Title: Grants Developer and Administrator Req Number: mit-00009708 Department: Comparative Media Studies Location(s): Cambridge MA FT/PT: Full Time Employment / Payroll Category: Administrative Work Shift:
GRANTS DEVELOPER AND ADMINISTRATOR, Comparative Media Studies (CMS), to meet the section's goals of supporting faculty research and funding graduate students, primarily by focusing on institutional sources of giving, i.e., corporate, foundation, and government grants. Will collaborate with section head on supporting and coordinating research initiatives and with faculty members and research staff to develop their research ideas into fundable projects; identify and assess relevant funding opportunities, gather background and application information, and critically assess potential for success; develop and oversee proposal submission process including gathering and preparing materials to accompany grants, e.g., needs analysis, goals, objectives, timelines, budget narrative, evaluation strategies, and other supporting data; assist with reporting process for periodic and final reports and renewal applications; plan and execute cultivation events; assist the assistant dean with stewardship process as needed, including drafting acknowledgement and stewardship letters and reports; and perform related duties as needed.
REQUIREMENTS: a bachelor's degree (advanced degree preferred); at least five years' grant writing experience, including familiarity with funding opportunities and application processes; proven strategic planning skills; clear understanding of how to work both independently and in coordination with key players to identify potential funding opportunities, produce strategies and proposals, and steward ongoing grants; outstanding persuasive writing skills and ability to clearly articulate complex information and funding priorities; documented success securing funding from foundation, corporate, and government sources including new funders; working knowledge of research resources for foundation, corporate, and government funding sources; exceptional organizational, interpersonal, oral and written communication and diplomacy skills; and ability to work efficiently under tight deadlines. Experience in higher education and media-related areas strongly preferred. MIT-00009708-P
Open Documentary Lab nails down grant from National Endowment for the Arts
Some great news from CMS research group Open Documentary Lab:
The MIT Open Documentary Lab is a recipient of an Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts! The grant will help the lab build a curated online database of interactive documentaries.
Gathering examples of interactive documentaries from around the world, the open documentary database will be fully searchable and will include key information about projects. The database will keep pace with the rapidly growing number of interactive documentary projects and include historical precedents of the genre, as well as cutting-edge examples.
“As new players armed with new technologies redefine the documentary form, we look forward to providing a map and compass to help navigate this new terrain,” said OpenDocLab Principal Investigator William Uricchio. “The interactive documentary marks the sector’s most important development since the days of cinéma vérité and direct cinema, and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab is delighted to bring these new forms to a larger public.”
NEA Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa said, "The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all contribute to vibrant communities and memorable opportunities for the public to engage with the arts.” Over 1,500 grant applications were reviewed by a panel of experts convened by the NEA, with the organization disbursing more than $26.3 million in grants.
For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA website.
Keep an eye on this blog for project updates about the OpenDocLab database in the coming months. We look forward to sharing our progress with you!
Lisa Song, MIT Science Writing grad, wins Pulitzer
Lisa Song, a 2009 alumna of the Graduate Program and Science Writing, as just been announced as a Pulitzer Prize winner for national reporting, as part of team that authored "The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of. The reporting itself began as a seven-month investigation into a 2010 spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River.
The Pulitzer-winning entry included a three-part narrative by McGowan and Song, who described the unfolding of the Michigan oil spill from the point of view of those directly involved--residents; state, local and EPA officials at the scene; scientists; and spokesmen with Enbridge Inc., the company responsible for the spill. As the three-year anniversary of the spill approaches, oil is still being removed from the Kalamazoo River.
The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) today announced the finalists for the 2013 National Magazine Awards. Known as the Ellies--for the Alexander Calder stabile "Elephant" given to each award winner--the National Magazine Awards will be presented on Thursday, May 2, at the New York Marriott Marquis.
Following Aaron Swartz suicide, MIT President's statement
The CMS community -- in particular several of its colleagues at the Center for Civic Media who knew Aaron Swartz well -- is grappling with the reality that he is no longer with us.
There is a widely-shared tension on campus right now between private mourning and public reaction, between whether (or if it's even a choice) to honor to Swartz's life in the way family and friends would any other, or to lay blame for Swartz's emotional struggles at the feet of the U.S. Department of Justice and MIT, as his family has, for pursuing, or not fighting, respectively, a federal case against him for using the MIT network to download millions of academic documents from JSTOR.
That tension seems to be reflected in the statement yesterday from MIT President Rafael Rief, and from what we've heard, the appointment of Hal Abelson as the lead on this internal review, and the promise to make it public, is an acknowledgment by the Institute that it will take responsibility if and wherever due.
To the members of the MIT community:
Yesterday we received the shocking and terrible news that on Friday in New York, Aaron Swartz, a gifted young man well known and admired by many in the MIT community, took his own life. With this tragedy, his family and his friends suffered an inexpressible loss, and we offer our most profound condolences. Even for those of us who did not know Aaron, the trail of his brief life shines with his brilliant creativity and idealism.
Although Aaron had no formal affiliation with MIT, I am writing to you now because he was beloved by many members of our community and because MIT played a role in the legal struggles that began for him in 2011.
I want to express very clearly that I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy.
I will not attempt to summarize here the complex events of the past two years. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT. I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.
I hope we will all reach out to those members of our community we know who may have been affected by Aaron's death. As always, MIT Medical is available to provide expert counseling, but there is no substitute for personal understanding and support.
CMS's Open Documentary Lab has teamed up with IDFA DocLab to create Moments of Innovation, an interactive exhibit and online research project exploring the long history of inventive documentary practices.
What I find most interesting about the project is how photography is being propelled forward by technology. The project shows viewers one of the first 'game changers' in photography, the $1 Kodak Brownie Camera that came out in 1900 and allowed the coining of the term 'snapshot.'
Federico Casalegno to speak at the Guardian's Mobile Business Summit
As if you needed any more reasons to visit London, Federico Casalgeno, director of our Mobile Experience Lab, will be a key speaker at the Guardian's Mobile Business Summit. His talk ("Future mobile and the blurring of screen technologies") takes place on November 19.
UC Santa Cruz Hiring for a Game Designer In Residence
From our friend Michael Mateas comes news of a Game Designer in Resident gig at UC Santa Cruz (and yes, their awesome mascot is the banana slug):
The Center for Games and Playable Media is in search of a talented game designer with a portfolio of interesting games for a new position, the Game Designer in Residence. Like an Artist in Residence, the game designer will continue to work on personal projects as well as contribute to the academic environment with a mix of teaching duties, offering feedback and critique, collaborating on research opportunities, and providing design guidance.
Learning Games Network receives $2m from Gates for adult-learning ESL game
From the Education Arcade's partner -- the Learning Games Network -- comes this great news:
The Learning Games Network, a non-profit spin-off of the MIT Education Arcade that bridges the gap between research and practice in game-based education, today announced a $1.99 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand Xenos, its flagship integrated social learning environment gaming platform, for Hispanic adults learning English (ESL) in libraries and workplaces. The goal of the Play Games-Learn English Project is to provide self-directed ESL instructional resources to adults in informal learning and vocational training settings. Pilot sites include the Boston and San Francisco Public Libraries and BJ's Wholesale Clubs.
Education Arcade Uses Online Gaming to Teach Science
From The Education Arcade and the MIT News Office...
For Immediate Release: 1/17/12
contact: Eric Klopfer
email: klopfer@mit.edu phone: 617-253-2025
contact: Caroline McCall, MIT News Office
email: cmccall5@mit.edu phone: 617-253-1682
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - With a new $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MIT Education Arcade is about to design, build, and research a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) to help high school students learn math and biology.
In contrast to the way that Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) are currently taught in secondary schools - which often results in students becoming disengaged and disinterested in the subjects at an early age - educational games like the one to be developed give students the chance to explore STEM topics in a way that deepens their knowledge while also developing 21st-century skills.
As director of the Education Arcade and the Scheller Teacher Education Program, Professor Eric Klopfer has been conducting research into such educational gaming tools for over ten years. He is the creator of StarLogo TNG, a platform for helping kids create 3D simulations and games using a graphical programming language, as well as several mobile game platforms including location-based Augmented Reality games and ubiquitous casual games.
According to Klopfer, the game to be developed under this grant will be designed as a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), a genre of online games in which many players' avatars can interact and cooperate or compete directly in the same virtual world. "This genre of games is uniquely suited to teaching the nature of science inquiry," he says, "because they provide collaborative, self-directed learning situations. Players take on the roles of scientists, engineers and mathematicians to explore and explain a robust virtual world."
The game will be designed to align with the Common Core standards in mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards for high school students and will use innovative task-based assessment strategies embedded into the game, which provide unique opportunities for players to display mastery of the relevant topics and skills. This task-based assessment strategy will also provide teachers with targeted data that allows them to track the students' progress and provide valuable just-in-time feedback.
Klopfer's team will be working closely with Filament Games, a Wisconsin-based games production studio as the project's primary software developers. A small number of Boston-area teachers and students will take part in a pilot phase of the project in the spring of 2012 using a prototype of the game. By the end of the three-year project, the game is expected to have 10,000 users nationwide.
WEB APPLICATIONS DEVELOPER,Comparative Media Studies-HyperStudio Team, to build the front and back ends of scalable web applications. Will be part of the core team responsible for the design and development of online tools for information visualization and user collaboration in the humanities and social sciences. Will provide system design, prototyping, implementation, functional verification, debugging, and deployment on Mac OS X and UNIX server platforms; and occasional system administration support. Will work closely with a team that includes developers, designers, graduate and undergraduate students, and faculty.
REQUIREMENTS: a B.S. in EE, CS, or CE; a minimum of three years of development experience; expertise developing database-driven web applications and data modeling; an understanding of software engineering best practices, object-oriented design, and test-driven development; strong programming skills in Ruby on Rails; advanced knowledge of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML 5; and a track record of delivering high quality products including a commitment to delivering a great user experience. Solid knowledge of SQL (PostgreSQL) preferred. Familiarity with basic Mac OS X system administration also preferred, in particular managing Apache, MySQL, and PostgreSQL installations. Some familiarity with PHP and Java is desirable. Experience building web application user interfaces and an interest in and enthusiasm for the humanities and social sciences also preferred. If applicable, you may include links to your work in your resume.
Interested in the CMS graduate program? Today at 2pm eastern time we are hosting our second online infosession, featuring our directors and research managers...as well as other perspectives adding their own great questions to yours.
Every couple of months we take a deep look into our Google Analytics numbers and adjust content accordingly, trying to improve tactics bit by bit.
But toward the end of the year, before the holiday crunch, we take a step back to see how those statistics are meeting overall goals versus years prior. Are we reaching a larger, more diverse audience? Are we keeping up with changes in technology? Is our content getting easier to find, and is our site getting easier to navigate?
The numbers below compare November 2010 to November 2011 against November 2008 to November 2009. (Note the gap year...our goal is to identify longer-term changes.)
The good:
Visits: Up 32% to 114,629
Homepage visits: Up 796% to 64,248
Pageviews: Up 16% to 307,460. We take this to be a good sign relative to visits: since our site is informational rather than commercial, we want people to find what they want quickly. Thus...
