the LC

After some administrative hemming and hawing, it looks like we are set for a new first-year learning community involving professional writing, communications, and art tentatively titled "The Digital Life." The way it works out, I'm going to teach a special topics courses titled "Writing in the Digital Age." Between the three of us, we're planning on introducing students to a range of Web 2.0 applications (social bookmarking, blogging, podcasting) as well as video and digital imaging. I think we're planning on working on a fairly basic level, of course, primarily with iLife applications, maybe some PhotoShop. We're also going to be incorporating iTunes University as a means for distributing media, so that will be something new for us.

The other thing I'm considering is some thematic connection across the courses. Basically, the idea of "The Digital LIfe" is to have students think about how these technologies shape our experience of information and the world. That is, through engaging in the production of new media (albeit on a basic level), the students will be asked to meditate on the cultural effects of technology.  So here are the three inter-related themes of digital life I'd like to include:

1. And somewhat foundationally, having experiences with the digital. I.e., our lives as shaped by our interactions with digital technologies. I know that's not particularly sophisticated but it is a first-year learning community, and I think it's valuable to establish some connection with lived experience that provides students with a viewpoint, a vantage from which to speak, if not a sense of authority. This includes both investigating their existing relationships with the digital (e.g. surfing, texting, cell phones, video games) and new encounters through the lc (digital photography, podcasting, blogging, making videos, etc.).

2. A little more complexly, a digital life referring to the potential to communicate, learn, and form relationships primarily, if not exclusively, through digital media. So here we might discuss facebook, myspace, and so on, as well as MMORPGs.  We'll also look at the blogosphere, social bookmarking, and related phenomena. Likely a number of the students will have experience in these areas, but I'm guessing not all. I think here we can discuss the idea of establishing an identity online as a rhetorical task related to ethos.

3. The final step I'd like to take would be to try to explore the ideological barriers between technology and self and between online identity and subjectivity that exist in these first two points. A digital life mean a life interpenetrated by digital media/information. For instance, a digital photo creates a kind of topography, a spatially-organized and referential digital text. There's the whole GIS thing, including the geospatial web concept. I'd like our students to think about how we imbue the world with meaning. Obviously, this is not a process unique to digital media; however, digital media has clearly altered the means and the quantity of information out there.

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts on where I'd like to go. I'll get a better grip as the LC starts to think about readings and assignments.