I am on sabbatical this academic year (2015-16), and my primary project is leading my English Department in the adoption of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) to shorten our "pipeline" of developmental-level writing courses. The ALP was created by Peter Adams and developed at the Community College of Baltimore County. It has been studied and researched intensively and has consistently found to be successful at the colleges where it is adopted.
As I am working on this project, I am continually reminded of the coursework I took at the University of Minnesota on my last sabbatical (academic year 2008-09) to complete a graduate-level certificate in Post-Secondary Developmental Education. (It was in one of those courses where I first started this blog.) In one of those courses I wrote a paper on "Mainstreaming Basic Writers," and one of the primary features of ALP is mainstreaming.
Irony? Fate? Coincidence?
Stay tuned; I may post more as the year goes on.
Showing posts with label first-year comp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first-year comp. Show all posts
Friday, December 18, 2015
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Using a Theme in Freshman Comp?
Hello everyone! I'm back! Sorry to have been gone so long! (Yes, I know that no one is reading this blog, that it's really for me only, but I thought I'd start with some simple humor to start my day!)
The topic that is most on my mind of late concerns using "themes" in college writing classes (i.e., developmental writing and/or the standard freshman comp. class). Common themes include pop culture (such as TV, ads, music, movies, etc.), a current event (such as an election), multiculturalism/diversity, social justice, work, education, suburbia, etc.
But some articles I've come across recently all seem to argue that any FYC (first-year composition) or FYW (first-year writing) course that uses a theme is a "sham." One problem is simple "truth-in-advertising," that it's really a course about something else, not writing. Another problem is that while such a course may be attempting to teach writing as well, use of the theme takes valuable time away from the study and practice of writing. A third, and perhaps the most troubling, problem concerns the possible "indoctrination" (political or otherwise) of students through the use of a theme.
When I was first taught to teach freshman composition at Mankato State University in the early 1990s, we did not start out talking about themes. We actually started out talking about the writing process and about the "modes" of writing (narration, description, exposition, and argumentation) which, I later discovered, reflected a combination of writing-process theory with "current-traditional" theory. But it wasn't a bad way to start to learn to teach. Later, some of my colleagues did begin to incorporate a theme (often involving pop culture or current events), while others of us incorporated focuses on literature, academic writing, or the various "genres" of writing (memoir, reflection, position papers, proposals, reviews, etc.).
A decade later, after taking other graduate-level courses about the teaching of writing at the University of Minnesota, I began to experiment with using a theme for my writing courses. I first tried the theme of "Work," thinking that it would appeal to my working-class, career-minded, currently-employed community college students. It didn't, really, and, to my surprise, some of my students didn't even have a job yet, had never had one. So, I switched themes, to "Education," which at that time was the focus of the writing courses in the (now defunct) General College at the U of MN. The theory behind having students explore education includes empowering students, having them reflect on their past experiences with education and critically examine the enterprise they are currently involved in. This theme interested me greatly but didn't have the same effect on my students. Some were interested, sure, but many others were tolerant, or bored, or apathetic. And this very mixture of widely varying interests in a theme by students probably occurs in any course, comp or otherwise, theme or no theme.
So, I'm returning to a course focused almost entirely on writing, language, the writing process, academic writing, documentation and citation, grammar, etc. Sure, there will have to be "topics" to writing about, and we will have to discuss some readings (either to respond to or as models). But the focus will be on the list I just gave. And, I'm sure, I'll still have some students who are committed and interested, and tolerant, and bored, and apathetic, etc. But the course will not be a "sham," it will directly address what it's meant to address, and it will, hopefully, help students with their writing, for other college courses and for the workplace.
But I'm also still continuing to think about this topic. It's interesting, and it needs to be discussed. We also need to talk about other "add-ons" to freshman composition courses, such as Service Learning, or Technology Tools, or Digital Writing Projects, etc. Do these also take away from the writing and language focus of FYC/FYW courses, or do they complement the courses in ways that "themes" do not?
For now, here's my bibliography of the sources I've been reading. Enjoy!
Benay, Phyllis. "They Say, 'Templates Are the Way to Teach Writing'; I Say, 'Use with Extreme Caution.'" Rev. of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 369-373. Print.
Brunner, Elizabeth. "Assignments for Freshman Composition." N.p. 24 Sept. 1999. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach?" New York Times 24 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 2." New York Times 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3." New York Times 7 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Foley, James E. "The Freshman Research Paper: A Near-Death Experience." N.p. N.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Grow, Laura M. "If They Say Academic Writing Is Too Hard, I Say Read Graff and Birkenstein." Rev. of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 363-368. Print.
Miller, Susan. "How I Teach Writing: How to Teach Writing? To Teach Writing?" Pedagogy 1.3 (2001): 479-488. Print.
Shank, Dianna Rockwell. Rev. of Save the World on Your Own Time, by Stanley Fish. Teaching English in the Two-Year College 38.1 (Sept. 2010): 85-87.
Young, R. V. "Liberal Learning Confronts the Composition Despots." Intercollegiate Review 46.1 (Spr. 2011): 3-11. Print.
The topic that is most on my mind of late concerns using "themes" in college writing classes (i.e., developmental writing and/or the standard freshman comp. class). Common themes include pop culture (such as TV, ads, music, movies, etc.), a current event (such as an election), multiculturalism/diversity, social justice, work, education, suburbia, etc.
But some articles I've come across recently all seem to argue that any FYC (first-year composition) or FYW (first-year writing) course that uses a theme is a "sham." One problem is simple "truth-in-advertising," that it's really a course about something else, not writing. Another problem is that while such a course may be attempting to teach writing as well, use of the theme takes valuable time away from the study and practice of writing. A third, and perhaps the most troubling, problem concerns the possible "indoctrination" (political or otherwise) of students through the use of a theme.
When I was first taught to teach freshman composition at Mankato State University in the early 1990s, we did not start out talking about themes. We actually started out talking about the writing process and about the "modes" of writing (narration, description, exposition, and argumentation) which, I later discovered, reflected a combination of writing-process theory with "current-traditional" theory. But it wasn't a bad way to start to learn to teach. Later, some of my colleagues did begin to incorporate a theme (often involving pop culture or current events), while others of us incorporated focuses on literature, academic writing, or the various "genres" of writing (memoir, reflection, position papers, proposals, reviews, etc.).
