Week 3 – Helen De Michiel 14 October 2013 video comment

We are fully immersed in the quarter now.  You have posted your first “private” essays on the readings, which I have duly received, and will write a few sentences at the end of the piece in color. Again, these are not public.  I am striving to get points posted on Blackboard by Wednesday.

I really want to tell you how I am learning so much from your writings.  Twitter and microblogging around social issues, transgender to transmedia (brilliant!), your links, citizen journalists compared to professionals and who is in more danger?  National security issues and new communications forms…transparency or lock-downs…But how will John Stewart play in Indonesia?

I see so much rich material and inquiry — you are truly setting the stage for work that will give you returns far beyond this quarter.

I am meeting with the groups via video conference this week.  I am emailing the groups separately to check in about your preferred gathering platform.  We can do Skype with the group in one room together around one screen.  Or we can do a video conference software that is better than Google Hangout called “Zoom,” where everyone can be in their own spaces and log-in.  I am super-excited to engage in a check-in meeting with you about the projects, and brainstorm with you any ideas or issues you may have moving forward.

I believe you will enjoy the Week 3 project examples. “Mobility, mapping, and migration are essential keywords for a media literate individual of the 21st century,” states the creators of Mapping our Memories. These are key terms to consider while experiencing the breadth of these works and how they embedin and transform in new and legacy-oriented organizational structures.

I invite you to look at the Guiding Principles for Mapping Our Memories as a prelude to reading, viewing and touring this site and the others . All three projects have a strong intentionality to them — from methodology to execution,  engagement and circulation with and through their communities and/or subjects they discover.  What are they telling you, and what is happening as multimedia context building both online through creation and in real life engagements?