I sat in again on Donald Ross's EngL 3005, American Literature and Cultures I, course at the University of Minnesota on Monday, September 29, 2008. The course schedule for that day indicated that Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor would be taught together. Since I also teach both of these Puritan poets near the beginning of my own American Literature to 1865 course, and since they are two of my favorite poets, I thought this would be another good session to attend.
Donald began the session by looking ahead to the recitation sections for that week. The topic would be Jonathan Edwards' Personal Narrative, a "conversion narrative," and his Images of Divine Things. The comment that I found most significant, in terms of connecting various writers together, which is something I continually try to do in my own course, is that "Edwards takes John Winthrop's ideas of Justice and Mercy and turns it into a story." I'd have to go back and check my own notes to see if I bring that point out in my own class. For some reason, I'm not sure if I do, but then again, I don't teach Edwards every year.
(But that is a topic for another post, or two topics for two other posts: (1) allowing students to "vote" on who they want to read, thus letting them become the "anthologizers," and (2) slowly reducing the number of Puritan writers I teach, since, almost to a class, one common comment at the end of the course is that the Puritans are not really all that interesting to read.)
Donald then moved on to Bradstreet and Taylor, and he made the comment that we would be studying "parallel poems" between the two poets. Again, my ears perked up, since this is also the approach I take. However, I normally teach Bradstreet first, over two days, since I also use her poems to introduce various literary terminology (e.g., couplets, stanzas, rhymes, end-rhyme scheme, iambic feet, tetrameter, pentameter, etc.), followed by a day or so of Taylor. I looked forward to which poems Donald would pair together.
The first pair was Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" and Taylor's "The Preface." The second pair was Bradstreet's "The Flesh and the Spirit" and Taylor's "The Soul and Christ's Reply" (actually, these are two poems). The third pair was done with students pairing up with each other and doing a 4"x6" index-card quiz: Bradstreet's "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" and Taylor's "Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children."
Donald ended the session on two notes. First, he talked about Philip Freneau's "On the Causes of Political ..." as a way to illustrate the short paper that was assigned. Second, he talked about Bradstreet's poem on Queen Elizabeth and likened it to current events about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.
Interestingly, there were some similarities and some differences between the pairs of poems Donald chose and the pairs of poems I normally teach. First, I pair Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" with Taylor's "Prologue," since they are both poems about the act of writing poetry. Second, I pair Bradstreet's "Here Follow Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House" with Taylor's "The Preface," since they are both poems about God both giving and taking away. Third, like Donald, I pair Taylor's "Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children" with Bradstreet's "Before the Birth of One of Her Children," since they are both poems about marriage and rearing children, but I also use other Bradstreet poems here as well, such as "I Had Eight Birds..." and/or one or more of the poems to her husband.
Furthermore, I teach some other poems by each poet, but not in pairs. For example, for Bradstreet, I also teach "The Prologue" and "The Flesh and the Spirit." I sometimes also teach her poems to her parents. And for Taylor, I also teach one of the Meditations, usually #150, I think, "The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended," and "Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold." I sometimes also teach Taylor's "Huswifery."
In all, a most enlightening reflection, and it was nice to see that Donald and I are not so far apart in the pairs we construct. While I normally teach all of the Bradstreet poems first, and then the all the Taylor poems after, I will rethink this part of the course and perhaps proceed, next time, pair by pair, rather than asking students to recall the Bradstreet poems of Monday or Wednesday when encountering the Taylor poems on Friday.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Participating in an Online Role-Play Debate
The role I created for the online role play was "Dale Mikkalson, School Board Member, Neutral." The name comes from my Junior High School Band Director, a man whom I admired and respected, a man somewhat reserved at times, but otherwise very friendly and kind, inquisitive, sensitive, thorough, always available, and very encouraging. You could show up to his house, on a Sunday, with a dented trombone slide, and he'd gladly take it from your hand, take it downstairs to his workshop, and straighten it out for you. And you got the idea that he didn't mind at all--even though, inside, he might have been really steamed!
What I think I changed about this basic characterization is that Dale in the role play is probably a bit more liberal, a bit more of a "rabble-rouser," than the original model. He is definitely more extroverted, more inquisitive. He really wants to get to the heart of the debate, but being on the school board and probably also busy with a job, family, and other community activities, he sees himself as not having the time to do any research of his own, so he's really relying on the research of others.