A decade later, after taking other graduate-level courses about the teaching of writing at the University of Minnesota, I began to experiment with using a theme for my writing courses. I first tried the theme of "Work," thinking that it would appeal to my working-class, career-minded, currently-employed community college students. It didn't, really, and, to my surprise, some of my students didn't even have a job yet, had never had one. So, I switched themes, to "Education," which at that time was the focus of the writing courses in the (now defunct) General College at the U of MN. The theory behind having students explore education includes empowering students, having them reflect on their past experiences with education and critically examine the enterprise they are currently involved in. This theme interested me greatly but didn't have the same effect on my students. Some were interested, sure, but many others were tolerant, or bored, or apathetic. And this very mixture of widely varying interests in a theme by students probably occurs in any course, comp or otherwise, theme or no theme.
So, I'm returning to a course focused almost entirely on writing, language, the writing process, academic writing, documentation and citation, grammar, etc. Sure, there will have to be "topics" to writing about, and we will have to discuss some readings (either to respond to or as models). But the focus will be on the list I just gave. And, I'm sure, I'll still have some students who are committed and interested, and tolerant, and bored, and apathetic, etc. But the course will not be a "sham," it will directly address what it's meant to address, and it will, hopefully, help students with their writing, for other college courses and for the workplace.
But I'm also still continuing to think about this topic. It's interesting, and it needs to be discussed. We also need to talk about other "add-ons" to freshman composition courses, such as Service Learning, or Technology Tools, or Digital Writing Projects, etc. Do these also take away from the writing and language focus of FYC/FYW courses, or do they complement the courses in ways that "themes" do not?
For now, here's my bibliography of the sources I've been reading. Enjoy!
Benay, Phyllis. "They Say, 'Templates Are the Way to Teach Writing'; I Say, 'Use with Extreme Caution.'" Rev. of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 369-373. Print.
Brunner, Elizabeth. "Assignments for Freshman Composition." N.p. 24 Sept. 1999. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach?" New York Times 24 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 2." New York Times 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3." New York Times 7 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Foley, James E. "The Freshman Research Paper: A Near-Death Experience." N.p. N.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Grow, Laura M. "If They Say Academic Writing Is Too Hard, I Say Read Graff and Birkenstein." Rev. of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 363-368. Print.
Miller, Susan. "How I Teach Writing: How to Teach Writing? To Teach Writing?" Pedagogy 1.3 (2001): 479-488. Print.
Shank, Dianna Rockwell. Rev. of Save the World on Your Own Time, by Stanley Fish. Teaching English in the Two-Year College 38.1 (Sept. 2010): 85-87.
Young, R. V. "Liberal Learning Confronts the Composition Despots." Intercollegiate Review 46.1 (Spr. 2011): 3-11. Print.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
More Education Videos
Here are two more videos that I might use for my writing classes--for discussion and/or for research.
The first is about a professor supposedly smashing a student's laptop!
The second is about "Your First College Year." I found out about it in a book the ARCC faculty are reading in preparation for the 2010-11 academic year:
More later!
The first is about a professor supposedly smashing a student's laptop!
The second is about "Your First College Year." I found out about it in a book the ARCC faculty are reading in preparation for the 2010-11 academic year:
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future: Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30, by Mark Bauerlein (New York: Tarcher-Penguin, 2009, p. ___).When I followed the link, however, there wasn't a video there. Here's another related link that actually appears to be the same page.
More later!
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Online Glossary of Usage
Hello all!
I'm looking for recommendations for an online "Glossary of Usage."
Such a glossary is usually found near the end of a typical, printed writing handbook, and these books are usually used in a Freshman Writing (or First-Year Writing or Composition) course.
I, however, have abandoned these handbooks--for reasons I can write about later--and am using the MLA Handbook in my courses. The MLA Handbook, however, does NOT have a glossary of usage.
Any suggestions? Would the Purdue OWL have something like this? The St. Cloud State U. WritePlace?
Thanks!
I'm looking for recommendations for an online "Glossary of Usage."
Such a glossary is usually found near the end of a typical, printed writing handbook, and these books are usually used in a Freshman Writing (or First-Year Writing or Composition) course.
I, however, have abandoned these handbooks--for reasons I can write about later--and am using the MLA Handbook in my courses. The MLA Handbook, however, does NOT have a glossary of usage.
Any suggestions? Would the Purdue OWL have something like this? The St. Cloud State U. WritePlace?
Thanks!
Friday, November 6, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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:
3.) Synthesize the main ideas in the videos
4.) Research
5.) Other
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.
3.) Synthesize the main ideas in the videos
4.) Research
5.) Other
Sunday, February 22, 2009
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:
Google Docs Presentation Link
Google Docs Presentation:
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
- "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).
- 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:
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Final Project Links
There are two parts to my final project:
Embedded:
The full version of the survey (including results for each question) is available here: a Google Docs Presentation.
Embedded:
The wiki is a revision of the WritingMinnesota wiki I started on weeks ago.
I'm glad we had the freedom to do what we wanted to do for our final project. I think both parts have been and will be very helpful to me in planning my courses for next year.
- An informal survey (using SurveyMonkey) of students at my college
- A wiki
Embedded:
The full version of the survey (including results for each question) is available here: a Google Docs Presentation.
Embedded:
The wiki is a revision of the WritingMinnesota wiki I started on weeks ago.
I'm glad we had the freedom to do what we wanted to do for our final project. I think both parts have been and will be very helpful to me in planning my courses for next year.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Final "Portfolio" Reflection #3
Will I have my students keep and present a final portfolio of their coursework? Yes, definitely.
How will I have my students keep and present their final portfolios? Their individual blogs? The course wiki? Individual wikis? The "eFolio" from the State of Minnesota. Ugh! I don't know. Yet. Perhaps I should let them choose? Or would that cause too many headaches?
What will I have my students include in the portfolio? The answer to this one is easier. Our English Department at Anoka Ramsey Community College already has a portfolio process and committee -- and I have participated in this process in the past, but not consistently. If my memory is correct, the current portfolio process for English 1121, our college-level first-year writing course, asks for the following:
I see now that some things are going to have to be modified if I'm going to have my students do this "digitally," especially the last two items.
For item #3, including all cited research sources shouldn't be too difficult -- most of this should be possible with hyperlinks. And, if a source is not "online," hopefully we'll be able to attach PDF files somehow. And, even better, I ask my students to highlight in their sources the material they cite in their paper, and they should be able to use the highlighter feature in Adobe for this! If nothing else, I can have my students do what I had to do for Professor O'Brien's "Struggling Adolescent Readers" course: they can send to me a compressed/zipped folder containing all their documents.
For item #4, this will be trickier. The intention behind the in-class essay is to see what a student can do on his or her own, without multiple drafts and without peer feedback. Partly, it exhibits a student's writing fluency, and partly it is a plagiarism check. To have students write this on a computer, or online, does present some challenges to both of these purposes, since blog posts or Word documents can be easily changed, after the posting or initial draft, and it is pretty much impossible to prevent this ... and useless, hopeless, unnecessary, etc. ... to "police" it.
