Digital Revolution: Event Preview

For our Digital Civilization class, our culminating activity isn't the final examination; it's a public showcase, a special event for which we are now all anxiously preparing. We call it "Digital Revolution: Upgrading Education for Digital Civilization." [explained | on Facebook].

Here's a preview of each of the ten presentations that will be made that night. Have a look, then join us for the live event on December 9, 2010...

Announcing the Digital Revolution Event: December 9, 2010

(Image credit: Andrew DeWitt)

Update: See a preview for the event by clicking here!

Events are awesome learning tools -- far more authentic, I think, than the artificial deadlines that drive most academic work. With events, a sense of social expectation energizes collaboration. Nothing like a clear purpose, a destination, and an audience to motivate people to bring their A-game.

That's why for our Digital Civilization class we have scheduled a showcase of final projects -- projects that we are going to try to demonstrate to a much broader audience than the forty people of our class. It's been a fantastic semester, full of challenges and opportunities, and this public event on the evening of Thursday, December 9, 2010 is going to help bring it all together. Here's the title for our event:

Digital Revolution:

Upgrading Education for Digital Civilization

This two-hour event will imitate the Ignite event format in which speakers are given exactly five minutes to make their presentations. This is a high-energy format that allows an audience to be exposed to a range of interesting ideas and people within a short period of time. In our case, we have ten presentations based on group projects. Between each presentation, Dr. Zappala and I will recognize students and blogs for their achievements in meeting our learning outcomes and for trailblazing digital literacy. A contest is also in the works, spearheaded by our event planning team, Kristina Cummins and Megan Stern.

Course Project

This post is intended to give you an overview of what we're expecting for your course project for the Digital Civilization class.  You will be completing your project in teams of about four students and working on this project throughout the second half of the semester. Remember that we plan to have a showcase for all the final projects on the evening of December 9th (a Thursday).

As explained below, your project should

1. be an authentic task
2. belong to one of the history of civilization content areas we list below
3. draw upon the historical context of Western Civilization, and 
4. use some of the digital media tools and digital culture concepts we have explored during the first part of the semester.