Star Wars Kid is a viral video made in 2002 by Ghyslain Raza[1] in which he wields a golf ball retriever in imitation of Darth Maul’s lightsaber moves from the Star Wars films. At the time, Raza was a 15-year-old high school student from Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada. He had not intended for the video to become public, but its subsequent release led to ridicule during which Raza chose to distance himself from the video. Raza since has affirmed his identity and has used the video to help speak on the effects of bullying.
On November 3, 2002, Raza made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a weapon. The video was filmed at his high school studio, and he accidentally left the tape in a basement. It was taped over a portion of a basketball game (as seen extremely briefly at the end of the clip). The video was discovered by a schoolmate, whose friend created an electronic file from the video tape. The video was distributed amongst his school’s students. A student uploaded it to the Internet with the title Jackass_starwars_funny.wmv. The video eventually became a viral Internet meme through P2P services. According to court transcripts, the video first appeared on the Internet on the evening of April 14, 2003.
Raza states he was a victim of cyberbullying, as his video also attracted negative attention and comments. Online commenters responded with critical or bullying messages. In a 2013 interview, Raza states, “What I saw was mean. It was violent. People were telling me to commit suicide.” Among the comments online, “One commenter called him ‘a pox on humanity.’ Others suggested he commit suicide.” He was bullied in person at his school, and he left the campus to pursue private tutoring. He claimed to have lost friends because of the ordeal.
Disruptive Technologies
Course site for Disruptive Technologies. Exploring identity, community, & design.
Author: Cole Camplese (page 2 of 4)
While I was at SXSW two weeks ago there was all sorts of talk about Meerkat — essentially a live streaming app/network let’s you instantly share a view into what you are doing. There were all sorts of chatter about (a) how cool it was and (b) the public dust up with Twitter over features and functionality. Everyone knew Twitter had purchased a similar service about a year ago and were speculating on if that was the root cause.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, Twitter released Periscope as an integrated live streaming and social interaction app today for the iPhone. Even though it is an iPhone app I have installed on my iPad and it works well. I may use it today in class.
The other one is a new app from Instagram that let’s you create multi frame images to share … nothing earth shattering, but it is fun to use. It is called, Layout by Instagram. Again it is designed for the iPhone but works on the iPad.
A pop up WordPress site from students at UVA in the wake of the Martese Johnson incident. That’s a terrible word, incident, to describe what happened to this young man. Even in the absence of an appropriate word I felt it was an important site to share for lots of reasons. Through the lens of both community and identity I feel there is much to discuss. What in these words can you relate with?
In class on 3/19/2015, our class discussion touched on the lack of support students feel from faculty in the aftermath of the brutalization of Martese Johnson and at other times of crisis here at UVA, especially when those crises center around race. We took the last ten minutes of class and wrote out what we wanted to tell our faculty. These comments are excerpted from those 27 students’ in-class responses. Who are we? We are women and men. We are Asian, black, Latino, white and multiracial. We are from a variety of cultural, national, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender and sexual identities and backgrounds.
I understand last week was a very positive experience … I’m thrilled about that and I look forward to hearing more next week when we get together. I am not going to assign anything new this week, but I will remind you to wrap up the assignments by the posted due dates.
Out of Class — All Due 3/24/2015 by 5 PM
- Weekly iPad Reflection — what did you learn from the Apple visit and what did you create? Did what you learn alter your appreciation for the iPad?
- Weekly Create — Time to Tweet! Everyone needs to Tweet something interesting about this class using the hashtag #CDT450. I’d then like you to post about what Twitter can mean to shaping your identity and embed your tweet in the post.
I am on the road this week so I cannot be with you … I promise I lined up something good for you in my absence. Apple will be here to talk more about the iPad and take you through some really interesting activities. I can’t believe we don’t get to hang out for three weeks! Speaking of Break, since next week is Spring Break I am going to make the tasks to do a bit lighter than what we’ve become accustomed to. I’m hopeful that you will enjoy today’s time with Apple and have a safe a restful Spring Break!
While on your iPad, please click this link to download the iTunes U materials for class today.
Before you leave class today, I’d like you to write a team definition of Identity, just like we did for community a few weeks ago. Be ready to defend it and discuss it when we get back together after Spring Break. Please choose one person to post it to the blog.
Out of Class — All Due 3/24/2015 by 5 PM
- Weekly iPad Reflection — what did you learn from the Apple visit and what did you create? Did what you learn alter your appreciation for the iPad?
- Weekly Create — Time to Tweet! Everyone needs to Tweet something interesting about this class using the hashtag #CDT450. I’d then like you to post about what Twitter can mean to shaping your identity and embed your tweet in the post.
Today we embark on our second theme, identity. The readings I had you do might seem strange in the context of identity, but I think they start to lay a deeper groundwork toward moving from looking at things from a pure perspective on community to how identity shapes what we see and feel. They really truly make perfect sense in the context of the team video project and based on the amazing conversations we had last week. Speaking of last week, you guys were terrific! Thank you for generating an exceptional learning experience for everyone.
Today we would have done quite a bit in class, but given the snow has conspired against us we will have to improvise. So what I am going to do is convert what we would have done in class to additional individual work that you will do here on the blog.
