Syllabus

Course Description

In this course, we will approach the act of writing through the medium of a blog. In other words, all of our papers will be virtual, that is, written as blog entries. There will be no paper exchanged. One of the main reasons for this is that I want each of you to have more than the instructor as your audience. I believe firmly that better writing happens when the writer knows her or his work will be read, and evaluated, by others. In this case, your audience will be your peers in class and anyone who finds your blog online. I want to make very clear at the outset: my standards for writing in this course will be no less rigorous than they would be if we were exchanging white paper. We will approach the act of writing as seriously as we would if we were writing on paper. Therefore, another reason for using the blog is for us to think critically about the very medium of the blog itself. For example, we will periodically ask the following questions: how does it feel to compose a paper virtually? How does it feel to read and evaluate a virtual paper, or blog? How are these acts different than white paper?

Much of the course will be devoted to discussions and writing about technology and media forms, from the 19th century dagurreotype to social networking sites. I do not expect you to have extensive knowledge about technology, but you must have an interest in it. Throughout the course, we will not be analyzing the technology of technology, so to speak, but rather the social, cultural and political constitutions of it. In other words, we will not write or analyze html code, for example, but we may think about the very notion of a code and how it functions in the everyday.

Schedule and Assignments

There will be some paper in the course, I suppose, if you consider the text New Keywords I have asked you to purchase. This text will help us build a critical vocabulary. By Sunday at 12:00 pm each week, I will post four keywords from our text you must read for the week. I will also post other short articles and possibly blogs for you to read and be prepared to discuss in class for the week. Here are the keywords for this week: technology, virtual, media, writing. By Tuesday, arrive having read the following article from the NY Times. Be ready to discuss it and write your first blog entry on it this week. We will discuss the logistics of signing up for your own blog on the first day of class, but if you want to do so before then, you must use Google’s Blogger. You can name the blog anything you’d like, but the username must include at least your first name and last initial.

Other than the mandatory reading for each week, each of you will post one blog per week and one extensive comment on a peer’s blog. On the first day of class, we will create two main groups, A & B and starting next week, we will establish a solidified schedule in which group A will post their blogs by Wednesday at 4:00 pm, group B will comment on these by Thursday at 4:00; group B will then post their blog by Friday at 4:00 and group A will comment by Saturday at 4:00. Then, the next week, group B will post first, and so on.

If this sounds confusing, don’t worry because we’ll go over it together on the first day. However, that this course is experimental and very different from other writing courses you will encounter on this campus is probably already clear to you. If you like more traditional structures and organization, please find another section of UWP 1. To be in this course, you must accept that we will change the schedule and methods along the way. Finally, you must be willing to share your writing with the rest of the class and be open to the comments you receive in return.

Grading

Blogs: 10% each (6 total)
Final exam: 25 %
Participation (includes attendance, in class discussion, comments): 15%

*Attendance is mandatory; if you miss more than 2 class meetings, your grade will be significantly affected.