Literacy in the Information Age

This was one of the best courses I took during my undergraduate years at UIUC. Hopefully the course web page which is full of useful links to cool essays will remain available forever.

Course Description

From the syllabus:

This is a capstone course that draws on students' experience throughout their undergraduate program to discuss a series of themes such as community, the political sphere and education which have been impacted by the new information technologies. A series of lecturers from across campus (including Commerce, Religious Studies, History, English and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science [GSLIS]) will lead two week modules that speak to the question of what the well-educated citizen needs to know and understand about information technology in order to be a good citizen. There will be a series of approaches taken, from linguistic analysis to critical theory to historical overviews.

My Essays

An Exploration of Information Validation Methods on the WWW written for Language and Technology: From Oral Communication to the World Wide Web
Inventing a Low-Tech Computer Mediated Community written for Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), Discourse, and Power
Dreaming of a Hypertext Reading Machine written for Reading and Writing in New Ways: Hypertext and the Late Age of Print
Computerized Life at UIUC written for How We Work with Information Technology
Emphasizing Community written for Community Ways of Knowing and Sharing Information
Is Helen a failure or a success? written for Discussion of Galatea 2.2