So, it’s been over a year since UMW has had it’s main .edu website running on WordPress. DTLT has been experimenting with the possibilities of aggregating posts from UMW Blogs into umw.edu (in fact, this post will aggregate into DTLT’s site on umw.edu). But the cooler part is to start experimenting with bringing the work students and faculty are doing in the classroom to the university’s website, and to that end Jess Rigelhaupt’s Oral History class last semester has done some really cool things. Every semester I come and talk to this particular class about the possibilities for creating an open, online space to share the documentary histories they create over the course of the semester. We look at a ton of sites, and imagine what’s possible for them. The final project/product for the entire class is to build a site and populate it with all the documentary media on the assigned topic they create, collect, and curate for the world to … [Read more...]
The Up Series
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” – attributed to Francis Xavier, the co-founder of the Jesuit Order I’m thinking a lot about documentaries lately. I’ve got no less than two classes working on them this semester. I took great pleasure in producing (a short) one last semester for an EDUCAUSE focus session that featured my colleagues at UMW, along with other faculty, staff, and students. I’m also working on a resource to help students create them, so in turn I’m thinking about some of the greatest documentaries ever made. The above quote, supposedly from Francis Xavier of Jesuit fame, is the framing of what is collectively known as the Up Series. Michael Apted was a researcher on the first film of the series, Seven Up, which began to tell the story of a group of children all at the age of 7 years old. The series begins by asking the children some different questions about their lives, their dreams, the opposite sex, … [Read more...]
The Up Series
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” – attributed to Francis Xavier, the co-founder of the Jesuit Order I’m thinking a lot about documentaries lately. I’ve got no less than two classes working on them this semester. I took great pleasure in producing (a short) one last semester for an EDUCAUSE focus session that featured my colleagues at UMW, along with other faculty, staff, and students. I’m also working on a resource to help students create them, so in turn I’m thinking about some of the greatest documentaries ever made. The above quote, supposedly from Francis Xavier of Jesuit fame, is the framing of what is collectively known as the Up Series. Michael Apted was a researcher on the first film of the series, Seven Up, which began to tell the story of a group of children all at the age of 7 years old. The series begins by asking the children some different questions about their lives, their dreams, the opposite sex, … [Read more...]