digital media production, fall 2013

MS 320: Digital Media Production
MWF 11:45-12:50 (Section 2)
MWF 1:00-2:05 (Section 1)
Kalmanovitz Hall 211

Professor David Silver
Contact: dmsilver [ at ] usfca [ dot ] edu
Office: Kalmanovitz Hall 141
Office hours: MF 10-11 & by appointment

Digital Media Production is a media studies production course designed around creating, sharing, and collaborating with social media. Using words, photographs, animation, and maps (not to mention links, sets, and hashtags), students will explore and experiment with social media, participatory media, or what we might as well just call contemporary media. Along the way, students will research and participate in an issue, organization, or movement that combines social justice and social media.

Learning Goals:
1. To learn how to use many different social media tools and platforms quickly, independently, creatively, and collaboratively;
2. To dig deeply, through research and participation, into a particular issue, organization, or movement that combines social justice and social media; and
3. To develop, through social media, a unique voice that combines creative expression and engagement with others.

 
Course Texts and Costs: All readings will be made available for free – online, via Gleeson Library, or outside my office. All students are required to make at least one $25 micro-loan, via kiva.org, which will be returned in full.

Calendar: In general, Mondays will be spent discussing readings, Wednesdays will be devoted to workshops and field trips, and Fridays will be guest lectures and Demo Days (class periods when students demo new work). On Fridays, the professor, in collaboration with the students, will decide next week’s topics, readings, workshops, and assignments.

Course Grading:
20% Quizzes and homework
20% Class participation
30% Individual projects
20% Group projects
10% Collaborative content project with students enrolled in Adam Fish’s Viral Video Production course at Lancaster University, UK

Attendance Policy: Missing class, or attending class unprepared, will significantly affect your final grade. If you do miss class, contact a classmate or two to find out what you missed. After doing this, if you have questions about missed material, visit me during office hours.

Course Rules:
1. No late work accepted.
2. If you have no new work on Demo Day, do not come to class.
3. Starting Friday, 8/23, no drinking out of non-reusable containers in class.