Yes, it seems like the semester just started.

“New Zealand Media & Entertainment Branding” by Unordinary — is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

We had a suspension of disbelief due to the passage of storm Dorian, which was going to pass through half of Puerto Rico and moved easterly later to miss us, fortunately. Classes were suspended a couple of days, and the semester’s second week was gone. Thus, yesterday felt like a new beginning.

But it was really the kick from Alan Levine’s impulse to record a new episode for The Puerto Rico Connection –our low-frequency podcast– and our doing so two weeks ago, that really put me solidly on the horse’s back. Why? Because Alan asked me about a few key questions about my New Media class and other stuff I’m doing, and so, such things acquired a life independent of me–some importance beyond my classrooms.

Shortly the episode will be available on the website and on Apple Podcasts or other aggregator. I think it came out pretty fine: he is such a kind master issuer of questions!

We’ll discuss in situ the details of the episode, but suffice it to say here that we talked podcasts and about the plan in my New Media class to have students do in small groups a number of episodes of the class’ podcast, La Situación— which they would plan, produce and distribute during the semester.

This class really motivates me and I consider it a privilege to share it with my brilliant students. So many experiences, from Podcasting to Una Foto Cada Día (the daily photo challenges we play with for forty days), from Instagram curation to Twitter class account management, to our curated database of shared Web content. The trip just started, and Winter is Sort of Coming (1).

Anyhow, this course is going to change a bit, since in my Department we’re having a revision. Bottom line, it will morph into a Digital Storytelling course (which of course it is already), but with some new stuff on data and their visualization.


(1) I refer to our hard Puerto Rican winter, of course.

Image: “New Zealand Media & Entertainment Branding” by Unordinary — is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

The post Beginning of semester appeared first on Skate of the web.

Antonio Vantaggiato
av@qmail.com