And he definitely wants to stir things up. For example, he takes on Arv, another school-board member, head on, challenging him to avoid campaigning during the "debate" and to avoid the "business model" of education. (And here's where I think I lost some character consistency throughout my posts: I wasn't exactly clear about whether Dale's seat was up for re-election or not, and Dale is awfully concerned about finances.) Another example is that Dale "goes off" on the Katherine Kersten article in the Star Tribune, an article mentioned by the third school-board member, and tries to bring in to the debate the tension between "liberals" and "conservatives" and a possible hidden conservative agenda in all this talk about single-sex classrooms. Dale's purpose here was not to side-track the debate, I don't think, but to stir things up a bit, perhaps to encourage other characters to respond, if they didn't want to respond to the "research-heavy" posts. School board, and city council, meetings are always like this: There's always someone there, either on the board or in the audience, who likes to bring up tangential issues, either to make things more colorful or to deepen or broaden the debate.
Instead of long posts, Dale read everything but responded briefly and frequently, asking questions, pointing out some trends or observations, and perhaps very subtly indicating that he's probably opposed to this proposal of single-sex classrooms, if for no other reason than no one has explained how much this is going to cost or how it's going to work. Dale is very pragmatic and wants to know the "logistics." A typical school-board member perspective, I think. And, from the assignment of the role play, Dale, as a school-board member, was supposed to be neutral, so I also think this influenced my approach to the character.
In reflecting on the role play so far, I agree with the other student who has already posted her reflection on the Ning. I don't think the "conversation" sounded authentic. It seemed piecemeal, bit-by-bit, rather than interactive, and this might be due, in part, to the asynchronous tool we're using. But, in addition, alliances didn't seem to be formed; characters did not often recall or quote other characters. The other student was, I sensed, frustrated that no one else had responded to her posts, and her posts were good: well researched, well thought-out, and well presented. I agree with her that our students would also be frustrated if this happened to them. They would put all this time and effort into researching and crafting a position, and then they wouldn't get the acknowledgement or satisfaction or affirmation of someone else responding to them, either to counter-argue or to advance their own argument. And I think this would ultimately be deflating/defeating for students.
I wonder if this other student is also right, that readers might skip her post, and others like it, if the posts were too long or "too full of research." Here's where Dale might have some advantage, in that all his posts were very short.
I think the two role-play characters with the most "power" right now are, interestingly, on opposite sides of the debate. Con Expert (Amy) and Pro Teacher (Brent) seem to have the most power--and maybe I shouldn't say "power" but "credibility" (not that the other posts/characters are not credible). But I wonder if this also has to do with the frequency of their posts: they seem more actively involved in the role-play debate at this point.
Finally, I'm not sure how Dale is going to vote tonight. For lack of any good explanations about finances, lawsuits, hiring more teachers, and scheduling, he might side with the "cons" and vote to keep things as is. In terms of my own personal beliefs, Dale's vote might be opposite of how I would vote myself. In terms of if my own personal beliefs on this issue changed over the course of the role play, I'm still thinking about that.
What I think I changed about this basic characterization is that Dale in the role play is probably a bit more liberal, a bit more of a "rabble-rouser," than the original model. He is definitely more extroverted, more inquisitive. He really wants to get to the heart of the debate, but being on the school board and probably also busy with a job, family, and other community activities, he sees himself as not having the time to do any research of his own, so he's really relying on the research of others.
And he definitely wants to stir things up. For example, he takes on Arv, another school-board member, head on, challenging him to avoid campaigning during the "debate" and to avoid the "business model" of education. (And here's where I think I lost some character consistency throughout my posts: I wasn't exactly clear about whether Dale's seat was up for re-election or not, and Dale is awfully concerned about finances.) Another example is that Dale "goes off" on the Katherine Kersten article in the Star Tribune, an article mentioned by the third school-board member, and tries to bring in to the debate the tension between "liberals" and "conservatives" and a possible hidden conservative agenda in all this talk about single-sex classrooms. Dale's purpose here was not to side-track the debate, I don't think, but to stir things up a bit, perhaps to encourage other characters to respond, if they didn't want to respond to the "research-heavy" posts. School board, and city council, meetings are always like this: There's always someone there, either on the board or in the audience, who likes to bring up tangential issues, either to make things more colorful or to deepen or broaden the debate.
