Lesson 1:1

 ENGLISH 470A: CANADIAN STUIDES

OH CANADA! “OUR HOME AND NATIVE LAND”

Lesson 1:1 Making Connections

Topics:

  • Introduction to the course
  • Overview of syllabus
  • Collaborative online working spaces
  • Working in self-organizing groups
  • Blogging guidelines and criteria

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

  • Find the resources and understand the requirements for this course
  • Explain how to fulfill the online requirements for this course
  • Demonstrate skills in setting up weblogs as a means for communication and building narratives.

Lesson 1:1 Description: ­

This lesson begins with an introductory vlog from your instructor that includes an overview of the syllabus.  As well, some discussion on the dynamics of the world wide web (www) and online self-organizing groups is necessary for two reasons: 1) to prepare students to work collaboratively online, and 2) to begin what will become an ongoing part of our studies: a questioning of how the www is inspiring and facilitating new genres of both literature and storytelling.  Indeed, our course of studies will come full circle by returning to this discussion in Unit 4 with the class Intervention Conference.  This lesson will also assist you technically in setting up your individual blog; it will introduce blogging standards and techniques and provide links to a tutorial to get you started.

Required Readings/ Viewing

Assignment 1:1:  Please see due dates on the Course Schedule

Following the instructions in this lesson, set up your blog and write a short introduction (300 – 400 words) that includes at least two hyperlinks and a visual. This introduction should, 1) welcome your readers, 2) include a brief description of the course, and 3) some commentary on your expectations for this course of studies. Place a link to your blog  on our Face Book page. Please see the Course Schedule for due dates.

1:1 Lesson:

We begin the semester by examining the relations between stories and land, more specifically, the land we call home.  Along the way we will ask many questions of the stories we have been told, and the stories we tell ourselves about our “Home(s) and Native Land(s).” The semester will end with an Intervention Conference offering up ideas on how to change the stories we tell ourselves, and the way we tell our stories.  The www offers remarkable potential for stimulating this kind of change.  And indeed, your research teams may want to explore this potential when it comes to the ultimate challenge of this course: the final conference in which you will be asked to work collaboratively to invent innovative strategies for shaping the future of Canadian Literature.

You should begin this lesson by viewing the Introductory Vlog where you will find a welcome video that introduces your instructor and an overview of the class syllabus. Open the class syllabus and follow along. You are encouraged to ask questions or leave commentary on your instructor’s blog.

Introduction to working on the World Wide Web

 The website genre known as the “web log” or “blog […] provides a fertile primordial soup from which online self-organizing social systems can emerge. The day-to-day tasks of creating new content, adding commentary, evaluating the quality of submitted material, providing user support and answering questions, and other tasks are distributed across the entire community via the blog infrastructure (Edwards & Wilye 1).

The www and its accompanying social media platforms and tools are re-shaping how we communicate and opening up new spaces for inventing new forms of communication, which include new types of social relationships (online self-organizing research groups), and new forms of pedagogy (student activated learning) and new genres of literature and story-telling (blogging, digital literature and digital story-telling).  An ongoing concern for our course of studies is examining how the www, as a communication tool with all these capacities, impacts the learning process and facilitates student-activated and collaborative learning.

Collaborative Online Working Spaces

There is much interesting and ongoing research on the phenomenon of online self-organizing groups and societies that indicate people with common interests are capable of finding each other via the www (by the thousands) and organizing themselves into active and effective research and problem solving groups with very little mediation. Indeed, in some ways, the online platform that you chose to use, becomes the mediator — in so much as the platform determines the capacity and style of interactivity (Edwards & Wiley, 2007).

Experience with blogging is not necessary; you will be guided and instructed on how to begin and the expectation is that digital literacy skills will develop over the course of the semester.  Below you will find detailed instructions and guidelines on how to approach your blogging assignments as well as links to tutorials on how to set up your blog.  But, before you concern yourself with these more technical tasks, I want to give you a larger conceptual overview of how we will work together.

