composition

I just returned from the 2014 IWAC (International Writing Across the Curriculum) Conference at the University of Minnesota, and I have to say it was one of my best conference experiences yet. The presentations were engaging, the people were open and friendly, and Minneapolis was a great city. During my brief two days there, I managed to sit in on 5 panels, one in which I presented, a keynote, and an incredible plenary session. In truth, it made me a little sad that I'm not a WAC WPA because I would have loved the opportunity to implement some of the ideas that were discussed at the universities where I am involved in writing pedagogy. The Panels Here is a brief overview of the titles of the panels that I attended: Role Reversal: When Students Teach Faculty in WAC Programs - Deanna Daniels & Brandy Grabow, Kate Ronald & Lucy Manley, and Greg Skutches Writing Beyond the Curriculum - Nicole Papaioannou, Dan Reis & Caroline Klidonas, and KaaVonia Hinton & Yonghee S...

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of experiencing a wild weekend of dancing at the Electric Zoo Festival in New York City, a huge annual electronic dance music (EDM) festival held on Randall's Island. It was an incredible experience. Thousands of people of all ages, from toddlers to the rare elderly individual, came to this event and danced together to different genres of EDM music and high-powered light shows. I met people from all over the country and even from other countries, including an entertaining trio from London on my ferry ride home the last day and a duo from Serbia. EDM and Education Like education, EDM is comprised of many different genres and draws people from all walks of life. Under the umbrella of EDM falls disco-like dance tracks, ambient trance music, punk-rock-esque dubstep and much more, and at EDM festivals, you are likely to find all of these genres of music co-existing. You are also likely to find a very diverse crowd, one that represents different style ...

It frustrates me IMMENSELY when students-- or anyone for that matter-- tell me, "Oh, I don't know what that word meant," "I didn't know how to cite that in MLA style" (especially after we've gone over it in class and shared multiple resources detailing how to), "I didn't know who so-and-so was," or "I didn't know that [insert major current event] was happening." There are some things that are tough to come by, but definitions, citation guides, biographies, and major world events are not any of them.  If my rabbit can figure out how to open up Google, so can you! Cluck hopped around on the keyboard and managed to open up Google without my assistance. Like I said, some things aren't easy to find (for instance, a free live stream of the Super Bowl), but many times people are simply lazy. Today, we have the biggest library in the world at our fingertips, the Internet, but people don't want to spend an extra 15 minutes look...

Each semester, I have made sure to spend at least one day talking about music and lyrics as forms of activism. I have my students read the lyrics of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," Linkin Park's "Hands Held High," and Eminem's "Like Toy Soldiers." I also share YouTube videos of these songs, so that they can listen to the them as they read the lyrics. In class, we talk about which songs were effective at carrying across their message and do close readings, dissecting lyrics, talking about tone, and evaluating audience appeal. Today, they also used this conversation about music to workshop their Writing as Activism projects, all of which are based upon very different topics. These are the instructions for the workshop: Click to See Blog Post :  http://npclass.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/the-soundtrack-to-your-project/ As far I have seen (some students took it home to complete), all of my students chose option # 1: the sountrack. While on the surfa...

image from sanangelolive.com Today, Ryan Lytle of US News published an article titled " College Admission Officials Turn to Facebook to Research Students ." The article reveals a growing trend of college admission officials using Facebook and other forms of media to check up on applicants. The consequences can be serious, as Lytle reveals: In the Kaplan Test Prep survey, 12 percent of respondents who reported checking social media sites noted that posts—such as vulgar language in a status update or alcohol consumption in photos—negatively impacted a prospective student's admissions chances. Some of the interviewees believe that Facebook is public access, and therefore, the school's right. While Florence Hines of McDaniel College was not one of them, she does say: "I believe the reality that if this trend increases, students need to be very cautious of the fact that admissions offices will use this information." As a student and someone hoping to join the ran...

I picked up R. W. Burniske's book Literacy in the Digital Age just because it sounded interesting. Lucky for me, I was not disappointed. Burniske's book is all about redefining literacy in a way that meets 21st century students' needs. He takes lame, underdeveloped terms like "computer literacy" and "functional literacy" and revises them so that they become more complex and useful. Burniske explains: just as we must learn to read and write the alphabet to develop functional literacy, so too must we learn how to ‘read’ visual images, discursive practices, personal ethics, community actions, cultural events, global developments, and humanity in general. (2) The focus is no longer on a set of operational skills, but instead, a set of reading practices that enable students to navigate their complex worlds, worlds that require much more than an ability to read text or word per minute proficiency. Burniske advocates a set of eight literacies:  media literacy,...

Part I: Corkboard.me It's not always easy to get a class involved, especially if your students are shy. Corkboard.me , however, seemed to really be effective in facilitating class interaction. Corkboard.me is a virtual representation of the classroom bulletin board. Students can stick post-its up anonymously and synchronously about just about anything. In my classroom, we use it as a brainstorming tool. My students post their ideas, while we have our Corkboard showing on the projection screen. The sheer number of post-its on our Corkboard show just how well it worked. For the last assignment, about 30 post-its were put up in 5 minutes. Last semester, I used Wallwisher to have students do some brainstorming for their Writing as Activism projects. They posted problems they foresee the world facing in the next fifty years. As you can see in this older post , students had fun using it and really did a great job of brainstorming and had fun doing it. Many of their thought bubbles were ...

Just a little something to make you smile when writing gets you down, a short video about the fight with writing, created with Xtranormal . I also think Xtranormal is a great resource for teachers and students. I've seen some really creative uses of it, including practicing arguments and counterarguments and writing mini dramas. I also think it would be a great way to virtually perform SLAM poetry or record interviews where the interviewed subject's identity must remain anonymous.