Bounce rate (visitors who view only one page): Up 13%
Average time on site: down 4%
Our international reach has grown. It's up 45%. Visits from Asia alone are up 59%.
Likewise, while small compared to those using English, browsers with their language set to Chinese are up a whopping 84%, making Chinese the second-most used language behind only American English.
Our academics and graduate program pages are behind only the homepage in all visitor categories.
The mixed:
We've seen a small drop-off in people visiting for the first and second time but a modest increase in those visiting three or more times. (We'd really like to know who these people are that have visited cms.mit.edu pages for the 200+th time. There are too many to ascribe it simply to students, faculty, and staff.)
There's been a dramatic swing in browser usage, reflecting higher ownership of Macs and a switching from Firefox to Chrome.
Likewise, visits via mobile devices have exploded: Up more than 4,600% in the last two years.
Changes in how visitors find us are difficult to account for in meaningful ways. Visits via Facebook are up more than 500%, but in '08-'09 we used Facebook far less often. We don't set specific goals as businesses do as to what percentage of visitors should find us via search engines (up 15%) versus typing in our URL (up 26%) versus from sites that link to us (down 18%).
Keywords (search terms) are important, though. These results are indeed mixed. Our brand recognition efforts have paid dividends, with variations on "mit cms" and "mit comparative media studies" up around 80%. But the more general search "media studies" has brought 20% fewer visitors over the last two years, we assume meaning either there are more such programs or (perhaps and) programs are pushing their marketing harder as well.
Why do we consider these results mixed? While people are finding new ways to access our content, well, they're finding new ways to access our content. Our site will have to keep up.
The bad:
Frankly, there's little to be disappointed in...except that our sister site gambit.mit.edu has done so much better. (Just one example: their visits are up 215% since 2008/9, to 506,000 visits in the last year.)
Then again, maybe we're biased in what statistics we're showcasing. Do you have specific numbers you'd like to see? Just ask: awhit@mit.edu.
Scot Osterweil to give keynote address at Media Literacy Conference, at MIT
Education Arcade program manager Scot Osterweil is slated to speak at MIT on October 22nd, giving the keynote address for a conference on youth media literacy:
HOME, Inc. invites educational decision makers, curriculum developers, after-school program coordinators, superintendents, instructors and community leaders are all welcome to attend and participate in relevant panel discussions and breakout sessions. The conference is the fourth to be held on a biennial schedule and will feature today's most topical 21st Century educational challenges: Play in Education At the Core of 21st Century Learning, Learning By Design, Using Alternative Reality Games to Uncover Real Science, Student As Television Journalist and Producer, Backpack Journalism and Youth as Advocates and Educators in public health. The conference will feature leaders in the field including Arnie Packer, the father of 21st Century skills and project based learning; and other prominent educators, filmmakers, public health workers and representatives from organizations dedicated to developing programs that promote and generate awareness and a deeper understanding of media literacy. Our Keynote address will be delivered by Scot Osterweil, Creative Director of the MIT Education Arcade and a research director in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He is a designer of award-winning educational games, working in both academic and commercial environments, and his work has focused on what is authentically playful in challenging academic subjects.
CMS opens two faculty searches: tenure-track in games studies and tenured position in Comparative Media Studies
The Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT seeks to fill two positions. Descriptions, requirements, and deadlines are below:
(1) Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Comparative Media Studies/Game Studies, MIT
MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science is seeking a tenure-track assistant professor of game studies to start in the fall of 2012.
Candidates should have a Ph.D. with a record of significant publication (or the promise thereof), research activity and/or design experience relevant to game studies. We seek a candidate who will connect the work of our GAMBIT and Education Arcade research labs to the classroom, and who can direct innovative and multidisciplinary research. Relevant areas of specialization include the history, theory, sociology, psychology and criticism of games and play, and expertise in one or more of the following areas: game design; game engineering; player, playing and assessment methodologies; user behaviors and game economics; data analytics; and visual, narrative, and audio design. Fluency in a broader array of humanities-based media studies and experience in game production will be considered a plus.
Applicants should have teaching experience.
Please submit a letter of application, C.V., three letters of recommendation, and work samples online by December 1, 2011 at: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/1032. Hard copies of works samples may be sent to Prof. William Uricchio, Director, Program in Comparative Media Studies, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E15-313, Cambridge, MA 02139. MIT is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer.
(2) Tenured Associate/Full Professor, MIT Comparative Media Studies
MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies seeks applications for a tenured Professor beginning in September 2012.
A Ph.D. and an extensive record of publication, research activity and leadership are expected. We encourage applicants from a wide array of disciplinary backgrounds. The successful candidate will teach and guide research in one or more of the Program's dimensions of comparativity (historical, methodological, cultural) across media forms. Expertise in the cultural and social implications of established media forms (film, television, radio, audio and visual cultures, or print) is as important as scholarship in one or more emerging areas such as games, social media, media literacies, digital arts and culture, internet research, network cultures, software studies, media industries, and transmedia storytelling.
The position involves teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, developing and guiding collaborative research activities, and participating in the intellectual and creative leadership of the Program and the Institute.
Candidates should demonstrate a record of effective teaching and thesis supervision, significant research/creative activity, relevant administrative experience, and international recognition.
CMS offers SB and SM programs and maintains a full roster of research initiatives and outreach activities [see cms.mit.edu]. The program embraces the notion of comparativity and collaboration, and works across MIT's various schools, and between MIT and the larger media landscape.
Applications consisting of a curriculum vita, a statement of teaching philosophy and experience, a statement of current and future research plans, selected major publications 3 letters of recommendation should be submitted online by November 1, 2011 at: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/1036. Hard copies of work samples may be sent to: Professor William Uricchio, Director, Comparative Media Studies, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E15-313, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. MIT is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.
UROP position available with AAGO, "Mobile Media Diaries for Youth Citizen Journalists"
Are you an MIT undergrad with a coding background and interest in media? Check out this great opportunity with the AAGO project:
UROP Positions: MIT Center for Civic Media and the Comparative Media Studies Program
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. James Paradis
Project Title: Aago: Mobile Media Diaries for Youth Citizen Journalists
Project Description:
With the increasing proliferation of mobile digital media tools and online video distribution, there is a need for secure easy-to-use platforms for sharing and organizing media content among youth. While capturing and tagging digital media with time and location is possible, editing and organizing it for producing seamless narratives that can be easily shared online remains complicated. This project seeks to undertake development of mobile tools and online platforms that support young media makers and citizen journalists to create, organize and share digital narratives produced in their own neighborhoods over time, while allowing new forms of inter-generational learning, location-based storytelling and civic advocacy.
Aago is a mobile media platform designed at the MIT Center for Civic Media, in collaboration with the Comparative Media Studies Program and the New School for Public Engagement. The tool is being prototyped using the iOS development environment and currently runs on Apple iPod devices. In addition to the mobile tools, we also plan to design and implement a web portal for youth to share, collaboratively author and publish digital media narratives. The tools and platforms will eventually be released as open source software for wider public dissemination. The current prototypes have been tested with youth this summer and will be expanded to support extensive pilot workshops conducted with youth community groups in Boston and New York City over the coming year.
The project is being jointly supervised by Prof. James Paradis at CMS and Prof. Nitin Sawhney at the New School for Public Engagement. We are seeking 2-4 qualified UROPs to join the project team to work on mobile software development, designing the web platform as well as conducting user evaluation with youth community groups.
Dates: The project will be conducted during the 2011-2012 academic year and possibly extended over the coming summer.
Prerequisites: Working knowledge of mobile iOS programming using Objective C and the X Code development environment OR web programming using PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and HTML5. Experience with digital video production and location-based applications using mobile and web platforms is helpful. Good user interface design and rapid prototyping skills are expected. Experience or interests in working with community youth media initiatives is a plus.
Contact Information: If you are interested, please contact Prof. James Paradis at jparadis@mit.edu and include:
Resume/CV and links to relevant projects conducted
Summary of previous UROP experience and references
Overview of mobile/web programming experience and interest in the project
Job opportunity: Android Developer @ MIT Mobile Experience Lab
Our Mobile Experience Lab is seeking a seasoned Android developer to help build a working prototype of a novel UI involving mobile streaming video.
This would be a short-term opportunity to work with the Lab's lead Android developer and a small, multi-disciplinary team. Someone with experience doing streaming video or other real-time communication is preferred.
Must be comfortable developing in Java
Must have 1-2 years experience developing native applications for Android
Must be comfortable working with other developers; should have experience using version control systems; experience with git is a plus
Should be comfortable reading the Android source code in order to build new features
Experience writing custom UI components is a plus
Experience with streaming media, camera integration, RTSP, etc is a plus
Experience with JNI is a plus
This project is already under way and moving quickly; we need someone who can begin immediately. The job will last from now until, at minimum, mid-September. This is a great opportunity to work with a multi-talented team on an exceptional project.
To apply or for more information, contact Zoe Schladow at schladow@mit.edu.
Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society has announced its fellows for 2011-12, a list that includes CMS professor Beth Coleman.
Coleman's research there this year will look at the impact of networked social media platforms on collective action. She plans to investigate qualitative and quantitative data on the developing role of the mobile Internet in regard to social and political movements.
In particular, Coleman says, she will focus on spheres of activism, where personal risk (bodily or otherwise) is the condition of participation.
Her forthcoming paper -- Tweeting the Revolution -- part of this research project, will be delivered at the Oxford Internet Institute in the fall.
Fellows this year also include other good friends of CMS, particularly through the Center for Future Civic Media, including Benjamin Mako Hill, Andres Monroy-Hernandez, Intisar Rabb, and Zeynep Tufekci.
ICE Lab hiring for part-time Web Developer/Manager
The Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) at MIT is looking to hire a part-time Web Developer/Manager. The ICE Lab is situated jointly in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing Programs and Computer Science and AI Lab (CSAIL).
Project Developer:
The ICE Lab develops new forms of gaming, interactive narrative/poetry, and social media.
We seek a part-time Web Developer/Manager. Will design, implement, and manage a website for ICE (Imagination, Computation, and Expression) Lab for public and internal group use. Will prepare existing and developing projects for public dissemination on the web and perform system/server administration and management. Will work closely with ICE director and graduate research assistants, developers and consultants. Directly report to the CMS/WHS/CSAIL Faculty member in charge of ICE Lab.
Requirements:
A bachelor's degree and/or a minimum of 3 years' experience as project developer and web programmer.
Experience with web programming languages/platforms including LISP, Flash, Python, Java/Processing, and/or iOS (Cocoa/Objective C), and/or ability to find developers to serve this role.
3+ years' experience building web sites and demonstrated experience in web programming and applications development; familiarity with university and research environments, knowledge of information technology and computing applications as implemented in scholarly research services, and knowledge of trends in the development of state-of-the art web-based technology.
Seek an HR generalist with experience in employee relations, recruitment and performance management.
Excellent interpersonal, written/verbal and communication skills.
Professional game development and/or AI development experience desirable.
Potential future duties include assisting with grant-writing and application (interactive narrative, gaming, and social networking) development.
This is a renewable one-year position, May 2011 to April 2012, with the possibility of extension.
THE 13th ANNUAL CMS MEDIA SPECTACLE
Monday, April 25, 2011 32-155 6pm
CALL FOR ENTRIES
SEND US YOUR FILM/VIDEO
CASH PRIZES! 7 PRIZE CATEGORIES!