Including other digital projects -- such as VoiceThreads or SlideRockets or YouTube videos -- should also be easy. Hyperlinks can be created and copied, or HTML code can be embedded.
Ultimately, for me, the first decision seems to be the "form" the portfolio will take ... blog, wiki, or eFolio?
And, ultimately, for the students, the reflective piece will hopefully be the most important.
How will I have my students keep and present their final portfolios? Their individual blogs? The course wiki? Individual wikis? The "eFolio" from the State of Minnesota. Ugh! I don't know. Yet. Perhaps I should let them choose? Or would that cause too many headaches?
What will I have my students include in the portfolio? The answer to this one is easier. Our English Department at Anoka Ramsey Community College already has a portfolio process and committee -- and I have participated in this process in the past, but not consistently. If my memory is correct, the current portfolio process for English 1121, our college-level first-year writing course, asks for the following:
- A cover letter or introductory piece, which also serves as the reflective piece.
- An essay of the student's choice, preferably expository or persuasive, with all drafts from first to final.
- The argumentative research paper, with all drafts and with all cited research sources.
- An in-class essay.
I see now that some things are going to have to be modified if I'm going to have my students do this "digitally," especially the last two items.
For item #3, including all cited research sources shouldn't be too difficult -- most of this should be possible with hyperlinks. And, if a source is not "online," hopefully we'll be able to attach PDF files somehow. And, even better, I ask my students to highlight in their sources the material they cite in their paper, and they should be able to use the highlighter feature in Adobe for this! If nothing else, I can have my students do what I had to do for Professor O'Brien's "Struggling Adolescent Readers" course: they can send to me a compressed/zipped folder containing all their documents.
For item #4, this will be trickier. The intention behind the in-class essay is to see what a student can do on his or her own, without multiple drafts and without peer feedback. Partly, it exhibits a student's writing fluency, and partly it is a plagiarism check. To have students write this on a computer, or online, does present some challenges to both of these purposes, since blog posts or Word documents can be easily changed, after the posting or initial draft, and it is pretty much impossible to prevent this ... and useless, hopeless, unnecessary, etc. ... to "police" it.
Including other digital projects -- such as VoiceThreads or SlideRockets or YouTube videos -- should also be easy. Hyperlinks can be created and copied, or HTML code can be embedded.
Ultimately, for me, the first decision seems to be the "form" the portfolio will take ... blog, wiki, or eFolio?
And, ultimately, for the students, the reflective piece will hopefully be the most important.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Connecting My Reading Course to My Digital Writing Course
I found an interesting quote, when I was reviewing my notes in my Reading course, for my final paper, which I thought applied to my Digital Writing course as well.
Donna Alvermann, in her "white paper," "Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents" (2001), offers the following analysis:
Donna Alvermann, in her "white paper," "Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents" (2001), offers the following analysis:
Without critical literacy instruction that is sensitive to youth’s and adults’ needs, however, little may be gained from venturing into these environments. For example, in a study of two girls’ out-of-school instant messaging (IM) practices, Lewis and Fabbo (2000) documented the girls’ intricate manipulations of friends and social situations as the two adolescents simultaneously went about constructing their own identities, seemingly with little critical awareness for how the chat/IM technology might be manipulating them and their literacy practices. Adults who worry about young people’s identity constructions vis-Ã -vis the new technologies would do well to examine the parallels and disjunctures between their own such constructions and those of adolescents (Hagood, Stevens, & Reinking, in press; Lewis & Finders, in press). For in doing so, they may come to understand better the futility of asking young people to critique the very texts they find most pleasurable. For such a request, as Luke (1997) has adroitly noted, would likely “cue a critical response which can often be an outright lie…[because while youth] are quick to talk a good anti-sexist, anti-racist, pro-equity game…what they write in the essay or what they tell us in classroom discussion is no measure of what goes on in their heads” (p. 43).This calls to mind my previous post about asking students to analyze and evaluate a blog or a website. Will their analysis be critical, in-depth, and honest, or will they just be telling me what they think I want to hear? Will this be a problem with any inquiry-based project? I definitely need to give this more thought!
Work Cited
Alvermann, D. E. (2001). Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents. Executive Summary and Paper Commissioned by the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.
Alvermann, D. E. (2001). Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents. Executive Summary and Paper Commissioned by the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.
Giving Digital and/or Online Feedback to Students
The presentation by Kristen Jameson and Linda Clemons, from the University of Minnesota's "Student Writing Center," in class on November 25, 2008, was very eye-opening for me. It looks like they are doing some great things with "SWS Online"--very much advanced from the traditional sit-down-together-one-on-one writing conference. See their website for more information. Also, check out the more general website on the writing center at UMN.
My first reaction to their presentation was, "This would be great to do with my own students, especially if I begin teaching fully online courses, or even partially online "hybrid" courses. I was a big "fan" of Donald Murray in graduate school--and one other guy who's name I can't think of right now--and I have twice tried courses where the students and I met as a group very infrequently, and the rest of the time was spent in individual conferences.
My second reaction to their presentation was, "Wow, this would sure take a lot of time" ... time, Time, TIME ... which is already an issue for all writing instructors who use a process-approach to writing and who try to provide their students with various forms of feedback, both formative and summative, throughout the process of each paper and throughout the course. (And not an issue at all for more traditional teachers who don't assign or read multiple drafts, and who only put a few comments and the grade on the final product ... much like my own freshman composition instructor!)
Of course, an "online" conference, using IM-ing or even Skype, might help to engage and motivate students who are not challenged, engaged, or motivated with more "traditional" teaching methods. But it would have to be carefully thought through and planned.
And I even like the idea of online peer review, but again, sorting out all the logistics seems daunting! And, would an online peer review even make sense to do in a computer lab where students are sitting right next to each other? Maybe, even quite possibly or probably. Students might write more, and they might approach response differently, given this new "medium" for peer review. But what would I use: a wiki, a chat room, a discussion board in D2L, ...?
I also like the idea, given either in class or in the textbook, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, where a rubric is kept in digital form, opened each time a professor grades a paper, comments inserted directly into the rubric, the rubric saved under a different file name, and the rubric then attached to the paper, or, more digitally, emailed to the student. But, again, my concern is TIME.
TIME is also a concern for students emailing their papers to me, me saving and then opening each one, me reading and commenting using MS Word's Insert Comments and/or Track Changes features, and then me saving and emailing the paper back to the students. I like the idea, in theory, but in practice it still seems daunting. But I might have to give it a go to see how it goes.
