English 5060

2006-10-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

An idea is formed for my paper topic…

I’ve really been struggling with my paper topic. Since I’m not yet teaching and have not done so in the past, the whole idea of pedagogy problems we discuss in class is new to me. It’s in no way a topic I have previously mused on or written anything on. Lucky me, I actually had an epiphany in class last Thursday and came up with a topic. I love the light bulb that randomly appears above your head when you least expect it but need it the most. Editing and grammar – this is my paper idea. Random, yes, but I do have a story. I’m an editor. I worked professionally for 5 years in NY and now I do freelance. I’ve been trying to finish up a job this week for one of my clients and I’ve been knee deep in punctuation and grammar checking as I’m on the final proofread. Also, aside from my professional editing life, I’m also knee deep in grading on TOPIC where many, many, MANY of the essays I read go downhill due to bad editing (proofreading) and grammar. For a very long time, grammar has been my life. Seems like more so than normal lately. I don’t mind though; I love punctuation and grammar. How weird is that. When I edit, it’s like solving a math problem for me, but in a more creative manner. SO, I’ve decided to do my paper on editing and grammar. I plan to look at it first in a theoretical and historical manner. How important it was back in the day. How the rules have changed for the good or bad. Also, I plan on looking at editing in freshman composition classes. It’s import or if it’s even taught. I also plan to use some samples from my own editing. I want to look at the before, the suggestions I make to the author and the revisions. Study the final result and see how important the editing changes were and how they affected the overall writing. I may include some first and second drafts from students in TOPIC also; see how they changed their essay after being critiqued by their peers and also the changes the grader suggested. I’m still working out all the details, but these are some basic ideas I have for the paper. I’m still working on the source material. Going to have me a fun day in the library! I’m also going to search ntce.org for pertinent material. I have to say I’m pretty excited. I think there are a lot of ways I can go on the subject of editing and grammar and its changes and effectiveness. I’m anxious to see which direction my paper will take. Good luck to me!

2006-10-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

Teaching Philosophy example...

http://www.isd.uga.edu/teaching_assistant/philosophy/2003/Bennett/index.html

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wider universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”
--"Self Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The teaching philosophy I chose to discuss opens with the above quotation by Emerson. I thought this was a very insightful and applicable quotation as to how a teacher functions. The author refers back to the quotation throughout her statement, picking it apart and pointing out how it applies.

As teaching philosophies go, I can't say I have a lot of knowledge thus far, but in the one above, I completely agree with the idea that we, as teachers, are "lifelong learners." We must put ourselves on the same level as the student, learning and accumulating knowledge everyday. When we stop learning, our minds become stagnant. We must continually be adding to our store of information, thereby stimulating our own minds so we can in turn stimulate the minds of our students.

I think it is also important to go back to your own learning experiences, as the author the philosophy discussed. What made you yourself excited about learning? What experience or experiences had the most impact on you and made you want to come back to class again the next day, just to see what would happen? In forming our own philosophies, it is very important to look back at those of others and how they have impacted our own lives and the ways we teach and learn. We can learn a lot from the experiences of others who have “been through it” before.

Lastly, moving back to the "lifelong learners" idea, I like the way the author shares her learning experience with her students. When they ask questions she doesn't know the answer to, instead of saying "Well, what do you think?” she goes and finds the answer and then tells them where and how she got it. This way, students not only learn the answers, but they also learn how to find answers themselves. This learning tool will come in handy throughout the students careers as they move on to research projects.

Basically, I like the never ending learning process we, as teachers, share with our students. I think it is important for them to know that the teacher does not know everything. He or she is there to not only guide the students in their learning experience, but to also acquire knowledge with them.

2006-10-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

Keyword Video Ideas – Audience

My keyword is audience. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between ideas, but got some inspiration after leading class on Thursday and discussing the article “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy” by Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford. The article discussed two main audience roles – audience addressed and audience invoked – and explained the difference between the two. I will most likely use some of these points in my video. I have also been reading some works on audience by Peter Elbow. I have come across some good techniques and ideas concerning audience from Writing With Power, by Elbow, and will also be using a couple of other articles, but am still deciding which ones. I am going to try to make a PowerPoint presentation, combining points from Ede/Lunsford, Elbow, and possibly some other sources. Along with the PowerPoint, I have been working on video clips concerning different audience roles named in the Ede/Lunsford article. These roles include self, friend, colleague, critic, mass audience, and future audience. I’ve been trying (and hopefully will find all by Thursday) to get each of these different audience roles on video, using different activities and atmospheres, so I can splice them throughout the PowerPoint presentation. I think with both video and key points, this should be an effective and entertaining way to convey the importance of audience and the different roles it plays depending on the situation. I’m also going to try to put in some nifty music and a couple of audience movie clips that I think would fit really well and spice things up a bit, but this depends on how well iMovie and I actually get along! So far it seems to be slow going as this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. Once I actually figure out what the heck I’m doing, I think this is going to be really fun, but at present, it kind of feels like I’m beating my head against a wall and getting nowhere. Yes, I am almost completely computer illiterate; I admit it. I like my MS Word and my Internet, and the rest of ye programs be damned! Ha Ha. But I’m getting there. Slowly but surely I hope to figure it all out by Thursday, hopefully in a lightning burst of knowledge that brings much but causes little pain.

