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Buddypress and the Social, Networked, Open-Source Classroom Matthew K City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY Graduate Center 2011 Beyond Friending: BuddyPress and the Social, Networked, Open- Source Classroom Matthew K. Gold CUNY Graduate Center How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/291 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research Graduate Center 2011 Beyond Friending BuddyPress and the Social, Networked, Open-Source Classroom Matthew K. Gold How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Follow this and additional works at: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs Part of the Digital Humanities Commons, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons This Book Chapter or Section is brought to you by CUNY Academic Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Publications and Research by an authorized administrator of CUNY Academic Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Learning Through Digital Media Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy Edited by R. Trebor Scholz The Politics of Digital Culture Series Learning Through Digital Media Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy Edited by R. Trebor Scholz The Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC) The Institute for Distributed Creativity publishes materials related to The New School’s About This Publication biennial conference series The Politics of Digital Culture, providing a space for connec- tions among the arts, design, and the social sciences. The Internet as Playground and Factory (2009) MobilityShifts: An International Future of Learning Summit (2011) The Internet as Soapbox and Barricade (2013) www.newschool.edu/digitalculture This publication is the product of a collaboration that started in the fall of Editor of the Book Series The Politics of Digital Culture: R. Trebor Scholz 2010 when a total of eighty New School faculty, librarians, students, and staff Advisory Board: Ute Meta Bauer, Megan Boler, Gabriella Coleman, Cathy Davidson, came together to think about teaching and learning with digital media. These Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Losh, Margaret Morse, Kavita Philip, McKenzie Wark conversations, leading up to the MobilityShifts Summit, inspired this collec- Copy Editor: Angela Carr tion of essays, which was rigorously peer-reviewed. Print Design: Jena Sher 1 Peer Review: MediaCommons The Open Peer Review process took place on MediaCommons, an all-elec- Publisher: The Institute for Distributed Creativity tronic scholarly publishing network focused on the field of Media Studies www.distributedcreativity.org developed in partnership with the Institute for the Future of the Book and The New School, 65 West 11th Street, New York, NY 10011 the NYU Libraries. We received 155 comments by dozens of reviewers. The authors started the review process by reflecting on each other’s texts, followed This project is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur by invited scholars, and finally, an intensive social media campaign helped to Foundation and The New School. solicit commentary from the public at large. ISBN 978-0-615-451448-0 The New School is a leading institution when it comes to incorporating cross- disciplinary digital learning into the curriculum. It offered its first Media Learning Through Digital Media is released under a Creative Commons NoDerivs, Non- Studies degree program already in 1975. Learning Through Digital Media re- Commercial, Attribution, ShareAlike License. Every effort was made to find all copy- affirms this commitment to interdisciplinary innovation. right holders of the images in this publication. Screen shots of websites are released under an educational fair use license. 1 See <http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress>. Download the free PDF or eBook (Kindle, iPad), purchase the printed book on Amazon.com or Lulu.com, or visit the publication’s website at www.learningthroughdigitalmedia.net The publisher has paid close attention to the correctness of URLs of websites men- tioned in this book but cannot be responsible for these websites remaining operational. Cover Image: Luis Camnitzer (Uruguayan, born 1937), The Instrument and Its Work, 1976. Wood, glass, and metal, 30 x 25.5 x 5 cm, Collection Reto Ehrbar, Zurich, Photo by David Allison, © 2010 Luis Camnitzer. Contents 149 16. Teaching with Google Docs, or, How to Teach in a Digital Media Lab without Losing Students’ Attention Abigail De Kosnik 157 17. Using Twitter—But Not in the Classroom David Parry 167 18. Voice, Performance and Transience: Learning Through Seesmic Holly Willis 175 19. Teaching and Learning with Video Annotations Jonah Bossewitch and Michael D. Preston 185 20. YouTube Pedagogy: Finding Communities of Practice in a viii Introduction: Learning Through Digital Media R. Trebor Scholz Distributed Learning World Elizabeth Losh 195 21. Community Media in the Digital Age Colin