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!