contemplating digital orality

I just got word that my paper “New Media in the Online Classroom: Delivering Content with Web 2.0 Technologies” was accepted (as-is) for publication in the Rocky Mountain Communication Review (RMCR) edition on “New Media, New Relations.” This online journal should be publishing around March 1.

The paper defines “new media,” considering what constitutes new media in our current age, perceived benefits new media offers, and what it means to be “new” media. The paper then focuses on the transition of a face-to-face class to an online environment and on through various iterations from delivery via Blackboard® to the addition of a supplemental Web site, and finally to its current form, which incorporates many instances of new media and Web 2.0 technologies. The paper examines the implications of such delivery methods and goes on to consider the most logical direction for additional research in this area.

Those of you that were present in my Day 2 Podcamp presentation got a snippet of what this is about. This paper represents the more thorough, formal, academic presentation of the concept/topic. Once it is live, I will add a link to it here.

Last week, I was discussing with someone the ability one has to add textual comments (annotations) to the timeline of online videos, such as in YouTube and Viddler. In this way, one is commenting textually at certain points in the timeline of the video. This is rather exciting, since it breaks a limitation of annotating video/audio.
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In response to “Are these media the ‘fitting response’ to an oral communicative exigence, that now gets expressed textually? Is this the answer to bridging geographic distance textually but using rules clearly based in orality, afforded by the new technologies?”

I took this to refer to bridging the situation that since you are not right in front of the individual(s) with whom you are communicating, there are spans of “silence” during which the other person does not know what you are doing.
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Having discovered (or been directed to) bubble.us, I have been playing with this great tool and developed some mindmaps in the general aim of the dissertation. This is really an excellent tool for organizing thoughts. Of course it is logical for applying to one’s own papers. projects, and ideas. However, I am going to experiment with applying this to the next few articles I read. I can see how this would be very useful in taking (organizing) notes and ideas gleaned from reading an article or book. If I continue to apply this to sources read, I will include the mindmap of each with my notes, comments on it.

Below, is one I created for the research question (as it is now). Click and drag to view the entire map.

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A research buddy just turned me on to a new research tool. This one, bubbl.us, is a mindmapping tool. In this way, one creates an account (or not) and can then add a bubble thought and branch off new ideas to create an entire sheet. The sheet can then be shared with friends, emailed, exported, or (as shown below) added to a Web page. This is an example of where I currently am in forming my research question, feel free to zoom and drag the image around in the fixed window: Read the rest of this entry »