List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list

List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list. Next identify three in other students' blog you do know how to define, and comment on them there in those blogs.

Here are five terms I could use help defining, especially within the number of characters given us for the exam. I understand some of them in a nebulous way, but putting down their exact definition is another matter. Thanks in advance to those who comment.

1) Discipline

2) Making of Knowledge

3) Power

4) Style

5) Social construction

What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?

As I reflect on the topic of technology and collaboration in the classroom, I am drawn to thoughts of my junior year of high school. I took AP English, which I suppose is the closest thing that I’ve taken to the English 1301 classes that our students are taking. We had an excellent teacher, one I still remember as having an impact on my later decision to study Englsih. For that class, we were assigned the infamous Movie Project.

This was a collaborative project. We were put into groups of eight, and then given four options of classic movies to adopt into the present day. This involved writing a new screenplay, as well as filming, acting, and editing all ourselves (my group did an adaptation of Macbeth).

It was an extremely stressful project, as perhaps you can imagine. However, I must admit that I did learn a lot more than I would have by working on a simple essay. How many people can say they put together a fifty minute movie when they were seventeen years old?

Thinking about my own syllabus, I can’t justify putting my freshmen through the trauma of being put in a group with seven people they probably don’t know. I like the idea of making a project involving a video, however. The Texas Tech Library has video cameras that are available for students to check out for forty-eight hours at a time, so access to technology shouldn’t be a problem even for students that might possibly not have video cameras on their phones.

Since in undergraduate classes it’s common not to really know your fellow classmates, I think I would assign them to groups of four and set them about the task of making a short film. I think it would be interesting to give them a specific time frame that their movie must fit within, maybe either exactly three or exactly four minutes (give or take five seconds). Like with the photo essays we’ve been discussing, I think that giving specific parameters will encourage students to be intentional in their choices about what to include or exclude.

As far as prompts, I wouldn’t be too specific. I think that simply telling a story will be the main point of the assignment. Does it have a beginning, a middle, and an end? By the end of the video is something concrete different than it was at the beginning? Is the tension, climax, character development? Granted, that’s a lot to expect from a short video, but that’s the art of it.

Alternatively, I might give students the option of making their video persuasive, rather than creative, in which case I would evaluate whether or not they were able to effectively present and defend their argument within the time constraints.

Regardless of the prompt followed, I would require each student to appear in the video, even if just for a few seconds. I would also require each student to write up a brief statement, maybe 250 words, explaining the part that they played in bringing the project to completion. In that way I would assure fairness of grading and prevent any students from profiting by slacking off while others did the work.

But how do we make them care?

Engage in discussion about something that captured your attention over the past few weeks in the course. Relate it back to specific class discussions, readings, and your grading/teaching when possible.

For this week's blog post, I'd like to invite you to go on a journey with me into the perilous world of flashbacks.

The year is 2011. In about a month, I will graduate high school and make my first faltering steps into academia. But for now, I'm stuck in my hometown, counting down the days I have left in my concrete box of a high school. And I am a theater kid.

Every year, the advanced theater class puts on a student written show, composed of various scenes and vignettes written by the students in the class. Aside from the evening performances which we have for every play, we are also performing several times throughout the school day for students from classes whose teachers decide to take them to the play. It is my first experience with a captive audience, and though I am happy to get out of class for the day in order to perform, I am also nervous, wondering how my peers will receive the play. My fellow actors and I make snide comments backstage about the lack of culture in our fellow students, but really, we all want to be liked.

We make it through the first couple of performances and on break, getting ready for the next one, when one of our star actors comes bursting into the room. "Guess what I just heard in the hallway!" he says. "I heard a couple of guys talking and one of them said 'I thought it was going to be lame, but it was actually pretty cool'!" 

We laugh, triumphant, joking about how we should make that our new slogan. But really, each of us is very pleased. Our show is doing what we'd hoped it would- entertaining. We're getting through to people!

Flash forward to 2015. It's been a while since I trod the boards in my high school theater, but I'm facing the same problem as I did then. How do I get through to people? How do I get them to care?

As I document instructor this year, I am not actively teaching. Yet as I look around me at the classroom instructors, and look forward to the teaching that I will be doing next year, I see many similarities between my situation back in high school, having to perform a show for people who are not necessarily interested, and the plight of the composition instructor having to teach a class full of students who are required to be there.

We've discussed many times in class the problem of getting our students to care about their composition classes. This would be much easier, I think, if each instructor had a bit more autonomy with regards to what assignments they required. But as this is not currently an option in our program, the best solution I can come up with is the one that I've carried with me since that day in the theater.

Our fellow students liked the show because we liked it. We were invested in it, and did our best, and stayed late and showed up early in order to put together a show that we were proud to be in. We cared. And because we cared, we got other people to care too.

A Response to the Extended Analysis—Email Etiquette

For this week’s blog post, I read through Iracema’s Prezi presentation on email etiquette, specifically email etiquette as it relates to emailing your professors. She gave the presentation to one of the freshman seminar courses, which I think was a fantastic idea. I know that when I was a freshman I found my professors a little frightening, and the idea of emailing them was intimidating to me. If anything I probably leaned more towards the side of formality than I needed to, though I can easily see how a freshman used it informal means of communication might be too casual in their emails. I wish that someone had gone over this with me when I was eighteen, if for no other reason than that I would have been more confident in communicating with professors, knowing that I was addressing them correctly.

Ira started her presentation off with an example of a bad email to send to a professor—offensively informal and clearly written while the student was drunk. I think that this was a good way to begin, as a bit of humor can often help capture audience interest. I also appreciated her advice on subject lines, which came soon after. I personally am often not sure exactly what the subject of an email ought to be. I think that the advice to be brief and precise is good, though I would add that if you are making some sort of request it might be better to write a slightly vaguer subject line. For example, if I were to write an email asking for an extension on a particular assignment, I would probably not make the subject “paper extension”. Instead I would likely make the title simply the name of the assignment, for the reason that I want the professor to read through the email and see my reasoning before making a decision about whether or not they will answer the request. However, I acknowledge that this may simply be a personal preference.

Ira went on to discuss the appropriate greetings and sign-offs that one could use, as well as the proper style for the body of the essay. I think that she was wise to include the note that sent email is permanent. Of course, everyone knows this, but it’s a good reminder to a freshman who might be tempted to send something in haste or without really thinking it through, especially when they are angry or upset about a grade.

The presentation goes on to cover a list of example emails, along with a slide of tips and tricks. Among these I found the advice to be careful with sarcasm and humor especially good, as humor often does not come across correctly in writing, and sarcasm may be perceived as disrespectful in the context of an email to a professor. After these last tips, the presentation is over. On the whole I thought that it was a well thought out and successful presentation. After receiving the information in the Prezi any freshman should be able to put together an effective and appropriate email to their professor.