The CMS Media Spectacle showcases video projects of all genres created by MIT students, staff, faculty and affiliates. To submit an entry, send your video to:
Becky Shepardson
E15-325
77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139
bshep@mit.edu
Prizes include the Chris Pomiecko Award for Best Undergraduate Entry, as well as awards for Best Non-undergraduate Entry, Animation, Experimental, Narrative, Nonfiction, and Audience Favorite.
Please include with your submission: contact email, video title, brief description, and running time. The maximum running time is 15 minutes. The deadline for submissions is April 13. Contact bshep@mit.edu with any questions.
"VANISHED": Smithsonian and MIT to Launch Sci-Fi Infused Interactive Mystery Event
The Smithsonian Institution and MIT announced the April 4 launch of VANISHED, an 8-week online/offline environmental disaster mystery game for middle-school children, meant to inspire engagement and problem solving through science.
Developed and curated by MIT's Education Arcade (a research group of Comparative Media Studies) and the Smithsonian Institution, VANISHED is a first-of-its-kind experience where participants become investigators racing to solve puzzles and other online challenges, visit museums and collect samples from their neighborhoods to help unlock the secrets of the game. Players can only discover the truth about the environmental disaster by using real scientific methods and knowledge to unravel the game's secrets.
To navigate through the mystery game's challenges, participants will gain access to Smithsonian scientists from such diverse disciplines as paleobiology, volcanology, forensic anthropology and entomology. Potential participants can sign-up for VANISHED at vanished.mit.edu beginning March 21.
"Current science instruction relies too heavily on memorization and activities with pre-determined outcomes causing many kids to lose interest in science and have misconceptions about what it means to be a scientist," said Scot Osterweil of MIT Education Arcade. "VANISHED will provide kids with real scientific mysteries to solve. The popularity of television shows like CSI, Bones, and NCIS tells us there is hunger for this kind of problem solving. We're eager to provide to VANISHED participants the genuinely fun and engaging experience of what it's like to be a scientist: trying to understand the unknown, asking why something has occurred, searching for evidence, and collaborating with other investigators."
As the weeks progress, VANISHED players become scientific investigators taking part in a wide variety of thought-provoking, collaborative, and engaging activities both on and offline. Participants will have the opportunity to communicate directly with Smithsonian scientists via videoconferences. During these sessions, players will tap into the experts' knowledge of key subject matters that have a major impact on cracking the mystery.
Online, VANISHED participants will take part in weekly tasks that help reveal more of the mystery. They will develop and investigate hypotheses, work with other players via online forums moderated by MIT students, and play games that help illustrate science concepts in order to unlock the secret of each aspect of the mystery.
Offline, they must collect scientific data from their neighborhoods and search for clues at Smithsonian affiliate museums across the country where exhibits will explain an area of science or history that players will need to understand to solve the mystery. Journal entries written by a game character will lead VANISHED players in different areas of the country to local participating museums, encouraging them to gather and decode clues. These local players report their findings back to the entire VANISHED community to spark discussion and hypotheses that in turn enable the story to progress and participants to inch closer to solving the mystery. The Field Museum in Chicago and seventeen Smithsonian-affiliated museums, including the Aerospace Museum of California, the Museum of the Rockies, and the Kansas Cosmosphere, have already signed on to contribute to this online/offline experience.
"Smithsonian educators are committed to providing young people with educational experiences that address real issues, while allowing participants to use a variety of resources as well as their creativity to solve problems," said Claudine Brown, the Smithsonian's Assistant Secretary for Education. "Projects like VANISHED demonstrate the power of collaboration as we work with museums across the country to share knowledge and inspire the next generation of young scientists."
Once VANISHED has reached its completion, the project's published findings will provide a blueprint for creating a range of similar activities that museums can deploy to engage their patrons. The Smithsonian Institution and MIT will publish a handbook that will document the project's design, techniques for mastering potential challenges, and an open-source software infrastructure to facilitate the development of similar games.
VANISHED has been developed with a grant from the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education Program.
About Smithsonian Institution
Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian is the world's largest museum and research complex, consisting of 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park and nine research centers. There are 6,000 Smithsonian employees and 6,500 volunteers. Approximately 30 million people from around the world visited the Smithsonian in 2009, with 188 million visits to the Smithsonian websites. The total number of objects, works of art and specimens at the Smithsonian is estimated at 137 million.
About The Education Aracde
The Education Arcade explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. The Arcade's research and development projects focus both on the learning that naturally occurs in popular commercial games, and on the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players.
Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock, civic media specialist, joins CMS faculty
An exciting announcement just went out on our email list from CMS director Jim Paradis:
Comparative Media Studies at MIT is pleased to announce that Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock has been appointed as Assistant Professor of Civic Media and will begin teaching at MIT in the fall of 2011.
Sasha Costanza-Chock is a scholar and media maker who works in the interrelated areas of social movements and information and communication technologies; participatory technology design and community based participatory research; and the transnational movement for media justice and communication rights, including comunicación populár.
His work has involved the use of mobile phones for social change; digital literacies and digital inclusion; and race, class, and gender in digital space. He has done research on the transformation of public media systems; the political economy of communication; and information and communications policy.
Dr. Costanza-Chock holds a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate; he is also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he has worked on a variety of civic media projects with community-based organizations, including the award-winning VozMob.net platform <http://vozmob.net/en/about>. More information about Sasha's work can be found at http://schock.cc.
Application deadline to CMS master's program extended to January 18
A quick update: due to the upcoming long weekend and the lingering uncertainty of mail delivery following the recent blizzard, we will be extending the application deadline for the CMS graduate program to Tuesday, January 18.
But be warned! This is a hard-and-fast deadline; the extension is just enough to be sure applicants aren't penalized for the deadline happening to fall near a storm, a Sunday, and a holiday.
Big Spaceship director of strategy, Ivan Askwith, has left the Brooklyn-based digital shop for a position at Lucasfilm (a BS client, actually). Askwith had spent three-and-a-half years at BS, moving up the ranks from senior strategist to his aforementioned post. For now, the strategy team at Big Spaceship is reporting directly to CEO, Michael Lebowitz. An MIT alum, Askwith spearheaded strategic efforts and project launches for clients including Wrigley (Skittles, Starburst, Altoids, Life Savers and Orbit) as well as Google, USA, A&E, Adobe and Corona during his time at BS.
Nick Montfort publishes "Sea and Spar Between", a Dickinson+Melville poetry generator
Congrats to faculty member Nick Montfort, who along with Stephanie Strickland just published Sea and Spar Between, a poetry generator based on text from the poems of Emily Dickinson and Melville's Moby-Dick. From that combined corpus, Sea and Spar Between can assemble into stanzas the words very common or very unique to both. (Explore the generated poem at the journal Dear Navigator.) The fun is in exploring how we read, analyze, and write poetry ourselves.
The human/analog element involved jointly selecting small samples of words from the authors' lexicons and inventing a few ways of generating lines. We did this not quantitatively, but based on our long acquaintance with the distinguishing textual rhythms and rhetorical gestures of Melville and Dickinson.
The resulting code tells the story in detail: A first line uses either shortLine(), oneNounLine(), or compoundCourseLine(). A second line uses either riseAndGoLine(), butLine(), exclaimLine(), or nailedLine(). The ways these specific types of lines are generated, and the ways the stanzas are arranged, can all be traced in the JavaScript program that implements Sea and Spar Between. This program, which includes the arrays holding all of the words used, is fairly small and simple. For instance, the Sea and Spar Between code, without comments, has fewer characters than the file that implements the vector font.
Lucasfilm chooses CMS alum's agency for digital business
CMS alum Ivan Askwith, who is director of strategy at the digital creative agency Big Spaceship, tweeted some stellar news yesterday. Big Spaceship landed a deal to do the digital creative work for Lucasfilm. From Ad Age:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Lucasfilm, the entertainment production company behind the "Star Wars" franchise, has picked a shop with a fitting name, Big Spaceship, as its new digital agency of record.
The New York-based independent agency beat out a handful of undisclosed digital shops pitching the business, according to people familiar with the matter. It will handle websites, social media and mobile for Lucas Online, which also includes work for film franchises such as "Star Wars."
Lucasfilm confirmed the relationship, though declined to elaborate. Kantar Media does not have ad spending data for the movie production company. Big Spaceship also declined comment for this story.
Over the last 10 years, Big Spaceship grew up largely handling digital production work, building websites for traditional ad agencies on a contract basis. These days the agency, which is run by CEO-founder Michael Lebowitz, says it only works with clients directly, with no agency middlemen.
The agency also counts General Electric, Wrigley, Microsoft and Google as clients.
Big Spaceship had $8 million in U.S. revenue in 2009, up 33% from the year prior, according to Ad Age DataCenter. The 50-person shop was also one of Ad Age's Best Places to Work in 2010.
Gambit Call For Abstracts: Summer Program Projects, 2011
Via Sara Verilli at the Gambit Game Lab comes your big chance to put game research into practice:
Call for Project Abstracts: Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab Summer Program, 2011. Abstracts are due October 13th, 2010
The Lab seeks researchers who are interested in seeing their mature research put into practice as a game. In particular, we seek research which poses questions best answered through games, or innovative designs or technologies which are uniquely demonstrated in a game. Participants must be able to devote several hours a week participating in the Summer Program at the MIT Campus Lab from June 6th through August 5th, 2011.
Eligibility:
Singaporean researchers, researchers funded by GAMBIT, and researchers at MIT are all invited to apply.
What is the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab?
The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium. GAMBIT sets itself apart by emphasizing the creation of video game prototypes to demonstrate our research as a complement to traditional academic publishing.
What is The GAMBIT Summer Program?
Interns from the Boston area and from Singapore collaborate on development teams each summer to create prototype games which demonstrate concepts based on accepted research topic proposals. Each team is required to create a 5-30 minute polished gameplay experience which demonstrates or explores a research topic. In addition, the game must target the production values of commercial casual games and be distributed online.
Depending on the research topic, the games created might apply some theoretical concept about design or development (e.g. new game design methods, new management methods), use a new technology that has not been used in games before, be an implementation of a specific set of innovative game mechanics (e.g. modeling a system that has not been implemented before), be an analytical tool to study players, or be an educational game to teach a topic.
Each development team will need an expert who can explain the core research and assess whether the game is effectively exploring it. Thus, research topic proposals will be required to select researchers to participate in the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab summer program for the entire duration of June to August. Researchers will be required to visit Boston for at least the first two weeks of the summer program; applicants who will be available on site for the entire 9 week program/development period at the MIT Campus will be given preference. Selected researchers are also expected to collaborate with GAMBIT towards publication of the finished product: be it in academic venues such as conference or journal submissions, or through the professional game industry via festival submissions, commercial development or licensing opportunities.
Application Process: Download the abstract application here. Abstracts will be reviewed by the GAMBIT lab, and the applicants with the strongest proposals will be invited to work together with the GAMBIT staff to create a project proposal. Abstracts are due October 11th, 2010, with invitations to continue work on proposals going out October 25th, 2010. Final proposals will be expected by December 6th, 2010, and final selection of projects will be sent out on January 10th, 2011.
