Institute for Writing Dot Ning Dot Com

The Ning site for the Institute is up and running. It’s just getting out of the gate. People have signed up, some additions have been made, but we haven’t begun to spend significant time there. I feel confident that if people start to see it as a place where they can do a lot of their work, that more activity will occur there, but there are a few who are relatively active. Of the 20 or so faculty in the institute, 17 have signed up. Some of these, however, are grad students and non-faculty. I’d like to see more people get involved.

Everyone’s bizzy now with the end of the semester grading, portfolios, meetings, conferences, etc, and given the amount of work going on around the institute, it’s comforting to know that there’s been this much involvement. From my call that I put out last week for folks who wanted to be test pilots with me in the Fall using Ning and the blog function, I got a handful of replies, just about what I wanted.

Next semester, I move from Queens to Staten Island, and David and Chiara (who I’ll be joining) are very open to networked environments, so we’ll be working closely together and I’m pretty sure getting a lot of crap done and enjoying ourselves in the process. I’m really looking forward to the Fall.

In any case, here’s my IWS widget (since wordpress doesn’t allow tampering with CSS.) (One day soon, I’m gonna start blogging from my personal domain and move the colony.)