I’ve created new pages for my Applied DSP (Digital Signal Processing) class description and videos. I’ll be teaching the course again this Fall (2022) for Drexel Engineering students and will be posting more frequent updates (both course materials and my reflections on using them for an in-person / hybrid class).
Of course, it’s been a while since I posted anything here. I was on sabbatical the past academic year, working on some great projects that I wasn’t able to talk about publicly. I’m in the process of rethinking the newsletter / blog to be something I can continue to publish regularly, but as a sustainable activity. Please check back for updates as we start our new academic year (late-September).
Last week, I wrote about tools and methods learned from a year+ of remote/virtual instruction that I’ll be bringing back into the IRL (“in real life”) classroom. What about the future of online instruction? Given the uncertainties of the past few weeks, we can all imagine a situation where we’re forced back online and a long-term future where more and more instruction is delivered exclusively online.
As I’vewrittenpreviously… Good online instruction is authentic to the medium, leveraging the benefits and limiting the constraints of tools and platforms. Good online platforms enable active participation, group interaction, and community building. For an example of all of these, I say look no further than Minecraft, a platform built around a culture of shared experiences and creativity. We used Minecraft for our middle school Summer STEAM virtual camp, and we designed new activities and worlds specifically within the norms and values of Minecraft. Click here to watch a summary of our camp activities.
As we start the new academic year, we’re kicking off a new ExCITe Center project to expand the Minecraft build of the Drexel campus. This project started with some amazing work in the early days of the pandemic by a handful of Drexel students to digitally re-create much of our University. Most campus buildings have been built, as well as some nearby buildings critical to Drexel students (e.g., Wawa and 7-11 😀). The students who started the project have since graduated, but we hope to continue their efforts in keeping the Drexel Minecraft server a dynamic, evolving, and accurate virtual representation of the area. For example, only a few building interiors have been created; most remain exterior shells. Drexel Minecraft has already been used for virtual campus tours and events, and it will continue to serve as a showcase for the creativity and imagination of our students.
Most college campus builds have stopped at the borders of their campus. In keeping with our mission to be the most civically engaged University in the nation, we’ll also be connecting Drexel students with our neighbors and community partners to extend the build beyond campus boundaries. Our Summer STEAM program was just a first step in virtual building with neighborhood K-12 students. Later this year, we’ll be partnering with Science Leadership Academy-Middle School to re-create their brand new school building on 36th and Warren Streets as part of our Minecraft campus. We hope to build more sites in Powelton Village, extending to the Dornsife Center, the West Philadelphia Community Center, and beyond.
This effort will help Drexel students learn about the surrounding neighborhoods and establish meaningful relationships with community members. We hope our students will mentor younger students in the building process, working with them to add the structures and landmarks most important to them. I firmly believe engaging in a shared creative process will bring more people together to better understand both the common challenges and the unique opportunities present in West Philly. I can’t begin to predict the new kinds of projects that may emerge from these collaborations, both virtual and, hopefully, IRL as well.
If you’re already a “crafter”, you can join our server in Minecraft (spectator mode) here: mc.excitecenter.org:19132. If you don’t have Minecraft visit this website, which offers a 3D preview of the world. We will follow-up in the coming weeks with a virtual building tutorial for those who want to participate in the building process. If you’re interested in following this exciting project, please sign up for updates here.
This is Welcome Week for new students, and we invite all new Drexel community members to join us (IRL) at the ExCITe Center this Thursday, Sept. 16 at 1pm to learn more about Drexel Minecraft.
Registration required: sign up via Drexel One or register here.
(Socially) Distant Creations
Kyrie [VOCES8] Start your day with this beautifully serene movement from Josef Rheinberger’s Mass in E-flat. I’m simply astounded by the volume of amazing music performances VOCES8 has released throughout the pandemic.
Landfill Monitor Restoration [The 8-Bit Guy] I’ve become addicted to this YouTube channel, which is like This Old House, but for technology. I love it. (Yes, I’m weird).
The Legend of Zelda [MayTree] Known for lending voice to technology, this Korean a cappella group is back with music and sound effects from another classic video game. Nintendo players, rejoice!
Our podcast, So Where Do We Go From Here?, will return with new episodes later this Fall! In the meantime, listen to our 4 summer interviews with Philly creatives.
