Fall 2010

The following is the introduction to the blogs from my Honors Composition Course, "How to Do Things With Bodies," which I taught in the Fall of 2010:

Well, readers, the time has come to stack on top of what I've already focused on in the past - urging readers and writers to become bloggers, and participate in the widely burgeoning blogosphere! In the entries below, I covered a few things discussed in the class I taught during the spring semester of 2010, in a composition class (Comp II at University of Oklahoma) that focused on understanding and comprehending new media and literacy. This semester brings me to a new and interesting topic (one that might almost seem unimportant in an online forum) - the human body!!

Below the cut, you'll find a list of student blogs from my composition class, "How to do things with Bodies." Please visit each link (I'll be adding more as more students join the project), and keep coming back as students update their blogs with personal reflections on bodies, body image, and their potential meanings for culture (both for dominant culture and for counter or sub cultures!).

But in the vein of the blog, wherein I love to get comments and start conversation and discussion after my entries, I leave you with a question.

How might the concept of the human body be incredibly pertinent to new media and technology, or the internet? Where do we see permutations of the body, or alterations of the body, online? Hmmm... Curioser, and curioser.

"Technology and Literacy"

Why Composition Specialists Need to Pay Attention
to Technology Issues
(from "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention")

"[...]
Allowing ourselves the luxury of ignoring technology ... is not only misguided at the end of the 20th century, it is dangerously short-sighted. And I do not mean, simply, that we a re all - each of us - now teaching students who must know how to communicate as informed thinkers and citizens in an increasingly technological world - although this is surely so. This recognition had led composition faculty only to the point of using computers - or having students do so - but not to the point of thinking about what we are doing and understanding at least some of the important implications of our actions.

Digital_Nation 2: Relationships

The more I watch this documentary, and navigate the website, the more astounded I am at the multiple ways people have accessed, and taken control of, our new digital world. One of my favorite segments in the portion of the film dealing with relationships and identity comes in the form of an 83-year-old Jewish woman, who along with her grandson Avrom became famous through a television show she has online, Feed Me Bubbe.



One thing Bubbe notes is the void that she feels her show may be filling in some people's lives. Do you think that people are reaching out because they're lonely and isolated, or do you think that it's not that computers are isolating us... but are bringing isolated people together?

Digital_Nation: Living Faster

Are we living faster and faster lives, or is the world we're living in moving faster and faster, while we scramble to merely keep up? These are problems addressed in the first portion of PBS Frontline's Digital_Nation, directed and produced by Rachel Dretzin, accompanied by Douglas Rushkoff. One of the first quotes in the film, from Melissa Chapman, relates the need for connection through technology that we're faced with: "I can't imagine, I can't even imagine, being without [my blackberry]."

This isn't a strange phenomenon, of course. We're all, in some respects, wired up to the eyeballs. I asked the students in one of my classes today how long they spent online in a typical day. One student responded about 5 or 6 hours. We don't like to think it's true, and many others seemed pretty surprised to hear that number. But think about it. I use facebook, I surf blogs, I read news online, I check and write e-mails constantly, and text, all available on my handy iPhone. How often do I use technology every day? Rushkoff observed that World of Warcraft players devote an average of 10 hours a week to the game, and some people snicker when they hear that. But, really, some of us spend 10 hours a day on our digital devices without even thinking about it!



What does it mean to be wired? Are we too wired? What would that look like?

Welcome to my classroom blogosphere!

If you've found me, and my blog, it's probably because I gave you the link. Otherwise, welcome! I'd love it if my extension of the "online classroom" became an interest to outsiders.

Since I'm all about being transparent, I'll come right out and state that my goal in this project is not only to introduce my students to the blogging world and the blogging genre, but to understand how we as individuals perform in online spaces. A lot of work is being done on how computer mediation can open up dialogue that might have been previously dominated (in the classroom) by masculinized (academic) environments, and feminists and gender studies critics have much to say on the subject (as soon as I find links to the texts, I'll provide some "further reading").

Having said that, we're all online, and I hope that it becomes productive and interesting, but we'll have to wait and see! In the meantime, please feel free to check out all of our blogs, and keep tuning back for more updates!

Find the list of student blogs below!