more on writing and the world

i've been thinking about the visual, the technological, the everyday and how we can bring these into the writing classroom and also create our own 'texts' that circulate within and beyond that classroom. at csu some comp folks used to say that the intro comp classroom is potentially the best teaching and learning space on campus because the classes are small (compared to the hundreds of folks in intro sociology lectures or etc) and it's so open to potential. i'm reading this lately as a great potential to bring the texts of the 'world' into the small community of a writing class and making them our own (through discussion, analysis, deconstruction, reconstruction...) and then thinking about our own writing in larger than classroom ways (not necessarily how writing might change the world but how any kind of writing or writing skill that is taken further than this intro comp class might have an effect on the person who then functions in the world...if there is any sense in that. i'll keep thinking about this as i start to develop a syllabus.