Author Archives: kfitz

I changed the link on Lexia to Perplexia on our syllabus to the Iowa Review version, but I couldn’t get that to work properly just now. So I also uncovered the E-literature Collection version, which comes with a note that the project doesn’t run in current browsers on the Mac. I’ve tried Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and can verify that. So, unless you’re willing to install IE on your Mac (which I, for one, won’t), you’ll likely need to track down a Windows machine in order to read Lexia to Perplexia. Sorry about that…

Okay, so, to file away under “what was I thinking”: I’ve assigned you about three times as much reading for today as I ought to have. All I can figure is that I must have thought this was a Wednesday-to-Monday gap, rather than a Monday-to-Wednesday. Here’s what I’m going to ask you to do: read the first twenty pages or so of the Kittler, for now, and then focus in on the first chapter of the Gitelman. We’ll catch up with the rest of it later, I hope.

As I’ve already told those of you who pre-registered for the class last semester, we’re going to be experimenting with several Google applications, including Groups, Docs, and Wave, over the course of the semester. In order to use those applications, you’ll need a working Gmail account that you’re willing to share with the class. If you already have a Gmail account, and haven’t yet sent me that address, please do as ASAP. If you don’t have one, sign up; it’s free!

This site is yours to make of what you want, a space for further interaction, for exploration, for testing out some of the ideas that come up in our discussions or in your papers. You’ll be expected to post your thoughts about our class reading here on the blog, but I also want to see you trying things out here for yourselves, thinking actively about how this blog might be made a useful space for thinking about and experimenting with the technologies that we’re studying this semester.

So any number of things might provide a good topic for a blog post. Here are a few suggestions (slightly modified from a similar list my colleague Meg Worley gave a class of hers):

• Isn’t it cool the way that Author X seems to predict technology Y?
• Aargh, I just can’t get my head around today’s reading.
• Does “jargonterm” mean P or Q — or something else entirely?
• Wow, Reading Z really reminds me of last week’s episode of Lost.
• I could use some feedback on this idea I’ve been wrestling with…
• Did she say A or B in class yesterday? I forgot to write it down.
• Hey, I’m in a play this weekend, and y’all should come!

You’ll no doubt find other things you want to post about, too — things you stumble across on the web that the rest of the class should see, things you find in your research that the rest of the class might be interested in. This kind of sharing is what makes group blogs exciting; I’ll look forward to seeing what you come up with.