My lab is working on a new video series on Minecraft, Music, & Coding. The first episode will drop in a few weeks.
Over the past 16 months, all instructors have experienced that teaching online challenges the traditions and assumptions of pedagogy. Not only have we had to learn all sorts of new tools and technologies in order to teach, we’ve had to change mindsets and become accustomed to very different norms and behaviors. But in this strange new medium combining videoconferencing (Zoom), collaboration tools (Slack and Microsoft Teams), and shared documents and storage (Google Drive), some have developed rather ingenious solutions to enable the best learning environment possible, given the constraints.
This Fall, most institutions are heading back into the classroom (hooray!, I think). But should we just go back to our standards and practices from before the pandemic? Or can we take what we’ve learned from a year+ of online classes to improve the in-person experience? Of course, I believe the latter. I’ve been teaching remotely since April 2020, with varying degrees of success. Here are some methods from my online class experiences that I plan to use the next time I teach in-person, with an emphasis on keeping students active and engaged.
Messaging / chat:For me, the greatest revelation from online teaching has been the difference in student questions and interactivity enabled by text chat. It’s clear that some who have difficulty asking questions or commenting verbally (whether online or in-person) become much more inquisitive and gregarious in a text chat. Last year, I created Microsoft Teams for each class, to enable real-time messaging both during and outside of class time (Zoom chat is similar, but doesn’t work outside the meeting). I believe this could carry over to the physical classroom, particularly for large classes, and I intend to use this in-person, so students can text questions and comments during class. I’d also like to allow anonymous messages (but that’s a little more challenging to implement, at least in Teams). A shared Google Doc is one possibility, but might be difficult to follow live.
A virtual whiteboard, to capture notes and figures for playback later. This is tricky to do over Zoom (best to use multiple devices), and it will also be tricky to setup in a classroom. With a projector, I can display slides, other material, or a whiteboard to the class and use my iPad and Apple Pencil to annotate or just make notes freehand. The key is that it can be recorded and played back in order. (So-called smart boards are supposed to be good at this, but even if your classroom has one, does anyone actually use them in this manner?) I’ll probably record the audio as well, so that students can refer to it later (if you upload the video to YouTube, it will be automatically transcribed so that viewers can search for keywords/moments). There will definitely be some limitations… Thus far, I can’t think of a way to “live code” and also draw on the board at the same time.
Pre-record lecture videos. Lecturing on Zoom is the worst (it’s just really hard to make a video lecture engaging). Even worse, students will often turn to YouTube afterwards for explainer videos on the content you present. Instead, for lecture-style content, I’ve been making high-quality short (10-20 minute) videos for students to view ahead of class that emphasize visuals and clear explanations (see below for an example). It does take an enormous amount of time as well as audio and video production skills on the part of the instructor, but becomes somewhat reusable content for future classes. Then, in class, students can ask questions and do active work to reinforce the concepts, which I intend to continue in person. It’s a similar approach to the “flipped classroom” movement of the previous decade+, but with even more emphasis on the quality of presentation.
Software-based workbooks & activities: Another success in my online teaching has been to use software workbooks so that students in class engage with something active rather than just “follow along”. This requires students to bring their own laptops, but that’s fairly common these days. For my technical classes, I create Google Colaboratory (Colab) notebooks, online projects that provide students with some starter code, but they have to explore and code what’s missing to fully realize a concept. I try to craft activities where the work can be easily visualized and reviewed “at a glance”, via a shared Google Drive folder, and I can project selected examples. Of course, it’s a momentum-killer when technology fails in the classroom (as anyone who’s attended a presentation where most of the time was the presenter trying to connect their laptop to the screen knows). So, I wouldn’t recommend screen switching for in-class “show and tell” presentations. For other subjects, even Google Docs or Slides can be a great way to capture some student work live, even in-person. I have visions of walking around a classroom as students work on these mini-activities… I’ll see if that works out as well in-person as it has online.
Some were already employing these methods before the pandemic, but online teaching really highlighted the potential gains for me. Everything on this list is also an opportunity for educational technology vendors. To be frank, the tools still suck, and it takes a great deal of effort to piece together these solutions. Even if your organization doesn’t have a license for some of these tools (Zoom or Microsoft Teams), other comparable platforms are available for free (Google Meet, Docs, and Drive) and can be used, with effort. But it should be easier.
