Thanks to a timely Twitter from the Good Doctor himself, I was able to tune in to Ustream.tv and watch some of his Intro to New Media Studies students presenting their final projects.

First up was Sarah, who talked about photography, still images and video as evidenced by YouTube and Flickr:

Sarah

You can view the incredibly cool video (”Metaphor Sandwich“)she made on YouTube that combines her photography skills with video (watch the knife):

Unfortunately I lost the chat window so I don’t have links to any of the products, but a shout-out to Amanda who gave an overview of the social music media phenomenon from traditional commerce to recommenders, Pandora, and my own favorite Last.FM:

Amanda

And Shelly, who made a moving presentation using Flickr to share photos of her and her father who died a few years ago:

Shelly

It was great not just because I could easily watch the presentations from my office in Alaska, but to share for a few moments the joy of the learning experience facilitated by social network media. Listening to Gardner’s facilitation and leading questions, catching the edges of the inside jokes, and watching the students making connections, synthesizing, and responding to questions on the fly… it was Learning 2.0 in all its occasionally glitchy glory.

I’ve really been struggling personally with the “where do I go from here” question… with so many necessary failures and so much time spent fighting the same old roadblocks institutionally and personally, this was a timely reminder of why I do what I do. Kudos to Gardner and his great students. I wish I could have stayed and watched the rest!