These are the Instructions for the Sixth module of this course:

Complete the reading assigned to this week:

Reading n 4 in your Reader, from the book "Digital McLuhan, a guide to the Information Millennium", By Paul Levison, chapter n 2 of the book.

The Chapter is called "The song of the Alphabet in the Cyberspace".
You will find a very interesting analysis of the different 5 senses and considerations on how each one of them conditions our experience.

Pay special attention to the explanation on "vision versus hearing" senses.
The core of McLuhan's theory is the "dictatorship of the visual sense" as a consequence of a "literate culture": a culture that institutes coding and decoding alfabet combinations as a way of transmitting knowledge.
The Electric age for McLuhan had an "acoustic character" because communication doesn't rest anymore on one exclusive single sense.

Don't take the explanations too literally: try to follow how the author uses the Visual versus Acoustic concepts as metaphors for different cultural constructions.

You might have to review again text 1 in your Reader, which is the introduction to the book "Understanding Media, the extensions of man", to refresh the main McLuhan's theories.

McLuhan is a complex but fascinating author. He is clearly a non linear right brain thinker so the main initial obstacle might be trying to follow his thoughts in a linear way since that is what we are used to when we read.Remember that the concepts that you are going to find lie behind the metaphores, don't take thinks literally.
Since 2007 I have been collecting the best mid-term work to create a paralell body of work organized as right brain thinking (integration of short text and images, videos and intereactive pieces). I have put together a little compilation of slides to work as a re-introduction to McLuhan's work.
Here you have the link to it. At the bottom of the page you will find the link to the homepage of selected mid-term projects.

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/ajarabo/intro_Multimedia/Understanding_media/Understanding_media.htm

Reading ahead.
Chapter 1 , "The Medium is the Message", and Chapter 2, on "Hot and Cold Media" are due next week, but it might help you a lot to take a first look at them, so you can begin outlining the concepts.

Check out successful student projects.
I have added several more student Mid-term presentations. Those are Powerpoint or video presentations that will help you understand McLuhan's ideas.
Make sure that you check the last presentation by Anne lennex, she put together an interesting explanation using storytelling.

You will be asked about them on the discussion.
It might also help you understand what type of project would be expected from you as a mid-term presentation.

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/ajarabo/intro_Multimedia/mcluhan_students_midt.html

Make your post in discussion 6.