"This is How We Dream," Parts 1 and 2

It has been almost a year exactly since Paul Hammond and I published "The Future is Now" on youTube. This gave us a taste of just how valuable the experience is of collaboratively creating idea-driven visual essays.

Last month, I presented our latest effort with new media collaborative composing on a panel at the MLA, entitled "How We Teach Now," organized by Gerald Graff. Paul and I have ground that talk, and the accompanying visual piece, down to 14 minutes. Because "This is How We Dream" exceeds youTube's now firm limit of 10 minutes per video, it has been posted in two parts.

In her recent request for submissions to Profession 2009, Rosemary Feal wrote,

Since Profession reaches the entire MLA membership, I can think of no better way to inform language and literature scholars of the concerns addressed by the forum participants.

I'm a longtime fan and avid reader of Profession, but the presentation I made doesn't translate well to an article-format. And, indeed, part of the argument of "This is How We Dream" is that, for some scholarly work at least, there might be better ways to communicate than via text alone. So, For those interested in the discussion of how Web 2.0 technology is transforming the acts of reading and writing, we invite you to check out "This is How We Dream"

And see more at our channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsEQnOkTZ0&feature=channel_page

and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you

Richard E. Miller
Chair, Department of English
Rutgers University

Paul Hammond
Director of Digital Initiatives
Department of English
Rutgers University