Contact akiru AT mit DOT edu with any questions or concerns.
Application Timetable & Deadlines:
Call for Abstracts: October 11th, 2010.
Written Proposals: December 6th, 2010.
Final Decisions: January 10th, 2011.
Job openings at CMS: Assistant Professor; Assessment Researcher; Development Officer
MIT Comparative Media Studies is pleased to announce the following three open positions.
Please note that the first -- the tenure track faculty position -- has its own application requirements, so you cannot apply for it via the MIT jobs website.
Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Comparative Media Studies, MIT
MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science is seeking a tenure-track assistant professor of media studies to start in the Fall of 2011.
Candidates should have a Ph.D. with a record of significant publication (or the promise thereof), research activity and/or experience relevant to civic media. Relevant areas of specialization include the contemporary practice, history, or theory of one or more of the following: user-generated content; forms of civic engagement such as citizen journalism, journalism and new media, and location-based social networks; innovative uses of media technology; media and democracy; youth culture and media literacies. Fluency in a broader array of theories, histories and practices associated with media studies will be considered a plus.
Applicants should have teaching experience.
Please send a letter of application, C.V., three letters of recommendation, and hard copy samples of your research and publications to Prof. James G. Paradis, Interim Director, Program in Comparative Media Studies, Room E15-331, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
The application deadline is December 9th, 2010. MIT is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer.
ASSESSMENT RESEARCHER, Comparative Media Studies, to assess and evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the research projects developed and deployed by MIT's Center for Future Civic Media. Will design and implement center-wide systems to measure the social and technological impact of the tools, applications, and practices developed and identified by the center; analyze and summarize research findings; identify best practices; advise principal investigators on center strategic planning, improvement, and new investment opportunities; and keep PIs apprised of new developments in the assessment and evaluation field and pioneer new standards and methods that impact the field. Will work under the supervision of the principal investigators.
REQUIREMENTS: an advanced degree in assessment and evaluation, media, technology and communities, or other relevant field; at least five years of experience assessing and evaluating the impact of media technology projects in communities and demonstrated ability to develop and implement innovative assessment models; and advanced knowledge of the principles, practices, and procedures of assessment and evaluation. Position requires experience and fluency in standard quantitative and qualitative assessment methods and the ability to develop innovative metrics for the assessment of the technological, social, and socially networked practices specific to the project's community-based activities. Must demonstrate attention to detail and outstanding analytical, organizational, personal interaction, writing, and communication skills. Seek self-motivated individual who requires minimal supervision and is able to work both independently and as part of a team. MIT-00007247
This is a temporary, appointment through May 31, 2011, with the possibility of extension.
DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, Comparative Media Studies (CMS), to meet CMS' resource development goals of supporting faculty research and funding graduate students, primarily by focusing on institutional sources of giving, i.e., corporate, foundation, and government grants. Will collaborate with faculty members and research staff to develop their research ideas into fundable projects; assess and target development options and opportunities; and work with the director, faculty members, administrative officer, school resource development staff, and MIT central Resource Development to identify, cultivate, and steward prospects and potential funders.
REQUIREMENTS: a bachelor's degree (advanced degree preferred); outstanding persuasive writing skills and ability to clearly articulate complex information and funding priorities; a minimum of five years' grant writing experience, including familiarity with funding opportunities and application processes; documented success securing funding from foundation, corporate, and government sources including new funders; and working knowledge of research resources for foundation, corporate, and government funding sources. Seek experienced grant writer with a clear understanding of how to work both independently and in coordination with a variety of key players--faculty, administrators, and other development staff as needed--to identify potential funding opportunities, produce strategies and proposals, and steward ongoing grants. Experience in higher education and in media-related areas strongly preferred. Exceptional organizational, interpersonal, and oral and written communication skills needed; as are strong diplomacy skills. Must be able to work efficiently under tight deadlines. MIT-00007233-P
Position funded through 6/30/11 with possible contract renewal based on job performance and availability of funds.
We'd like to pass along this announcement from the MIT Alumni Association about a holiday greeting design contest.
Anyone from the MIT community is eligible, and there are cash prizes of $1000 and $500...not to mention the chance to show off your creativity to the entire MIT community.
MIT students and community members:
The holiday season may feel far away, but the MIT Alumni Association is already scheming--and looking for help. As of today, the Association is issuing a call for proposals for the 2010 MIT electronic holiday greeting. Those who can channel the Institute's brilliance, creativity, and distinctive quirkiness are encouraged to participate.
About the Greeting
The 2010 holiday greeting will be electronic, like last year's. It will be sent by MIT President Susan Hockfield and the Alumni Association to an audience of some 150,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and friends.
Eligibility
MIT students or other community members may participate. Contestants may work individually or in teams.
Prizes
Cash prizes of $1,000 and $500 will be awarded to the winner and runner up, respectively. The winner will also receive credit, wide exposure, and the opportunity to have his or her work viewed and approved by President Hockfield.
Center for Future Civic Media hosts announcement of 2010 Knight News Challenge winners
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation--sponsor of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media--in June 2010 announced their 2010 Knight News Challenge winners. Together, these winners form another ground-breaking, visionary class of civic media developers, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
This is video of the announcement by Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibarguen, as introduced by the Center's director Chris Csikszentmihalyi.
Please join us in congratulating the winners:
CityTracking, by Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen Design $400,000
To make municipal data easy to understand, CityTracking will allow users to create embeddable data visualizations that are appealing enough to spread virally and that are as easy to share as photos and videos.
The Cartoonist, by Ian Bogost and Michael Mateas, Georgia Tech $378,000
To engage readers in the news, this project will create a free tool that produces cartoon-like current event games -- the game equivalent of editorial cartoons.
Local Wiki, by Philip Newstrom and Mike Ivanov $350,000
Based on the successful DavisWiki.org in Davis, Calif., this project will create enhanced tools for local wikis, a new form of media that makes it easy for people to learn and share their own unique community knowledge.
WindyCitizen's Real Time Ads, by Brad Flora, WindyCitizen.com $250,000
As a way to help online startups become sustainable, this project will develop an improved software interface to help sites create and sell what are known as real-time ads.
GoMap Riga, by Marcis Rubenis and Kristofs Blaus, GoMap
Riga $250,000
To inspire people to get involved in their community, this project will create a live, online map with local news and activities.
Order in the Court 2.0, by John Davidow, WBUR $250,000
To foster greater access to the judicial process, this project will create a laboratory in a Boston courtroom to help establish best practices for digital coverage
that can be replicated and adopted throughout the nation.
Front Porch Forum, by Michael Wood-Lewis, Front Porch Forum $220,000
To help residents connect with others and their community, this grant will help rebuild and enhance a successful community news site, expand it to more towns and release the software so other organizations, anywhere can use it.
One-Eight, by Teru Kuwayama $202,000
Broadening the perspectives that surround U.S . military operations in Afghanistan,
this project will chronicle a battalion by combining reporting from embedded journalists with user-generated content from the Marines themselves.
Stroome, by Nonny de la Peña and Tom Grasty, Stroome $200,000
To simplify the production of news video, Stroome will create a virtual video-editing
studio.
CitySeed, by Retha Hill and Cody Shotwell, Arizona State University $90,000
To inform and engage communities, CitySeed will be a mobile application that allows users to plant the "seed" of an idea and share it with others.
PRX StoryMarket, by Jake Shapiro, PRX $75,000
Building on the software created by 2008 challenge winner Spot.us, this project will allow anyone to pitch and help pay to produce a story for a local public radio station.
Tilemapping, by Eric Gundersen, Development Seed $74,000
To inspire residents to learn about local issues, Tilemapping will help local media create hyper-local, data-filled maps for their websites and blogs.
Congratulations to this year's Media Spectacle winners!
The 12th annual CMS Media Spectacle was on Monday and featured a ton of short films from members of the MIT community. Thank you to all who attended and to all you ambitious souls who submitted pieces.
Winners this year included:
Chris Pomiecko Award for Best Undergraduate Entry
"Mario vs Wario"
Garrett Hemann, Joshua Kastorf, Ashley Nash, Nick Ristuccia
Best Non-undergraduate Entry
"How to Win Friends and Influence People"
Jess Wheelock
Best Narrative
"Moment"
Marleigh Norton
Best Nonfiction:
"Living Room Monologues"
Audubon Dougherty and David DiMaria
Best Animation
"Modern Escher"
Otto Ng and Mavis Yip
Best Experimental
"Study Break"
Claxton Everett
Audience Favorite
"How to Win Friends and Influence People"
Jess Wheelock
Interested in learning more about the CMS graduate program? An on-campus information session is this Monday, May 3
With the CMS graduate program application process re-opening this fall, we're holding an on-campus information session this Monday, May 3, from 9:30am to 4:00pm.
Thank you to all who have already RSVP'd. If you'd like to add yourself to the list, please write us at cms-admissions@mit.edu.
CMS and MIT commemorate program's 10th anniversary with publication and symposium on April 23
In just over a week, on Friday, April 23rd, Comparative Media Studies will officially celebrate its 10th anniversary with a day-long symposium on the history and future of the program and field.
To commemorate the anniversary, CMS has produced a beautiful 60-page booklet on Comparative Media Studies at MIT, featuring pieces by Dean Deborah Fitzgerald of the MIT School for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; by CMS Director William Uricchio; and by research directors, alumni, and staff.
Print copies will be available at the anniversary celebration, and a PDF is now posted here at cms.mit.edu and on Scribd.com...
Comparative Media Studies is now school's second-largest major
A nice stat and a nice moment: since approval of its permanent major in 2008, Comparative Media Studies has grown to become the second-largest major in MIT's School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
While still a far cry from Economics' 90 students, Comparative Media Studies has become a clear choice of major at a time when more humanities undergraduates demand ways to apply knowledge to the challenges right in front of them.
Kudos to Dean Fitzgerald, director William Uricchio, associate director Ian Condry, academic coordinator Becky Shepardson, and groundwork-layer/former director Henry Jenkins for such great success.
GAMBIT Game Lab raising money for Haiti/Partners in Health this weekend in Complete Game-Completion Marathon
We are marathoning for earthquake relief in Haiti. We have teams of players ready to grind it out for charity, but we need your help! Tune in to the webcam feed on the weekend of February 26th-28th to check it out, and please donate to the cause. Every little bit helps.
A full 82 game hockey season (plus playoffs) with the beloved Boston Bruins on EA's NHL 10 on the Playstation 3. Trades will not be initiated by the players, but computer initiated trades will be reviewed. Acquisitions via free agency are fair game. We are also going to play the All-Star Game. Lots of fights will be instigated by the players. We will probably wear the alternate jersey with the bear, or throwback sweaters for the majority of the games. Also, Scott Thornton will probably be moved to the first line. Abe intends to spend the entire 25 hours speaking Canadian, Andy might knock out some teeth training for the event, and don't be surprised if Gene is wearing skates and tearing up the lab carpet. Tune in to watch the B's win the Stanley Cup, in February!
Congrats to Sara Drakeley '12, a double-major in Comparative Media Studies and Applied Mathematics, upon being named a 2010 Burchard Scholar! From the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences' announcement:
Thirty-four outstanding MIT sophomores and juniors have been selected as the 2010 Burchard Scholars in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
Now in its 24th year, the Burchard Scholars Program brings together distinguished members of the faculty and MIT sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated excellence in some aspect of the humanities, arts, or social sciences.
