Hello class,
My name is Ben Fast and I think I’m posting this in the correct place. I’m a fifth year honours history student taking the Professional Writing minor and wrapping it all up this semester. After 17 years of constant school I think I need a break, but I also need a solid base in the real world so studying technology and society seems like a great idea.
As this is my fifth or sixth WordPress-based blog, I think I’ve got the hang of how it all comes together, but I am interested to see how this OAC thing works. I really like networking and social media, but I’d say I’m somewhere between a Jenny Aitken and a Katie Rosenburg on the scale of social media familiarity scale. My interests in the more physical machine side of technology draws me towards airplane design and digital cameras. I have a great passion for airplanes and studying how designs have changed over the first century of flight, and I am an avid amateur photographer who uses both film and digital cameras regularly.
I would love to see this class explore media integration into learning, but not specifically classroom learning. As Jenny and I so aptly put, the university is both like a womb and a prison, but what about how we learn outside of school? I’ve studied the idea of public history (non-academic-centred history like in museums, movies, walking tours, historical fiction, etc.) and I am heading towards a career in museums, so I would love to see how media and social media has integrated into those areas, and how that affects alternative learning experiences. If none of this paragraph makes sense to you, take a look at the Royal BC Museum’s Twitter account and tell me how it changes your view of the museum and their programming.
Well, I think that’s it for me. Nice meeting you, see you tomorrow,
Ben
PS: This is one of my favourite YouTube videos recently. Michael McIntyre on the Invention of the Kilt. Enjoy!
(I’ve done the classic embed YouTube to WordPress trick, but we’ll see if it works on the OAC servers… If not, watch it here.)
Thanks! Hopefully you can bring your previous WordPress skills to offer feedback to the OAC folks. You should check out StoryTrek for an interesting use of technology & augmented reality for the study of history outside of traditional settings, but also to complement museums and galleries.