Romanticising the Digital

Victor Hugo noted Romanticism as "liberalism in literature". Generally, Blake, Byron, Colerdige, Shelly, etc were tryting to break away from traditional restraints in regards to poetic verse and form, seeking to free the artist. None more so noted this ideal as William Blake, who said "I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans". Blake, an extremist, even by romantic standards, went so far as to create his own unique form of printing using copper plates and acid baths. For the romantic, creativity and imagination were prefered over traditional and formal values.

New Media and Multimodal Composition are the children of romantic ideals. The advent and acess of new software and technology allows for writers to publish their work, while working in non-traditional forms. The ablility for people to incorporate all forms of visual and audio media breaks from culturally accepted and dominant forms of composition. For Blake's vision, using standardized software would still be too limiting; however, the acess and simplicty of composing in these forms, even he would agree, allows for more freedom of expression compared to formal standards.

Viewing 'New Media' and 'Multimodal Composition' as neo-Romantic forms, we can try to place opposition to these new forms of composition in the cycle of tradition and revolution. If, as I believe, we are in a period that values tradition; then it could be that these new forms of composition might usher in a new wave of revolution, of liberalism in composition--a liberalism of the forms of composition.

As observed by Stanley Cavell, in Bolter's Remediation, "[to] speak of our subjectivity as the route back to our conviction in reality is to speak of romanticism" (234). This return to our conviction--our subjectivity--is another romantic value: placing value on the individual and individual creativity. This move is contrary to beliefs that writing does not happen in a vacume; that writing--and the writer--cannot be seperated from the social space in which they occupy. The divergence of social-constructivist and romantic ideals become blurred in the pop-up, hypertextual enviornment.

This blurring occurs in the mediums of multimodal composition. Using images, audio, video and text from varried sources allows the individual to develop a sense of self, which is singular and is constructed from societal and virtual artifacts. By using these artifiacts, the individual is returning to subjectivity. And by returning to subjectivity, the individual becomes more aware of societal impacts on the self and, also, how the self impacts and creates the world around it.

Virtual Collaboration

Why weren't my punchcards working? I have this new-fangled doo-hickey and it won't accept my punch cards. The little button on the side pops out this tray that only accepts a disk-like object--not my punchcard I thought, this new tricked-out model would be able to handle all the work that I would complete over the next few years and my work form the past, but lo, that is not the case.

Though, the punch card line is an exaggeration, the difficulties posed by distance learning were beginning to irk me. The lack of a physical communal space for collaboration was somewhat of an issue to overcome. In some ways, I think entering the discourse of the virtual space is just as hard as any new environment. It took time for our project to get rolling in the virtual environment. The years that have built my educational experience have accustomed me to the "brick-and-mortar" environment and have not acclimated me to digital spaces as a center for learning and collaboration.

This environmental discord and disconnection of a physical interaction with other students created a greater amount of inertia to overcome in the collaboration and learning process. Feedback was not instantaneous, causing a slow down in development of the required PowerPoint project and making the transition from slide-to-slide weak at best. However weak the transitions felt, becoming adapted to these new learning spaces would stream-line collaboration in digital spaces.

Skynet: The Computerized-Classroom

Student-Centered, Teacher-Centered, the Democratic Classroom. These terms can't help but be dropped to describe pedagogies of classrooms. But, as we move into the digital classroom, the binary of student and teacher dissolves, centers do not hold and everything is shifted to zeroes.

The only input is one: The Technology.

Though my first inclination is to be suspect of the techno-centered classroom; the way it plays the queens gambit, holding the center, value free; the technology is ideological neutral. Neutrality is good? Technology fills the center pushing teacher and student to inhabit the diameter. This move makes student and teacher have equal input and the division of authority is lessened. This is the ideal for the democratic classroom, where no ideology is center and students can fill this ideological void with their voices.

But sound does not resonate in a vacuum. By moving to the techno-centered class, the lack of reflective teaching and reflective learning creates a somnambulist learning environment where the tools are not wielded with intention. Both the student and teacher are blindly writing, using the technology as modes of design and control, allowing this value-neutral entity to pull the strings. Even a teacher so bent on total control is still a puppet to the technology.

The nature of software can give students and teachers a foothold in the center. Blogs, wikis, discussion boards, synchronous and asynchronous chat are ways to break the constraints of technological, environmental, and institutional designs of the digital classroom. These modes can create a new center within these environments that allows for a Democratic digital classroom.