Marc's Voice

Structure of my new course

For next semester - I’m going to teach a three hour course - which is ‘attached’ to an exciting project going on at CWRU.  I can’t talk much about that project YET - but I can talk about how I’m going to teach the course.

Three hours is a long period of time and we need to break up the evening into three distinct chunks:

• 1st hour - Lecture, Guest Lectures, snap quizzes, open discussion
• 2nd hour - Presentations by students, breakout groups, applied research results
• 3rd hour - Software interaction, blogging, real-time conversations, knowledge base development, social networking, Twittering, back channel snarking - all based upon on-line software

So maybe one night I lecture on my Digital City platform idea, Skype in an interview with Robert Scoble or Mary Hodder and then discuss the ramifications of what ‘Content is still King’ means. That’s hour #1.

Hour #2 starts off with hand a presentation from some of my programmer students on the ‘dashboard containers’ ideas we worked on last semester. We’ll then view some interview footage shot the last week and edited - from our “History of Hessler St.” documentary project.   The fundamental thing we’re studying is what people do with on-line technology nowadays.  My conjecture is that they is entertain, socialize and buy things. Figuring out the business models, behavior patterns and standards for Digital Cities is a core element of our research and study.  That’s the second hour.

Then after a break (snacks and drinks) we’ll dive into a hands-on hour of using software.  Ideally folks would document and upload what was just discussed and presented in the previous two hours.  Ideally we’d all sit around blogging, conversing on-line and using our on-line tools in a myriad of fashions.  eg. students will need to bring their laptops to the class. Students will be required to participate, learn how to ‘operate’ a social network, moderate content, flow ads and promos onto the pages of the free dashboard software we’ll be providing and in general - become digital students.

I know of no other way to teach then to get students to do.  To learn by doing.

So if you look at the top level of this structure we’re covering in every evenings class:

- theory, discussion and the dialectic

- groups, progress and project management (analytics, applied research, creating products and services)

- tools, interaction and community building

Here’s the best part - we’re welcoming members of the community to come and join us.  Tuesday nights 6-9