Rhinesmith 1 01. Delicious: Renovating the Mnemonic Architectures of Bookmarking 203 22. The Virtual Cutting Room Martin Lucas Shannon Mattern 213 23. Learning with Handbrake: A Ripping Story Kevin Hamilton 11 02. Follow, Heart, Reblog, Crush: Teaching Writing with Tumblr 221 24. Mind-Mapping Inside and Outside of the Classroom Adriana Valdez Young D.E. Wittkower 17 03. Blogging Course Texts: Enhancing Our Traditional Use of 231 25. Crowdmapping the Classroom with Ushahidi Kenneth Rogers Textual Materials Alex Halavais 241 26. Book Sprints and Booki: Re-Imagining How Textbooks 27 04. Socializing Blogs, a Guide for Beginners Tiffany Holmes are Produced Adam Hyde 35 05. When Teaching Becomes an Interaction Design Task: Networking 249 27. Productivity in the Age of Social Media: Freedom the Classroom with Collaborative Blogs Mushon Zer-Aviv and Anti-Social Fred Stutzman 47 06. Children of the Screen: Teaching Spanish with Commentpress 257 28. Would You Like to Teach My Avatar? Learning in Second Life Sol B. Gaitán Patrick Lichty 57 07. Facebook as a Functional Tool & Critical Resource 267 29. Media Production with Arduino Jonah Brucker-Cohen Mark Lipton 273 30. A Path towards Global Reach: The Pool 69 08. Beyond Friending: BuddyPress and the Social, Networked, Craig Dietrich with Jon Ippolito Open-Source Classroom Matthew K. Gold 285 31. Ethnographic Research and Digital Media Laura Forlano 81 09. An Argument for the Web in the Equally Messy Realities 295 32. Sharing Research and Building Knowledge through Zotero of Life, Democracy, and Teaching Vanalyne Green Mark Sample 89 10. Copy Your Homework: Free Culture and Fair Use with 305 33. The Wicked Problem of Pedagogy, An Afterword Wikimedia Commons Michael Mandiberg Elizabeth Ellsworth 99 11. How I Used Wikis to Get My Students to Do Their Readings Ulises A. Mejias 313 A Digital Learning Tool Kit 109 12. Google Wave: Pedagogical Success, Technological Failure? 319 Acknowledgements Kathleen Fitzpatrick 320 Praise for Learning Through Digital Media 117 13. Learning on Mobile Platforms Jessica Irish 322 Advisory Board 125 14. Mobile Learning Tools: A Teachable Moment in the Age of the App 325 Biographies David Carroll 137 15. Teaching and Learning with Omeka: Discomfort, Play, and Creating Public, Online, Digital Collections Jeffrey W. McClurken Beyond Friending 69 BuddyPress and the Social, Networked, Open-Source Classroom Matthew K. Gold In the spring of 2007, I asked students in the “Introduction to English Studies” course that I was teaching at Temple University to use blogs to discuss the novels we were reading for class. During a unit on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, one of my students wrote a post titled “Chaos and Imagination”1 that speculated upon the autobiographical roots of Ellison’s text (Cummings). Soon after the post was published, a comment appeared from an unexpected contributor: a producer from Radio Open Source,2 Chris Lydon’s nationally syndicated public radio show, asked my student to contribute a question to Lydon’s upcoming interview with Stanford professor Arnold Rampersad, who had recently published a biography of Ellison.3 On the Radio Open Source blog,4 the producer linked to and quoted from my student’s post, adding her work to a list of “extra credit” readings that also included texts by Saul Bellow, New York Sun book reviewer Adam Kirsch, and Ellison himself. My student was delighted and flattered by the attention her blog post had re- ceived; it gave her confidence in her writing and bolstered her enthusiasm for our class. I was nearly as happy with the news, since the episode confirmed my suspicion that bringing my classes onto the Web in an open, public way would be beneficial and edifying for my students. Since I had been unaware of Rampersad’s biography, the editor’s comment both brought the text into 08 our classroom and reframed our discussions. We were no longer studying an course site because they receive a friend request from a fellow student, and 70 71 important work of twentieth-century literature within the narrow context of in visiting the site, they may quickly respond to a status update, contribute D my syllabus; instead, we had become part of a conversation that involved the a link to a group, respond to a forum post, send a private message, or update ol broader reading public. As the professor, I was displaced from the center of their own status. Taken in aggregate form, all of these informal interactions G that conversation, which became more open, distributed and student-driven with fellow class members help create a richer, more social learning environ- than it had been before. ment than a site that uses blogs alone. This moment has informed my approach to teaching and learning ever since BuddyPress adds several new features to networked learning environments because it demonstrated so powerfully the kinds of connections made pos- that can be used in creative ways: sible by open learning environments.
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