A Fair(y) Use Tale

Of course we all know about the interesting things on YouTube, but this particular 10-minute video is useful for teaching about copyright and fair use. And I don't just mean teaching my students about these things, either.

Working from Home

I have to say that working from home (working at home? via home? in home? What is the appropriate preposition?) is not my favorite thing. I'm getting used to a MacBook - the keyboard is odd, too flat or something. Because I don't yet feel comfy working with the wordprocessing interface, I still need to take student work to my desktop for editing/comments/grading. Then I upload their work using the laptop after downloading their work to a flash drive (just a tiny thing), uploading to my desktop, downloading again, and finally uploading graded work to the "Dropbox" for our course. I can leave a message for them when I return their work, but I've learned that my message should not be anything related to the evaluation of their work: students who drop the course are erased from the website, and any comments I've made to them are erased, too. So I keep copies of all work and send a "Here's your latest assignment" message when I return their graded work.

All these tricks I've learned the hard way by teaching online (or should I say "teaching" online: I just don't think of it as teaching in the way I'm used to teaching - too thin!).

Time Warp

That's what an online course is: I sink into a time warp! I'm sitting in my office, and I've been responding to students in four ways for the past two hours:

1. Student stops by for a face-to-face chat about his portfolio from last semester. He had said he'd be here on Thursday, so I'm not ready for him, and he'll come back tomorrow.
2. Students (about 3) find the "Page" function on our course website and page me while I'm reading student discussion postings. I return the page - sort of "instant messaging" them.
3. Students send email messages to ask for clarification, greet me, and answer my questions. I write back to all seven of them.
4. Students post messages to the discussion board for the first two topics in technical writing. Since the first topic is introducing themselves, I respond to every posting (20). Since the second topic asks them to speculate about why summarizing is the first assignment, I respond in general by sending one message to the whole group.

And it's only the third day of the semester.

Whew.

New Semester

But I'm not really finished with the old one! Grades aren't due until tomorrow, though . . . .

Today was the first day of Summer Session 1, and I've got two courses: online technical writing and intro to glbt studies. Both were active today - again I am energized by energetic students!

I won an award

At least according to my math colleague who's three doors down from me. She walked by the office today when I had my door open and commented, "You win the award for the office that's even worse than mine!" That's right - I have piles of student papers and portfolios on every surface (table, floor). But the end is in sight!

Finals Week

This finals week should be busy - as they all are. But I've just read partial final exams from my WGST 1071 class: those students have learned something this semester! I'm proud of their work. I hope that this glimpse is the beginning of good things to come from all of my students.

That Panicky Feeling

I wonder how many students realize that instructors feel the same end-of-the-semester panic as they feel - okay, maybe not the same, but similar.

The final reading-through of student work enables me to see who's taken advice, who's not able to do so (for a variety of reasons), who's needing to take the course again. With writing, because it's a skill, taking the course a couple of times gets students up to where they need to be.

I am plowing through my files, looking at final re-writes, grading revisions, recording scores, calculating attendance, getting reading to do some calculations. Actually, I don't like calculating their final grade until the end of the semester because I don't want to interact with a student in a way that says "Oh, this student isn't ever going to get more than a X grade, so why bother with substantive comments?" I think that ALL of my students deserve to be taught, even those who won't pass my class this semester. They've all paid their tuition, so they all deserve my engaged attention. It's too easy for me to write-off the slackers if I know that they're flunking anyway - that seems unfair to me. So I refrain from doing any math until the end of the semester. But I still feel panicked and pressured about it!

Late Night Peepers

My Comp 1 class has just ended - 9:57 p.m. It's supposed to go until 9:50 p.m., but with workshop tonight, the last few questioners hung in there. One of the joys of a late night in the office: dark outside and the frogs chirping-peeping-singing outside my window. Even though it's not open. Even though I'm on the third floor and quite a ways from the pond to the south of campus.

Those spring persistences: hardworking students and chirping frogs.

Don't want to lose her . . .

An *excellent* student has just sent me an email message saying she's feeling overwhelmed and needs to drop the course. This email has arrived AFTER the drop date for the semester, AFTER I'd just returned a lovely essay by her (one of the best in the class), and AFTER an especially insightful series of contributions she made to our class writing workshop. I know that students have full lives and that my class is only one of her priorities, but I'm shocked at the (potential) loss of this excellent student.

