pedablogical

10 rules to manage your boss

10 rules to manage your boss—Not quite sure why Lifehacker didn’t share this piece from the August Money till March, but here it is nonetheless. Given the shakeup at work this week, we can all use some tips :)

Daily Work: Being Coached

And today we begin hell. A “life coach” is coming in to help our team be more, well, I don’t know what. These psychosocial analytical things make me sick, and by that, I mean physically sick. I do not want analyzed. I do not want my psychological tendencies probed. I would rather go to the dentist. Because I am insane, the result of the related stress and anxiety of this nonsense makes me physically sick with varying gastrointestinal nonsense. Now, of course, I am procrastinating. The longer I can put off going to work, the longer I may be able to ignore the hell.

ReadWriteThink: Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing

Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing asks students to identify and research a local issue that concerns them, using Internet and print sources. They then argue a position on the issue in letters to two different audiences, addressing their own purpose and considering the needs of the audience in each letter.

In the News: Bound by Words And Much More

Bound by Words And Much More—an example of how an authentic audience grows writers. This article describes a memoir-writing activity, completed by students and family members. With these real readers, both from their families and others in the classroom community, these students seem to blossom as writers.

For Windows: Identify unknown files and processes – Lifehacker

Identify unknown files and processes – Lifehacker—for those days when twizzlefoo.dll is clogging up the firewall and I can’t figure out what it is.

In the News: Teen craze over networking sites

BBC NEWS | Technology | Teen craze over networking sites—darn those crazy teens. Apparently the UK version of MySpace or Facebook, Bebo faces the same challenges from schools and colleges that worry the site is potentially dangerous for students. The article explains, “Debbie Cowley, technology teacher at the college, told the BBC she was concerned about what pupils were sharing via the site. Some were posting personal details, pictures and even making disparaging comments about the school and its staff.” As is the case in the states, it’s so much easier to ban things than to teach, at least as far as administrations are concerned.

For Mac: Mac OS X application folders – Lifehacker

Download of the Day: Mac OS X application folders – Lifehacker—cool folders for that new Mac I am going to buy one day.

CCCC 2006: It’s all over

I managed to get the rest of my stuff packed up and wrangle it out of my room by about 10:30 this morning, a full 30 minutes before I had to :) Unlike my messy navigation to Chicago on Tuesday, I returned to Champaign without ever looking at a map. I got home around 1:30, unloaded the car, unpacked some stuff, and wisely took an afternoon/evening nap from 3 to 7. Finished up some writing this evening, so now I can officially call my conference time over.

There were so many people whom I didn’t get to spend much time with. That’s probably mostly my fault for being cheap, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and minute rice in my room rather than going out for meals. That and my own stupid lonely behavior, sitting alone tends to make you alone. Such an idiot. I keep asking myself if I wouldn’t have been better off spending that $1200+ on a new mac rather than on a hotel bill. It’s not that I didn’t love seeing the people whom I did see, but I’m thinking that maybe I’m no longer a fit for CCCC. Maybe I should have saved that money for Lubbock or Columbus or something. My brain is such that I rehash and rethink and mope and weep; so I’ll probably still be questioning this weeks from now.
I do know that it would take an act of Congress for me to go to CCCC NY. There’s something about NYC that just scares and overwhelms me. The world is better off without me there. I guess I have to get back to my regular life and figure out what to take to work tomorrow.

CCCC: Day Four

It’s the last day, so that means that the first thing I had to do today was get down to the Exhibit Hall to snatch up the goodies that the publishers are now happily giving away. I got a copy of several professional books from Bedford, all of which included some info on writing assignments (given that I’m supposed to be writing a book on that topic and all). Got a copy of a Longman book, Envision: Persuasive Writing in a Visual World, and ordered a copy of Anne and Dennis’s Compose, Design, Advocate. Also ordered a Bedford/St. Martin’s book, Everything’s an Argument, a revision that has some cool visual argument info in it.

I could have wandered around a bit more, but I ran into Will and Martha, who updated me on the morning’s business meeting. Their sense-of-the-house motion passed without any difficulty :) After some chatting and planning, I had to get hugs goodbye and head off to a session, L.04: New Media, New Curricula:

