Week Two: Object, Place, Making, Beauty
This week, digital anthropology started with a few kinks to work out. Most importantly I needed to figure out how to free my class from various forms of entrapment and entombment in The Nether, and...
View ArticleMy Digital Birthday Cake(s)
This year my birthday happened to land on the same day as our digital anthropology class. This turned out to be a great opportunity to make a point related to some things we have been discussing in...
View ArticleGetting a Change of Scenery in Mineclass
Today we started class in our regular cave classroom. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when I first built the space I modeled it on the attributes of a physical classroom. It has a “front” with a podium and a...
View ArticleA Different Sense of Space in Mineclass
In previous posts about our Mineclass I’ve commented on the many moments where students feel comfortable building and intervening in the our virtual world in ways that are very different from the way...
View ArticleStudent Feedback on Digital Anthropology Class in Three Modalities: Zoom,...
Since the beginning of the semester, the Digital Anthropology class has examined the material natures of the digital, the deep time of digital devices, and the way that human and non-humans interact in...
View ArticleBreakout Discussion Groups in Minecraft
For the past few weeks I have been thinking about ways to standardize group discussions in Mineclass, yet not lose the spatial/creative component that is so special about working in Minecraft. When the...
View ArticleWhy Don’t Minnesotans Have a Word For This Thing That Gives Us So Much Joy?
Every year as late winter begins the transition to early spring, Minnesotans enjoy a morning landscape punctuated by a unique ice formation. The ice I’m referring to exists as a function of the melting...
View ArticleF*ck E-Learning. Snow Days Teach Us Something More Important.
Two hours ago I woke up to that special kind of muffled winter silence, pulled the shade, and looked out the window. While we slept, the weather remade our average neighborhood into a fantastic land....
View ArticleWong Cafe Menus, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Some years back I stopped at a small restaurant, the Wong Cafe, at Rice Street and Wheelock Parkway. It was a small operation in one of those buildings with a trademarked corporate design that you know...
View Article