SB:
Thanks for your last responses . . . I have a list of things that I'd like to get your opinions on. These are some themes from the "Computers and Writing" conference; the proceedings are in Kairos, but I'd like your slant/take--they write that the papers will explore the "intersections between the uses of computers and teaching in various settings and between thematic concerns within the computers and writing community and significant issues outside this community."
Theme #1: Distance education in academic and corporate environments--is this the future? And do you have a place here? Distance education -- would you teach any writing course exclusively on line? COULD you?
WB:
I have for a while. For about two years I participated in the Antioch, Los Angeles low residency MFA. Students meet twice yearly for a two-week intensive series of workshops, seminars, meetings with teachers and set up online communities, courses. I then mentored groups and individuals year long, using a system called First Class and the entire MFA--advertising, faculty lists, etc. works on-line. So before I "taught' in Blackboard, I was using the "First Class" system. I found the on-line segments particularly unrewarding. The group discussions rarely cohered or took off. I don't think this sort of learning is impossible and I liked, at that time, that it was anchored in an initial amount of face-to-face course and meeting and community building time. When teaching in Alaska or on the Navajo reservation, as I did some years before arriving in Florida. I could easily have imagined using on-line courses as "value added" but I'd still want some face to face.
That said, I think I COULD teach such a course, especially if I stretched and learned how to use real time chat rooms and as I get better at sending photos, etc., AND if the group of students was mutually motivated. Can I, as moderator, supply the motivation and do I think the advantages generally outweigh a number of disadvantages -- a primary one being writers tend to write alone too much anyway and benefit from face to face and interactive and human connections? No--I think I'd rather we all devoted the effort to forge a classroom community together for a little while.
Theme #2: Hypertext theory and practice -- your take on the uses in teaching writing, if any. Do the "levels" or "depths" in hypertext confound or assist in learning? You can check out KAIROS for hypertext articles for examples of the kind they publish.
WB:
I'm a hypertext neophyte. Just no time, and coming from a plastic arts background that makes me more engaged still with physical commonplace books and writer's journals though again, two students in my style seminar are keeping their commonplace books on line in a website and recently took the class on a tour of those sites. Significantly, one student felt he chose this option to limit the time he might spend on his commonplace book--he said a physical journal would take more time--he'd be fussing with cutting and pasting and arranging. I thought that was a very interesting observation. He was being practical in going online with this work. The other student put her commonplace book on line because it opened up the possibilities and links and play: she set up an option for a fan club and linked to my dept. web page when talking about the "instructor" and so on. Two equally striking and radically different uses of the web for commonplace books. And then the print varieties are also dramatically different: one hand-written, many cutting and pasting, some lovingly transferring computer generated text and images into a carry around book, and so on. But the web commonplace books allowed for new (and re)thinking of older forms.
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