As good an anchor as class time is, it is very finite and particular. Not everyone feels comfortable all the time (we should work towards that though), there’s not enough time for everyone to speak enough, and there’s plenty of things for which that may not be the best tool. We are lucky to live in an age where we have free tools to support the creation of asynchronous communities online. We will use Slack to keep in touch and work together when we are not in the same room.<\/p>\n
Slack is a free (for our uses) cross platform software for team communication, itself the outgrowth of a failed game design project. For supporting class communication, it is a million times better than email. You can use it on your phone or computer, either by installing apps or the web. Unlike courseware like Learn, this is ours. It does not disappear after the semester ends, and we\u2014not just I\u2014can reconfigure it to better suit our needs. All my announcements will be via Slack, and any communication about the content of our work together. Conversations can be as public or private as the participants need at the time. Planning group work is dead simple without needing another point of contact. I will communicate feedback on work due or done, among other things, but not assign grades. That’s something we should do in person or via UNM email.<\/p>\n
From keeping up to date with course requirements, finding missing readings, continuing discussions, linking to new sources, planning and executing group work, in the last few years Slack has taken the world by storm and it has worked well to adopt in my courses (and other areas of life), largely replacing email. Slack is a really nice compliment for in class participation, and like that space, this online one will only be useful if we find uses for it.<\/p>\n
The danger of course is that this adds another straw on the pile. A new piece of software to learn, and another thing to keep up with. This means making decisions about how and when you use it. I do not expect everyone to be constantly on call, but I do expect people to check-in often enough to know what’s going on. I feel confident in making this assignment for a few reasons. One is empirical. It has been a real benefit to communication in the courses I have used it. The others relate to what this course is about. Being willing to try new things, not for the sake of newness, but because there’s a set of problems we hope these tools help us address, and because these tools and behaviors are valuable in the world outside school.<\/p>\n\n\n Our Slack instance https:\/\/criticalhacking2018.slack.com As good an anchor as class time is, it is very finite and particular. Not everyone feels comfortable all the time (we should work towards that though), there’s not enough time for everyone to speak enough, and there’s plenty of things for which that may not be the best tool. We … Continue reading “About Slack”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-59","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PaaYyq-X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/criticalhacking.localgameslab.org\/2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/not-my-only-class.jpg\")
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