ARCC English Division Meeting 2009-04-08

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

Video:

• YouTube Video: "A Vision of Students Today"

Wikis & Wikibooks:

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

Tag/Text Clouds:

• Wordle
• TagCrowd

Podcasts:

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

Let me know if you have any questions!

Final "Portfolio" Reflection #1

Well, it looks like I've written 35 or 36 posts since I began this blog back in September! Wow! Time sure has flown. And, I can't believe I've written that much. I had figured 1-2 a week for the 15-week semester, which would be about 15-30. Well, I guess it's close. (Too many "wells"? I'm still not sure if I've found my "tone" or "voice" yet!)

The first major thing that comes to mind when reviewing my posts is something Alyssa R. said to me in class a few weeks ago: "These blogs sure are public." When I asked her what she meant, she replied that someone from SlideRocket had found her blog, and her post about SlideRocket, and they had left a comment for her. Like me, I think she thought no one would find these blogs except our classmates. But someone had found hers! Then, just a day or so later, I saw a comment to my podcasting post, and Chuck Tomasi (one of the co-authors of Podcasting for Dummies) had left a comment thanking me for using and mentioning Podcasting for Dummies in my blog! Then, a few days after that, the SlideRocket people had also found my SlideRocket presentation and blog post, and had left a message as well. Of course, it's all about recognizing "product placement" and advertising, but it's also "cool" to think that these blogs are "out there, and lovin' every minute of it," as Kramer once said on Seinfeld.

My best blog post? Maybe the two posts about American Literature, and comparing my course to a course Donald Ross is currently teaching. But why are these the best? Maybe because they were not assigned for my Digital Writing class. (Which is where we want our students to also end up, eventually.) But also maybe because I'm really enjoying my sabbatical and having the time to do things like this, to take this Digital Writing course, and to sit in on another course that I enjoy teaching. So, I don't know if the two posts are necessarily "good" because of the writing itself but because I enjoyed the creation of them, the experiences which led up to them.

Likewise, my "worst" blog post ... perhaps the one(s) having to do with podcasting ... because I struggled, at first, and partly throughout, with the podcasting activity itself, with figuring out Audacity, with take after take, with finding music, with editing. But by the time I was looking for music, and editing, and using the envelope tool, I was actually starting to have a bit of fun.

So that may be the "key" for me, the criterion that I would use for evaluating my blog posts: Which activities gave me the most frustration and struggle, and which activities were fun (or even became fun as time moved along)?

Frustrations:

• Podcasting (recording and editing audio) ... the first three-quarters of it
• Vlogging (recording and editing video) ... I don't actually consider what I did to be a vlog ... OK, it's definitely NOT a vlog, I do know that ... and it took a long time ... but again, the fun came later, when I got the "hang" of iMovie ... and it was fun to use video of my cat and creatively connect it to writing ... and it was fun to actually post something to YouTube!
  

Enjoyments:

• Creating the WritingMinnesota wiki
• Bubbl.us
• Flickr SlideShow
• VoiceThread (x2)
• SlideRocket Presentation
  

These were all "new" tools for me, they were fun, I had to be somewhat creative (although I'm not creative at all), and I tried to always connect it to my teaching, although often in somewhat goofy ways. But, hey, it's a start ... and I might even have the courage to show these to my students as "rough models."

And that's what I have to keep doing: reflecting on HOW AND WHY I might have my students use these tools. Yes, I want them to have fun, to be motivated and engaged, but I also want them to be writing and to be improving their writing. And I want to be confident that these tools are indeed helping them to do that.

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.)

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:

• 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

At this point, the discussion about Wikipedia began, and they made many good points. Instead of saying to students that they can't use it and/or they can't cite it -- which they're going to probably look at anyway -- we should "train" our students in a better use of Wikipedia. We should even ask and discuss the question, Is an encyclopedia an appropriate college-level source?

