powerpoint

Heard of Death by Powerpoint? It can be done well - but rarely seen it. Collecting links at delicious.

All grammar and style advice should be funny

Fake APStylebook posts style advice for writing - the site makes me laugh consistently and sometimes I agree with their point. Sometimes it's bogus - but generally funny. attached is a screengrab from what I found worthy of retweeting (BTW: follow me here on twitter if enough people did I might actually keep up with it).

I decided to follow them on the advice of a student who gets updates to his cell phone.

This reminds me somewhat of The Transitive Vampire - a grammar handbook for the doomed. It actually does a great job teaching grammar - on purpose.

Re: Students' Right to Their Own Language

Don't worry about taking the wrong position on this topic. I've argued both sides. In graduate seminars in Education, they teach that educators struggle to balance 3 needs or demands: the student, the society and the curriculum. No one can privileged all of these needs equally, and making any one concern a priority reduces the focus on the other 2. My position depends on the environment and what concerns seem the most critical or neglected in that context. Don't try to guess my position. It's a recipe for disaster for several reasons. I tried this a few times with professors and it never worked out.

The 4C's statement of students' right to their own language privileges society over individual students - as I see it from my seat in an American community college - and my bias runs counter to that. My experience and interests also lie with non-Native English speakers and linguistic minority groups, and yet I come to conclusions that may differ from the majority of my colleagues with similar experience and interests. My childhood personality and a variety of influences that shaped me since - thru my admiration or thru my rebellion - result in a pragmatism. Many colleagues I respect, and my sister, reject pragmatism.

How this relates to your writing:

Sometimes we write for discovery, not figuring out what we truly believe until we finish. Sometimes we start with a problem and write our way out of it - figuring out in the end through examining what we believe. Maybe in the past teachers taught you to start with a rockin' thesis statement and then find quotes to support your position, but isn't what true scholarship looks like at the college level. I recently made the analogy in class that too many students were using research the way a drunk uses a light post, for support rather than illumination.

Learning changes the way we think, or the tools we have for understanding. It stands to reason that what we read will affect our thesis. The thesis typically evolves.

More than a few students in my office this week have decided to scrap their papers and start over. That isn't a sign of failure. I've done that more than a few times myself. This happens in the writing process and we shouldn't consider the effort wasted.

What's been threatening my sleep

Just a few blocks down the street from me - on my daily route to and from work - something huge and bad has happened within the last 72 hours. At least 3 agencies, including state and federal (ATF, Animal Control, Sheriff's Office confirmed so far), have been cooperating - and doing and excellent job of not releasing information.

For the first 24 hours the helicopters annoyed me. I counted at least 3, and identified 2 as news crews from Kansas City. KCTV 5 and Channel 9 had mobile units camped out for the first 36 hours - and one crew was still there 2 days after the initial raid. The Emergency Response Command Unit ( a big honkin' RV) just left.

The way people respond to the excitement and lack of information interests me as much as the language skills and usage of the people commenting on the local paper's online post (blog). Interesting discussions about appropriate use of written language and the relationship to class and social status relates to class discussions - as does the lack of civility (and moments of kindness) on the message boards. Several well-intentioned members of the accused s' families have been compulsively attending and contributing to the discussions - which have some rather silly participants as well as some real trolls. The back and forth disturbs me and compels my attention. Loads of lurid elements and history connected to that patch of real estate. The packs of wild dogs are real, and I remember the guy the exotic dancer ran over (he went to sleep in the middle of the road walking home from the club) but many of the stories strain credibility way too far.

• Video from Lawrence Journal World.
• LJW blog post with insane dialogue #1 - comments are where the action is.
  
• LJW blog post with insane dialogue #2 - see comments
  

Is this funny?

Passive voice

When I speak of excessive use of passive voice (or passive verbs) I refer to the over use of "to be" verbs: is, are, was, were, be, being, been and am.

Passive verbs are to writing what salt is to the American diet. The human body needs salt- and if and when it is totally eliminated from a person's diet that person will eventually die. But we tend to eat way too much salt. It's everywhere! It has become a health problem that leads to health problems and the early death of too many people (fat works in the metaphor too).

Same with passive verbs. Good writing will have a few - but first drafts always have too many - and with some students I only see first drafts. We have to learn to reduce our reliance on passives.

