English Professor Jessica Pressman discusses her students' digital assignments during a Teaching w/ Technology Tuesday session March 24, 2009.

Given the subject matter of English Professor Jessica Pressman’s Digital Literature course, inviting students to get their hands dirty with new media was a natural teaching strategy. “Any literature class is about understanding how the literature works,” Pressman said. “Approaching old media through new media can enhance that pedagogical goal.”

The new media in this case were web-based elements that students created to communicate ideas in their final essays. The projects included animation, video, sound, and interactive elements in conjunction with written text. “Students didn’t just post a traditional 10-page paper on a website,” she said. “They considered the form that best presented their message. Should the essay use Flash graphics or be static? Should the reader control the pace? How is it navigated? Students contemplated how to most effectively present arguments by thinking about how their essays would be received.”

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Kariann Yokota, Assistant Professor of American Studies and History, and Michael Klingbeil, an Assistant Professor in the Music Department, have been awarded Yvonne and John McCredie Fellowships in Instructional Technology for 2009.

Kariann Yokota’s fellowship will focus on developing a web-based teaching/research gateway to material objects in Yale’s collections that will help scholars explore the transoceanic exchange of objects, ideas, and people between America and Britain as well as America and Asia during the post-Revolutionary period. Also as part of the fellowship, Yokota is working with the Instructional Technology Group and the Library to design assignments for her “American Culture in the Revolutionary Era” course which will encourage students to develop their visual and material literacy skills by investigating objects as historical evidence.

Michael Klingbeil

Michael Klingbeil’s fellowship provides resources for students to work directly with advanced digital media hardware for interactive, real-time, digital media creation and live performance. These resources will enhance two courses, “Fundamentals of Music, Multimedia Art, and Technology” and “Applications in the Composition and Performance of Music, Multimedia Art, and Technology” taught by Klingbeil. The use of the advanced hardware, including alternate controllers and sensor interfaces, will encourage students to be more critical and reflective about the nature of digital media creation, the underlying assumptions made by interface and instrument designers, and the artistic influence of these assumptions. Klingbeil’s students will chronicle their reflections and recordings of their performances using web-based portfolios that are being developed as another key component of the fellowship.

For more information on the McCredie Fellowship, please visit http://itg.yale.edu/mccredie.

The new StatLab classroom is located in Room 01 of the newly opened Rosenkranz Hall which also houses the Political Science Department.

The StatLab classroom formerly located in the basement of Brewster Hall has moved to Room 01 in Rosenkranz Hall which is located at 115 Prospect Street.

The move will not affect the StatLab facilities and services in Urban Hall located at 140 Prospect Street. The main StatLab classroom in Urban Hall along with the StatLab staff and consultants are *not* moving.

Hours for the new Rosenkranz StatLab classroom will remain 8:30a.m. - 4:30p.m.  All room reservations that would have been made for Brewster will now be placed in Rosenkranz. The reservation URL remains the same: http://statlab.stat.yale.edu/calendar/reserve.jsp

The classroom features space for 13 students, a lecturn, dual projection and plenty of whiteboard space.

The new classroom accommodates 13 students and offers a lectern and more whiteboard surface than the room in Brewster. Additionally the facility will feature dual screen projection similar to that found in the main StatLab classroom in Urban Hall.

Updated information is posted on the StatLab homepage and the StatLab Twitter page.