I think Doug's right, but I'd push it a bit further (surprise,
surprise). Doug says:
> This is why web publication, like any other form of publication,
> MUST be the culmination of a complex process of drafting,
> exchanging drafts, responding, commenting, exploring--a process in
> which the instructor is intimately involved. The product is just
> the icing on the cake.
What I want to suggest is that it's got to be a beginning itself.
Not icing, or at least not icing unless we see the cake as a step in
a food chain . . .
What's wrong with the product metaphor is that it presumes that once
you've got the product it's the end of the process. But in fact
every utterance is the _middle_ of a process. (Bakhtin: a response
to a previous utterance and an anticipation of a further response.)
When we talk about someone to read these things we need to be clear
about this: we're not looking for some undifferentiated mass to
admire it; we're looking for a situation in which the text will
serve a function for some real person.
-- Russ
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Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Learning and Teaching
Department of English )_ __)_|_)__ __) Development Office
St. Thomas University | )____) | EMAIL:[log in to unmask]
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