Making Progress

I am currently in a class titled Digital Culture in the English Department of my university, and the professor of the course advised us to make our thought process transparent as we think through things and look for social proof on our ideas. This post runs along that vein.

The semester for me is full of nodes, media, and discussions of digital technology and culture. I am taking 3 courses that directly address these issues: a film course with an emphasis on documentary, an education seminar focused on educational technology and social media, and the English class I mentioned earlier. Being immersed in these courses has fueled my desire to act on the idea for a teacher-crowdsourced database of movie clips that I had about 2 years ago. It is exciting to finally start acting on the idea in the form of this blog, my Diigo group, on Twitter, and a variety of other ways. Hopefully I can start moving the idea in a more concrete way - and I have some confidence that there may be some open doors out there as I have been receiving very positive responses from folks I consider to be experts in the field.

Here are two sketches of possible interface designs. I am heavily influenced by movieclips.com, Youtube, theteachingchannel, and a bit of Vimeo. These artifacts of modern art are probably incomprehensible.

So right now I am trying to flesh out my "database idea" (I need to find a better name for it!) as I continue learning about digital literacy, transmedia storytelling, and listen to a host of interesting podcasts about the current political situation and movements in education. I am really getting stuck on the seeming fact that everyone may have a different understanding of what the purpose of school actually is. It makes sense to me that there is so much controversy about our system - because the variety of what people think schools should be doing for kids and young adults is varied. I feel like this is a key issue.

I plan on graduating with my film and English degree in April 2013, and from there I am not sure what will become of me. Teach For America is a hopeful option right now, and I am also looking at a few instructional design programs (BYU, USU, ISU, and maybe Georgia) I could start next fall. There are so many things I care about and want to dip my toe in, but I am trying to just take deep breaths and ease into the waters of post-graduation life.