Reflectant Thoughts and musings of a ramblin' media consultant.

The wonderful Ms. Lauren Beal found this resource for learning the very basics of how the modern web works – and is written.  With a hint of sarcasm and a completely approachable attitude, the video modules on Don’t Fear the Internet are perfectly suited to explaining this new language of webcode to those who really don’t want to learn it any farther than they have to.  Just yesterday, Carla was bringing herself up to speed with some tutorials on the matter so I’m sure she’ll be excited to see these videos.  And you’d better believe that I will be showing clients – PSU and freelance alike – the training very frequently from here on out.

Well, I just lost about half an hour of my morning to learning about sweatshops.  And I never even opened a single blog, Wikipedia article or YouTube video documentary.  Instead, I dove in head first to Sweatshop, Channel 4’s newest games for youth project.  It is addictive – as all games should be – so you have been warned.

I had the pleasure and privilege recently of hearing former Editor of Education for Channel 4, Alice Taylor speak about the genesis of games like Sweatshop.  Her keynote at DML 2011 was inspiring and eye-opening:  the idea that the BBC would turn over an entire television budget to the development of rich, educational games was so outside the norm for the colonies.  Imagine having millions of £s to throw at developing content that teaches kids instead of just distracting them!  

Just like games such as 1066, Cover Girl and The Curfew, Sweatshop is smart, well-produced and highly engaging.  It doesn’t hit players over the head with information but the learning is still there.  Most importantly, it treats the player like a young person of the modern world – so much so that it’s not so far below an adult level that it’s clearly a “kid’s game.”

Hannah recently attended a leadership conference where all participants were asked to complete the StrengthsQuest assessment of their own individual work profiles.  (Read more about her thoughts on the assessment.)  She recently got access to this same testing for anyone in the department that was curious about their own strengths and I just completed the evaluation.  The results were pretty spot on, especially those contained within this Insight Report.  Really powerful stuff and I’m now looking forward to finding the top strengths of the other test-takers!

Now that I’ve had an entire week off the road and in the office, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the first five Media Commons 101 sessions that I put on at my western campuses.  Looking back at the sessions, I feel confident in saying that they achieved exactly what Carla and I had hoped for, namely reaching new people in the Commonwealth.  Of the 63 people that attended my sessions, 67% were “new”, at least to me which means that I met for the first time a lot of faculty and staff that I would not have otherwise – or at least not for a very long while.  And in meeting these individuals, I discussed quite a few new ideas for projects, leaving each campus with at least one wholly new Media Commons collaboration.  

I also had a chance to better experience campus culture during the MC 101 sessions.  Because the just-in-time nature of my past travel has me on campus for course times and then back on the road, there isn’t often much time to interact with clients and contacts in a more relaxed session.  This is especially true with campuses that bring me out for mostly evening classes.  As much as I enjoyed getting to learn about the community members at my campuses, they seemed to relish the opportunity to have me there long enough to really talk at some length about their courses, research, projects and plans.  In addition to follow up visits for new projects, my hope is that I can continue getting closer to these fascinating Penn State people by visiting each campus more often – and for longer periods of time, ideally on a regular schedule.

Looking at the evaluation data in full, it’s clear that the sessions were very well-received overall.  27 people (42%) responded to the survey sent at the end of each MC 101 and 21 of them felt that the Media Commons overview at the heart of the programming was Excellent (the other 5 found it Good – and one didn’t respond).  

Unsurprisingly, Refreshments scored very well across the board.  Organization was certainly the best rated logistical element of the MC 101 sessions that I coordinated with Pacing and Communications coming in a close second and third.  Venue was a mixed bag and I’m still trying to figure out what might be an ideal space.  While I prefer the round tables and gallery feel that made the Forum on Media + Gaming, it’s possible that trying to recreate this same atmosphere at all campuses is just not feasible.  Something to continue pondering as I look forward to August’s last two sessions at Beaver and Mont Alto.

Most importantly, most respondents found that MC 101 was Relevant to them professionally and even more thought that the session – and Media Commons – was Interesting.  All but one person would attend this event again or recommend it to a colleague.  (That one person simply prefers that the next session be something more in depth than MC 101 since they’ve already attended.)