#learningtoteach

November 5, 2017

I can’t remember if I reflected on my opportunity to lead class a few weeks ago. 

It was weird for me to take any authority in our classroom. I didn’t know exactly what I needed to do since I was the first grad student to lead in this way. I think one student is working on the photograph yproject (I don’t know to what extent), another is assisting with ePortfolio (again, I don’t know to what extent), and the third hadn’t gone yet (except when she did, she did a phenomenal job leading discussion). 

For my other grad class I had decided to do a research project on Twitter in the ELA classroom to aide in this class presentation. The week or two leading up to my turn, I was reading several articles and trying to connect them to real-world situations. I originally had no clue how I wanted to tie in Twitter personal branding to our class discussion, until I was working on that research project.

Then it clicked.

I figured creating a worksheet would be useful to have my peers analyze different social media accounts. By understanding how celebrities and companies use their accounts, media, and tone, my peers might consider how they to best represent themselves online. 

The worksheet ended up being a homework assignment, which seemed to give students plenty of time to work through the options. I probably should have rotated to other groups more when we discussed our findings in class the following week, but it just felt odd to join pre-established groups when I had one to belong to. I guess I wasn’t comfortable in the setting, especially since I’ve been out of practice for about three years or so. 

As we were talking as a class, it hit me that I’ve used personal branding on another social media site -- WordPress. I had curated a How-To blog to pair my technical writing skills with a more leisure lifestyle writing. 

November 4, 2017

I struggled a lot in class the other night when everyone was debating graphic narrative assessment. I think the biggest point of contention for me was the fact that everyone (eh, a majority) had already submitted their assignment, so everyone had their own agenda to push. I see the value in seeking student opinion during rubric creation, but I think the final version should be completed prior to the submission deadline. That way everyone has time to make adjustments as needed and they aren't as stressed making sure their personal project doesn’t take a hit during grading. 

It was difficult to watch some of my classmates because I had just heard them discuss how stressed they were with the semester or how disappointed they were in a grade from a separate class. Their stress was visible during the debating process. There were also some who were arguing for the sake of argument as I heard during break they felt it was a game to play. 

Announcing Learning to Teach Conference, January 20th, 2018 in NYC. Tickets

Learning to Teach is a day-long conference for educators teaching computation in creative fields like art, design or digital humanities departments. Led by Taeyoon Choi (SFPC) and Tega Brain (NYU), the conference will feature keynotes by leading educators including Daniel Shiffman, Naomi Clark, Brad Garton. The keynote speakers will share their experiences teaching computer programming and related topics, their strategies for blending critical thinking, engineering, and inspiring creativity in a teaching environment. This year’s program will include a participatory session for attendees to observe the pedagogical strategies of their peers and develop teaching approaches of their own. Join us to explore the intersection of pedagogy and creative practice, and get ready for the year ahead.

Date: January 20th, 2018 (10am ~ 5pm)

Venue: Integrated Digital Media, NYU, 8th floor of 2 Metrotech Center. Brooklyn. 

Organizers: School for Poetic Computation (SFPC), Processing Foundation and Integrated Digital Media, NYU (IDM).

Early Bird Tickets:  General & Full-time faculty: $100, Freelancers and Adjunct faculty: $60, Sponsor ticket (with VIP access to a private reception with speakers on January 19th): $200

Keynote speakers: 

Daniel Shiffman works as an Associate Arts Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Originally from Baltimore, Daniel received a BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University and a Master’s Degree from the ITP. He is a director of The Processing Foundation and develops tutorials, examples, and libraries for Processing and p5.js. He is the author of Learning Processing: A Beginner’s Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction and The Nature of Code (self-published via Kickstarter), an open source book about simulating natural phenomenon in Processing. He can be found talking incessantly on YouTube about programming.

Naomi Clark is an independent game designer based in New York City and an Assistant Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. For more than two decades she's designed, produced, and written for a wide variety of games spanning many platforms and audiences. Among the several dozen released games she's contributed to are early text-based virtual worlds, downloadable and mobile games for mass audiences, and online games for LEGO. She's taught classes on the study and design of games at Parsons: the New School for Design, the New York Film Academy, and the School of Visual Arts, and has contributed writing on games to publications (Feministe) and collections of essays (Videogames for Humans, Queer Game Studies) in addition to co-authoring a textbook entitled A Game Design Vocabulary. For the last fourteen years, Naomi has also served as part of the collective that runs the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit legal organization by and for the trans and gender non-conforming communities of New York. Her current design projects are primarily non-digital games: Consentacle, a two-player game of trust, communication and intimacy, and Lacerunner, a 19th-century revision of an existing commercial card game.

Brad Garton received his BS in pharmacology from Purdue University, where he also worked towards an MS in psychoacoustics. He eventually entered the graduate music composition program at Princeton University and was awarded a PhD in music composition in 1989.  He is currently a Professor on the composition faculty of Columbia University, where he also serves as Director of the Computer Music Center. Much of his work has focused upon the development and real-time use of music performance models, especially in collaboration with Terry Pender and Gregory Taylor in the improvisatory group "PGT".  He is an active composer and music software developer, co-authoring the computer music language RTcmix.  He has written a number of 'language objects' for Max/MSP, melding the capabilities of diverse music and general-purpose programming languages with the extensive music and graphics processing of the Max platform.  Recently he has embedded the RTcmix language within the Unity Game engine, enabling extended algorithmic and audio capabilities in the Unity environment.  He has worked as consultant on the design and installation of computer music facilities throughout the world.

Event photo: Kaho Abe at Learning to Teach 2017, Photo by Kira Simon-Kennedy