University of Manitoba, Information Services and Technology, Michael Wesch and the Future of Education, June 17, 2008 Dubbed “the explainer” by popular geek publication Wired because of his viral YouTube video that summarizes Web 2.0 in under five minutes, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch brought his Web 2.0 wisdom to the University of Manitoba on June 17. During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future. “It’s basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online,” he explains. “We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn’t.” 1 From umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html 13 July 2008 Michael Wesch Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology SASW, 206 Waters Hall Kansas State University Manhattan, KS 66506 Phone: 785-532-6866 Fax: 785-532-6978 Email: [email protected] Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the impacts of new media on human interaction. He graduated summa cum laude from the Kansas State University Anthropology Program in 1997 and returned as a faculty member in 2004 after receiving his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. There he pursued research on social and cultural change in Melanesia, focusing on the introduction of print and print-based practices like mapping and census-taking in the Mountain Ok region of Papua New Guinea where he lived for a total of 18 months from 1999-2003. This work inspired Wesch to examine the impacts of new media more broadly, especially digital media. To this end, Wesch is launching the Digital Ethnography Working Group, a team of undergraduates exploring human uses of digital technology. Coinciding with the launch of this group, Wesch created a short video, "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us." Released on YouTube on January 31st 2007, it quickly became the most popular video in the blogosphere and has now been viewed over 3 million times. Wesch has won several awards for his work with video, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Media Praxis from the Media Ecology Association. Along with other explorations of mediated culture, the Digital Ethnography working group is now studying video-blogging on YouTube, a project which was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wesch's videos are part of his broader efforts to pursue the possibilities of digital media to extend and transform the way ethnographies are presented. His first experiment with digital ethnography, Nekalimin.net, began in 1999 and was recently listed by the Cardiff School of Social Sciences Hypermedia and Qualitative Research Project as "by far and away the most interesting web-mounted hypermedia ethnography to date." In 2002, Wesch created "Virtual Snow," an on-line resource on the life and work of Edmund Snow Carpenter, an anthropologist who was instrumental in developing the foundational ideas of media ecology which inspire much of Wesch's work with digital ethnography. Wesch is also a multiple award-winning teacher active in the development of innovative teaching techniques. Most notably, Wesch has developed a highly-acclaimed "World Simulation" for large introductory classes in cultural anthropology. Currently he is the coordinator for the Peer Review of Teaching Project at Kansas State University, part of a broader nation-wide consortium of universities pursuing new ways to improve and evaluate student learning. He is also working with the Educause Center for Applied Research on "The Tower and the Cloud" project, examining "the question of how higher education institutions (The Tower) may interoperate with the emerging network-based business and social paradigm (The Cloud)." 2 From umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html 13 July 2008 Recent News • Wesch wins the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology - June 2007 • 'omg my mom joined facebook!! ' June 7th 2007. New York Times • An Anthropologist Explores Video Blogging. May 7th 2007. The Chronicle of Higher Education - see video • Wesch wins Wired magazine Rave Award - Wired Magazine May 2007 • Tech Tops the Pop Charts . March 15th 2007. PC World • Wesch interview with John Battelle . February 18th 2007. • YouTube is a hit in K-State classroom, world . 49 ABC News. February 15th 2007. • A Lesson in Viral Video. Inside Higher Ed. February 7th 2007. • Professor's Teaching Style Garners Praise. KSU Collegian. March 14th 2006. Recent Publications 2007 A Witch-hunt in New Guinea: Anthropology on Trial. Anthropology & Humanism Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 4-17 2007 What is Web 2.0? What does it mean for Anthropology? Anthropology News May 2007, Vol. 48, No. 5, pp. 30-31 2007 An In-depth Look at the Cyber-Phenomenon of Our Time: Web 2.0 (interview with Virginia Buege). The Lawlor Review XV(2), pp. 10-16. 3 From umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html 13 July 2008 .