The Domain is Right

This past week UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learnign Technologies rolled out what’s most certainly our most ambitious project yet: Domain of One’s Own. I’ve written a lot about this project over the last year or so, and it’s surreal to think it’s up and running. Domain of One’s Own provides any interested Freshman at UMW with his or her own domain and web hosting to start taking control of their identity on the web. The first week didn’t come without it’s highs and lows, and Martha Burtis’s awesomely comprehensive post recaps what’s transpired thus far. While we dreamed 1000 Freshman would sign-up day one, at the same time we knew it was gonna take a lot of work to make this fly. We’ve been through this all before with projects like UMW Blogs and ds06, great things need to grow organically as part of a community. And that’s what we have to focus on this year, and I have no doubt it will be a resounding success because Domain of One’s Own is pure and good and RIGHT.

Which reminds me, last Sunday DTLT did a half-hour presentation for all Freshman in which we introduced and officially rolled out Domain of One’s Own. It was an update of a legendary group presentation we did  back in 2007, and it features everything from a terribly bad video presentation by Martha to a trailer for Bagman comes to UMW (more on this genius below) to an overview of the actual project to the capstone finale: “The Domain is Right” —a gameshow in which students are invited on stage to strut their knowledge of all things web. [For the record, Andy Rush wore his Tuxedo, need I say more?] This was a total blast, and it’s yet another  testament that with the addition of Tim Owens and Ryan Brazell DTLT is as kickass as we have ever been. When you can put together a presentation like this as quickly and easily as we did, the proof is in the pudding. Oh yeah, and then there’s the whole Domain of One’s Own infrastructure Tim Owens nailed last Spring—genius!

As part of the documentation and the more generalized narrative of Domain of One’s Own DTLT has adopted a mascot of sorts: Bagman! While we were out at lunch a week or two before classes started, Martha got the idea that we should have the character Bagman be a Freshman coming to UMW, and work with him to go through all the steps of Domain of One’s own: namely signing-up, choosing a domain, installing applications, etc. The great Brian Ralph Short—who has a million and one other things going on—was unbelievably gracious and agreed to hep us out.  Lo and behold, we have the beginnings of a whole transmedia campaign for Domain of One’s Own starring ds106’s very own Bagman (I love it when world’s collide). Check out the trailer as well as the first three videos below (you can follow the ongoing series here).

The Trailer for “Bagman Goes to UMW”

Bagman’s Introduction to a Domain of One’s Own

Bagman Chooses a Domain Name

Bagman Signs-up for a Domain of One’s Own

UMW is the college upon the hill, and we will shine a light for the heathens and unbelievers! Domain of One’s own is #4life!