I have a confession to make – I seldom read introductions to textbooks. But for some reason I did with The Literature Workshop and was excited to learn that Blau is part of the National Writing Project. I was fortunate enough to be a fellow at the 2005 Summer Institute at the Northern Virginia Writing Project. As I have said before, the experience was life changing and contributed to a complete overhaul of my teaching practices.

The Project is currently accepting applications for the 2008 Institute; please visit their website (NVWP Summer Institute) for more information. They are especially looking for teachers at the college level, so I encourage those of you in the D.A. program to apply.  The Institute counts for six hours of credit toward your degree.

Here’s the annotatable (is that a word?) version of Group Two’s Think Aloud. Feel free to experiment. Hover your cursor over the gray circle on the video timeline. Then click on the green plus sign to add a comment, or click on an existing comment to add a follow-up response. If people are interested in this, I can make Group One’s video annotatable too.

Sherry Linkon wanted us to know that she’s formalized her electronic posting on her Critical Inquiry project into a longer and more contextualized article in Pedagogy:

Linkon, Sherry Lee. “The Reader’s Apprentice: Making Critical Cultural Reading Visible.” Pedagogy 5.2 (2005): 247-273.

Mason subscribes to Pedagogy as an e-journal through Project Muse, so you can all check out the article (on-campus link), if you’re interested in reading more about Sherry’s project.

I know that reading and printing the online electronic posters from the Visible Knowledge Project can be somewhat schizophrenic, given the multilinear layout and use of pop-up annotations. To make things easier, I’ve compiled all the reading material (the posters, pop-up annotations, and handouts) into a single PDF file: VKP Critical Reading Posters. I still encourage you to explore the VKP site, but when it comes to what you need to read and print for Wednesday’s class, it’s all in this file.

I still haven’t found a suitable spot for our class, and I believe we’ve been kicked out of the conference room. So, let’s plan on meeting Wednesday at our original location: 110 Thompson Hall.

Welcome to the class blog for ENGL 610:002 (Spring 2008), at George Mason University. This site will be an essential component of the course…as you will soon discover.

If you are a student in ENGL 610:002, you can go ahead and register for the blog. You may also browse the class guidelines and calendar.

I’d like to hit the ground running on the first day of class, so please note that everyone should read the following article prior to Wednesday: Lee Schulman on “Taking Learning Seriously,” published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.