This is an 8 week experience for the college student that begins by setting a learning context through using library resources, especially online databases, for locating images and art that reflect a chosen research topic and creating a mural that demonstrates the students’ comprehension of the chosen topic. The experience includes conducting research on 3 significant events or people in women’s US history. The written research will be accompanied by images or art that the student has chosen (described) as reflective of, or related to the researched event or person. In order to determine the students’ level of information literacy, the research will include a detailed description of how the students located the images. The students will also draw or describe a personalized sketch of one of the researched events or people. The culmination of the research is the design and painting of a collaborative mural depicting the students' research topics.

This Reusable Learning Object (RLO) was created out of the desire to infuse university courses with information literacy or research activities. A traditional research project on significant events or people in history is enhanced with the discovery and analyzing of art and images within the context of history. Analysis not only includes written text but the painting of a mural. The RLO is structured in a way that allows for easy replication and alteration to a variety of subjects and learning levels.

Kevin Lynch’s landmark volume, The Image of the City (1960), emphasized the perceptual characteristics of the urban environment, stressing the ways that individuals mentally organize their own sensory experience of cities. Increasingly, however, city imaging is supplemented and constructed by exposure to visual media, rather than by direct sense experience of urban realms. City images are not static, but subject to constant revision and manipulation by a variety of media-savvy individuals and institutions. In recent years, urban designers (and others) have used the idea of city image proactively – seeking innovative ways to alter perceptions of urban, suburban, and regional areas. City imaging, in this sense, is the process of constructing visually-based narratives about the potential of places.

The Internet Archive was founded to build an ‘Internet library,’ with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images and software, as well as archived web pages in our collections.

This course is intended for students pursuing research projects at the Media Laboratory. Topics include Media Lab research areas, documenting research progress, ethical issues in research; patents, copyrights, intellectual property, and giving oral, written, and online presentations of results. A final oral presentation is required. Enrollment limited with preference given to students in the Media Arts and Sciences freshman program.

This course provides a critical analysis of mass media in our culture. Various types of media such as books, films, video games, and online interactions will be discussed and reviewed. This course will also evaluate how information and ideas travel between people on a large scale.

"Learning the Open Source Way" is a toolkit aimed at assisting others who want to create or adapt their educational courses using the principles found in FLOSS communities. It is aimed at providing information about learning in an open source manner.The toolkit is created in an open source production way using a 12 week open access session, called summer university. This summer university runs from July 2007 on and will be conducted as a joint event bringing in as a “special guest” the Ubuntu community.

This lesson allow students to explore the forces that prompted the literary modernism movement, specifically focusing on modernist poetry. By allowing students to explore the movement independently, they will also be able to develop research and inquiry skills.

In this course students create digital visual images and analyze designs from historical and theoretical perspectives with an emphasis on art and design, examining visual experience in broad terms, and from the perspectives of both creators and viewers. The course addresses key topics such as: image making as a cognitive and perceptual practice, the production of visual significance and meaning, and the role of technology in creating and understanding digitally produced images. Students will be given design problems growing out of their reading and present solutions using technologies such as the Adobe Creative Suite and/or similar applications.

This course centers on historical eras in which the form and function of media technologies were radically transformed. It includes consideration of the “Gutenberg Revolution,” the rise of modern mass media, and the “digital revolution,” among other case studies of media transformation and cultural change. Readings are in cultural and social history and historiographic method.

A short introduction to the concept and features of online photo sharing web sites.

This reference list contains brief descriptions of and links to five Web sites that provide a broad range of remote-sensing resources.

This Remote Sensing reference list contains annotated links to free software for viewing remotely sensed data.

This is a book of readings discussing how social media and its related technologies shape individual and collective identities.

This class teaches the fundamentals of signals and information theory with emphasis on modeling audio/visual messages and physiologically derived signals, and the human source or recipient. Topics include linear systems, difference equations, Z-transforms, sampling and sampling rate conversion, convolution, filtering, modulation, Fourier analysis, entropy, noise, and Shannon’s fundamental theorems. Additional topics may include data compression, filter design, and feature detection. The undergraduate subject MAS.160 meets with the two half-semester graduate subjects MAS.510 and MAS.511, but assignments differ.

This class focuses on representation tools used by architects during the design process and attempts to discuss the relationship they develop with the object of design. Representation plays a key role in architectural design, not only as a medium of conveying and narrating a determined meaning or a preconceived idea, but also as a code of creating new meaning, while the medium seeks to establish a relationship with itself. In this sense, mediums of representation, as external parameters to the design process, are not neutral tools of translating an idea into its concrete form. They are neither authentic means of creativity, nor vapid carriers of an idea. Therefore, an important aspect in issues of meaning is how the architect manipulates the play of translating a concept to its concrete version, through the use of a medium of representation. The course is a continuation of the equivalent course taught in the fall semester and specifically focuses on digital media. The course is intended to establish a reciprocal relationship with the design studio, feeding from and contributing to its content.

This seminar explores approaches to representation for distributed cinematic storytelling. The relationship between story creation and story appreciation is analyzed. Readings are drawn from literary and cinematic criticism, as well as from descriptions of interactive, distributed works. Students analyze a range of storytelling techniques; they develop a proposal using visualization techniques; and they prototype a working story experience, culminating in a final project displayed at the end of the semester.

This class deals with interactive art. Visiting artists will discuss their work from a theoretical and practical perspective. Discussions of the history of interactive digital art and contemporary issues in the field will take place. Students will develop an interactive art project for a final exhibition or submit a short paper.

The transition from high school and home to college and a new living environment can be a fascinating and interesting time, made all the more challenging and interesting by being at MIT. More than recording the first semester through a series of snapshots, this freshman seminar will attempt to teach photography as a method of seeing and a tool for better understanding new surroundings. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a body of work through a series of assignments, and then attempt to describe the conditions and emotions of their new environment in a cohesive final presentation.

What are we teaching and learning when we analyze films? Who's missing from the story? This resource is offered for teachers across the humanities who use film and incorporate opportunities for students to develop media analysis skills.

This course explores the properties of non-sequential, multi-linear, and interactive forms of narratives as they have evolved from print to digital media. Works covered in this course range from the Talmud, classics of non-linear novels, experimental literature, early sound and film experiments to recent multi-linear and interactive films and games. The study of the structural properties of narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time, space, and of storyline is complemented by theoretical texts about authorship/readership, plot/story, properties of digital media and hypertext. Questions that will be addressed in this course include: How can we define ‘non-sequentiality/multi-linearity’, ‘interactivity’, ‘narrative’. To what extend are these aspects determined by the text, the reader, the digital format? What are the roles of the reader and the author? What kinds of narratives are especially suited for a non-linear/interactive format? Are there stories that can only be told in a digital format? What can we learn from early non-digital examples of non-linear and interactive story telling?