My very first animated gif.

Colleagues, section 9, enrolled VCU students, open participants all over the world: this is our digital engagement pilot of UNIV 200, which we’re calling “Living The Dreams: Digital Investigation and Unfettered Minds.” Think of this title as our statement of commitment, the prize we’ll keep our eyes on for the next eight weeks–and perhaps far beyond as well.

I’m Dr. Gardner Campbell. Call me Dr. C. Along with five other professors and a crew of bright and creative folks working on everything from videos to cascading style sheets and more, I’ve been helping to put our course of study together. We all hope the next eight weeks will turn out to be one of your most memorable and valuable learning experiences. If you’re a VCU student, your work will be evaluated and graded, and you’ll receive college credit (three in total, count ’em). You’ll also have access to extra resources to help you succeed in the course. If you’re not a VCU student, you’ll have access to the learning community and all its public interactions, and we hope you’ll participate as often and as intensively as you can.

Our course catchphrase is “Thought Vectors In Concept Space.” This is Dr. Douglas Engelbart’s description of thinking, separately and together, within the space our species has created out of our symbol-making abilities. Don’t miss our course librarian Jenny Stout’s great video explaining this catchphrase in greater detail.

We get started this Tuesday, June 10. At the bottom of our section site, where much of our section’s participation will be aggregated and displayed, you’ll see periodic announcements from me to you. I’ll try to help you stay on track by alerting you to upcoming events and assignments. For the most part, though, get in the habit of consulting the syllabus regularly, and watch the #thoughtvectors hashtag on Twitter for a stream of interesting things, some of which may be timely reminders or announcements. The bottom line is that you’ll need to stay alert and check in often: email, thoughtvectors.net, this site, etc. It’s a lot to stay on top of, but we believe that in the end it’ll be a much more immersive and interesting experience if we have richer and more various kinds of communication. (Like life that way–at least, certainly like life in this century.)

I’ll be making videos from time to time either to introduce a reading or just to muse aloud about something. You’re welcome to do this too, of course. Just upload your video to YouTube and embed it in your blog post on your individual blog site.

Oh yes, and do remember that you post to your blog, just as I’m doing now (www.gardnercampbell.net), not to the “clubhouse” aggregation site for our team. Strange, yes, but all very webby.

Soon, I’ll write a bit about why I chose “team revolution” for our clubhouse. For now, here’s my welcome video–and here we go. Exciting times ahead!