My Blog, Myself

I've proposed to Haverford's Educational Policy Committee that I offer a first-year writing-intensive course in Fall, 2004, about blogs. Here's the draft description:

A review of self-expression on the Internet, with special attention to weblogs produced in adolescence and adulthood. Students and the instructor will form a friends group using LiveJournal or similar software to construct mutually-linked individual weblogs and will use these to share personal experiences, to annotate and discuss course readings, and to practice more and less structured writing about the psychology of such biographical discourse. Discussions will focus on existing biographical materials avaliable on the Net, on discussions of these by psychologists, and on our own experience of reflecting on each other's writing.

The reading list will grow and link from:

Davis, D. (1994-95). Erotic Computing. Webster's Weekly.

Davis, D. (2003). Milennial Teaching. Academe.

McNeill. (2002). Teaching an Old Genre New Tricks. Biography.

Turkle, Sherry. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Zuern. (2002). Online Lives. Biography.
TomD points to evidence that the writing-teaching community is now interested in classroom blogs:

There is a pretty vigorous group of rhetoric/composition scholars who have been exploring the intersections of emerging technology and writing (and teaching writing) for the past 20 years or so.

I've lots to learn, as I try to pay off on the speculations of a decade ago.

__________________________________________________________

Here's the Fall, 2004, course web page for Haverford College WPR 115A

Comments

[Bryan Alexander]

Good luck, Doug! Is this a place for feedback and notes?

[Lorna Quandt]

I wish I could take that class! I have blog (My URL) and I think the writing form of blogging is really interesting.