A Mediated Life

Here’s a great publishing opportunity, especially for those of you who are already in the middle of writing annotations for CRD 704 (hint, hint!)…

From: Gregory R Glau
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 3:25 PM
Subject: publication opportunity

Chitralekha Duttagupta and I are working on the 3rd edition of the BEDFORD BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR TEACHERS OF BASIC WRITING, and we need folks to annotate the new entries.

We’ve pasted-in the url of available entries below. If you’re interested in annotating one or more of them, while we cannot pay you anything, Bedford/St. Martin’s will send you a copy of the text when it’s published, and we will owe you our debt of thanks!

Please note:

1/ you must have the essay(s) or book(s) you’d like to annotate in-hand; we cannot supply them to you

2/ annotations should follow the general form, style, and length of those in the 2nd edition (your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative can supply you with a copy, if you don’t have one)

3/ annotations must be sent to us by email by November 17, 2008

If you’d like to annotate one or more of the items in the list below, please send your selection(s) to Greg at Gregory.glau@nau.edu. Please do NOT reply to the whole List. Please note that items in BOLD are available to annotate (as we assign entries, we’ll “unbold” those we assign, so you can always see what entries are still available:

http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/grg37/available.doc

It’d be useful if you can send Greg your “first three choices” (or however many) as we have to assign these first-come, first-served and your first choice might not be available by the time we get to your email. Please indicate if you’d like to do one out of the three, or two, etc. and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Many thanks,

Greg Glau
Northern Arizona University
Gregory.glau@nau.edu

Chitralekha Duttagupta
Utah Valley University
Chitralekha.Duttagupta@uvu.edu

I think I’ve figured out why I don’t prefer to read online. I like to read books and articles on paper. This week I’ve been reading a lot of online publications, and I’ve found that the problem for me is not the same as what I’ve heard a lot of teachers say when they protest the idea of designing a paperless classroom, posting readings online and responding to student writing on the screen instead of on paper. I don’t mind reading from the screen. It doesn’t hurt my eyes, and I actually prefer commenting on student writing on a computer than on paper. I type a lot faster than I write, and the older I get, the faster the hand cramps seem to start when I’m writing with a pen.

The problem for me with reading online is the DISTRACTION.

I guess I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I’d like to believe. This week I would start with The Horizon Report, but somehow end up in Facebook (yes, there really is a string of connections that can lead there).
Or I would open up an article, like Prensky’s Digital Natives piece, and wind up with five different tabs open, chatting with a friend while I’m trying to put a blog together and–yes–check Facebook at the same time.

Sometimes it feels like I can spend hours at my computer and get very little done. On the other hand, I might come away with several different ideas to follow up on. I guess online reading can be a kind of invention for me, but I always end up feeling like I need to chastise myself for not staying more focused.

But perhaps I’m missing the point.

I haven’t posted to my blog lately because I self-edit too much. I’ve started dozens of blog entries and then deleted them because I didn’t think that I had anything relevant to add to the blogosphere. Why clutter it up anymore than it already is? And then sometimes I wonder what others will think about what I have to say. Blogging and social networking can bring back tons of self-absorbed middle-school neuroses.

But seriously, why should I care? How many people really find one lonely little blog? And of those who do read it, does it matter whether or not they find what I write to be enlightening? That’s the beauty of the internet, isn’t it? We vote with our mouse. If we don’t like something, we go elsewhere.

This has made me wonder, though: How does blogging cause us to rethink what we write about, who we share it with, how we represent ourselves, and how others might perceive what they read? Why do people blog? What’s appropriate to blog about? Are there things that should just be kept private? But then there are private blogs for that, right? I guess I just don’t get the point of those. Perhaps someone else can help me understand?

In my graduate class, I require my students to keep blogs. But I can’t decide how I feel about the educational potential of blogging–is it inappropriate to coerce someone into blogging? Is there a unique potential learning experience that can only be found through blogging? Maybe I’m overthinking it. Or maybe I’m just too darn skeptical.

The longer I spend in the business of teaching writing (and especially in being a writing program administrator-WPA), the more I find myself challenged by a paradox that I can’t seem to solve. I believe that it’s vital that writing teachers and WPAs have knowledge and understanding of the linguistic diversity that they encounter in their classes. I think it’s important that writing teachers have a background in working with second language/ESL writers, for example. But I also find that the more I learn about linguistic diversity and the more I understand about my students’ complex linguistic and cultural heritages, the more I question the nature of what I do.

