Blogging is New

Many of my technical writing students -- mostly sophomores -- have never blogged, don't know what a blog is, are a bit leery of this thing called "blogging." We're using a blog, hosted by Blogger, to discuss "Technical Writing in the News," which they find out about by subscribing to Google Alerts (use "technical writing" as the Search Term and "News" as the Type).

This casual, audience-centered forum lets students try out some conversation about information we might be able to chat about if we were in a residential-campus setting: we'd perhaps read similar news items, looking for stories about technical writing, and then chat about them in the cafeteria, hallway, student lounge.

Since we're a commuter campus, I try to make the blog an online space for such chatter: you get a news alert that has "technical writing" in it -- perhaps a job post, a human-interest story, a "jobs going to India" story -- and then post what you think about it on the blog. Classmates can read the same alert and concur/disagree/expand. Students learn about audience, diction, technology, purpose: all technical writing concepts.

I like this assignment, and even though many students are completely new to blogging, they end up liking it, too.

High School Stars

Tonight, I helped out a pal of mine who teaches English at North High in Minneapolis: she set aside time for her AP students to come by -- in the evening! -- to get some specialized information to help them get prepared for their AP courses this fall. She asked me to talk about literary analysis in particular, so this afternoon I created a handout, not knowing if I'd be talking with 2 students or 20.

In fact, six young men showed up -- and one young woman about 30 minutes into the session -- who were eager, intelligent, highly energetic and accomplished athletes. They listened, asked and answered questions, offered interpretations that showed they'd had practice thinking of alternatives.

I was impressed with the truly beautiful combination of rowdy joshing with each other and respectful listening with me (and the other teachers present, who were all known to them).

Ideally, they'll all attend college and earn degrees, but the demographics do work against them: ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic class matter. Here's hoping that these seven engaged young people defy the odds.

MIA!

The Voki avatar I made the other day for my online course "welcome" message took me about 45 minutes to create. I wasn't familiar with the software, and then the uploading to the course management system took more steps than were obvious.

But now, that work has disappeared! As I'm double/triple-checking the course websites for the semester that starts tomorrow, I do NOT find the avatar! I don't see the facsimile of myself saying "Welcome to this class" in the voice of Kate. :-(

Dang! What happened!

*UPDATE!* The issue is Firefox. With Safari as my browser, I can see the avatars. Yea!
*DOUBLE UPDATE* But I can't edit the html in D2L when I use my MacBook. Boo!

Does she look like me?

Revving Up

The new semester begins in three weeks (just less than that, actually), and I'm wondering where my summer went! Of course, I was teaching (both a f2f and an online course), driving around the country on great road trips (Bemidji, Madison, Chicago, New York, Montreal -- not always in that order), and next week I'll fly to San Antonio for a visit.

But I'm beginning to pull together ideas for my fall classes, and I found this new multi-authored blog: Ecology of Education | Exploring the Ecosystems of Learning.

Although the site seems primarily addressed to K-12 educators (the most amazing and under-appreciated public servants in our country), I'm finding some great information there, too. Just the metaphor alone needs to be more widely understood: Ecology, indeed!

Check it out.

P.S. Here's one more resource: a delicious.com list of sites for classroom ideas from Active Learning Carnival. I found it via the MnSCU CTL blog (see at right).