Context
In this course, students will create blogs as spaces to create online identities, engage with texts, and converse with the ideas of their peers. A secondary goal to student blogging is to introduce students to online writing and design work, which can potentially be beneficial for professional future endeavors.The following sites offer free blog creation:
http://www.blogger.com
http://www.wordpress.com
Of course, you don't have to use these websites to create a blog. If you already have your own personal blog on a site other than that listed above and you feel comfortable enough to share the blog with the class, you are free to do so.
Framework
Greg Ulmer (a professor at our very own University!) has created a new genre which he calls "mystory." Mystory is a writing activity which allows you to create connections between four discourses in your life -- family, career, entertainment, and community.One of the goals of this course is for you to recognize the type of writer that you are. To cultivate this understanding, you will be completing a mystory through your blog posts. Essentially, this (edited version of the) mystory assignment will help you to understand how your beliefs help to shape your writing identity and style, and what was present in your past which you have taken with you in developing your identity.
Constraints: For this project, you will be uploading and perhaps remixing found pictures from the Internet. You must have permission to use and/or manipulate these pictures (Either assets in public domain, assets licensed through creative commons, or assets you have previously created or otherwise received permissions to use.)
NOTE: If you are not familiar with fair use standards, please go to http://fairuse.stanford.edu/index.html and read over the following sections: A and B under "Copyright FAQs" and All of "Fair Use" Section, all of Public Domain Section and A and B of Permissions Section. Also, please make sure that you honor the conditions of all Creative Commons licenses that limit your use of CC-licensed material.*
*From Laurie Gries' Writing, Theory, and Practices course at the University of Florida, Fall 2013. Available to registered and invited users of Wikispaces course wiki
Blogging Discourse Prompts
Blog Post #1, Career Discourse
Please choose 1 or 2 sections to complete.
A. Please choose and describe a founding figure or invention, a key concept, problem, or object of analysis in the disciplinary domain in which you foresee yourself creating a career within. Choose an image that you have a strong connection with, that you strongly identify with, even if you have never thought deeply about why you are compelled by this thing. In your description, please first help your readers understand what that thing is and then freewrite about what you find intriguing, fascinating, stimulating, inspiring, motivating (etc.) about this thing.
B. Please gather a series of pictures related to your disciplinary field and identify the personal meaning they have for you in relation to your own interests and experience. Please pay attention to random details in these pictures. Write about these details, the feelings and/or thoughts, the mood they evoke, and identify any connections you might find between pictures.
C. Please choose and describe an educational scene (positive or negative, odd or typical) in which you experienced an epiphany or moment of insight during your childhood. Narrate in detail the setting, characters, plot, and mood and then share insights you may have had during or after that moment as well as those you may have looking back on that moment.
Blog Post #2, Family Discourse
Please choose 1 or 2 sections to complete.
A. Write about a strong memory from your childhood involving education or learning which is indicative or emblematic of your family life growing up. What narratives, norms, ideologies, patterns of thought/behavior, moods are present that you believe may have shaped your current emotional, physical, working, social life?
B. Think back on a decision you made as a young adult with or without the help of your family. As you describe this moment of decision making, think about the mood of the moment. Find a series of images or a YouTube video that evoke that mood and briefly explain why you choose that image/video.
C. Find a school picture of yourself from elementary, middle, or high school. This might be an official school portrait or a picture of you at school doing some activity or a picture of you getting ready for school. Analyze the details of your bodily and facial expressions. What is the mood in the photo? What thoughts, feelings, memories does this photo evoke for you?
Blog Post #3, Pause
Go back and read through all the entries you have crafted thus far for your mystory. What connections, themes, repetitive moods, feelings, etc. do you notice between the threads? As you freewrite, try to look for connections that are only apparent now that the memories have been written down. For example, is there a repeated color, movement, or object that you were not aware of while you were writing?
Blog Post #4, Entertainment
Please choose 1 or 2 sections to complete.
A. Detail in writing a movie, TV show/narrative, book, play, game, song, etc. that you still remember from childhood or that continues to be of importance to you now. Once you have written about it, find a copy of that movie, book, game, etc. and play or listen to it again. Pay attention to and then write about moments you identify with or details that stand out. Also try to find artifacts (Youtube clips, photographs, remixes, etc.) as examples of the movie, book, etc. that you can upload as examples.
B. Find an image of a famous person who you have always, for whatever, reason identified with. This person may be a writer, movie star, musician, athlete, etc. Beneath the image, briefly describe who this person is. Then freewrite about what significance you ascribe to this person and/or why you have always felt drawn to, admired, etc. this person.
C. Choose a scene from a movie, play, music video, or television show that you can vividly recall. Use the character or events from this scene as an analogy for your life circumstances, longheld beliefs, dreams, etc. You may not even remember what movie, play, or television show the scene comes from, but try to remember the mood of the scene. Also, try to identify what feelings/thoughts/affects stuck with you from this scene and make connections to your own life.
Blog Post #5, Community
Please choose 1 or 2 sections to complete.
A. Describe a literacy sponsor from your childhood or young adult life. As Deborah Brandt defines it, a literacy sponsor refers to
…any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way….sponsors set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty. Sponsors are delivery systems for the economies of literacy, the means by which these forces present themselves to—and through—individual learners. (Literacy in American Lives, 19)
As you describe this agent and their relations and experiences with you, be sure to identify the mood, feelings, thoughts, etc. that you experienced as a consequence of your interactions with this agent.
B. Choose a location in a community in which you have lived and/or worked in which you felt a strong sense of belonging. Draw a picture of that location, making sure to include houses, shops, trees, monuments, signs, rivers, etc. in as much detail as possible. This spot may be one in which you had a personal experience that has made a lasting impression on you or it can be a spot that has much historical, cultural, and/or political significance to your community. Upload this drawing and below, write about this location, using vivid descriptions to help us understand what this place looked like and why it made a strong impression on you.
C. Choose a specific local legislative issue or unofficial social code that that stood out in your community and constrained your and/or others' behavior. Include an anecdote about one of your or others' experiences that supports or problematizes the "rules" of that law or social code. Then describe what this anecdote says about the values, norms, behaviors about your community, which might have shape your own beliefs, thoughts, actions, etc.
Blog Post #6, Pause
Go back and read through all the entries you have crafted for this section (i.e. Entertainment and Community), and look for connections, themes, repetitive moods, feelings, etc. between them and your entries on career, family, and entertainment. Please freewrite about what insights come to you as you read back through the entries and search for such connections, similarities, etc.
Blog Post #7, Emblem
Now, based on your personal revelations, design an emblem that represents your writing persona and captures the look and feel of your self, based on the writing you have done. Think of this emblem as a motto; it is a wide image for your mystory and a symbol of yourself the vocation you have chosen. Post this emblem to your webpage. Be sure to give proper accreditation if you create a remix for your emblem.
Beneath your emblem, please describe what repeating themes, signifiers, images, moods, beliefs, experiences, feelings, etc. kept coming up across your writing that inspired the design for your emblem and can help us understand both the design and your design choices. Finally end this entry with a written slogan (perhaps based on a quote from someone you wrote about, or a scene from a movie or a song lyric) that stands for the mood of your mystory and a motto for your current path in life.
Grading Criteria
Blog posts are graded upon completion. Posts must be accessible on your blog by the date and time designated by the instructor. In addition, you must respond to at least the assigned blog post made by at least one your peers. There are no restrictions involving format, style, or language. This is your telling of your story, and therefore, should be an accurate depiction of you and your voice.