This summer we’re putting the finishing touches on our Year One Report, providing an inside look at our work with students, faculty and educators from around the country in our first year. One interactive feature in the report will be a virtual tour that allows those unable to visit us in Abilene a glimpse of the new facility.
Mathew Bardwell, a media production specialist in the Learning Studio, produced the virtual tour and Nathan Driskell, another specialist designed the map overlay along with the rest of the iBook. Step inside and enjoy this unique walk through our facilities.
This September we took a group of advanced photographers–and aspiring advanced photographers–out to Albany, Texas, to shoot the big sky. Nil Santana from the department of Art & Design worked to help participants get the most out of their cameras and find an original point of view.
Thanks so much to Tecia Santana and to Sandra and Ben from the Learning Studio for their expert painting. The pictures everyone submitted really give you a sense of how clear a night in West Texas can be. Amazing night. Thanks so much to everyone who came along.
This last week the Learning Studio appeared in the summer issue of the alumni magazine, ACU Today. The article walks through some of the assumptions behind the design of the facility and the changing face of the 21st-century library:
“Education is no longer about preparing our students to contribute to conversations after they graduate; the vital discussions of our day are already underway and our students are producing messages for a global audience in a wide range of media.” – Kyle Dickson
In the article I reference a couple scenes from the brand new Brown Library in 1970, including ACU’s first state-of-the-art media center with 50 audio cassette players. Here are those photos.
This last week Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling joined us for a one-week follow-up to our workshop last May. During the week he and Beverly Bickel from CDS trained on-campus volunteers to facilitate future digital storytelling workshops.
As part of the facilitator training, a small group of campus volunteers went through a “workshop within a workshop” where they created stories of their own. See below for select stories from each workshop..
Dr. Cole Bennett’s ENGL 325: Advanced Comp students produced Literacies projects that premiered this afternoon.
Student readings all semester focused on “theories of literacy from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, paying particular attention to readings that emphasize social and political issues related to reading and writing.” The course concluded with individual students or groups producing short videos that extended the focus of the course to consider other cultural literacies:
“Rhetorically, this video should attempt to convince the viewer that 1) the activity under consideration qualifies as an expanded form of literacy; and 2) society would benefit as a whole if such argument were accepted. How does the subject fall under a definition of literacy? Which definition? Why does it matter? How are our lives enriched if we agree with you? How might your opponents disagree with you, and how would you address such concerns?”
Thanks again to students from ENGL 325 for working with us in the Learning Studio. Here are a few examples of their work.
Digital Storytelling Workshop Reflections – May 2011