Colin Rhinesmith

My beautiful wife just started the second version of her blog at Left Behind Bottle Caps. Where did the title come from?

The title of this blog came about from observing the number of bottle caps I’ve noticed along the streets of Boston and at times on my own kitchen counter. The scattered caps brought to mind all the miscellaneous moments of life tucked away in each of our minds and the pieces of information, knowledge and experience we collect as we go through our days. It seemed only fitting.”

No doubt she’ll be blogging there about a number of cool things, including her observations as a student in Hub2 this semester. So, be sure to check it out and subscribe to the RSS feed.

Share This

This academic year, I will be working with Emerson College professors Eric Gordon and John Craig Freeman on an exciting new media project titled “Digital Lyceum” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Here’s a bit from Eric’s recent blog post:

This project explores the virtual architecture of the live humanities event. In other words, we’re interested in identifying how back-channels (from virtual worlds to information streams) can enhance the learning and experiential capacity of a live lecture or performance . . .

In the short term, we have promised the NEH that we will research how this work is currently taking place and produce a website that includes best practices and ideas. We hope to communicate with those who are building tools and those who are implementing those tools in innovative ways. We hope to provide a resource for anyone interested in staging mixed reality events.

I’m setting up a number of online research tools for collaboration and hopefully to encourage public participation in this project. I’ve installed a WordPress blog at AugmentedPlace.org where we’ll be documenting our work and and sharing our findings online. After these project tools have been set-up, I’ll move towards compiling a list of resources for our database and best practices report.

It’s an exciting project that connects my digital media production background and research interests in this area. I’m looking forward to being part of the team.

Share This

Here’s a quick tip for the Boston Globe: Learn a thing or two from the BBC and provide more context for your online stories.

This is how the Globe currently uses its right webpage columns (from: “Nonprofit takes over local cable station”):

1. “ADVERTISEMENT” = I understand you have to pay the bills, but 1/4 webpage ads are annoying.
2. “LATEST LOCAL NEWS” = Totally unrelated to the story.
3. “BOSTON.COM’S MOST E-MAILED” = Also, totally unrelated to the story.
4. “SEARCH THE ARCHIVES” = VERY HELPFUL, but what if I don’t want to search for stories related to what I’m currently reading? What if I want them included on the page?

Here’s how the BBC uses its right webpage columns (from: “Bush hits out at ‘brutal’ Burma“):

1. “KEY STORIES” = Provide important background on the story.
2. “FEATURES” = Also provide context to the story.
3. “BACKGROUND” = Provides even more insight related to the story.
4. “WATCH/LISTEN” = 3 online videos related to the story viewable in a pop-up video player that provides multimedia context.
5. “HAVE YOUR SAY” = Reader feedback adds more opinions.
6. “FROM OTHER NEWS SITES” = The titles says it all.
7. “RELATED INTERNET LINKS” = Other important off-site related news with a notice that says “The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites”
8. “TOP ASIA-PACIFIC STORIES” = Even more up to the minute regional news to provide context for the story.

I don’t mean to pick on the Boston Globe. I am a daily subscriber. But it’s interesting to see how different news organizations present their news online. The Globe is a great example of a website that could do a much better job providing context - and reader participation - in bringing us the news.

Share This

My fellow Emerson grad, Ryan McGrady recently started blogging over at the Center for Citizen Media. Look for his upcoming series on Citizen Media Business Issues. Congrats, Ryan!

Share This

Share This

The new ACME website is up! As mentioned earlier, the site was built using Drupal. As a result, there are lots of new features and ways for members and visitors to participate in our coalition’s work:

• Browse by Subject: search the website by tags, including Media Education, Advertising and Branding, Youth Media and more . . .
• ACME Blogs Page: aggregates blogs on a single page with an RSS feed
• ACME Partner News: read recent blogs posts from ACME partners
• ACME Bookmarks: browse our del.icio.us feed from the homepage

We’re also working to move the ACME Discuss E-List to a new server. We hope to have it up and running in a few days. In the meantime, take a look, drop us a note and tell us what you think.

Share This

From Bill Densmore:

“On Aug. 7-8, the Media Giraffe Project at UMass Amherst helped convene ‘Journalism That Matters: The DC Sessions,’ at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The event brought together more than 150 journalism editors, mainstream and web/citizen journalists and mission-driven activists with the aim of planning ‘The Next Newsroom’ prototype.

OVERALL LINK: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc

A couple of the breakout sessions covered:

1) How journalism education must change.

2) What’s going on in youth media and youth-media education.

We videotaped and audioblogged portions of both sessions and the multimedia or text notes are useful for getting a sense of the intersection between our work at ACME and what journalists are thinking. My strong sense is that journalists who have time to think have realized they need to be thinking about media literacy if they want to have an audience in the future.

Here’s the whole roster, many linked to profiles:

http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc-roster

And here are the blog posts that will get you to the text, audio and video of the two relevant breakouts:

YOUTH MEDIA:
http://newshare.typepad.com/jtm2007/2007/09/video-diverse-g.html

JOURNALISM EDUCATION:
http://newshare.typepad.com/jtm2007/2007/08/audio-excerpt-o.html

– bill
————————————-
Bill Densmore, director/editor
The Media Giraffe Project Journalism Program / 108 Bartlett Hall Univ. of Massachusetts

What happens when all that’s left is the journalism?
Help plan and launch The Next Newsroom in a U.S. community
sometime during 2008. For background:

KICKOFF: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/
WHO CAME: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc-roster
THE BLOG: http://newshare.typepad.com/jtmnextnewsroom
ANOUNCEMENT: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/pdf/jtm-dc-announcement.pdf
THE SESSIONS: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc-reports“

Share This

Over at Community Media in Transition, I’m beginning to focus in on my research topic for this year. Here’s a bit from a recent post:

“Over the past year, I’ve been exploring online, and talking with community media workers about, a variety of “web 2.0″ tools being used at Community Media Centers. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, social bookmarking, video mapping, and other social media platforms have generated much interest and discussion around which tools are most relevant to their center’s work and community’s needs.

Out of all of these areas, participatory Internet video seems to be the most exciting and relevant discussion most directly related to the medium of PEG access TV. So, I’ll be moving towards developing a framework upon which to further investigate, provide context, and invite feedback on the uses and narratives (e.g., YouTube v. Public Access TV debate, etc.) surrounding the implementation of participatory web video at community media centers.”

I’ve also posted a number of questions that I hope will generate some response and, more importantly, discussion around this topic. To learn more, visit Community Media in Transition.

Share This

Over the summer, I’ve been working with ACME (Action Coalition for Media Education) Co-President Rob Williams and Flow Media Design’s Rick Hood on building a new website for our organization using Drupal. It’s been a crash course for me in learning Drupal, which has been a lot of fun. I’m still learning my way around, but Rick’s been absolutely fantastic in helping me get up to speed.

There are lots of great things about working with Drupal for the new ACME site. Most importantly that it’s an open source CMS. But, also we’ll have a new site that will provide the opportunity for ACME members to blog and have an audience that includes many of the leading progressive media educators, media makers, and activists across the country and around the world.

We hope to have the site up and running in a couple of weeks. I hope it will serve as a much more interactive web environment for ACME and others interesting in sharing their work and collaborating on issues related to media education, justice and democracy.

Share This

“Pacifica Radio WPFW 89.3 FM - The Messenger since 1977″

If you care about local noncommercial radio or independent media of any form, then you must watch this new video produced by Jessica Duda of American University. It’s an excellent short (8 min 39 sec) available on YouTube featuring many of the people behind the microphones and their views on what makes WPFW such a great station.

Please watch it and share it with friends.

Share This