planning

After giving the matter some thought, I think we should switch our project tag from “whitman20” to “ww20” on the proposition that shorter is better for services such as twitter.  So, please update your previously tagged items on social bookmarking services such as twitter and social photo services such as flickr, and please use “ww20” from this point forward.

Whitman’s oeuvre may argue against the thought that shorter is better, but I think that we do have to make some allowances for modern technology!

Areas of Concern

getting courses talking to each other – creating interaction between class

• requiring commenting across blogs
• shared projects

— Need training Manual so that on first class students can be walked through blogging
— Knowing structure/procedure for interschool connections — protocol for that
— Groups/BuddyPress stuff/Twitter

— add events calendar
— schedule a weekly conference call
— during conference call — discuss highlights of week, make a quick list, send out to everyone involved in project
— blog post after class — take five minutes at the end of class and brainstorm — most important thing we did today

— worried that things are too distributed — how many things do I have to keep up with and how diluted to conversations become if they’re happening in six different spaces instead of one space or two spaces

— create introductory video/screencast that can be shown in all classes on the first day

– need

By end of the second week: personal intro
First Assignment — Introduction of self through sections of Leaves of Grass/”Song of Myself” — find six
— find an image or video that illustrates that passage — flickr, YouTube
goals — practice technology — get to know other o
— grab six lines — comment on why that passage is meaningful to you
— why does that resonate with you
— comment on at least one blog from each class

Second Assignment: Cultural Contexts/Cultural Artifacts
scalpel, surgical instruments, train, ferries, bucket full of feet, slippers, hospitals, hats, plumbing, lincoln lecture, laurel creek, shoemaking, printing press, penny paper/newspaper, Horace Traubel, Ford’s theater, slouch hat, opera, art/realism, Eakins, daguerreotypes, Fred Gray society, phrenology, painting (someone’s NY), Pfaff’s beerhall, omnibus, diet food, lincoln’s funeral, cemeteries, rural park/cemetery unit, carpentry tools,
Each student responsible for providing cultural context
possibilities — everything from material object (ex. slouch hat. ex. Camden — annual lincoln lecture ww gave — find invitation to that lecture — that could be starting point for finding out ww’s role — late in life — why giving lecture
— ex. surgical instruments — find

find artifact — find Whitman’s writings

Third Assignment
Different Editions of Leaves of Grass as structuring assignment — CommentPress
–students limited to doing a hypertext of a poem that was new to that edition
— so that they begin to understand what is new to that edition
— NYC – 1855/1856/1860 // Journalism/ Franklin Evans //
— UMW/Fredericksburg – 1865 (Drum Taps)/1867/1871-2 // Memoranda During the War
— Camden – 1876/1881-2/1892 Deathbed // Two Rivulets
— Using the WW Archive

Field Trips
— documenting experience
— take photos — upload content
— see other students
What do we do with field trips

final project that shows immersion

cinepoem / video / online museum / research essay
annotated map / mp3 – rap / google maps (MyMaps)

Final project — video project — every student in every class reads a WW text/poem in a specific place
— locate videos on the map

each used a map of town as home page for site
— ex. use a civil war era map of f-burg — links on it that would correspond to

bibliographic essay —

choose one sound

Biography — int

Looking for Whitman
March 2009 Planning Meetings
New York City College of Technology, CUNY
March 6-8, 2009

Itinerary:
Friday, March 6
Participants arrive at NuHotel, Brooklyn, check in. Call Matt with any problems

~ 7pm — Optional gathering for dinner/drinks in Brooklyn. Call Matt if interested in attending.

Saturday, March 7
Location: City Tech, Namm Building Room 601B

9am-9:30am — Welcome/Opening Remarks/Introductions

9:30am-12pm — Presentation/Technology Workshop
Jim Groom, Instructional Technologist, University of Mary Washington

12pm -1pm — Lunch — Brooklyn pizza delivered from Fascati’s Pizza

1pm-2pm — Course Content/Planning Discussion

2pm-4pm — Lecture/Discussion: “Walt Whitman, One of the B’hoys: Leaves of Grass and Manhattan Street Culture.” David Reynolds, Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Location: City Tech, Atrium Building Room 632

4pm-5pm— Course Content/Planning Discussion

~7pm— Optional dinner/drinks

Sunday, March 8
Location: City Tech, Namm Building Room 601B

9am-10am— Technology and Pedagogy Discussion/Workshop; Future Meetings Discussions

10am-11am — Resource Planning Discussion

11am-1pm — “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” walking tour led by Jesse Merandy, Ph.D. Candidate in English, CUNY Graduate Center. Please visit http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/CBF/walking%20tour/index.html and download the audio files to a mobile music device if you have one

1pm-1:30pm— Closing Ceremonies