2006-09-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Who I am as a teacher….

Hhhhmmmm….I have to say this is a toughy. I honestly am not sure WHO I am as a teacher just yet. I think I know who I WANT to be, but I’m still working out the details. When I think about what kind of teacher I will be once I finally reach that step in my life, I mostly look back to those who have made an impact in my own life; I ask myself what it was they did to reach me. The first person that comes to mind was an English teacher I had at A&M who loved Latin. That man knew the Latin origin of any word you threw at him. What was so inspiring was how excited he got just talking about it. I looked forward to that class everyday (and it was an 8 AMer, so that’s a feat) because his excitement boiled over to the rest of the class. Everyone laughed and talked and wanted to be a part of the discussion. I think this is an important factor of my future teaching philosophy. I want to be so excited about a subject and have so much fun teaching it that my students cannot resist being excited also. This brings to mind one of my favorite quotes: “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” Maybe it could be modified to say, “Those who bring the excitement of learning into the lives of other….”
Another teacher whose methods had an impact was Mr. Rowe, another A&M professor who taught literature of the sea. His main goal was always to get us, the students, involved. We would discuss a book for awhile, and then Mr. Rowe would have some activity for us to participate in that brought to light some important aspect of our reading. I remember one class when we were reading Mutiny on the Bounty. We had been talking about the 15 or so men abandoning ship to survive in a dinghy for weeks and how much food they had. To convey to us the extreme hardship of the situation, Mr. Rowe brought rope to class and laid it out on the floor to form the shape and exact size of the dinghy in the book. He then called up 15 students to stand inside the “boat” and proceeded to hand out our rations of food, the same amount as those in the book, in plastic bags. Some had an old moldy cracker, others crumbled pretzels and still some, well, who knew what was in there. We then had to stand in the dinghy, almost nose to nose, with our baggy of food to last a week, and discuss the book for the rest of the class period. Man, did I feel sorry for those poor guys in the book once class was over. To this day, I think that was one of the coolest classes I’ve ever taken. I think this would be another main goal of my teaching philosophy. To get students involved. To bring to light aspects of a book (or whatever we are studying at the time) that are often overlooked as unimportant. I want to inspire curiosity and eagerness to learn.
I’m sure these are philosophies that every teacher strives for. As I’m still learning about teaching, I’ve got a long row to hoe. But I hope someday I will be one of those teachers, like the ones I remember from my education, about whom a student will say, “Man, she rocked!”

2006-09-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Concerning "The Seven Deadly Sins of Student Writers" by Ben Yagoda