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

If you teach history or geography, you might be interested in:

• worldmapper.org

If you teach your students research skills, you might be interested in:

• 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

I'm glad Digital Campus was recommended to me by my Digital Writing professor. I've already downloaded several more podcasts and hope to listen to them soon. I tried to listen while doing other things on the computer, but I'm not one to be able to do that, whereas I know others who can multi-task. It makes me question using podcasts for my classes: Will my students be paying attention, or will they be distracted with other things and come away with only a fraction of what was on the podcast? Maybe in asking them to find and evaluate some before actually doing their own, they might actually realize that their audience won't be paying as much attention as they hope? Is this too much to hope for?

Reflecting on Creating a Podcast and Editing Audio

I've already posted my podcast, as you might already know, but I promised to come back and blog about the process and how I might use it in my teaching. And, if you've already read my reflection on editing video, you might already be able to guess what I'm going to say here.

I HATED the podcasting assignment, but I'm not quite sure why. It might have to do with struggling to find a topic that others might be interested in hearing about. But are my students always interested in what we talk about in class? No, not really, I'm a realist, but at least they are "present," with few distractions, to be able to take in, and perhaps contribute to, the discussion. With a podcast, they can listen to it whenever, wherever, but I'm guessing that they will NOT be sitting, listening, and doing nothing else.

Hating the podcasting assignment might also have to do with never having done any audio editing before, and the "learning curve," at least for me, was steep. Downloading Audacity and LAME wasn't a problem, but it seemed that "fine-tuning" the volume and other set-up things, and then actually recording the podcast, was excruciating. However, the editing was better, and was more fun the more I played with it. I even managed to find the Podsafe Audio site and was able to include some music in my podcast for my "intro" and "outro." Really cool music, I might add. (Thanks, again, to Mauricio Cuburu for "Disco Viejo.")

I should also say here that the Podcasting for Dummies book, second edition, by Tee Morris, Chuck Tomasi, and Evo Terra, was helpful ... but it was also a way for me to prolong the project, because I convinced myself that I had to read almost the entire book first, before sitting down to do anything.

Finally, how might I use podcasting in my classes? I'm not sure, but I do know who I could talk to, to get some ideas. A former colleague of mine, Jerry Shannon, who is now a Ph.D. student in Geography at the U of MN, used to teach freshman composition, both at ARCC and the U of MN. He was light-years ahead of me, and many others, in terms of technology, and he also had a service-learning component in his classes. While teaching at the U of MN, he affiliated his classes with a radio station somewhere, perhaps in one of the Minneapolis high schools, and he had his students create podcasts. I'm not sure what they created podcasts about, but here might be some ideas, based on the kinds of writing normally assigned in freshman comp:

• Personal Writing -- create a podcast about an event in your life that changed your thinking about others. Use the podcast to tell the story, to set the mood, and to get people thinking and reflecting on their own lives. Check out NPR's "This I Believe" for some ideas.
  
• Informative Writing -- create a podcast to inform your listeners about a process they know little about. Use the podcast to teach your listeners the process, to introduce them to an expert in the process, and to let them know where to find more information. Check out various NPR/MPR "stories" for some ideas.
  
• Argumentative Writing -- create a podcast to state your position on a local controversial issue, or to present your solution to a problem in your community. Use the podcast to state and support the reasons for your position, to acknowledge and address the various opposing arguments, and to persuade your listeners to either change their thinking about the issue or to at least consider your position more carefully. Check out various NPR/MPR "editorials" and "opinion pieces" for some ideas.

All of these podcasts would, of course, be preceded by the full reading, research, and writing processes, resulting in at least one draft, a peer review, a revision, and then a "script" for the podcast. Digital recorders would be required for interviews in the field, and microphones and headsets would be required in the computer labs. Skype interviews might have to be arranged and recorded somehow (Camtasia Studio? Gizmo?). Arrangements would have to be made with my college's Technology Department for storage space and for "processing," similar to the U of MN's Media Mill, so that the MP3 files could be "subscribed to" using RSS feeds or downloaded for playback.

And, now, all of this seems so clear and straightforward, and yet so time and resource intensive!