The format is a series of lively dinner-seminars at which faculty present current research, often interdisciplinary in nature, followed by discussion and conversation.
Here's the full list of this year's Burchard Scholars:
Omar Abudayyeh '12, Mechanical Engineering
Jenna Caldwell '11, Biology
Mengjie Ding '12, Computer Science and Economics
Jenny Dohlman '11, Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Sara Drakeley '12, Comparative Media Studies and Applied Mathematics
Dora Gao '11, Physics and Ancient & Medieval Studies
Allison Hamilos '12, Biology
Latifah Hamzah '12, Mechanical Engineering
Jennifer Lai '11, Biological Engineering and Music & Theater Arts
Allen Lin '11, Political Science
Connie Lu '11, Environmental Engineering
Razaz Mageid '12, Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Lauren McGough '12, Mathematics
Asad Moten '11, Brain & Cognitive Science
Alexandra Piotrowski '11, Chemical Engineering and Biology
Julia Reardon '11, Chemistry and Women's Studies
Ricky Richardson '12, Mathematics
Khalea Robinson '11, Civil Engineering
David Rolnick '12, Mathematics
Emma Rosen '11, Economics
Sarah Rumbley '12, Music & Theater Arts and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Mariya Samoylova '12, Biology
Cory Smith '11, Economics
Ethan Solomon '12, Brain & Cognitive Science
Eduardo Sverdlin-Lisker '11, Electrical Engineering and Physics
Adrianna Tam '11, Music & Theater Arts
Stephanie Tong '12, Brain & Cognitive Science
Ian Tracy '11, Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering
Graham Van Schaik '12, Materials Science & Engineering
Our expanded, more-open space at last puts us physically alongside our research colleagues from the Education Arcade, the Center for Future Civic Media, and--as we were in Building 14--the Convergence Culture Consortium.
Our main office address changes to E15-331, and our mailing address is now 77 Massachusetts Ave., Building E15-331, Cambridge, MA 02139. For mapping purposes, know that building E15 is located at 20 Ames St.
GAMBIT Game Lab announces "Complete Game-Completion Marathon for Haiti"
Dear Friends of GAMBIT,
Like the rest of the world, we here at the GAMBIT Game Lab are shocked by the recent devastation in Haiti. One cannot help but wonder what it will take to rebuild the community leveled by this disaster. The people of Haiti need our help now, and we at GAMBIT have a plan!
February 26-28th, GAMBIT will be hosting the 2010 Complete Game-Completion Marathon to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti. Teams of players will gather at our MIT lab to attempt to complete a game in one sitting. Participants will independently seek sponsorship on a dollar/hour basis with all proceeds going directly to relief efforts in Haiti through Partners in Health, and with support from the MIT Public Service Center. The labs will be open 24 hours a day through the weekend to accommodate the teams, with snacks and refreshments available for the players.
Center for Future Civic Media speed-develops tech for Haiti
CMS's sister group, the Center for Future Civic Media, was uniquely positioned to respond to communication needs in Haiti following last week's devastating earthquake.
Center researchers, led by director Chris Csikszentmihalyi, have been aiding this first majorly tech-heavy humanitarian response, helping ensure developers open their tools to one another. It sounds minor at first, but nearly every news outlet and NGO has ramped up its technological capability in recent years--but without consideration for standards for sharing information in the middle of a crisis.
In the response to the earthquake in Haiti, many organizations have created sites where people could find one another, or least information about their loved ones. This excellent idea has been undermined by its success: within 24 hours, it became clear that there were too many places where people were putting information; each site became a silo.
People within the IT community recognized the danger of too many unconnected sites, and Google became interested in helping. Google is now running an embeddable application at: http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/
We recognize that many newspapers have put precious resources into developing a people-finder system. We nonetheless urge them to make their data available to the Google project, and standardize on the Google widget. Doing so will greatly increase the number of successful reunions.
I am not affiliated with Google -- indeed, this is a volunteer initiative by some of their engineers -- but this is one case where their reach and capacity can help the most people.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the reasoning behind this request. Any questions about the widget or its functionality or features are best directed to Google.
Meanwhile, the Center is maintaining an open thread on its website to track the Haiti-tech response. If you have ideas to share, please contribute and it will get re-shared to important mailing lists.
On a personal note, Google's people-finder at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/ has already helped me (Andrew) find a former Tufts colleague based in Haiti during the quake and report back to her coworkers that she indeed returned safely to the Boston area on Saturday.
So the crisis is ongoing, but the fast-response civic technology the Center is studying and implementing--it works, even at this scale.
As Comparative Media Studies faculty, students, and staff return from two weeks of Christmas and New Year's celebrations, we also return to celebrate our program's entering, with not-quite-believable-speed, its 10th year.
2010, as an anniversary year, will not only be a time for lauding the program's accomplishments but also for exploring--as an academic community and with our fans--where Comparative Media Studies as a program and discipline wants to go from here.
CMS at MIT has grown from an idea, nurtured by Henry Jenkins and Dean Philip Khoury, into one of the world's top media studies programs. So we will have a formal anniversary celebration in April, bringing together alumni and scholars, with the public portion being a Communications Forum on April 22 to welcome back Henry Jenkins to discuss the history and future of CMS--to talk about what co-Director William Uricchio described in early planning as, "What worked, what didn't, and why. And Henry being Henry, his talk will have a strong dose of the visionary."
A strong dose of the visionary marked these first ten years and--with our move to the Media Lab building this month, more inspired directorship coming this spring, and continued groundbreaking research from our various projects--doses of the visionary will be the prescription for the next ten.
The Lab seeks researchers who are interested in seeing their mature research put into practice as a game and who are able to devote a few hours a week towards this end at the MIT lab from June 7th through August 6th.
Interns from the Boston area and from Singapore collaborate on development teams each summer to create prototype games which demonstrate concepts based on accepted research topic proposals. Each team is required to create a 5-30 minute polished gameplay experience which demonstrates or explores a research topic. In addition, the game must target the production values of commercial casual games and be distributed online.
Depending on the research topic, the games created might apply some theoretical concept about design or development (e.g. new game design methods, new management methods), use a new technology that has not been used in games before, be an implementation of a specific set of innovative game mechanics (e.g. modeling a system that has not been implemented before), be an analytical tool to study players, or be an educational game to teach a topic.
Each development team will need an expert who can explain the core research and assess whether the game is effectively exploring it. Thus, research topic proposals will be required to select a researcher to participate in the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab summer program for the entire duration of June to August. The selected researcher will be required to visit Boston for at least the first two weeks of the summer program at a minimum. Selected researchers are also expected to collaborate with GAMBIT towards publication of the finished product: be it in academic venues such as conference or journal submissions, or through the professional game industry via festival submissions, commercial development or licensing opportunities.
SUBMISSIONS
Interested persons should fill out the attached questionnaire and send it to Sara Verrilli . All researchers currently receiving funding from GAMBIT should apply in this way as well.
Priority will be given to researchers funded by GAMBIT, Singaporean researchers, and researchers at MIT.
GAMBIT UROP Opportunities Open House, Friday, December 11th from 4-6pm
Via Rik Eberhardt at GAMBIT:
GAMBIT is now hiring current MIT students for a potential 16 positions for the MIT IAP session (Jan 5 through 31).
WHEN: Friday DECEMBER 11th, 4-6pm
WHERE: NE25, 3rd Floor.
I invite you all to attend a meet and greet with the researchers at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11th, from 4pm to 6pm.
Each semester of the school year, we bring in student research assistants via MIT's UROP program along with students from some of the other regional colleges to assist our researchers with their work. This can range from helping a researcher collect data or create a tool for data collection, creating a game based on existing research, enhancing a game we already have, or creating tools or middleware for use with future game development.
Here are brief descriptions of the projects we'll be working on and the number and type of positions available on each:
Physics Deformation Library
Creation of a wrapper in C# for Unity 3D for existing research, plus a tech demo/game to prove that it works.
2 Programmers. Skills: C#, Unity
Glove/Hand Tracking Library
Creation of a wrapper in C# for Unity 3D for existing research, plus a tech demo/game to prove that it works.
2 Programmers. Skills: C#, Unity
Dream Logic Modeling Game
Creation of digital prototypes based on research into game puzzle logic and existing paper prototypes created this past summer.
2-3 Programmer/Designers. Skills: One or more of Java/Processing/Flash/Unity, writing Interactive Fiction
PAX Booth Game
Creation of an analog or digital prototype of an ARG/location-based game that will be played at PAX East in Boston in March 2010.
1 Programmer/Designer, and 1 Designer. Skills: PHP/Ruby/C#, experience in iterative design of game prototypes
Windows Mobile Sensor-based Game
Creation of a tech demo/game for the Windows Mobile platform using an existing library for accelerometer-style sensors.
2 Programmers. Skills: programming for Windows Mobile
The Sophocles Project
Design for a web site and blog for an ongoing research project.
1 Artist, 1 Web Designer/Developer. Skills: HTML, PHP, Movable Type, Illustration, Web Design
Abandon 2.0
Creation of new art assets for levels we created this Fall, and integration of them into the game. The previous version of this game can be found at http://gambit.mit.edu/abandon
1 Artist, 1 Programmer. Skills: Python, Panda3D, Illustration
Molasses
Level creation for an existing game based on the Boston Molasses Disaster.
1 Programmer, 1 Level Designer. Skills: C#, TorqueX, Unity, level design
We pay the same rate as the UROP direct funding pay rate (about $9.35/hour) or credit, and are looking for people able to work 20-30 hours per week during the IAP period as well as work 10 hours/week in the Spring semester. Please still apply if you can only work during the IAP period - some of our projects will only last during this month.
PLEASE EMAIL Rik Eberhardt (gambit-request@mit.edu) with the type of position you are interested in, a brief statement of intent why you are able to fill this position, and your availability for both the IAP (Jan 5 through Jan 31) period and the Spring (Feb 1 through May 15) period.
More information about work for the Spring period will be sent later this month.
That leave just a handful of tickets available for Day 1. If you're still (inexplicably!) on the fence about attending a conference whose first day alone will feature Wired's Frank Rose, the head of the BBC's Fiction & Entertainment Multiplatform Commissioning, NYU's Stephen Duncombe, and our old friend Henry Jenkins, register for Day 1 today!
Futures of Entertainment 4
November 20 and 21 (Friday and Saturday)
Jobs: Teacher Education Program looking for educational games programmer
MIT's Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP) is seeking a talented web application developer with experience working for educational audiences or developing games.
The STEP lab does research and development of new technologies for education, primarily educational games and simulations. Currently, the lab is developing the next generation of mobile educational games, called Ubiquitous Games. These games can be played on any computer with an AJAX compliant web browser, but are designed to be played on mobile devices with webkit browsers (i.e. Android, iPhone, etc). Currently, there is one prototype game built on the UbiqGames platform, and development is slated to begin shortly on four more games.
