This is your course blog. I will use it to update assignments + class activities listed on your course calendar and to post course documents (on the right panel).
For now - I encourage you to browse through the syllabus and calendar, order books, and think about what you want to get out of this class. Although the syllabus has a lot of writing about what I (the teacher) am going to do - really, whether and how this class works will depend on you. Because literacies are deeply tied to our identities (they are like the clothes we wear for the people who read us) - all of us will need to spend some time thinking about the choices (conscious + unconscious) we make in the MANY circumstances were we write ourselves into being (like here). Then we will do some talking about the kind of power and influence we gain (or give away) through different writing choices. These are important considerations for all writers - and especially for teachers.
As you look through your textbooks you will notice that some (most) of the theory might feel "old". Connections between writing and technologies make it so literacies are changing just about as fast the computer technologies we now use to "write." I will supplement textbooks with some more recent journal articles to round out their presentation on literacies - but.at the same time - the books for this course provide a solid grounding for the kind of thinking about literacies that teachers, professional writers, or authors who take their craft seriously will want to do.
Your text books introduce the important questions researchers have asked about how writing makes us who we are - and what I think is most exciting is that there is still plenty of room for debate about how to answer those questions - and that is what this class is about. And I am very excited to hear what you have to say!
