I’ve begun a new teaching technique this semester to put online platforms in practice for my FYC classrooms. I’m beginning simply with the email and by sending MS Word files through email. I send an email note (with or without a connected file)- the contents of which are intended to be my student’s reminder system (and my documentation of my teaching process). I write them all but if someone sends me a question asking for clarification on an assignment or an exercise I’ve asked them to do, I send the answer to all members of all 3 of my classes – in the form of the summary of what I actually said in explaining it initially in class. If there is a question about anything I’ve covered in the previous meeting, I send my lecture notes simplified for their perusal. I’m writing and keeping these things in conjunction with my research into my classroom activity in order to track with the subsequent results. I hope they don’t figure it out that a question produces a classroom session summary and begin to skip class. Note: A glitch showed up this morning in my email sending and receiving process. Apparently, something happens out there in the ether, in which the information about an assignment that I send comes back in the form of an assignment that is different than the one I requested. Either that or perhaps they believe if one changes the name of the assignment to match what one actually did, then that is close enough to doing the actual assignment without doing the actual assignment. So many give the same answer when I ask about it, “at least I turned something in.” I am interested in continual access to their process. I bang out a quick return email with the appropriate explanation. It’s like a class information search machine. Pose a question, a deficit = get an answer. Maybe why so many say they can’t properly access their email. Just a thought.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
I don't Know, you look.
It’s a curious stage of my FYC classroom activity when students’ questions are not about the writing but about what they don’t understand about their computer interaction. Just today I heard these issues: “I am not MS Word literate, It took me four hours to write this last paper,” (one annotated bibliography listing), “I can’t figure out the (Purdue) OWL website,” “It asks me to sign in to the library from home, I can’t get on,” “I didn’t read your email, I was in class(said at 130pm about an 8am email), “I don’t use the school email and I can’t figure out how to transfer it,” “(at home) my school account won’t let me sign on,” “I don’t know how to get my bibliography to look like the MLA format,” “I don’t know how to change the font,” “If I can look up an author online, is it a good source?” and more that I can’t remember right now. This is on top of last week’s 90 minute exercise to go into a library to do a preliminary search on a topic of their choice, after 3 different demonstrations in the search function of our library’s collection of books, each demo done online in my classroom projected on the big screen. Yet, half merely walked up to the librarian and asked him/her to show them how to use the computer and search a topic. Was it a reticence to explore or did the new info not register or was it merely laziness? Or maybe it was an aversion or fear of the computer. Or something else? These folks all have computers at home, I think, so it can't be a computer-aversion. They usually tell me if they don’t have one and I haven't heard that so far. But something stopped them from melding easily with that new task. I get that maybe it is like looking up a word you don’t know how to spell, like you need to know how to spell it to look it up – search functions on computers often yield no help (and no results) unless you know exactly what question to ask. Is it in the politics of the computer? I know it is in the algorithm. That’s a starting place to investigate.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Tuesday 15 February 2010 DL
-1 Open browser.
-2 Go to youtube
-3 Enter my name and what I did for a living (until recently)
Hint: (figure it out among yourselves)
-4 search that phrase
-5 Click on the top one –says: B B C Michigan
-6 pause the video
-7 read and follow the directions listed in the comments
Hint: (open another browser window)
Monday, February 14, 2011
3 hours and i'm starting to get some more...
Organization of one online medium looks the same in my mind as another. I suppose, with what you aren’t familiar with, it all looks the same. So far this semester, I look at these and familiarize myself somewhat and then next visit – I’m lost again. I’ve taken plenty of notes in a few places to help me remember what I’ve learned and where I’ve been to help me back and it will build from there. It didn’t help that last week I’d lost all my notes from this semester so far. They were in a notebook. Turns out it was mis-labled. I blame it on the Prey-Harrold move.
I’ll elaborate in a commentary on an older technology. Last semester’s class with Bernie Miller (ENGL 503) was in a classroom in the Porter Building that had half-desks tilted at such an angle that without a hand holding it down, any book would slide off the desk. And they were only a half desk at that! I like the double-page note-taking system in which I write note in a loose leaf binder. On the right I write lecture notes and on the left (which is actually a back- page), I write annotations to my notes and lecture and comments. I couldn’t manage the loose left binder on those tilted half-desks (only half the binder fit!) so I switched to a spiral notebook after two classes and flipped the notebook from front to back as the classes progressed, it was quite a headache.
So, I’ve got this (set-aside) loose leaf notebook (incorrectly) labeled 503 on the spine sitting in my “active” notebooks shelving area IN ERROR because I’m accessing the Rhetorical Theory in the Teaching of Writing for my PhD research and I left it out rather than filing it. (I’ve actually consulted a Master Archivist about my records management …my daughter- hee hee.) Without noticing, I’d started my notes for ENGL 516 inside this notebook, usually sitting out (and open) on its specific table study area and somehow slipped it onto the “active” notebooks shelving area at the front of my main desk. So when I looked for it- my eyes glanced over a notebook labeled 503 and thought it was just “out” to be easily accessed when I wanted to. Ten days it took to go through everything “out” to find it- sadly I hadn’t needed to access Rhetoric in the meantime. You guessed it- now where is the real engl 503 notebook?
BUILDING LINKS -->
BUILDING LINKS -->
go to “accounts” to see other classmates’ P1 pages/media choices
Google acct: billbarrstudent@gmail
Access: “Documents”
And email FROM CLASS / DEREK
Gmail
Google Reader (to see “shared files)
Diigo acct: billbarrstudent
Delicious acct: to be set up (I swear I set one up- can’t find it tho)
(use for academic links- straddling TOW and PhD research – situating 516 w/in it)
BLOGS à
516: After sign in to google AS billbarrstudent- then sign in to:
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