STEP is seeking a web application developer capable of working within the very general structure defined by the prototype game to develop the four new games. The games will likely be built on an existing Ruby on Rails framework. The programmer will work on a close-knit team with game designers and a project manager. This person will have the opportunity to, and should be excited to make substantial contribution to the overall design of the project/games. If you want only to take perfectly detailed specs and translate them to code, this job is not the right fit.
Required Experience/Characteristics Include:
coding database driven web applications
data modeling and implementation, preferably in MySQL
Object Oriented programming of some flavor
user interface design
excitement about educating students, particularly in science
experience with either educational product development or game development
development of the system architecture for web applications
good sense of humor
enthusiasm for innovative projects at the intersection of games, learning, and technology
The position is full time for 1.5 years. Salary $50-60K/year depending on experience.
Interested candidates should submit letter and resume to tep-jobs@mit.edu with "UbiqBio Programmer" in the subject line.
Registration now open for Futures of Entertainment 4
This year's conference is November 20 and 21 here at MIT:
Convergence has moved swiftly from buzzword to industry logic. The creation of transmedia storyworlds, understanding how to appeal to migratory audiences, and the production of digital extensions for traditional materials are becoming the bread and butter of working in the media. Futures of Entertainment 4 once again brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new directions in our culture and academic scholars immersed in the investigation the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological implications of these changes in our media landscape.
Confirmed speakers include Frank Rose of Wired, Andrew Slack of the Harry Potter Alliance, Stephen Duncombe author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in the Age of Fantasy, and many more.
Please enjoy this "behind the scenes" content from the development process of our summer prototypes. For eight weeks teams of students worked together to develop these games from scratch with only some research guidelines as a starting point. We hope that by exposing our process to the public we can encourage innovation in game development and game studies for industry and academia alike. Take a look at the developer interviews, concept art, sound, design documentation, essays, commentaries, and all other content we will make available in this series. But most importantly please take a chance to go play the games. We have made them, for you.
CMS announces addition of Ian Condry as program's Associate Director
Director William Uricchio last Friday introduced Ian Condry, cultural anthropologist with a focus on contemporary Japan, as the new Associate Director of the Comparative Media Studies program. In a note to CMS faculty and staff, Uricchio said, "Ian's work across a variety of media platforms (music and club scenes, anime, social networks and literature) and between cultures (particularly the US and Japan) fits CMS perfectly. Particularly in this time of transition for CMS, Ian's presence is vitally important."
"I'm delighted to have this opportunity to work with William, the CMS students, and the many affiliated faculty and staff at MIT on the rebuilding of the program," Condry said. "CMS has already proven its importance in providing a space for invigorating and collaborative for research and teaching, as evidenced by the decade-long commitment to engaging with the ways media are reshaping the ways we learn, teach, work and play. The challenge now is to take advantage of the the program's strengths and to reach out across the Institute and beyond to expand the core of the program in a way that works towards a more sustainable future. I'm excited to be part of that effort. "
Director Uricchio added, "As a program, we still have challenges ahead, but with Ian's addition, the possibilities are both exciting and tangible."
MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies seeks applications for a tenured position beginning in September 2010. A PhD and an extensive record of publication, research activity and leadership are expected. We encourage applicants from a wide array of disciplinary backgrounds. The successful candidate will teach and guide research in one or more of the Program's dimensions of comparativity (historical, methodological, cultural) across media forms. Expertise in the cultural and social implications of established media forms (film, television, audio and visual cultures, print) is as important as scholarship in one or more emerging areas such as games, social media, new media literacies, participatory culture, software studies, IPTV, and transmedia storytelling.
The position involves teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, developing and guiding collaborative research activities, and participating in the intellectual and creative leadership of the Program and the Institute. Candidates should demonstrate a record of effective teaching and thesis supervision, significant research/creative activity, relevant administrative experience, and international recognition.
CMS offers SB and SM programs and maintains a full roster of research initiatives and outreach activities [see http://cms.mit.edu] The program embraces the notion of comparativity and collaboration and works across MIT's various schools and between MIT and the larger media landscape.
MIT is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.
Applications consisting of a curriculum vita, a statement of teaching philosophy and experience, a statement of current and future research plans, selected major publications, and names of suggested references should be submitted by November 1, 2009 to:
Professor William Uricchio
Director, Comparative Media Studies
MIT 14N-207
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
This year's Julius Schwartz Lecture speaker was transmedia creator J. Michael Straczynski, who has most recently entered the motion picture arena, writing the period drama Changeling for Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie, adapting such books as Lensman for Ron Howard, World War Z for Brad Pitt's company, and They Marched Into Sunlight for Tom Hanks and Paul Greengrass, as well as reviving Forbidden Planet for Warner Bros. and selling two new original movies, The Flickering Light and Proving Ground to Universal and Tom Cruise's United Artists, respectively. He has also begun work on Last Words, a pilot for a new TV series for the TNT network.
More than half of Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab students find employment in game companies
From a press release issued by the Media Development Authority of Singapore:
Since running yearly summer internship programmes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2007, the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab (GAMBIT) has trained 77 students from various local tertiary institutes in games research and development. Of these, 41 of them have since found employment in the Singapore games and media industries while the remaining is largely still serving national service.
That's a remarkable accomplishment and testament to the GAMBIT program. GAMBIT staff added their thoughts:
We here at the Cambridge office are very excited by this announcement, and look forward to working closely with our partners across the ocean to find more job placements for our highly skilled and talented students.
A DVD of last spring's inaugural Julius Schwartz lecture featuring comics writer and New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman is now for sale exclusively at New England Comics.
Pick up copies at New England Comics' eight stores or online, including pre-order.
When representatives from natural gas companies knock on doors in rural areas to try to lock up deals for drilling rights, they typically hold most of the cards. They have the knowledge and experience about the process, while the landowner often has little or no information about what kinds of deals other residents in the area have agreed to -- or about such issues as toxic chemicals that have been used in other drilling sites and the health effects residents say they have experienced. Currently, there is no easy way to find such information.
A team of MIT researchers hopes to remedy that. They are developing a suite of software applications to extract information from government and corporate databases, along with input from citizens in the affected areas, and make it all available in a clear, easy-to-navigate form. "This is an experiment to see if we can develop new tools to help communities self-organize," says Chris Csikszentmihalyi, head of the Media Lab's Computing Culture group and co-director of MIT's Center for Future Civic Media.
Within the next few days, the MIT team will begin tests of one of their new software tools, Landman Report Card (LRC), with small groups of landowners in Colorado and Ohio, and eventually extend the tests to New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, all of which are experiencing new booms in natural gas exploration.
Co-Director Henry Jenkins to leave MIT, accepts position at USC
From Professor Jenkins' blog:
On Monday, I announced to the members of the Comparative Media Studies Community -- our graduate and undergraduate students, staff, researchers, faculty, and alums -- that I will be leaving MIT at the end of the current academic year to accept a new position at the University of Southern California. I have decided that the phrase "bitter-sweet" is inadequate for such a moment, prefering to adopt the phrase, "Brutal-Sublime" to capture the extreme highs and lows I feel at what is for me a significant transitional moment in my life. This turned out to be one of the most agonizing decisions I've ever had to make.
New website launched for the Center for Future Civic Media
The new Center for Future Civic Media (C4) site, at civic.mit.edu, not only serves as the public face of C4 but also reflects its collaborative mission: to develop new technologies that support and foster civic media and political action, serve as an international resource for the study and analysis of civic media, and coordinate community-based test beds both in the United States and internationally.
The new site encourages the free sharing of civic media tools. MIT-made tools--including the group decision-making tool Selectricity and a tool to report acts of civic courage, called Hero Reports--are currently featured, but so are tools submitted by others, such as IBM's visualization program, Many Eyes. The site's central aim is to highlight others' civic media tools, to give them a platform for sharing and improvement.
Visitors to the site are encouraged to follow the work of Center for Future Civic Media's researchers, partners, and students through its blog and its many events. And they can discuss civic media issues, ideas, and challenges in the site's public forums.
About the Center for Future Civic Media
The Center for Future Civic Media supports research at MIT to innovate civic media tools and practices and test them in communities. Bridging two established programs at MIT--one known for inventing alternate technical futures, the other for identifying the cultural and social potential of media change--the Center for Future Civic Media is a joint effort between the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. It is made possible by a four-year grant from the Knight Foundation.
Transforming civic knowledge into civic action is an essential part of democracy. As with investigative journalism, the most delicate and important information can often focus on leaders and institutions that abuse the trust of the communities they serve. By helping to provide people with the necessary skills to process, evaluate, and act upon the knowledge in circulation, civic media ensures the diversity of inputs and mutual respect necessary for democratic deliberation. Some of what emerges here looks like traditional journalism, while some moves in radical new directions.
William Uricchio to give keynote at European Network for Cinema and Media Studies conference
William Uricchio will speak about new directions in archiving-- social tagging, access, recycling
and the broader implications for the interaction between history and memory-- in his opening keynote for European Network for Cinema and Media Studies in Budapest, Hungary. Founded in February of 2006, NECS brings together scholars and researchers in the field of cinema, film and media studies with archivists and film and media professionals who share a common interest in academic film study and the preservation, distribution and programming of film and media art and the film heritage. Click here for more information.
The Center for Future Civic Media is collaborating with the MIT Communications Forum to host an ongoing series of conversations about media and civic engagement. Click here for full article.
A new computer game developed by MIT and Singaporean students makes it possible for visually impaired people to play the game on a level field with their sighted friends.
Sandbox Summit, the organization created to explore how technology is affecting the ways kids play, learn and connect in today's digital world, has announced the formation of its first Advisory Board. The announcement comes as summer, the unofficial season of play, is about to begin. Drawing from a variety of fields, the roster of accomplished professionals includes academics, educators, policy makers and toy developers. The Sandbox Summit 2008 Advisory Board members include: Scot Osterweil, Creative Director, MIT Education Arcade, et al.
Henry Jenkins to speak at Games for Change conference in NYC
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Chris Crawford (original founder of the GDC), Prof. Henry Jenkins (MIT), and Prof. James Paul Gee (University of Wisconsin-Madison) are all confirmed speakers for the upcoming Games for Change NYC conference, to be held June 3 and 4.
Games for Change is a conference about using video games and game technology for altruistic purposes.
CMS is proud to announce that the Spring 2008 issue of its newsletter, In Medias Res, is now available for download. The new issue contains the following:
From the Directors CMS Undergraduate Major nearly ready for liftoff
Features Center for Future Civic Media welcomes Ellen Hume; the new games curriculum at MIT; Live Action Anime at MIT; William Uricchio's new Media@MIT course; HyperStudio examines Missed Opportunities between the US and Iran; Futures of Entertainment 2 conference introduces Backchan.nl
Events Spring 2008 Colloquium schedule; CMS Class of 2008 thesis presentation schedule; CMS hosts House, M.D.'s Katie Jacobs and novelist Wu Ming 1; 10th annual CMS Media Spectacle returns; Neil Gaiman to present Julius Schwartz lecture; Purple Blurb announces Spring lineup
Project Updates C3 examines what happens on YouTube; the Education Arcade imagines the future of educational gaming; GAMBIT welcomes Doris Rusch and Jesper Juul; HyperStudio develops resources for exploring history and historiography; Project NML modifies its exemplar library; C4FCM research takes shape
More Poetry by Nick Montfort; faculty and alumni updates; Neeti Gupta deep-dives into real-world CMS
Other issues of our newsletter are available for download from the In Medias Res page in the News section of this website.
