a.

auto-e blog:

Autoethnography or "auto-e" can range from the highly evocative to the highly analytic, but always calls attention to the self within a given context of study or inquiry. "Ethnography" involves the study of peoples and culture and "auto" can be traced back to the Greek word autos and literally means "self." Therefore, by definition, autoethnography studies the representations of the individual "self" performing the study while studying other peoples or cultures.

The following new literacies entry simultaneously performs a reflexive task and a digital one. In the spring of 2010, I designed and maintained a 36-entry blog that created an autoethnography of my reflexive experience as a graduate student and poet. Students in a secondary or post-secondary context can be asked to perform a similar procedure requiring them to autoethnographically examine themselves over the course of a term.

The use of the "Weblog" or blog genre in the classroom constitutes a new literacy being embraced by many practicing educators. However, combining auto-e with blogging adds another layer of new literacy and calls for the blogger to reflexively remain aware of herself while blogging and within larger audiences, affinities, and cultures of blogging.

The personal blog Pathways & Ponds models effective composition practices for students and allows students to see a sample of the work they may be assigned. The portrayal of a moment in time, and the capture of a life while living it on a blog, affords students the opportunity to see how their teacher uses new literacy to rhetorically communicate.

Students will be given a more personal look at aspects of their teacher's personal life, how their teacher presents these aspects in a public forum, and perhaps will provide insight into how an author sees herself (or himself) in his or her own composition. Pathways & Ponds grants the reader access to a life and to a functional blog published to the World Wide Web from Writing@CSU (The Writing Studio). The present entry differs from other entries, such as blog-reports, in that it presents an actual portrayal of a graduate student over the course of an entire semester.

Click here to view the blog Pathways & Ponds or on the image below...

Assistant Professor of English Dr. Sue Doe displayed the work of E633 - Autoethnography on a wall in the Department of English at Colorado State University in the spring of 2010 (performed in the image below). Similar displays can also be used to present autoethnographic work of students in the hall of a middle or high school.

Dr. Sue Doe, Assistant Professor of English, displayed the work of

E633 - Autoethnography on a wall in the English Department at

Colorado State University in the spring of 2010.