Honestly, I cannot express how much I truly enjoyed this article. As a professional editor and graduate student (also professional according to my father), I encounter these mistakes on a daily basis. I also shake my head in sadness on a daily basis. It really is a sad state of affairs when the technology we have come to depend on - e-mail, instant messenger, blogs, etc. - quickly becomes the downfall of proper grammar and mechanics. But Yagoda is correct in pointing out that the badly edited nature of our technological communication has a startling effect on the prose of the current generation of students. And, honestly, it's not just the younger students who are affected. Last weekend I was helping a friend edit the first few chapters of her dissertation. She is 28, graduated from Texas A&M and received her masters from UT where she is also currently working on her PhD. I say this to prove that she is a well-educated individual. However, once I started editing her work, I realized my friend was, in fact, a comma fanatic. Commas, commas EVERYWHERE! I immediately called her up and suggested we read the dissertation together over the phone. I have found that proofreading out loud catches many more mistakes than reading silently and helps to straighten out awkward sentences. Once we started and I made a point to pause at each of her incorrect commas, then continue on, she was shocked. Her high school teacher had taught her if ever in doubt about commas, put one in. Oh my! And the fact that she made it through tons of college essays using this rule of thumb simply amazes me. So, although new technologies of online communication have a hand in the bad grammar of today’s writers, many of the mistakes have also been brought with them from grammar school and haven't been corrected in their later education.
Another rule of the article that I have experienced personally is the spell checker. Oh, how writers simply love this feature, and oh, how us who edit hate it. Spell check is a tool that has not only invaded my college career but also my professional. As an editor, I generally do two read-throughs of a title. I edit it the first time for grammar, punctuation, mechanics and style, and also make comments and suggestions for improvement. After the author has made the changes they feel necessary from my comments, they send it back to me for a final edit. Mind you, I have already edited for grammar and mechanics, and yet EVERY author feels the need to spell check it ONE MORE TIME before sending it back to me, thereby thoroughly wrecking all correct changes I have previously made. The frustration I feel for this nifty little tool in MS Word cannot be expressed. If I could blow smoke out of my ears, the gesture would come somewhat close to conveying what a complete nuisance I think the spell checker makes of itself.
Going back to the state of online communication and how it affects writers today, I will say again I agree this is a definite contributor to the state of student writing, but another is the simple fact of published prose. Fiction, non-fiction, magazines, etc., have all diminished in their editing of grammar/mechanics. And honestly, this cannot be blamed on authors, but rather editors (which I cringe to say). I cannot even count the number of times in the past month I had to put down the current popular fiction book I was reading or my copy of RT Book Reviews because all the spelling and punctuation mistakes were driving me crazy! And honestly, if a student is reading popular fiction or the like, and comes across grammatical errors, they probably think 'well, if John Grisham can do it, so can I'. This is not a good thing.
As I talked about with my example of my PhD friend’s dissertation, many grammatical rules, that may not be correct, are taught at a young age, or simply picked up by reading bad prose. It is our job, as future teachers, to catch these errors as soon as we can, and correct them. The writing mistakes of future scholars cannot be corrected all at once, but by catching and improving them one by one, we can slowly move our way back to a grammatically correct society. (And I just have to say, I write this essay in terror of everyone catching my own violation of the 7 deadly sins!)

2006-09-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

You can't have a close-knit community in a distance relationship...

BELIEVE:
Distance Education (DE)/E-pedagogy is a relatively new concept for me. When I started undergrad, it was not yet strongly in practice. All my classes were face-to-face. In the following years, I was never in need of taking an online course for my daily job or outside interests, so the subject of DE was not one I thought about. After entering the online composition program this semester, DE is now at the forefront of my thoughts. Is it effective? Does it teach the students all they desire and fulfill their needs for community and interaction? I think yes, definitely. Although face-to-face interaction is taken away, except for the weekly class meetings, there is still a different kind of interaction that occurs online. Chat rooms, instant messaging and peer reviews (as was noted in Kurlioff's article) can replace face-to-face interaction and still provide the familiarity and camaraderie students crave. Also, often times, NOT being face-to-face with someone, but instead, chatting through a computer, will empower students who are shy or lack social skills to interact more openly than they normally would feel comfortable doing.
Distance Education also provides endless opportunities for self-expression. Students are encouraged to interact openly and find their voice. Techniques can be practiced and improved on with each on-line class exercise.
Another very important aspect of DE is the exploitation of time. When students are not restricted to hours of classroom time a week, they can work at their own pace. This encourages individual responsibility and often improves work. Many students need time to think, research and reflect on their ideas before putting them to paper (or computer). The open community of DE allows for this need.

DOUBT:
The future of college classrooms is steadily moving towards Distance Education/E-pedagogy. Is this good? Bad? How does it affect the students of tomorrow? I think, overall, they will not benefit from DE, but rather it will hinder them by not meeting the classroom needs they have come to expect. By moving a classroom online, social interaction is taken away. Although students can chat online, the face-to-face interaction and human contact they have come to rely on is taken away. This is most troublesome from the teaching aspect. If students are working online with minimal classroom time, an instructor cannot gage the attitudes, emotional states or understanding levels of their students. It is not as if instructors desire this decrease in interaction, but once it occurs, empathy levels tend to decrease. The impersonality of the internet has been a problem since its beginning. Formality is taken away when the writing environment is a blank screen and immediate consequences of improper correspondence are nonexistent or slow in coming. This informality bleeds into the students work and interactions as the semester progresses, hindering the students ability to interact effectively and appropriately.
Another major concern when face-to-face interaction is taken away is the progressive learning ability. Many students NEED someone there, at all times, to guide them through the learning process. They need, in a sense, someone to hold their hand. Now, this is in no way a good thing, and at some point, the student will have to learn to let go, but what about in the beginning. By introducing them to an online community, with little instructor interaction, and tell them to "just go for it," it is basically like pushing them off a dock and seeing if they sink or swim. Is this really how we, as educators, want to teach the students of the future?

2006-08-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

Essay concerning how a particular technology or technological practice has impacted me in the past.

After graduating from Texas A&M in 2000, I took a month off then packed up and moved to New York City with a couple of friends who had accepted jobs there. I was interested in the publishing industry, editing in particular, and NYC seemed like the place to be. In theory, this was a good idea. The thought of moving to the big city and living the "high life" was the most exciting decision I had ever made. However, once I got settled in and started my new job, I actually had time to slow down and take a look around. I realized that the only people I knew were my roommates. Being a person who has always been surrounded by friends and family, being basically all alone and in a new place, hundreds of miles away from home, can be a very lonely experience. I would talk to my sister and my friends on the phone daily, but it just wasn’t the same as seeing them face to face. While they were hanging out at happy hour, drinking and laughing it up on a Thursday afternoon, I was sitting alone in my apartment with nothing to do but watch TV. Although I enjoyed spending time with my roommates, they both worked in the stocks/trade industry and worked long hours, so they were rarely home. After a couple of months of total loneliness, my sister and I finally came up with a solution (I was desperate and she was tired of hearing me bawl nightly). We each bought a web camera and signed up for instant messaging. We used both at home and at work. Neither of us had tried this before because we had always lived close enough to see each other whenever we wanted. It was an experience to say the least. But honestly, I cannot express how comforting it was to see her face at night before I went to sleep. Whether we were sitting at the computer chatting through IM or talking on the phone with the web cameras on, it was wonderful to see her reactions to my comments and vice versa. I felt like she was actually in the room with me and that feeling was exactly what I needed. Plus, instead of just describing all the new clothes, shoes, etc. we had bought recently (we have always been shopping freaks - a bad habit we got honest from our mother!) we could actually show each other using our nifty new web cameras.

The impact of having this technology at hand really hit home on September 11th. I'm sure I don't even have to express the import of this particular day. When the first plane hit, I was in my apartment getting ready for work. I did not have the TV or radio on, so I did not know anything out of the ordinary was happening. As I left my apartment building to walk to work, I looked towards the end of the island and could see a building on fire. I didn't know what building it was, as it was partially blocked from view by other skyscrapers, and I had no idea why it was on fire. But, thinking it wasn't anything too shocking, I stopped to look with a few other pedestrians then continued on my way. Once I arrived at work, I turned on my web cam and IM to chat with my sister. About this time, the second plane hit the Twin Towers. By then, we in the office knew something was up, but only having the radio and considering there was still mass confusion in the city as to what was actually happening, we did not know exactly what was going on. My sister, on the other hand, was at home with the TV on, watching the whole thing. She turned her web cam on her TV so I could watch while she IM'ed me what was happening. It's a funny thing when a person hundreds of miles away has to show you what is happening 50 blocks away from you over the Internet. Technology is truly an amazing thing. It was also a comfort for my mother in the coming week. Our building was evacuated (due to close proximity to the Empire State building) and our office closed for a week. During this time, all the phone lines were down due to so many calls trying to come through. Needless to say, my mother was in a state of panic until my sister got her on the computer to chat with me over IM and to see my face through the web cam. She now thinks it is the best thing ever invented!

Thinking back on the experience, technology not only impacted me, but my family also. Without it, we would not have been able to communicate, and also, the impact of such an important event was shared closely between us, which made it all the more amazing.

2006-08-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

So, it's Wednesday and I've been thinking back on our first Tuesday class. I have to admit I was slightly freaked out. As a DI instructor only this semester, and someone who has NEVER taught a class before, the idea of guest teaching and being video taped is not something I'm necessarily excited about. Although, as Rebecca said, I'm sure it will be very useful in helping us figure out our teaching styles and also bad public speaking habits. I for one am a hair-tosser when I speak in public. I was informed of this annoying habit during a speech class I had in high school. Hopefully I have grown out of the habit since that class was a good 10 years ago. If not, maybe I will just shave my head. Quick and easy, although might have detrimental effects on my social life. All horrors of video/teaching aside, I think the class is going to be extremely helpful in developing our classroom personae and comfort level, which is something I need very badly. We also seem to have a very fun group of people, so I am looking forward to the rest of the semester.

2006-08-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

Testing testing.