Goal:
Our goal is to get to known new friends and learn more about each other. Also we hope to study the media communication tools and the style of conversation on MSN IMS.
The official CMS newsletter, In Medias Res, for Fall 2006 now available!
The newsletter gets a new look thanks to CMS graduate student Geoffrey Long '07; the breaking news is that CMS will spearhead the new Singapore-MIT gaming lab; also, New Media Literacies receives second-phase funding from the MacArthur Foundation; the Convergence Culture Consortium's Project Good Luck visits China; and Education Arcade's Learning Games to Go develops the puzzle game Labyrinth.
In collaboration with game design luminaries Jane McGonigal (42 Entertainment) and Ian Bogost (Watercooler Games), MIT's Comparative Media Studies program will be sponsoring the Boston-Cambridge premiere of the new public street-game, Cruel 2 B Kind.
When? October 31, 2006 / 6:30 - 8:30 PM Where? Several blocks near Harvard Square What? A free game of benevolent assassins, complete with prizes and costume contest! ...What? For more information, go to cruelgame.com! How? Sign up online, right here.
CMS spearheads the new Singapore-MIT International Game lab
A spotlight on the web.mit.edu revolving frontpage, as well as within the MIT news office, MIT has announced a joint-project with Singapore to explore and work within the videogame industry. CMS Directors Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio will both co-direct and serve as Principal Investigators in this project.
The SMIGL initiative will enable students and researchers from Singapore to collaborate with MIT researchers and game industry professionals in international research projects. Beyond technology development, SMIGL will also conduct research on the artistic, creative, business and social aspects of games. The new initiative will also provide Singapore game researchers and professionals with access to cutting-edge technologies, the latest conceptual developments and links to international game development and research communities.
We are proud to announce that we are now publishing our Colloquia Series in audio podcast form! Set your podcast client or feed reader to http://cms.mit.edu/news/podcast.xml to listen in. We're also listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory, Podcast.net, and PodcastDirectory.com.
After years of writing articles and blog posts for everyone else, Professor Henry Jenkins has finally launched his own blog, Confessions of an Academic/Fan, in preparation for the release of his forthcoming book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
With frequent updates which already touch on everything from the logic of the Long Tail to the summer's Snakes on a Plane phenomenon, Henry's blog is already becoming a must-read in media and game discussion circles around the world.
The blog will be redesigned later in the summer with a more distinctive appearance, but content is content, so go take a look.
"A Piece of Cake" and "Amnion" Awarded at CMS Media Spectacle
CMS Undergraduate Coordinator Gene Fierro sends along the following report from the CMS Media Spectacle 2006:
Last night, a great crowd turned out for the CMS Media Spectacle in honor of Chris Pomiecko, the former program administrator here at CMS. The Media Spectacle was held at Stata and was a huge success both in the quality of submissions and in audience response. Cathy Pomiecko, Chris' sister and his mother were in attendance, and Cathy served as one of the judges. The other judges were Professor Junot Diaz, Dr. Laura Ceia-Minjares, Dr. Doris Rusch, Dr. Joern Ahrens, and myself. The event was filmed and aired on MIT cable.
There were two awards given last night, one for the best undergraduate submission (The Chris Pomiecko Award) and another for the best graduate submission.
The winning undergraduate submission was A Piece of Cake, by Anna Wexler (Brain & Cog Sci) and Nadja Oertelt (Brain & Cog Sci), who were awarded the Chris Pomiecko Prize for their work. Both Anna and Nadja were unable to attend as they are in the Cambridge-MIT Program. Cake is a very funny film with monotone dialogue showing a very mismatched date.
The winning graduate film submission was Amnion, by Rajesh Kottamasu (Urban Planning). Amnion was an ambitious experimental film set within a womb, where a pair of twins was recreated using a light table and fabric. A voice-over narrative chronicles the experiences they would share in their lifetimes.
CMS congratulates the winners on their excellent work, and everyone who attended for coming together to make the Media Spectacle 2006 a memorable experience.
We hope to make streaming versions of the award-winning videos available here on the CMS website in the next few weeks, so check back soon!
Graduate student Sam Ford (2007) was a member of the panel "The Perils and Promise of Interdisciplinarity" on Friday, April 14, at the National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Conference in Atlanta.
His presentation, entitled "Break the Walls Down: Trumpeting a Desire to Blur Disciplinary Lines in Academia," was part of a four-member discussion about the current status of interdisciplinary studies in American academic institutions. He was joined by Dr. Ted Hovet, head of the film studies minor and member of the English faculty at Western Kentucky University; Dr. Dale Rigby, writing professor at Western Kentucky University; and Amanda Ford, independent scholar.
The panel members were joined by about 30 audience members who actively participated in the discussion, which turned into a brainstorming session about the place of interdisciplinary studies in the current academic structure. All four panel members and most of the audience members have multiple interests that do not fit clearly into a traditional academic field, making the carving of an academic niche difficult, especially at schools and in programs more tied to a traditional academic structure.
Ford presented MIT's Comparative Media Studies program as a potential alternative, where the department has most of its faculty spread across the university. The discussion included debates about costs of attending graduate school and doctoral programs for students not entirely happy with the structuring of most academic programs; the debate of looking outside academia, where interest in multiple areas may be, in some ways, better received and even celebrated; and a look at the positive moves toward embracing and effectively utilizing interdisciplinary studies. The group also looked at the potential reasons why universities are so invested in guarding against interdisciplinary studies and the misconceptions many people have with blurring or breaking some of the barriers built up between various strands of academia.
Ravi Purushotma ('06) and Dan Roy ('07) flew out to San Jose recently for the Game Developers Conference where they presented their work modding the LucasArts adventure game Grim Fandango to teach Spanish. The original game is an undisputed classic in the industry, and its focus on the Mexican Day of the Dead makes it a good choice for teaching Spanish.
They also showed updates of their Sims 2 project, providing students with a modified version The Sims 2 suited for learning a foreign language.
Purushotma and Roy plan to continue conceptualizing the most effective ways of marrying entertaining technology with the best language learning theory to engage students in a new way around language.
Coming Soon: More News, Announcements and Accomplishments!
Please bear with us... we're just getting the new version of the CMS Website up and running (which is a major accomplishment in and of itself!), so we're in the process of rounding up announcements, details of past accomplishments, and more historical CMS news items, which will be added into this section as soon as possible.
In the meantime, you can get a better sense of what everyone involved in CMS has been doing by looking at In Medias Res, our official department newsletter.
And, if you know of an accomplishment you think should be mentioned here, please let us know!
Professor Beth Coleman has passed along the following announcement (and request) for all members of the CMS Community:
This week was the kick off show for Minority Report (CMS.876) "100 Years of Radical Music" on MIT radio station WMBR (88.1). The students who are taking the course that coincides with the show are developing radio programs as part of their course work and also learning some basic skills about sound, recording, broadcast, and mix culture.
I want to invite students and faculty from our extended CMS community to
participate, as they would like:
- Send me an MP3 to include in a show.
- Send me a full mix.
- Send me some trivia about the history of recording technologies or electronic music.
If you would like to participate in the radio broadcast training, please e-mail me in advance.
Special guest mix contributors to the show include:
- Cory Doctorow
- High Priest (airborn audio/anti-pop consortium)
- MC Verb (soundlab)
- Oculart
- Dr. Joe Paradiso
Claudia Hart is an artist, curator and critic, working in the contemporary context since 1988. She creates virtual paintings that take the form of 3D imagery integrated into photography, animated loops, and interactive screen-based installations. At MIT, she will talk about the different roles she has taken on in her career and her views on the themes of popularity, populism and interactivity in the digital arts.
Take a look at her website, get excited and join us!
CMS Professor Beth Coleman will be participating in an upcoming ARTspace panel entitled "Can We Fall In Love With A Machine?", as part of the larger College Art Association Conference. ARTspace is a conference within the Conference, tailored to the interests and needs of practicing artists but open to all. It includes a large-audience session space and a section devoted to the video lounge. Other participants in the panel include Sherry Turkle (MIT-STS) and Claudia Hart (Sarah Lawrence and Pratt Institute).
The panel will convene from 9:30 AM to noon on Saturday, February 25, at the Hynes Convention Center. It is free and open to the public, so anyone can come without registering for the conference. Speakers do not have to be members to present in the session.
The CMS program is currently soliciting applications for two new postdoctoral teaching and research fellowships: one focused on media education and designed to help support the work of the Education Arcade and the New Media Literacies Project; the second focused on creative industries and globalization and linked to the new Convergence Culture Consortium. The post-docs will also be teaching courses designed to broaden the CMS curriculum into areas that are increasingly central to the program's research efforts. The fellowship program is also designed to encourage the academic growth of promising media studies scholars with recent Ph.D. degrees. Support for the new postdoctoral program has come from an anonymous donor and from the Dean of Humanities.
CMS is looking for films, videos, video podcasts and mobisodes produced by MIT and Wellesley students, faculty, staff and affiliates for its 2006 Media Spectacle.
The deadline for submission is April 10.
Screenings will begin at 7 pm on Wednesday, April 26 in 32-123 (the Stata Center). All formats, styles, lengths and subjects are acceptable. Works-in-progress are welcomed.
The Chris Pomiecko Prize will be awarded to the most outstanding undergraduate media submission. The prize is named for the CMS administrator who died in a car accident last year.
To submit a work, send title, format, description and running time to Gene Fierro at generoso@mit.edu or contact CMS at 617.253.3599.
Beginning this term, webcasts of all Communication Forum talks will be made available by MIT World, which provides free on-demand video of significant public events at MIT.
"The Communications Forum is a welcome addition to our video collection," said Laurie Everett, MIT World's project manager, about the arrangement. "These scholarly discussions help MIT World stay true to its mission to present a wide range of ideas and topics to a global audience of learners."
The MIT Communications Forum, founded by Ithiel de Sola Pool who taught in the Department of Political Science, has sponsored talks on all aspects of communications for more than 25 years. An article about the Forum and CMS appeared in the fall 2005 issue of In Medias Res.
"The rapid expansion of broadband and wireless technology makes these webcasts feasible and significant. The collaboration strengthens both the Forum and MIT World," said Literature Professor and Forum Director David Thorburn.
This spring, the Forum will sponsor a conversation between former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Thorburn; and three linked forums on the state of TV – the economics of television, the changing face of television news and a discussion with David Milch, creator of HBO's Deadwood.
The Forum will continue to make audio recordings of its talks available from web.mit.edu/comm-forum about 48 hours following live events. Webcasts will be available from MIT World approximately a month following live events.
MIT World currently hosts nine Forum events. To browse titles, go to mitword.mit.edu and under "Video Finder" select "MIT Communications Forum" from the "All Hosts" dropdown menu.
CMS and MIT Communications Forum Partner with Taiwan's Kainan University
Special students and visiting scholars from Kainan University, Taiwan, will join the MIT community beginning in January 2006.
The Asian visitors will be part of a collaboration between Kainan and CMS and the MIT Communications Forum. The partnership aims to fortify and extend the multicultural interests of both the Forum and CMS by adding a Taiwanese perspective to ongoing teaching, scholarship and public forums centered on Asian media and cultures.
