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!

Congratulations everyone – the remix projects are done, the exegeses have explained (most of!) your creative thinking and the final comments are posted – your iGeneration journey (or, at least, the formal unit-shaped bit) is done! As part of this wrap-up can I just say what a pleasure it has been to be your guide (and I’m deliberately not saying teacher – I’m sure I learnt just as much from you all as you did from me in this course) in this unit; the conversations have been great, your work fun to read, listen to and watch;  and from your final comments on the unit I’m left with the sense that iGeneration was a successful adventure in learning for everyone!

Now, to the marks: your hardcopy exegeses and marks can be collected from me in my office. Your remixes were all great, I should add, but as we agreed, the blog is a place for conversations, not marks, so you’ll need to come and collect them from me in person. 

Beyond that, congratulations to Kiri and Joanne who’ve now finished their Honours year; and good luck to Alex, Chris and Shemila who will be finishing off their no doubt impressive dissertations (and creative projects for some) next semester!

For this unit, though it’s been a pleasure! Thanks for all your contributions and good luck with whatever comes next in life!

PS For those reading this and wondering why this post needed cupcakes as the final photo – well, you need to meet Jo and Alex and then you’ll understand (I’m sure they’re secretly co-writing a fabulous cupcake blog somewhere!).

[Photo: ‘Cupcakes’ by Zesmerelda CC BY SA]

Your core reading/viewing:

[X] Axel Bruns. "Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation." Paper presented at Creativity & Cognition conference, Washington D.C., USA, 13-15 June 2007.  Also see the interview of Axel Bruns recently conduct by Henry Jenkins: Part I; Part II.

[X] Jane McGonigal, ‘Saving the World Through Game Design’ [20 minute video presentation], 2008 New Yorker Conference, 28 May 2008. And once you’ve thought about the video, please visit the latest socially ‘game’ McGonigal and her colleagues are running, Superstruct.  Explore the artifacts on the Superstruct pages, delve into the material created and edited by players (allow yourselves at least thirty minutes to really look at Superstruct).

[X] Cory Doctorow, ‘Giving it Away’ and ‘World of Democracycraft’ in Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, Tachyon Publications, 2008, pp. 71-75 and 201-206 respectively. (There are plenty of different formats of the whole book available online – feel free to read as much as you like, but please at the very least read the two very short essays I’ve suggested.)

[X] Tama Leaver, ‘Building Open Education Resources From the Bottom Up’ [18 minute video], Tama Leaver dot Net, 23 September 2008.

Axel Bruns’ notion of ‘produsage’, where the concepts of producer and consumer collide in a world on increasing user-generated content creation, in some important ways updates or extends the idea of participatory culture discussed in the early weeks of this course.  Bruns’ essay gives us a sense of the heightened role users play in the creating content, but it is also aware of the limitations of such an idea (something often forgotten as the selected examples of participatory culture and collective intelligence are continually rehashed).

In contrast, the video from Jane McGonigal gives a far more optimistic take on the world, where the participatory culture surrounding socially meaningful games can act as the perfect focus on collective intelligence.  More to the point, the latest socially-aware gaming experience from McGonigal and her colleagues is being played right now, so looking at Superstruct will, hopefully, let us see how well these ideals are working in this world of meaningful play.

Finally, Cory Doctorow’s two short essays (and other writing in Content) return to two key questions in relation to digital communication: ‘How can copyright be meaningfully situated within an informatic economy, especially in relation to older media forms [such as books]?’ ; and ‘How will the social fabric of virtual worlds be governed?’. Also worth considering is the fact that the book Content is itself released under a Creative Commons license.

Questions to Consider:

[1] Is Bruns’ model of ‘produsage’ a more accurate and realistic version of participatory culture as it operates today (and tomorrow)?  How well does the idea of produsage reflect aspects of your own life, and what role do you think produsage has in our increasingly digital communities?  How well does produsage describe the examples of participatory culture examined throughout this unit?

[2] How well does Superstruct work as an example of collective intelligence in the real world?  Are socially-responsible games good learning tools?  Is so, are they still fun (or do you think they’d be fun)?  Where is the boundary between play, learning and activism in Superstruct?  (Do you think this style of meaningful gaming would be useful to investigate other political or social issues?)

[3] Returning to the question of copyright, looking at Doctorow’s example and the unit overall, is there a future for copyright in the era of digital communication, and if so, how do you think it should operate?

[4] After watching Tama’s video, how do you feel about Open Educational Resources and your role as participating in their creation via this course?

[5] Finally, how have your own ideas about participatory culture and digital communication changed since the beginning of this unit?  What surprised you the most?  What worries you?  What makes you hopeful and optimistic about our digital future?

The Last Blog Comments

As well as making your last comment or two about the topics raised in this seminar, can I ask everyone to please make one additional reflective comment detailing your thoughts about this unit overall: did it work as a coherent unit for you? What was most interesting or enjoyable? What didn’t work as well? Any suggestions about things that should be changed?

And that’s the final seminar done.  Now you’ve just got your remix projects to complete – and to post to the blog – and that’s your iGeneration experience done (at least in the formal sense)!

[Image ‘Wake up!’ by Eddi 07, CC BY]

First off, can I just say to everyone: well done, your podcasts are all really engaging; I’ve enjoyed listening to every single one!   Following that line, don’t forget you need to listen and share your thoughts.  To be fair, it would be fantastic if everyone got two comments on their podcasts (it wouldn’t really be fair for one person to get five comments, another person none).  That said, beyond the two critical comments you’re required to make, you’re most welcome to leave comments on the other podcasts, too, if you like!

