to the column on the Observer’s website.
Our city might learn a lot from the Democratic National Convention this September, if we all become students.
My friends and I share a joke about internships. While in college, I explained to a group the differing functions of an MRI and an fMRI. My friend Jessica responded jovially with, “Did you do an MRI internship or something?”
To her surprise, I had. The joke continues, over a decade later, that I’ve done internships in everything.
At Queens University of Charlotte, all students complete two semester-long internships before graduation. This requirement has inspired our faculty to think experientially as we design courses.
This fall, professors in the Knight School of Communication are embarking on a learning opportunity like none I’ve heard of before. We are “bringing down the walls” of the school by inviting students to focus on Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention.
Before the DNC, students will learn about Charlotte and the role of political conventions in America. Local historians, media makers, and city leaders will investigate the relationship between the life of a city and events it hosts, joining with professors from not only communication and political science, but also environmental science, new media design, history, philosophy and religion.
During the convention, students will work in our city. Some will intern for national media personalities. Others will assist the host committee in their communication center. Some will tell our stories alongside journalists in the press gallery, in the corridors of the Charlotte Observer, and on Charlotte’s streets. Still others will volunteer with the PPL, a first-of-its-kind cultural initiative unique to Charlotte.
And they will learn what it means for Charlotte to exist in the national spotlight and to function under scrutiny for national security. They might even invest in political action or explore the American political process, partisanship and its boundaries.
Our hope is that our students – and the people of our city – treat the convention like a week-long internship.
Internships have the ability to give students a window into options that lie ahead. In my case, internships taught me a little about what I wanted to do with my life, and a lot about what I didn’t want to do.
The convention might do the same thing for Charlotte. The paths that lie before our city are many. As September draws closer, our city can and should prepare to learn a few things – what we want to become, and what we might choose not to be.
Between now and the convention, Charlotte’s citizens should reflect on our city and what we value.
Then, during the convention, join us in the Knight School by becoming a student. Study the city. Learn from visitors. Watch, read, and listen to stories being told about the Queen City and her people. Respond. And, if you come across a good story, share it.
Our week in the national spotlight can be a valuable, city-wide internship. At the very least, let’s take some time to think about what we are learning.
John A.McArthur, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte. He can be reached at http://jamcarthur.com
Investing in Digital Literacy through Social Media
This article was featured on the Social Media Club’s Education Blog on Wednesday, May 9, 2012.
***
Entertainer Cee-Lo Green’s cat, Purrfect, has become a mouthpiece for NBC’s The Voice, a singing competion which this past Tuesday crowned its second winner. With 63,000 followers on Twitter, this feline certainly has a voice of its own – one that meows to promote the television show that led it to fame.
If a cat can do it, we all can.
But to what end?
The insertion of social media in education has the potential to advance core aims of our society: to teach students how to engage with their families, neighbors, and communities in a new way.
The combination of social media and education requires that we teach students how to become literate in a digital world. The skills of literacy are no longer just about reading and writing, but about abilities that surround our responsibilities as authors.
In Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action, researcher Renee Hobbs offers that digital and media literacy is constructed of five crucial abilities:
- The ability to access.
Access refers to an individual’s ability to use a computer to connect to the Internet. Many of us who use the Internet everyday take access for granted, but even in America, a vast digital divide still exists. The lack of access to both computers and the Internet play a distinct role in determining who can contribute to a conversation. - The ability to analyze.
Analyzing information is a skill frequently taught in educational circles: how to establish the accuracy of a source or the reliability of an author. Digital media expands this conversation as sources become too numerous to count and an author’s reliability is often found in shades of grey rather than a decision that is black or white. - The ability to create.
As we engage digital tools, we are creating. Whether designed through Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest or using advanced software like Final Cut Pro, Garageband, or Illustrator, the creations we make are messages that we send out to others. - The ability to reflect.
Reflection on our own actions in a digital space remains a core competency forgotten by many. We operate in a social media space that encourages us to reveal ourselves without reflecting on our actions. Reflection will become a distinct indicator of success and value as we move toward an increasingly interconnected world. - The ability to act.
Action is not about tweeting or updating a status or sharing a video, but rather about using the tools we can to make a positive impact on others. Our actions in social media spaces can degrade, insult, and embarrass, but they can also engage, promote and uplift. The choice is a minute-to-minute decision of each author.
One aim of education is to train a citizenry for active participation. When applied to social media, these five competencies are learning outcomes that the combination of social media and education can address to contribute to that aim.
Social media gives each one of us a voice, and we each have a role to play in our respective communities. I can choose to be a town crier by advancing today’s news or costermonger who peddles my wares online. I might be a village idiot making jokes.
But, on a fundamental level, we must all serve as citizens who are listening to the voices of those in our communities and discerning the voices of merit from the rest.
Teachers and learners around the country are grappling with ways to insert social media into pedagogy and trying to decide if and how it fits.
Teachers, use the five competencies of literacy above as guideposts for your instruction using social media. I don’t teach Twitter for Twitter’s sake. I teach it as a tool for active engagement in communities. Some of these five competencies have become learning outcomes in my classes and social media have become one piece of the larger set of pedagogical aims for my teaching.