David Thorburn, director of the Communications Forum, conceived the partnership during a visit to Taiwan in March, where he gave lectures on new media and met Michael Tang, president of Kainan University. He returned to Taiwan in August to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between MIT and the Taiwan institution.
The collaboration will bring four students and two Kainan faculty members to MIT each year. The CMS program will form the core of the students' curriculum, though they will also be eligible to enroll in other MIT subjects appropriate to their interests. The Kainan faculty visitors will participate in the visiting scholars' program; some will speak at CMS colloquiums and appear as guests in classes.
The collaboration will be supervised by a governing board consisting of Thorburn, Tang, Henry Jenkins, director of CMS, and Jing Wang, head of Foreign Lnguages and Literatures at MIT.
Emma Teng, associate professor of FL&L, will serve as faculty advisor to the Kainan students. Teng is the author of Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895, and teaches the popular CMS course 21F. 030, East Asian Cultures: From Zen to Pop. Teng's father is a native of Taiwan.
The collaboration also supports an annual conference in Taiwan where MIT scholars will be featured.
MEDIA STUDIES WEB SITE
Students, faculty and staff from the Comparative Media Studies program, with contributions from friends and colleagues around the world, have created Reconstructions, a website devoted to reflections on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and Pennsylvania tragedies and aftermath.
"We had been discussing the role of media theory during a time of crisis in my theory class and a student asked whether there was any way that they --individually or as a community--could make a difference in the current discussions of this tragedy," said Professor Henry Jenkins, director of Comparative Media Studies (CMS). "Inspired by that question, I called a town meeting of any person from CMS who was interested in participating in some kind of project which might help promote rational discussion and mutual understanding during a time charged with enormous emotions and risks."
The web site, created during marathon sessions over the weekend, may be accessed here.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- As a new generation of students heads
"back to school" -- from pre-kindergarten through
college -- broader uses of interactive technologies such
as web-based applications, DVDs, video and computer games
are becoming increasingly integral to teachining and learning.
Researchers in MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies
today announced plans to launch three new efforts that integrate
classroom experience with web-based instruction, create
digital media archives for teaching humanities subjects,
and expand definitions of educational media to include "games-to-teach."
The first venture is "Media, Education, and the Marketplace,"
a new course that explores how emerging forms of interactive
media fundamentally transform the learning process. Fuji
Xerox is providing platform and technical support for this
new couse, which integrates both classroom lectures and
on-line learning and provides a first-hand example of how
the potential of new interactive and telecommunications
media are being harnessed to support teaching and learning.
"This is one of our first attempts at integrating
theory and practice in teaching a course on educational
media," said Professor Shigeru Miyagawa, who designed
the course following his own experiences in developing several
educational media properties. "With the arrival
of broadband and other delivery platforms, educators will
have at their fingertips a broader set of tools to teach.
Our goal is to develop that toolkit," Miyagawa added.
Through Miyagawa's 14-week course, students will explore
effective media design, educational theory, and existing
and anticipated methods for distribution, as well as the
business concepts behind such issues. Star
Festival, a multimedia curriculum that encourages
users to explore issues of cultural and ethnic identity,
serves as the primary case studey for the term. Developed
by Miyagawa over the past five years, Star Festival was
adopted in 2000 by the Boston Public Schools as its first
"interactive textbook" for district-wide use.
George Takei, Liutenant Sulu from STAR TREK, narrates the
media-rich poject based on the young life of Miyagawa.
On-line lectures by business leaders, educational theorists,
and media scholars will supplement students' exploration
of Star Festival and classroom discussions. Anticipated
guest and on-line speakers include:
-- Bonnie Bracy, Advisor on Education and Digital Divide,
Clinton Administration; Lucas Fellow
-- Henry Jenkins, Director of MIT's Program in Comparative
Media Studies
-- Steve Lerman, Director of MIT's Center for Educational
Computing Initiatives
-- Robert Metcalfe, Venture Capitalist; Founder of 3Com
-- Livia Polanyi, Senior Researcher at FX Palo Alto Laboratory,
Inc.
-- John Vaille, Internet2 K-12 Team in California
-- Toby Woll, Director of e-Learning at Sloan School of
Management
By the end of the term, students will develop a project
that shows an understanding of the types of business models
that facilitate educational technology in the classroom.
And, many students will become part of an on-going e-learning
project in Sloan School of Management, CMS, and other groups
at MIT.
"We're bringing together world-class thinkers and
practioners with MIT-quality students who've grown up in
an intensely rich mediascape," said Miyagawa.
"We expect the projects to chart a course for future
work in developing and producing those all-important 'killer
apps' in educational media."
NEW PROJECT: META-MEDIA
Digital technologies allow educators to create more robust
tools for teaching by integrating a wide variety of media
in a single archive. The Meta-Media Project aims to
create such media-rich archives so students can explore
broader notions of specific subject areas across media and
over time through "expanded texts." Created
by Peter Donaldson, professor of literature and director
of the Meta-Media Project, the Shakespeare Electronic Archive
was one of the first explorations in integrating images,
audio, and video clips for use in humanities education.
"We want to take what we've learned in the past few
years and apply that to the development of a larger suite
of mini-archives for use in humanities education,"
said Donaldson. "Shakespeare was a good starting
point because his work has been represented in all media
that's existed for more than 400 years."
Donaldson and other researchers, including Dr. Kurt Fendt,
who developed the language and culture teaching archive
'Berliner sehen,' will collaborate with other MIT faculty
in literature, writing and humanistic studies, foreign languages
and literature, anthropology, music, and comparative media
studies to develop archives for use at the secondary school
and undergraduate levels. Although the first projects
have yet to be identified, researchers are considering a
broad range of topics, including:
-- The Evolution of the Declaration of Independence
-- The Detective across Media
-- Chaplin, Montage and the Poetic Image
-- Billy Budd: Manuscripts and Film
-- Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Theater and Film
-- Marlowe's Edward II, Texts, Film and History
-- Utopian Visions of the Future City
-- Teaching Hong Kong Cinema
-- Interfaces for Communication
-- Tools for Teaching Writing
-- Fundamentals of Music Composition
-- Photography
-- Theories of Evolution
"We plan to look at not just what information and
media go into a subject area, but how to exploit the potentials
of interactivity and expand both pedagogies and models for
collaboration," Donaldson added. He and his colleagues
hope to have the first modules deployed in classes at MIT
as early as this fall and spring.
The Meta-Media Project is funded in part by a grant from
the Alex and Brit d'Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in
MIT Education.
The third major initiative involves an interdisciplinary
collaboration of faculty, staff, and students across the
humanities, sciences, and engineering that will develop
a series of conceptual prototypes for "games-to-teach"
science and engineering subjects at the advanced high school
and introductory college level. As part of Microsoft
i-Campus, a five-year research alliance between MIT and
Microsoft, the Games-to-Teach Project intends to explore
best practices in game design and production, current educational
theory, and emerging technological platforms and to apply
such understanding to new models for presenting and exploring
educational content in computer and video games.
"Until now we've seen so-called 'edutainment' that
has all of the entertainment value of a bad lecture and
the educational value of a bad game," said Henry Jenkins,
director of Comparative Media Studies and principal investigator
on the project. "Our goal is to reverse that
polarity by combining MIT-quality science and engineering
subjects with state-of-the-art game design."
Jenkins and his colleagues believe computer and video games
are emerging as a powerful new teaching medium that enables
robust interactivity, providing for new pedagogical models
and stronger collaborations across disciplines. Pointing
to an industry that this year will report domestic sales
totals that are roughly equivalent to Hollywood's take at
the box office and a battery of new creative products, Jenkins
sees an industry that has finally begun to understand its
basic building blocks and is now stretching out on new directions,
experimenting with new forms, and diversifying audiences.
"Teachers need to take notice of such industry changes
and explore ways to leverage this new medium in their teaching
strategies, thus allowing for new learning exeriences among
a broad range of student abilities and media literacies,"
Jenkins said.
Through weekly lab seminars and creative development workshops,
Jenkins and his team plan to explore the "best practices"
of interactive teaching tools, define corresponding pedagogical
models, and begin to test assumptions through the development
of a dozen conceptual prototypes that will focus on subjects
from biology to physics, from mechanical engineering to
chemical engineering, and from applied mathematics to materials
science.
"As humanists at one of the world's leading technological
institutions, we're in a unique position to think about
the intersection of science and culture," said Jenkins.
"The challenge of the Games-to-Teach Project will be
to create science and engineering content in a compelling
narrative form that students want to engage with, where
they want to explore, and where they can experiment with
new ideas."
Jenkins hopes the conceptual prototypes developed within
the project provide the games industry and government agencies
with the blueprints for exploring full-scale development,
production, and release of "games to teach" in
coming years.
COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES
Comparative Media Studies is the humanistic and social scientific
examination of media technologies and their cultural, social,
aesthetic, political, ethical, legal, and economic implications.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students in
the program are trained to think critically about the unique
properties of different media and about the shared properties
and functions of media more generally. More than 30
faculty from a wide variety of disciplines in the School
of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences aim to teach the
next generation of leaders in industry, journalism, government,
the arts, and the academy to think across media and investigate
issues central to the role of media in today's world: current
research topics include, interactivity, narrative, and hypertextuality;
childhood and adolescence in a mediated culture; informed
citizenry and cultures of democarcy; and, media in transition.
Lisa Song, a 2009 alumna of the Graduate Program and Science Writing, as just been announced as a Pulitzer Prize winner for national reporting, as part of team that authored "
And Coates is in good company. From 
The CMS community -- in particular several of its colleagues at the Center for Civic Media who knew 
From our friend Michael Mateas comes news of a Game Designer in Resident gig at UC Santa Cruz (and yes, their awesome mascot is the banana slug):
Our research group for digital humanities, the 
Education Arcade program manager Scot Osterweil is slated to speak at MIT on October 22nd, giving the keynote address for 
The Smithsonian Institution and MIT announced the April 4 launch of 
A quick update: due to the upcoming long weekend and the lingering uncertainty of mail delivery following the recent blizzard, we will be extending the application deadline for the CMS graduate program to Tuesday, January 18.
Big Spaceship director of strategy, 
Congrats to faculty member Nick Montfort, who along with Stephanie Strickland just published 
In just over a week, on Friday, April 23rd, Comparative Media Studies will officially celebrate its 10th anniversary with 
As Comparative Media Studies faculty, students, and staff return from two weeks of Christmas and New Year's celebrations, we also return to celebrate our program's entering, with not-quite-believable-speed, its 10th year.
GAMBIT is now hiring current MIT students for a potential 16 positions for the MIT IAP session (Jan 5 through 31).
MIT's Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP) is seeking a talented web application developer with experience working for educational audiences or developing games.
Director William Uricchio last Friday introduced Ian Condry, cultural anthropologist with a focus on contemporary Japan, as the new Associate Director of the Comparative Media Studies program. In a note to CMS faculty and staff, Uricchio said, "Ian's work across a variety of media platforms (music and club scenes, anime, social networks and literature) and between cultures (particularly the US and Japan) fits CMS perfectly. Particularly in this time of transition for CMS, Ian's presence is vitally important."