Reflecting on Editing and Posting Video

While this project was actually for an assignment in the Digital Writing course I am taking, it began at home with my wife and I anticipating some fun with our cat, Charm. We set up a black-cat Halloween prop for Charm to find, and at the last minute we thought to get the camera. I should say here that Charm is extremely sensitive to anything new and she especially does not like other animals about. I should also admit that we weren't as prepared as we should have been. Good photographers and videographers know to always have their equipment pre-checked, ON, and ready to shoot. We were a bit slow, but we still managed to get some good material. We should have gotten the camera sooner, and we should have made sure we had fresh batteries! Live and learn, I guess.

Even though we shot the video on the Kodak EasyShare Z885 camera, we were able to use a cable we got with our Canon camera to transfer the video files to our PC. No problem so far. But then when I went to begin editing the video in Windows Movie Maker, problems quickly arose. The video was in Quick Time Movie format (.MOV), which is not supported by Windows Movie Maker. So I had to take A LONG TIME searching the web to find a file conversion site that was reviewed well on several discussion boards. I settled on Media Convert, and was eventually able to successfully convert my four .MOV files to .AVI files. Since I am, by nature, obsessive compulsive, this whole ordeal probably took me much longer than it would take anyone else, but slower is sometimes better.

Ironically, by this point, I had to leave for class, so I took all the video files with me, on a USB flash drive, and I ended up beginning the editing process, in class, ON A MAC. So, I didn't need to do the conversions after all, but I do eventually want to go back and learn Windows Movie Maker, if only because my college does not really support Macs, except for the Art Department.

As you might already guess, the video editing took me A LONG TIME also. I began it in class, but had to spend about three-and-a-half additional hours outside of class to produce a 3-minute video. I was then able to compress it, upload it to the U of MN's Media Mill, process it there, and have it ready to embed on my blog and upload to YouTube. The first upload to YouTube did not "take," for some reason (which, based on past experience, I'm guessing had to do with my poor relationship with the U of MN's servers, or with doing it on a wireless laptop), but the second upload to YouTube from my PC at home was successful.

In all, however, in spite of the video file format conversion problem, and in spite of the uploading to Media Mill and to YouTube problems, I enjoyed the video editing process MUCH MORE than the audio editing process (for the podcasting assignment) even though the two processes are very similar and the editing environments (Audacity or GarageBand, and iMovie) have many similarities--e.g., multiple "tracks," adding in music or sound effects, cutting, rearranging "clips," etc. And I'm not sure why I enjoyed it more. Was it because I had already gone through the "hell" of podcasting and editing audio, so I had more "background knowledge" when it came time to do the video editing? Or was it because I am a more "visual" person so I enjoyed that element more? (This second reason I'm not as sure about, since I also tend to learn better from reading than from hands-on lessons--for example, I loved the chemistry formulas, math, and "book work," but I hated the chemistry labs.)

So ... would I use this in class? I'm not sure yet. I would first want to learn Windows Movie Maker, so that I could "teach" it to my students, at least in a rudimentary way. Second, my college does not loan out cameras, I don't think, whereas the U of MN does, either in the Curriculum & Instruction Library or out of Walter Library, so I'm not sure if my students would have as good of access to equipment as I did. Third, I'm not sure yet what assignment I could give that would lend itself to video. I could see an argumentative-inquiry project involving not only research but some type of video component, but that's as far as my thinking has gone.

Using Podcasting in My Classes

Forthcoming. Stay tuned!

My First Podcast

There. It's done. Finished. I've finally done it. And who says that worrying and carrying on aren't useful?

This particular podcast is "Episode 2" (no, there's no "Episode 1" yet) from a podcast "show" which might be titled "American Literature to 1865." Oddly enough, this "show" also happens to be a course that I teach at Anoka Ramsey Community College. (But I won't get into educators as entertainers in this particular blog post.)

In this podcast, I talk about why we are reading some texts but not others; particularly, why we are not reading exploration narratives/reports by Spanish, French, Dutch, and other non-English writers, and why we are not reading the Native American Origin and Creation Stories.

