Subject: [HASTAC] HASTAC Scholars Forum with Howard Rheingold: Participatory Learning launches Mon., August 25

Hello everyone,

Howard Rheingold will be vlogging on participatory learning with HASTAC Scholars starting August 25 on www.hastac.org.

The HASTAC Scholars Program will kick-off the week of August 25th with an inaugural Scholars-led discussion forum exploring the topic of “Participatory Learning” and featuring social networking pioneer Howard Rheingold.

The topic coincides with the theme of the recently launched 2008 HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media & Learning Competition.  HASTAC Scholar Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, a graduate student from UC-Santa Cruz, will work with Rheingold, author of such works as The Virtual Community  (1993) and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (2003), to initiate the conversation.

The discussion will take place “vertically” in a traditional online forum, but also “horizontally” in a video-to-video format using Seesmic, a new interactive video technology that allows anyone with a web cam and a microphone to add a vlog in response to the ongoing discussion.

Everyone is welcome to join in the discussion, and if you have the capability to produce video, we recommend you join Seesmic (www.seesmic.com - their registration process is extremely simple) in preparation for joining the discussion.  Subsequent blogs by the Scholars will analyze whether and how the affordances enabled by technologies such as Seesmic impact the quality of online discussions.

The HASTAC Scholars fellowship program recognizes graduate and undergraduate students who are engaged in innovative work across the areas of technology, the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences. This group of select Scholars from institutions across the nation will act as the eyes and ears of HASTAC’s virtual network, bringing the work happening on their campuses and in their region to international attention. The Scholars will spend the year as part of a virtual community of fifty students creating, reporting on, blogging, vlogging, and podcasting events related to digital media and learning for an international audience.  The HASTAC Scholars will also orchestrate a regular discussion forum on the HASTAC web site (www.hastac.org) featuring their own ground-breaking research and interests alongside those of leaders and innovators in the digital humanities, such as open source scholar Christopher Kelty, and Director of the Office of Digital Humanities for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Brett Bobley.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Sheryl Grant
Director, Social Networking
HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media & Learning Competition
http://hub.dmlcompetition.net