Sign in or 
Welcome! This is a website that everyone can build together. It's easy!
Share this
Introduction
Welcome to the English 201: Writing and Technology Homepage!
This wiki is our central meeting place to plan and discuss assignments throughout the school year. Check back regularly to review any new announcements, review the schedule, and ask a question for other students or the instructor.
To visit the Writing Technology Wiki resource for students and instructors, click here.
Course Description
Near the end of Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, written in the 4th century BCE, Socrates famously disparages the emergence of a new technology that in his view leads to simplemindedness and forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it. Whereas speech allows conversants to engage each other’s ideas and pose questions of them in the here-and-now of face-to-face communication, this new technology writing, Socrates argues, distances the author temporally as well as spatially from his/her readers, making it difficult if not impossible for readers to interact with the author in the ways speech allows. Thus, he worries, “when it’s been once written, every speech rolls around everywhere, alike by those who understand as in the same way by those for whom it is not fitting, and it does not know to whom it ought to speak and to whom not.” At the heart of Socrates’s concern is an understanding that technology—even a relatively “simple” one such as alphabetic writing—is by no means neutral and that its introduction into everyday practices can have considerable effect on people’s perceptions of themselves and the world around them.
In this course, we will follow Socrates’s lead by questioning what technology contributes to the act of writing and, further, how various technologies mediate and inform what we come to see and know about the world and ourselves within the world. More specifically, we will focus considerable attention on how technology contributes to the production of knowledge in areas that include the humanities as well as the sciences and social sciences. In each of these areas, we will read and discuss a range of scholars who address the important—and often overlooked—role technology plays in the daily work of research and communication across the university. Over the course of the semester, students will extend their understanding of these issues by learning at least one new writing technology and contributing to a group project that will provide online information and support for instructors and students at UW interested in using new technologies in the writing classroom. In addition, each student will complete a semester-long research project examining a specific technology in their field of study and reporting on it in the form of presentations to the class and a final research paper.
This wiki is our central meeting place to plan and discuss assignments throughout the school year. Check back regularly to review any new announcements, review the schedule, and ask a question for other students or the instructor.To visit the Writing Technology Wiki resource for students and instructors, click here.
Course Description
Near the end of Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, written in the 4th century BCE, Socrates famously disparages the emergence of a new technology that in his view leads to simplemindedness and forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it. Whereas speech allows conversants to engage each other’s ideas and pose questions of them in the here-and-now of face-to-face communication, this new technology writing, Socrates argues, distances the author temporally as well as spatially from his/her readers, making it difficult if not impossible for readers to interact with the author in the ways speech allows. Thus, he worries, “when it’s been once written, every speech rolls around everywhere, alike by those who understand as in the same way by those for whom it is not fitting, and it does not know to whom it ought to speak and to whom not.” At the heart of Socrates’s concern is an understanding that technology—even a relatively “simple” one such as alphabetic writing—is by no means neutral and that its introduction into everyday practices can have considerable effect on people’s perceptions of themselves and the world around them.
In this course, we will follow Socrates’s lead by questioning what technology contributes to the act of writing and, further, how various technologies mediate and inform what we come to see and know about the world and ourselves within the world. More specifically, we will focus considerable attention on how technology contributes to the production of knowledge in areas that include the humanities as well as the sciences and social sciences. In each of these areas, we will read and discuss a range of scholars who address the important—and often overlooked—role technology plays in the daily work of research and communication across the university. Over the course of the semester, students will extend their understanding of these issues by learning at least one new writing technology and contributing to a group project that will provide online information and support for instructors and students at UW interested in using new technologies in the writing classroom. In addition, each student will complete a semester-long research project examining a specific technology in their field of study and reporting on it in the form of presentations to the class and a final research paper.
Announcements | Schedule | Projects & Assignments |
Course Policies | Contact Information | Resources |
rsbarnett |
Latest page update: made by rsbarnett
, Mar 29 2009, 2:51 PM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
Edited by rsbarnett
1 word deleted view changes - complete history) |
|
Keyword tags:
assignments
class
classroom
classroom wiki
homework
students
study guides
Syllabus
More Info: links to this page
|
There are no threads for this page.
Be the first to start a new thread.
