An assortment of reactions I noted while reading for class tomorrow:

“*dusts hands* Well, our work here is done. Composition instructors have been dealing with IP issues, virtual play, trolls, etc., for years.”
“How can people still argue that they don’t use ‘technology’ (i.e. digital technologies) in the classroom (if they have access and institutional support/incentive)?”
“How can people still not accept digital scholarship/scholarship on digital things as significant in 2015?(!)”

“How have we not figured out how to stop trolls?…”

On the whole, I felt like the readings for this week could easily replace a few keywords and still probably gather attention at CCCC’s. Identifying individual contributions to collaborative projects is still as much an issue today as it was for Kolko; trolls might even be more of an issue today than they were for Daisley; and text-based interfaces are still challenging to understand. Part of me was left wondering, what’s left? Or more so, why haven’t things changed more? That said, I wish there were more emphasis in current scholarship on digital work to point back to some of these early pieces, as I was frankly unaware that these conversations ever happened (aside from knowing that MOOs were similar to MOOCs, but way earlier).

One point that did stand out as different today however, was on 113 in Daisley. She mentions her students’ preoccupation with “rumors about a race riot” on campus, but it seems likely that today most students would have access to some sort of “eye witness” account, whether it was a video, pictures, or somebody live Tweeting the events. It seems such access would quell similar rumors, or at least challenge dominant narratives (maybe I’m being overly optimistic here). Any thoughts on this?

It’s funny… I do a lot of writing using similar methods to what Derrick describes with Dosequis, using Google docs and a buddy, but several times during the article, I found myself shaking my head. Yes, human interaction is helpful, but how is computer literacy not essential? It was a different time, I suppose, with different expectations. While his exercises rang true to me (and did not seem gamified at all), the way he talked about it was not my experience on either “side” of the classroom.

I also went into the Haas and Gardner thinking: how on earth would a LAN MOO be any use in the classroom? Why not just talk over and around the computers, or move the computers, or something else? But as I read, I thought about my students’ research forthcoming research unit, and the eternal struggle of teaching strong proof for claims, and I thought about students in collaborative spaces, like the aforementioned Google docs, or a chat room, in which they could quickly exchange ideas, quotes, sources to get ideas and feedback. What Ashley said last class period got me thinking about sharing my own process with my students, and this may be one way to do it, particularly if it’s a persistent resource they can access at any time they are working on the research. It may help the research process, and may disrupt it, but since my students this semester are part of a small group and will be working within a pool of research topics, I might now test something like that out… though again, it doesn’t seem gamified to me, but maybe that’s because I played too many MUDs and MUSHes and have pretty particular associations with games versus purely social/communicated spaces (maybe it wasn’t supposed to seem gamified? I dunno.)

Finally, as I read Daisley, I think I have come to understand that I don’t see games in these readings because what is described is my baseline normal. I am irreverent and silly even with the things I do take very seriously (well, most things) and in that sense, I guess my classroom tends to be a very playful place. But I want to establish comfort and engagement and for me, that’s one of the easiest ways to do it, or maybe I mean most natural.

Lots to think on.

Those of you who are friends with me on FB know that I recently posted about a Vanderbilt University study that presented information on the expectation for Black professors, equally male and female, to entertain their students by “telling more jokes” and “loosening up.”  After laughing for a bit about showboating and the ignorance of Katt Williams with my fellow Black colleagues at various institutions, I determined that the results of the study (very small participant data, n=33)  did not surprise me. In just the seven years I have been teaching (of course, laughable in comparison with Dr. Sam) I find students expecting more and more from their classes while giving less and less in many cases.

Now, just hear me out. I know that every student, class, and institution is different. However, the kids I taught in AZ were different in many wonderful ways. I miss those kids who were just excited to be learning something new and who found joy in being able to discuss something more than books in an English class. I miss the majority of my students working hard and rarely giving up. For anyone who has taught at a small(ish) regional land grant university, you know what I am talking about here. The Purdue student, generally doesn’t have these traits.

The activities we have been discussing in class and so far in the articles, are great. Exciting for the time even. Haas and Garder’s MOO and Derrick’s Dosequis can be adapted for the 2015 classroom relatively easily, therefore proving the strength in their ingenuity. I have conversations with my students about collaboration and ownership in ways that are similar to Kolko; it is an important conversation to have with students who are consumed by their grades and performance. But then the articles entered this weird realm for me.

Gamification of courses and games in courses feels like a cheat for me. Now, just hear me out. I fully respect the awesome stuff happening in games studies (especially the critical movements we should all be familiar with ATM) and I also enjoy many people/things/stuffs about the gaming culture. I also understand the richness games can offer to composition and rhetoric, especially for novice and expert writers.

Many, many, many scholars and scholarship do gaming right. I’ve seen it (shout out to Tony and Patrick!). However, I am not here to entertain my students. I crack jokes, I smile, we try to have a good time, but life as a young Black instructor at a STEM focused PWI is hard enough without playing games and fighting the good fight to justify their use in an English class. More power to you for figuring this out, game folks. Maybe when I am a grown up professor with some clout, like Dr. Sam, I would be willing to give it a try. Until then, concepts from game studies can find ways into my class, but not games themselves.

