Cyber 110 and Myspace

A few thoughts on my evolving plans for Cyber 110 this spring regarding myspace. (I plan to post other thoughts on a separate entry.)

1. I'm going to have all the the students either create alternative "student" profiles or create their first profiles for the site. Then we're all going to "friend" each other, and put up pics :). The "interface" for the course has our faces, and we will all "see" each other in the same place, which is more pleasing than blackboard.

2. I'm going to assign a time to instant message "chat" with them once a month, just one on one with me, in order to assess their perspectives and comments and questions about the course.

3. I'm going to require that the students post a new blog every week. I'm going to post the requirements for the entries on my page, as my own "blogs," but which will really be a message board to the students. Each week, the students will write the equivelent of at least a page, and then they will also revise their blog from the previous week in terms of sentence structure. This will allow them the opportunity to "draft" one week (and focus on production and writing) and then "tighten" the following week. This will also get them in the habit of revision, and hopefully after a few weeks they'll notice how their thinking itself evolves, and thus understand somewhat organically the necessity for revision.

4. I'm going to do group chats, if possible, through the myspace instant message. I'm going to try and do this instead of Google, which needs Windows as far as I can tell.

5. I'm going to also assign students to respond to each other's weekly posts. They will simply respond to something -- one or two things, in one concise and reflective paragraph -- that someone else wrote. It will not have to be as long as the blog they themselves write.

6. I'm going to use Blackboard primarily for course readings that need to be scanned. I have to admit, I'm trying to re-think scanning anything at all. It doesn't look right, somehow, to see paper online. One needs the words glowing. The majority of the course communication will be on myspace. I think this site works fairly well for this.

7. I'm excited about the possibilities of combining a "social" space with an "intellectual" space. I'm hoping that they will inform each other; in other words, that their "work" will seem "funner" and their play will grow more reflective. Like the text message assignment, I see my role here in part as one that merges or combines their impulses to communicate with certain organizational skills and analytical reflections. But I must go to them, to where they are -- and even if myspace is a bit old school, it works a helluva lot better than blackboard.

8. Over this break, I've experimented myself with keeping a blog on myspace. I've finally understood a lot more of what I suppose I've been teaching, as far as what the internet does to complicate or even reinforce identity, persona, the concept of the avatar. In the pulse of experimentation, I'm going to consider keeping my other myspace profile public, which it is currently. I think I can "own" it and still work my class; or, I think I can make my personal life work with my professional one, even if my personal one is somewhat constructed and organized around a kind of persona, a style of expression, something not quite me as "professor." I'm asking the students to do it, as students and as -- adults? -- and I think there's an element of practicing what I preach. I write a lot, I revise, I do analysis, I write about texts, I write in the first person personal -- all things I want them to master. Some of the entires are a little out of left field, though...one little suggestion from Duncan and Jamie might prod me into privacy. (I'll say this, though, the reader count is fairly astonishing. I have something like 30 friends and I get nearly 10-15 readers on the blog a day -- I started this thing at Christmas, and it just climbs, it's well well over 500 since Christmas!. I don't know why this is, but it's fascinating.)

At the same time, I'm NOT going to advertise that blog to the students, and I'm going to keep that myspace profile separate from the one that I use to interact with students. Compare: www.myspace.com/justinrogerscooper to www.myspace.com/jrcqueens .

What do you guys think?