Instead of long posts, Dale read everything but responded briefly and frequently, asking questions, pointing out some trends or observations, and perhaps very subtly indicating that he's probably opposed to this proposal of single-sex classrooms, if for no other reason than no one has explained how much this is going to cost or how it's going to work. Dale is very pragmatic and wants to know the "logistics." A typical school-board member perspective, I think. And, from the assignment of the role play, Dale, as a school-board member, was supposed to be neutral, so I also think this influenced my approach to the character.
In reflecting on the role play so far, I agree with the other student who has already posted her reflection on the Ning. I don't think the "conversation" sounded authentic. It seemed piecemeal, bit-by-bit, rather than interactive, and this might be due, in part, to the asynchronous tool we're using. But, in addition, alliances didn't seem to be formed; characters did not often recall or quote other characters. The other student was, I sensed, frustrated that no one else had responded to her posts, and her posts were good: well researched, well thought-out, and well presented. I agree with her that our students would also be frustrated if this happened to them. They would put all this time and effort into researching and crafting a position, and then they wouldn't get the acknowledgement or satisfaction or affirmation of someone else responding to them, either to counter-argue or to advance their own argument. And I think this would ultimately be deflating/defeating for students.
I wonder if this other student is also right, that readers might skip her post, and others like it, if the posts were too long or "too full of research." Here's where Dale might have some advantage, in that all his posts were very short.
I think the two role-play characters with the most "power" right now are, interestingly, on opposite sides of the debate. Con Expert (Amy) and Pro Teacher (Brent) seem to have the most power--and maybe I shouldn't say "power" but "credibility" (not that the other posts/characters are not credible). But I wonder if this also has to do with the frequency of their posts: they seem more actively involved in the role-play debate at this point.
Finally, I'm not sure how Dale is going to vote tonight. For lack of any good explanations about finances, lawsuits, hiring more teachers, and scheduling, he might side with the "cons" and vote to keep things as is. In terms of my own personal beliefs, Dale's vote might be opposite of how I would vote myself. In terms of if my own personal beliefs on this issue changed over the course of the role play, I'm still thinking about that.
The 12.5 Rules for Writing -- 2nd Attempt
I know, I know. This is the same image as the previous post. I know. But since I had a technology glitch yesterday, I thought I'd try it again and see what happens.
This time, I tried using DashBlog again, but I took the image from Rachel Tholen's blog, just to see if that would make a difference. And. Ugh. It happened this time too. DashBlog not only captured the image I wanted but it also captured a video--and, again, the video was in a DIFFERENT post. Why, oh why, is it doing this?
However, this time I must have deleted the code correctly. I went into the Edit Html view again, and I was just as careful as I thought I was yesterday, but I paid attention to the closing code, and I think I got it right. There was NO error message when I went to publish. Yeah!
Monday, October 20, 2008
The 12.5 Rules for Writing -- 1st Attempt
I originally saw this image on Rachel Tholen's blog and really liked it. However, in this attempt to capture the image to blog about it, I took it from Leeshi's blog. I tried using "DashBlog" to "Grab an Image." But what happened is that it grabbed more than just the image I wanted; it also grabbed a YouTube video or a VoiceThread that Leeshi had put up--in a different post. I then tried to go to "Edit Html" in Blogger to delete the code for the embedded video, but apparently I also ended up deleting the closing code for the image. I ended up getting an error message when I went to publish the revision. However, when I chose the Compose view, rather than the Edit Html view, the post published successfully. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED! Ugh.
Anyway. This image of the 12.5 Rules for Writing would make a nice introductory image to a course blog or a course wiki. Ironically, there's nothing here about digital writing, or about digital writing tools, but the composing process--and all the rules--are similar in all writing situations.
This image also reminds me of when I first started teaching college composition, back in 1992, as a teaching assistant, and all the things we TAs had our students do. Getting into a routine. Making lists. Having an implicit thesis in a narrative essay. Experimenting with different styles. Having writing implements and materials always handy. Doing an observation on campus. Where did all the "basics" go? With increasing interest in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and the ever-increasing technology tools, somehow I think the "basics" got misplaced.
