sunflowers #2 (2011)

I’ve always dug sunflower season: a last brilliant gasp of summer before autumn. Every sunflower season for the last 3 or 4 years we’ve made a point to find a first rate sunflower field for photo ops with the family. Marshall county has had some of the best in the past, but the farmers I know have moved away from the crop – and they never got into it for the aesthetics anyway. And it’s a 2 + hour drive.

Right now is the best time to find pictures. They'll be haggard in a week.

There’s a farmer near Lawrence who we’ve discovered – who plants a field most years – and leaves a Karma bucket up so you can cut flowers (1$ apiece I hear) if you want. I’ll search and post again once I find more pictures from years past. His wife (I assume) blogs at The Farmers Wife blog.


Map with directions found below.




Double click on map to enlarge. Field is 7 miles from the turnpike ramp in north Lawrence.

Echo Cliff

Discovered a hidden gem of Kansas geology this weekend at Echo Cliff near Dover just outside of Topeka. It started at the sunflower field near Lawrence - where the boy discovered some Sioux Quartzite and got really interested in my stories of glaciers and how the rocks ended up in Kansas so far from their home in Minnesota.

That lead us to the Kansas Geological Survey site, which noted an anomalous sandstone deposit less than an hour from our home. The sites we found had less than impressive photos, but they hinted at something interesting - and that called for a road trip.

There is an echo - and some bizarre steam punk out houses, picnic tables

and wild folk art trash cans. But the landscape looks alien to Kansas.

SQUIRREL!

Been thinking about the squirrel meme lately. It started in the pixar movie UP! A dog is given a device that enables him to speak English. We like him and he wants to please, but every time he sees a squirrel he interrupts himself and completely loses focus. The train or thread of the discussion is lost.

A popular entertainer noted the corporate media tendency to give eccentric or ridiculous behavior way too much attention - moving from distraction to distraction rather than exploring any topic or issue in a meaningful way (it is here at 4:15 in). He compared us/ the media to the dog.

As a teacher, I've dealt with bats, a cobra, a wild dog and more insects than I can recall in the classroom. No real challenge to maintaining decorum; however, those with ADHD/ADD, autism spectrum disorder, and myself can get distracted by certain unnecessary or inappropriate images, behaviors and activities. These include but are not limited to:

• Walking in to class late while holding an uninterrupted conversation not related to the class.
• texting
• walking in late holding a fresh coffee.
  
• being consistently late (classic passive aggressive behavior - sends clear message to teacher and class)
• Sleeping in class.
• sexually inappropriate behavior (groping, disrobing, whispering, and any exchange of bodily fluid of any kind).
• ?

SO if I shout squirrel in class - I'm using a meme to express my distraction and loss of focus due to inappropriate behaviors that I can't train myself to ignore.

That will work, if we all share the same values, but do we? To what extent?

This is culturally laden. Blowing ones nose in Taiwan would send the class into hysterics. BUT I could belch really loud and no one cared at all. I used to enjoy that.

What behaviors should I add to the list?

image found at http://filesll.fluxstatic.com/01112D4701DE4E26000710FCFFFF/TN1/Jpg/B-1008/AR590x590,Resize/634200684000000000

the no sshls rule

Been thinking of boiling my course policies down to something short and clear. Something like the best selling book, The No Asshole Rule (written by Stanford business prof Robert Sutton - and winner of the 2007 Quill award for best business book - based on his popular essay written for the Harvard Review). I thought it was brilliant and funny. (buy here at amazon - and/or read additional review of text).

He makes a great case for using the A word, but not sure I can get by with it. But does jerkwad have the same impact? Isn't D-bag even more offensive and probably sexist?

If 3 to 4% of the population is sociopath (as scientists/psychologists argue) then we can't doubt jerkwads exist. Most of them aren't clinically anti-social so the percent of jerkwads is way more than 5%. In college it has a lot to do with maturity - and/or lack of it. Learning to think of those other than oneself is a big step - and considering the prefrontal cortex doesn't finish developing until the mid-20's - and that's necessary to see the consequences of actions.

Is one of the roles of / goals of/ objectives of college to recognize and avoid jerkish behavior? Should it be?

