Welcome to the first New Media PNW circular! As you may recall, this effort emerges from the workshop with Anne Wysocki held last February in the UWB Teaching and Learning Center, hosted by the redoubtable Becky Reed Rosenberg. Anne did a marvelous job of taking us into the “Generous Web” by considering how “memory, bodily experience, generosity toward difference, and the pleasures of learning and engagement can be woven into the design process….” We wanted to find a way to continue her efforts and to continue to educate ourselves about our new teaching and learning environment.

Our major goal now—in fact, our only goal at the moment!—is to get a conversation started on New Media and thereby create a virtual Learning Community around a series of questions. What is it? Is there any such thing? What’s “new” about it? What gets mediated? What are its cultural implications? How can we use it, if there is an “it,” in our classrooms? What does it have to do with iPods and MySpace? Cell phones and nanotechnology? How does it relate to the digital arts and scholarship? Is it fun?

We thought we’d start with one or more of these questions, a few short readings, and a little blog. The URL for the blog is: http://newmediawg.blogspot.com –bookmark it today! The blog will be updated (at least) weekly, and we welcome your posts and comments! You may post to the blog from your email by emailing: newmediabothell.blog@blogger.com. Have fun exploring the blogger site while you're at it!

For our initial reading, how about if we look at Borges’s “Garden of Forking Paths” (1941) paper (http://www.cybergrain.com/remediality/borges.pdf or http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/) and V. Bush’s “As We May Think” (1945) (www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/194507/bush). These are linked to the blog's "links" section as well.

See what you think. Hear what you think. Touch what you think.

What next?

Gray and Amanda