480 syllabus progress
I’ve made quite a bit of progress on the 480 syllabus. While there’s still quite a bit of work to be done, I think I’ve developed a coherent course, and I’m really looking forward to getting started. It took a bit longer than I anticipated, since I was learning a few more things along the way (using del.icio.us, absolute positioning with CSS, more on PHP/MySQL interaction, RDF parsing, etc). Not to mention that I at the same time I’ve been thinking a lot about next semester.
Thanks to John and Steve for your praise and comments. I welcome feedback from anyone else. If anyone is in a shredding mood, please have at it. I’m hoping for a good mix of practical, hands-on work with computers and more reflective, critical engagement. I guess this is what all of us want in our computer-intensive classes. But as I’ve been reading the examination copies I’ve collected from publishers, the same old patterns emerged: many texts attended to nuts and bolts and left larger cultural or discursive issues unturned; many focused on these loftier issues so doggedly that practice seemed a distant possibility. In my mind, few found the sweet spot I hope to inhabit.
To-do: finish moving course assignments from rough outlines in my head to something more concrete; put more pressure on schedule, especially October; tweak CSS (especially text formatting); set up any more necessary infrastructure (wiki, moodle, weblogs).
