April 05, 2004

• first post. please be kind.
• Interesting post pog - welcome aboard. It's a really interesting idea for a course. I could see it being useful to help your writting. I definetely know that my blogging and internet screwing around (Wikipedia, Everything2) have greatly helped my writing. I can now summarize and retell stories and events in an interesting and readable manner instead of being all over the place...... yeah...contrary to this post I don't know about it being useful as a class however. So much of blogging is a personal expression. You blog what you want when you want. I imagine that a classroom can't be run this way. I don't know how much value it would be if you have to blog X entries per Y Days.
• Hey, since my blog has been linked to About.com and Wired News does that make me a professor of blogs?
• My partner, who I'm betting will be signing up for Monkey membership as a result of this post, is now know as "that blogging lady" at UNM. She's blogging the university one person at a time.
• It's a bit like a computer literacy course jammed into a journal keeping course, innit?
• Perhaps this college course can explain this.
• Sullivan, I'll post some of the search strings MoFi gets one day. They're, uh, interesting. I'm sure you get some good ones. (That would have been a fun FPP, too.)
• Hi, pog -- an interesting post. Sems like an idea whose time has come.
• pog: Hi-Ho! Don't worry, we're always kind! *cross fingers* bah: I don't know how much value it would be if you have to blog X entries per Y Days. Well, that reminds me of when we had to write personal diaries in class (or strictly speaking, write diary entries as homework and pass them up to the teacher in class). As much value as that activity, I suppose. Which isn't alot, admittedly.
• Sounds like a vege class to me -- ie. something you take for very easy credit. They could at least learn some of the technical side of blogging by using something like Movable Type, where they have to install and customise it themselves. There's more than enough crappy livejournals out there already, mine and Noam Chomsky's included.
• I always disliked required journals or diaries, not so much because I would have to write them (though I strongly dislike being told when and on what to write), but because then the instructor would want to read them. What kind of journal is that? Also, though I hate to raise suspicion on a fellow humanist (we get enough guff as regards our utility), I am skeptical about the rigour of this particular class. tracicle: Vege class is a cool term. I've always called them "bird courses" (probably from tv), not that I ever found one. At my new university I find they are called "gut course". (Grads "gut" a book instead - read intro and skim sections, and pretend they read it all). Any other variations?
• Over here, they're called "soft courses". Still recall the shell-shocked look on some of my classmates two weeks into our American Film course, when we started on Greenaway's Prospero's Books. They thought it would be a breeze. They were wrong. Sooo wrong. *snigger*
• Is that the one with John Gielgud? yes, that was confusing - I was watching it once on Bravo for fun and didn't get through. Do want to try again sometime though - it was very beautiful. But perhaps I will read The tempest first.
• I don't like that shot-on-video look, although admittedly it's improving. I have also had drinks with Peter Greenaway. /film student
• Wolof, I'm so jealous. I loved that movie. Saw it three times, and volunteered to present on it. The first time my tutor didn't interrupt a presentation from start to finish. But it's banned here, so the only copy (that I know of)resides in the English Department's library. *sigh* Why are we whispering?
• Because we aren't talking about blogging. My favourite Greenaway is Les morts de la Seine, honourable mention goes to A Zed and Two Noughts.
• Thanks! I'll go see if they're banned too. Will be so glad to get to England and buy some of these gems. Sorry, pog.
• Wolof, I'm jealous too. And I thought I was a Greenaway film buff, but I've never even heard of Les morts de la Seine. Alnedra, I'm intrigued: why did Prospero's Books get banned? Please could somebody come up with a Greenaway-related FPP, so we can have this discussion without having to whisper?
• Because in 1991, when the movie came out, Singapore didn't have a rating for movies with nudity or other explicit material. So stuff that couldn't be cut got banned. And though we now have a Restricted(Artistic) - or R(A), as it's commonly called - rating for such movies, the Censorship Board did not retroactively grade older films.
• thanks to fork's most recent FPP, i can say with authority that in my state it's a "blow-off" course. as in easy to blow it off and go to the bar instead. i apparently am teaching one such course right now; very often my students just blow it off. and here i thought comparative anatomy was a hard course. guess i was wrong. it's so easy to dissect and learn all the parts of four different animals... well, the exam scores pretty much prove me right, but the kids this year just don't seem to care. anyway... my problem with a blogging course (aside from encouraging kids to take the road that i'm on, spending time posting rather than graduating) is that, knowing their instructor will read it, how honest will they be in posting their life story? it's one thing to confide your deepest secrets (somewhat) anonymously to a (maybe nonexistent) online audience, it's quite another to write "i so want to have sex with X" when you know your mom/dad/teacher is going to read it, know exactly who you are, and most likely know who X is and perhaps make some kind of personal judgement call about you because of what you write. that's hard enough when it's your parents. it's harder when it's for a grade.
• what caution live frogs said (except for the part about comparative anatomy being easy): I'm not sure what benefit the students will get out of this class.