Blogs for Bibs? ... Or ...?

In my English 1121 class right now, we are beginning work on our annotated bibliographies for our major argument paper. One option I'm giving is to compose the annotated bibliography using Microsoft Office's PowerPoint rather than the "traditional" Word document.

To give credit where credit is due, or at least some credit, since my idea is a bit different:

A fellow classmate of mine, last year, when I was on sabbatical and taking courses at the U of MN, was Kate Peterson, a librarian at the U of MN, did her final project on "new" annotated bibliographies. If I remember correctly, she advocated using blogs for this, with one blog post for each source; the blog post would contain both the bibliographic citation and the annotation.

If you are interested, please read Kate's blog post about her final project.

I really liked this idea--for many reasons, including the use of a popular digital writing tool in place of a more "traditional" tool--but since I'm not assigning blogs (yet?) in my writing courses, I went searching for a way to modify Kate's idea. PowerPoint came to mind, not only because it is another digital writing tool that we studied and practiced last year, but also because one of its slide choices, "Title and Content," seemed to lend itself well to how an annotated bibliography is set up. In addition, another slide choice, "Two Content," might lend itself well to doing a summary annotation on the left side and an evaluative annotation on the right side.

I can also see students perhaps uploading their PowerPoint bibliographies into something like SlideShare or SlideBoom or SlideRocket and "publishing" it on the web.

I'll report back on how this works out.

A Possible Argument and Research Project

Here are three related videos:

A Vision of Students Today (12 Oct. 2007): A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today -- how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.( This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. So you are welcome to download it, share it, even change it, just as long as you give me some credit and you don't sell it or use it to sell anything.)

Embedded:



A Vision of K-12 Students Today (28 Nov. 2007): This project was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills. Equally important, it serves to motivate district level leaders to provide teachers with the tools and training to do so.

Embedded:



A Vision of Community College Students Today (29 June 2009): Inspired by mwesch's YouTube video, "A Vision of Students Today" . . . For more information on Sussex County Community College and its anthropology department please visit http://sussex.edu/

Embedded:



Here might be one more video to consider:

Shift Happens

Embedded:



Possible Assignments:

1.) Write a response to one of the videos:

• A personal response--how do your own experiences connect to the video? do your experiences further support, demonstrate, or illustrate ideas in the video? or, do your own experiences refute or contradict the video? etc.
• An analytical response--what is the purpose or intent of the video? who is the intended audience for the video? what rhetorical strategies are used in the video (ethos, pathos, logos)? etc.
• An argumentative or a persuasive response--do you agree with the ideas in one or more of the videos? do you disagree with the ideas in one or more of the videos? can you offer further support? can you offer counter-arguments? etc.
  

2.) Compare and contrast two of the videos

3.) Synthesize the main ideas in the videos

4.) Research

5.) Other

Revision Activity #2

A set of related sites that I learned about last year on my sabbatical involve taking a text and creating visual depictions of it. (For more information, here is the "Tag Cloud" Wikipedia article.) These sites include:

Tag Cloud -- currently getting an overhaul, apparently.

Wordle

Make Cloud -- to make a Tag Cloud from an RSS feed.

Tag Crowd

and Many Eyes -- which is apparently a kind of user's guide (I'll have to explore this more).

Again, to try things out, I submitted the text from my short non-fiction piece, "Where's the Whistle," to Wordle, which has a nice "Randomize" feature and a print feature, but it does not allow me to embed it to my blog.

Tag Crowd allows for different submissions--web page URL, uploading a file, or copying-and-pasting text--and it also allows for embedding to a blog and sharing on FaceBook, del.icio.us, and Stumble It! Here's my Tag Crowd for my narrative essay:

ball begins behind chris class didn dodge doesn don door eye figure fuck game gets guess hall happened head hear hit instead keep kids latzke ll looks mrs office open pass past person players powers scott secretary sit standing stop supposed team thought throw told voice walks whispers whistle won

created at TagCrowd.com

Again, I would be interested to see if my writing students, when using this, find any inspiration for further writing or revision--or for some sort of digital publishing. By allowing us to visualize word frequency, we might discover that our words are matching our message or that our most frequent words are really not that important. Try it out and let me know how it works for you!

