WRD 201: Digital Writing Class 1 - September 10, 2015

Dr. Lisa Dush DePaul University ldush@depaul.edu

i. literacy, new literacies, and multiliteracies

Oral Rhetoric, c. 400 BCE Dominant literacies = speaking and listening—for making and responding to speeches

(image from Wikimedia Commons)

Post-Printing Press: 15th C. onward Dominant literacies = reading and writing—for consuming and composing print text

(image from de Young | Legion of Honor)

The ‘Digital Age’ Dominant literacies = reading and writing online, taking photos, making videos, etc.—for participating online

(image from Wikipedia)

Each era (and each culture) has its own definition of ‘literacy.’

Multimodal Literacy

[*also, digital literacy, technological literacy]

(image from Arola et al., Writer/designer, p. 4)

Two DefinitionsModes: still images, moving images, linguistic content, audio…

Media: photographs, video, print, digital content

For our purposes, the distinction between modes and media is not actually very important. What’s important in discussions of multimodality (or multimedia, or new media), is to understand that there is a wide range of new stuff from which to compose and with which to deliver texts.

ii. your technology autobiography

Your first task in WRD 201 is to write a “Technology Autobiography.” The technology autobiography gives you a chance to reflect on your relationship to and history with technology, so that you might understand how technology has shaped your life thus far, with an eye toward controlling how you use it in the future. !We will begin drafting this autobiography in class today with a series of memory-trigger prompts and some freewriting time. For Tuesday’s class, bring a file that contains a complete draft, plus a printout of your draft. We’ll then work to shift your draft from text-only into a multimodal blog post.

The Assignment

1. List at least 5 strong memories that you remember having with digital technologies in your childhood (in school or at home).

2. What were the popular gadgets and forms of media in your home when you were young? What attitudes did you and various family members have towards these gadgets and media?

3. What people have had an important influence on your attitudes about technology?

4. What people have had an important influence on your attitudes about writing?

5. How would you characterize your understanding of how writing and technology are related?

6. How would you characterize your interest in learning new composing technologies?

7. Are you, or are you moving toward, becoming multiliterate? Why or why not, and how?

The Prompts

While your autobiography will likely begin as a broad set of memories and observations, you’ll want, in revision, to move toward a more specific and focused interpretation of your relationship to technology, which answers these questions:

• How technologically “literate” are you? • How did you come to be so? • What are the major themes and moments in your development of

technological literacy?

The best Technology Autobiographies make an argument of some sort, such as:

• I’ve always been an early adopter, which has helped me adapt to new tools quickly.

• I developed my pragmatic approach to technology by helping my parents, who freaked out about each new device they got.

• I loved technology and used it uncritically until Facebook, which I got basically addicted to, an experience that made me wary of technology’s ability to distract me from what really matters.

From Draft to Revision…