getting things straight, getting started
in class this morning
I've said that the first week will be focused on making as sure as we can that everybody understands as thoroughly as possible how this course is going to work.
You should, since last class, have read the course introduction and written an email in response to it, and should have read at least some of the emails others sent. As I've said, one of the things central to my teaching is using text as a tool to think with, especially a tool to think with in a group. Here's how were going to do that this morning.
I'm going to divide the class into some working groups and give each group a selection of printouts of the emails people sent. There'll be some overlap; groups will each have about half the emails. What I'm going to ask you to do is read through them and identify four or five questions or issues raised in the emails you have in front of you that you think we (I) should talk about, right now. Agree on them; make sure everybody in the group agrees. Highlight them (I'll supply some highlighters). Take about a half hour for this, and then I'll ask groups, in turn, to tell us what they think is the most immediate of the issues they've found. We'll go around as many times as we have time for. I'll then collect the highlighted printouts; they'll be available on line.
for next time
I'm still in the process of lining up potential plays. But one that I know is on the schedule is Sam Shepard's Buried Child, which is being performed at UNB February 2-5. We're going to treat this script a little differently than we'll treat most, because we haven't time to create and organize a task force, and then set up an editorial team. For this one, we'll try to do the whole works as one huge group, collaborating on line, and perhaps this will give everyone a sense of what's involved.
Reading
The first thing to do is to read the script. Miraculously, this one's available on line. If you go to the library Web site, Switch to Quest, Enter "Buried Child" as a search term, and then select "title" in the right-hand pulldown, clicking "GO" will pull up a link to the play as an "electronic resource." (This isn't a violation of copyright because the library paid for access, and you paid the library, through your tuition. The library knows you're a student -- or needs to be told: if you access this from off campus you'll need to use your regular university login to assure it that you've paid.)
Between now and next Monday morning, read the play. Read it carefully,
thinking specifically about things you're confused by or would like to
know more about, or challenges you can see in putting the play on the stage,
and how you react to specific things in the play.
Reflecting
Then sit down and write -- as rapidly as you can, but continuing to write until you've got at least 750 words -- a reflection on your reading. I suggest you sit at a keyboard and just keep writing; you can also do it with a pen if you're more comfortable that way, but you're going to have to key it in when you're done.
Why do I set a minimum number of words? because if you have to keep writing after you've run out of things you've planned to say, you often get to the really important stuff, the stuff that occurs while you're writing, that you didn't know you were thinking about. When we do this in class, live, on paper, it's called "inkshedding" (some people will have had experience with it): online I guess it should be called pixelshedding or something.
When you've got a text that's long enough, spend a few minutes making sure there aren't too many typos and so forth in it, and save it (actually, save it while you're writing, and immediately you're finished. Save everything immediately -- but you knew that, didn't you?
When you're done (this is before Monday morning, remember), go back to the course main Web page and click on the link to the Buried Child forum. You'll need to enrol yourself in the Moodle course to get to the Forum, if you haven't already done so. Click on the link to Reflecting on reading Buried Child," and then click on "Add a new discussion topic." For "Subject," enter your name (we know what the subject is, after all), and then copy your text from where you've saved it, and paste it into the editing window.
Before you click "Post to Forum," have a look at your posting and make sure it hasn't gone wonky -- sometimes they do, and the editing bar at the top will let you fix things like extra spaces, loss of paragraphing, a half page of code at the beginning (sometimes MSWord does that -- if you can't get rid of it one thing you can do is paste the text into WordPad or NotePad, save it, edit it there, and then paste it into the Moodle window). The main thing is that it be easily readable, because guess what comes next?
After Monday morning, read at least a dozen of your colleague's reflections, and respond thoughtfully to at least three. Respond with more than a couple of sentences, and no empty "well said" stuff: this is a conversation. Every response should start with one of the following phrases: