DGST101 // Spring 2016 // Schedule
[/] WEEK 1
Jan. 12: First Day // Introductions
Jan. 14: Ray Bradbury, “The Veldt” (About the Book)
Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains”
Assignment: Sign up for medium, complete your profile, follow our course publication (which you’re reading right now), write an initial post responding to either or both of the Bradbury stories.
[/] WEEK 2
Jan. 19: Clay Shirky, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter”
Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
Assignment: 1) Refine your Medium publication by deciding on a name, a description, a layout, tags, etc. Create a logo for your publication. A logo should be exactly 72 pixels tall and up to 600 pixels wide and work on a white background. 2) Also, sign up for our DGST101 Slack channel by navigating to dgst101.slack.com, say hello, and start getting your bearings there.
Jan. 21: Audrey Watters, “The Web We Need to Give Students”
“A Vision of Student’s Today”
Assignment: 1) Publish a post to your own Medium Publication (in any genre: text, video, sound, image). Respond in some way to any of the readings or media stuffs we are discussing this week. 2) Search #dgst101 on Medium. Find posts by a few of your peers in the class and add comments. Respond to comments.
[/] WEEK 3
Jan. 26: Snow Day
Jan. 28: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (3–96, ch. 1–8)
Assignment: 1) Publish a post to your own Medium Publication (in any genre: text, video, sound, image). Respond in some way to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 2) Search #dgst101 on Medium. Find posts by a few of your peers in the class and add comments. Respond to comments.
[/] WEEK 4
Feb. 2: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (97–195, ch. 9–16)
Feb. 4: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (196–244, ch. 17–22)
Assignment: 1) Publish a post to your own Medium Publication (in any genre: text, video, sound, image). Respond in some way to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. 2) Go to Slack. Find the #androids-dream channel. Post a link to one or the Medium posts you’ve written about the book. Quote something from your post. Ask a question. Answer a question. Provoke discussion.
[/] WEEK 5
Feb. 9: Blade Runner (Amazon) (iTunes)
Feb. 11: Virtual Class Session (details TBD)
Assignment: (1) Read the Preface and Ch. 1 from Small Pieces Loosely Joined. (2) Publish a post to your Medium Publication with a tentative response to the question “What is the internet?” (3) Search #dgst101 on Medium. Find posts by a few of your peers and add comments. Respond to comments. (4) Begin working on Rebuild the Internet due Feb. 25.
[/] WEEK 6
Feb. 16: Small Pieces Loosely Joined, cont. discussion of Preface and Ch. 1
Feb. 18: Discuss Rebuild the Internet Projects in Groups (come to class with a sketch, draft, or idea). In class project: The art of the animated GIF
[/] WEEK 7
Feb. 23: In class project: The art of the animated GIF
(1) Instructions for making a GIF (and formatting for the Media Wall).
(2) There are also some online tools you can use to make a GIF in your browser. Just Google something like “make a GIF.”
(3) Share your GIF in the #animated-gif channel in the DGST 101 Slack.
Feb. 25: Rebuild the Internet Assignment Due
[/] WEEK 8
Mar. 1: SPRING BREAK
Mar. 3: SPRING BREAK
[/] WEEK 9
Mar. 8: Craig Mod, “Books in the Age of the iPad”
Weing, “Pup Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe”
Assignment: Publish a post to your own Medium Publication (in any genre: text, video, sound, image). Respond in some way to one or both of the readings for the day.
Mar. 10: Assignment: Self-reflection and Submit one (or two) revised post(s) to course publication.
[/] WEEK 10
Mar. 15: Discuss virtual class sessions. Continue discussing Electronic Literature.
Mar. 17: Virtual Class Session: What’s Behind Door Number 10101?
[/] WEEK 11
Mar. 22: Virtual Class Session: What’s Behind Door Number 10101?
Mar. 24: Virtual Class Session: What’s Behind Door Number 10101?
[/] WEEK 12
Mar. 29: Share results from Virtual Class Session and Discuss Drafts of Final Project.
Mar. 31: Limbo
Jane McGonigal, “Gaming Can Make a Better World” (will watch in class)
[/] WEEK 13
April 5: “Excavating the Video-Game Industry’s Past”
Anita Sarkeesian, “Damsel in Distress,” “Body Language & the Male Gaze”
Veli-Matti Karhulahti, “Defining the Videogame”
Kevin Wong, “The Most Depressing Theories On What Limbo Means” (lots of spoilers, so you may want to play the whole game first)
Assignment: Publish a post to your Medium Publication with a tentative response to the question “What is the internet?” (3) Search #dgst101 on Medium. Find posts by a few of your peers and add comments. Respond to comments.
April 7: Make a Game. An interactive or collaborative narrative. Even just a simple prototype for a game. Use inkle, Construct, Sploder, Scratch, ARIS, Twine, PuzzleScript. Draw the game out on paper. Use Twitter to make one like A Dreadful Start. Or use hyperlinks in a series of Medium posts. Link to your game in a Medium post and prepare to talk about it or invite folks to play it during class. Here are some more ideas for how to get started. And some more resources.
[/] WEEK 14
April 12: Online Relationships
Alan Levine, “Facebook as Catfish Paradise: Its Community Standards Wears the Cone of Shame”
Alec Couros, “Identity, Love, and Catfishing”
April 14: Multiple Internets
“The Future of Internet Freedom”
“The revenge of geography” (note the publication date on this one)
Teleport.to
[/] WEEK 15
Monday, April 18: Submit one thing you’ve built, coded, written this term
April 19: The Dark Web
“What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?”
“The Internet, the Deep Web, the Dark Web”
“Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp”
April 21: Final Project is Due. Submit a post that includes your project (or pictures of your project) on your Medium publication. Also, document your process (with a short video, text, and/or a series of images).
April 22, 9:00— Noon: Digital Studies Showcase
April 28: Final Self-reflection. E-mail to Jesse at jstommel@umw.edu before 7pm with “Final Self-reflection” in the subject. You can use the midterm self-reflection as a guide, but remember to e-mail your letter this time rather than sending via Slack.