I say yes. It is addressed in comp student learning objectives as: tone, audience awareness, peer work and collaboration and effective communication. When one is a jerkwad - that is the only message received by one's audience. Any other intention is rendered moot.

To that effect, rules about use of cell phones, sleeping in class, tardiness and all other passive aggressive and disruptive behavior should be consistently applied....but...

It gets wrapped up in power or control, doesn't it.

questions for classes

• What behaviors in class qualify as jerkwadish? Why? How do the affect the class?
• Does every class have jerkwads? What percent of the school population in general are jerkwads?
• What about teachers? What behavior have you seen in instructors that qualifies as jerkwadish?
• Is it merely manners? Are manners related or not and how or why?
• 
  

Funny because it's true...

Got this from a post on the funniest facebook fails, but something very much like it has happened with one of my students.

Then he asks me to tell him what's in the textbook

found this gem at memebase

How to say nothing in 500 words

What does "Concise" mean? Is writing the art of spinning bllsht into gold? Isn't a grammatically clean paper all you really need for an "A"? Do students really think instructors can't see through BS? OR do students think BS is what is expected? (After all we see nothing but BS on TV, in the news, from those around us)....
Turns out back in the '50s a prof. had some brilliant insight into this. I've only just scanned it - but it comes highly recommended by a colleague.

• the essay
• a blog post on it by someone else.

The writer's job is to take a boring idea, and make it interesting.

If you use something, cite it!

Some salty language at the end if you scroll down, but it makes a good point. Original source here.

course policies

I've had a policy against high fives - which I reconsidered my first year hear at my current school.

That turned out to be a mistake once. Won't go into it here - but ask me in class and we might role play it (or not).

Teaching

What is teaching? Why does it matter? How should it be done?

Trains - the ole 844 steamer

I've long had a soft spot for trains. These images come from the UPRR Facebook site. I voted to get them to come through Topeka/ KC with this classic steam engine (the 844). I didn't have a chance to see them either place - but caught it going through Lawrence yesterday - Didn't have time to bail out and snap a picture though - so I'm linking these photos. We were so close - but pictures or it didn't happen.

France '96;

Came across some long lost photos doing some spring cleaning. Thought I'd lost them. Can't believe it was around 15 years ago. I remember wine in France was cheaper than bottled water - though that may have been a thin rationalization.

I went in the off season - but still spent some serious cash. It was well worth it.


Notre Dame. Always under construction

day trip

A special thanks to the bloggers in Comp 1 who turned me on to Deanna Rose farmstead for children. And thanks to my wife, who takes much better pictures than I. We really like this place - and I can't believe it was so close and we never knew it was there. It pays to know other people with kids.

KC Disc Dog Photo Experiments

So the only camera I had when we stumbled across the Kansas City Disc Dogs demo in Southpark Last week, was the ancient 3 megapixel - which is enough a camera to outpace my talents as a photographer. So this is more of an experiment is image editing.



These dogs got serious air. The KC disc dogs group has a Facebook page, and they do free shows all over the Kansas City area.

Body art

I know stories of people not getting jobs (in banks, as nurses) because of their tattoos. I keep thinking this would make a good paper topic for the SRTOL paper, but I haven't seen it done well yet. Cracked has a funny post on this. See also my bookmarks.

The problem with a social D

A report currently excerpted on Doonesbury in the "say what" (a kinda WTF quote of the day) states:

The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations. We also know that of the 200,000... approximately half have a high school diploma or GED...

Some people, particularly students, sing the praises of the social pass - giving a low passing grade to students who have a score in the high 50%'s, but manage to show up the minimal number of times. I suspect this happens more with students who take the pass fail option - because they shoot for a 60% and we all know that the lower our expectations, the lower our performance.

A boss at a former school I taught at explicitly discouraged giving D's. This partly because novice teachers tend to worry about their students' grades more than the students do. When a new teacher, a GTA or someone insecure in their job gives a D it often means the student earned an F but the teacher lacked the confidence to enter that grade.

I don't think too many students expect the social D, but the few who do cause most of a teacher's problems.

On the relevance of Media to Composition

I always get a few students who don't see the point of using media in a composition classroom. This always surprises me. How many people see themselves writing essays for a living? How often will we write essays in our future jobs?