So, without further ado, here are the various links created by the University of Minnesota's Media Mill:

Public Download URL

Public Playable URL

RSS2.0

This podcast was created on a PC using Audacity and LAME. The podsafe music by Mauricio Cuburu was found on PodsafeAudio.com. The mp3 file is stored on (hosted by) the U of MN's Media Mill, which also generated the RSS feed.

Thank you, thank you very much!

Planning an "Interview" Podcast

As you discovered in my previous post, I'm a bit behind on these two podcasting assignments. But that's not to say I've been doing nothing. Hardly. I've been obsessing. I've been reading. I've been worrying. I've been reading. I've been frustrating. (Just ask my wife!)

And, as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not only trying to figure out all the technology, but I've been trying to focus my attention and efforts on PC applications, rather than Mac applications. So, in this case, for an interview podcast, I've been focusing on Gizmo, rather than Skype, along with Camtasia Studio and Sound Tap.

I've read the U of MN's "position" on Skype, since I was warned about Skype ahead of time by my wife (a U of MN employee), and I was swayed by the arguments. I do not at all like the idea of Skype "using" my computer to "route" other people's "calls" while I'm online. I also do not like Skype because, currently, Skype offers no way to record conversations.

Thus, I've found a reference in the Hendron book (p. 86) about Camtasia Studio for recording Skype video -- if I decide I need to use Skype for video -- and I've found references in the Podcasting for Dummies book (pp. 71-72 and 95-99) about using Sound Tap to record "any" audio being played through the computer. And, Gizmo, a Skype competitor (?), seems to be similar to Skype but it has the capability to record audio. I still need to check into Gizmo about video capabilities.

But my planning for the interview podcast is nearly complete. I plan to interview a friend from graduate school who is also my "adjunct" colleague at my college and who teaches English at Irondale High School. He is currently using a PBWiki in his classes -- after talking to me about them, and, after actually learning from me about them -- and I'm going to talk to him about how it's going, how he's using it, how his students are responding to it, etc.

So, again, stay tuned! I hope to have that podcast up soon!

Planning a "Solo" Podcast

Just when I thought I had a handle on the technology -- on Nings, on Blogs, on Wikis, on VoiceThread and digital storytelling, etc. -- along came the Podcast ... and BOOM ... I'm paralyzed with fear ... again!

I've spent the last week, and more, pouring through the Hendron and the Podcasting for Dummies books -- I've read the whole PFD (not .pdf) book now -- and I'm still tentative about actually sitting down and doing the podcast. My next task is to review the tutorials on the wiki, again, and the plan is to sit down on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, and record, and edit, and complete the ID3 info, and complete the show notes, and complete the FTP of the mp3 media file to the U of MN Media Mill, and finally generate the RSS 2.0 feed.

See, I have the process down now. It's just the bells-and-whistles of all the software to worry about. But it's not like I've done nothing. I experimented in class last week with the Mac's GarageBand. I definitely like GarageBand, but since my college only supports PCs and Windows, I'm focusing more on the software applications related to PCs, particularly Audacity.

And, I've already recorded two files on Audacity: a personal introduction for my classes, and a short story I wrote a few years ago -- which would actually work well as a 2-3 person "radio play," or whatever it might be called, if I scripted it that way.

Audacity does not have all the bells-and-whistles that GarageBand does, which might lead one to think it's easier, but it then requires other downloads for music and sound effects and whatnot. Maybe that's what's tripping me up?

But my preparation or planning for my "solo" podcast is done. It will be a monologue about the reasons why I do not currently spend very much time on Native American literature (or orature?) -- especially on the creation tales, the trickster tales, the ghost dances, the songs, and so forth -- in the American literature survey courses. It's a question I ask myself every semester, it's a question I wrestle with frequently, and it's a question sometimes (OK, rarely) asked by my students. So it will be a "talking through" of the rationale I use ... and perhaps the rationale I've heard from others.

So stay tuned! I hope to have a post on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, with at least two things: a link to the podcast itself, and, hopefully, an RSS feed to "subscribe" to the post ... and perhaps to future posts.

Listening to and Evaluating a Podcast

Forthcoming. Stay tuned!