Anne Wysocki, the chair, introduced Scott DeWitt, Aaron McKain, Jason Palmeri, and Cormac Slevin, who shared details on digital media activities as part of the Ohio State first-year composition classes. The findings of their analysis of student course evaluations was most interesting: students spoke of rhetorical technique learned in their evaluations in ways that they never spoke of such things in non-digital sections of the course. It sounds like a perfectly marvelous program they have created. As they were talking about how digital (and nondigital) components were included in their courses, I realized that the language we use to talk about digital resources in our classrooms is (or could be) the same language that we use when we discuss curriculum transformation. The whole issue bubbled up in my head because of the Multicultural Multilingual research on the MarcoPolo sites (remember that conference call where I had the phone tied to my head?). So I began wondering which assignments we were completing where digital resources were additive, when they were blended, and when they went beyond those basic levels to deeper conceptual interrelations. I’m sure there’s another evaluation of the ReadWriteThink site that I need to complete as a result. Other odds and ends from the session include these: My favorite misspoken comment, from their instructor videos: Lisa Ann referring to “ethos, pathos, and legos” One of their assignments shifted issues of fair use and copyright to a critical issue for the course, rather than a simple presentational one, by asking students to prove permission for every resource that they used. Truthfully, we should be asking for that sort of focus on every activity that we complete. Dene, in the audience, commented that she sees “new media as a bridge between literature and rhetoric.” I nodded and wrote it down at the time, though now I’m less certain that I agree. I assume that Dene meant institional definitions of lit and rhet (e.g., those are the literature faculty and these folks are the rhet/comp folks). After all, literature uses rhetorical technique. I wish I had more context written down. Originally I thought she meant that new media created some space communicative space between literary discourse and what I’ll call rhetorical discourse (e.g., persuastion). But new media describes a medium for me, which is part of the reason that I’ve always found the name problematic. I’m hoping now that what she meant was that new media provided a method to bring different faculties together. Maybe someone else will remember and explain more here. As they were talking about the activities that students completed, one of the presenters mentioned that students complete accompanying artists’ statements that explain the how and why behind their work. I was hoping to hear something like this, as that’s the way that I have tended to complete such activities. Students don’t just complete the multimodal activity but also complete some sort of accompany letter or statement that explains the intentionality behind their work. Frankly, I like these kinds of accompanying letters with regular old essays too (something like Draft Letters). “It’s okay if it doesn’t work, but talk about why”—in the context of those artists’ statements and letters, one of the presenters talked about what happens when students’ efforts don’t work out. It’s an important enough point for it’s own bullet point. The focus of all rhetorical work should be less on the final product and more on the analytical process that went into the work. Now, I’m the last person to start handing out grades willy-nilly for effort only; so I want to emphasize that that’s not what this is about. One of the examples that the presenters shared was about a student whose audio recording work wasn’t meeting his expectations. Yet that student understood it wasn’t working, knew reasons why it wasn’t working, and wanted to try to communicate the message in another medium. THAT is the kind of learning that we need to target. Analysis after production in similar media deepens engagement for students. The point seems so obvious, yet I’m not sure that we have anything on the ReadWriteThink site that goes about things this way. The idea is that once students have designed their own work in a media, they understand how that media works in new ways. For instance, students often laugh off deep analysis of the visual argument behind advertisements or PSA posters when first introduced to the ideas. They accuse us of overanalyzing everything. Have students create their own PSA posters or visual arguments. Ask them to think about and explain their decisions in detail. At the end of the process, they are far more willing to accept and, in fact, to embrace the idea that nothing happens in these media as an accident. Everything has a purpose of some kind, and it is our job as critical consumers to unearth that hidden meaning and purpose.

Next session for me was M.20: Info-Ecology, Info-Architecture: Growing and Designing Rhetoric for Critical Technography.

Mark Crane described the session as a cage match between Dickie, representing info-ecologists, and Salvo, representing the info-architects; and with Pat Sullivan (both are right) and Marilyn Cooper (neither is right) responding and expanding on the two positions. As seems to often be the case when we wonder into Theoryland, I didn’t completely grasp any of it; but, importantly, there were moments when I thought I almost understood. We have to consider that some kind of progress. I’m not about to try to explain my understanding, since I’m sure it’s wrong in places; but overall, it seemed to me that this was all arguing over seeing or naming or constructing interactions with technology. Marilyn noticed that in all of the papers there was a focus on agency—loss of agency in ecologies, the control of agencies through architecture, anxiety over agency in Pat’s narratives. Basically, it seemed to come down to the human place in the interaction with technologies. At times, I felt that with very little change in the sentences being used, we could just as easily have been discussing scientific determinism versus organic evolution. What seemed to make sense to me, regardless of the confusion of what or how we name all this, was Dickie’s observation that “we need a citizenry that understands the best way to live” in the context of these varying technologies. As teachers, it’s our job to try to foster the critical thinking that will yield and inform that citizenry. The big surprise of the session for me was unrelated to any of that. At a point when I was lost, I was doodling and freewriting about on my pad on my Computers and Writing topic. Suddenly, Pat was sharing an Ong quotation about an elephant, which sadly I only got part of, but which I want to find out more about so that I can see if it will fit in with my paper. That would just be too wonderful :) I think it was on metaphor, so it would, indeed, be relevant. I need to get in contact with John Walter to see if he can help me with it.

