Blogs, Landscape, Narrative: Blogging to link Ecoliterature and Experiential Learning
Summary: 1. Integrating WordPress features for course management
2. Using blogs for journals, discussion questions, short essays, and other assignments
3. Gathering student experiences in one website and preserving a record of student responses
4. Providing a webspace to link course texts with experiential learning
Description:
This presentation will focus on two distinct ways to integrate blogs in teaching: to facilitate questions, responses and analysis in the study of ecoliterature and wilderness philosophy; and, to document and track experiences in experiential learning. The course utilized WordPress software to facilitate these two aspects of blogging in a Winter Term class at DePauw University. Over the three weeks of the class, the WordPress blog allowed students to document and respond to west-central Indiana landscapes, which resulted in a full-class narrative. Many writers of ecoliterature explore the idea of landscape and narrative. In Barry Lopez's essay "Landscape and Narrative," he writes that he "think[s] of two landscapes--one outside the self, the other within." Later in the essay, he opines that "the interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes." Blogging allowed the students to record their changing "interior landscapes" in response to the ideas in the ecoliterature readings and to hiking and exploring Indiana.
The WordPress site facilitated the expected interactivity and collaboration of Web 2.0. The page and blogroll functions provided excellent tools for course management and information gathering and dissemination. Moreover, students had to post reading-response blogs and discussion question comments for each class meeting, which improved the students' preparation for class discussion and led to more exposure to authors. In a three-week course, we read books by Jon Krakauer, Roderick Nash, Janisse Ray, and Terry Tempest Williams and numerous additional essays by relevant ecowriters. Without the WordPress blog, the class would not have been able to cover this much material and also generate shorter essays relevant to the readings.
Blogging also allowed students to record reactions and responses to the course's many field trips. Students experienced old-growth forests, pristine streams, rare ecosystems, and recovering ecosystems, all within an hour's drive of Greencastle, Indiana. These outdoor experiences directly related to the texts covered in the class. Throughout the term, many blogging assignments were designed to relate outdoor experiences to the readings in ecoliterature and wilderness philosophy. Moreover, each student's blog recorded their changing "interior landscapes." Each student's blog showed their own personal narrative. Each student's blog combined to create a landscape narrative of one January spent with books and the outdoors in Indiana.
The WordPress site facilitated the expected interactivity and collaboration of Web 2.0. The page and blogroll functions provided excellent tools for course management and information gathering and dissemination. Moreover, students had to post reading-response blogs and discussion question comments for each class meeting, which improved the students' preparation for class discussion and led to more exposure to authors. In a three-week course, we read books by Jon Krakauer, Roderick Nash, Janisse Ray, and Terry Tempest Williams and numerous additional essays by relevant ecowriters. Without the WordPress blog, the class would not have been able to cover this much material and also generate shorter essays relevant to the readings.
Blogging also allowed students to record reactions and responses to the course's many field trips. Students experienced old-growth forests, pristine streams, rare ecosystems, and recovering ecosystems, all within an hour's drive of Greencastle, Indiana. These outdoor experiences directly related to the texts covered in the class. Throughout the term, many blogging assignments were designed to relate outdoor experiences to the readings in ecoliterature and wilderness philosophy. Moreover, each student's blog recorded their changing "interior landscapes." Each student's blog showed their own personal narrative. Each student's blog combined to create a landscape narrative of one January spent with books and the outdoors in Indiana.
Kevin McKelvey
Visiting Assistant Professor
University of Indianapolis
Visiting Assistant Professor
University of Indianapolis
Kevin McKelvey currently teaches writing, editing and publishing at the University of Indianapolis. Recent poems are forthcoming in Cutthroat and The Pinch.