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:

“’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.

My Search Strategies

The databases I typically use for my teaching and for my own writing probably tend to be more “old fashioned” than “tech savvy,” and most are found on my college’s library website. I use these primarily because I feel there are fewer “credibility” issues to worry about. I usually begin with MnPALS, the library catalog used for all the MnSCU colleges and universities as well as other MN private colleges; this catalog is mostly for books. I then go to the EBSCO family of databases, which is free for all faculty and students; it includes other databases such as Academic Search Premier, CINAHL (for nursing and allied health), EBSCO MegaFILE, and MasterFILE Premier. I then go to ProQuest for newspaper searching.

When I help my lawyer friend with medical research for his insurance-claims cases, we tend to go to the Diehl Hall Medical Library at the U of MN and use the computers there. I forget off-hand which specific databases we use there, but using the in-house computers not only guarantees access to those databases but also allows us to easily print full-text articles online and to physically go to the shelves if we can’t obtain a full-text article online. Another benefit is having a reference librarian right there to help us if we get stuck.

I sometimes will check Google, but it’s usually last instead of first, which is exactly opposite what I advise my students to do! I tell them to check Google first, even Wikipedia if they must, to get an overview of the topic and what’s out there. I then encourage them to go to the “better” sources and databases for their actual research. Much of this has to do, I suppose, with my own reluctance to use technology and my own skepticism of the credibility, reliability, validity, relevancy, etc. of much of the stuff on the Internet. We do, however, cover all these questions in class, and most, if not all, writing textbooks and handbooks include a section on “evaluating sources,” complete with lists of questions to ask about each different type of source.

The other advantage with the databases listed above is that, more and more, the full text of things is available online. This is ironic, because I also value the physical act of “browsing” in libraries and bookstores. More and more, I find that students will avoid going to the library if they can help it. They’d rather get the full text of things online, even if we are in a computer lab just down the hall from the library and I tell them they can walk down there during class if they need to find, get, or copy something. Rather, if they can’t get the full text online, they will probably skip that source, even though it might be the best source ever for their topic, the source with the “smoking gun,” even if the library owns a hard copy of a book or journal they could photocopy, and they go on to find something else, something similar, but probably something not as good. Another related thought: students also tend to avoid asking the librarians for help, even if the librarians are present with us in the computer lab or are wandering throughout the library.

For identifying and testing out relevant search categories or keywords, I usually begin by brainstorming as long a list as I can before even hitting the computer. I use the most obvious keywords, but I also try for synonyms, and I also try various combinations of key words. (For the law/medical research that I do with my friend, we do this together.) I also note where and when to use Boolean operators and quotation marks to group words together to be searched together.

Right now, I’m only beginning to understand, and use, RSS feeds to subscribe to things such as news, blogs, online magazines, podcasts, etc. I have feeds set up now for my three blog partners. I’m going to see if NCTE has a feed so I can receive their “INBOX” in Google Reader instead of through my email, which sometimes blocks NCTE emails for some reason. I’m also going to explore the Ed-Tech-Talk and Teachers-Teaching-Teachers that Prof. Beach has been talking about. I also still need to set up feeds for iTunes and YouTube, but I don’t yet know how to do that.

I think I’m already pretty good about teaching my students effective search strategies. I’m pretty detail oriented, and I think and do things my students don’t do, and hearing about these things helps them—I know because they tell me so. But, I admit, more and more they are actually teaching me things too—which I give them credit for and then share these tips with the entire class through the class distribution email lists. I can see already, through this digital writing class this semester, that I will have much more to teach when I return from my sabbatical in Fall 2009!

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:

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?

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:

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?

Student Blogging and Plagiarism

In the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008, pp. 5-6), the authors quote Gunther Kress:

If I am thinking of composing a text, I can take the resources for that from anywhere--usually described and misunderstood as cut and paste, and not as real writing or composition.

My worry here is that this IS what some students do, and they don't see a problem with it. They cut-and-paste text from the web into their own documents, without any attribution phrases or citations (from a particular documentation system), and are then shocked when I fail the paper for plagiarism.

I am beginning to understand, now, in this class on digital writing, why and how they can think this way. With YouTube and social-networking sites, this is how things are done, and they don't think anything of it. A video--or anything else--is linked to quickly and then passed on. The original creators might even be pleased that their work is being passed on to a wider audience and may not worry about correct attribution.

But here comes, then, discussions of specific discourse (or other) communities, and specific conventions observed by different communities. Academia values attribution and citation. Knowledge is created, disseminated, and built on. But previous work is acknowledged.

Web 2.0, or the Read/Write Web, does not seem to value this acknowledgement, or seems to value it in a different way. We are not only "consumers" of the web; we are now also "producers." And with this instantaneous "switch" in role, from reader to writer, we seem to immediately respond and/or create, and attribution can get lost.