The end of the semester is rapidly approaching, and I've been thinking about the best way to do student writing portfolios, since I am committed to improving digital literacy, both for my students and myself. As a model, I created an ePortfolio  (work in progress) for my graduate course using GoogleSites with GoogleDocs . Here are the basic steps: Select Blank Template Add themes and design elements as you see fit Make homepage the table of contents Click edit side bar and delete the old navigation tab, then add a new one by clicking "add to sidebar" and "add navigation" Upload documents, powerpoints, etc. to GoogleDocs Create pages for the pieces of the portfolio On each page, add text introducing your work On each page, click "Insert Document" under the "Insert" tab, and add your document to the page Link in any additional work (such as blogs, wikis, websites, videos) Add pages to navigation bar by clicking "edit side bar," "...

My favorite tv teacher of all time, Boy Meet's World's  Mr. Feeny. He was always interested in his students' futures and took pride in his teaching. According to my Twitter tweeps, today is the National Day of Blogging for Education Reform . Teachers across the nation are blogging about the improvements that can be made to change education for the better. Many are collaborating on Cooperative Catalyst , an education reform blog, to create an archive of changes we can implement to reform education. Though the majority of the blogging teachers teach K-12 and are much more experienced than I am, I thought it was my duty as someone on both sides of the line to chime in (I left high school behind only seven years ago, and I am still taking graduate courses, working towards a Doctor of Arts degree). Plus, as a college writing instructor and writing center tutor, I get the products of their efforts. I get to see the end result of public education. So, here are my top 5 suggestion...

Though this semester isn't quite over, the new semester is just around the corner. I've been dabbling in lots of digital writing venues and social networks trying to find out what works best, what's the most fun, what's going to inspire engagement, etc. in my college composition classroom. I've also been thinking about alternatives to boring old Blackboard, trying new types of digital writing (like scripting podcasts for iTunes or documentaries for YouTube), and addressing the digital humanities in my classroom. We use the discussion board, digital dropbox, and chat features on Blackboard, but those seem so basic when there are so many more creative options out there! Here is a list of some things I've been playing with: Social Networks 1. Grou.ps : This site lets you build your own social network, akin to Facebook. It has tools to add wikis, file sharing, video chat, and comments. You can also choose themes and run multiple networks. Very nifty! 2. GoogleWave :...

Wallwisher actually ended up making its way into my classroom today. Students thought it was a cool tool. They were excited about using it, and one sutdent even asked if I would leave it up for them to see for years after they were done with the class. Today, I used it to segue into our final Writing as Activism project. I asked students to write stickies about all of the things they thought were going to be problems in the future. Many of them foresaw war, disease, obesity, and financial hardship in our future. Since they were all stuck in clusters, it was easy to see where ideas overlapped. The one problem that we did have was that with 23 people trying to access the same board at once, things were running slow. For many of my students, error messages bogged them down and left them unable to participate immediately, or at all. My students said that they are going to continue posting their ideas, as well as using Wallwisher in place of our Open Forum anonymous discussio...

So, I just stumbled upon Wallwisher  thanks to Twitter user,  TeachaKidd . What a neat program, and it's FREE! Wallwisher is something like Twitter combined with the look of computerized post-its or a digital scrapbook. You can add short messages and include links to audio, videos, and pictures. The text boxes stay where ever you click, so that you can layer them, move them into clusters, and see multiple messages all at the same time, unlike other programs, such as Twitter and Facebook, which push old text down the page and out of the way. I could see this being a useful tool to enhance class discussion. You could post something like "race" or "gender" and have students to do short free associations. You could create a wall of your students favorite links, books, music, etc. You could even just make small talk. I think there are endless very cool possibilities for this program. I'm going to give it a test run with my class this week, following TeachaKidd...

So, I was debating spending a cool $200 on LiveScribe's Pulse SmartPen to bring to graduate school and my FYW composition class until a good friend recommended that I try Microsoft OneNote . That good friend deserves a huge hug because Microsoft OneNote is AWESOME! Microsoft OneNote allows you to create new notebooks, new pages, and new tabs, and chock them full of text, pictures, links, documents, etc. Now, instead of lugging around four different notebooks and textbooks, I have all of my notes neatly stored in OneNote (and my PDFs and eBooks on NOOKstudy). I never have to fumble through sheets of paper to find my class notes, and I can actually keep up with the rate of lecture speed. This is a screen shot of my class notes from one of my graduate courses: Click to see a larger view. As you can see, I was able to take notes, separate them into subjects, and even draw diagrams. What makes it different than writing in a notebook or typing them in a word processor is that OneNote ac...

Between lesson plans, handouts, and multiple drafts of assignments, the reams of paper can really pile up. Not only is that bad for Mama Earth, but it's ergonomically unwise for professors and students to be carrying so much weight. So, trying to do my part to save the world (and to seem cool and up-to-date), I've been experimenting with ways to go paperless. For those of us who use PDF files, I really don't think I can say enough good things about Barnes and Noble's NOOKstudy software-- not to be confused with the NOOK eReader. It's a FREE download that only requires the student to make an account with BarnesandNoble.com. NOOKstudy allows students to read eTextbooks, ePub files, and PDFs on their computers. Unlike reading the file in Adobe Reader, however, NOOKstudy allows you to: take notes and even add tags to those notes  highlight passages in multiple colors easily flip from page to page enlarge the size of the page so that it can be easily read look up words i...