Digital Writing Month: A (somewhat) Insane Mooc-ish Course-like Thing

Thursday, November 1, 2012 - 12:01am - Friday, November 30, 2012 - 11:59pm
 
Beginning on November 1, 2012, the English and Digital Humanities degree program at Marylhurst University and Hybrid Pedagogy will host an online writing challenge called Digital Writing Month (DigiWriMo). Brought to you by the minds behind the mini, meta-MOOC, MOOC MOOC, this new adventure promises to be a wild exploration of how learning and writing happen online. The event will bring together a diverse audience: high school students, college students, prospective students, teachers, local participants, national and international participants.
 
DigiWriMo is a (somewhat) insane month-long writing challenge, a wild ride through the world of digital writing, wherein those daring enough to participate will wield keyboard and cursor to create 50,000 words of digital writing in the thirty short days of November. Modeled after the inspirational National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), DigiWriMo’s intent is to crack the lid off what it means to write online. Participants will conspire, collaborate, co-author, cooperate, collude, and even compete to reach their goal in whatever form they see fit: blog posts, text message novellas, code poems, Twitter essays, wiki novels, some creative wizardry of text and image, and more!

And for all those creative minds who will be too busy to reach 50,000 words, you are encouraged to concoct your own goals. There will be weekly writing challenges -- both collaborative and independent -- to keep everyone's imagination percolating. Can't write a novel in a month? Work together to write one in a day! Don't understand how code can be poetic? Challenge yourself to write a code poem in under an hour! 
 
DigiWriMo writers can join the forums to unlock even more ideas for writing, to connect with collaborators, and to share their successes (and inspirational failures). There will also be weekly Twitter chats during the month, using the #digiwrimo hashtag, so writers can interact in real time.
 
DigiWriMo designers, Sean Michael Morris (@slamteacher) and Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer), talk further about the MOOCish, course-like thing in a recent interview on the NaNoWriMo blog. For more details, follow @digitalenglish, @digiwrimo, and visit www.digiwrimo.com.