More from the 2010 NMC annual meeting last month in Anaheim. These are fairly rough notes, but rather than trying to make them into a more finished narrative, I’ve decided that there’s a play of voices here that can stand on its own. A few of my own interjections emerge here and there, in parentheses, representing thoughts at the time and thoughts somewhat later. What I remember most vividly about this session in retrospect is not necessarily anything we decided or any consensus reached, but rather how extraordinarily moving the conversation became as we went along. We are indeed united by our passion. We care about the potential for computers, for the Internet, for richly mediated human interaction as engines for the augmentation of human intellect. That caring is difficult to sustain within many typical educational practices and organizational realities, many of which are either indifferent or openly hostile to these ideas and this potential.

As Janet Murray asks, how long before we recognize the gift for what it is? In many respects, this session wrestled and dreamed with the hope of answering Murray’s question, and the goal of honoring and fostering the recognition more widely.

Getting started on day two of the NMC annual conference with a town hall meeting: NMC members are responding to NMC’s emerging investigation into possibilities for accrediting New Media programs at colleges and universities. To begin, Cornell’s Joan Getman, chair of the NMC’s Commission on Standards and Excellence, recaps the April San Antonio meeting and summarizes the conclusions, most of which turned out–usefully, in my opinion–to be questions about values and meaning. I’m impressed by Joan’s summary, its the clarity and faithfulness to the experience. (I was there on the last day.) I look forward to reading them in the NMC monograph that will come out of the April meeting and subsequent discussions.

Larry Johnson picks up the discussion here, talking about Rachel Smith’s visualizations of the April discussions, telling the story of the experience through these remarkable drawings. The drawings are online, and I urge you to consult them to get a sense of the rich texture of the discussion.

At this point in the conversation we begin to try to define New Media. A difficult and interesting moment. A member from Australia cites interactive design, use of electronic tools, research abilities in a cross-disciplinary research design with critical media studies work, and the foundations of education terminology and theory. A colleague from Wisconsin sees New Media as a great equalizer, a way to bring the disabled into society, an avenue for participation that might otherwise be lost. Another colleague says New Media is about agency and generativity. Yet another colleague speaks to New Media’s emphasis on storytelling and rich contexts. A colleague from UT-Austin describes New Media as “a field that combines the arts and sciences to communicate human experience.” Another voice: New Media is about innovative thinking, forward thinking, thinking that leads to new research and new methodologies. New Media makes the invisible visible, very powerfully.

Larry points out that the field of New Media is mature, twenty years old. That’s part of why we feel this need to bring more specificity and focus to our work. (At the same time, the generativity of New Media constantly works against this codification–a fascinating tension.)

A colleague from England speaks to his work in new literacies. The word “new” implies an opposition to old media, and raises the question of when something new becomes old. At a higher level, we see that all human experience is mediated. New Media implies a paradigm shift in how we view this mediation, and how we conceive knowledge to be constructed and shared.

And what about the toolkit, one voice asks? The toolkit changes all the time, but the end is the constant of human experience and its expression. Another voice helpfully adds that we also value a certain attitude toward the tools, a set of expectations regarding creativity and the possibility (indeed, the necessity) of innovation.

And what of old media? Do we reject old media? Far from it, Mike Berman suggests, pointing to Rachel’s visualization of the discussion as a wonderful example of analog, “old media” expression, not all that different from the cave paintings.

Another question: what experiences *are* New Media? Is SMS still “new media”? Perhaps NMC’s Horizon Report can lead the way here: the newness is at the horizon, at the leading edge. (“Horizon Media”? An intriguing possibility.)

From Maricopa Community Colleges: New Media is about digital literacy, teaching people to drive cars, not drive Fords. Preparation for transport, not for a particular brand of automobile.

And a very poignant suggestion arises: can we define New Media in words? Perhaps we must define New Media by using New Media. (My heart beats faster at this suggestion, I confess. I find it bold and inspiring.)

Yet another fascinating suggestion: perhaps work in New Media combines both research and application. (This idea maps well onto The New Media Reader’s suggestion that New Media unites making and knowing, techne and episteme. In that same volume, Janet Murray writes eloquently of the braided interplay of cultural expression and technical innovation at the end of the twentieth century–braided interplay, which Ted Nelson might also call “intertwingling.)

Larry asks why we’re interested in New Media. “Toys!” a person shouts out from the back of the room. “Imagination,” another adds. These “toys” empower children to enter the conversation. For all of us, the tools empower tinkering–we use these tools to commit art. (I think of Seymour Papert and the “children’s machine”–how much of the history of New Media has focused on education, especially on early childhood development.)

More thoughts now, coming faster (the question obviously taps into some deep wells of emotion): The field has dreamers and outcasts–the field enables us to be the misfits, successfully. New Media builds a subculture. New Media also bridges the new and old cultures, and allows communication between the rising generation and the older generation. This is a profoundly human activity, one that generates innovation and rewards imagination. New Media also fills in the gaps between imagination and communication. New Media helps us make information digestible. Think also about SF: the children have extraordinary learning opportunities in science fiction. The Star Trek holodeck is a tremendous learning technology, a tremendous learning environment. Arts and Sciences have become ossified and do not embody our current knowledge of what we are and what we’re capable of. New Media is a field, a structure, a community that can embrace scientific methodologies as well as artistic practices and possibilities. It also generates respect for intellectual diversity, and perhaps generates enough big picture thinking to lead to something as ambitious and apparently out-of-reach as world peace. New Media gives us the chance to hear voices we would not otherwise hear–the voice now speaking cites Joe Lambert and the Center for Digital Storytelling as sterling examples. And a voice adds that “transparency in the use of the technology” leads him to fascination with New Media, which focuses on the expression even more than the tool.

So now the question is, “what is excellence?” Bryan Alexander offers three ideas. 1. Future scanning: methods of looking forward. 2. Awareness of copyright, including an appreciation and celebration of fair use (dammit, he adds), 3. Storytelling. Another voice speaks up: the willingness to admit we don’t have all the answers. Ruben Puentedera adds: an awareness of the history of the field, the thinking involved in getting to that point. I contribute a thought born of years within the profession of English studies:

What of assessment? What of the end user? What of innovation defined in terms of the strengths and abilities of individual students? The new objects of study–do we really intend web science as our focus? Can we set aside some of what we value as we search for this focus?

Another person emphasizes the need for not only copyright but also citation, giving proper acknowledgement to the works we use and alter. Works cited: a hallmark of an excellent program, with a rich sense of rigorous scholarship. We also need to be mindful of the professionalism we seek to prepare, an important connection with the corporate world in which many of our students will be working. We also need to use New Media to help teach the skills and values of collaboration. And then there is Henry Jenkins’ concept of transmedia, an exciting way of thinking about the new media landscape and the cultural products that emerge from that landscape.

Larry closes with a look forward to a monograph coming out in the early fall, a catalyst to continue this conversation about accreditation/standards and excellence for new media programs at colleges and universities. There’s a wiki where you can add to this conversation. We hope to craft a process that embodies the values we hope to promote.

Practicing our values. Walking the new media walk–with our eyes on the horizon.