iGeneration 08

iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture 2008 was an honours course in Communication Studies at the University of Western Australia.  The unit coordinator was Tama Leaver, and the five talented students who took the course were Kiri, Alex, Chris, Shemila and Joanne.  The honours course was a collaborative effort; Tama provided the frame and the first few and last weeks of the course, but the central seminars were constructed and run by the students (and, can I say, they all did a fine job!).

The first thing someone looking at this course blog should know, is that everything here – the unit outline, the seminars, the podcast project, the remix project and all of the artefacts and conversations, are released under a Creative Commons Australia Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 license. This means educators, students and pretty much anyone else is free to use, and re-use any of the material here as long as they give attribution (the easiest way being a direct link back to this blog), and the material in used non-commercially (and we consider any and all educational uses as non-commercial, along with plenty of other uses, too) and that any subsequent work building on these materials is also shared under a similar license (no, it doesn’t have to be exact, but the intent needs to be pretty much the same).  This course, and all of its content, are an Open Education Resource and we encourage you to borrow, mix and build upon the work here.

The second thing you should know is that this is a course blog which, for those unfamiliar with blogs, means that this course is in reverse chronological order – the first posts made in July are at the end of the blog, the most recent posts are at the beginning (this one being the most recent and thus the top post).  To navigate you can either follow the links to specific parts of the course using the menu links at the top of this and every page, or you can use the side-bar which points specifically to the posts and artefacts created by the students for assessment (which entailed created audio podcasts and video remixes, each with a critical exegesis, which basically means a short essay explaining why they made the remix or podcast they created in the context of exploring participatory culture).From the main page you can also access the monthly archives in the side-bar.

Finally, if you’re an educator or a student, considering using or building upon material here, please also consider the value of Open Educational Resources and, if you ever get a chance, either yourself or encourage others to think about the value of putting material online for others to learn from; it’ll make us all smarter in the long run!

And that’s it for 2008!