I began this project intending to discover an appropriate mood, an appropriate intellectual and imaginative space, around which to design my freshman writing course in the NWE. After working through the ideas in this web, I realized that to determine a definitive structure, even as a vague "ambience" at this point would be unwise if not impossible.

Working through this project, I have not be able to map out my entire course, but I have provided myself a needed orientation to entering into the terrortory of this new teaching and learning situation. I have examined "where I am coming from," but I still don't quite know where I am going. I can only set up the scene, and leave the story to develop as the other writers, my students, begin to interact with the initial parameters I set up.

A mood of terror and disorientation, lightened by a certain amount of humor and enthusiasm, is the starting point for the course. The real work of the course will be for both students and teacher to develop skills (writing and otherwise) that are suited to navigation of the terrortories of electronic, networked communication and as well as postmodern culture.

the class homepage