Digital project

Video

This is the video I made for my digital project. It’s me doing my Paula Deen impression for my dog (Millie Jean), talking about HV Blackford’s book “Out of This World.”

MVL #3

Please check out the MVL Kacee, Abby, and I did together!

And again.

http://gizmodo.com/5925156/the-worst-tweets-from-the-first-year-of-twitter

Presented without comment, courtesy of my best friend

Response to “It Takes a Village to Find a Phone”

I got sucked into the story that Shirky uses to introduce the idea behind “It Takes a Village to Find a Phone,” so much that I went to the original website and looked for the 20/20 clip on YouTube (unsuccessfully.) The story is interesting, and I understand what Shirky is saying–the web is a powerful tool, and we need to get students to understand this. I think students do understand this, though, and perhaps feel it is more powerful than it really is.

I don’t think Shirky was thinking about this, perhaps because this article was from a few years ago and I don’t think this was that big of a thing then, but I was reminded of the idea of slacktivism. I know I’m guilty of being a slacktivist about some things; I’ll get sucked into signing a petition on Change.org, then end up signing ten more. I think sometimes this helps, but really, most of them get lost in cyberspace.

I thought of a status Caitlin re-posted on Facebook a couple days ago about slacktivism and how it’s much more beneficial for any cause for someone to actively fight for it, rather than passively signing a petition online. I thought about how I watched the quality show Kathy after class Thursday (come on, I just needed to zone out after all that hard work!) One of the guests was Jane Fonda, and they showed her mugshot from the 70s. While many do not agree with what she was fighting against–and she has actually apologized for it–she was being active about her protest. Kathy commended her for that, and I thought about how there is little that I would actually physically protest against, even though I feel like I’m passionate about a lot of causes.

We talked about a lot of issues in Dr. Ford’s class last semester, and one idea she gave us was to have students write to their congressman about an issue they feel strongly about, and actually send the letters. Physical letters, though it’s pretty easy to correspond with your congressman via the internet these days. Especially in an English classroom, I think this is a great idea. It teaches persuasive writing, gets students writing in general, plus it gets them fired up about something worthwhile. Additionally, we can teach students that there are active alternatives to the slacktivism they are probably used to practicing.

MVL #2

Here is the link for the project I did with Kacee and Abby!

Response to “Transforming the Group Paper with Collaborative Online Writing”

I was hoping “Transforming the Group Paper with Collaborative Online Writing” by Peter Kittle and Troy Hicks would convince me that collaborative writing is a useful tool. I remain unconvinced, as they mainly explained how to teach it in the classroom. I’m not sure I will do this. I, personally, hate group work, and I think most people agree with me, even extroverts. No one likes relying on other people for their grade, unless you’re lazy. Group work should be collaborative, but it usually does not turn out that way.

Disclaimer: This is not to say I don’t enjoy working with Kacee and Abby. I do! They’re great group members!

However, I think back to the first time I had to write a collaborative paper. It was my freshman year of college in a terrible ethics class I had to take. We had to find an ethical situation in a TV show or movie, and work with three other people to write a paper about it, which we then had to present. The paper had to be ten pages, so I delegated two pages to everyone else and took four for myself (for the team.) I also edited everyone else’s parts (which I would have done anyway, because I’m Hannah) and made sure it flowed (and trust me, after tons of edits, that thing FLOWED.)

The problem? The way the grading was assigned was by peer evaluations. You could only assign one A, one B, one C, and one D. Nothing more, nothing less. The “leader” of our group decided she would spend hours in the video lab copying the portions of the TV show we were using (The OC, which she also chose) so they could be shown directly without skipping or rewinding…Even though that was not required! So she spent more time on it than I did, but I had other things to do! So even with all the work I put in, I still got a B.

Now I know this issue has more to do with group work than collaborative writing, but I feel like it just serves no purpose. I can understand having groups work collaboratively on Wikis, like we’ve been doing in class–But that is far different than writing a paper together.

One example I think of is a book I read last semester for Dr. Rish’s class called Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom: Being the Book and Being the Change by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Bruce Novak. Aside from the fact that it was terribly boring, it was awkward to read because Wilhelm and Novak had trouble with the collaborating part and instead referred to themselves in third person so it was clear who was writing what. For example, in paragraph one: Bruce feels like blah blah blah. Paragraph two: Jeff thinks blah blah blah. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose??

I will say one thing though, in the opposite order of what Kacee calls the “Pet pet slap theory.” I could hardly tell this article was written by two people! Kittle and Hicks were successful in writing collaboratively.