Finally, TIME is also a concern for me if I choose to digitally record comments about a student's work, as both of my professors--Dr. Richard Beach and Dr. David O'Brien--are doing for me/us this semester. I think I heard that I would actually need two computers, one for the blog, or wiki, or document, or whatever, that I was looking at, reading, analyzing, and evaluating, and another one for the recording, with Audacity open and ready to go. The recording would have to be made, the MP3 encoding would have to be done (using LAME), the file would have to be saved, and then the file would have to be emailed back to the student--perhaps along with their paper. My college doesn't have a Media Mill server or feature, as the U of MN does, so I couldn't just email students a link to their comments.
And I wonder if students would listen to their comments, right away or even at all. When I received my digital comments from both professors this semester, I didn't immediately "open" them and listen, as I would if I got a hard copy of my paper handed back to me with notes in the margins. It's a new way of thinking for me. Maybe my students are already there, maybe not.
Also, my regular teaching load is 3 writing courses and 1 literature course each semester. Writing courses enroll 26 or 28 students, depending if the course is college-level or developmental, respectively, while literature courses can enroll up to 50 students. With this load and number of students, I don't think there's any way to give the kinds of feedback I've gotten this semester. Prof. O'Brien not only gave me recorded comments but also used the Word commenting feature to insert specific comments throughout my paper. And Prof. Beach gave me extended recorded comments. (Of course, there's also the difference between undergraduate and graduate level courses, I don't think my UMN professors are teaching more than 1 or 2 courses each semester, and my Reading course has only 12 students in it while my Digital Writing course has between 20 and 25.)
My first reaction to their presentation was, "This would be great to do with my own students, especially if I begin teaching fully online courses, or even partially online "hybrid" courses. I was a big "fan" of Donald Murray in graduate school--and one other guy who's name I can't think of right now--and I have twice tried courses where the students and I met as a group very infrequently, and the rest of the time was spent in individual conferences.
My second reaction to their presentation was, "Wow, this would sure take a lot of time" ... time, Time, TIME ... which is already an issue for all writing instructors who use a process-approach to writing and who try to provide their students with various forms of feedback, both formative and summative, throughout the process of each paper and throughout the course. (And not an issue at all for more traditional teachers who don't assign or read multiple drafts, and who only put a few comments and the grade on the final product ... much like my own freshman composition instructor!)
Of course, an "online" conference, using IM-ing or even Skype, might help to engage and motivate students who are not challenged, engaged, or motivated with more "traditional" teaching methods. But it would have to be carefully thought through and planned.
And I even like the idea of online peer review, but again, sorting out all the logistics seems daunting! And, would an online peer review even make sense to do in a computer lab where students are sitting right next to each other? Maybe, even quite possibly or probably. Students might write more, and they might approach response differently, given this new "medium" for peer review. But what would I use: a wiki, a chat room, a discussion board in D2L, ...?
I also like the idea, given either in class or in the textbook, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, where a rubric is kept in digital form, opened each time a professor grades a paper, comments inserted directly into the rubric, the rubric saved under a different file name, and the rubric then attached to the paper, or, more digitally, emailed to the student. But, again, my concern is TIME.
TIME is also a concern for students emailing their papers to me, me saving and then opening each one, me reading and commenting using MS Word's Insert Comments and/or Track Changes features, and then me saving and emailing the paper back to the students. I like the idea, in theory, but in practice it still seems daunting. But I might have to give it a go to see how it goes.
Finally, TIME is also a concern for me if I choose to digitally record comments about a student's work, as both of my professors--Dr. Richard Beach and Dr. David O'Brien--are doing for me/us this semester. I think I heard that I would actually need two computers, one for the blog, or wiki, or document, or whatever, that I was looking at, reading, analyzing, and evaluating, and another one for the recording, with Audacity open and ready to go. The recording would have to be made, the MP3 encoding would have to be done (using LAME), the file would have to be saved, and then the file would have to be emailed back to the student--perhaps along with their paper. My college doesn't have a Media Mill server or feature, as the U of MN does, so I couldn't just email students a link to their comments.
And I wonder if students would listen to their comments, right away or even at all. When I received my digital comments from both professors this semester, I didn't immediately "open" them and listen, as I would if I got a hard copy of my paper handed back to me with notes in the margins. It's a new way of thinking for me. Maybe my students are already there, maybe not.
Also, my regular teaching load is 3 writing courses and 1 literature course each semester. Writing courses enroll 26 or 28 students, depending if the course is college-level or developmental, respectively, while literature courses can enroll up to 50 students. With this load and number of students, I don't think there's any way to give the kinds of feedback I've gotten this semester. Prof. O'Brien not only gave me recorded comments but also used the Word commenting feature to insert specific comments throughout my paper. And Prof. Beach gave me extended recorded comments. (Of course, there's also the difference between undergraduate and graduate level courses, I don't think my UMN professors are teaching more than 1 or 2 courses each semester, and my Reading course has only 12 students in it while my Digital Writing course has between 20 and 25.)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Analyzing Readability in a Blog or Website
This was the suggested blog post/topic assigned for my digital writing class on Nov. 18, 2008, in preparation, I think, for our creation of interactive PowerPoint (or SlideShare, or SlideRocket, or VoiceThread) presentations.
However, instead of doing the assigned post first, I jumped right into the creation of my interactive SlideRocket presentation, which has already been posted on my blog (see past posts below), but I thought I'd return to this post, if only for some reflection on the assignment ... since I don't think I'm going to actually do the assignment!
I think that this would be a great assignment to give to my college students, but I think the key ingredient for the assignment would be to make sure students have clear criteria for analysis and evaluation in mind before they go out in search of a blog or website to analyze/evaluate, but especially before they begin the actual analysis and evaluation. And, like I've done in the past, discussing and creating/developing this criteria together as a group is a better use of time than me just lecturing to them about what to look for.
I don't remember, now, if we discussed potential criteria for analysis/evaluation in class, but I remember that our course text, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, includes a nice discussion of this topic. My intial thoughts about criteria include:
I think a "blend" of the old and the new will be where I start, when I begin planning my courses and assignments for next year.
However, instead of doing the assigned post first, I jumped right into the creation of my interactive SlideRocket presentation, which has already been posted on my blog (see past posts below), but I thought I'd return to this post, if only for some reflection on the assignment ... since I don't think I'm going to actually do the assignment!
I think that this would be a great assignment to give to my college students, but I think the key ingredient for the assignment would be to make sure students have clear criteria for analysis and evaluation in mind before they go out in search of a blog or website to analyze/evaluate, but especially before they begin the actual analysis and evaluation. And, like I've done in the past, discussing and creating/developing this criteria together as a group is a better use of time than me just lecturing to them about what to look for.
I don't remember, now, if we discussed potential criteria for analysis/evaluation in class, but I remember that our course text, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, includes a nice discussion of this topic. My intial thoughts about criteria include:
- General, overall structure of the blog or website: top banner(s)? sidebar(s)? construction of the main body--one column, two columns, three columns, etc.? bottom banner(s)?