Finally, I attended the Intelletual Property Caucus meeting, which was operating under the guise of a workshop, SW.04: Intellectual Property in Composition Studies. I primarily joined to see what they had to say about digital IP rights, but since it was more of a working meeting where they shared business from the caucus and the CCCC-IP committee, I found myself freewriting more on that silly Computers and Writing presentation. Freewriting and daydreaming really. I’m not sure that I’ll be going to Lubbock, so I need a presentation that can take place without me. I’m thinking of some kind of Flash or video presentation, so while they talked about EULAs and companies trying to control students’ papers, I was sketching out imagistic phrases and trying to guess how I could illustrate and present them. The challenge, of course, was that I was doing all this without the Lakoff book. Still I got some good notes during the more business-oriented first half of the session. The second half focused on action groups, on specific topics. I joined the Barclay Barrios group, which was subtitled EULAs and Implications for Researchers and WPAs. Karen Lunsford, Charlie Lowe, Barclay, and I were supposed to solve the problems of the world on the topic; but before we got there, Karen asked some questions about NCTE copyright and online repositories. I did my best to answer them, and then wandered into the hallway to acquire little jars of honey, which were out on the table open access. It’s not stealing if it’s open access after all :)

And that was the end of the conference for me essentially. I came back up here to the room, have been packing in a leisurely manner, writing up more blog entries, watching DVDs, and eating elegantly pricey room service food. I just need to manage to go to bed early enough that I can get checked out before they start charging extra money. My stuff is mostly packed at this point, so I may actually get out of here on time.

CCCC 2006: Day Three

It’s been an oddly hard day. I feel so disconnected from the CCCC world. Maybe it’s just that all my work is K–12. Maybe it’s that I’ve not been here in so long. I dunno.

I went to a Computer Connection session during the I session time, primarily to hear what Bradley Dilger had to say about access issues. There were other presenters there as well, so I heard John Walter and Gina Merys’ presentation, “Developing a Local Digital Culture: A Grassroots Initiative,” which primarily explored the recommendations to help their university’s program meet graduate (and eventually undergraduate, by extension) needs for computer interaction, exploration, and pedagogical investigation. It seems to be a fairly complete proposal.

In discussion of various resources, wikis came up and John recommended schtuff.com as a free host site. During the workshop on Wednesday, someone suggested pbwiki.com. Maybe I can choose one and start investigating myself.

Bradley’s piece of the session was “Thirty Minutes to Better Web Accessibility.” Working off Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Accessibility, Bradley’s 30-minute outline proposes “five ‘quick fixes’ for making your site accessible.” Easily the best overview of the issues I’ve heard. Though, okay, I admit that I haven’t run out to revise the accessibility of any of my sites. Surely I can put that off a few more days. I really wanted to consider a ReadWriteThink lesson plan based on his discussion, but the most obvious one that I could think of would have relied on a free screen reader, and such a thing doesn’t exist. I’ll have to think on it more to figure something out. I’m sure that we should have a lesson that explores these issues. It’s just a matter of figuring out what and how.

Next, I was off to Session J.11: What’s Queer about Writing Program Administration? New Research from the Field, with Will Banks, Martha Marinara, Jonathan Alexander, and Samantha Blackmon. Selfishly, I went to the session to see Will and Sam, but expecting to be bored out of my mind. I really don’t need info on WPA work. That’s just too far away from anything I’m doing now or likely to do anytime in the future. Happily, it turned out to be a great session. The group of them had done an analysis of FY comp readers, evaluating them for inclusion of explicitly queer material. The findings were probably predictable. GLBT folks aren’t identified in biographical notes. When their texts are included, they are frequently texts that do not focus on the queer issues for which they are known. And overall, the biggest relevant issue was a recurring gay marriage debate in the various argument sections. The findings were really quite in line with the various race, class, and gender analyses that I did of texts and syllabi in the late 80s and early 90s. You’d think things might progress, take a different path. You’d think we’d learn lessons and make things better; but everything seems to follow the same, tired, slow-paced progression.

I finished off the evening with the Fifth C SIG, which went well. Again, I’m just there as an ex officio observer, so I don’t actually have to do anything :) After that, I just wandered off back to my room, where I frittered about till 9:30 when the Rock and Roll Party started. I went down to the party for about an hour. Nothing like watching comp/rhet people dance.

I saw good people and some good sessions, but I hate this part where I’m alone—like dinner, waiting, parties. I’m so bad at everything social, and the end result seems to be that I’m alone by my own failure. Stupid me.