The inquisitive, pedagogy-nerds at WritingwithMachines are excited to resume our conversation about teaching, writing, and technology in the 2018 fall semester.

This semester, we are following the lead of our colleagues at MiraCosta and the CUE Equity-minded Teaching Institute who are focused on equity research, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and contemplative projects that facilitate more inclusive and meaningful learning experiences.

Pursuing this work, we will host a table at the Pedagogical Breakfast during MiraCosta’s FLEX week. We will welcome a cohort of new and returning faculty to the 2nd half of our 10-week Certification Sequence, which begins September 4th. We will also host 2-3 discussions over the course of the semester focused on pertinent topics:

• Topic 1: technology and writing in the traditional, onsite classroom
• Topic 2: contemplative projects in the digital writing classroom
• Topic 3: equity-minded course design that facilitates recursive reading/writing experiences

Each of these discussion will kick off with an email invitation to all MiraCosta faculty to contribute resources, perspectives, questions, theories, hopes, and dreams to a discussion board in our Canvas site, which will be collected into an annotated bibliography. Over the course of a two-week window, those who are interested will explore the topic independently via research, classroom practices, skepticism, questions, and ambitious proposals. At the end of the two weeks, those who participate will be invited to join a culminating discussion in Zoom or, who knows, maybe we will help break in MiraCosta’s new Teaching and Learning Center! All time spent in any of the activities described above can be claimed for FLEX credit. The result of this work, including an archive of the meeting, will be published to this blog.

If you are interested in participating in these WritingwithMachines Discussions, please look for emails coming to your inbox throughout the semester. Also, if you are interested in completing or beginning our Certification Sequence, please email curry at cmitchell@miracosta.edu.

Thank you for taking the time to consider participating in our community of practice. Have an excellent semester.