k-CATTt
ORIENTATION
WHERE AM I GOING?
Below, I have arranged a review of my orientation to
networked pedagogy into the slots of the CATTt,
the inventive device so beloved by Dr. Gregory Ulmer
This page also provides an orientation and starting points for exploring
Terrortories.
CONTRAST:traditional pedagogy
I realize that I will not completely leave behind the model of conventional
pedagogy, because of both my own cultural and institutional investments and the
necessity of preparing students for academic
careers. However, I find that much of the traditional model works only awkwardly in the networked
writing environment. Since I cannot rely completely on my experience in academia for a
model for teaching in the networked classroom, I must look elsewhere for my models.
ANALOGY:MOO writing
I will not invent my teaching style out of thin air; I will use
experience in other fields to guide my plan. When I took Ulmer's Electronic Culture course last fall,
I could not rely soley on my experience writing academic essays to write hypertexts and MOO spaces. To
establish "landmarks" for what for me was the terrortory of electronic discourse, I
drew from my experience as an ambient and electronic
music DJ. For teaching in the NWE, I am most interested
in the changed experience of space in the electronic classroom. Therefore, I drew
from my experience in MOO
programming.
THEORY:Bloomer on architectural writing
The theoretical orientation of this project has been
colored
by the graduate seminars I have taken this past year. In
particular, this project is based on Jennifer Bloomer's description of a "scrypt" writing that
"shuttles" between verbal and visual language. Excerpts from her book Architecture and the Text
were read in the spring NWE Practicum.
TARGET:Electro-pedagogy
Specifically for this project, the target is discovering the space of
learning, the
orienting mood, of
the first course I will teach in the Networked Writing Environment.
Tale:Piranesi's Carceri; the
infinite building These etchings provide the mise en abyme,
the emblematic image that is infinitely
mirrored through every
layer of my project--the space of the
networked classroom,
the structure of the web, my critical situation, etc.
(and this image seems
especially apropos, as the Carceri themselves depict a mise en
abyme)