My Literary Genes

July 28, 2010 by

I’ve written before about my literary claim to fame: I’m slightly related to Ralph Waldo Emerson, through my great-great-grandmother Anne Emerson.

While I know that Anne was Ralph’s third cousin once removed, I’m not exactly sure what that makes me. Genealogy isn’t exactly my area of expertise.

That’s why I’m loving the relationship in Wolfram|Alpha. I entered the information I knew, and got a lovely chart that made everything clear:

My genealogical relationship to Ralph Waldo Emerson

Depending upon how I described the relationship, I’m Emerson’s 4th cousin 3 times removed or his 3rd cousin 5 times removed.

Either way, it appears that I share a 1/8192, or 0.012207%, blood relationship. We share a 13th degree of kinship, which apparently means I’m free to marry him or serve on a jury considering his fate. I don’t think either of those situations is likely to arise. But enough of my poetic cousin.

The relationship query in Wolfram|Alpha could be used in the classroom to help clarify family relationship students read about as well. If you’re reading Faulkner, you may well need complete family trees. If you’re just trying to explain third cousins, this may be just what you need.

 

Filed under American Lit, classroom activities Tagged with , ,

My Top 3 Tips for Teaching with Twitter

July 18, 2010 by

Blue Cartoon Bird by Lisa YarostSo you’re ready to dive in and try Twitter in the classroom. Let me share these tips that can make sure your classroom experience is a smooth and effective.

  1. Create separate logins. Audience and purpose shift from message to message. Set up different Twitter accounts to keep classroom updates separate from updates for family, friends, and others. There are tips to make managing multiple accounts easier. Encourage students to create a separate account for official class work as well. I actually post on four accounts:
  2. Use hashtags. Choose a specific and unique hashtag (# plus a keyword) to group updates from your different classes (e.g., #VTEngl10). See “How To Create Successful Chats on Twitter with Hashtags” for more suggestions. Lists can work too, but you have to set up a list. You can just search for hashtags.
     
  3. Use search creatively. Obviously you can search for those hashtags you’re using, but there are some more sophisticated search tools you can use to narrow down exactly what you’re looking for. Pair a search for your hashtag with filter:links to get just the Tweets that have URLS. That’s an easy way to find those links to an assignment students posted. The until: and since: operators can narrow down Tweets by date.

And one extra tip: you can always Make your own Twitter bird if you need to relieve some stress.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by Lisa Yarost]

 

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Classroom Activities Using Twitter

July 13, 2010 by

Sending Twitter Message by Cell Phone Image by rockinfreeSince Twitter is a communications tool, there are infinite ways to use the site in the English classroom.

These two excellent videos provide introductions to using Twitter with students that are polished enough to share at staff meetings and professional development sessions:

  • The Twitter Experiment – UT Dallas is one of the first stories of a teacher using Twitter in the classroom to hit wide distribution . The YouTube video includes discussion and feedback from Dr. Monica Rankin and students in her history class. Rankin’s focus is on increasing discussion and class participation.
  • Twitter in the Classroom? shares details on a partnership between University of Minnesota and Roosevelt High School to use Twitter to communicate and engage students.

In addition to giving students some basic tutorials and guides, it’s useful to go over the information from College Student’s Guide: Twitter 101. The page shares advice on how to make choices wisely so that students are taken seriously when they use Twitter as part of their classes.

For some more concrete classroom activities, look at Twitter Resources for the Classroom and Ten Ways to Use Twitter with Colleagues, both from Bedford Bits.

You’ll also find useful examples in these articles:

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by rockinfree]

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Officially a Geek Now

July 8, 2010 by

Computer Engineer BarbieSo I was bumbling along last week, doing a pretty good job of keeping up with everything. I was even working on blogs ahead of time and had a series of entries on using Twitter in the classroom underway. And then something happened.

Last Thursday, I was invited to join the staff on the Geekshed IRC Network. If you’ve been around since the MBU days of Computers and Writing, you probably remember IRC as the place where the Netoric Project (which you may remember as the Tuesday Cafe) started off, before moving on to using MOOs.

