Hello everyone....
I've been reading and thinking today, and I'm not particularly pleased with the way I've been using your blogs and our course maps. We've veered to far from my original idea....which was:
a) for you, individually, to write about the South as you experience it.
b) for you, collectively, to create a deep map, which would place your experiences alongside one another.
So, we're going to take a break this week and regroup. I'd like you each to offer suggestions about how we might change course on this project (Post them as replies below).
I'd also like you to take a look at this blog, TheWhereProject. Its owner is Tim Lindgren, an instructor and PhD student at Boston College, and he hopes that the blog will "deepen my sense of place." I know that may sound touchy-feely, but that's what I want this do: to provide each of you with a chance to think critically and analytically about the PLACE and the CULTURE in which you know live. Ideally, I'd like you to connect your experiences in this place to our readings, but it's not absolutely necessary.
Among the options I'm considering: I might end the regular pattern of issuing a prompt, expecting you to respond by Friday, and then assigning the 0-2 score. Instead, you would be free to write about your experiences and interests as you see fit. At the term's end, I would assess as a total portfolio of multimodal composition and communication. Of course, if I did this, I would provide a rubric explaining my expectations and criteria. The benefit to you: you could work on your own pace and write about what interests you. The downside: you'd be on your own.
Anyway, these are up for discussion. Let me know what you think.
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10 comments:
Being able to be more free in our writings would certainly be of use however, it would also be great if we had a few topics set by you if we can't think of anything on our own to talk about.
I personally don't like the idea of everybody writing whatever comes to mind and doing it whenever they please. I also don't see how everyone doing their own thing would enhance the interactivity among students and their blogs any more than our original practice has. I think that assigning a general idea/topic on monday due friday works very well because in assigning us a topic, you force us to think and brainstorm about things that would not ordinarily come to mind-which causes us to grow as critical thinkers and writers. I think you could possibly alternate between having us write a topic one week and another week write a well thought out responses to the thoughts of our fellow students. In doing this we would not only have been pushed to think and write in unorthodox ways but also observe what students besides ourselves think, furthering the different ideas we are exposed to.
I do like the idea that we can write about anything we'd like, but I would want a slight restriction on it. For instance, give us a one word topic to write about each week. One word would give us a broad enough range to sift through, but also a defined topic that we have to follow.
I don't like the idea of writing whatever is on our mind. Having a topic each week to write about is good but to make it more of how you wanted it we should make a post of our one and then comment on someone else's blog and make that a post as well. If we have a topic we will all have some kind of common ground and be on the same level of what we are thinking about instead of being all over the place. I think the prompt's should be more what we have experienced in the South and if that makes the south unique and if we that was our expectation or how we viewed the south.
i think the best would be a compromise of sorts. i know that sometimes, i encounter something very different than back home in St. Louis, but can't write about it. at the same time, i dont think that i could find something every week that would make an interesting blog. I think that if there were some way to use regular, assigned blogs, and incorporate unassigned, extra blogs (possibly for extra credit or to count as class discussion grades) that would be best.
I feel this idea is actually pretty good. Despite the ancipated lack of ideas associated with this new, free writing, I feel we would still have a lot of ideas. Our classes each week seem to be centered around a central theme. If you go to class and pay attention, it's fairly easy to see what we're focusing on. By going to class, we're getting that initial idea of a topic from you. The advantage is that it doesn't necessarily have to be on a set topic, considering each theme branches off in about a million different ways. By giving us free writing, you're allowing us to write about whatever we choose, but it will probably still have a similar theme to many of the other students' writings.
I like the idea, but in practice, it might be a little more difficult for the students than the assigned weekly blogs. The easiest might be to base it off the discussion from class that work and see what students can come up with, or giving us a few topics or ideas or an open prompt question. Like you said, there's a reason for the direction taken in class discussion and our assignments, and maybe an open-ended blog would be a way for us the students to better understand and sort the topics of the class. As long as you have a clear rubric for the blog and maybe required us in some way to interact with other students' blogs in the rubric, I don't think this new direction will be too difficult or dangerous for us.
I really like the idea aof being able to talk about how we feel personally about the readings and course material and how it relates to us. However, I feel like some sort of guidline would be helpful. I thinks the new idea of the blogs is great!
I prefer having topics each week, I enjoy the level of structure it provides. A good compromise would be to allow the option to do either one.
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