Wire 106: Welcome to Hamsterdam!

This fall I’ll be teaching a section of ds106 at UMW. I haven’t taught it in over a year, but the last time I did we themed the class around what might be the best TV series of all time: The Twilight Zone. We nicknamed the course ds106zone, and that five week online summer course was a major blast. Returning to the class this fall, Paul Bond and I decided to theme this semester around what might be the second best TV series of all time: The Wire.

The class will be fully online, and right now our section alone (there are two others!) has 36 students enrolled at UMW. That number will fall—as it always does—when students realize how much work they’re in for. The plan is to start the semester in medias res, in other words Paul and I will starting watching and exploring season one before the course gets going. We’ll be watching and discussing the first three episodes of season 1 next week, and episodes 4 through 6 the following week. This will help us get our rhythm, and also enable interested enrolled students at UMW and open online participants jump in over the next few weeks.  I already sent an email out to enrolled students with details, and this is my humble invitation to everyone else 😉 Next week we’ll start posting about the first three episodes of The Wire ds106-style. If you’re a fan of this show, would love to riff along with you. If you have never seen it, consider this your excuse to take a dive into one of the most compelling explorations of post-industrial life in a US city. Register your site for Wire 106 here, and welcome to Hamsterdam!