Wiki in progress!

Yes, I finally set up the class Wiki with the help of a good friend and it is up and running. It didn't take me too long to learn the ropes and I uploaded most of my syllabus. It looks pretty good. I am going to try to have the students use it as much as possible. I will also upload additional information and some URLs that might help them out in their readings. I also created myself a user account. This class is becoming very exciting. Can't wait!

Negotiations with Patchwork Girl

Still negotiating with the department to have them buy ten licenses for the e-book. The department is somewhat reluctant to give $75 for an electronic text which, I sense, they assume that it will not be used by anyone but me. So in a sense it is a lost investment. Never knew it would be this hard.
I think if our departments will go extinct, it will be because our unwillingness to open our boundaries up a bit. We need to realize, along with all the other English departments (who seem to have realized it long before us), that literature is moving beyond print. Shakespeare is moving beyond bound books. Books will always remain and will serve invaluable purposes, but digital literature will be considered just as valid.

Wiki

I am going to create a Wiki and post my syllabus there. I will also post class notes, background information on the readings, and useful URLs on this site. But I also had two great ideas about the class Wiki:

• I will start discussion forums about our readings and expect the students to participate.
• I will also create a page where we can create a class story where everyone contributes to the story. They can even blog their writing experiences on their personal blogs.

I think this will engage them intimately with digital texts. Let's see what I can prepare until the class starts.

Patchwork Girl

It seems I have to jump the hoops of bureaucracy to have ten licenses of Patchwork Girl ordered from Eastgate Systems. We'll see how it goes, I might have to get the library involved as well. Negotiating between three different locations isn't making it easy either.

Every step of this course is presenting a new challenge. I am doing something new in this department, so I have to work hard to break new ground. All the obstacles point to that.

Maybe I might be pleasantly surprised and all will be resolved soon...

Scale it down a bit...

Lately, i keep remembering that Eddie Izzard sketch that I saw in Dressed to Kill, which BTW is one of my favorite performances. Eddie Izzard in this show talks about his childhood and how he became the way he is, i.e. an "executive" transvestite. Of course, I don't think anyone, to this day, has understood what he means by "executive." Anyway, apparently one day his school career counselor came to class to talk to the students about their career choices. When he asked Eddie, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" he replied that he wanted to be an astrounout and explore new galaxies and go to places where no man has ever gone before. His counselor responds, "You're British, scale it down a bit." Then Eddie says he wants to be a shoemaker and explore new shoes and discover shoes that no men has ever discovered before. The counselor says "You're British, scale it down a bit." Finally, Eddie decides to become a garbage man... Well, this is my story in designing this course (LOL).

I think that i can pull the hypertext project, but now I realize that I may not have enough time for it. It turns out that eight-week semester in reality means only 6 weeks! No room to breathe. Damn. I guess I wil have to save this brillant assignment for future, if and when I get to teach this class as a full semester. Funny, the amount of hours is the same as a full semester class, but since it is condensed, I can't assign too many stuff in such a short time.

I can hear my advisor saying, you're British, scale it down a bit... Gotta settle for becoming the garbage man (LOL).

Hypertext assignment

I am thinking about additional assignements for my class, besides the blog that they will keep daily about their readings.
I don't want them to just read about digital writing, I want them to experience it in different ways. So I remembered a hypertext I created for my Digital Arts class offered in Fine Arts. In that class, I was just beginning to take interest in new media so in that class, I had this brillant idea of translating Snow White into a hypertext environment. But at the time I wasn't aware of Storyspace (a software that created hypertexts). So I created the sentences, words, in other words lexia in Photoshop and position these accordingly so it would look like a hypertext. I can show this as an example in class, do a quick crash course on how to use Storyspace, and give them short stories to translate into a hypertext. This would be a cool assignment where they will have to think about the problems they encounter. In the end, we can all see what the groups came up with and comments on them.

Potential problems:

• licencing, funding
  
• computers to install this program
• learning curve of the software
  

I e-mailed Eastgate Systems to inquire about the licencing for both Storyspace and Patchwork Girl (which I will include in my reading list). For ten licences Storyspace is $550, for Patchwork Girl is it apprx $80. I decided to e-mail my director and ask them if they can buy Patchwork Girl. I highly doubt the department will support the purchase of Storyspace.

We'll see what happens...

Blogging assignment

By now, I realize that I need to come up with other assignment idea. Second Life will not work.

In one of the e-mail lists that I subscribe to, I read an e-mail from Thom. He posted the URL for his syllabus for T101. I looked at the syllabus and there are a lot of cartoons that describe the assignments and there are some interesting projects. In this class, he requires his students to keep a blog for a part of their grade.

AHA!

This could be one of the assignments for the class. They could open up a blog account free and blog their readings for the class. This gives me the advantage of getting to think about their daily readings. I will ask them to blog what the readings remind them of in their daily lives, their thoughts and the issues they had while reading it. I too will keep a blog (this one). Everyone will read each other's blog (including mine) and comment on them. I can read everyone's blog before I come to class and identify major problems regarding their readings.

I like this idea... Doable, entertaining, educational. I should e-mail Thom and thank him for the idea some time.

Second Life and the challenges it presents

My biggest challenge is yet to come. I thought about some interesting assignments that could make the theory reading more tangible for them.

My first idea: Have the students play Second Life for the entire semester and keep a daily journal on their experiences. What kind of an avatar they choose to create, why, what kind of games they engage in. This would be an extraordinary project for them to do. Quite exciting to say the least.

Technical difficulties:

• Second Life is a very sophisticated program that require a high-end computer with a good video card.
• It has a long learning curve.
• The students may (or will) not have computers.
• University Technology Department will refuse to install it on the STCs.

I figured, for those students who don't have computers, I can assign them another assignment asking them to follow a story from the four online Second Life journals. I will ofcourse give them specific questions.

Sounds great, but it is not going to happen. I will probably assign online readings on Second Life, but I will have to end it there. Such a shame...

I e-mailed one of my professors to see how he handles this problem. After all he teaches this. As I expected I received no reply, as usual. I guess I will have to give up on this idea.

Challange of teaching this course

When I am assigned a course, the first thing I try to assess is the challenges that might come up along the way. I was ecstatic in being able to teach such a course, but later, this enthusiasm was dampened with the realization that my goals in this class will suffer from technical limitations.

The first problem I ran into is to find a classroom that was technologically equipped for the stuff I wanted to do in this class. After all, it is kind of hard to teach about new media in a regular classroom. When I was teaching Public Speaking we were using these high-end tech rooms. No matter how hard I tried to reserve a room in Sycamore, I failed miserably. So our secretary ended up reserving a dorm classroom. I will schedule a VCR and projector for my classroom and will bring in my laptop. I am hoping there is wireless in the room.

My picture

Great news!

I just found out that Comparative Literature is offering me to teach a class on my dissertation topic. This is an invaluable opportunity and i hope to make it a very interesting and fun for the students (and also challenging...)