Technology innovation has been at the heart of the Center's mission since its inception. The "idea that knowledge should be shared" has translated into an IT infrastructure at the Center that specializes in new communication and media technologies. The Center is proud that its experimentation with videoconferencing and webcasting has translated into broader Duke initiatives in this realm. We aspire to continue this leadership and innovation, and with partners like HASTAC, the Kimberly Jenkins University Professor in New Technologies & Society, ISIS, OIT, CIT, and A&S IST, we are very excited about the future.
Some of our new initiatives include:
Interactive Multimedia Project Space (IMPS)
The John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies is pleased to announce the opening of its new Interactive Multimedia Project Space (IMPS). Made possible through the generous support of and collaboration between the Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS), the Kimberly J. Jenkins Chair in New Technologies and Society, and the John Hope Franklin Center, IMPS provides Duke University faculty, staff and students with opportunities to experiment with new modes of technology-inflected teaching, research and collaboration.
The core of IMPS is its ability to nimbly and flexibly route and display video and audio materials from laptops and gaming systems. Four 50-inch plasma displays and an XGA projector can be deployed in any combination, affording a high degree of media immersion in classroom, meeting or lecture settings. Integrated videoconferencing capabilities connect the space to the world. And robust recording and capture functionality afford easy archiving of class and working group sessions. "We're excited about IMPS, about the effect it could have on humanities research, collaboration and teaching at Duke," says Mark Olson, Director of New Media and Information Technologies at the Center.
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Podcasting Symposium
Podcasting as a mode of communcation is experiencing an explosion in popularity. Not only are major media corporations aggressively adopting the technology, there has been a concomitant upswell of grassroots media production as well. In the upcoming academic year, the Center intends to enter the podcasting arena itself, and will offer podcasts of several of its major lectures and events. As with all its technology initiatives, however, the Center not only makes use of technology, but also makes of them objects of critical inquiry.
To that end, the Center is pleased to announce its role as co-host of the first-ever academic symposium on podcasting, tentatively scheduled for September 27 - 28, 2005. The two-day event will feature a podcasting "how-to" workshop, as well as panel discussions of the economic/business, legal, political, and cultural impacts of podcasting by bringing together prominent members of the podcasting community with policymakers, scholars, and media experts.
The symposium is being held in conjunction with the Duke Digital Initiative and is the result of a collaboration among several departments and centers at Duke, including the Center for Documentary Studies, the Center for Instructional Technology, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Cultural Anthropology, the Department of Music, the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, the Jenkins Chair in New Technologies & Society, Information Science + Information Studies program, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, The John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Law School, Office of Information Technology, Office of the Vice-Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, Program in Film/Video/Digital, the Program in Literature, and the Program in Women's Studies.
The symposium will be free of charge and open to the public.
Franklin Center Voucher Experiment - First Year Assessment
In late 2004, the Franklin Center IT staff instituted an experimental technology accounting system, dubbed the "Franklin Vouchers." Conducted from November 2004 through June 2005, the experiment's goals were four-fold:
- To place a symbolic value on the IT services provided by the Franklin Center IT staff.
- To implement a control mechanism on IT demand that promotes the recognition that technical support is a finite resource.
- To create an internal accounting mechanism to monitor general workload levels as well as distribution of workload across the FC staff.
- And finally, to take a leadership role, on behalf of the Dean of Arts & Sciences and the Provost, in analyzing the escalating costs of technology.
The report, "Franklin Center Voucher Experiment: First Year Assessment," assesses the experiment and offers suggested revisions for continuation of the experiment in the 2005-2006 academic year.