|
Course Focus — Writing for the Web
New professional writing course includes blogging projects
By Meagan Parrish
 The phenomenon of blogging has opened a new realm for people to exchange ideas and information. Much more than just personal diaries, blogging has also forever transformed the world of professional journalism. In order to keep up with this rapidly changing market, MATC is now offering a new course to prepare students who want to be a part of the expanding profession of web writing.
This fall, Writing for the Web will be taught for the first time at MATC by Martha Schwer, who has been maintaining her own blog on poetry and teaching since 2002. Charismatic and energetic about the course she has developed, Schwer hopes students will come away from it with a “personal vision of what kind of power their voice can have.”
Schwer has designed the class so that students will create and maintain their own blogs throughout the semester. Students will be published online; at the same time, students will be introduced to the important concept of writing for a targeted audience.
Students will also have an opportunity to create audio blogs and work with non-linear writing, which is the kind of script development used for video games and interactive web sites.
Although the coursework requires students to put their ideas online, Schwer stressed that it is not vital to be computer savvy.
“You don’t have to have a lot of computer skills,” Schwer explained.
Schwer expects students will enjoy the course’s Web-based projects. They will also gain an understanding of the legal and ethical issues of blogging.
“Lots of [bloggers] violate the law and don’t realize it. Some don’t understand that the things they say could be libelous. Political free speech is protected but you can’t say those same kinds of things about your neighbor,” Schwer said, referring to the more fanatical viewpoints that are often popular online.
In many ways, the law hasn’t caught up to how information moves on the internet, Schwer said, which causes copyright laws to also be very “murky.”
Overall, the course is designed to help students approach blogging from a professional point of view. This addition to MATC’s English curriculum may be especially timely for students entering the world of journalism, where some fear blog writing may be taking over.
Schwer explained that people really respond to the immediacy of blogs such as those posted by individuals trapped in New Orleans during the ordeal of Hurricane Katrina. Nonetheless, Schwer said she could see blogs only taking the place of editorials and not news writing.
Schwer maintained, however, that newspaper publishers “should be worried” as the Internet has changed the way information is delivered to the masses. Anyone can now easily start a Web-based news organization.
Journalism students should also probably be prepared for this new world of journalism, as Web-based writing is becoming an important and needed skill for students entering the field of journalism.
Writing for the Web will likely become a component of the Journalism Certificate that is being developed at MATC. Currently the course is also one of four required for a Technical Communications Certificate that Schwer said would work well for students seeking a career in the medical, scientific or graphic design fields.
As a course created to keep MATC students on the cutting edge of technology and academia, Schwer said she feels the Writing for the Web course is “appropriate for who we are as a college.” |