In my as-of-yet unpublished dissertation I have found a wealth of solid research supporting the incorporation of multi-modal forms of "writing" in composition:

Sheltzer and Warshauer (2000) write, “Language professionals who have access to an Internet computer classroom are in a position to teach students valuable lifelong learning skills and strategies for becoming autonomous learners” (p. 176). Those without access or with limited access are at a distinct disadvantage.

Teachers, in preparing content for digital modes of instruction delivery, have too often tended to, “transpose books and lectures, and so they miss the opportunity for use of the computer for creating responsive and active learning environments”(Bork, 1985. p. 7 cited in Alvi text but not referenced in their works cited).... Researchers (Lunsford, 2006; Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan, 2006; Ito et al. 2008; Lenhart et al. 2007) argue for us to redefine what it means to write in the digital age. Whatever definition we use, we must consider the role of modern web-based communication networks. It is likewise important to note, as Zhao (2003) and others have, that it isn’t the technology that makes the difference for students, but the way it is used.
Cummins (2000) notes that projects making extensive use of instructional technology (IT) can develop language and literacy more effectively than projects that make minimal use of IT. He concluded that this may be through heightened communities built across ethnic, geographical, social and linguistic divides (See also Brown et al., 1998; Cummins & Sayers, 1995).
Language educators should examine the potential of IT not only to increase the linguistic power of the individual student but also to harness that power in critical and constructive ways to strengthen the social fabric of our local and global communities…we should acknowledge the fundamental changes that IT is bringing to our societies and seek ways to use its power for transformative purposes (Cummins, 2000, p. 539). The diverse student population of our school makes development of literacy and the building of community essential.

I frequently share that many instructors (I can think of 3 off the top of my head now, and I think earlier I counted as many as 11) use multi-modal (or media) projects in composition 1. I also share that this project was the teaching demonstration that impressed my hiring committee when I got this job. We took a museum tour where the docents explained how art was composed - in many of the same ways the written word is composed.

If you need to make a presentation to a boss, will you read an image free text - or will you include pictures, charts and graphs? Will video or sound help persuade a manager or sell a product?

And my final question, should colleges prepare students for the workforce of 20 years ago, the work force of today, or the workforce 5 years down the road?

Finals schedule

Here's the finals schedule for JCCC. Evidently I'm not the only one who couldn't find it. Lesson: when in doubt, ask the administrative assistants. They know everything.

This reminds me of a classic XKCD cartoon. Include Finals Schedule for something people would look for - which the search engine couldn't even find.

Rules for beginning writers.

Got wind of this advice for beginning writers from BoingBoing, who found it from VS Naipaul.

1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.

2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.

3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.

4. Never use words whose meaning you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.

They found it here. I agree with Cory Doctorow that these rules should not be absolute - with the exception of # 4. What will it take for people to use the dictionary? And yet when dictionary is used - will they resist the impulse to cite it as a source?

When a toddler announces to a dinner party that they have pooped and wiped themselves, we find it acceptable and even cute. When an adolescent does the same - not cute and only acceptable if we have very low expectations of said adolescent. We expect students to use dictionaries and encyclopedias, but we don't look for that as sources on papers.

Review: Lost on Planet China

I found this book on MP3 audio at the Lawrence Library. His introductory admission that he is, in no sense, an authority on China nor on any things Chinese, drug me into this book.

While an admitted non-authority, he did offer an honest and perceptive first hand account of his travels in China. Also, his research and journalists eye for detail and social criticism - - combined with a trenchant sense of humor (3/4 reviewers online have called it rollicking) reminded me of my time in the middle kingdom.

His irreverent social criticism - and his multi-national perspective (he's some sort of Dutch / Czech/ Canadian living mostly in California) should appeal to the traditionally aged students at our school, though he drops the f-bomb a couple times in the first chapter, and the mofo-bomb a couple times in a clever and funny recollection of his meth-addled neighbors in Sacramento. He seems to be a devoted family man - who none-the-less speaks candidly of the unclear roles of, for instance, the student/ "take out girl" or the factory girl "Cinderella." These moral ambiguities are part of the mystery of the east, he reasons. In his humor, I detect an elusive and indelicate truth.

