Looks great Matt - what other texts are you thinking about using (either primary or secondary)?

Despite its length, I think that I'd be tempted by _House of Leaves_.

Also - as a side note - if you want to dodge teaching HTML, you can always point them towards the excellent Peer Training program with OIT. If you call over, they might even set up a session just for your class (for those who need it).

I had a similar problem... and I've found that introducing students to weblogs helps accelerate students' confidence in cyberspace.

I used to each a 300-level course that tried to combine technical skills with theory, and as the technology advanced, the theory got more and more compressed. I had them borrow communal copies of Landow's Hypertext from the bookstore, but asked them to purchase Aarseth's Cybertext.

Now I'm teaching a 200-level course that doesn't have much room for theory. I start with familiar forms such as text-messaging and e-mail, and will end up talking about Wikis. It's really a writing course, and it's offered under a "journalism" umbrella, so I've had to look at texts through the lens of that profession. And in a course that compressed, while student did feel comfortable using WYSIWYG tools, I was worred that instead of teaching HTML authorship I was teaching them "how to use MS FrontPage" -- the wizards and non-standard gadgets distracted them from the more basic business of making web pages. So I'm using FrontPage express -- a free program, written before Microsoft started trying to take over the Internet with its non-standard web features.

I'll also be teaching a separate 300-level seminar in media aesthetics -- there will be more room for theory in that course, though the 200-level course is not a prerequisite.

For the first time, I've tried getting my e-text students to blog -- and so far it's been very successful in terms of getting students to see exactly what is different about hypertext, without distracting them with too many design issues up front. I also ran into the unexpected problem of some students taking such an ownership to their weblogs that the homework assignements seemed like an intrusion.

A non-content-related commment: please consider turning off justification in your text; it makes for very awkward visually distracting spacing between words. :(

Oh, but I love justification! Even when I draft my own writng I _need_ justification turned on. Those ragged right margins drive me crazy. I know, it's a weird tick and arguably counter-productive, as you suggest--and I'm really not a control freak--but don't we all have our formatting fetishes?

Jason--I'm going to try to have them work through each of extended examples in Cybertext, including afternoon. They'll also read Ullman's The Bug, and lots of e-literature on the Web. I'll post the syllabus when it's ready this winter.

Nice. For added hacker freakiness, you could always screen Pi. ;)

Looking forward to seeing the whole syllabus...