Communty College Teaching

Zee Maps and Basic Writing and Beyond.

It looks like technology has finally caught up with me. I've wanted to be able to create a group map of the campus in which the students were responsible for writing, annotating photo-ing and researching the campus. All of this work would be uploaded onto a map program. I tried using Wayfaring, but it just didn't work quite as well as I'd wanted. I liked the skin, but as I recall, I couldn't have more than one person contributing to a map at a time. I'll check back with them, but I liked what I saw tonight on ZeeMaps.com There, I could select the degree of participation each person had on a private map, so that some folks would be contributors, other viewers. I think all of my students will be contributors, and I'll give viewing privileges to other faculty or student guests as we go along. I'm also interested in making it a private map until such time we decide to share it with the world.

Right now, I'm playing with the map program and creating a genealogy map that links the origins of my family. I'm thinking that I'd like to link this to a timeline in my Women and Literature class as well. Perhaps have the class work together on a group project of all of the writers we're reading.

Mapping looks like a great way to ground (no pun) visual learners when there' a lot of information to cover that doesn't lend itself to a traditional outline or list. The fact that links and graphics can be uploaded makes it just as meaningful.

The Litmag Assignment

went rather well.  I'm posting here the assignment guide which I submitted to my BW colleagues at school.  Feel free to take this idea and adapt it to your style.

EN 001/MC-R/Joanna Howard/Fall ‘07/Developmental Group

The Literary Magazine Assignment

Abstract: In this assignment, given at the start of November, students were asked to read the campus literary magazine, The Red Jacket, and use their reading as the basis of an assignment of which they would have several options.  Through daily reading quizzes, homework questions, one handout and class discussions, students reviewed the literary components of the narrative as well as the individual stories in the magazine.

Writing Focus: Distinguishing Fiction from Non-Fiction; discussing commonalities of narration; practicing rereading and rewriting; being able to give reasons using examples from one or more stories; practicing writing opening paragraphs; practicing writing for different audiences.

Punctuation Focus:  Proofreading for sentence –level comma errors.

Note:  Although the assignment suggests a 4-6 paragraph limit, I say to the class that if anyone wants to write a longer paper, they are welcome to.  Also, the handout was the chapter on writing a literary analysis in Writer’s Inc. (Houghton Mifflin).

The Assignment Sheet:  Below is a cut-and-paste version of the assignment. The homework questions are specific to the current issue of the magazine, so I haven’t repeated them here.

This Week’s Assignment:  Writing About the Literary Magazine

The reading and writing that you have been doing for the past week will help you out as you begin to write about the literary magazine’s selection of stories, both real and fictional.  As college students, you are developing your ability to read critically, so remember that the point of this assignment is not to love or hate the selections in the magazine, but to be able to talk about them in a constructive, critical way. 

Also, you will be writing a longer and more structured piece of writing with this essay, but you are ready for it.  Your essay should run for about three pages and be made up of somewhere between 4-6 paragraphs.  Furthermore, your essay should have an opening paragraph that draws the reader’s attention in by having the following components:

·         An opening sentence or two that pulls us in;

·         A thesis statement that states the point that you are making in your paper;

·         A sentence or two that previews the main ideas of the paper;

·         Mention of the author and title of the work.

Note that your opening paragraph doesn’t have to follow the order listed above.  Just be sure that it contains all of the components!

As far as what you write about goes, think about the following choices and pick one:

1.       Assume that you have been asked by the campus paper, The Advocate, to write a review of the stories in the literary magazine.  You will need to have an overview point to make about them, which will be supported by your analysis of two-three stories as examples.  Each story can serve as one of your example paragraphs. 

2.       The chair of the Psychology department is putting together a student-based workshop on relationships and has asked you to write an analysis of the personal narratives which you think would be useful examples of problems people experience in life.  Again, you will need to have an overview point to make about all of the pieces, and can use each narrative as a support paragraph. 

3.       The author of one of these stories or narratives is a good friend of yours who has asked you for some constructive feedback.  Write a letter that is both tactful and honest, and which points out the strengths as well as the weaknesses. 

For each of these choices, give some thought to how you will address your audience.  Also, be sure to explain your points:  remember the Topic-Illustration-

Explanation technique. Finally, proofreading and editing do count, so please make sure that your sentences are punctuated correctly.

When you turn in the paper, remember to staple the rough drafts to the final draft, and to underline your thesis statement.  This assignment is worth 75 points.

Writing About the Literary Magazine

Here's a copy of a letter that I sent to the maillist for Basic Writing Teachers:

Hello Friends,

I'm trying to put together an essay assignment around the school's literary magazine, and I'm stymied.  I've thought of asking the students to write a review of the magazine, or write a sales pitch for it-- anything that would enable them to move into thinking about using different voices and different rhetorical moves to appeal to different audiences.  But I don't feel like I've hit the spot yet.  What I want to be able to do is to ask the class to:

1.  Read the litmag--as a class, discuss one story or personal essay; in small groups, discuss another story/essay and then reconfigure them into new groups which will report on their given story.

2.  Before we even begin reading the litmag, ask the class to do a freewrite about what they enjoy reading (even if it's non-literary) and what a "good read" should have in it. This will lead to a class discussion and some ground rules, or items to critique in the litmag.

3.  So, by the time they sit down to write the literary magazine piece, they will have read the magazine cover-to-cover and have read two pieces more closely.  And here be dragons.  Is asking them to develop a draft that crtitiques, sells or whatever too much for a BW class?  Should I stick with one idea-- that is, writing whether or not the litmag is a good read?

I would like to move through this assignment in two weeks as the class will be writing a genealogical research paper next, and I want the class to be able to take advantage of family gatherings to work on it.

So please send me questions, observations and ideas.  I would appreciate any and all advice.

And I would, dear readers.  So please post away!

The Facebook Challenge

This week it's conference time, which means that while I meet for twenty-minute conferences with my students, they are sitting at their computers, mopping their brows and rewriting two, count 'em, two, pieces of writing for their midterm.

And, for the most part, that's what they're doing, though I have looked around and noticed that there are some students peeking at their Facebook pages.  Since I've spent my spare time peeking at my own page and hurling sheep and fish as well as serving drinks, I can well understand the attraction.

So, on Monday, when the last of the conferences take place, and most of the students are finished revising their midterm writing, I'm going to offer the Facebook Challenge:

Working in groups of three or four and using your Facebook accounts,  research the ways that a writing class could use Facebook.  Create a typed list that you can share with the rest of the class.

I'll let you know how it turns out. 

"Where I'm From"--its latest iteration

This assignment, based on a poem by George Ella Lyons, never fails to produce some sparkling work from my students.  I've tried to use it in concert with a web page assignment, but that has taken far too much class time and resulted in unhappy faces all around.  This semester, we used MS Word and created what I call "web page lite."  That is, the students have been responsible for taking their poems and, using the fonts and colors, shaping their words into visual expressions.  Also, the students were required to scan in a photo or graphic to augment the poem, and then save the whole thing and email it to me as an attachment. 
So, web-based skills used include:
Using fonts, colors, importing graphics, sizing graphics, saving doc, email attaching.  That's enough for one assignment.