Hello all,<br> I already know many of you, so it feels like I am here among friends. For those of you who don't know me, I am an anthropologist interested in helping the general public gain a deeper sense of media literacy, helping people recognize how media change our world in ways we might not intend, and empowering people to connect and communicate more broadly and deeply. My ultimate goal is to help create more empathy in the world. (I know this all sounds a bit too grand, and not really all that academic, but since I'm among friends here I thought I should just be honest.) I was originally invited to iDC four years ago after publishing The Machine is Us/ing Us. Since then I have used the video essay as one of my primary forms of publication. You can see all of my video essays at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch">http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch</a><br>
This past semester I teamed up with a few hundred undergrads from all over the world and a local HTML5/javascript guru (Garrett Pennington) to create <a href="http://visionsofstudents.org">http://visionsofstudents.org</a> In this "video collage" I have taken nearly 300 videos, remixed them, and placed them in an HTML5 video framework that uses javascript to launch the thumbnail of the video, book, or resource that is currently being shown in the remix. By the end of the video, all videos are on the screen, along with all the books and links that have influenced the work. You can click on any of the books, links, or videos to see the original. My own 10 students each produced a 5 minute video that expands on one of the main ideas. I think it may be best to let it stand as the rest of my introduction to the group. Since it was just launched a few days ago, it captures my current thinking pretty nicely. <br>
Looking forward to the ongoing discussions,<br> Mike<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br>Michael Wesch, PhD<br>Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology<br>Coffman Chair for University Distinguished Teaching Scholars<br>
2010 NITLE Fellow<br>2009 National Geographic Emerging Explorer<br>2008 US Professor of the Year<br>2007 Wired Magazine Rave Award Winner<br>Director of the Digital Ethnography Working Group<br>Kansas State University<br>
<a href="mailto:mwesch@ksu.edu" target="_blank">mwesch@ksu.edu</a><br><a href="http://mediatedcultures.net" target="_blank">http://mediatedcultures.net</a><br><a href="http://bikemanhattan.info" target="_blank">http://bikemanhattan.info</a> <br>
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