Exploration Seminar: Schedule of Events

“There’s an app for that”
IDST 200: Exploration Seminar in Digital Literacy
syllabus | schedule of events
Spring Term 2013, Mondays 3:00 – 4:15 pm

January 7
Welcome, Introduce the Seminar

January 14
Exploring Access
Readings:

January 21
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday

January 28
Inquiry Project 1 presentations & discussion

Inquiry Project 1: Access
Access to the Internet is a major issue for our society. Access the Internet to find out the answers to the following questions:

  1. Where can someone in Charlotte go to get access to a computer and the Internet.
  2. What are the rules for accessing the Internet there?
  3. How many people access the Internet there each day?

You may not use your phone, personal computer, or any computer on campus to complete this assignment.

Document your journey by photo or video and produce a 2 minute video in which you describe your journey. We will watch them in class.
 

February 4
Analyzing information
Readings:

February 11
Inquiry Project 2 presentations & discussion

Inquiry Project 2: Analyze
Find out how people make decisions about information online. Some questions that might guide you: How do they determine whether a site or author is credible? How can they tell a “good” website from a “bad” one? What tools do they trust when they navigate the web? I advise you to select one good question and give us a wide variety of short responses.

Create a 60-120 second video showcasing their responses. You will play the video in class. You could either bring the exported video file with you to class or post it to YouTube.

February 18
Creating
Readings:

February 25
Inquiry Project 3 presentations & discussion

Inquiry Project 3: Create
Make a creative/innovative/fun video that inspires “creative confidence” in the digital world. Your video should be between 1:30 and 2:00 minutes. Consider what the major purpose of the video is and then let that purpose inform how you shoot it, where you shoot it and how topresent yourself on screen. You can work in groups on the production, but everyone should turn in his or her own video.

March 4
Spring Break

March 11
Reflecting on Practice
Readings:

March 18
Inquiry Project 4 presentations & discussion

Inquiry Project 4: Reflect
Keep a media journal for one week. In it, make a notation of every time you interact with media (this includes your phone, a television, a newspaper, the Internet, movies, games, social media, and any other media you come across). Note what the media was, how long you used it, and for what purpose. At the end of the week write a two-page assessment of your own media use or create a video diary-style reflection of your media use.

March 25
Acting our parts
Readings:

April 1
Action brainstorm and project selection

Final Project: Action
Develop a way to promote digital literacy on the Queens campus. It might be an event, a marketing campaign, an app, a fundraiser, and awareness campaign, or any creative idea that comes to mind. The project should connect a student’s experience in the physical world to something in the digital world. Here are three examples from previous students: You are what you tweet, #eggQueens and “Tally Your Tweets.” We will select projects this week and final projects must be carried out before our final class meeting.

April 8 & 15
Action implementations

April 22
Final inquiry project recaps.

Each student will present the results of his/her final inquiry project and submit a three-page reflection about how the project went – what worked, what didn’t. Explain how you connected the physical world and the digital world and discuss how many people made that connection and how you knew. Your project must be implemented and assessed before our class meeting.