A Portal to Media Literacy

Presented at the University of Manitoba June 17th 2008. (for those of you waiting for the Library of Congress presentation, it will be posted July 19th-ish.) From Stephen's Lighthouse: stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com "Many of you have probably seen Kansas State University prof Michael Wesch's thought-provoking video, "A Vision of Students Today". www.youtube.com Recently Dr. Wesch spoke at the University of Manitoba where he explained the the basis of this video in a talk entitled, "Michael Wesch and the Future of Education." I found it fascinating! He describes how he so naturally incorporates emerging technologies into his courses from the smallest seminar type class to the largest lecture theatre filled class. More importantly he not only talks about the technologies but how he encourages extraordinary participation and collaboration from his students by engaging them in meaningful learning activities. Although the video is 66 minutes long...pour a coffee, iced tea or glass of wine and enjoy this dynamic presentation from a master teacher." umanitoba.ca Dubbed "the explainer" by popular geek publication Wired because of his viral youtube video that summarizes Web 2.0 in under five minutes, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch brought his Web 2.0 wisdom to the University of Manitoba on June 17. During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future. "It's basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online," he explains. "We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn't."