More new finds

I'm not sure what to call the paths I've been taking lately to find new and interesting information on the web: following hyperlinks? trails? serendipity? ADHD?

At any rate, I've found a blog called CyberEnglish today, which is written by an English teacher who's also interested in technology.

I've also watched "Text & Technologies," a talking-head lecture on YouTube. Very odd experience, but I've learned something, I think.

And finally, a person can find TONS of educational stuff online. Try this site "Free Video Lectures" for short courses in everything from Anatomy to Electronics to Philosophy to Web Design.

Another Discovery . . .

The MnSCU Center for Teaching and Learning has a blog, too! Although it's not a blog with frequent posts, I think the list of CTL tutorials from June 7, 2007's entry is worth a look. Check it out.

And also try this small blog called "Civic Engagement and Higher Education" by John Hamerlink who works for the Minnesota Campus Compact. These two ideas are important to me, too.

Much Belated . . .

I have just found out that Century College has a blog! Who knew?

Actually, it's not quite a college blog - more like one person - and some important links don't work.

But I suppose something is better than nothing . . . although that phrase loses its punch in this "instant access, ready information" age. Dead links are especially damaging to an institution's ethos . . . .

Considering logic

In this political season (aren't they all?), we're bombarded with arguments by analogy. Most of these arguments contain the logical fallacy called a "weak [or false, faulty, questionable] analogy." It takes work to uncover the weak analogy, but perhaps this little story (stolen from here) will provide a bit of fun:

Consider: How is a raven like a writing desk? (In other words, how are these two analogous?) Most people might say they're not; they share no compelling characteristics.

Consider this answer: Poe wrote on both of them.

It's a joke, right? We know it's a weak analogy because the answer depends upon wordplay, the two meanings of "on" used simultaneously. (The ancient Greeks called this particular figure of speech or trope a "syllepsis.")

In other words: study logic and rhetoric today so you can become a better argument analyzer. Visit these sites:
Silva Rhetoricae
Gorgias's Weblog: "The Daily Trope"
CriticalThinking.org
Language Log
Electric Rhetoric

Podcast of note

Browsing around the Minnesota Public Radio site, I found this: Grammar Grater, "a weekly podcast about English words, grammar and usage for the Information Age." (I wonder what they think about the serial comma? MPR must align themselves with the newspaper crowd.)

An English Course?

I'm intrigued by a professor's introduction to (or invitation to or commercial for) a UC-Irvine course called Digital Rhetoric 2007. The professor, Liz Losh, produced a number of videos on the topic.

For example, she presents a couple of what I might call "course lectures" that summarize the use of digital rhetoric: "2007, The Year in Digital Rhetoric" and "2006, the Year of Digital Rhetoric"

Both of these "lectures" would be great in any classroom, as would Losh's initial course invitation. In that video, she's explicit that such courses and the area of study (digital rhetoric) belong in an English department. I agree!

(Do you think I'm getting addicted to YouTube?!)

Typography=Visual Rhetoric

I continue my fascination with typography: the relationships between words as words, as containers, as vehicles, as collections of letters which are themselves words, containers, vehicles.

Here are some YouTube videos that I like:

"Typography" by Boca and Ryan Ulrich, which introduces the vocabulary and concepts of the art
"Who's on First?" by Jimmy073, which uses the famous Abbott and Costello routine as the basis for a terrific little typography film
"Adolph Hitler Speech using Kinetic Typography" by sonyaedith, a powerful presentation of an actual 1939 speech by Hitler, profoundly disturbing and great for many kinds of courses
"Kinetic Typography Girl" by Meyrien Janevine, which has great music, too
"Live Out Loud" by Johnny Lee, short and powerful

Thirty Students, 59 authors

The students listed the authors they'd heard of and came up with a list of 59, of whom almost a dozen I know next-to-nothing about (Upton Sinclair? Robinson Jeffers? Edwin Arlington Robinson?).

Which is to say that I'll learn something this semester - hooray!

Webinar

Although this particular neologism bothers me, yesterday I did participate in a web-based seminar (or "event" as Capella University, the sponsor/host, describes it). Intrigued by the topic, "Academic Standards in Online Teaching and Curriculum," I logged into a webspace to participate, a website that didn't make clear how I was to communicate/listen to the webinar (why does no one use consistent vocabulary when describing things?). Eventually, I was able to connect fully, after typing in questions to the "host" (different from the "presenter") who did an admirable job juggling the technology.