Picture a spider’s web. In the center of that web sits a spider carefully weaving threads connecting and expanding each circle of the web. Your instructor is the spider, your insights and questions are the threads, and our course of studies is the web we are building together.  You, the students, will be creating the threads; it is your thoughts, reflections, insights and questions that the instructor will string together, joining each thread through hyperlinks.  You have two ways of creating these threads: 1) with your blog assignments and 2) with your comments on each other’s blogs.

Self-Organizing Research Teams:

 We will be working in research teams with four members each, which means that each student must find three research partners. Self-organizing means you will create your own groups. The way to find your group members is by reading each other’s blogs and comments and engaging with students who have common interests and compatible work habits.  The course syllabus includes deadline dates for this process.

Blogging Standards and Criteria

At the end of each lesson you will find a list of blog questions. You will select one of these questions to address on your blog.  Class blogs will be hyperlinked together via the instructor’s blog and you are expected to question and comment on each other’s answers with the purpose of creating dialogue.  To be clear — each student will read two student blogs and make two substantive comments each week.

With these blog assignments students will be assisting each other in exploring our questions.  In other words, you are blogging the answers to your assigned question with the purpose of enlightening your classmates with your insights and observations.  Or alternatively, creating dialogue with questions and responses to your classmates. You will find more technical assistance with setting up your blog below.

How to set up your Blog:

Please go to the U.B.C. Blogs page where you will find instructions:   https://lthub.ubc.ca/guides/ubc-blogs/

If you need extra assistance with getting started, please feel free to ask your instructor for assistance. Once your blog is set up you need to post a link on your instructor’s blog in the comment box.

Blogging Guidelines:

 “Instructional blogging operates as a knowledge-centered instructional tool. In this model the instructor involves students in research activities, engages them in discussions, and leads them through developmental concepts of the discipline’s knowledge domain” (Glogoff 1).

BLOGGING GUIDELINES

  • Your blogs can be reflective and based solely on your understanding of our assigned readings.
  • Or, your blogs may be scholarly and based on outside research.
  • Or, you may choose a combination of reflective and scholarly: you have choices to make.
  • Blog entries will address assigned questions for each lesson and be posted according to the schedule on our syllabus.
  • Blog entries should be a minimum of 500 words.
  • Each blog should contain at least two hyperlinks.
  • The quality/credibility and relevance of your hyperlinks will impact the instructor’s evaluation. *See an example below please.
  • Hyperlinks must be correctly cited using MLA Handbook, 7th ed. style in a works cited list at  the end of each blog entry.
  • Your links are meant to inspire commentary and provoke insights on your post.
  • NO Wikipedia links.  Wikipedia can be a good source for finding scholarly sources and sources which are pertinent to your research concerns. But Wiki is too easy, I want you to broaden your horizons and explore the www for interesting sources that are new to you.
  • No links to dictionary definitions.
  • You may choose what kind of source you want to use: scholarly articles, popular articles, , literature, editorials, poems, you tubes, websites, Blogs, images, graphs, National Film board … .
  • Images and videos must be correctly cited.
  • As the course progresses you will have the opportunity to try your hand at a little story telling with your blogs.
  • You will note that your first six blogs are worth 10% and your last three blogs are worth 20%; this is to give you the opportunity to develop your voice as a blogger – so, if this is all new to you, please relax and enjoy the process of learning to blog and hyperlink.

Blog commentary

Students are required to read two student blogs and post a significant and relevant observation or question in the comment box of each blog.

  • The comment offers a new insight or a new example from the text that will enlarge the original answer
  • The comment concludes with a question with a measure of complexity

Blog Assignments are found at the end of each lesson.

Example of a blog that hyperlinks with expertise:

HYPERLINKING GGRW

Some excellent websites to use as resources for hyperlinking:

These are examples to get you started, feel free to explore and discover our own sources. Thank you.