She's a returning adult who thinks college isn't the place for her - but it is! I see her just once a week in the evenings, which isn't enough time to make those casual "nice job" or "good to see you" comments that you can make when you see students a couple times a week. I've sent what I hope is an encouraging email asking her to stay. I hope she can.

Grammar Ninja

I have been assisting Scott Simonsen's ITT 2080 Technology Planning and Architecture class, all computer guys. I had hoped that Grammar Ninja would be fun as a starting point for talking about sentence construction. Unfortunately, none of the classroom computers could access the game, not through Windows or Linux. They all claimed it was because Flash sucks, but I don't know. They all tried valiantly to access it - some could hear the game but not see it; others could not hear it but could see part of the questions. Very frustrating. But they were good sports.

Creating an Exam

The process I go through for creating a fair, reasonable, challenging exam for my students always wears me out. I spent three hours creating one for my night class, and this is after I brainstorm with them about the content they'd like to see on the exam. "Knowledge is socially constructed," I tell them, "so tell me what you've learned this semester so I can ask you some questions about it and you can show me what you know." Often, students just want to list names and stories ("I remember Jamaica Kincaid's 'Girl'!" or "I liked Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried'!"). So I can create a matching section with this information, but it's not exactly higher-order thinking (remember Bloom's taxonomy?).

Anyway, I'll say more about this in a while - after I answer the phone that's ringing right now!!

What's wrong with this picture?

Late January - I return for the new semester to teach in my usual computer classroom. It's been painted (very pretty curried squash color), but the back-wall whiteboard is missing. I submit a request asking if/when/can the whiteboard be replaced. I use the web-based request system that I've been instructed to use (clicking on a link called "Information Technology Service Center" and filling out a ten-field form that I have filled out many times before but which cannot retain my identifying information).

Late April - I receive a voice mail message regarding my request for the whiteboard, a nice man who notes that it's been a long time since I submitted the request. He says that I submitted the request to the wrong department and must resubmit to "Facilities," which I look for on the web-based request system. There, I find a link called "Plant Mainenance Service Center" with an ten-field form that's identical to the "Information Technology Service Center" form, except for the word "Maintenance" in the header. I must re-fill in all ten fields because this form does not recognize my computer. I submit my request again.

Even later in April - I receive an email notification from an Automated Mail Service that my request (called a "Work Order") has been completed. The notification reads as follows: "I reclassified this. It was submitted as a bulletin board request. White Boards are not covered by the policy. Status: Completed. Please do not respond to this email."

So now what do I do? Who is the "I" above? Will the white board ever show up? And who could possibly have mistaken a white board for a bulletin board?

Infrastructure and communication: two HUGE problems at my institution.

Editing vs. Grading

I don't think I've mentioned that I've been doing a bit of editing/proofreading - something I love and have to say that I think I'm pretty good at. And editing isn't the same as grading: I get to suggest changes without assigning any evaluation to those changes. How refreshing!

One big document was a legal thing: report about a child custody dispute. The other document was a manuscript: novel/memoir that moved me enough to email my own mother (the protagonist's mother dies of ovarian cancer). For both of these projects, I did have to call my pal who's an M.D. to check out the "facts" about specific medical terminology. She never fails to answer my questions, and she's one of the smartest people I know.

Here's where playing softball comes in handy for an academic: softball friends know a lot about a lot of things, and I can ask my softball pals (with whom I've been playing for probably 20 years) about a range of topics: medicine, other health care topics, social services, the phone company, high school teaching, private school administration, small business ownership, computer-geekiness, physical therapy, city administration, accounting. These are all specialities of my teammates.


My message? Anyone who teaches in a college should play a team sport. :-)

Safety First?

Yesterday, I was going to post something about the Virginia Tech tragedies, something related to education, something like "We education professionals have always been at risk - this tragedy could happen anywhere" or something like "What could have so profoundly affected this young man that he had to act in such a ferocious, powerful, permanent way?"

Today, I hear the spin and pop of our media: clamoring for first-person accounts from student witnesses, attempting "analysis" that only reinforces the racial and class divides in our country, setting up an ugly clash between pro- and anti-gun groups. As if the Second Amendment has anything to do with the current state of violence in our country.

