Today, my friends, I want to discuss the possibility of using Drawball as an analogy for the participatory model of reading.

An Afternoon with Jonathan Harris at his Brooklyn studio.

(The content of this interview will be available in video chapters on Project New Media Literacies Learning Library)

Earlier this month, Clement and I went to New York City to interview Jonathan Harris. A New York based artist, who combines elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling to explore and explain human world through designing systems.

A couple of weeks ago, I had something happen to me which made me consider (yet again!) how much our relationship with new media has shaped our real-world (or non digital) lives.  As a graduate student with Comparative Media Studies at MIT, I had been preparing my thesis (the culmination of almost two years of research in school) for final submission for graduation in June 2008.  Like my other compatriots at CMS, I had basically been living in front of my laptop for months: writing new sections of my chapters, making last minute revisions, and formatting all my citations and footnotes.  However, unbeknownst to me, my computer was hatching its own devious plan - one which was unaligned with my goals of finishing the thesis and thus graduating from MIT.  A year previous, I had faced down a "screen of death" (according to Wikipedia) on the very same laptop.  I was left computer-less at the exact time when I needed it the most, finals week.  I had found myself not only without computing tools, but also without my precious data (I was writing papers and making an educational website at the time).  For the most part, I had to reconstruct what I was doing from printed pages, my memory, or scattered hand-scribbled notes.  Thought it was difficult, I ended up scraping by - relying on several desktop computers, burned CDs and flash drives along the way to help me finish the term.

I've been thinking lately about identity play. I'm focused on this right now because of Project NML's collaboration with Project Zero's GoodPlay Project on an ethics casebook focusing on the five ethical categories GoodPlay outlines in its white paper. This month, we've been talking about identity. A recent brainstorm session got me thinking about the assumptions we (read: Americans) make about the relationship between the identities we take on and our sense of who we are.

I'm a member of Facebook ...and the other day, someone I didn't know requested me to be his friend.  My first reaction is "Who is this person?" ...so I go to his profile to check him out.  I realize we have three friends in common - all people I work with.  So, I send him a message, saying I see we have mutual friends and ask him if we've ever met before.  The reply is "Unfortunately, we haven't met in person but I don't think this should matter if we can communicate online. :)"

I think of myself pretty aware and up on today's social media experience... but I personally want to have some reason / connection to be "friends" rather than a simple, we're just going to talk online.  I find my experience online as an extension of who I am and what I do offline... so it matters. And for those of you who don't know, you can set your profile so that people can message you without being friends.  Why not get to know the person first...

As we continue to work on developing NML's Teachers' Strategy Guide, we are lucky to be surrounded by geniuses who continually push us to ask, and try to answer, several Big and Difficult Questions about the guide. A recent question, posed to us Veronica Boix-Mansilla, a Principal Investigator at Project Zero:

What is the added value of shifting from a traditional model of reading to a participatory model?