Being in the first wave to students to complete a Wr 250 course has been an exciting refreshing scholarly adventure. Something that I have realized during the course of this term is that being part of a new and experimental class has some responsibilities. It will take some time to hammer out the specific expectations you have for us as students, as well as it taking time for us to fully realize what your responsibilities are as a teacher of this course. As a student in a fairly new course we have the power to shape where this course goes in the future. I feel like Emily Simitt has handled the chaotic nature of this course with great zeal and I am exited to see where this course ends up in future terms.
Something that needs to be considered is the fact that some of the digital tools we deal with in this course are still in development, and therefore not yet as streamlined and concise as other digital tools that we are likely familiar with like google and Microsoft’s suites of tools. Part of the purpose of this course is to have us consider the potential strengths and weakness of the various digital tools available to us, and to get us thinking about how these tools will be improved or used in new and novel ways in the future.
I feel like this class as a whole was reasonably successful considering the fact that everyone in the classroom is experimenting and experiencing with the complex and multifaceted assignments for the first time. Instructing a complex and open ended class like this must be stressful for the instructor that is expected to provide concrete grades to projects and assignments that are very much open ended and subjective in nature.
Because digital technologies evolve rapidly as well as new tools being released all the time this course will naturally change over time. In attending this course you will be exposed some new and useful digital tools, that I can almost guarantee you will take advantage of in your other courses. My favorite tool we looked at this term Voyant, you should dig up a your favorite digitally transcribed piece of writing or just pick any book from Project Gutenberg and enter it into Voyant and see what comes up.
links pointing towards Voyant Tools and Project Gutenberg can be found below
It would be interesting to see what fresh students attending Wr205 expect to learn and accomplish in this course. I would love to hear your ideas in the comments below <3