Secondly, in our next seminar which is on Project planning, discussion and refinement you’ll be pleased to hear there are no set readings.  Instead, you need to bring along your thoughts about the major project you’d like to do for this unit.  Depending on what everyone wants to do, we’ll discuss potential ideas and then refine them into a form which can be equitable (ie things which can actually be marked alongside each other at the end of the day).  Your only major stipulation is that your major project must explore participatory culture and digital communication in a meaningful and focused way.  Also, think about what form you’d like your project to take: a straight-forward essay; a short video piece; a longer podcast; some sort of blogged investigation; and so on.  Think about something that would be of interest and engaging to you. 

Keep in mind, though, that there will be a fair amount of negotiation and refinement needed for each idea, so bring along your thinking caps, and your flexibility!

Let me reiterate, though: your podcasts are all really interesting, and you should all be proud of your efforts!

[Photo: ‘Fireworks at the Taste of Chicago’ by Zesmerelda, CC BY.]

Exegesis
Your exegesis – the critical essay giving the aims, context and rationale for your podcast, using the terms of reference and theory from the course, would go here (first, before the podcast itself).

The Podcast
Tama Test Podcast [1:00]
(The blue triangle is the play button, click it to hear the podcast. It’s a good idea to indicate the total length of the podcast in square brackets so your listener knows how long it runs for!)

Bibliography
Orb Gettarr, ‘The Ghosts of Ancient Light (FL Mix)’ (Music), n.d. c.2007, http://www.tetragrammatonproductionsltd.net/The-Ghosts-of-Ancient
-Light-FL-Mix.mp3, CC BY SA 2.5
With your bibliography, supply whatever information is available and relevant. Include the author (real name if possible, or the band or username is that’s all you can find, the title of the post/song/clip/etc., write the URL out in full, the year if you can find it (if not, use “n.d.” – no date – and if you can estimate the year, something like “c. 2007″ where the “c” means ‘circa’ (which really means ‘as best as I can tell’) and since it’s relevant to what we’re doing, the license under which you’re re-using any music or samples.

Release Forms
You don’t have to scan any release forms you have – just hand them in with your hard copy version of the exegesis.

Category
When writing your podcast post, make sure you select ‘podcast’ as the category, too!

And please listen to this presentation:
[X] Lawrence Lessig, ‘Final Free Culture Lecture’, Stanford University, 31 January 2008. (53 minutes, video file)

Last week Henry Jenkins and J.D. Lasica gave us some grounding in the way that cultural interaction and production have changed in recent years, especially in the context of digital media. Building upon these ideas, this week we’re turning to the work of Lawrence Lessig who has been called, among many other things, the Elvis of cyberspace law! Lessig is a passionate crusader for a legal system which reinforces and encourages creativity, rather than locking creativity down (which is what the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] and RIAA [Recording Industry of America Association] and their anti-piracy rhetoric platform are doing in Lessig’s view). In the excerpts from Free Culture that you’re reading, pay particular attention to the way culture has changed in terms of ownership and in terms of what that entails for creativity and cultural production. I’d encourage you to also explore the websites of the Creative Commons organisation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Lawrence Lessig’s own website. Lessig’s book is a great read, so if you have time you may want to dip into some of the other chapters, too.  You’re also reading an article by Sam Howard-Spink which explores the cultural reaction to ‘The Grey Album’, and the reaction when copyright holders tried to remove the album from circulation. (If you’re interested, you can download the Grey Album using bittorent via links here, or watch the Grey Video – a music video featuring one of the remixes from the Grey Album.)

When reading, keep these questions in mind:
[1] How does the rhetoric of ‘piracy’ work in the debate(s) surrounding digital cultural production and creativity?
[2] How has copyright as an idea evolved over time?  (Think about the politics behind the way copyright works.)
[3] How have large corporations and copyright holders reacted to new media forms and new media technologies in the past two decades?
[4] What does ‘Grey Tuesday’ tell you about the way individuals react to the current copyright system? How representative do you think this attitude towards copyright is amongst young people today?
[5] What does an organisation like the Creative Commons hope to achieve in terms of copyright and creativity?

[Image Credit: ‘culture is not a crime’ by Dawn Endico CC BY]

The article by Henry Jenkins looks at interactivity and audience agency, giving a sense of where culture has been in terms of participation and ownership, and then looks to how culture is shifting facilitated, in part, by digital communication. Tim O’Reilly’s article famously introduces the idea of ‘Web 2.0’ which has widely been adopted to describe the shift toward online cultures built for and by users. Finally, the excerpts from J.D. Lasica’s Darknet look at what immediate changes and battles are happening in the Western cultural context due to immediate challenges made by digital communication and interaction tools.

While this seminar is meant as a general overview, keep these questions in mind when doing you reading:
[1] Is participatory culture a brand new idea, or does is have historical precedents? 
[2] How are the terms ‘ownership’, ‘community’ and ‘culture’ actually used in these readings (and are these stable terms, or do they mean something different for each author)?
[3] How is the shorthand ‘web 2.0’ deployed by O’Reilly and how accurate do you think it is?
[4] How open and accessible is cultural production in the twenty-first century? What are the trends, and where do you think things are headed?

(Remember, after our face to face conversation in the seminar, your thoughts and reflections on the topic should be posted as a comment on this post.)

This year’s honours cohort are…

Kiri, Lawrence, Joanne, Alex, Chris and Shemila.