Information Session: Classroom 2.0: How Online Social Networks are Transforming Academic Life

HILLgroup invites individuals from Hamilton and local colleges to attend...

Eric Gordon
Classroom 2.0: How Online Social Networks are Transforming Academic Life

Saturday, February 10
10am, Science Auditorium

In December 2006, Time Magazine named “You” the person of the year.  As part of what they called a “revolution” in networking technology, they described how the new Web is ushering in a culture of participation where users are just as likely to produce as they are to consume.  Americans are contributing to wikis, keeping their own blogs, writing reviews for Amazon.com, keeping their photo albums on Flickr, and making movies to post on Youtube.  In what Time calls the “new digital democracy,” the consumer holds the power.  “You control the media now,” reads a headline, “and the world will never be the same.”  

The classroom, also, will never be the same.  Students are entering college with different social patterns, learning habits and cultural expectations.  They are consuming and producing within global networks, and have come to demand instant gratification and constant connectivity. So how can colleges and universities respond to this cultural shift without compromising their ideals and mission?  How can social networking in the classroom actually increase engagement and productivity?  And how can this "culture of participation" work in accordance with existing standards of academic productivity, just as it is transforming the nature of academic work?

Eric Gordon is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston. His work focuses on technology in public space, perceptions of place in synthetic worlds, and social software in teaching and learning.  His book The Urban Spectator: Emerging Media and the Consumption of the American City is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press.

If you would like  to attend this event, please fill out the registration form at the link below by Monday, February 5.
http://www.hamilton.edu/college/its/survey/index.html?id=496