Web 2.0 for teaching -- my first experiment (1)

Towards the end of last semester, I made my first serious attempt to use some of the material from Bill's Web 2.0 course in my undergraduate teaching.

Some of you may remember that, as part of that course, I started developing a wiki suitable for use by my special option students. The main aim of the wiki was to get the students collaborating on editing some seventeenth-century texts by women. One of the points I make repeatedly during this course (which is on women writers, 1580-1700) is about the importance of taking the editing process into account when reading women's writing from the early modern period. Our week 5 seminar is entirely devoted to the issue of editing. The idea behind the wiki was that students' understanding of editing would be much improved if they tried it for themselves.

Ideally I would have introduced the wiki at an early stage in the semester -- and definitely in time for the week 5 seminar. That I didn't manage this is partly due to lack of time, partly to the fact that I had reservations about requiring students to register to contribute to a Google wiki. (And now you'll probably tell me that registration isn't necessary for wikis ...)

I might have dropped the idea altogether but for two things. One was that I found I had to replan my week 10 seminar, which I hadn't been happy with in previous years, and suddenly realised that the editing exercise -- if it worked -- would bolster exactly the area of the seminar that had seemed thin before. The other was my realisation that I could run the exercise by inviting students to collaborate with me on a Google doc, without any need for separate registration.

So I went ahead. The seminar was on Aphra Behn: both her prose work Oroonoko and a selection of her poetry. It's rather a lot to fit into one seminar, and I've always found in the past that discussion of Oroonoko totally crowded out the poetry. It doesn't help that the selection of Behn's poetry in the anthology we use is rather meagre. My hope was that the online editing exercise might focus students' minds both on the poetry itself and reinforce some of the ideas about editing we'd addressed early in the semester.

I skimmed through Behn's poetry, and found two texts that looked promising. One was a rather scurrilous poem, advising the Earl of Kildare against his intended marriage to (in Behn's view) a loose woman; the other was a verse letter addressed to Behn's fellow-poet (but social superior) Anne Wharton. I chose the first because it's such a contrast to the rather pious, worthy poetry the students would have been studying earlier in the semester, the second because it's a rare and interesting example of two women from this period reading and complimenting each other's work and can also be used to raise issues of how women writers in this period relate to the male-authored canon (since the premise for the exchange between Behn and Wharton was an elegy Behn had written on Wharton's uncle, the poet Rochester).

I found texts of both these poems on the web (non-copyright sites!), and pasted them into my Google doc. Then I wrote a few basic instructions, warned the students, and issued my invitation to collaborate on the document. And waited to see what, if anything, would happen next.

Like shopping? Become a postgraduate!

Encountered on Ben Goldacre's Twitter page, a marvellous nursing recruitment ad. from the 1960s.

I wonder if we could use similar techniques to attract postgraduates.

Only joking.

Scary Story

According to a story in today's Guardian, Edexcel has plans to use computers to mark one of its English language exams, the Pearson Test of English Academic. Edexcel claims that using computers will not only be more efficient than employing humans, but will also help ensure consistency of marking practice, since computers don't get tired or suffer from subjective bias.

I dare say, as usual, there is more to this story than the journalists have seen fit to tell us, but it's hard not to see this as part of a worrying trend. Edexcel insist that there are no plans to use computers to mark either GCSE or A level English exams, but do we believe them? 'No plans to use' is such a handy phrase.

Someone taking Web 2.0 seriously?

Or does Arnie just care about the cash?

Marilynne Robinson

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that I have recently added a list of my current reading to this blog (see left sidebar). I'm planning to post about this when marking permits, but since one of the authors listed there is Marilynne Robinson I thought I shouldn't miss the opportunity to celebrate her success in this year's Orange Prize, announced last night.

Home, her prize-winning novel, is a companion to Gilead (published 2005). I read Gilead some 18 months ago, but I have a very poor memory for fiction these days so thought I would reread it before starting on Home. (The asterisk against titles in the sidebar indicates a reread.)

The Guardian last Saturday carried an interview with Robinson, and today's paper has an interesting article by Andrew Brown on the role of Calvinism in her fiction.

Not All That It Seems

The online Guardian, via Google Reader, has just alerted me to what looks at first sight like a marvellous new resource: British Literary Manuscripts Online. The preview provided by The Guardian includes images from manuscripts by Pope, Bronte (Charlotte) and Wilde -- some of which are even readable on-screen. You can see Pope's corrections to his translation of the Odyssey, and also Wilde's redrafting of one of his more famous epigrams. I can see the latter being tremendously useful to me in the Manuscript and Print lecture I give our first-year literature students in semester 1, when I try to encourage them to see literary texts in terms of production, transmission and reception rather simply as finished, immutable and iconic.

The downside, however -- which isn't apparent until you read the small print (actually, follow the links) in the article -- is that this is a commercial resource which users will have to pay for. (The article is, in fact, closely based on a press release from the publishers, Gale.) I followed links to the 'BLMO brochure' and 'BLMO factsheet', and in neither -- admittedly, on a very quick reading -- are there any details of how much the product will cost. 'Very expensive indeed', is my guess -- probably 5 figures. Which puts it way beyond the budget for our own library, sad to say.

Reading Past and Present

I'm still thinking through what I'm going to do with this blog now that the Web 2.0 course has finished. One thing I will unquestionably want to do is blog about teaching matters -- a subject which is never likely to run dry.

Another thing -- more for my own interest -- is that I plan to use Early Modern Gillian to help keep track of my leisure reading. I've already blogged at different times about books I've been reading such as The Rest Is Noise and For Lust of Knowing. I realise that the books I read in my spare time are likely to be of interest only to me, but I'm hoping that by blogging on this subject I will be encouraged to (1) read a more interesting range of books and (2) remember what I've read rather better than I do at the moment. My memory for books read used to be quite good; it's very poor nowadays. This may just be age, but I'm willing to try what training and keeping better records can do.

So I'm taking a twofold approach. Books I'm currently reading will be posted on the sidebar of Early Modern Gillian. When I finish a book, I will delete it from the sidebar and post it to my new account on Library Thing. I've made a start on my Library Thing account by posting every non-work book I can remember reading this year -- not even shrinking from admitting to the chicklit (some of which, I should point out, was semi-work anyway -- books I knew one of my dissertation students was planning to write on). In principle, I like the social networking aspect of Library Thing -- though I've yet to notice it having much effect in practice.

I'm a bit sceptical about how long this will last, but for the time being it amuses me.