This relates to an earlier post I wrote, the one about Freshman Comp. no longer being a "Service Course." There are so many different approaches to a college comp. course, it's hard to know which is "best." It's even harder when one sees advantages and possibilities in different ones. And combining the best of different worlds isn't always possible. Sometimes, I think it'd be easier if I had a single-track mind, where I "knew" one approach to teaching was the best, and I didn't let any of the others distract or lure me!
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Walt Whitman's Astronomer Poem
Here is my first attempt at "digital literature" or "digital storytelling." I'm sure it does not exactly meet what was asked of me, since here I use Walt Whitman's words mixed with some "Creative Commons" images from Flickr. I'm sure I was supposed to use my own photos or images, and my own writing, to create "this"--a digital poem or story. But I had fun doing it. And I'm sure my students might have fun doing something like this as well.
But what's the point? Why did I do this? (Other than to complete the terms of an assignment?) And why would I have my students do this? (Other than to complete the terms of an assignment?) What would be the purpose? Who would be the audience?
Would including a project like this in my course challenge my students academically in some way? (The technology challenged me a little bit, but the concept of the VoiceThread came to me almost immediately, and I had fun doing it.) Or would it be only for fun, a new way to look at and think about literature? A pop-culture approach to American Literature?
Would doing a project like this give my students more insight into a literary text? (For me, the insight might come in the way of requiring them to choose the "best" images for the project. It was impossible for me to find "applause in the lecture-room." I guess I could have "staged" it--and students might have fun doing these stagings. But, I think I did pretty well with "the mystical moist night-air," when I thought that was going to be the hardest phrase to capture.)
I definitely see much potential here, but like all the other tools I've been introduced to so far in this class, I'm still falling short of brilliant ideas and insights for incorporating them into my courses. Maybe it'll come to me later ...?
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Using a Wiki in My English 1121 Course
Despite being a teacher who gets irritated when my students don't follow my directions, I didn't do a very good job at all of following Rick Beach's directions this week. I set up my wiki first, before checking out other wikis or even doing the assigned reading. I used PBwiki to create my wiki, and my wiki's name is WritingMinnesota. Wiki. Wiki. ;-)
I set up my wiki first because, as you might have already read, I've already been toying with ideas in two previous blog posts and I was pretty much ready to go. I finally decided on "WritingMinnesota," mainly to tie it in with my community college's visiting writers program.
But also, just as a history class focuses on history, or just as a chemistry class focuses on chemistry, a writing class should focus on writing. And not just the students' writing either, as some writing-process advocates might argue (such as Donald Murray and Peter Elbow). Writing should be not only the process(es) writers use but also the "content" -- the study of "text" and how it works ... student text, professional-writers' text, printed text ... and now ... digital text or media ... in all its forms. We should be writing, and studying our own writing, and writing about writing.
So back to my wiki. It will probably end up being the new course website, and I will probably begin to reduce what I do and how I use my old website. The course I am going to begin my use of wikis with will be our college's college-level writing course: English 1121: College Writing and Critical Reading.
So what will the course look like? What will change, now that I've taken this course in digital writing? What will the students write? How will the students use the wiki to collaborate?
I'm guessing the first two papers for the course will be more in Phase I and Phase II (see Beach, et. al. on pages 9-11 and 17). At this point, the wiki might be used as Hendron describes on pages 184-188, where the collaboration is more in the form of students providing "models" for other students and of students providing "peer review" for other students.
After this, hopefully I would be helping my students shift into Phase III (and maybe Phase IV) where students form "Affinity Groups" (see Beach, et. al. page 47) as we move into the argumentation and research portion of the course. The affinity groups would be based on the type of Minnesota writing they would like to study -- e.g., a particular writer or a particular genre (such as sports journalism or children's literature).
I could see the third paper -- instead of a typical review of literature, or a synthesis paper, or an annotated bibliography -- be more about gathering the sources they will eventually use in their final papers. I could even see the third "paper" being something other than a paper, like, say, a PowerPoint production of the best sources they've found -- and, maybe, importing the PowerPoint into a VoiceThread, and then doing a voice-over, explaining the sources and how and why they are "good sources." These VoiceThreads could then be presented to the entire class, possibly for feedback, or maybe just for informative "fun." Obviously, this might have to be a group effort, and, obviously, this could get out-of-hand, overwhelming, and unwieldy, if I don't think it through more! The wiki, for this paper, would be the repository of all the sources they've found AND the place where they would collaborate on their PowerPoint and VoiceThread "scripts."