- Specific construction within these main structural components
- Use of colors
- Use of fonts
- Use of "graphics"--still images, and/or video, and/or other graphic-design features
- Use of "sound"--music, voice, etc.
- Use of text
- Length of text
- Readability of text
- "Interactive" components--comment sections, chat rooms, surveys, quizzes, games, etc.
- A "rhetorical analysis" of an essay, focusing on how the "techniques" used in an essay (usually narrative or expository)--such as structure/organization, examples, details, introductory strategies, conclusion strategies, syntax, diction, style, tone, etc.--helped the writer accomplish her/his purpose for his/her audience.
- A "critique" of an argumentative/persuasive essay, primarily focusing on Aristotle's "three appeals"--ethos, pathos, logos--but also on other argumentative/persuasive strategies used by the writer to accomplish her/his purpose for his/her audience.
I think a "blend" of the old and the new will be where I start, when I begin planning my courses and assignments for next year.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Evaluating a Podcast
I finally got back to this post, which I promised weeks ago!
I started out following the directions given in Podcasting for Dummies, second edition, by Tee Morris, Chuck Tomasi, and Evo Terra. It's a great book if you're starting out with podcasting, and the sections about finding and listening to podcasts have great examples and recommendations. I agree that one should "browse" through many podcasts before starting out ... but I plunged right in, after reading most of the book first, and only later did I start to listen to some.
I'm using both Juice and iTunes as "podcatchers," but I'm not sure which one I prefer. There are some things about the different "screens" in Juice that I don't understand, but Juice is clearer than iTunes, it seems to me, in the step about "going-out-and-seeing-if-anything-is-new," whereas this step seems more hidden in iTunes. With Juice, you get a clear list of all available "episodes" and can see at a glance which ones you have or don't have. I haven't found this yet in iTunes.
The podcast I listened to was Episode One, "Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?" produced by Digital Campus and the Center for History and New Media. It originally "aired" on March 7, 2007. I think I'm going to like the Digital Campus podcasts, if I can work more of them into my schedule. The focus is definitely more on higher education than "Teachers Teaching Teachers," but I think there'd be some good stuff there as well.
This episode had the host, Dan Cohen (?), and two guests. It was pretty informal, the three speakers seemed to know each other, they worked off of each other pretty well, and they seemed comfortable with a few seconds of "dead air" here and there.
The episode started out with a "News Roundup," which covered many different topics and was very interesting. Oddly, though, it took up about half the time of the podcast. Here's a "run-down" of the topics discussed:
One speaker then described an extra-credit project in his Western Civ. class, a project which soon became a required project. He asked his students to either write or substantially edit a Wikipedia entry and then to track the commentary and changes made to the page. He argued that an important part of an entry that is often overlooked is the History of a page. His students soon discovered how quickly and how drastically a page can change, and not always for the better. However, the other argument is that the more people who are involved in a page, the better the article might be. His hope was that, through this project, his students might better understand both Wikipedia and the "scholarly process," the creation (and maintenance?) of knowledge.
The discussion also included, several times, the phrase: "Community of Enthusiasts." We need to recognize that these communities drive Wikipedia and that our students probably already belong to one or more "communities of enthusiasts," based on their personal and/or professional interests. We should capitalize on this and work the concept into our classes.
(As a side note, I already often teach my First-Year Writing course, especially when I focus explicitly on "academic writing," using the ideas of "community" and "conversation." Students need to recognize that, in coming to college, they are joining a new community, and they are going to be "listening to many different conversations." And every conversation is going to have different "conventions" to follow when/if one joins the conversation. We then start in with summarizing, then analysis, then evaluation, then synthesis, then argument, where they actually join or contribute to a conversation after doing all the "listening.")
Finally, the podcast ended with some recommendations for the listeners. If you want to use a wiki for personal or professional reasons, these two were highly recommended:
I started out following the directions given in Podcasting for Dummies, second edition, by Tee Morris, Chuck Tomasi, and Evo Terra. It's a great book if you're starting out with podcasting, and the sections about finding and listening to podcasts have great examples and recommendations. I agree that one should "browse" through many podcasts before starting out ... but I plunged right in, after reading most of the book first, and only later did I start to listen to some.
I'm using both Juice and iTunes as "podcatchers," but I'm not sure which one I prefer. There are some things about the different "screens" in Juice that I don't understand, but Juice is clearer than iTunes, it seems to me, in the step about "going-out-and-seeing-if-anything-is-new," whereas this step seems more hidden in iTunes. With Juice, you get a clear list of all available "episodes" and can see at a glance which ones you have or don't have. I haven't found this yet in iTunes.
The podcast I listened to was Episode One, "Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?" produced by Digital Campus and the Center for History and New Media. It originally "aired" on March 7, 2007. I think I'm going to like the Digital Campus podcasts, if I can work more of them into my schedule. The focus is definitely more on higher education than "Teachers Teaching Teachers," but I think there'd be some good stuff there as well.
This episode had the host, Dan Cohen (?), and two guests. It was pretty informal, the three speakers seemed to know each other, they worked off of each other pretty well, and they seemed comfortable with a few seconds of "dead air" here and there.
The episode started out with a "News Roundup," which covered many different topics and was very interesting. Oddly, though, it took up about half the time of the podcast. Here's a "run-down" of the topics discussed:
- MS Vista
- Google Docs
- A reminder that "students are not automatically technology literate" -- even though we might think that since they're mostly in the 18-22 age group
- A reminder that some students do not have MS Office -- due to cost or other issues
- A discussion about open-source class management systems vs. commercial ones such as BlackBoard and WebCT -- and how "tagging" works in various systems
- Flickr -- and the Ken Albers study
- Delicious
One speaker then described an extra-credit project in his Western Civ. class, a project which soon became a required project. He asked his students to either write or substantially edit a Wikipedia entry and then to track the commentary and changes made to the page. He argued that an important part of an entry that is often overlooked is the History of a page. His students soon discovered how quickly and how drastically a page can change, and not always for the better. However, the other argument is that the more people who are involved in a page, the better the article might be. His hope was that, through this project, his students might better understand both Wikipedia and the "scholarly process," the creation (and maintenance?) of knowledge.
The discussion also included, several times, the phrase: "Community of Enthusiasts." We need to recognize that these communities drive Wikipedia and that our students probably already belong to one or more "communities of enthusiasts," based on their personal and/or professional interests. We should capitalize on this and work the concept into our classes.
