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)