If you weren’t around back then—or if your memory is sketchy, you’ll need a little more detail. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. You can think of an IRC network as a collection of chatrooms, where people can use fairly simple commands to communicate. For the most part, the benefits of IRC conversations are quite similar to the benefits of chatting at the Tuesday Cafe.

I’ve been known the folks who run the Geekshed network since May of 2005. That’s when John Walter showed me BlogShares, a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Blogshares had a chatroom, which was hosted on IRC. Accustomed to hanging out on MOOs, I naturally logged right in, and I’ve been on the network ever since.

So I hope you’ll understand that thing got a little derailed during this last week. To go from plain old network regular to network staff is a bit of a change. I suddenly found myself reading documentation, searching for a Mac client that doesn’t suck, and trying not to break anything.

I still don’t have all the answers, but it’s time to get back to the blog writing I’m supposed to be doing every day. And who knows, maybe before too long I’ll finally be able to connect teachers back to IRC. I’ve been thinking for quite some time that we need to set up a regular online chat meeting. I miss Tuesday Cafe, TechRhet Barn, and chatting with the Talkies in the MOO on Friday nights. If you’re an educator and you’d be interested too, let me know by email or in the comments below!

[Barbie Photo © Mattel]

Filed under Personal Journal Tagged with , , ,

Resources You Need to Teach Effectively with Twitter

June 30, 2010 by

Twitter Button from MilkAddictTuesday, I argued that Twitter is a great classroom tool. Students can publish their ideas immediately to a ready audience of readers. This authentic audience and purpose makes Twitter one of the many ways that teachers can engage writers in meaningful communication.

So how do you teach effectively with Twitter? Today I’m sharing classroom resources you can use to get started and tomorrow I’ll have details on specific classroom activities you can complete with Twitter.

Basic Twitter Guides

Regardless of the project or activities, you’ll need some basic tutorial or guide to share with students and colleagues.

The classic explanation of Twitter is Twitter in Plain English from The Commoncraft Show. Originally produced in March 2008, the video is dated in places, but it’s still a good overview for someone who has never heard of Twitter. Chances are your students already know all about the tool, but if you’re trying to explain the resource to colleague or students’ family members, the video can be useful.

Ten Handy How-To Resources for Twitter from Bedford Bits includes guides and tutorials you can use yourself and share with colleagues or students. Twitter features have changed over the months, so some information will no longer match the site exactly.

Twitter’s Help Resources and Twitip’s Beginner’s Guide Posts are the best place to find the most current information. The 5 Naming Tips can get you going if you still need to set up your own Twitter account.

Specific Twitter Features

For classroom use, be sure that you talk about these features:

Twitip’s 5 Commonly Misunderstood Things on Twitter addresses several specific features quickly. Some may not be very relevant for class activities (e.g., tracking retweets), but others are crucial—like effective use of the @ sign in Twitter updates.

Be sure to come back later for information on how these features can be part of great classroom activities.

 

[Twitter Button Image by MilkAddict]

Filed under classroom activities, Teaching with Digital Tools Tagged with ,

Is Twitter Classroom Worthy?

June 29, 2010 by

Sending Twitter Message by Cell Phone Image by rockinfreeI have a confession to make. I spend more time sending out Twitter updates (commonly called tweets) than I do on email these days.

Why is it a confession? Twitter has gotten a bad reputation in some circles. The College Humor video Twitter in Real Life demonstrates the way many people perceive the world of Twitter—it’s all a bunch of random, mediocre comments about whatever the writer happens to be doing at the moment in time.

Just because you can use Twitter for random reports on your day, however, doesn’t meant that you have to use it that way. In fact, I’d argue that a lot of the updates on Twitter are anything but random and mediocre when they are read by the intended audience in the appropriate context.

Yep, it’s all about the rhetorical situation. There are lots of people using Twitter to publish status updates about projects, news, and their lives in ways that are anything but random. Take @BreakingNews for instance. All day long, every day, the editors post the latest news stories in 140 characters or less, often with a link to a page with more information.

