@newsfromtengrrl for 2016-06-13
June 14, 2016
- Rethinking Twitter in the Classroom https://t.co/NiAFN663DO ->
- It’s Getting Personal in Here https://t.co/gPGYHONbzZ ->
Revising the Resources List on My Syllabus
June 8, 2016
This week’s post on Bedford Bits describes the work I have begun on revising my course documents to make them more visual. The ultimate goal is to make them more engaging and more useful to students.
I started with the required resources, which has been nothing but a glorified book list for as long as I can remember. My revised version still lists books, but I have tried to add some negative space and color to make it easier to read and a bit more friendly.
Read the full details in the blog post on the Macmillan Community site.
@newsfromtengrrl for 2016-06-07
June 8, 2016
- Revising for a More Visual Syllabus: The Resour… | The Macmillan Community https://t.co/LwhC3Jo4BV ->
Connecting Selber and Halliday
June 7, 2016
Ever since I looked at the review of Stuart Selber’s Multiliteracies for a Digital Age in Composition Forum 14.2 (Courtesy of a tip from Bradley Dilger), I have been reflecting on my notes about M. A. K. Halliday’s literacy engagements.
I have a pile of old notes on how I thought Halliday might be used to understand technology engagement from my time at ReadWriteThink when the site used Halliday to structure the site.
Halliday’s literacy engagement system (learning language, learning about language, learning through language) parallels Selber’s. There are nuances that would need worked out, but generally I think I could argue that literacy learning follows the same kinds of meaning making, even when the kinds of literacy are different. I’m just not sure that matters as an observation. What does that knowledge really bring to the conversations and scholarship on literacy?
The Harm We Can Do
June 3, 2016
Sara Kadjer shared “Can Reading Logs Ruin Reading for Kids?” from The Atlantic. The piece dredged up some memories for me, good and bad.
I guess I am an oddity, but I always loved tracking what I read when I was in school. Reading doesn’t really come with a tangible thing to point to when you’re done, and those logs let me say, “Look, I did all this!”
I know there are problems with the pedagogy when tracking takes away from the joy of reading. It made me recall Troy Hicks’ recent blog post on the troubling need to quantify everything students do.
That leads me to my bad memory. On the first day of class in 9th grade, the teacher asked us to write down all the things we read over the summer. I busied myself with a list in categories: mysteries, biographies, historical fiction, and so forth. I had to think in categories to remember them all. As I scribbled titles down, the teacher moved through the classroom. She paused at my desk, and I expected her to be impressed with the list of all the things I had read. Unfortunately, she instead announced to the full class that I had to be lying because no one read that many different books.
I try to remember that moment to remind myself that the long-term harm of my comments as a teacher can last forever. After all, I was in 9th grade a very, very long time ago; and I still remember that moment of shame very well.
Image: Pinocchio by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier, on Flickr, used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
Alphabetic Text as the Only Text
June 2, 2016
I’m befuddled by this MLA call for proposals for a volume on the Changing Role of Writing in Composition.
Everything I understand about multimodal texts tells me that any alphabetic text is not tapping the linguistic mode alone; but from reading this CFP, you’d think that spatial and visual modes (for say a paperback book) weren’t a thing until this “turn toward multimodality.”
I’ve read and reread the call, trying to figure it out. I thought maybe I was just not getting something (blame imposter syndrome). For the life of me though, I can’t figure out how to respond to that while talking ONLY about alphabetic text (which is culturally limiting in addition to not making sense in a multimodal context). I’d really love to submit something to the call; but I can’t figure out how to work within such a limited vision of what it is to be multimodal.
Image: abc album p1 by patricia m, on Flickr, used under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
Free Access, If You’re Patient and Persistent
May 30, 2016
Routledge (Taylor and Francis) is offering a nice collection of articles to mark the RSA conference this weekend: Rhetoric & Change: A Free Access Article Collection in Collaboration with the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA).
It looks like a grand collection; however, the fact that you have to read and download everything one-by-one leads me to believe that Routledge is more interested in trying to keep you on their site than actually providing free access to key pieces.
A well-designed site would have a “Download All” option. I would have been willing to fill out a short survey and give them my email address for such access. Sure free != easy, but it could and often should. Shame on Routledge!
@newsfromtengrrl for 2016-05-12
May 13, 2016
- My post on asking students to Report on Group Work with a Class Slideshow: https://t.co/iHrfajH3K0 ->
@newsfromtengrrl for 2016-05-06
May 7, 2016
- Are You Being Rigorous or Just Intolerant? https://t.co/dX8jqyeare ->
@newsfromtengrrl for 2016-04-29
April 30, 2016
- Reporting Live From Miami: A Bunch Of Fourth-Graders Tell Their Teacher's Story https://t.co/e8Kmynqxzh ->
- Amid Backlash, U of Washington Pulls Cheerleader Advice https://t.co/iY02kHk8kf ->