Sunrise in Toba, Mie-ken, February 2003, © Rudolf Ammann
Coming Soon
The idea of a web site created by students has been on my mind for a long time. Initially, I was thinking about an online magazine with regularly updated issues. I discussed the idea with several students, and at one point one of them suggested the name Tawawa for it. The name stuck, the concept didn’t: while rethinking the project a while ago, I concluded that a weblog would be a more adequate form.
Originally I didn’t intend the project to be a course, didn’t believe it could be done as a course. But what with one thing and another (more about this later), I decided to run it as Composition III.
Here’s how it works: for the coming term, my students will be writing about the things they care about and then post their texts to this weblog. There will be no restrictions or rules about content and subject matter: pets, band practice, personal relationships, politics, culture (yes, that includes J-pop and anime), media, the web etc. – all of these things are worthy of description and comment, all of these things come with stories that need to be told.
The site’s infrastructure will allow readers to comment on each posting, right on the same page. Other readers and, of course, the authors may respond to these comments, so my hope for this site is that it will become a place that fosters discussion across geographical boundaries and political borders.