Revision Activity #1

I was made aware of "Gender Analyzer" and "Gender Genie" in one of the classes I took (EngL 4722: Alphabet to Internet: A History of Writing Technologies) at the U of MN last year during my sabbatical. I'm wondering if having my writing students use one of these sites during the writing process might somehow inspire revisions of a different sort--perhaps word choice, tone, etc.

"Gender Analyzer" seems to be strictly for online sites--one cannot upload a paper or text to this site for analysis.

"The Gender Genie" does allow for typing or pasting text into a box for analysis.

To try it out, I copied and pasted the text from a short non-fiction piece I had written in 2000 for the Minnesota Writing Project. The narrative is titled, "Where's the Whistle," and all of my current students have access to a copy of this.

Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, for me, "The Gender Genie" analysis determined that the writer of the piece was FEMALE! Yes, I kid you not. Here's the analysis:

• Words: 1210
• Female Score: 1690
• Male Score: 1561
• "The Gender Genie thinks the author of this page is: female!"

Hmm. I guess I've always been bookish and sensitive, but this is a little much. I'm going to go cry now. (Just kidding!)

I then tried typing my blog URL into "Gender Analyzer." This didn't help my ego much either. Their guess was 51% that it was written by a woman, but they admitted it was quite "gender neutral." (Thanks!) Hmm. I'm starting to think about the skit, "It's Pat," from Saturday Night Live, years ago!

Have fun with it. Does it change your opinion of your paper at all? Are you going to rewrite in any way based on this analysis? Let me know!

Group Project for CI 5410 (Fall 2008)

I've just completed my sabbatical report for 2008-2009 and, while composing it, I realized that I had not yet posted this presentation to my blog.

In the fall of 2008, I took two classes at the University of Minnesota. One of those classes, "Special Topics in Literacy: Struggling Adolescent Readers," required a small-group project/presentation, which resulted in the following slideshow.

I gratefully acknowledge my two collaborators, Katie Bruhn (high school) and Emily Olson (middle school), for their contributions to this presentation; it was probably the best group project I was involved in during my sabbatical year and classwork. Thanks!

Graphic Novels

As recently promised to a fellow teacher-scholar (Brent, teaching in Hopkins), here are a few of the graphic novels I'm considering for near-future literature classes. The first one is a collection of graphic short stories, all based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe:



I discovered another graphic novelist in a class I just completed at the University of Minnesota, Spring 2009: EngL 4722: From Alphabet to Internet: A History of Writing Technologies (Prof. Michael Hancher)--and I really recommend this class! The writer/artist's name is Adrian Tomine, and apparently he's done some really cool cover art work for The New Yorker magazine. Here's the book I'm considering:



A third novel under consideration is pretty obvious, I guess--obvious to those in the know, which doesn't always include me! Also, apparently, one of my nephews just did a presentation on this one for his Popular Literature class at University of Minnesota, Morris:



And finally, just because I love this comic strip. And, yes, I know that comic strips are not the same as graphic novels. But this cat is too funny:



That's all for now. Let me know your suggestions. I'm just getting into the groove ... or do I dare say it, Groovitude:

TagCloud for Bartleby

afternoon answer away bartleby behind business called certain chambers coat common copying days desk done door eyes ginger give indeed looking man mind morning nippers nothing nut office pale papers prefer present quit rather remained reply room round screen scrivener seemed sir something sort standing strange think thought towards turkey

created at TagCrowd.com

ARCC English Division Meeting 2009-04-08

Here are a few links I might be mentioning in my presentation at the English Division meeting today:

Video:

• YouTube Video: "A Vision of Students Today"

Wikis & Wikibooks:

• UMN Prof. Richard Beach's course/textbook resource wiki
• Matt Barton's Rhetoric and Composition wikibook

Tag/Text Clouds:

• Wordle
• TagCrowd

Podcasts:

• EdTechTalk
• Teachers Teaching Teachers
• EdTechWeekly
• Women of Web 2.0
• Digital Campus
• EdTechCrew
• The Tech Teachers

Let me know if you have any questions!

Book Recommendations & Practicing APA Style

Some people have been asking me what I've been reading in my UMN classes on my sabbatical, so here's a reading list for everyone, in APA style (for some reason, the preferred style in most education courses). I've just included the many books; there have been many, many more articles. If you're interested in the articles, let me know and I'll show them to you; I also have digital copies of nearly all of the articles, if you want one or more.