I'm halfway through the book, but the following comments brought back memories, and reminded me of some of the visceral first impressions I'd forgotten, such as:

Pollution

• "700,000 people per year die just from breathing the air" - the air pollution in China is unimaginably bad. 1/3 of the pollution in California, he asserts, comes originally from China. - and has survived the 4000 miles of ocean.
• 1/3 (or 2/3rds) of all the water in China is unfit for even industrial use. It's too polluted for even use to make leaded paint.
  
• Air quality in Beijing is 3 times worse than what the level at which we tell children and the elderly to stay indoors because of unacceptable danger. If that link is correct - he may have understated .
  

Culture

• "I was finally having an authentic Chinese experience: It was awful." Here he spoke of a train ride. The second-hand smoke recollections rang a bell.
  
• Chinese culture has a unique approach to queuing up - or waiting in line. It's a contact sport more akin to football than anything in the west. It has to be experienced to be understood.
  
• The interactions with food (including experiences eating sheep brains, frog, and live squid).
• The way the Chinese call out Lao Wai when they see a foreigner - his Chinese language skills aren't stellar, but he figures out it means something negative. In Taiwan the meaning is much like the n-word here, or the c-word. It may mean something less negative in China - but considering how the attitudes toward human rights differ - I'm not sure we can ever make easy comparisons. That said, I cringe every time he uses the term. It might be his causal honesty, or that refreshing wise but clueless - eyes wide open stance of his that I initially found endearing.
  

The MP3 lasts 11 hours, and I regret not being able to bookmark pages - but I'm diggin' it.

• Book review - by someone else.

• Find the book on Amazon

Metaphor paper explained

Once again too many papers start off with a paragraph to a page of random BS on the nature of metaphors in general. Papers should get to the point quickly - and focus on the text one analyzes.

Here's an example where someone analyzed the epic Rebecca Black song that all the kids listen to:
Of course some of this is false - like that the name of Kennedy's chauffeur is Kickin - that wouldn't fly in a class paper - but enough of the content is usable that this could have been developed into a 1250 word paper.

A couple students have translated the goal of the assignment into different languages - I can't speak to the accuracy of their translations, but as we get more non-native speakers who translate the goals of the assignment into their own languages, perhaps a dialogue that transcends English might develop which will shed some additional light on the assignment.


Note: it doesn't really matter if the author meant to achieve or communicate what the student writer finds. Much like it doesn't matter if Ms. Black meant to write a song about Kennedy. IT's about Kennedy now as far as I'm concerned. And in French:


Again, some students waited too long to start and misunderstood the goals of the assignment. Though for as many who think that misunderstanding an assignment is defense or excuse, it almost seems like a strategy - failed though it turned out to be.

Why doesn't this work in my class?

If you want to know why this won't work in my class, read the syllabus.

Master Teacher Retreat

This weekend I'll be co-facilitating a Master Teacher Retreat in the bucolic splendor of Tall Oaks. We've got the wiki started up, and I'll give anyone attending rights to add and edit content. If you've never participated in a wiki before, I highly recommend the 3 minutes it takes to watch the common craft presentation, Wiki's in Plain English. For further ideas on how to use wikis, check out this page.

I'll share my experiences using wikis, blogs and podcasts and other collaborative media in and with my classes.

Here are some links I'll use:

• for the podcast
• podcasts of yor
• Twitter (I'm Kaizer3 and I'll be using the hash tag #kcpdc and displaying using visible tweets (and for those that don't have a twitter account - just enter the hashtag).
  
• Social bookmarking
  
• Google Docs Moderator - where audience can ask and/or vote on questions. http://goo.gl/mod/c33D
  
• Facebook group for the retreat (note: we shouldn't have to friend to collaborate here).
  

Research in the news.

A new research study on composition reports

An analysis of research papers written in first-year composition courses at 15 colleges reveals that many students simply copy chunks of text from the sources they cite without truly grasping the underlying argument, quality or context...