The hour-long experience consisted of me watching a series of PowerPoint slides on my computer while I listened on the phone to the presenter talk about the slides. Participants could type questions into the "Chat" space on the website (not the Q&A space which is where I typed my first three questions). The presenter would stop occasionally to ask for questions, which the host would read to her from the website - evidently, the presenter wasn't seeing the same thing we were seeing. Oddly, I could not tell who else was participating: no list of participants appeared, even though I asked for one, and so I thought I was listening by myself for the longest time - and I thought I was listening to a taped presentation because it was so stilted.

Sadly, the slides and presenter were unsatisfying to me because they were both too complicated and too generalized to be taken seriously as "seminar" topics. If listeners did not already agree with the presenter's points and references, they couldn't accept or even understand the advice they were being given. That such an event was called "higher education" frustrates me. I wouldn't prepare something that thin and biased for my undergraduates.

As a person trained in the humanities, I'm used to asking questions, asking for clarification and for support/rationale/reasons/justification for ideas I encounter. In short, I'm a critical thinker. But critical thinkers could not fully participate in this event because they didn't have any opportunity to be truly critical. Sure, we could ask questions, but no follow-ups, so my only question conveyed to the presenter received a woefully inadequate response: mostly broad generalizations without support (along with a sad joke).

I'm frustrated that so-called experts in education provide such sub-standard content - and via the online medium, which further limits the value of that content. For all the presenter's emphasis on "standards" and "outcomes," I do not see that she planned any for this particular educational event. It was much more of a "do as I say, not as I do" experience.

Extremely disappointing.

Reading Lists

Before the winter break ends, I hope everyone gets to finish the reading they'd hoped to do. I'm still working on Otto Jespersen's 1924 book The Philosophy of Grammar, a book I acquired about 10 years ago and have dipped into periodically. I'd hoped to read it rather than dip, but so far I've not managed. Feels too much like a textbook, and I suspect I'm feeling what many of my students feel: why am I reading all this explanation for something that seems obvious?

Another book on my list for break is The Heath Anthology of American Literature, vols. C, D, and E. I have to make some selections from these volumes for a course called American Literature: 1870 to the Present. Any suggestions?

Candidate information

Since I don't watch television, I didn't even know what Mike Huckabee looks like. I get my most of information from National Public Radio, with occasional perusals of The New York Times online.
This collection of images (clipped from a goofy blog called "Vote for Breakfast") reminds me that he's the candidate who is admired for his weight loss, which I'd forgotten. Odd that such a feat would be persuasive as a Presidential qualification.

But another information source I ran into recently is CNNMoney.com. About a month ago, Marlys Harris of Money Magazine wrote an article that analyzed the net worth of the Presidential candidates. Click the link at the bottom of the article to find a candidate-by-candidate breakdown of their finances. Note that Huckabee wasn't even considered a "top White House contender," so he's not included on this list. I wonder where we could find his net worth?

New for the New Year

I recently found out that I can add the New York Times to my blog. I chose the "Front Page" option (although seriously considered "Books") because I thought a "current events" option makes pedagogical sense. See it at left (obviously). I do wish I could figure out how to have a shorter list of items: must be a way.

Christmas Messages

The Royal Channel on YouTube is the official website for the British Monarchy. Here's the link to Queen Elizabeth's 2007 Christmas message. Important and sincere, I think, and with an acknowledgement of technology's power.

In contrast, here's the Christmas message from the U.S. White House this year. This static written message, taken in conjunction with the President's weekly radio address, do touch on some of the same themes as Queen Elizabeth's message. The rhetorical strategies differ significantly, of course, and so the U.S. message seems much less inclusive, much less sincere, and much less moving.

That's too bad.

Community College English?

This Chronicle online article sounds familiar . . . "The Petition"
Happy Break.

Negativity

AT this time of year, negativity is the last sentiment I'd like to write about, but listening to today's MPR interview with Mitch Pearlstein of the Center for the American Experiment was *full* of negativity.

The Midmorning host Gary Eichten said Pearlstein was talking about "reforming public education." Instead, he talked about destroying public education - not that he thought anything about it was good anyway - by letting vouchers and the free market take care of the "problems" of our public educational system. He acknowledged that more money provides access to better education when he asserted that poor "black" families should get vouchers so they can send their kids to "good private" schools rather than the "poor public" schools in their neighborhoods.

So he would rather see that money go to individuals than to the public schools themselves. But the public schools could use that voucher money to reduce class size, provide more one-on-one education, and reconfigure themselves so that they have some of the characteristics of so-called successful privates.

He had nothing but bad things to say about teachers' unions, too, setting up a false dichotomy (one of many logical fallacies in his comments) between unions and "neighbors and community members." "When people see that the choice is between these two groups," he said, "they'll choose the right group."