(As a side note, I already often teach my First-Year Writing course, especially when I focus explicitly on "academic writing," using the ideas of "community" and "conversation." Students need to recognize that, in coming to college, they are joining a new community, and they are going to be "listening to many different conversations." And every conversation is going to have different "conventions" to follow when/if one joins the conversation. We then start in with summarizing, then analysis, then evaluation, then synthesis, then argument, where they actually join or contribute to a conversation after doing all the "listening.")
Finally, the podcast ended with some recommendations for the listeners. If you want to use a wiki for personal or professional reasons, these two were highly recommended:
- wetpaint.com
- pbwiki.com
- worldmapper.org
- the Open Content Alliance, a rival to Google Books (the Google Library Project), which has upward of 187,000 books online with searching and downloading capabilities -- archive.org/details/texts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Charm's Writing Process
Our cat, Charm, is finally a "star" on the famous YouTube site! And it's actually related to writing! Check it out:
The video was recorded on a Kodak EasyShare camera and transferred to a PC--the file types were "Quick Time Movie." The editing was done, however, on a Mac laptop, using iMovie 2006 (I think). The video image was sharp on iMovie, but when compressed and uploaded to the U of MN's MediaMill, and then "processed" there, the image quality has decreased. Obviously, as soon as I get a second (or three hours), I'm going to look into improving the quality.
The video was recorded on a Kodak EasyShare camera and transferred to a PC--the file types were "Quick Time Movie." The editing was done, however, on a Mac laptop, using iMovie 2006 (I think). The video image was sharp on iMovie, but when compressed and uploaded to the U of MN's MediaMill, and then "processed" there, the image quality has decreased. Obviously, as soon as I get a second (or three hours), I'm going to look into improving the quality.
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 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.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Interesting Class Topics/Themes
In an earlier post, I was all excited about an idea for a class wiki: "Minnesota Literature." Since then, I've been toying around with variations on the theme, since "literature" is sometimes thought of narrowly as only poetry, drama, novels, and short fiction. But I don't want the class or the wiki to be that limiting, especially since some/many students might have reading (and, thus, research) interests in other forms of "literature"--memoirs, autobiography, biography, history, self-help, letters, essays, all the various forms of journalism, etc. Not to mention all the various forms of novels--romance, mystery, science fiction, historical, etc.
So I was thinking of "Minnesota Writing." Or "Writing Minnesota." Or "Minnesota Writers." And I was still excited about the idea.
Then we went to a confirmation party last weekend, where I visited with my nephew who is in his first year at the University of Minnesota at Morris. He was telling me about his first-year writing course and how excited he was about it. And the class topic/theme? Was there one? What was it?
Conspiracy Theories.
And he was saying things that every writing teacher would love to hear. "The readings are so interesting and engaging." "It's fun to go to class and listen to him try to convince us of things." "The topics really get me to think and keep me thinking." "The writing we do is real. We're not just writing to him; we're writing to people we hope to convince about our ideas." "My friends in other writing class aren't reading and writing about anything nearly as interesting."
(When I got home and looked at the UMN-Morris bookstore website, I could kind of see what he meant. A few sections were using a straight "inquiry and academic writing" kind of text. I've done that a lot in the past. One section seemed to be focused on Nature Writing. Seems to make sense for Morris. And one section, well, I couldn't really figure out what they were doing.)
And his enthusiasm is infectious. But I know NOTHING about conspiracy theories--although I've always been interested in them. I love the Dan Brown novels and all the JFK information, among other things. But I've never formally studied conspiracy theories, so would I really feel comfortable about using a theme like that in my classes?
And what would my students think? Some would love it. Some might wonder if it's a history class instead. Some might hate it, have no interest in it. And what about my students from many other countries and/or cultures? What would they think? Would any of the topics even interest them or apply to them? Could they relate? Would they have any background knowledge to draw upon? And any of the "Christian" conspiracy theories might not interest my Jewish or Muslim or Native American students--and might in fact irritate my very deeply religious Catholics or Lutherans. (It is Minnesota, ya know!)
What now?
So I was thinking of "Minnesota Writing." Or "Writing Minnesota." Or "Minnesota Writers." And I was still excited about the idea.
Then we went to a confirmation party last weekend, where I visited with my nephew who is in his first year at the University of Minnesota at Morris. He was telling me about his first-year writing course and how excited he was about it. And the class topic/theme? Was there one? What was it?
Conspiracy Theories.
And he was saying things that every writing teacher would love to hear. "The readings are so interesting and engaging." "It's fun to go to class and listen to him try to convince us of things." "The topics really get me to think and keep me thinking." "The writing we do is real. We're not just writing to him; we're writing to people we hope to convince about our ideas." "My friends in other writing class aren't reading and writing about anything nearly as interesting."
(When I got home and looked at the UMN-Morris bookstore website, I could kind of see what he meant. A few sections were using a straight "inquiry and academic writing" kind of text. I've done that a lot in the past. One section seemed to be focused on Nature Writing. Seems to make sense for Morris. And one section, well, I couldn't really figure out what they were doing.)
And his enthusiasm is infectious. But I know NOTHING about conspiracy theories--although I've always been interested in them. I love the Dan Brown novels and all the JFK information, among other things. But I've never formally studied conspiracy theories, so would I really feel comfortable about using a theme like that in my classes?
And what would my students think? Some would love it. Some might wonder if it's a history class instead. Some might hate it, have no interest in it. And what about my students from many other countries and/or cultures? What would they think? Would any of the topics even interest them or apply to them? Could they relate? Would they have any background knowledge to draw upon? And any of the "Christian" conspiracy theories might not interest my Jewish or Muslim or Native American students--and might in fact irritate my very deeply religious Catholics or Lutherans. (It is Minnesota, ya know!)
What now?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Possible Activities for Blogs in the Classroom
I’m supposed to develop some activities for how I might use blogs in the classroom, but I think all my initial ideas run straight into the warnings given in the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008). For example, the authors quote Sandy Hayes:
In English 0950, for example, since it is a developmental-level college writing course, perhaps start out the semester with the idea of blogs, perhaps even assign some of the chapters in Blogging for Dummies, and have students set up their own blogs. Then, rather than continue on with teacher-assigned readings, have students explore the course anthology and find five readings that they are interested in. This next part sounds the most like the “blog-as-teacher-assigned-horror,” but I could have the students write five posts, one for each reading they’ve selected, briefly summarizing and then perhaps arguing why other students should explore the same reading. All these activities would help them setting up their blog, get them reading, help them with writing fluency, get them to think of their audience as they write, and get them responding to and thinking about each others’ posts.
My next idea also seems very teacher-driven and really just another spin on a typical classroom activity, though this time in the electronic medium. Once students have drafted an essay, rather than the usual in-class peer reviews (which never seem to work the way I want them to, and which never seem to result in all students getting great feedback), the students would copy-and-paste their drafts into a blog post, and then their “writing group,” perhaps now called their “blog partner(s)” (grouped in pairs, trios, or quads), would read their posts/drafts and provide feedback through the comment feature.
