1.22 Introductions, Blogs, NIH training, and Gee

We spent today's class getting to know one another and talking about what kind of research you might like to do. This course is designed so that you can spend some time studying writing that is relevant to your professional growth - or that is personally valuable to you as a writer. As you can see from the calendar - we will be talking about ideas for research projects for about the first third of the course. So you have some time to think and explore. Pick something you are excited about.

Blogs. The course blogs are an important point of connection for our class. Your posts help you practice using the language researchers use to talk about how writing works and where you can try out ideas. They also create a learning network - where you can check in to see how your classmates replied to assignments and use their answers as input for your own. This is an interactive process - and it is the way learning works. The link list on the side of my blog should be an important resource for you.

In class you set up your blog and sent the link to the course email. If your link works - you should see your blog posted to the right. If it doesn't - we need to be in touch so we can figure out how to get you into the class network.

NIH training.  All researchers who study human activities and relationships, and who work at  institutions that receive government funding are required to tak training in the ethics of worrking with human subjects.  The assignment sheet to the right will direct you to the government site where you can complete your training.

Reading Gee. I went over the assigned reading for Thursday - mostly pointing out terms you should pay attention to. You don't have to completely understand everything in these two chapters (as you see from the calendar, we are going to be reading them, using them, and re-reading them for the first couple of weeks) - but you do need to jump in. Pay attention to important termsdo some thinking about the definitions for: discourse, identity, practice(s), descriptive versus critical discourse analysis (which kind is Gee interested in?), and context. Most importantly, try to understand Gee's language and ideas in terms of your own experience. If you don't get what he is talking about, write questions that you can bring to class. Think about how your research can make use of the questions he associated with the things we build through language.

As I said in class, I am pretty sure all of you know how to do research already. What this class is about - is learning to slow down and talk about the steps in your thinking so you can write about them and explain your findings to others.

For next class:
Get started on the NIH training (assignment sheet is posted to the right)
Read: Gee, Chapters 1 & 2
Blog 1: What kind of writing studies research are you interested in?