I am SO tired of the negative public rhetoric about public education, teachers, and schools. We hear this lambasting at every level: our governor, legislators, media (including supposedly "liberal" MPR), every-day citizens. It's come to be a commonplace to say "our schools are failing," when Minnesota's public school system is one of the best in the entire country: despite the disrespect for teachers, teaching, and education for citizenry (which our founding fathers had in mind when they created a public education system).

Teaching professionals persist by and through herculean efforts and despite the constant barage of public disrespect: they're committed to their profession, their subject areas, and their students, and this commitment and achievement simply must be part of the public dialog.

Come on, teachers: let's start combatting the negative rhetoric of "failing schools" by getting vocal about our achievements despite odds, our joys tempered with sorrows, and our pride in the strong students we've nurtured.

Writing Matters

Especially technical writing and usability testing so that people who need to use a document or website can actually use it!

If you don't believe me, read this New York Times article called "Technology's Untanglers: They Make It Really Work."

Ultimate Performance

I just attended the final class meeting of a colleague - he graciously invited me to sit in on this last class of his last course of his last year teaching. He's been at it for 37 1/2 years, and he's on the top of his game.

The course was Shakespeare, the final play "The Tempest," and Ray pulled together the bard's life and work, the power of Prospero, and the power of the humanities in general when it comes to educating human beings. His "lecture" (read "performance" as he so eloquently said) inspired me and another faculty member in attendance, and perhaps even some of the students. A tour de force.

Enjoy the rest of your life, Ray. You've made a difference.

Keeping Up

It's tough managing all the interesting things to read - books, articles, newspapers, email messages, discussion list postings. It's also tough to manage all the things to watch - YouTube, movies, the cats. And then there are those "multimodal" artifacts that I both read and watch: webpages, Facebook, blogs.

I'm finding so many interconnections between the academic listservs I'm on (WMST-L and techrhet are my two most active), especially when it comes to discussing how our students use technology (most of them, anyway). One poster even said that to teenagers, 2 or three years is a generation gap. Sure, but an even bigger gap might be the one I've been living in: I remember using a computer when you couldn't see much on the screen (remember the Osborne?) or when I could watch the cursor speed greenish across a gray/black screen, stopping (throbbing!) to wait for me to type in a command (see this blog for an example). Doesn't seem that long ago, somehow, yet eons ago in other ways.

Here's an interesting take on this odd speeded-up time/gap, especially in terms of what kids are doing with communications technology/social networking (what we called "CMC" or "Computer Mediated Communication" in the old days): "The Death of Email" at Slate.com/

So the question for me now becomes, "How to teach?" Or maybe, "What to teach?" Or maybe, "What is teaching?"

And here's a random list of cool online things to make me think even more about change:
**a YouTube Video "Did You Know?"
**an online journal "Said It: Feminist News, Cuture, and Politics"
**a quasi-academic article "A Professor Pokes Fun at Copyright"
**a blog "Feminist Philosophers"

Two great reads

The early 20th-century Australian writer, Henry Handel Richardson, is someone I teach in my course "Women's Literature: British and Colonial." Her short story "Two Hanged Women" appears in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, my foundational textbook for both women's literature courses I teach. I love the stylistic economy of the story.

The novel I've just finished reading is Richardson's masterpiece: The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, which consists of three separate novels: Australian Felix, The Way Home, and Ultima Thule. The protagonist is based on her father, say most critics, and I recommend the entire 900+ pages.

A second good book, Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House, is a collection of essays about writing fiction. I'm just starting it and already I want to copy the essays to use in class.

Student [and other] Writers

MnSCU has a student literary magazine! It's online and called Inkling. Check out the first edition here: here.

I'm no critic of student creative writing: I can't tell if anything's good or not. It's terrible, really, because I'm finding myself being so impatient with mediocrity these days (okay, many of you will say "So what's new about that?") and so I can't read student creative writing. Essays, okay, but poems? Stories? There's just too little time in the day already to read poetry - I don't want to spend that time on student work.

Speaking of poetry, I picked up four good volumes yesterday at Half Price Books:

--- John Balaban - Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong (he translated this 18th-century concubine's poems: really beautiful. Also he was a professor of mine at Penn State, even gave me some advice about poems I wrote as a youngster)
--- Jim Daniels - M-80 (an amazing urban voice that I thought was African American until I saw his photo here - I don't think we're related, and I'd never heard of him, but he's published many volumes)
--- Edna St. Vincent Millay - Conversation at Midnight (really more of a drama than a poem, but the book I bought is a 1937 edition, lovely paper, a gift from one lover to another although I can't make out every word of the fountain-pen-inked inscription)
--- Adrienne Rich - Sources (scroll down this site to see this rare book, a volume of Rich's I don't have, and I'm trying to round out my collection of her work)