Looking for a more local example? The town where I live posts regular updates about road construction, town planning, town council meetings, and special events as @Blacksburg_Gov. Virginia Tech, my local university, posts similar updates as @vt_edu and @vtnews.

But is Twitter classroom worthy? Obviously, you can send similar class information and news to students using Twitter, but is the social networking tool capable of more than simply class announcements? Absolutely.

If you’re unsure, think about Twitter as another of the many ways that students can publish their writing. Make it one of the tools in your arsenal, placing it alongside blog posts, Wikipedia updates, email messages, and web forum posts.

Now any one of those tools for publishing writing can be used in mediocre ways that are not worthy of classroom exploration. That’s where the teacher comes in. The teacher has to talk about the audience and purpose for the messages and help students find the most effective ways to communicate—whether students are using blogs, email messages or Twitter.

Now just how do you go about it? Come back later this week for tips on how to introduce Twitter and ways to use Twitter in the classroom.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by rockinfree]

Filed under classroom activities, Teaching with Digital Tools Tagged with , , ,

Résumés That Stand Out the Right Way

June 27, 2010 by

Catwoman being interviewed photo by Alaskan DudeThere are right ways to dress for a job interview. Sure, you want to stand out to an extent. You don’t want to blend into the sea of suits that march before the hiring committee. But, um, you don’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons. Probably shouldn’t wear a catwoman costume to an interview for at an engineering firm.

The same advice applies to résumés. When I talk about résumés with students, I do encourage them to do things that will make themselves stand out a little.

Traditional résumés can get very boring when you’re reading through a stack of 20 or 30 of them. If students can make themselves stand out, they have a better chance of being noticed–and we all know that being noticed can lead to getting that job.

It’s just as important, though, to talk about how audience comes into play in preparing résumés. You can teach this lesson quickly and clearly with the Dzine blog collection of “27 Examples of Impressive Resume(CV) Designs,” which my friend @Alliegator8u found and shared.

  • Go over résumés as you normally would, exploring more traditional examples in your text or online.
  • Share the DZine collection of résumés with students and encourage general feedback and discussion. You can click on the résumés to see larger versions.
  • Once general discussion dies down, ask students to think about the jobs that they would apply for themselves. You might group students with like career goals for this project. Have students brainstorm some details about the positions and companies they will send resumes to. Emphasize that students are effectively completing an audience analysis for these companies.
  • Return to the DZine collection of résumés. With their audience analysis in mind, ask students to identify which of the résumés might stand out and still fit with the needs and expectations of the audience companies. Encourage students to read through the comments on the page for some interesting discussion as well.

It’s likely that some of the more intriguing DZine résumés will be inappropriate. While they are clever and eye-catching, most of the résumés are suited only for edgier graphic design positions and companies.

I don’t think I’d encourage MrSunnyBlack or Sofiane42 to send those résumés to a conservative company. But Kenji2030 and Kamilmytnik might have a reasonable mix of traditional elements and “wow” design that would let their résumés stand out without ending up in the decline pile. As the résumés should make clear to students, it’s all a matter of the audience the résumés are presented to.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by Alaskan Dude]

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm Tagged with , , , , ,

Want Free Pointers on Designing Class Projects?

June 26, 2010 by

Students working by USACE Europe DistrictImagine a classroom full of engaged students busily researching, composing, and discussing their work. Project-based learning (PBL) can make such dreams a reality.

As the name suggests, project-based learning asks students to participate in a project that focuses on a particular question or issue. Edutopia describes PBL this way:

Project-based learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they’re studying.

What makes PBL useful in the composition classroom is the focus on authentic writing situations. To have an impact on the real-world issues they explore, students communicate with real readers with a concrete purpose.

Whether you’re new to PBL or just looking for new resources, be sure to check out Edutopia’s free, upcoming Project-Based Learning Camp, led by Suzie Boss, co-author of Reinventing Project-Based Learning.

By the end of the camp, you’ll have everything you need to teach a project-based class this fall. And everything takes place online, so you don’t even have to put on your “school clothes” to participate. Sign up now, and I’ll see you at camp!