Like the past year of online classes, these will all be experiments. But I am far more excited to incorporate the learnings from the past 16 months than to return to the “old ways”, since it means the adaptation and hard work over the past year might actually have been worthwhile for improving our future teaching and learning.
If you have other ideas for online practices that you’ll be bringing into the classroom, please reach out. I’d love to hear more suggestions!
(Socially) Distant Creations
Summer Virtual Concert 2021 [Drexel Cleftomaniacs] Fantastic video program by Drexel’s co-ed a cappella ensemble. Great work by a great group of Drexel students!
Halo Theme – A Cappella Style [Peter Hollens] If you’ve ever played any of the incarnations of Xbox game Halo, this virtual a cappella rendition of the (awesome) theme music will get your pulse racing.
Locus Iste [Stay At Home Choir] The latest from the worldwide virtual choir will premiere this weekend! It’s a brand new work by renowned choirmaster and composer Gareth Malone, Locus Iste. The video will be released on YouTube this Saturday 8/28 (6pm BST).
What I’m creating…
As I’ve mentioned previously (and referred to above), I’ve been creating short, high-quality videos for lecture topics in my Applied Digital Signal Processing (DSP) class. I emphasize animated visuals and familiar sound examples to explore the math & engineering concepts behind digital audio and signal processing. It’s been a while, but I just released a new video in this series on the z-Domain and Parametric Filter Design. If you happen to be teaching (or learning) DSP this Fall, you may find these useful!
Followers of this newsletter know that I frame my work not in terms of STEM, but rather STEAM: Science, Tech, Engineering, Arts, and Math. But STEAM is much more than simply exposure to the different disciplines; it’s the potential of better research, learning, creative work, and even products through the integration of disciplines. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a strong advocate for learning about STEM concepts through creative work. This framework forms the core of the ExCITe Center’s activities, and since 2015 we’ve hosted an annual workshop on Presidents’ Day for educators in the region to highlight exemplary transdisciplinary work in education.
Our upcoming 7th Annual STEAM Education Workshop on February 15 (9am-12pm) will be a little different. First off, it will be all-virtual. Second, this year’s event will focus on specific integrations spanning learning science, pedagogical practice, racial equity, and social justice. I am thrilled that the program will feature a keynote by renowned author and researcher, Dr. Bettina Love (University of Georgia), co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network, who will address an audience of those in Pre-K-12 as well as higher education:
We Gon’ Be Alright, But That Ain’t Alright: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom Dr. Love’s talk will discuss the struggles and the possibilities of committing ourselves to an abolitionist goal of educational freedom, as opposed to reform, and moving beyond what she calls the educational survival complex. Abolitionist Teaching is built on the creativity, imagination, boldness, ingenuity, and rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists to demand and fight for an educational system where all students are thriving, not simply surviving.
The program also includes brief presentations and a panel discussion with Drexel faculty. Participation is free and ACT 48 credits are available for Pennsylvania teachers. All are welcome to register here (the event is free, although space is limited).
Dr. Love’s talk is brought to you through the generous support of the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Center for Black Culture, the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering, the Office of Research & Innovation, the Office of University & Community Partnerships, the School of Education, West Philadelphia Action for Early Learning, and the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.
(Socially) Distant Creations
Caledonia [Stay at Home Choir with VOCES8] I’ve been really looking forward to this latest collaboration between our friends VOCES8 and the many thousand-member Stay at Home Choir! Premieres Feb. 6 at 1:30pm (for the US Eastern Time Zone).
Save the Boys [Opera Philadelphia Channel] Wow, Opera Philadelphia is really nailing this streaming thing…. This is the first of four digital commissions set to debut on the channel in 2021. Newark-born Composer in Residence Tyshawn Sorey, premieres a new work inspired by an 1887 poem by abolitionist, writer and Black women’s rights activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (premieres Feb. 12).
Virtual Choirs & Orchestras [Alternative Classical] A nice summary of virtual singing and instrumental ensemble opportunities. It’s focused on the UK, but when you’re collaborating virtually, national borders have little meaning.