Response to “Envisioning Justice”

I had a hard time focusing on what C. Richard King was saying in “Envisioning Justice: Racial Metaphors, Political Movements, and Critical Pedagogy” because of the descriptions of these grotesque images. I kept trying to take it as rhetoric, but I was distracted. When I finished, I realized my distraction was probably a good thing. These are the kinds of things we should be getting our students to write about; this is what we should be focusing on in the classroom. That might be controversial, sure, but controversy gets people excited and wound up.

King finishes this article with an appendix of an assignment he gave students. Generally, the students had the option of giving their opinion about particular statements about controversial subjects. I believe this was meant for a college class, but this could work in a high school class, as well. It would be a good tool to use to get students to learn how to be persuasive. You could also tweak the assignment to make students write objectively about a similar subject, even if they disagree with the subject.

In my classroom, I’d like to have students write about things they can relate to and issues of the world. I don’t think we’re doing them any favors by asking them to write about the symbolism of blood in Macbeth, but if they can find something they are genuinely interested in, I think they might actually enjoy writing a paper, or at least find doing so is a bit easier.

This article also reminded me of what we have been doing in class and of Ryan Jerving’s article, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black-and-White Photograph.” I enjoy deconstructing photographs, looking for hidden meanings, perhaps even making up meanings that are not intentionally there. Using somewhat disturbing images and having students write about the message in these photographs and whether or not they agree with what they say should make for a good piece of writing. However, I do think it is important to heed King’s advice in limiting the description to 200 words, lest the piece becomes repetitive (and I know mine can be.)

Response to “The Facebook Generation”

While reading Stacy M. Kitsis’s “The Facebook Generation: Homework as Social Networking,” I was thinking about Dr. Levy’s composition class. I definitely think I try harder to write something decent because I know my classmates will be hearing it. If you’re not writing for an audience, what’s the point? (Yeah, yeah, self-expression, self-realization, etc.)

In my future classroom, I intend to use the feather circle (under a new name) to have students showcase their writing. However, I also like using Vista to write responses to readings, and responding to other people’s reflections. We used this some in my undergrad, and it was only effective, in my opinion, when we were encouraged to respond to our classmates. I believe I only used it in two classes, and one was only open for the professor to see. For some reason, that was not great motivation for me. If possible, I would like to have some sort of similar set-up for my students to use. It’s important to me to create a community, and I think an online response system can be helpful.

Kitsis also mentions blogs, and I think the two can be very similar, but both present the problem of *technology.* Some students may not have computers or internet access at home, but Kitsis says students can use the media center before or after school. This is true, but some students may not be able to control how early they get to school or how late they can stay. In addition, they may not have ample time anyway to really focus on their writing.

Kitsis also offers the alternative of using journals. I was trying to imagine how this would actually work in a classroom; students write in their journal and then have a peer or multiple peers read their work and comment. Now that I’m thinking about it, it actually seems like it would be more fun for students; kind of like passing notes. Hopefully. I plan to have a five or ten minute freewriting period at the beginning of each class–this would be a good addition to that time.

Response to The Shallows

In the afterword of The Shallows, Nicholas Carr says he was finishing the book up in 2009. I was surprised, because I assume that means he had been working on it for at least a little while before 2009. I was thinking about how much technology must have changed while he was writing it, considering it has changed in the two years since it was published (2010.) I thought back to what I talked about in my last post–his skepticism about the Kindle and how I assumed he felt that way because of when he wrote the book. I wondered if, as time went on, he went back and updated certain parts about technology. The majority of the book is a history lesson, but he does include some opinion on current-day technology.

I loved the second to last paragraph of the afterword:

“In the months since I completed The Shallows, Facebook membership has doubled from 300 million to 600 million; the number of text messages processed every month by the typical American teen has jumeped from 2,300 to 3,300; sales of e-readers, tables, and smartphones have skyrocketed; app stores have proliferated; elementary schools have rushed to put iPads in their students’ hands; and the time we spend in front of screens has continued its seemingly inexorable rise.”

He validates almost everything I have talked about in my blog and that we talk about in the program! Amazing coincidence……?

He also answered my previous question. He didn’t continually update the book as time went on; he included an afterword to cover those bases. I’m torn about whether I feel this was the best idea or not. On one hand, the changes in technology are not really what the book is about; it’s more about how technology has affected us over time socially. It also seems to demonstrate how technology really does change. On the other hand, I think it would have been more effective for him to continually update the book, at least until he sent it to his publisher, because–why wouldn’t he?