Finally, the fourth paper would be the "argumentative research paper," where the students would have to state and then defend some debatable thesis about the type of writing they've been studying.
This all sounds great on "paper," but how am I going to pull it off? Will it work? And how much work will it be? Will the students buy into it? Will the "guaranteed audience" of the wiki -- of either their peers or anyone surfing the web for information about Minnesota writing -- motivate the students to do their best, and to better understand purpose and audience, as Hendron suggests on page 188?
Or, will anything resembling "community building" serve to make the students rebel, or just not buy into it, as students might value the American ideal of "individualism" more, as Rebekah Nathan suggests in her book, My Freshman Year (2005). This increasing individualism in American society is also documented in Robert Putnam's book, Bowling Alone (2000).
Maybe individual blogs are the better answer? Ugh. No. Yes. No.
I set up my wiki first because, as you might have already read, I've already been toying with ideas in two previous blog posts and I was pretty much ready to go. I finally decided on "WritingMinnesota," mainly to tie it in with my community college's visiting writers program.
But also, just as a history class focuses on history, or just as a chemistry class focuses on chemistry, a writing class should focus on writing. And not just the students' writing either, as some writing-process advocates might argue (such as Donald Murray and Peter Elbow). Writing should be not only the process(es) writers use but also the "content" -- the study of "text" and how it works ... student text, professional-writers' text, printed text ... and now ... digital text or media ... in all its forms. We should be writing, and studying our own writing, and writing about writing.
So back to my wiki. It will probably end up being the new course website, and I will probably begin to reduce what I do and how I use my old website. The course I am going to begin my use of wikis with will be our college's college-level writing course: English 1121: College Writing and Critical Reading.
So what will the course look like? What will change, now that I've taken this course in digital writing? What will the students write? How will the students use the wiki to collaborate?
I'm guessing the first two papers for the course will be more in Phase I and Phase II (see Beach, et. al. on pages 9-11 and 17). At this point, the wiki might be used as Hendron describes on pages 184-188, where the collaboration is more in the form of students providing "models" for other students and of students providing "peer review" for other students.
After this, hopefully I would be helping my students shift into Phase III (and maybe Phase IV) where students form "Affinity Groups" (see Beach, et. al. page 47) as we move into the argumentation and research portion of the course. The affinity groups would be based on the type of Minnesota writing they would like to study -- e.g., a particular writer or a particular genre (such as sports journalism or children's literature).
I could see the third paper -- instead of a typical review of literature, or a synthesis paper, or an annotated bibliography -- be more about gathering the sources they will eventually use in their final papers. I could even see the third "paper" being something other than a paper, like, say, a PowerPoint production of the best sources they've found -- and, maybe, importing the PowerPoint into a VoiceThread, and then doing a voice-over, explaining the sources and how and why they are "good sources." These VoiceThreads could then be presented to the entire class, possibly for feedback, or maybe just for informative "fun." Obviously, this might have to be a group effort, and, obviously, this could get out-of-hand, overwhelming, and unwieldy, if I don't think it through more! The wiki, for this paper, would be the repository of all the sources they've found AND the place where they would collaborate on their PowerPoint and VoiceThread "scripts."
Finally, the fourth paper would be the "argumentative research paper," where the students would have to state and then defend some debatable thesis about the type of writing they've been studying.
This all sounds great on "paper," but how am I going to pull it off? Will it work? And how much work will it be? Will the students buy into it? Will the "guaranteed audience" of the wiki -- of either their peers or anyone surfing the web for information about Minnesota writing -- motivate the students to do their best, and to better understand purpose and audience, as Hendron suggests on page 188?
Or, will anything resembling "community building" serve to make the students rebel, or just not buy into it, as students might value the American ideal of "individualism" more, as Rebekah Nathan suggests in her book, My Freshman Year (2005). This increasing individualism in American society is also documented in Robert Putnam's book, Bowling Alone (2000).
Maybe individual blogs are the better answer? Ugh. No. Yes. No.
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