This seems only a novelty, however, which might produce one round of good feedback, or which might improve over the semester. However, Hendron, in RSS for Educators, offers something similar to this idea in Chapter 9, in “Lesson 2: Keeping a Fine Arts Portfolio” (pp. 163-165). I think the key here would be to get students to comment on the comments they receive, something I don’t allow them to do in class in their small groups, thinking that they would start “defending” their paper (they should be seeking to understand the comments, asking questions for clarification, etc.). However, with the blog, maybe it would be different. I would, of course, tell them not to defend their paper but to seek clarification, or to initiate some sort of dialogue. This, of course, might require that I have the writing group read the drafts/posts again, including the comments, and to comment on the comments to their comments. If you can follow that!
Lastly, for English 1121, our college writing (or FYC) course, I’m not sure yet about blogs for that class. Since it is the class focusing on argumentation and research, perhaps a class blog and/or a wiki would work better. But I still need to find out more about class blogs; hopefully, that will happen in class on 9-23-08. The Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book has already given some good examples where class blogs and wikis are used for argumentation and research assignments. And the Hendron book, in chapter 9, offers “Lesson 4: Let’s Review” (pp. 168-170) which seems like an ideal assignment for this course. The critical review / critique could be of a movie, book, or musical recording, as Hendron suggests, but it might also be of an argument (the focus of the course), whether written, oral, or visual, whether academic, political, social, or pop culture.
NOTE TO RICK BEACH: I would still like to learn about “track-backs” in blogs, wherein the blogger cites and links to other sources within his/her own blog. I know you covered this a bit last week, right at the end, but a little more time on it would be great! How is it best done? Is it copy-paste, or a hyperlink, or both, or what? It is especially mentioned on p. 103 of your book.
“’It’s not about learning how to use the tools . . . it’s about understanding how to use the tools to learn’” (p. 8).One page later, the authors add:
“We need to consider how students perceive their uses as more than simply completing writing assignments for teachers—now on blogs or wikis rather then [sic] in Word. Clay Burell (2008) warns that blogging can easily become ‘just another way to turn in homework.’” (p. 9).Similarly, the authors quote Anne Beaton:
“However, I felt that my students were essentially experiencing a typical classroom task via a blog—an electronic substitute” (p. 101).So now I’m left wondering: Maybe it’s a learning curve. Maybe I need to start with whatever ideas I have, see how they work, then modify and improve upon them. But it’d sure to nice to start off with wonderful ideas that will work splendidly every time. Of course, I know from experience that this is well nigh impossible. So on to my initial ideas.
In English 0950, for example, since it is a developmental-level college writing course, perhaps start out the semester with the idea of blogs, perhaps even assign some of the chapters in Blogging for Dummies, and have students set up their own blogs. Then, rather than continue on with teacher-assigned readings, have students explore the course anthology and find five readings that they are interested in. This next part sounds the most like the “blog-as-teacher-assigned-horror,” but I could have the students write five posts, one for each reading they’ve selected, briefly summarizing and then perhaps arguing why other students should explore the same reading. All these activities would help them setting up their blog, get them reading, help them with writing fluency, get them to think of their audience as they write, and get them responding to and thinking about each others’ posts.
My next idea also seems very teacher-driven and really just another spin on a typical classroom activity, though this time in the electronic medium. Once students have drafted an essay, rather than the usual in-class peer reviews (which never seem to work the way I want them to, and which never seem to result in all students getting great feedback), the students would copy-and-paste their drafts into a blog post, and then their “writing group,” perhaps now called their “blog partner(s)” (grouped in pairs, trios, or quads), would read their posts/drafts and provide feedback through the comment feature.
This seems only a novelty, however, which might produce one round of good feedback, or which might improve over the semester. However, Hendron, in RSS for Educators, offers something similar to this idea in Chapter 9, in “Lesson 2: Keeping a Fine Arts Portfolio” (pp. 163-165). I think the key here would be to get students to comment on the comments they receive, something I don’t allow them to do in class in their small groups, thinking that they would start “defending” their paper (they should be seeking to understand the comments, asking questions for clarification, etc.). However, with the blog, maybe it would be different. I would, of course, tell them not to defend their paper but to seek clarification, or to initiate some sort of dialogue. This, of course, might require that I have the writing group read the drafts/posts again, including the comments, and to comment on the comments to their comments. If you can follow that!
Lastly, for English 1121, our college writing (or FYC) course, I’m not sure yet about blogs for that class. Since it is the class focusing on argumentation and research, perhaps a class blog and/or a wiki would work better. But I still need to find out more about class blogs; hopefully, that will happen in class on 9-23-08. The Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book has already given some good examples where class blogs and wikis are used for argumentation and research assignments. And the Hendron book, in chapter 9, offers “Lesson 4: Let’s Review” (pp. 168-170) which seems like an ideal assignment for this course. The critical review / critique could be of a movie, book, or musical recording, as Hendron suggests, but it might also be of an argument (the focus of the course), whether written, oral, or visual, whether academic, political, social, or pop culture.
NOTE TO RICK BEACH: I would still like to learn about “track-backs” in blogs, wherein the blogger cites and links to other sources within his/her own blog. I know you covered this a bit last week, right at the end, but a little more time on it would be great! How is it best done? Is it copy-paste, or a hyperlink, or both, or what? It is especially mentioned on p. 103 of your book.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
First-Year Composition: A "Service" Course No Longer?
In continuing to think about the first chapter of the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008, pp. 1-17), I am starting to make "links" as I begin to recall my past readings in College Composition Theory and Pedagogy.
One "theory" or approach to First-Year [College] Composition (FYC) is that it is a "service" course--not in the sense of service learning, although some people include that approach, but in the sense of being "in service" to all the other courses in the curriculum. In other words, students should learn in FYC how to do the kinds of writing that they will encounter in other courses in college.
On the other hand, another approach is to focus almost entirely on the "writing process"--whose proponents include, if I'm remembering correctly, composition scholars like Janet Emig, Peter Elbow, and Donald Murray. In fact, as I was reading this first chapter, a quotation from Donald Murray kept coming to mind--and I'm PARAPHRASING here:
But this relates to this digital writing class. We cannot possibly know what kinds of digital writing our students are already doing, in and/or outside of school, nor can we even begin to guess what kinds of digital writing they will be asked to do in the future--or even what new digital writing tools will be used in the future. Thus, we should continue to stress the writing process as we ask them to use various digital writing tools.