Day One of American Lit. I -- Taught by Me

In the past 2-3 years, I've begun this course--Eng. 2230: American Literature to 1865--after welcoming the students and identifying the course, by handing out two poems: Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" and Emily Dickinson's "There is no Frigate like a Book." I don't identify the poems by either author or title--I just hand them out (both printed on one page) and ask students to spend a few minutes reading and thinking about them. I then try to get discussion going by asking, first, for general reactions to the poems, and then for any similarities or "links" students see between the two poems; I also ask if anyone knows the poets or the poems. I begin this way for a few reasons:

1. I want to foreground the reading and analysis and interpretation of literature in the course, rather than all the history.
2. I want to set a tone and an expectation for the class--there will be more class discussion than lecture.
3. I want students to look ahead a little bit--to the end of the course, in this case, since the course ends with Whitman and Dickinson. Many of the early writers will be slower and more difficult to read--Smith, Bradford, Winthrop, etc.--but more "modern" English will come.
4. I want to set a few themes for the course with these poems--the importance of books and reading, but also the importance of getting outside the analytical classroom to appreciate the literature on its own.

I can do this--while Donald Ross probably can't (and may not even want to)--because my class "caps" at 50 students; however, my usual enrollment is between 35 and 45 students. After seeing Donald's first day, however, I do want to rethink my own. Does he set more of a "university" tone to his class (yes, I know, he teaches at a university), while my tone is more "community college" (or even "high school," as some students think)? Should I even be concerned about this?

Some students have been told all through high school that college will be full of lectures. I want them to discover right away that this might not always be the case. This brings with it, however, another kind of challenge. For the students who value lecture, or who have come in expecting lectures, my class might disappoint them. And, they might see a discussion-based class as less valuable, or more "easy," than a lecture-based class. They might not see it as I do, that a discussion-based class might be harder because it is "active learning," while a lecture-based class might be more "passive." It does all depend on the setting (for example, class size, which usually can't be helped) and the professor. I know really good lecturers, who are very engaging and elicit student participation.

After about 15-20 minutes discussing the poems, I hand out the course syllabus--the document with all the objectives, requirements, and policies--and review it with the students. Years ago, I stopped reading everything to them; now, I only read the requirements section with them, and a few of the policies. I try to point out everything, and I encourage them to read it that night. Some of my colleagues read everything; others read nothing and expect the students to read it all. Some of my colleagues will even give quizzes over the syllabus during the next class period. The discussions surrounding these practices have to do with the thought that students need to be familiar with all the objectives, requirements, policies, penalties, etc. right from the beginning, so that there are no surprises, hurt feelings, or complaints later on.

I hand out the course reading schedule separately from the course syllabus--and, yes, I know that, technically, the word syllabus suggests "outline," which suggests "schedule." Like Donald Ross, I include a reading question or two for each writer on the schedule, to guide and help the students with their reading, but unlike Donald, I include these for every writer, not just for some. Where I "fall down" is not following up with these questions daily or even regularly. Nearly all questions do make it into our discussions of the literature, but I don't always start with them, nor do I make it obvious when I'm bringing them in. Thus, past students have reported not paying attention to the questions "because we don't use them."

By this time we have only about 5-10 minutes left. (The class meets 3 times each week for 50-minute sessions.) I usually end the first class with a "Participant Information Sheet," wherein I ask what they already know about American Literature, what they are expecting, how comfortable they are with class discussions, and if they have anything personal they want to tell me--such as legitimate, planned absences or disabilities.

Day One of American Lit. I --Taught by Donald Ross

On Wed. Sept. 3, 2008, I sat in on Donald Ross's first day of EngL 3005: Survey of Am. Lit. and Cultures I (to 1850). I had asked him previously if this was OK, and he had no problem with me attending whenever I wanted. I wanted to see how he conducted his first day to compare to my own first day. In a follow-up post, I will describe how I usually do my first day.

EngL 3005 at the University of Minnesota enrolls approximately 150 students. If I'm counting correctly, these 150 students are broken into 6 recitation sections of 25 students each, and 3 teaching assistants each teach 2 recitation sections per week. Donald Ross handles the lectures, which meet twice per week, 12:45 to 2:00 p.m.

Donald began directly with the course syllabus, which includes the reading schedule. He stressed that he teaches literary works in their contexts, so the course--and probably primarily the lectures--will stress history. He also pointed out that for some writers, he put questions in the reading schedule to help students guide their reading. He reviewed what 4"x6" card quizzes were. He mentioned that information on the two course papers--one short and one long--would come in 2-3 weeks. And he finished with what he calls the "fine print"--all the policies set up by the University and the English Department.

He then jumped right in to the historical background, beginning with maps to show how much the Europeans knew about the Americas, beginning with about 1502. He began with Spanish explorers but soon switched to English explorers and explained why and how the course will deal mostly with English-language writing and the East Coast.

He then plotted a timeline on the board and asked for a few dates from the class. Aside from these questions, there was little class participation thus far. He began the timeline with about 1340 and ended it with 1865.

From there, he began his lecture on Hawthorne's novel, The House of the Seven Gables, which will begin the course. During this time, since it was the first day after all, he pointed to and read specific passages from the Preface and Chapter One of the novel, and followed those readings with his own commentary and explanations. The goal behind all this was to create a list of major themes for the novel, which also, incidentally, will appear later on as major themes for the course.

All in all, an interesting and engaging first day--from my perspective. But, remember, I'm a teacher of American Literature as well! The girl next to me did doze off a few times, but for the most part, people around me seemed to be engaged and taking notes. About 15 minutes before the end, though, people were getting restless.