I'm embarrassed that it's been so long since I've posted on my blog. I posted with some regularlity during fall term, when I taught an advanced undergraduate/graduate student class on Language, Technology, and Culture. That class was a blast--in part because of our class blog: The Presence of Others
http://blog.cmc.oregonstate.edu/mtblogs/lisa/Last term I taught a large (65 student) Introduction to Fiction class, and my thoughts were elsewhere. This is a very challenging class to teach as roughly 1/3 of the students really want to be there, 1/3 are neutral and just completing a requirement, and 1/3 really, really don't want to be there. Many in this last group are seniors who dislike literature so much that they have put off taking the class until their last term or so.
I like the challenge of teaching such a diverse group of students, but doing so is very absorbing, especially because as a writing teacher at heart I require lots of writing in this class--daily informal writing and four formal writing assignments.
That kept me busy, as you can imagine.
This term I'm teaching a graduate-student-only course on Current Composition Theory, so I have a bit more time to post here. I've also got another incentive. I and a student, Michael Faris, are participating in an exciting New Research Summit at the University of Oregon.
Here's the URL for Michael's blog, A Collage of Citations:
http://oregonstate.edu/~farism/blog/This is a research blog Michael has maintained since he started the blog for our Language, Technology, and Culture class. Michael did a terrific job writing a seminar paper on research or k-blogs. (K stands for knowledge.)
And here is a link to the blogsite for the New Research Summit:
http://newresearchsummit.blogspot.com/As Suzanne Clark's post to the blog says, the purpose of the Summit is to investigate "What has changed about writing and research? [thanks to the development of new technologies]. What are the new problems? New opportunities?
Michael Faris and I are speaking at the Summit, and the Summit's blog has a link to my blog. So, hey, I thought I'd really better post some new content!
I need to prepare for class, but before I close I'd like to add that in recent months I've become increasingly interested in social bookmarking and tagging. I have been to sites like de.li.cius (hope I've got that right), but I'm still not quite sure how they work. I do know that they hold the potential to create what are sometimes termed "folksonomies" rather than "taxonomies"--but I'd sure like to know more.