But this will conflict with those, both in the English Department and in other departments, who feel that FYC should be a "service" course. If Biology, or Math, or Health, or Political Science does not use blogs, or wikis, or podcasts, or whatever, are we in FYC "wasting our students' time" helping them to use these things? If digital writing becomes a focal point in the class, we won't be able to cover Reviews of Literature, or Annotated Bibliographies, or Lab Reports, or whatever. What happens then when our students go, unprepared, into these other classes?
One "theory" or approach to First-Year [College] Composition (FYC) is that it is a "service" course--not in the sense of service learning, although some people include that approach, but in the sense of being "in service" to all the other courses in the curriculum. In other words, students should learn in FYC how to do the kinds of writing that they will encounter in other courses in college.
On the other hand, another approach is to focus almost entirely on the "writing process"--whose proponents include, if I'm remembering correctly, composition scholars like Janet Emig, Peter Elbow, and Donald Murray. In fact, as I was reading this first chapter, a quotation from Donald Murray kept coming to mind--and I'm PARAPHRASING here:
As writing teachers, we cannot possibly know what kinds of writing our students will encounter later on in their college careers, let alone what kinds of writing they will encounter in their lives outside of and after college. Thus, we should help them to understand the writing process itself, guide them through the steps, all its ins and outs, foster their use of it in any writing situation. Then we will have truly helped them, for any writing project will be better if writers follow the writing process to plan, draft, revise, edit, and proofread their writing.I could probably find the exact passage if someone asked.
But this relates to this digital writing class. We cannot possibly know what kinds of digital writing our students are already doing, in and/or outside of school, nor can we even begin to guess what kinds of digital writing they will be asked to do in the future--or even what new digital writing tools will be used in the future. Thus, we should continue to stress the writing process as we ask them to use various digital writing tools.
But this will conflict with those, both in the English Department and in other departments, who feel that FYC should be a "service" course. If Biology, or Math, or Health, or Political Science does not use blogs, or wikis, or podcasts, or whatever, are we in FYC "wasting our students' time" helping them to use these things? If digital writing becomes a focal point in the class, we won't be able to cover Reviews of Literature, or Annotated Bibliographies, or Lab Reports, or whatever. What happens then when our students go, unprepared, into these other classes?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
A Possible Wiki for Next Year's Classes
I've definitely heard more bad than good about Wikipedia, and I usually try to steer my students away from using it. If anything, I tell them to start there, but then to dig deeper to find better sources. So my initial impressions of wikis aren't that great. However, I'm starting to see the positive possibilities.
Last night in class, Richard Beach showed us several wikis created by students who've taken his classes in the past. And Rick has at least two of his own wikis. And we're going to be creating a wiki of our own, apparently. So what would my topic be? What would I really USE in my classes, and what might interest my students, and what might be able to "grow," from class to class, as new students add to the wiki and to the work of previous students?
I was already thinking about this during last week's reading. In the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008, p. 6), the authors write:
The reasons for this topic? First, my own interest in Minnesota Literature, going all the way back to Dr. Ronald Gower's Minnesota Literature course at Mankato State University in the Spring of 1992. And my past students have often reported that my interest in and love of literature in general is infectious and is definitely a positive part of the class.
Second, the community college where I teach has a fairly well established "visiting writers" program, going on 10 years now, where one or two Minnesota writers come to campus each semester to give a presentation. Before each presentation, our college loosely follows a "common book(s)" program, where as many faculty as possible assign the visiting writers' books in their classes, so students have already read and discussed the book(s), and maybe have even written about them, before the writers arrive.
This topic could then be the over-arching "theme" for my first-year writing courses. The first part of the semester could be spent reading the books, talking about them, writing about them (perhaps in Phases I and II as described in the Beach et. al. book), and beginning to gather resources. Rick describes some wikis where the high-school teacher has already gathered some resources for the wiki, to get students started. I could either do that, or let/make them do it. At this point, we'd be concentrating on research methods and skills, searching databases and the Internet, and maybe even starting to evaluate sources.
The second part of the semester could then be spent on further evaluation of the sources gathered, on gathering "multimedia" sources, perhaps including video of the visiting writers, on choosing and defining a "research" topic, and on proposing and planning the paper. The last third of the semester would be spent on the writing process of the required "argumentative research paper" for the course.
Sounds good to me so far! I wonder how my ideas will change over the course of this semester?
Last night in class, Richard Beach showed us several wikis created by students who've taken his classes in the past. And Rick has at least two of his own wikis. And we're going to be creating a wiki of our own, apparently. So what would my topic be? What would I really USE in my classes, and what might interest my students, and what might be able to "grow," from class to class, as new students add to the wiki and to the work of previous students?
I was already thinking about this during last week's reading. In the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008, p. 6), the authors write:
In his first-year composition course at St. Cloud State University, Matt Barton uses a wikibook, Rhetoric and Composition (en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Rhetoric_and_Composition) to which students add material related to topics on rhetoric and composition. Barton finds that, rather than writing papers only for himself, his students are highly motivated to add material to this wikibook knowing that it is being employed by their peers and by [a] larger audience interested in composition.At this point, I had an immediate topic: "Minnesota Literature." Of course, perhaps there's another one out there, but why can't there be two? And, this one would be primarily for me and my students, though anyone else out there could access it. At this point, however, I don't know if I would have it open access for people around the globe. I need to know more before decisions are made.
The reasons for this topic? First, my own interest in Minnesota Literature, going all the way back to Dr. Ronald Gower's Minnesota Literature course at Mankato State University in the Spring of 1992. And my past students have often reported that my interest in and love of literature in general is infectious and is definitely a positive part of the class.
Second, the community college where I teach has a fairly well established "visiting writers" program, going on 10 years now, where one or two Minnesota writers come to campus each semester to give a presentation. Before each presentation, our college loosely follows a "common book(s)" program, where as many faculty as possible assign the visiting writers' books in their classes, so students have already read and discussed the book(s), and maybe have even written about them, before the writers arrive.
This topic could then be the over-arching "theme" for my first-year writing courses. The first part of the semester could be spent reading the books, talking about them, writing about them (perhaps in Phases I and II as described in the Beach et. al. book), and beginning to gather resources. Rick describes some wikis where the high-school teacher has already gathered some resources for the wiki, to get students started. I could either do that, or let/make them do it. At this point, we'd be concentrating on research methods and skills, searching databases and the Internet, and maybe even starting to evaluate sources.
The second part of the semester could then be spent on further evaluation of the sources gathered, on gathering "multimedia" sources, perhaps including video of the visiting writers, on choosing and defining a "research" topic, and on proposing and planning the paper. The last third of the semester would be spent on the writing process of the required "argumentative research paper" for the course.
Sounds good to me so far! I wonder how my ideas will change over the course of this semester?
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