Learners, invest yourself in the five competencies to better your own practice. You may find yourself tweeting for your company, advertising a product on Facebook, or writing a blog about your family. Ask yourself if your skills are being enhanced in the process. But, more importantly, ask yourself if your use of social media is working for the good of your community.
Teaching and learning can be dramatically impacted by social media. But only if we as teachers are willing and able to model its effective use alongside our students.
Town Crier? Village Idiot? We each have role in public space
Town crier? Village idiot? We each have role in public spaceThis column ran in the Charlotte Observer on September 30, 2011 on the opinion/editorial page. The link above will take you to the column on the Observer’s website.
Facebook is changing the face of our private lives. The impending release of Facebook Timeline and Open Graph blurs the lines between private information and public announcements. Some critics suggest that Americans need to realize that all information shared online is public – regardless of the privacy controls we believe we have.
Next time you tweet or update your Facebook status, make a choice about who you want to be in the public space of the Internet. In our global village, are you a town crier, a costermonger, or just the village idiot?
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan suggested fifty years ago that electronics would lead us toward a global village – a world made smaller and more social by rapid advances in communication technologies. Many people believe that we now live in that small, interconnected village of loud citizens who publicize various aspects of our lives.
Sharing ourselves publicly is not a new phenomenon. In Medieval towns and villages, three types of people could often be found yelling in the streets.
The first, the town crier, was responsible for sharing the daily news. He walked the streets ringing a bell, shouting, “Oyez, Oyez!” His responsibility was to make announcements for the court, the government or other organizations considered influential by the people.
The second, the costermonger, was often known as a hawker or street vendor. She could be heard singing advertisements for her goods or trade. Whether selling strawberries, flowers, or clothing, this savvy businessperson used her voice to make a living.
The third was known around town as the village idiot. He ran through the streets making a joke or serving as one. His was the voice of the jester, the merrymaker, the town player or the buffoon.
In towns, there were also citizens. These townspeople weren’t often shouting. Instead they listened, discerning between the voices on their streets. They used their voices sparingly to join in the fun or to talk among themselves – and sometimes shout, if necessary.
In the global village, we give voice to our stories on Twitter and Facebook. We shout on YouTube and peddle our wares on eBay, Etsy, and blogs. We even identify our streets on Foursquare.
Each of us must make a choice about the voice we choose – the role we choose to play in our global village. Like the town crier, we could advance the news of the day. As a costermonger, we might be found practicing our trade. And many of us, like the village idiot, just add to the noise and festivity of our town. All of these voices can benefit the village.
However, the more important role in our global village is the one of citizen. The citizen listens, thinks, evaluates, and then joins in the discussion. My hope is that, like the citizens of the villages of old, each of us can learn to distinguish between the voices of the crier, the costermonger and the idiot. Only then can we become engaged citizens, fully participating in the global village.
John A.McArthur, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte. He can be reached at http://jamcarthur.com
9/11 Remembered in Memorials
This column was featured as "Share Your Own Memory" in today's Greenville News.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in a classroom on the first day of the term at Furman University. I had just finished the first course of my senior year – “Freedom in the Western Tradition” – and was settling into my second of the day – “Islam.”
The irony of that juxtaposition was not lost on me that morning.
As planes crashed in New York City, Washington, DC and a field in Pennsylvania, I watched and prayed. Two days later, as news was still developing, student leaders at Furman led a prayer vigil for our country. At our opening of school convocation, the Furman community sang a hopeful “America, the Beautiful” in place of the typical rendition of our alma mater.
A decade after 9/11, each of us can remember our feelings of shock, anger, and fear and tell the story of where we were when the news found us. When we take the time to share our stories, we memorialize the event. But the stories of those that perished in the attacks will be forever told through our national memorials.
The Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial was dedicated three years ago. 184 benches, each representing one of the lives lost at the site, jut up from the ground and hover over reflection pools. The benches are arranged along an age line – from the youngest victim aged 3 to the oldest, 71. Each is engraved with the name of the victim for whom it stands.
While facing the Pentagon, visitors see the inscriptions for those that died in the building; whereas the inscriptions for those who died aboard the plane can be read by facing the sky in the direction from which the plane travelled.
The gravel underfoot, the sound of flowing water, and the peeling paperbark maple trees at the site give the sensation that this is a place of memory, different from the area around it.
The memorials at the World Trade Center in New York City and the site of the Flight 93 crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania will be dedicated this weekend. Like the Pentagon Memorial, the two memorials to be dedicated on this solemn anniversary tell the stories of the lives lost there.
Each memorial is set apart from its surroundings, creating a place for reflection. Each shares the stories of the victims as individuals. And each creates a space designed for national remembrance.
Memorials move us from saying an independent, “I will never forget,” to declaring as a nation, “We will always remember.” They cause us to pause, to contemplate our history, and to share our own stories.
This September 11th, take the time to learn about our three national memorials and the stories of the lives they represent, reflect on the events of these last ten years, and tell your own story of remembrance.
Dr. John A. McArthur is an assistant professor in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte and resides in Greenville, SC. Contact Dr. McArthur at http://jamcarthur.com
