Hi All,

My project idea is still up in the air a little bit.  I’m a level three student, so I’m trying to get my dissertation together which is somewhat theoretical and focusing on different thought or logic systems produced by participating in a certain discourse or practice.  My dissertation will likely focus on how the being a patient in psychoanalysis, and thus being an active participant in the kind of thinking required for that practice can be seen in sociologists academic work that is not explicitly psychoanalytic.  My larger idea would be to bust up interdisciplinarity to a certain degree such that we have a new inter-, beyond (the idea of) discipline(s).  This is applicable to this class in terms of the way technology shapes thought processes.  In fact, this came up in class on Thursday when Michael said “we can model behavior in terms of logic”.  This was in reference to the IT flow-chart and how logics shape decisions. Well, I’d be interested to see how we might trace these new logics we are learning in this class into our academic work – not in the tangible evidence of adding in technology into our work, but in how the extended use of certain technologies shapes our logic systems and how we make our arguments.  If someone has ideas on how to make this into a project for the class I’d be super excited.

Since, for now, I’m not seeing a way to do that I’d like to think about another project I am working on which is a website for an on going workshop series on pedagogy.  For now, there is not much on there except menus for where content will go, and I am currently doing it through opencuny. As you all probably know most GC students start teaching in their first or second year with no training.  Sociology students are organizing a day long workshop on March 2nd, open to all, to help teach each other what we know about teaching.  We are planning to have follow up meetings with small groups matched up at the conference that meet monthly, and then to have another workshop in the Fall.  This would continue for years to come, and hopefully will generate enough push for sociology to develop a 3 credit pedagogy class for its students.  I would like to make a website that pulls together the workshop registration and survey data that needs to be collected (for the grant we may get), has a social network aspect for support, and has a wide array of materials sort of like Perdue’s OWL.  This website would be by and for primarily the sociology students at the GC, but would hopefully extend itself and serve as a resource for the GC as a whole and maybe eventually be used as widely as Perdue’s website.

Any feedback on either idea would be much appreciated.