Eye of the Tiger [Jared Halley] Another great one-man a cappella performance from this prolific YouTuber. A classic 80s tune associated with Philly’s most famous fictional athlete (it’s from Rocky III).
NFL 2020 [Bad Lip Reading] In honor of this weekend’s Super Bowl… there’s always something for everyone in Bad Lip Reading’s videos. They also sometimes make music videos, like this classic.
What I’m creating…
I mentioned the videos I’m creating for my class this term, Applied Digital Signal Processing (DSP), a senior-level undergraduate engineering course. Ultimately these will form a “video textbook” for this class, but those of you really interested in DSP can check out the first 5 episodes here.
I don’t recall entering a new year and academic term with this much uncertainty. We have a new President (finally!) and the hope of a coordinated and competent federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Vaccines are being administered, but when and how will they reach the broader population? Our economy is wrecked, although much-needed relief legislation may soon take effect. We’re still mostly teaching online, which amplifies many structural inequities, so we’re trying to get students back into schools and onto college campuses in the coming weeks / months. But what’s the right balance between safety and delayed learning? There are so many questions, and the answers will take time to play out.
Last year was a forced mashup: a mixture of all kinds of tools, technologies, and methods applied in unintended ways to overcome new challenges. Virtual choirs and ensembles emerged into the mainstream as one example of an arts-tech mashup. Developing the skill to produce broadcast quality live or recorded streaming content in-house is another. Recall that at the start of 2020, most people hadn’t heard of Zoom and were unfamiliar with Slack and Teams, but now almost everyone has gained some proficiency with these tools for online collaboration. And there are countless ways their intended uses have been transformed for remote teaching and learning. Remember, creativity is connecting things.
I believe (and fervently hope) we will be able to return to in-person work, events, and performances with live audiences sometime in 2021. But I also believe that online creation, collaboration, and learning will continue to play a growing role this year and well beyond, particularly in ways that enable things not possible otherwise. As a self-proclaimed “creative technologist”, I am a highly biased commentator on this topic, but I have to believe the creativity and the technology we’ve developed to overcome some of the challenges of social distancing will continue to be valuable. When we return to in-person classrooms or live performance venues, what we’ve learned will feedback into what we do in the “real” world.
Despite the uncertain future, I remain certain that it will continue to demand a great deal of creative adaptation and the ability to wield technology in productive and positive ways. This year will bring new works and tools that will push the limits of what’s possible, and I still look forward (cautiously) to what the future will bring.
I am honored to be featured on Apple’s higher education website for “pushing the boundaries of creative expression”. Click here to read more about how faculty leaders are using technology to make a positive change in the world.
(Socially) Distant Creations
Peace On Earth [Ragazzi Continuo] Unlike most virtual concerts, this was performed and recorded live. How is that possible? A system called JackTrip (developed at Stanford’s CCRMA) enabled the ensemble to sing together from their own homes with minimal audio delay. After months practicing with this new technology they performed this concert live in December. (Yes, my research group has also been experimenting with this system.)
Soldier Songs [Opera Philadelphia Channel] I’ve been really looking forward to this new version of composer David T. Little’s exploration of the life of the soldier combining theater, opera, and rock. Presented in a new film for streaming and based on interviews with veterans of five wars, the piece boldly examines the impact of trauma, the exploitation of innocence, and the difficulty of expressing war’s painful truths. (Available with a Season Pass through May or with a seven-day rental for $25.)
#ISing. Hallelujah [la Caixa Foundation] A unique and beautiful twist on virtual choirs, projecting singers large scale inside a cathedral, the Basilica de Santa Maria Del Mar, for a performance of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
The Mandalorian Light Show [Steve Beers] Holiday lights meet Ludwig Göransson’s rousing theme for The Mandalorian, the fantastic Disney+ series set in the Star Wars universe. And how can you not love baby Yoda?
The Mandalorian on iPhone [iSongs] And here’s how to create the theme song entirely on your iPhone in the GarageBand app. Just one of many amazing videos in this YouTube series.
What I’m creating…
For my class this term, Applied Digital Signal Processing, instead of lectures, I’m creating a series of short videos. I’ll release the full series at the end of the term, but here’s my intro theme for these videos.
Creating at a Distance 