Right now

We'll do what usually will happen with inksheds; we'll read them, and mark on them. (You may have noticed that this is another example of an unusual kind of text we're using.) If you haven't encountered inkshedding before, I need to explain that it's a way of conducting a discussion using text as a basic medium. In this case, I'll ask you to read five or six of the inksheds. Swap them around; when you've finished one, hold it up and look around for someone else holding one up. Go get it. As you read, do two things  -- if you find a passage, say a sentence or two, that you think others should take note of, put a vertical line in the margin next to it. If someone's already marked it, and you agree it should be looked at, add a second vertical line. Also, if you want to respond -- agreeing, disagreeing, qualifying, whatever -- add a sentence or two to the bottom of the inkshed. When everybody's had a chance to read five or six, we'll take a few minutes in which I invite everybody to read aloud to the rest of us a sentence or two from the inkshed they happen to have in front of them. We'll build some oral discussion on this.

An assignment

I need, and we all need, to get a sense of what people are bringing with them to this course. So I'm beginning with a survey. We'll do it on line, so that the results will be available to everyone. I'll ask everybody who joins the course to fill it out as they do. That way we'll all have a clearer notion of what to assume can be taken for granted, what some people know and believe, and what nobody does.

We'll be using Moodle for this.This means that you need to log in to Moodle and enrol yourself in this class, if you haven't already done so.You can get to the course Moodle page directly from the main course page. Take a half hour or so some time between now and Wednesday night and respond as you like to the six questions there. Between Wednesday night and the weekend, read as many other people's responses as you can, and reply to at least three.

A second assignment

Spend an hour or so on line looking for an article which defines or explains one of the terms regularly used used to identify the kind of writing we're going to be focused on. I suggest using a variety of search terms -- "literary journalism," of course, but "new journalism," "creative nonfiction," "extended journalism," "long-form journalism" -- there are others, but those will get us started.

Let's start with the basics: Wikipedia and Google. As everybody knows, these aren't usually respected as "academic sources," but they're often where we start out to find out about something new (and they almost always lead onward into the unexplored territory).

Write out a report of what you find and (equally important) where you find it. How long? As long as it takes. Remember, the basic rule for this course is that you put in seven or eight hours a week, including Monday night class time. Budget yours.

Class next Monday

We'll spend some time discussing the survey; then we'll read each others' research reports and start digging into our exploration of literary journalism.