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by USACE Europe District]

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Lady Gaga and the Research Process

June 21, 2010 by

Okay, so maybe I’m a month behind on finding this (via @Lumpy), but it’s too fun not to mention it now that I have. Cory Doctorow shared “Librarians do Gaga” on BoingBoing back in May.

In the YouTube video, librarians from the University of Washington share a few research tips, all to the tune of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. I’m sure you’ll get a chuckle out of it—and maybe you’ll be inspired to ask your students to do their own video remixes to promote the school library.

If you want to know more about the video, the comments point to Sarah Wachter’s blog, where there are more details on how the video came about in FAQ style and a transcript of the lyrics.

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Text + Image = Tagxedo: The Next Generation of Word Cloud Fun

June 19, 2010 by

I’ve been a Wordle addict for a while. The online tool takes any text and creates a cloud of the words based on their frequency. It makes for some fun analysis activities that goes beyond the norm in the classroom.

When Obama was sworn in, Wordle addicts like me used the tool to analyze the inaugural address and to look back at the speeches of previous presidents. I even used Wordle to explore Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18Now this word cloud-driven analysis is ready to move to the next level with Tagxedo. Highlighted Friday as Jane‘s Pick of the Day, Tagxedo shapes your cloud of words into an image. To demonstrate, I used the text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and had Tagxedo arrange the words into a heart. Cute, no?

Tagxedo allows you to choose one of 42 included image shapes or upload your own image. Settings allow you to customize the colors, contrast, and other features of the resulting word cloud.

You an also exclude words, and customize the way that the text is handled (e.g., include or exclude numbers or punctuation). Like Wordle, Tagxedo allows you to save the resulting word clouds. You can place the image in the Tagxedo Gallery, create an embedded version you can use elsewhere, or simply save the image as a JPG or PNG.

The possible downside: The tool uses Microsoft’s Silverlight. I didn’t have Silverlight installed, and it managed to crash my machine once the installation completed and I tried to refresh the Tagxedo page. If you allow for that possible bump and can get Silverlight installed, however, you’ll have another option for playing with word clouds in the classroom.

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan PoeThe benefit of Tagxedo in the classroom is its stronger connection to visual rhetoric. Word clouds emphasize the words that are used most frequently in a text. Taken out of their context, key words stand out and readers can think about how they may work as symbols, establish a mood, or build an image.

Tagxedo word clouds allow students to pair that kind of textual analysis with an image that extends the emphasis the words communicate. Consider the image on the left. I took the text of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” Click on the cat image to see a larger version. If you have Silverlight installed, you can go to the Tagxedo site to see the Silverlight version, which enlarges the words in the image when you mouse over them.

To make the image, I had Tagxedo focus on the top 150 words. I chose the cat shape, which is one of Tagxedo’s included images, and then I changed the colors to get the strong contrast I wanted. I love the way this cat image includes the words cat, wall, myself, and animal in the center of the image, and the stark black and white contrast makes the cat image really stand out.

Now imagine students applying this same tool to texts you explore in class. The process is fairly simple:

  1. Choose a text. You might have students analyze a full chapter of a work, a short story, several poems by a single poet, or an essay. The text might come from an author in their textbooks or it could be their own work. Project Gutenberg can make the process for many out of copyright text as simple as copy and paste.
    The Tagxedo developers also have the ability to point to an HTML page and are working on the capability to use a Twitter feed or search results.
  2. Choose an image. There are 42 images included in Tagxedo. Students can also use their own images. Designs with a clear two-color appearance will work best. Simpler designs probably work best. A detailed image of a colorful garden is not going to work as well picture of a single flower.
  3. Enter the information in Tagxedo. Use the various tools in the left panel to customize the results. Make sure students know how to save the image so that they can share it with the class or turn it in.

Simple and fun, Tagxedo takes word clouds beyond simple rectangles and asks students to do a bit more critical thinking than Wordle word clouds do. There’s still a place for Wordle in the classroom, but Tagxedo adds another level to the designs that deepen students’ critical thinking–and can create some nice posters for the class bulletin boards and websites!

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