The approach [being used for a particular course] is quite simple: have the students respond to each and every reading through the class blog by selecting three or more categories that define their understanding of the text, then they need to explain their choice of this category (which is wide open) with a close reading (read more about the approach here). Simple enough.
(Someone please tell me if I have offended blog ethics and/or etiquette in my citation.)
This morning, I finally got around to attending to the reading more carefully; now that I am nearing earth again, I think I have the beginnings of a way to structure my Intro to Philosophy course. The epiphany came in reading the linked description of the approach (again, here). From that, I quote: "...it's a kind of wild way to think about category tagging not so much as an after-thought or general repository of ideas, but as a specific act of declaratively defining the way in which they closely read the works and write about them." (emphasis mine.)
In my course, we will read canonical texts (works by the philosophers typically covered in a survey course) and we consider contemporary "texts" in film, advertising series, television, etc. By using reflective blogs tagged as students' declarative definitions, I imagine that we can construct an ongoing conversation that engages texts carefully and collaboratively.
Within this dialogue, our alternating engagement with ancient and contemporary texts can provide a "temporal distance" from which we may more clearly see our pre-judgments. I will provide the first tags from which the students choose, but students will be able to add tags. (Here is my attempt to play in a world of "always already" and the "anticipation of completeness" without ignoring the hegemonic power of prior scholarship and my own pre-judgments. Thanks, Hans Gadamer and all the post-moderns.)
Back to Groom's work....I did begin there....I am particularly attracted to the "weighted tag/category cloud." (I add my thanks, D'Arcy!) Now I'm off to figure out how to make this happen.
Well, right after I figure out what book/s the students will need. This appears to be the only concern of the institution. Until student evaluations roll 'round, at least.
