I felt more confident approaching the readings this week, and I wonder if it isn't a factor of having another week of the semester behind me, a little more familiarity with the websites, and a little boost of confidence from meeting a few of the online faces in person.
It's interesting that we're talking about a mediated experience in this course while constructing a technologically mediated experience for ourselves, I think. Having this technological lens in place might make us look differently at what we're doing and how we're receiving and reacting to things.
The readings were interesting -- I'm glad to see that I liked both of the selections in Critical Terms and found them to be much more accessible than the introduction by the editors. From just reading the introduction, I was skeptical about it. Sometimes, I wonder if some introductory essays wouldn't function better as epilogues. This one seemed to present a different picture of the collection than the content itself did.
I'm able to draw some references to other work in pedagogy as well as some readings from the theories of professional writing course, which I'm pleased to see. Good week, overall.
Ah, this is all good to read, Kim. I am happy things are settling for you.
ReplyDeleteIt made sense to me that we have an online class for precisely the reasons you bring up: our work here certainly foregrounds the mediation of digital spaces, and encourages us (I think) to be more alert to how we work with each other precisely because doing such work in such an environment is still pretty new to us. I know that we're all accustomed to some set of email, Facebook, Skype, and so on, but a full class online -- where we need to establish particular kinds of relations with each other in order to do our work -- is still open to our shaping and our discomfort.
As much as you can, do pull in your work from Professional Writing. There ought to be lots in our class to help you think about how professional writers are mediated through the institutional structures of workplace environments as well as through their writing and other communications. You've got the potential here for some really rich projects.
Looking forward to the coming weeks, Anne