Passives

• can make sentences longer than they need to be - resulting in wordy constructions
• hide or obscure agency - who did what? Politicians have long used passives for non-apologies for various heinous acts
• suck the life out of writing. Active verbs have more ... action. Stuff happens.
• were once tacitly, if not explicitly, encouraged in medical schools. In 2006, my boss at the KU Med Writing Center showed me research that indicates this habit - with the intent to hide agency in case of malpractice cases - actually exacerbates the filing of malpractice suits. Modern med schools now, at least publicly and officially, no longer encourage passive voice in medical reports (eg. "the patient's temperature was 106" is now better, "the nurse recorded the patients temperature at 106" ).
  

Sometimes the problem may come from cognitive malware installed by previous writing instructors, such as directives "Don't use first person in any writing!" in which the teacher probably meant to address other issues such as wordiness and over-reliance on opinion rather than fact or support. I don't mind an occasional use of first person - especially if it reduces passive verbs. But that's just me ;)

There's an online interactive tutorial from punctilious.org that we should use in class. I've also started collecting links re: passive voice/ passive verbs on the social bookmarking site.

Gen 1.5

On a surprising number of Comp 1 papers this week, I find myself writing about the Gen 1.5 experience and how excited I am to have students with first-hand knowledge. This could be an topic for the SRTOL paper.

Generation 1.5 refers to students with the characteristics of both 1st generation immigrants and 2nd generation immigrants. They typically entered the U.S. in their childhood - though some sources say true Gen 1.5 students enter between the ages of 3-5, and other sources say they enter the country as teenagers. All agree that the experience involves public schools during a pre-adolescent or early adolescent stage.

Kids seem to learn language better than adults, and partly because kids play. Gen 1.5 youth learn language more from the playground, or extra-curricular activities, than the classroom. Their oral skills rival native born English speakers, which can cause problems. Other native speakers assume Gen 1.5 are fully fluent and cultural insiders. Sometimes people have less patience for Gen 1.5 learners because on the surface they look and sound fully "American," and yet they don't catch every word or cultural reference that a student born to 2nd or 3rd generation Americans might. I see this with how people treat my wife - tho she's 1st generation with phenomenal language skills.

Gen 1.5 face particular challenges with writing. At least 6 of my Gen 1.5 students have told me stories this week of being laughed at by students and mocked by teachers. Generally the Asian students smile and laugh with the group.

Therese Thonus, now Writing Center Director at KU, wrote an interesting piece on the essential role of writing centers for Gen 1.5 students. It's titled, "Serving Generation 1.5 Learners in the University Writing Center," published in TESOL Journal in 2003. Look for it in the Eric Database or thru google scholar. Gen 1.5 students need to disclose their linguistic background to the peer consultant at the WC and ask them to function as a cultural informant. Most people assume Gen 1.5 students can hear grammatical anomalies as well as native English speakers, but they don't.

Mark Roberge explains it in easy-to-understand language, but I disagree with him on a couple key points. 1) age is much more flexible than he suggests and 2) they do have a home language - though it may be defined as an interlanguage (see also creole, pidgin, etc). Interlanguages count as "a language of nurture" for the Students Right to Their Own Language paper, though academics have been slow to realize and acknowledge that.

What American location is most famous for it's creole? New Orleans - They just won the Superbowl and everyone's yelling, "who dat." Ever wonder what that means or where it came from?

I'd like to share research at the social bookmarking site.

Superbowl, gender diversity and the SRTOL paper

Absenteeism was up for my 2 classes on Monday. Some research shows this may be caused by the Superbowl. See a scholarly journal here, or see a more news magazine article here. It could also have been the weather.

Maybe people stayed home because they don't have a draft of the Students Right to Their Own Language paper.

I've had some ideas lately. Given arguments expressed in class and in videos on the wiki that fashion is a form of expression and analogous to style or "voice" in writing, could we treat body art as communication, and a type of language, and thereby bring discussion of tattoos, piercings and other body modifications into our discussion of students' rights to their own language? The chart at the bottom of the recent post on diversity notes generational changes in attitudes toward body art.

If students have a right to expression through body art, where does that leave us on transgendered issues? By the way JCCC has invited Donna Ross in GEB 233 at 2pm on Thursday. She's undergone the transition and will be answering questions.

Am I still on topic in asking, if students have a right to their own language, how do I as an instructor respond to the comment in a student paper, "I know it's gay, but my girlfriend gave me the Twilight books, and I read them."

I know the "it's so gay" comment is inappropriate - but as my guest speaker Miguel pointed out last semester - in certain situations and in certain audiences gay people use it. Is it exclusively the purview of homosexual groups, or are there times and places where anyone can use it, or is it a word any young person should be allowed to use because it means something different today than it did in the old days?

BTW: the Queer & Allies group meets Wednesday at 2 pm in CC 212. Maybe someone could take these questions to them.

