Throwback Thursday – To commemorate the 10th year of SXTXState, each Thursday we’ll be featuring past participants in the project. Check back each Thursday until SXSW to find out what SXTXState alumni remember from their time with the project and what they are up to now.
Dale Blasingame is the definition of Texas State homegrown. He pursued both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the university, and then he became a full-time digital media faculty member. This makes Blasingame a unique case, as he never really left the school and project.
“When I came to grad school, I original thought I was going come here and study more traditional TV news type topics,” said Blasingame. “It was actually this program, the SXTXState program, that changed all of that for me.”
One of the first panels he attended covered blogging. According to Blasingame, the SXTXState project changed his entire perspective on mass media. Everything he would work on from that point forward would have a digital media focus.
“I noticed Craig Newmark from Craigslist standing right on the edge of the escalator,” he said. “I tweeted really quickly, ‘Hey that’s Craig, and he has a list’ … By the time I got to the top of the escalator, he had tweeted me back and said turn around and come say hi. So I went right down the escalator and went back and waved to him, and shared a little moment like that.”
Blasingame had several tips for the current group of students, embrace the serendipity of the event, and keep an eye out for familiar faces and the types of badges people are wearing.
Now, as a senior lecturer, Blasingame teaches the Fundamental of Digital and Online Media class, one of the school’s largest introductory digital communication courses for undergraduate students. He also proposed and teaches a class called Mobile Storytelling in the Park, a class that takes students to state parks to produce content for Texas Parks and Wildlife.
“It sounds stupid, but I think I’ve kind of carved a niche out as the parks professor, which is really cool,” he said. “It’s nice to actually get up in front of crowds and be able to talk about these cool things … It gets everyone’s attention, and we’re actually getting ready to expand it to where we’re taking them to national parks as well.”
Because of his innovative and unconventional outdoor parks course, Blasingame will be hosting his own panel, Experimental Learning: Teaching Tech Outdoors, at SXSWedu. SXSWedu is a smaller SXSW conference that is more hyper-focused on educational and scholarly topics.
“I’m incredibly excited and honored to be speaking at my first South by event this year,” he said.
You can reach out to Dale Blasingame any time on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.
When and Where:
Monday, March 6
4:30 – 4:50 p.m.
JW Marriott – Room 201-202 / 110 E 2nd St
Find out more: Experimental Learning: Teaching Tech Outdoors