Our college president sent a message to the entire college community, a good move, I think, although his focus on safety seems wrong to me: a human being can't be kept "safe" from incidents like these.

Century Colleagues,

It is with great sadness that we extend our sympathies to the students, staff, and families at Virginia Tech. We share in their grief and distress over the senseless shooting deaths of 32 students yesterday.

As our thoughts turn to the safety and security of our own campus, I want to reassure you of our commitment to keeping the Century campus safe and secure. The College has policies and procedures in place designed to prevent such tragedies, and our public safety staff remain in a state of heightened awareness and vigilance. We will continue to monitor what is learned from the incident at Virginia Tech, and we will use that knowledge to improve our own response plans and campus security.

Please contact Mark Holper, Director of Public Safety, or Ron Anderson should you have concerns about the safety of any member of our campus community. This terrible loss reminds us all of the value and the need for supporting each other as a community.

Larry Litecky
President

'tis the Season

For letters of recommendation! I've been asked by at least a half-dozen students, which makes me feel proud. I'm pleased that they consider me a good judge of their achievements and skills. Most of the students who've asked me to write are exceptional, and it's a pleasure to articulate this fact to the awards committee. (I write an awesome letter, if I do say so myself.)

Even more important to me, though, is that the students themselves hear how exceptional I think they are: I always give them a copy of the letter for their own files. I remember how proud I was when my professors praised me - I'm returning the favor.

Actually this semester, I've been trying to be the kind of professor that I wished I'd had as an undergraduate: I've been listening a LOT more to students who come to me to talk about their lives, their worries, their worlds. Sure, I'm behind on my grading, but when someone drops by and says (like yesterday), "I'm just bored so I thought I'd come talk to you," I'm thrilled. Okay, maybe a little panicked and irritated because I was trying to read a bunch of reports to prepare for a meeting, but what's more important that talking with a first-year student who's trying to wrap her head around Peggy McIntosh's "invisible knapsack" idea? Or the student who's working for the City of St. Paul and begun teaching her co-workers what she's learning in our technical writing class? Or the student who's started a gay soccer league and wants me to pass out his flyers to students in my Intro to GLBT Studies course?

Today, I'm feeling all the exceptional energy of my work: it's a good day.

Two cool things

1) I've been re-reading Mrs. Dalloway for my British Lit course, and I'm reminded that Virginia Woolf is a genius. I hope my students resist the urge to read SparkNotes or GradeSaver instead of the novel itself.

2) Lake Superior Community College has a helpful peer review site for faculty teaching online. We at Century should steal some of it!

PainInTheEnglish.com

Found this link when I was looking for an answer to my question about using "age" vs. "aged" in the following sentence: Zoe, age(d) 19, attends McGill University.

Still don't have a clear answer to that question, but the website I discovered is cool!

Too Long (or maybe too short)

Well, this week has been a long one - it's two weeks, really, I suppose. I said I was going to post something about the 4Cs conference, but I've not gotten around to it because I haven't even caught up with my students' papers! I didn't "work" very much over the break, which means that I didn't read/grade the midterm exams and midterm essays that my students turned in before they went on break.

My philosophy is that students should have a break at spring break, so I don't ask them to turn in their midterm work after break. But that means I have a ton of work during break. This break, I spent most of it at a conference, so I didn't get much grading done.

Hmmm, does this sound like whining or rationalizing? I'm not sure anymore . . . :-)

Back to real life - work

New York and 4Cs was amazing in almost every way: intellectually stimulating (I haven't thought so much about ethos in a while), professionally invigorating (met lots of colleagues from around the country), and sensually complex (wind-and-rainy days, best cannoli in Manhattan found on the Lower East Side, MOMA-orama, subway smells!). Now I'm grading my online students' work, trying not to procrastinate too much by feeling nostalgic for the heady environment of NYC.

Thought I might catch up . . .

. . . how silly! Sure, it's spring break, but I've got 4Cs to go to (and a paper to write for it!). Also, I told my office mate that I wanted to see the tabletop in my office - fat chance.

I've not written at all about how the local conference went (relatively well, given all the complications and mixed messages). I've also wanted to write about the task of creating exams, which I tell my students are "opportunities for you to show me what you know." That's true, but it takes skill to design something that will enable them to do this - maybe I'll write more about that later.

Meanwhile, I hope I can post something about 4Cs this week in NYC - I'm looking forward to it!