Blogging Pedagogy

Academic Earth is the Hulu for Education

I had a conversation with my brother yesterday, who is 22. He was telling me about World of Warcraft, a video game that he spend many hours playing every day.

He told me that he hasn't come across any other situations in which his unique abilities and interests are so obviously helpful to other people. In the game, he works as part of a team. He gets constant validation and praise for his actions. He depends on other people, but he also needs to excel at his roles.

Have you heard of hacking education? It's all the rage on Twitter. Fred Wilson suggests that teachers are going the way of newspaper reporters and that diplomas are becoming less important due to technological changes in education.

Hacking Education

I read a really interesting interview with Nicholas Carr this week. Carr argues internet use harms our ability to reflect deeply.

The interview is useful for a couple of reasons: first, instructors may want to think about how decisions to use technology or not affect the way their students are learning. We assume in the CWRL that using technology in the classroom is good, and this interview questions those assumptions. Second, if students read this article in class, they could critique their course (and their instructor's choices), which may help them think critically about what they are supposed to be learning and gaining by using technology in the classroom. I can see the article being a way to frame a learning record essay also.

Here's the link:
Computing the Cost: Nicholas Carr on How the Internet is Rewiring Our Brains

Most of us at UT know to send kids to the writing center if their papers are terrible. But so many times, it's not just their writing that is terrible. They often aren't reading very well either.

The UT Learning Center offers academic counseling. Students can drop and speak with a counselor for 20 minutes on aspects of learning that are giving them trouble, for example:

Time Management
Reading and Concentration
Note Taking
Memory Improvement
Goal Setting
Motivation
Test Preparation
Test Taking Strategies

In two of the best grad classes I've taken, Tom Cable gave worksheets to fill out in response to each reading assignment. He didn't make us turn them in, they were just to help us get the main points from the readings. Sometimes he would point out an important passage without even asking a question.

Gerald Graff wrote a really interesting column in the MLA newsletter this month, which pointed out that many undergraduate papers are asked to interpret a text in a vacuum.

I know that's true of my undergraduate experience. Most of the time, I was specifically told not to cite criticism in my papers. No wonder I am struggling to "enter the conversation" to this day. For much of my academic career, no professor explained to me the importance of answering the "so what?" question or finding someone who disagreed with me.

I'm trying a new grading strategy this year. I use a table with two columns. The first column lists the grading criteria and how much each aspect of the paper is worth, for example:

1. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence in the essay (this may include a discussion of statistics). 25 points.

2. Write a concise, relevant introduction. 5 points.

The second column includes my comments on that aspect of the paper as well as the total points the student received.

A couple of years ago, my CWRL project group set out to determine how Second Life could be used in the rhetoric classroom. Starting with the tool, we tried to imagine an assignment that would fit--somehow--into our curriculum. Only one person in the group tried the assignment we developed. It was irrelevant to the rest of our courses.

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001212.html hola a todos me llamo mcest