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.

Facebook policy

Does using Facebook help students or hurt them? Research has been going back and forth. See links. The last school I worked at blocked campus access to the site - except for the police department who used it to check out job applicants and people who may have become an issue.

My policy has been to friend any student who requests it - but not to initiate the connection with students. Other teachers - particularly the female and high school or middle school teachers I've discussed this with, only friend students after class is over.

My class last semester created groups - that we used to some effect, but I'm not an expert on facebook.

I consider Facebook a form of online e-portfolio and have read arguements that creating e-portfolios is a skill students will need in future work environments. The topic shows up frequently in teaching journals and is hotly debated. What do you think?

JCCC Writing Center resources

Located on the 3rd floor of the library in room 308, the Writing Center (or WC) holds a slew of resources. they have a copy of each textbook used by English and Journalism faculty - maybe each text book used by humanities. MLA Handbooks, EasyWriters, and other style and usage texts also litter the tables.

Many instructors keep a binder with assignment prompts and examples of student work. Sometimes an example is worth more than any other kind of explanation. Look for mine.

They also have scads of handouts, but the most useful resources are the peer consultants. Talk to them.

REMEMBER: you need your JCCC ID card for many services.

AT-AT's from Star Wars invade Overland Park

Kevin Burg, a local now living in New York and working in technology, created this using Photoshop. He explains that his mom:

has been sending me pictures of wintry fog in Overland Park, Kansas — and to me it always looks like the ice planet Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back. So, I took it a step further and added some AT-ATs. That’s my high school football stadium in the background.

See his original post.

Inspiration from Animation

The Venture Brothers series has long been a favorite because of its wit, deft skills with parody, and impressive ability to work on several levels at once. It decided the subject of this semester's Natural Narrative.

Episode 45 (?) entitled "Self-Medication" has perhaps 2 plots - the main being:

Dr. Venture attends a group therapy session for former boy adventurers, but a strange death causes the patients to fall back into their old mystery-solving habits.

The boy adventurers are clever parodies of classic action cartoon syndications from a golden age of animation prior to the 80's - when art, story and character development in cartoons were scrapped in favor of extended toy marketing campaigns and banal politically correct bore-a-thons.

But it was the murder weapon that triggered a flash-back and inspired my next Natural Narrative. The name, description, and dialogue about the "Vietnamese 2-step viper" showed an amazing insight and knowledge about southeast Asia (as did the reference to Thailand, boy-girls and the modern sex-tourist/slave trade - but that's in the sub-plot. That kinda thing happens here too). The viper is, like the boy adventurers, real but/and legendary.

Just as "Lance Hale" the mockery of the assertive Hardy Boy series (written by another Dixon) ridicules and disputes the existence of the snake that just killed their therapist - as western experts who haven't lived in southeast Asia denigrate the Bamboo Viper. My knowledge of the snake came from lurid fiction, the legends of the locals who lived on my mountain in JuDong, and some close and physical contact.

The story of evil amah (wikipedia may have it wrong - I like "Grandmother" as an honorific as a better translation) who demanded I kill the viper pictured may be a better story than either the 7.6 Richter-scale 921 earth quake story (powerful - tho perhaps a downer) or the time I posed as a roadie to sneak into a sold out psychobilly show and hung out with The Reverend Horton Heat. Good fun - but questionably relevant; both stories I've told students in the past. I haven't written or told this story yet.

Will post outline of Viper story soon - but it will require an intense amount of orientation (pardon the puns) - and digressions into the intense ethnicity of my jungle neighborhood (Hakka and Aboriginal), other venomous encounters (krait, cobra and an insect that may not have an English name - but it's nasty) and perhaps unpopular history of the occupation and abuse of Taiwan by Japan.

FYI: Venture Bros. aired at 11pm Sunday Jan. 17th on Adult Swim - on the Cartoon Network. Gotta look up MLA for documentation.

New Year/ New Semester resolutions

1. I will lose the 3 kilos I put on over winter break.
2. I will get the coffee monkey off my back.
3. Classes will grasp the meaning of deadlines - I will be firm in NOT accepting late work for credit.
4. We won't extend deadlines for the class.
5. We will make the connection between our comp classes and real life more clear and understood.
   
6. I will make greater use of the text-book.
7. Students will learn that communication is important and excuses only mean something if they come BEFORE the deadline/ missed class/ whatever; Therefore, if you have commitments to school sponsored activity, or religious holiday tell me well in advance and we can work something out.
   

notes

1. Re: # 1 - and then continue to lose 4.5 kilos more.
   
2. Re: # 2 - I will at least stop buying it.
3. Re: # 3 - I'm by far not the only instructor who got burned on this last semester. One had students asking to turn in late work after the grades were posted!
4. Re: # 4 - Students liked it in the short term - but complained about it in summative (semester-end) reviews.
5. Re # 7 - The school formally does not recognize any absence as excused.