Digital Bibliography

Sitting down tonight for a night of writing that’s a little different. Thinking about narrative. And digital technologies. And my narrative. Or narratives.

Sitting on the couch in my office. Soft light from a japanese lamp on the end table covered with books. And a glass of merlot. A small fan. My 13″ Macbook Pro. And Ommwriter. One of those “zen” word processing programs. Cheesy, chimey music. The house is empty except for me. Roommate gone for a week. Friends busy. Just me. And these words. And this wine.

Spent some time today re-reading a book on digital storytelling by Joe Lambert (of the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley). I’m co-teaching a class this summer with Tony O’Keeffe at Bellarmine University. Mostly, it was Tony who proposed the class out of his interests sparked at the Digital Media and Communication Institute at Ohio State.

And I’m thinking about some elements of narrative which are particularly important to me. Point of view. Conflict. Character. Setting. Complexity. Resonance. Image.

And I have the impulse to produce another story. Read the rest of this entry »

Contents: FYC as “writing as a generalizable skill” vs. “writing as technology.” Students as with a dual existence in the U: anonymous and uniquely individual. How to reconcile that.

Whew. I’ve been on the road now for almost an entire month. I’m exhausted. And it’s got me thinking about the role patience plays in working with new media.* In this post, I’m going to try to think about it from the role of someone who produces new media scholarship.

I’m teaching at DMAC again this summer, and we’re into the home stretch with the visiting participants’ projects. We began the institute by introducing people to two software packages: Audacity and iMovie 9 (part of Apple’s iLife suite, and only available for Macs). After two days of really intense introductions to these software, and asking the participants to put together two small practice texts (which Scott and Cindy call “finger exercises”) we started to introduce participants to an emerging software package called “Sophie.” (Click here for details about the Sophie Project developing the software).

I’ll skip the sordid details, but I it’s safe to say that Sophie wasn’t yet ready for prime time. Read the rest of this entry »