Blog489 ENGL489 Advanced Portfolio Workshop
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 ltorda@bridgew.edu www.leetorda.com |
Spring 2015 Office Hours:
Tuesdays 2:00 to 4:00 Fridays 11:00 to 12:00 (noon) and by appointment. |
Preamble, Part I: Two summer I had the privilege of working
with some students on an Undergraduate Research Abroad trip to Israel. Students
researched and wrote pieces about culture and life in Israel through a blend of
ethnographic methodology and creative non-fiction. One thing we did while we
were on our trip is take turns posting to a blog about our journey. I think
that for the most part we did a pretty good job and the feedback from readers
(albeit readers who were on our side to begin with) was positive. It was the first time I
ever participated in a blog. Here is the link: http://bsuinisrael.tumblr.com/
So of course my first instinct was to inflict the practice on future students.
Preamble, Part II: One of the challenges of teaching writing in a classroom to students who want to write outside of the classroom is mirroring the way people write in the real world. One of the most difficult and somehow fraught aspects of writing in the real world is that real readers read you—not for a grade, but because they like what you are writing. As a monumental testament to how little grades actually matter, students are much less nervous about having their teacher read and grade their writing than they are about having regular people read and not grade their writing. A blog is public. It’s not as public as Time, but it’s still out there, Harrry, it’s out there. And there is the possibility for other people to read what you wrote. And that is why I am, in fact, inflicting this project on all of you: I want to raise the stakes a little.
Preamble, Part III: Lots of blogs suck. I would like ours not to suck. I do not want it to be about our class or cutesy stuff about writing—bad clichés that there is plenty of and more on the internet already. It’s asking a lot, I know, but I’d like to come up with an idea for a blog that was general enough to allow all of us to have something to say, but, at the same time, not be so general that it’s about nothing at all.
Finally, the actual assignment: During our second class meeting, we will, as a class, decide on a blog—based on personal expertise and interest as well as collective expertise and interest. Once we’ve made some decisions. I will set up a blog on this website and invite the rest of you to give feedback and suggestions to the look and feel of the thing. Then we’ll start, me included, posting, one entry a day, every day, until the last day of classes this semester. It will work out to roughly three posts per person (about).
Part of the challenge of this assignment is that blogs are a particular genre (as is writing for all social media). It has a kind of language that is not the language of your essays for you Am Lit class. It is a language of words and pictures and stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. So we'll need to think about the genre as a genre, and your success as a blogger will in part depend on how well you write in the genre.
So of course my first instinct was to inflict the practice on future students.
Preamble, Part II: One of the challenges of teaching writing in a classroom to students who want to write outside of the classroom is mirroring the way people write in the real world. One of the most difficult and somehow fraught aspects of writing in the real world is that real readers read you—not for a grade, but because they like what you are writing. As a monumental testament to how little grades actually matter, students are much less nervous about having their teacher read and grade their writing than they are about having regular people read and not grade their writing. A blog is public. It’s not as public as Time, but it’s still out there, Harrry, it’s out there. And there is the possibility for other people to read what you wrote. And that is why I am, in fact, inflicting this project on all of you: I want to raise the stakes a little.
Preamble, Part III: Lots of blogs suck. I would like ours not to suck. I do not want it to be about our class or cutesy stuff about writing—bad clichés that there is plenty of and more on the internet already. It’s asking a lot, I know, but I’d like to come up with an idea for a blog that was general enough to allow all of us to have something to say, but, at the same time, not be so general that it’s about nothing at all.
Finally, the actual assignment: During our second class meeting, we will, as a class, decide on a blog—based on personal expertise and interest as well as collective expertise and interest. Once we’ve made some decisions. I will set up a blog on this website and invite the rest of you to give feedback and suggestions to the look and feel of the thing. Then we’ll start, me included, posting, one entry a day, every day, until the last day of classes this semester. It will work out to roughly three posts per person (about).
Part of the challenge of this assignment is that blogs are a particular genre (as is writing for all social media). It has a kind of language that is not the language of your essays for you Am Lit class. It is a language of words and pictures and stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. So we'll need to think about the genre as a genre, and your success as a blogger will in part depend on how well you write in the genre.