Submitted by inge on Sat, 05/29/2010 – 7:33am
Session Reporter: Ingeborg Endter
Conversationalist 1: Ingeborg Endter
Conversationalist 2: Michelle Ferrier
Michelle is also a lifelong learner. She had a very interesting path to her present interest in interactive media. She started in high school working at Goddard Space Flight Center. She was working on digitizing images from satellites. Those images have become what we see today as Google maps and Google Earth. She’s interested in alternative stories that help a community see themselves and their relationships. She did this using the metaphor of a quilt.
Her academic work has focussed on hyper-local community news using a social network interface. In the social network one comes to learn where the knowledge is in the community.
Michelle is currently a Professor in Interactive Media at Elon University in Greensboro NC. She and her students have recreated a Museum of Civil Rights in Second Life.
She describes herself as the “chief instigator” for the JTM meeting in Detroit. After attending some other JTM meetings, she decided that we need more such meetings for people of color. Diversity is a very important ingredient in creating the new media landscape. And achieving that diversity is Michelle’s goal for this meeting.