Ideas from David Blakesley

David Blakesley visited NDSU yesterday to talk about his new handbook with Thompson publishers, and to talk more generally about teaching and composing with technology. Stimulating day; here are some highlights:

1. David showed us and talked about his own composing practices. He frequently composes in Adobe Acrobat and InDesign, and showed us the advantages of doing so for assembling an Acrobat presentation or preparing a visually rich manuscript, like his handbook, for publication.

2. He showed us the handbook companion website, which is going to be maintained via Drupal, and many in attendance had questions about teaching with Drupal. I just found this description of the Purdue approach to Drupal, written by Jeremy Trirrel.

3. David showed Kenneth Burke's, and some of his own, "Flowerishes," which gave me some ideas for adding a visual component to the commentary assignment I use in first-year comp.

4. He talked about some interesting assignments, including some developed by Bill Covino (dialogue and one other) and David Jolliffe (inquiry contract). Definitely some ideas worth following up on.

Hopefully others captured some additional ideas I have not captured.