The researchers analyzed the students' 1,832 research citations and assigned each of them to one of four categories:

• Exact copying -- a verbatim cut-and-paste, either with or without quotation marks.
• "Patchwriting" -- the copying of the original language with minimal alteration and with synonyms substituting for several original words (patchwriting is often a failed attempt to paraphrase, they said).
• Paraphrasing -- a restatement of a source's argument with mostly fresh language, and with some of the original language intact; it reflects comprehension of a small portion, perhaps a sentence, of the source material.
• Summary -- the desired form of citation because it demonstrates true understanding of a large portion, if not the entirety, of the original text; summarizing was identified by the researchers when student writers restated in their own terms the source material and compressed by at least 50 percent the main points of at least three consecutive sentences

The paper speculates that this indicates a lack of engagement: apathy. Students don't care. They provide an example and conculde

students tended to rely heavily on their sources -- so heavily, in fact, that students rarely seem to fully own the material and marshal it to form a novel argument, the researchers said.

“The compelling, unnerving issue is that the student has nothing to say,” said Howard of the piece that drew so heavily on WebMD. “How could she, since she's writing a research document from reference materials?”

This is the big question. Why do students seem to have nothing to say? Part of the problem may stem from deficits of reading comprehension. Many students don't seem to understand what they read and balk at, or shy away from, meaningful resources. They don't read, but is it right to assume they can't? Or are they accustomed to pretending to be ignorant to keep instructors' expectations low. I used to do that. It was a big mistake.

The article also speculates that most sources are merely the first hits from a google search. Do students understand how lame that sounds? Why or why not?

I'm seeing this on the iSearch, which necessarily is topic that students care about. Maybe the research only looked at early drafts. I do want to see the process, but on the final paper reference material won't cut it.

This relates as well to something I'm seeing in the Metaphor paper. What's up with people quoting the dictionary? That's common knowledge. By college - dictionary definitions are assumed to be common knowledge - In the past I've chalked this up to a lack of sophistication or understanding of rhetoric, but perhaps it is instead (or as well) a deficit in research skills.

Research is an active process. It is a hunt: an exploration; an adventure. At least it is when it's done right.

I need to make reading logs regular assignments - and we need to do more "think/pair/share" in the classroom.

Office Door Comics

I always notice cartoons posted on the office doors of faculty, and I enjoy the people who stop at my door and read what I've posted. This image is from the last bit of unclaimed office debris left over from a former adviser of mine. He passed while I was still at KU; he always had my tremendous respect, though I saw some element of our strained relationship in this cartoon. Even so, I'm hard pressed to explain it.

He spoke of Hermeneutics, and I remember this cartoon adorning his office for a decade.

I believe this posting is fair-use. The publication data I have is clearly visible. It is being used for educational purposes and it is re-purposed to illustrate teaching theory and vocabulary. But I invite anyone to criticize my use by reading the awesome free digital comic that explains copyright law by Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins at the site hosted at Duke University.

BTW: the scanned image data is (Sept. 7 1996 by O'nelly (?) Creators Syndicate Inc. speedbump@ compuserve.com).

Profile Writing

Our textbook offers excellent instructions and suggestions for writing profiles, in addition to many fine examples. If one reads that material one should have no trouble with the assignment.

A profile differs from a memoir in that it is about another person. For this assignment we require that the subject of your profile be associated with JCCC and available for interview (or respond to email requests for information). This is necessary because the paper must have at least 2 examples of quoted material (be it speech, email or publication) and that all sources be listed on the works page/ bibliography at the end of the writer's paper. All choices are up to the discretion of the instructor, and family and /or romantic partners are not allowed.

To give some ideas and expose students to some of the groups available on campus the following JCCC organizations have sent representatives to address classes in the past.

• Inter-varsity Christian Fellowship: campus contact erin@ivkansas.org
• Queers and Allies: Facebook group; Google Group page;
  

The JCCC Center for Student Involvement coordinates a host of other groups, and in the future I hope to have other groups talk to our classes.

Who's using facebook.

Mashable has an interesting infographic on the demographics of Facebook. A year ago on April 5th 37.5 % of the total US population had a Facebook account. The Makeup of the US Facebook population had significantly more diversity that the US population, at least with Black, Hispanic and Asian users (Muhammad Saleem 2010). Roy Wells estimated the total US Facebook population in August of 2010 at 41.6%.

Library Research Orientation

One point the librarian made that bears repeating - research takes time. I'm not talking about the reading of articles (that takes even more time) but finding good research is work. Students who got "A's" and "B's" last semester said they spent over 30 hours on research alone. That doesn't include the writing of the paper at all. This was easy for them because they picked topics they felt passionate about.

