Digital Reflections

My Superhero Self
www.marvel.com

Looking back into this past semester I am delighted that I chose the Writing, Literacy and Technology course at UCF.  It can be said that my use of technology wasn’t that of the amateur, but by no means was I taking advantage of the many opportunities the digital world offered me.  By this I mean in knowledge, or even awareness of how it affects every aspect of my life and the many ways I can use it to my advantage.  The readings assigned were helpful to understand the direction of the course overall, but what was most essential for me as a student were the class discussions. 

In Week-1, there was a heavy focus on Bruno Latour and his Sociology of a Door.  Reading this article was like reading stereo instructions, in French.  Latour became quite a fixture for the course, but only through lectures and fellow classmates who understood his point did I appreciate the meaning of a material object replacing human effort.  I found Marc Prensky to be an easier read, but mostly because I understood the concept of digital immigrant versus digital native.  I felt I was a part the immigrant world being forced to learn new technologies in order to adapt to the ever changing advances even on a basic level (like changing the settings on my iPhone), whereas for my kids it was almost innate.  However, the bonus this semester was that I found through the many projects I wasn’t such foreigner after all.  I firmly believe that if the desire to understand is there, then learning a new technology will come much easier.

I was fortunate that my last name placed me in a fabulous group simply fashioned alphabetically.  Having always dreaded the group project for the universal reasons of those not pulling their weight, not being available, blah, blah, blah - I truly had a cohesive unit willing to work together.  Our presentation on digital identity was based predominantly on our understanding of Mark Dixon’s Identity Map. The premise of his article is that each individual’s digital identity is constructed on our core identity.  What makes me unique (like everybody else) are my core elements, such as reputation, knowledge, experience, my many roles in life and relationships, to name a few.  It is because of these many components an identity thief is only able to steal the attributes that represent me. What a relief!  Not necessarily to my credit rating should it happen, but the notion offers a little more peace of mind.

The project assignments for the class challenged me to gain literacies I intend to expand on in order to succeed as a writer in the twenty-first century.  Project 1 required me to write about how digital technology has affected my life, my Digital Autobiography.  Choosing the current format I’m using now, a blog, ended up being the perfect arena to translate my life digitally. Recalling the many technologies I encountered within my oh-so-short lifetime was an eye-opener for me, but not as much as learning how to make the blog work for me to share the story.  I was enabled by this knowledge to bring my reader into my world by outsourcing key points of my discourse through hyperlinks. What’s ironic is I’ve always been one to look things up to either gain a better understanding of what I’m reading, or writing, and stopping immediately to do so. What a convenience hyperlink is for a reader like me.

Project 2 was to create a web page to explore transliteracy, studying a text as it has transferred across various forms of media.  I chose to research Bram Stoker’s Dracula with a focus on authorship while highlighting intertextuality (and not just because it’s fun to say).  I used Ellyssa Kroski’s guidance from her blog, as well as class lecture for understanding of authorship.  It can both flattering and distressing to see your work transformed into someone else’s model of what they want it to be whether it’s named remix, parody, adaptation or appropriation.  As far as creating a web page, I explored the free web hosting sites and chose the most user-friendly.   I’ve never been one to read a manual, even in the days of yore (i.e. before the internet), so being a trial-n-error gal I successfully created a site that embodied my focus and my digital self.   I did this through the my use of language, research, experience with the blog creation as well as simply choosing fonts, photos and colors that appealed to me.

My latest, Project 3, introduced me to transmedia where it was now my turn to remix.  Although the concept was to take a text and remix it into a form of digital media such as video, comic strip or audio, I chose to create an animated video about how I researched my text.  I wrote a paper last semester on an eighteenth-century novel, The Coquette, and was essentially forced to use an online library database for ease of research.  Therefore, my focus was on how I utilized my foraging-for-information internet skills, as well as the acquisition of a new literacy with the epistolary format.  And since then, it has been my goal to write a fiction piece that incorporates journals or email messages as it seems letter writing is unfortunately losing it's value.  The animated video enabled me to manipulate my character’s actions and incorporate my actual voice, both of which allowed me to integrate my sense of humor through personalization.  I was limited with the free service I chose, so I signed up for a free trial that allowed greater opportunities with the use of characters with the pretense I would pay a fee after a month’s time.  It was truly a great project and I will no doubt be creating more videos just for fun.

So, I decided when I grow up I want to be a writer, but more importantly I want to enjoy what I do.  In this class I learned how technology has changed the face of writing and I am armed with the skills I need to write a blog, create a web page or even design an animated cartoon to get my point across. In fact, I have already put my web literacy skills to work making a web site for a club I'm starting at my daughter's school. My eyes are now open to the nuances of digital media and it's impact on my social experience I have through its use. I am more confident in expanding my digital identity, allowing me to play a bigger role in the ever changing world of technology.