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• 1 2015-04-19T22:46:05-07:00 Why DH? 2 par 2015-04-19T22:56:49-07:00
  In wrapping up my final proposal for this project, I have found that though the content of my proposal aims to achieve a specific implication for composition students, the project in and of itself is inherently a digital humanities project. Here is my proof:
  The Why:
  The shift I've made: I've made the transition from looking at SMS spaces and Emoji's to focusing on how such technologies can help our CLASP students. Through this course I have learned that a common misconception of DH is the view that technology must be the central focus. We've learned about this through our readings within the Debates in the Digital Humanities anthology with Steven Ramsay's argument that Digital Humanists must "do" or "create". However, as Tom Scheinfeldt and others have mentioned, we don't necessarily have to "do" to be digital humanist. What's important is that we are critical in our use of technology, consistently critiquing and examining the effect it has on us as humans.  It is important to remember that the technology is second to the critical thinking and engagement students must participate in as users of technology.

  The What:
  What I've turned to as a theoretical base: In focusing on the first year writing class, I've found Olin Bjork's article "Digital Humanities and the First Year Writing Course" to be exceptionally helpful as I begin to consider what it means to be literate in the 21st century, and how technology and its use plays a critical role in shaping our understanding of literacy. I found a plethora of materials in the Digital Humanities Pedagogy collection to be valuable as I consider the pedagogical applications of using Emoji's in the composition classroom. Kuhn and Callahan's Undergraduate Digital Literacy article in Hacking the Academy has also helped to shape my perception of the ethical obligations we have towards infusing technology and the critique of such technology in ways that allow students to make meanings. Jason Farman's Mobile Interface Theory has helped me to understand the relationship between material and virtual, situating the body as an interchangeable device to which it cannot exist outside of the actual or the virtual and what this means to different cultural use of emoji and inherent racism in software development. 

  The How:
  Practice: An introduction to digital tools through the DiRt Bamboo archive has really helped shape my perception of my project from the "big picture" perspective. Using tools like Project "R" to showcase visual representations of the qualitative survey data mirrors the implications of visual communicative practice in SMS spaces, which to me really brings my project full circle. The conversations this semester in class have also asked me to really consider end users and access as it pertains to not only my students, but also my colleagues and how I showcase myself as a digital humanist within the English Department. Unless I'm housed in DTC, my colleagues won't be following me as I begin to talk about hardware, and coding, and other technical technology terminology. Therefore, using tools that make the data accessible is especially important to me, and I don't think I would have had access to these free resources for my project without this DH course. DH has also allowed me to view my final project as a hybrid discourse that infuses both the visual with the written. In looking at the implications of Emoji's in composition and rhetoric, and more specifically the first year writing course, I'm thinking critically about multimodality, and how a hybrid composition can help to be more inclusive of different cultural populations of students. By using Google Hangouts as a platform to compose narratives and not just engage in conversation, students are able to see their visual compositions as situated conversations that are using narrative framework through visual rhetoric. All of these resources are merely tools that ask the students to situate themselves and they relationship they cultivate and participate in as the major focus of inquiry. Who are they within these spaces? What about their bodies? What are the connotations of their emojis? What aims or goals are they trying to pursue? What platforms? These questions that keep the human central help me to verify that my project is inherently DH. 

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  Without the literature, projects, and prompts this semester getting us to understand the tangible currency DH has as a interdisciplinary field, I believe that I would really view my project in a way that made a case for technology under a framework of literacy, where I think the "why" does in is that I am keeping my students central in this project, and I am looking at technology in such a way that I hope it helps them become better compositionists. I don't think I would have came to that central goal without the scholarship and practice, and tools that DH has introduced me to.