Most Basic MLA format.

It starts with the heading (yourname/prof's name/class name/date) followed by the title - always a title then the body: all double-spaced with no extra hard returns (empty lines) stuck anywhere. Look at the sample student paper on page 41 on the free Norton MLA guide. It's real easy to spot any visual anomolies like 1.5 line spacing and non-standard fonts / point sizes/ margins. Margins should be 1 inch on each side and on the top - which is standard in every word processor program I know.

Book titles get italics - no longer do they get underlined. The underlining is a throwback to the days of typewriters. Underlining a title would be like using the expression "carbon copy" or "cc" when sending a duplicate message to someone. It wouldn't make sense today ;) Titles of short stories/ poems/ chapters in books get quotes around them.

Every page with the possible exception of the first page gets the author's last name and page # in the top right-hand corner.

Keeping things uniform makes my reading easier. When I read it's like I'm running a marathon and the format of student papers is the shoes they give me to wear. Cowboy boots are great shoes and in no way of less quality or inferior to running shoes - unless you have a marathon to run. Standard MLA format performs like top-of-the line running shoes.

Nobody expects one pair of shoes to serve every need. Don't expect one format or writing style to serve every communication purpose either.

Thanks.

Response to Comp 2 literacy reflection.

This term's Literacy Reflections impress me. We have some bright and thoughtful classmates. I'd like to note that for the first time in my almost-2-decade career in higher ed. about 90% of the class got the MLA heading right! What happened? I've never seen more that 30% get the heading even close on the first paper. I 'm verklempt.

Then, as is too often the wont of composition instructors, I get distracted by less than optimal usage and rhetoric. Too often it looks like students merely type rather than compose their papers. Most often, waiting until the last minute and rushing through a paper, then neglecting to proofread causes this. This may be the root cause of the following:

• over-use of passive verbs: while it didn't affect the grade on this paper, excessive use of passive voice will be considered in all subsequent papers. Passive voice is the "to be" verbs: is, are, was, were, be, being, been, am.
  
• passive language occasionally betrays a lack of responsibility or involvement with the educational process in expressions such as, "I received _(good/bad)_ grades in high school." Didn't you earn them? If they were unfair didn't someone give them to you? Also seen repeatedly, "the classes I was enrolled in." Did the student have a choice? Was there parental or institutional pressures that aren't being directly communicated? Passive verbs hide agency - the "who was responsible for what"ness of good writing.
  
• use of semicolons (;)Technically it acts like a period - which means it should be followed by an independent clause. Too often fragments (dependent clauses_) follow. If that's the case use a colon (:) or comma. Really a trivial issue - but I'm glad to see people using semi-colons and I want to see them used correctly, so as not to diminish their effect.
  
• 5 paragraph essay - legit for this assignment but overused. Be willing to try new and more sophisticated forms of organization.
• Conclusions not summaries. Summaries come across too often as redundant.I know someone somewhere once said, "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you've told them" but that was an oversimplification and/or questionable advice. I read quite well and remember what I've read. I expect more nuanced and sophisticated rhetoric (congrats to AH for being the first to use the word in class).

Several writers appear to have gone down the list of possible ideas to respond to found in the assignment prompt, and then addressed them one at a time in that order with little or no attention to transitions or organization, rather than adjusting the suggestions to the individual student's experience and crafting a coherent approach to organization. (Wow that was a long sentence).

These issues commonly, if not always, appear early in a semester. Let me reiterate that the content and reflection was exceptionally good.

Reponse to Literacy Reflection: Comp 2

This term's Literacy Reflections impress me. We have some bright and thoughtful classmates. I'd like to note that for the first time in my almost-2-decade career in higher ed. about 90% of the class got the MLA heading right! What happened? I've never seen more that 30% get the heading even close on the first paper. I 'm verklempt.

Then, as is too often the wont of composition instructors, I get distracted by less than optimal usage and rhetoric. Too often it looks like students merely type rather than compose their papers. Most often, waiting until the last minute and rushing through a paper, then neglecting to proofread causes this. This may be the root cause of the following:

• over-use of passive verbs: while it didn't affect the grade on this paper, excessive use of passive voice will be considered in all subsequent papers. Passive voice is the "to be" verbs: is, are, was, were, be, being, been, am.
  
• passive language occasionally betrays a lack of responsibility or involvement with the educational process in expressions such as, "I received _(good/bad)_ grades in high school." Didn't you earn them? If they were unfair didn't someone give them to you? Also seen repeatedly, "the classes I was enrolled in." Did the student have a choice? Was there parental or institutional pressures that aren't being directly communicated? Passive verbs hide agency - the "who was responsible for what"ness of good writing.
  
