9/12/12

Week 2

How to prepare (not in any particular order; do this work as it makes sense to you):

• Read Ong and McLuhan, available for you in our course Dropbox. (You should have received an email inviting you to this Dropbox, which will be our main way of exchanging texts this semester.) (Note, too, that the McLuhan file is the whole book, but in Dropbox is a page listing the sections you should read.) (Also note that I will start class on the 12th by asking you to write about the readings, so as you read please work to develop a paragraph[or2]-length summary understanding of each reading—as well as a sense of the kind of person/subject and kind of world assumed by the reading; you do not need to write these beforehand.)

• Make a blog. If you already have a blog, you can use that for our class writing if you wish. To make a blog using software that does not charge, check out Blogger and WordPress.

• On your blog, define “writing.” (As you compose your definition, consider our discussions and writing in our first class. As part of your definition, also discuss your understanding of “academic writing.” How do “writing” and “academic writing” connect? What kinds of writing do you teach in your classes? Also discuss the values — however you understand that term — that cohere to your understanding of “writing” and “academic writing.”) (As you compose, keep in mind that this is work preparing us for the rest of the semester: Do not feel that you have to compose what could be published in an academic journal; instead, while I do want to see clean, polished, coherent prose that might cite reading you have already done, what is most important is for us to figure out where we are now.)

• Finally, please make a separate blog post in which you discuss your reasons for being in our class and your goals for the class. Imagine yourself on December 17th, having turned in your final work for our class: What understandings/confusions/excitements would you like to claim at that moment? Also imagine yourself teaching next semester as well as six or seven years from now: What attitudes toward that teaching would you hope to have acquired from our class this semester? Return to this moment, too: What questions and/or desires and/or concerns about digitality, writing, teaching, and/or technology do you bring to class and would like to discuss and explore with others? I will be using these posts to decide —with your input — among possible readings and activities for the rest of the semester. (So, again, this does not need to be publishable in an academic journal, but should be clean, polished, coherent prose.)      

All the blog posts are due no later than 5pm on September 11; this gives us all time to read each other’s thoughts and to prepare.