Here are some brief descriptions of ideas for courses at Richard Stockton College, should I take a position there as a full time professor:

New Media for Children and Education

This will be a workshop course in how to design web sites and Flash applications for preschool children and for the classroom. What sort of interfaces appeal to children? How can new media augment a traditional education? Students will spend a month learning Macromedia Fireworks (an imaging program) and Flash (an interactive graphics program). We will also read and discuss children and creative educational literature and websites. For the second half of the semester, students will work on a final project that has either an educational function or is geared toward children.

Hypertext Fiction, Poetry and Non-fiction

This will be a workshop course for which the first half will be entirely devoted to writing in the various genres above with traditional “workshopping” critique sessions, and reading the classics of hypertext literature and holding up to the same values we expect of print literature. During this time, rudimentary skills in Fireworks and Dreamweaver will be acquired along with basic typesetting skills. For the second half of the semester, students will work on a final project that will encompass issues of writing, design and interactivity that characterize a successful hypertext work while keeping an eye on its print manifestation.

Writing for Video Games

In this class, we will read and play several of the “classic” video games that involve textual experiences by the users with a mind to treating the text like one would a screenplay — as a literary genre primarily associated with a visual (and highly lucrative) medium. We will consider these games in relation to the traditional genres of literature, such as drama and fiction, and read several interactive fiction texts. Students will also acquire a working knowledge of a software program or programming language (not sure which one yet), and work on crafting textual, interactive experiences in these programs.

Electronic Editing and Publishing

This is a workshop in print design (in Photoshop and Illustrator), typesetting (in Quark if they have it in the Mac lab, in Word if not) and print-on-demand services such as Lulu.com. Students will have produced a professional looking perfect bound publication by the end of the class. The content will be a collection of writing of some nature – poetry, essays, etc. – which can be either collected online or via submissions from peers. By the end of the class, each student will have conceptualized, edited, designed, typeset, and finally “published” a paperbound book through Lulu.com.