i can has new blog
most of you know that i'm teaching the nature & environmental writing literature class again this spring for chatham's new online MFA program. i've taught the class face-to-face already, so right now i'm working on tweaking it for the all-online format. one of the most important- and my very most favorite! - parts of the class has been the students' nature journals. for this component, they are all required to choose a single place outdoors and to visit it once a week for the entire term, chronicling their visits in a paper nature journal of their choosing. as participants in the Technology Age, most students found this paper format awkward and uncomfortable at first, but they pretty much all eventually grew to appreciate and love the format (save two cranky and resistant students who just could not give up Word). and from my perspective, the journals were the most compelling and interesting work students turned in all semester. for the most part, they were honest, uncensored/unedited, and filled with artwork, poetry, photographs, and just all-around fabulous, fabulous stuff. i enjoyed reading them more than anything the whole term.
but in planning the online course, i have been puzzling over how i could possibly incorporate this component in this new format. the nature journal has played a HUGE and pivotal role in the larger canon of the nature writing tradition (thanks Henry David et al!), so it seemed like it would be, well, just *wrong* to cut that requirement loose from the online course just because of logistics. and i couldn't think of a good, or logical, way to make it work. but after talking to SSG, she suggested that i try a completely different approach, one that, rather than working against technology, worked with it. so i have decided that my students are going to all keep online nature *blogs* instead. there are actually already a huge number of such existing blogs, so this approach seems like a natural one. i am planning that students will be required to write at least 3 entries a week:
1) One entry from their chosen *places*;
2) One entry in response to a directed prompt related to the week's course topic;
3) One entry in response to an already-existing, published nature blog, chosen either from that larger list (linked above) OR from one of their fellow students' blogs.
now that i've made the decision to handle the nature journals this way, i am getting really excited for the possibilities! and, as part of my preparation for them, i decided that i probably ought to start my very own nature blog. partly i wanted to check out the format and make sure that students would have an easy time using it. so this new blog of mine is, technically, brand new, but i realized that a large number of my LJ entries over the years here have related to the natural, non-human world, which turns out to be mostly dealing with animals and their relationships to humans. i've spent a couple of days importing all those relevant entries (sans all your comments, unfortunately - i couldn't quite figure that all out) into this new blog.
i have to confess that i find the Blogger.com interface a LOT easier and more user-friendly than the one here at LJ. but that doesn't mean i'm abandoning LJ or my journal here. after all, i've been keeping it for what is quite a long time now, in cyberspace terms. but this new blog will contain all and only "nature" related posts. and the one here will be for everything else (well, everything else not parenting-and-kid-related - i will still have the lunavessel one, and hope to update that imminently - there is LOTS to say where that is concerned).
so that's what i've been doing the last few days. now i just need to get my course more sorted out. i can't believe there's less than 2 months left before i have to start teaching it! i realized the other night that out of the 168 hours in every week, i currently have, literally, about 7 total hours for the entire week into which to fit absolutely everything i have or want to do (running, personal hygiene, writing, and teaching stuffs). no wonder it feels like my life has been totally hijacked. that's just about twelve different kinds of WRONG.
ETA: the format on the new blog will likely change. that one is just one of Blogger's generic templates. i plan to rework it, as soon as i get some time...
but in planning the online course, i have been puzzling over how i could possibly incorporate this component in this new format. the nature journal has played a HUGE and pivotal role in the larger canon of the nature writing tradition (thanks Henry David et al!), so it seemed like it would be, well, just *wrong* to cut that requirement loose from the online course just because of logistics. and i couldn't think of a good, or logical, way to make it work. but after talking to SSG, she suggested that i try a completely different approach, one that, rather than working against technology, worked with it. so i have decided that my students are going to all keep online nature *blogs* instead. there are actually already a huge number of such existing blogs, so this approach seems like a natural one. i am planning that students will be required to write at least 3 entries a week:
1) One entry from their chosen *places*;
2) One entry in response to a directed prompt related to the week's course topic;
3) One entry in response to an already-existing, published nature blog, chosen either from that larger list (linked above) OR from one of their fellow students' blogs.
now that i've made the decision to handle the nature journals this way, i am getting really excited for the possibilities! and, as part of my preparation for them, i decided that i probably ought to start my very own nature blog. partly i wanted to check out the format and make sure that students would have an easy time using it. so this new blog of mine is, technically, brand new, but i realized that a large number of my LJ entries over the years here have related to the natural, non-human world, which turns out to be mostly dealing with animals and their relationships to humans. i've spent a couple of days importing all those relevant entries (sans all your comments, unfortunately - i couldn't quite figure that all out) into this new blog.
i have to confess that i find the Blogger.com interface a LOT easier and more user-friendly than the one here at LJ. but that doesn't mean i'm abandoning LJ or my journal here. after all, i've been keeping it for what is quite a long time now, in cyberspace terms. but this new blog will contain all and only "nature" related posts. and the one here will be for everything else (well, everything else not parenting-and-kid-related - i will still have the lunavessel one, and hope to update that imminently - there is LOTS to say where that is concerned).
so that's what i've been doing the last few days. now i just need to get my course more sorted out. i can't believe there's less than 2 months left before i have to start teaching it! i realized the other night that out of the 168 hours in every week, i currently have, literally, about 7 total hours for the entire week into which to fit absolutely everything i have or want to do (running, personal hygiene, writing, and teaching stuffs). no wonder it feels like my life has been totally hijacked. that's just about twelve different kinds of WRONG.
ETA: the format on the new blog will likely change. that one is just one of Blogger's generic templates. i plan to rework it, as soon as i get some time...