• use of semicolons (;)Technically it acts like a period - which means it should be followed by an independent clause. Too often fragments (dependent clauses_) follow. If that's the case use a colon (:) or comma. Really a trivial issue - but I'm glad to see people using semi-colons and I want to see them used correctly, so as not to diminish their effect.
  
• 5 paragraph essay - legit for this assignment but overused. Be willing to try new and more sophisticated forms of organization.
• Conclusions not summaries. Summaries come across too often as redundant.I know someone somewhere once said, "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you've told them" but that was an oversimplification and/or questionable advice. I read quite well and remember what I've read. I expect more nuanced and sophisticated rhetoric (congrats to AH for being the first to use the word in class).

Several writers appear to have gone down the list of possible ideas to respond to found in the assignment prompt, and then addressed them one at a time in that order with little or no attention to transitions or organization, rather than adjusting the suggestions to the individual student's experience and crafting a coherent approach to organization. (Wow that was a long sentence).

These issues commonly, if not always, appear early in a semester. Let me reiterate that the content and reflection was exceptionally good.

The gravity of punctuation.

Punctuation sometimes makes a huge difference. Today on BoingBoing a great dialogue rages on regarding the dangers of careless punctuation. I dream of the day when I get dialogue like that on one of my blogs. But be warned - at least one comment is off color.

The first comment correctly punctuated is wholesome, but the slightest slip and it implies something obscene. Examples like that illustrate the richness and the fun of language, and could forestall embarrassing mistakes by students, but could a discussion like that get me in trouble?

Punctuation has real world implications - for example the time conservative California judges had to allow same-sex marriage because the lawmakers who passed legislation against it misplaced a semicolon.

My question, can and should we have these discussions? What is acceptable language? Is it about topics, ideas, or merely about word choices? Many students this semester go to church regularly and characterize themselves as devout. How (or should) we filter dialogue?

I went to catholic school 6 yrs., and have taught in at least 2 church colleges/universities. Religious schools counter-intuitively allow discussions that might get a teacher in trouble at a public institution. What's the consensus with our group(s)?

What do do if you can't log in to ANGEL

An ANGEL course shell supports instruction in myriad powerful ways. The email features alone make direct and targeted communication easy and convenient. Some classroom activities and homework are required in ANGEL and using Learning Management Systems for class in this way is the norm throughout higher education.

If you can't log in try going first to the student help desk and reading their material. They college also has great video tutorials that may make things easier if you haven't used such a system before. You can also email the helpdesk directly at helpdesk@jccc.edu.

Diversity and blogging: a brief look at research

Blogging helps expand community and can be a particularly powerful tool for diverse and minority populations. As I say in my dissertation, educators must look:

at the opportunities for instructional technology to not only enhance the linguistic power of individual students, but we need to also assess how that power can be used in constructive ways to strengthen local and global communities (Cummins). Literacy defines a person’s ability to communicate and creatively produce and use information (Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan, 2006) and is therefore required for full and active democratic participation.

Surprisingly, although it may seem counter-intuitive, less advantaged ethnic and linguistic minority students appear to be even more likely to own and/or use valuable instructional technology hardware (Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Madden and Rainie, 2005; Patten and Craig, 2007), though they may not use it for educational purposes or otherwise use it differently. Pew Reports indicate greater minority involvement in online blogging communities (Lenhart and Fox, 2006), and that minority students are more likely to own personal media players (Madden and Rainie, 2005). A poll by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) cited in The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education (Allen, 2007) reports additionally that Hispanic boys listen to portable media players longer and louder than any other demographic. The different use of technology by diverse groups may be because, as Troyka (1982) asserts, these students are more social and “more comfortable in an oral rather than a written mode” (p. 258).

I'll post the citation information soon, and add links as they become available - but I want to get this up ASAP in honor of Black History Month.

On Blogging

You deserve some info, research and support on blogging.

Web 2.0 in the Classroom has collected an impressive collection of links to answer most of the questions the skeptic or resistant learner could ask regarding the educational value of blogging. The links are organized with basic info on top, and grouped helpfully. For example if you need to know why before you do something in class....scroll down to pedagogy. I prefer the term andragogy and have posted on that - though I have no evidence anyone appreciated the joke or the cartoons. To quote This is Spinal Tap "there is a fine line between brilliant....and stupid." Do we all walk that line when we write? Should we? More on that when I finish reading this round of papers - which have walked the brilliant side far more frequently than the other.