EngL 4722 / "Alphabet to Internet: History of Writing Technologies" (Spring 2009)

• Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
  
• Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy. London: Routledge.
• Tribble, E. B., & Trubek, A. (2003). Writing material: Readings from Plato to the digital age. New York: Longman.
• Zaid, G. (2003). So many books: Reading and publishing in an age of abundance. N. Wimmer (Trans.). Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books.

EdPA 5704 & EPsy 5451 / "College Students Today" (Spring 2009)

• Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2001). Making their own way: Narratives for transforming higher education to promote self-development. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
• Colby, A., Beaumont, E., et al. (2007). Educating for democracy: Preparing undergraduates for responsible political engagement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  
• Harper, S. R., & Quaye, S. J. (2009). Student engagement in higher education: Theoretical perspectives and practical approaches for diverse populations. New York: Routledge.
• Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., et al. (2005). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Levin, J. S. (2007). Nontraditional students and community colleges: The conflict of justice and neoliberalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

CI 5330 & CI 5475 / "Teaching Digital Writing: Blogs, Wikis, Online Talk, Podcasting, and E-portfolios to Teach Writing" (Fall 2008)

• Beach, R., Anson, C., et al. (2009). Teaching writing using blogs, wikis, and other digital tools. New York: Columbia Teachers College Press. (?)
• Gardner, S., & Birley, S. (2008). Blogging for dummies (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Hendron, J. G. (2008). RSS for educators: Blogs, newsfeeds, podcasts, and wikis in the classroom. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.
  
• Morris, T., Tomasi, C., & Terra, E. (2008). Podcasting for dummies (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

CI 5410 / "Struggling Adolescent Readers" (Fall 2008)

• Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., Cziko, C., & Hurwitz, L. (1999). Reading for understanding: A guide to improving reading in middle and high school classrooms: The Reading Apprenticeship guidebook. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass and WestEd.
  

EdPA 5704 Article Presentation

Citation:

Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing Process Problems. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford, 1985. 134-165. Rpt. in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1997. 589-619.

Summary:

"Inventing the University" means learning to speak the language of higher education--more specifically, having to speak (and write) the discourses of the various communities (usually, academic disciplines) of college. This skill is asked of students quite quickly, usually before the skill is "learned," and this can cause problems. Most college freshman do not yet know the conventions, they do not yet know the jargon, and they cannot yet create (or sustain) a voice of authority, particularly when the audience is their professors; the students may be aware of this "privileged" language, but they cannot yet control it. In section II, Bartholomae reviews the general theory of audience awareness, the cognitive theorists’ view of the composing process compared to the social theorists’ view, and contemporary rhetorical theory’s concept of “’codes’ that constitute discourse” and applies them to the idea of "inventing the university." In section III, Bartholomae provides and then analyzes five representative samples of student writing (out of 500 placement essays reviewed), eventually ranking them based on how the writers’ "ability to imagine privilege enabled writing" (607). Ultimately, educators must accept that as our students struggle with a difficult and unfamiliar language, their papers will not be error-free nor have elegant syntax.

Why It Was Important to Me:

• "Discourse communities"--also, "interpretive communities" (Fish)
• Definition(s) of "basic writers"
• Definition(s) of "commonplace"
• "Writer-based prose" vs. "reader-based prose"
• Cognitive vs. social-epistemic composing theories
• Types or frequencies of error

Why I Find It Professionally Useful:

• "Much of the written work that students do is test-taking, report, or summary--work that places them outside the official discourse of the academic community, where they are expected to admire and report on what we do, rather than inside that discourse, where they can do its work and participate in a common enterprise" (599).
• "One response to the problems of basic writers, then, would be to determine just what the community’s conventions are, so that those conventions could be written out, 'demystified' and taught in our classrooms" (601).
• "In fact, one of the problems with curricula designed to aid basic writers is that they too often begin with the assumption that the key distinguishing feature of a basic writer is the presence of sentence-level error" (612).

Recommended Reading:

• Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: Norton, 2006.

Google Docs Presentation Link

Google Docs Presentation: