Posts that focus primarily on teaching and pedagogy.
This week we’ll cover the issue of visual rhetoric in technical communication. We begin with an article by Greenzweig who discusses “the ways in which visual composition contributes to a user’s aesthetic experience and why such an experience is important when designing information structures.” We continue with McCloud’s chapter in… Continue reading
Welcome to Remix Culture Week! Readings/Videos Larry Lessig’s TED talk on Copyright Law Remix Theory’s definition of Remix An excerpt from David Shields’ Reality Hunger Questions to Consider How might remix challenge traditional the structure of rhetoric? Or is is not so much a challenge as another piece of the… Continue reading
Normally, I would sit down to write a blog of this sort saying I’d “just returned” from a particular conference. However, that language doesn’t really work this year as I was lucky enough to move to Atlanta just before this year’s National Women’s Studies Association annual conference. This year it… Continue reading
The final project for my ENGL1102 course “London City Comedy” is a collaborative digital edition of Tarlton’s Jests, a 17th century collection of anecdotes about the Elizabethan clown Richard Tarlton. The assignment consists of five parts: Continue reading
(Seminar by Sipai Klein, Julia Munro, Michael Tondre) 1. The meaning-making process writers face has been historically determined by the “technology” of paper. The integration of electronic communication has arguably changed writers’ meaning-making processes and the discourse produced by writers. In other words, the material contexts of writing have influenced… Continue reading
I had an “a-ha” moment in first-year composition class last week. I was preparing for a conference, writing job letters, preparing my classes, and trying to keep up with grading. In short, something had to give. But what? And then it hit me – Blog Post of the Week! Every… Continue reading
I know you’ve been holding your breath for the second installment of my musings on and eternal search for effective stereotype-breaking strategies. So here goes. Today I take on the elusive term “race” as a myth that students approach rather curiously: with great resentment. And I think I’ve figured out at least part of the reason why. Let me try to explain:
I attempted to have a conversation with my students this week about white privilege. They read “The End of White America?” by Hua Hsu, published in The Atlantic in 2009. I also had them look at this hilarious video made by Smirnoff in 2006, which Hsu mentions.
So, they had read (or were supposed to have read) Hsu’s essay on the “beiging” of the white race in the United States, the increasing diversity of American popular culture, and the ensuing backlash against multiculturalism and retrenchment into whiteness. Continue reading
In this article I wish to reflect at more length on the topic of “archaeology of digital media,” which happens to be the topic of discussion this week for the weekly Digital Pedagogy Seminar for first-year Brittain Fellows. Although many literary scholars are certainly well-versed in historical approaches, myself included,… Continue reading
(Seminar by Amanda Madden, Julia Munro, and Michael Tondre). 1. One of the promises of teaching with digital technology involves its power to evoke the historical conditions of the past through the tools and techniques of the present. To be sure, web-based learning can be a vital means of exploring… Continue reading
Last week I ventured into largely-unknown territory for me – speech analysis and a consideration of the oral mode. Unknown, I say, because even though teaching involves vast amounts of time standing before an audience and, well, speaking, I have never formally studied speech at length: no speech communication class,… Continue reading
This is the first installment of what I’m hoping will be a recurring discussion about breaking students of a nasty habit: the tendency to rely on harmful preconceptions when engaging with literatures, cultures, and traditions that they aren’t very familiar with. In the title of my column, I’m using “myth” in two (of the many) meanings of the term: as stereotype (a widely circulated falsehood); and as culturally significant narrative (a local, communal, or national “true” story). My research explores the way twentieth-century US writers of color incorporate culturally specific mythic narratives in their literature. When I bring aspects of this research into the literature and communication classrooms, I inevitably come up against significant hurdles… Continue reading
Check out this great video on infographics (and y’all know how much I love infographics): The Value of Data Visualization from Column Five on Vimeo. Continue reading
In Jade Simmon’s discussion on the necessity of rhythm in human interaction to the Brittain Fellows on Monday, October 10th, I was reminded of a Radiolab podcast from a while back on how two physicists explained the nature of urban life based on the rhythm created by its inhabitants. For… Continue reading
Hello all, The digital divide! This week we question how issues of power, privilege, and access intersect and collide with categories like race and class. While “the digital divide” is commonly discussed in terms of global access, we would like to limit our examination of the phenomenon to America for… Continue reading
The Writing and Communication Program offers the course LCC 3403, Technical Communication Practices, which introduces third and fourth year students to basic skills and strategies necessary for effective communication in technical and scientific fields. Continue reading
This week I’m teaching Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle as part of my English 1102 course on London City Comedy. The play is usually identified as a breakthrough Early Modern parody (of other plays like The Shoemaker’s Holiday and The Four Prentises) and one of the first English plays to break the fourth wall. Continue reading
(by Katy Hanggi, Aron Pease, and Michelle DiMeo) Assessment figures centrally into our teaching in many ways: we assess our students’ work, but we also reflect upon our roles in the classroom. When we incorporate technology into our classes, we introduce assignments that use new modes of communication which demand… Continue reading
Moods on Twitter Follow Biological Rhythms, Study Finds – NYTimes.com. I wonder how this approach to parsing Twitter usage extends to the classroom. I have observed that many students groan when I tell them at the beginning of course that they will be using Twitter for peer feedback and evaluation… Continue reading
Ever since Baudrillard found his way into my dissertation (I have no memory of inviting him—suddenly he was there, like Jack Nicholson in that picture at the end of The Shining), I’ve been curious about how he’d fare in an undergraduate classroom. His postmodern and Nietzschean sympathies make him entertaining… Continue reading
This semester I have the privilege to be a participant in the Class of 1969 Teaching Scholars program here at Georgia Tech. We (a small group of faculty members, instructors, and staff from a variety of disciplines) meet once a week to discuss issues related to our seminar topic, “student engagement.” I am learning so much from our sessions, not only from the readings and discussions, but from the techniques our seminar leaders use to engage us with the topic at hand.
his week I took part in an exercise that I’m now excited to try in my class: the gallery walk.
The exercise required us to read an article on how students learn, looking at the way the brain changes when new information is stored and recalled. Continue reading
This semester, I am teaching an honors section of ENGL1101, aka first-year composition. The students are awesome, and I am really enjoying the experience. Recently, though, I discovered that in addition to providing an opportunity to work with great, motivated students drawn from a close-knit learning community, Georgia Tech’s honors… Continue reading
Disciplinary Boundaries and the Multimodal Classroom: Professional Resistance in English Departments Three key themes: 1. The Multimodal Classroom: Digital Pedagogy (Michelle DiMeo) 2. Interdisciplinary Research and the Job Market (Chris Weedman) 3. Navigating the Disciplinary Minefield: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Composition (Kate Tanski) 1. The… Continue reading
I’ve been using blogs for a long time in my classes as a place for informal writing and reflection. I originally used the blogs as simply an online repository to store weekly response readings but the more I’ve used them, the more I find that the actual medium creates a particularly dynamic… Continue reading
DIGITIZING RESEARCH INTERESTS FOR THE CLASSROOM AND THE JOB MARKET Katy Hanggi, Jennifer Holley, Kate Tanski, and Chris Weedman Evaluation and Academic Tension Between Traditional and Digital Scholarship (Katy Hanggi) “Digital Humanities” is a term I have heard frequently, but I have not given it much consideration. My familiarity… Continue reading
It’s that time of year and we’re all thinking “syllabus.” At least we were about a week or two ago – now with classes underway most of us have finalized our syllabi and distributed them to our new classes. Or did you? I didn’t. Well, distribute them that is. I’ve… Continue reading
