Teaching Zin/ography
To teach zin/ography in a classroom, I initially present a brief
introduction to the reasoning behind the method. That is, I want
my students to generally understand why I am teaching them
zin/ography rather than the kind of academic writing that even a
brief tenure within the educational institution leads them to
expect. I begin the first week of class with introductory
material including a lecture on the justifications for both
teaching and learning zin/ography as well as excerpted readings
from Lester Faigley's Fragments of Rationality, Richard
Ohmann's English in America, and Judith Williamson's'
"Engaging Resistant Writers Through Zines in the Classroom."
From that point I proceed through the exercises outlined below;
they are designed to produce background material. This material
is then used to complete the five step zin/ographic process. In
an electronic classroom such as the University of Florida's
Networked Writing Environment (NWE) I find it best to organize
most in-class time into either discussions or workshops (as one
might in a creative writing or a fine arts class). Obviously,
some time must be spent introducing the mechanics of the
technology and lecturing on the reading material, but my
classroom experience suggests that students are best off when
given a brief introduction to the task at hand and then allowed
to experiment on their own. During these times I see the most
spontaneous collective learning take place -- a refreshing
change for students whose previous schooling has taught them that
learning is a solitary enterprise.
INTRODUCTION
EXERCISE 1
EXERCISE 2
EXERCISE 3
EXERCISE 4
ZIN/OGRAPHY