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.

Culture Cat Blogging

I wrote this post for my regular blog, but as I finished, I realized that it could just as well fit here.  So I'll do the next best thing:  link to it!

Moodle Volunteers

I need to ask you all a favor--would you be willing to be a "student" and log-in to my Moodle site so that I can test some specific functions before I unleash unveil my course site (to replace the textbook). I am going to run the test from December 1 through January 10, and all you have to do is to sign up, sign in, do your assigned assignment and send me an email with your feedback. 

Liz and Audio Essays

If you are interested in how comp profs use audio to create essays, check out Revisionspiral.  Liz is doing some amazing things by blending NPR's "This I Believe," with student composition. 

Online Textbase (Book?) Writing

One of my ever-slowly growing projects is my online textplace for Basic Writing, which I'm working on at a glacial pace.  The discussion on the WPA-list has been about this idea of online textbooks and wikis and so forth, and while I won't reproduce everything here, I do want to repost my comment, if for nothing more than to keep track of my ideas.  So, here, with some introductory stuff removed, is my thought:

And yet, doing away with textbooks (at least as we know them) disturbs our ideas of authoring and authority, and for that reason, I wonder when such a project would be deemed appropriate by the "higher ups."  I mean, do we ever interrogate our reasons for using textbooks?  I didn't and still wouldn't be if I hadn't become fascinated with computers and the net. For years I used textbooks because that's what teachers did. Then, after coordinating the BW program and looking at the different, expensive textbooks available, I started to think of finding a cheaper way to give out information..  It was then that I started to question why I needed to use a mass-produced textbook, especially since my writing classes were moving more and more in the direction of using the net for more than research.  What textbooks do is pull together activities, essays, explanations and graphics so that anyone can pick them up and teach.  But the computer makes it possible for me to create or find open source activities, and so on, and to do so relatively quickly.  Okay, relatively steadily, perhaps.  The question I'm noodling around these days is to ask what and how information should be presented in an online text:  that is, should I supply a framework and links as well as chat spaces, discussion  and white boards for students to find out their own answers?  I have this vague thought that maybe the goal becomes helping students create their own wiki that they fill with information pertinent to their needs, rather than having those needs presumed ahead of time.

 

I'm not knocking textbooks per se, nor am I completely clear about how I'll proceed.

 

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.