Had we been in class we would have started with a brief reflection on the synthesis presentations and answer any follow up questions. Given we aren’t together I am happy to answer anything either here in the open or more privately in a Yammer group. I would like everyone to take a minute and log in and give it a try. Do yourself a favor and get the Yammer iOS app … it makes it so much better on the go.
Speaking of Yammer, I posted some general thoughts on your work so far in our Yammer group. Please view it and leave a comment on it in Yammer so I know you looked at it.
We would have also watched your videos — Team Right Shark and Team Too Disruptive. Since we can’t discuss them in class, please respond individually to the other team’s video — specifically in the context of McLuhan!
To make the jump into our next theme, I want you to watch a video that explores an incredible story that will quite literally build a bridge for us from community toward identity. Share your reactions as comments to that video on that post.
After that, I want you to self record and publish a short video (no more than two minutes) using your iPads and iMovie for iOS is free for owners of iPad Airs). Please post it to YouTube and embed it in the course blog. In the blog post where you embed the video, please write your weekly iPad reflection to focus on the process of creating the video. The video itself should address the following questions:
- How do you personally define the word identity?
- Who are you?
- What you do?
- What shapes and makes up who you are?
- Are you the sum parts of your online and offline identities?
- When you post the video write our weekly iPad reflection to focus on the process of creating the video.
Out of Class
- Reading: Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Chapter 1: Introducing Identity (pages 5-19)
- Reading: Chapter 6: Identity in Practice in Wenger (p. 149-163)
- Listen: RadioLab Podcast, Voices in your Head
- Team Post: What are your team’s reaction to the readings? Due 3/14/15
- Weekly Create. Due 3/14/15
- Weekly iPad Reflection & Identity Video Project: Connected to your individual definition of identity and your own identity. Due 3/10/15
- Comment on the Building Bridges video. Due 3/10/15
- Log in to Yammer and comment on my feedback post. Due 3/10/15
- Comment on the other team’s technology video post. Due 3/10/15
Preparing for next week — remember I will not be here (sadly), but a team from Apple will be here to teach you some more specific iPad skills. I will post a Week 7 overview, with assignments, readings, etc. Take care and be safe. You will need several free apps from Apple. Please make sure you get them. Go to the App Store on your iPad,scroll to the bottom and tap “Apps Made by Apple” … there you will be able to get that group of apps. Thanks!
Hangout on Air
Please watch this video and share your reactions as comments to the post. We would have watched this in class today. Try to focus your responses around what you know about community from our previous work and what you think you know about identity from our emerging work. Everyone should watch, comment, and engage in conversation.
I would love to hear what each of you has to say about this idea! I have my thoughts, but I will save them for the comments as you all comment. I’d be interested in trying this out.
Lynn University, a small institution in Boca Raton, Fla., started giving away iPads to all its new students about a year and a half ago. Now there is a catch: If those students cut class, their iPads might tattle on them.
An interesting concept video from Microsoft of the future or collaboration and productivity. They’ve also put together a companion site. It is worth a look.
Apple’s app of the week is something called, Printer Pro. It gives you the ability to print from your iPad to a printer that you own. Might be worth the free download.
Quick Hitters
- Printing from the iPad on campus … this is what I found out.
- Phoster… I found out that Phoster costs $1.99 so I am not requiring it, but it is very cool.
- Getting this week’s reading to your iPad
This week the stage is yours … Teams Right Shark and Too Disruptive get to present their synthesis of the first four classes with an emphasis on Community. I am really excited to see how you pull together the notions of community that we’ve discussed in the first block of the class. I did my assigned readings, did you?
Before we dive into the presentations we will look at a few quick items and talk a little bit about what they might mean to us going forward. I know that you are all hard at work on your videos and I promise I will let you wrap up early so you can take some time work more on those. Next week we will be looking at those as we also kick off the “identity” phase of the class. But enough about next week, let’s get to work on discussing the first big artifact of the class!
Out of Class
Readings
Assignments
- Continue working on your Team Videos and post them to the course site via a YouTube or Vimeo embeds with a short overview of what technology you focused on and why you chose to explore it by noon on 3/5/2015
- Weekly Create using Phoster or another like app for the iPad that illustrates your initial thoughts on identity. Post your artifact and share a short thought in the post about why this speaks to our next theme. Due by 5 PM on Tuesday
- Weekly Team Post … what were the biggest takeaways from the readings? Please cite at least two core ideas from both The Medium is the Massage and The Web is a Customer Service Medium and discuss them in the context of both community and identity. Do you feel differently about your team video now that you have read McLuhan’s work? Due by 5 PM on Tuesday
I use Scannable every single day to make my life easier. I am a huge Evernote user, but I take a ton of handwritten notes — especially in meetings where I am given handouts. I used to take them back to my office and put them in a real scanner. Now I use my phone and Scannable.
My favorite feature of the app is that you don’t have to pay close attention to how you take pictures because Scannable will generally make them look better for you once they’ve become PDFs. Blurred text, unclear borders, slightly tilted perspective – in most cases, Scannable can adjust everything automatically, which makes for a solid user experience.
I’ve been looking at the survey results and I am amazed at how different the responses have been WRT external keyboards. The first week everyone felt the device needed one … the second time through fewer. I am wondering if we should try the device with a couple different external keyboards or just keep pushing the device as it is out of the box?
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