Nancy Kwang Johnson
Dept: Interdisciplinary Writing
Project:  Being There: A Virtual Reality; Bringing Multi-Media to the CORE Cultures Classroom

In the fall of 2001, visiting professor, Nancy Kwang Johnson attended a Faculty Teaching Table at Merrill House where CEL discussed the various uses of technology in the curriculum. The Merrill House discussion piqued Professor Johnson's interest and encouraged her to pursue a collaborative multimedia project with CEL. She was very impressed with the "Living Writers" series and had entertained the thought of pursuing a media-rich project that would enable students to interact with a virtual reality--without actually "being there."

Professor Johnson was planning a research trip to Senegal over the Christmas break and wanted to capture more than just memories while she was there. She wanted to capture the people, the culture, the climate, the traditions, and the current issues of Senegal through images, video, and sound and incorporate them into her Spring Semester CORE Cultures course. Being a technology neophyte, Nancy looked to CEL for guidance as to how to accomplish her goals.

For starters, CEL provided a digital video camera and some training for Professor Johnson to take with her to Senegal. A digital still camera was also available, but Nancy decided to stick with the 35mm camera that she was more familiar with.

While in Senegal, Nancy captured 21 hours of video footage, took at least 20-30 rolls of color and slide photos with her 35 mm Pentax K1000 camera, purchased musical cassettes of local musicians like Youssou N'Dour (the Senegalese Michael Jackson), Viviane (the Senegalese Sade), and collected postcards of modern day Senegal.

The 21 hours of footage included a room-by-room walking tour of the “Point of No Return” slave-house on the island of Goree, interviews with American activists (living in Senegal) who work with non-governmental organizations and are promoting the decline of female genital circumcision (FGC) in rural Senegal, interviews with Senegalese slave historians (or more precisely authors of texts we used in class to re-create a "Living Authors" scenario), and ethnographic footage of daily life in rural and urban Senegal.

Now came the challenging part, incorporating her digital content into a resource that could be used by the students in her CORE Cultures class. After much consideration, it was decided that the content could all be made available through a Blackboard course web site. Using Blackboard would allow her students to access all of the content - video, still images, audio, and text, via the web.

Having never used Blackboard, Nancy first had to learn how to post files that she created so that they were available to her students via the web. Along with a syllabus and course assignments, Nancy also learned how to use PowerPoint to create in-class presentations and then make them available for review at a later time by her students over the web. As a part of her PowerPoint presentations, Nancy incorporated images and maps by learning how to scan using a flatbed scanner.

Concerning the hundreds of photos that Nancy took, when she sent the pictures to be developed, she specified that she wanted the images in standard print format and also saved onto a CD. This step may have cost a few extra dollars, but it made if very easy to incorporate them into PowerPoint, Blackboard, and individual web pages.

Translating the video and audio into a format that could be accessed over the web was a service that CEL provided for Professor Johnson. In class, Nancy would show small excerpts from an interview or a tour and then ask her students to watch the video in its entirety on the web for homework. For those students who had difficulty accessing the video over the web, there were a few copies created on standard VHS tape and put on reserve. The audio tapes were treated in the same manner – small excerpts played in class and the entire audio to be listened to for homework.

Nancy presented the images in a similar way to the audio and video. Since there were so many images available, she incorporated a few into PowerPoint presentations that she displayed in class and asked the students to view the remainder on their own time.

Because of the limited time that Nancy had to incorporate the digital content into her course, many hours of video and many images were left out. If she were to teach this course again, she could continue to add and edit the content that she wanted to make available to the students.

To view a sample of the digital content that was used in Professor Johnson’s course, go to the link http://cel.colgate.edu/profiles/university/nkjohnson-sample.htm . Note: to view the video and listen to the audio, you should be connected to the Colgate network directly (not via modem), and you must have Windows Media Player installed on your computer.