An idiom allegedly from Chinese goes, "if you give someone a fish, they eat for a day. If you teach them to fish they eat for a lifetime." Our goal in our class is teaching - and skills that transfer to a lifetime of use.

You have to hunt for research (hence the word "search" embedded in the term). CQ Researcher is like a barrel of fish for you to shoot at - I hope most of you don't need it - it doesn't impress me. It is not a database but an encyclopedia published in a journal format. Its primary virtue is ease of use. Sure, we may get more calories in you if we spoon-feed pre-digested information, but it isn't the calories that are important, but the ability to provide for ourselves. And CQ Research is processed. Sure a McDonald's Filet-o-fish will provide more fat and calories (not to mention salt) than a fish you catch and prepare for yourself - but is is far less healthy, and ultimately less satisfying. We only prefer the taste if we've been raised on a diet of deep-fried and slathered in fat.

To teach this subject better, in the future I should create a handout with links - that students can follow. I also need to clarify that students NEED time to work on their own research.
Databases I recommend:

• Academic OneFile link
• JStor
  
• ERIC
• Gale (3 different databases - I'm thinking Gale Virtual is the way to go first).
  
• PsycArticles
  

Resources I would use sparingly - no more than one source per paper.

• Wikipedia - not a bad place to start to learn language and to poach resources, but it's a lot like peeing in the shower: not something you need to brag about.
  
• CQ Researcher. It's research lite. It may be credible, but it doesn't impress anyone. In some ways it's inferior to wikipedia. The same scatological analogy applies.
  

Another thought on comments made regarding procrastination: computers changed the process and meaning of "writing a paper." 30 or 40 years ago research was done with bound indexes, card catalogs that took up enormous space, and rows and rows of physical books. Writers would copy from books by hand into notecards (or notebooks) then rearrange notes and recopy by hand into their notebook rough drafts - and repeat until the last minute and TYPING often happend the night before the paper was due.

Research today all happens at a computer/ word processor - so "writing" isn't divorced from research - but the two are connected throughout the process. Also, the myth of writing a paper the night before it's due in college and still getting an "A" is an college urban myth that ranks right up there with the one about people who only show up for tests and Ace classes - or that drinking bong water is an awesome psychedelic experience.

Why might fools or sociopaths repeat these college myths?

On education

Learning Management Systems (LMS)

It’s important to clarify a distinction between LMS ( such as ANGEL)and Web 2.0 tools. LMS “use a top-down approach; blogs tend to go in the other direction. LMS offer a great deal of flexibility and the potential for creativity in the construction of the site, yet still feature the ease of use of a template-based system” (Godwin-Jones, 2003). LMS’s encorporate many of the social and collaborative authoring tools of Web 2.0, and while sometimes slower to market and stripped down of features, they offer more security. Lane (2008) clarifies the distinction:
integrated commercial [LMS] systems have a built-in pedagogy, evident in the easiest-to-use, most accessible features. The focus on presentation (written documents to read), complemented by basic "discussion" input from students, is based on traditional lecture, review, and test pedagogy.

Lane clarifies that this differs widely from a learner-centered, constructivist or inquiry based model of instruction, which many instructors believe in. Constructivist pedagogy sees the role of the instructor as one who creates an environment that is rich and conducive to learning. Such an environment might include independent projects, social interaction and\or self-assessment. Web 2.0 applications, or LMS better support such teaching techniques and pedagogy.

An instructor who is already experienced with Web 2.0 applications and "lives on the web" may feel stifled when facing the managerial focus of a commercial CMS and wonder, Why can't I do that? Those who want to offer learning experiences based in audio, visual, or mixed media formats, for example, find these systems clunky if not completely unusable for their purposes (Lane, 2008).

This has been the experience of this researcher and several of those who work in IT support at the schools I’ve worked at.

