B. Franklin left it at death and taxes, right? As I teach SU’s research-based
second semester writing course to seniors (and only seniors), I’m feeling the
weight of the death-n-taxes counterpart in academic writing: length limits and
deadlines. Two unavoidable encumbrances. Give either of them a liberatory shrug–whatever–and what happens? So we need, instead, to
declare two-thousand words by Friday, and so on, arbitrary though it might seem. What, besides length
limits and deadlines, structures the writing activity one does for academic credit?
Sure, there are sentences and paragraphs (utterances, gestures, etc.), but I’m not talking
about language forms. Length limits and deadlines certify the institutionality of
the writing. Institution-free, the writing need not adhere to either
staple, right? With blogging, for instance, what of deadlines? What
of length limits? But figure blogs into a course, what will happen if matters of
length limits and deadlines or frequency, even if left to such vagarisms as
"flexible" or "open," are not otherwise determined? Just a few
thoughts…
Tag: teaching
Courseware, Training Wheels
Thanks to everyone who threw in a
congrats. May I never grow tired of
waves of encouraging comments. (Makes me consider, for half a minute, the
possibilities in announcing that I passed exams every week until the diss is
finished. Entry #1419: For the Hundredth Time: Pass! Pass!)
For a few minutes now, I’ve bee thinking about Blackboard. IHE
has this little
news piece on Blackboard and law suits over patents. Blackboard, as I
understand it, fancies itself the first to develop the web-in-a-box-ware used by
so many colleges and universities for delivering online courses (or augmenting
F2F with innovations like discussion forums). The legal loops are only
marginally interesting to me. I mean, even though I think it is
far-fetched, I can understand why Blackboard must, in the interest of solvency,
claim as its property the idea of rolling together things like message boards,
bulk email, and announcements into an unforgettable discombobulware.
Still-Unbuilt
Classes begin one week from today, and so I’ve been wrenching and soldering
the course I’m slotted to teach. The syllabus must be ready one
week in advance of the semester (i.e., today) so that our plans and projections
can be vetted, held up alongside what’s acceptable. And once the syllabus
is vetted and approved, TAs are awarded their precious copy codes. That said,
I’m teaching an online section this semester, and so it’s entirely possible that
I won’t make a single photocopy over the next sixteen weeks. It’s a
section of Studio II, the second course in SU’s two-course composition
sequence, a course normally taken during the second semester of the sophomore
year. But the section I’ve been appointed is designated for "seniors
only," which means that there will be ten or so seniors enrolled who will
graduate in May and who have yet to take WRT205 for any number of reasons.
Rather than explain my plan here, feel free to check out the
syllabus if you’re so inclined. You should be warned that the front
piece looks like garbage in IE, but I’ve checked it for CSS compliance and it’s
looks dandy in Firefox, Netscape, and Safari–just like I want it to look. And
yeah, I have been futzing with style sheets just for kicks in the last day or
so.
Fulkerson, “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century”
Fulkerson, Richard.
"Summary and Critique: Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-first
Century." CCC 56.4 (2005): 654-687.
North, The Making of Knowledge in Composition
North,
Stephen M. The Making of Knowledge in Composition. Upper Montclair,
N.J.: Boynton/Cook, 1987.
Kittler, Discourse Networks
Kittler,
Friedrich. Discourse Networks, 1800/1900. Trans. Michael Metteer.
Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 1990.
Wysocki and Jasken, “What Should Be An Unforgettable Face”
Wysocki, Anne, and Julia I. Jasken. "What Should Be An Unforgettable Face…."
Computers and Composition 21 (2004) 29-48.
George, “From Analysis to Design”
George, Diana. “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing.” CCC 54.1 (2002): 11-39.
Wysocki, “Opening New Media to Writing”
Wysocki, Anne.
"Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justifications."
Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding
the Teaching of Composition. Wysocki et. al., eds. Logan: Utah State Univ. Press, 2004. 1-23.
Gliffy and Facebook
The week’s quasi-experiment in WRT302 blended Facebook and Gliffy. In the 
session dedicated to Facebook (what of it?), I wanted to prime our upcoming
discussion of networks when we read a few chapters from Critical Mass.
But reading about Facebook didn’t seem to me to be enough. I was mildly
bored with the idea of reading about Facebook. Next, pose as if critical.
Next, rehearse the cautions about visibility and decorum. Thorny! It’s a fairly
reliable pattern that when I’m bored, my students are doubly bored. And
so.