Ironically, I hoped this entertained you.

• If you have access to a projector, use MS Word as the board, typing up discussion answers/brainstorm ideas/etc so they display on the screen. It’s faster than writing and you don’t have to turn your back on the class, and the notes are easily saved and emailed or uploaded.
• Use blogs as notecards for organizing research. The tag system lets you make connections faster and reorganize easily.
• Peer review on Google Docs (specifically with spreadsheets) can be incredibly useful. I have students exchange drafts with a partner. As they read, I write up 2-3 questions (ex: general impressions, intro critique, etc) as the first few headers on the table. As students finish reading, they begin to answer. When my fastest students are starting on the last answer, I put up a few more that focus on the middle of the paper…and so on. This lets me see what kinds of feedback students are giving (I can push them to write more if they’re half-assing answers), and lets me pace it so everyone is actively engaged, rather than having students sitting and doing nothing.
• Have students use the “talk” page of a wiki to discuss content. It documents the conversation (a lot like Moran was talking about) while also helping dissolve the idea that information on the page is set in stone or static.
• Have students create word/phrase collages by going back through their writing (both in and out of class) to pull out things they said that they like. Some of the best class reflections I ever got were after having students do this, because it’s fun but it also requires reading through their old work rather than just skimming it or “doing their best to remember.” They make better connections.

I’ve seen technology used in classrooms in a few different ways and at different levels, whether it’s the bringing in of game consoles to play games that tie into specific conversations we have in class (lookin’ at you, Sam!), or whether it’s, in the opposite direction, the complete rejection of technology as a result of some sort of belief that computers or screens distract from the work. I feel like the latter happens more often with people working within the field of literature (and I’m speaking anecdotally about what I’ve witnessed not just here but in other departments)–people who are deeply entrenched in, perhaps, earlier forms of literature or pedagogy or who are maybe a bit set in their ways.

So as someone working within this field myself, and as someone who wants to incorporate newer technologies into the way we think about narrative, I occasionally find myself facing some resistance to the idea of including the changing technological landscape into our work. And I’m out of time, so I guess I’ll just leave it there!

today in 420, all my plans for computer/projector object lessons died because the instructor computer seemed to fry itself to death. so I swapped to a student station and posted links to some of the things I had planned to show, and left students to look through them on their own. it was useful that we were meeting in a lab and I was able to do that.

other things I’ve done with the tech in these labs:

collected lesson plan links on Pinterest– the non-linear layout suits my random personality very well

had students join a class Pinterest board and post visualizations or photoshop tutorial projects

hosted class discussion forums where students either respond to readings or post links to examples they’ve been researching (today it was the worst/ugliest/weirdest resumes)

showed videos

played audio podcasts

linked to resources like the OWL or other helpful how-to things

had students pull up drafts and then rotate around the room adding comments/feedback/questions

When I use the workstation in my class, I’m mostly trying to keep the classroom experience consistent and unobstructed. As Moran demonstrates, this usually means planning things out before hand or limiting myself to things I know how to do well already. I most often make use of the following in preparing my course and classes:

• Blackboard/Drupal for CMS and student-facing documentation
• Google Drive for attendance charts, daily agendas, conference schedules, and other miscellaneous, short-term assignments (sharing the view link on BB makes it very easy to import assignments and edit them on the fly
• Word/InDesign for syllabus and assignment sheet design. I never draft in them, only lay out
• Google Drive (again) for drafting things and prepping them for layout
• Sciverner for long-term or (meta) planning for the whole trajectory of the course
• Dropbox for storing readings, and backing up all of the previous things on the list. I pay for storage because it’s worth it.

One thing that I like to do when having students write an argumentative paper (researched, non-researched, OpEd, etc.) is have everyone get in a Google doc and I have them write their tentative thesis on separate lines. Then I have them write underneath each others’ theses contrary arguments. I encourage them to be as antagonistic as possible in order to highlight the counterarguments. Because the workspace allows for anonymous feedback and posting, they can be as free as they want. And since everyone is participating they can see it as a fun and not a hateful enterprise. This facilitates more thorough discussion of counterarguments, as well as discussions of the ethics of web-based, anonymous writing.

The really weird thing is that I’m not sure when the last time I’ve actually had students specifically use word processors in class was… games, yes. Audacity/Garage Band, yes. Photoshop/InDesign, yes. Word, nope. I think it comes from the fact that I think that timed writing is pretty much the devil. Don’t get me wrong I will occasionally ask people to jot down ideas for discussion purposes, but that’s usually in a non-computer classroom. In the computer classroom I ask them to do something else to generate ideas. Idea mapping, blogging, tweeting, anything else…out of time.

1. Podcasts
2. Youtube (making videos – like a practice presentation)
3. videos (assessing presentations – loading videos to course site and having students self-assess, primarily focused on speaking skills)
4. learner corpora
5. Facebook – class group for discussion of readings
6. google docs (collaborative processing, peer-feedback)
7. research
8. online discourse communities
9. blackboard (ew)
10. blogs
11. wikis