Works Consulted

Lane, C. and Yamashiro, G. (2008) Assessing learning and scholarly technologies: lessons from an institutional survey. Educause Quarterly. V. 31 no. 3 (July-Sept. 2008)

Lane, L. (2008) Toolbox or Trap? Course Management Systems and Pedagogy. Educause Quarterly V31 No. 2

Godwin-Jones, R. (2003) Emerging technologies: Blogs and wikis. Language Learning & Technology. May v. 7 No. 2 pp. 12-16 Http://llt.msu.edu/vol7no2/emerging/

Podcasting - little literature review

Podcasting can be compared to radio programs made available on demand rather than broadcast arbitrarily. It can also be likened to blogging, and is sometimes referred to as audio blogging (Learn Out Loud). Podcasts can be the content delivered during class (i.e. the class itself), or supplemental material such as audio productions of written literature, interviews, discussions or almost anything. Mikat, Martinez and Jorstad (2007) call podcasting, “a new and powerful tool that can potentially benefit students and instructors. Podcasts are versatile, reusable, interesting, and stimulating to the new generation of technology-savvy students, and they can be listened to at the consumer’s leisure” (p. 15). Ample evidence supports the potential educational benefits of podcasting. Duke University has developed curriculum exploiting the potential of Podcasts, and Duke Provost Peter Lange reports “The direct effect of iPods …[is that] students learn better” (ctd in Allen, 2007).

The addictive appeal of the accelerated communication and convenience of content portable on demand is difficult to overstate. According to the 2005 Pew Internet and American Life Project, 22 million adults own iPods or MP3 players and of that 22 million 29% (approximately 6 million people) have downloaded podcasts from the web. When we consider that the vast majority, 80%, use their computers to listen to these broadcasts (Essex, 2006, Bridge Ratings, 2005), this burgeoning communication medium is expected to continue growing. The technology is already in students’ hands. Lum (2006) cites national studies showing, “more than 80 percent of college students own at least one device that can download and play recordings.” In predicting future trends, Bridge Ratings estimated a conservative 45 million people will have listened to a podcast by 2010; more aggressive estimates put that number at 75 million. Ipods, the most popular portable music player was the number one most “in” thing on campus in 2006, according to the Student Monitor’s “Lifestyle & Media Study” (cited in Winham 2007). Interestingly the ipod bumped the former number one, beer.

The use and production of podcasts fulfills Lunsford’s definition of writing, and benefits NNS and those who are auditory learners. The students will benefit because, as Baskin and Harris (1995) point out, audio “can facilitate understanding of dialect and complex language, emphasize humor and drama, and provide the benefits of storytelling” (p.272). Troyka elaborates:

for naive, limited, or simply inexperienced readers, proper names and uncommon words may be heard correctly pronounced for the first time, offering suitable models, comfortably extending vocabulary, and overcoming possible barriers to the flow of the narrative.. More significantly, the professional narrator, bringing finely honed dramatic skills to an interpretation of a text, can generate excitement and captivate a wide spectrum of listeners from the inept and the unwilling to the expert and the passionate (1982, p373).

Many researchers and teachers, Ong (1978), Troyka (1982), Heath (1983), and Sabrio (2007) among them, have long documented and elaborated upon the great “extent to which many of our entering college students are products of an oral culture” (Sabrio p.39-40).

Work Cited

• Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2006). Making the grade: Online education in the United States. Needham, MA: Sloan-C. Retrieved March 29, 2008, from http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/making_the_grade.pdf

• Baskin, B. H. and Harris, K. (February 1995) “Heard any good books lately? The case for audiobooks in the secondary classroom” Journal of Reading. 38:5 p. 372-376

• Bridge Ratings (2005) Bridge ratings industry update: The podcasting outlook. Retrieved November 12, 2007 from http://www.bridgeratings.com/press_11.12.05.PodProj.htm

• Essex, C. (2006) Podcasting: a new delivery method for faculty development. Distance Learning. 3:2. p 39-44

• Heath, S. B. (1983) Ways with words: language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press

• Lum, L. (2006) Language, culture & technology. Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Sept. 21, vol. 23. no 16, page 30

• Ong, W (1978). Literacy and orality in our times. ADE Bulletin, 58, 1-7

• Mikat, Martinez and Jorstad (2007) Podcasting for your class. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. May/June vol 78. No. 5

• Sabrio, D (2007 spring) Research in developmental writing courses and implications for practice. NADE Digest, 3 (1) pp 39-

• Troyka, L. (1982) Perspectives on legacies and literacy in the 1980’s. College Composition and Communication, 33 (3), 252-261

• Windham, C. (May/June 2007) “Confessions of a Podcast Junkie” EDUCAUSE Review http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0732.asp accessed 11-15-7