Writing programs are in the business of assimilation, so we’re caught in a dilemma. We want to honor (and if possible, preserve) students’ home languages and cultures, but our job is to teach them “Standard Academic English.” Sometimes I find myself coming back to Sharon Crowley’s argument about the nature of the first-year writing requirement, and how Jim Berlin pointed out the “gate-keeping” nature of the course. It’s a puzzling paradox, and I’m not sure I have a solution. Perhaps there isn’t a simple one. I don’t see the existence of the paradox as negative, though–maybe it’s just a step on the way toward developing a better approach to teaching writing and structuring writing programs. But I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others.

A few folks have written to me asking how to join the Second Language Writing listserv for CCCC (which also includes others interested in L2 writing who are not part of CCCC). If you’d like to join the list, here are the instructions:

1. Send a message to: mj2@lists.ncsu.edu

2. In the text of the message, type: subscribe slw_cccc

3. Note: Do not type anything in the subject line

4. You will receive a message back from the listserv asking you to confirm your subscription to the list

5. When you want to send a message to the list, send it to slw_cccc@lists.ncsu.edu

On May 30th, I attended the North Carolina Scholarship of Teaching and Learning day at UNC-Greensboro with my colleagues Wanda Lloyd and Kate Hagopian. It was a great day to network with people from around the state, and I felt like I had one day that was completely dedicated to thinking about new directions for my own research on teaching and learning. I co-presented on “Going Public with SoTL” with Laura Cruz, from Western Carolina University, and her fabulous slides made me look well-prepared. I don’t mean to be too touchy-feely, but I think that for the first time in the two years I’ve been in NC, I felt like I had found a community of teacher-scholars who spoke my language. AND, I felt like we discovered a community that could be a catalyst for designing some innovative initiatives in our writing program at NC State. One idea I had: a mini-fellowship for lecturers in the writing program based on the Carnegie Scholars and Maricopa Institute for Learning models. What do you think?

Attending the conference also raised my awareness about several other opportunities around the state that will be coming up soon for those interested in professional development. The Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will be holding their annual conference in September in Little Switzerland, NC. The North Carolina English Teachers Association will host their annual conference in Winston-Salem in October, and UNC-Greensboro will hold the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching in February, 2009. I also can’t resist plugging the first North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing that we’ll be hosting at NC State October 17 and 18 of this year. More info soon!

I just got back from CCCC in New Orleans, and it was a fabulous conference–and a great location! Some of the highlights of the conference for me were:

• Chairing a terrific panel on plagiarism for my colleagues, whose talks were featured in Inside Higher Ed the following Monday
• Presenting on a panel with Dana Ferris and Gail Shuck, who shared some great strategies for working with L2 writers
• Facilitating a workshop on plagiarism and L2 writers with Rebecca Moore Howard
• Celebrating Sharon Crowley’s book award and (well-deserved!) retirement
• Sharing the plane to and from New Orleans and the taxi from the airport with a crazy bunch of folks from East Carolina
• Dinner at Broussard’s
• The view from the top floor of the Loews Hotel
• Realizing that I really only need to travel with my Blackberry…and I’m annoyingly addicted to checking it

Can’t wait until next year in San Francisco!

When I was in Arizona, I used to teach an online class in personal writing. I really loved teaching that class, and sometimes I feel like I’ve lost a part of me by not teaching it anymore. It took me awhile to warm up to teaching the class as I always felt conflicted about “grading” students’ personal writing. I resolved that dilemma by changing the way I grade. I’m no Peter Elbow, and I’m not really a very touchy-feely kind of teacher, but that class really helped me remember why I teach…and why I write. It’s really the only class I’ve ever taught where I would genuinely and faithfully write with my students.

At the beginning of the semester, I would share four “rules of writing” with the class that I had adapted from rules Lynn Nelson shared in a workshop I took with him a few years back. I owe much of what I discovered about the power of personal writing to Lynn, and I thought I would share those four rules here to inspire myself to write again.

1. Write from the heart.
The best writing we do is about things that we care about and are invested in. We’ve all had to do writing that was assigned to us, that we weren’t interested in, and that we had to complete anyhow. The best writing, however, starts with the heart, and explores things that we care about. I’m constantly struggling with how to help my students follow this rule in class, and it all comes back to writing about what we love and connecting our own interests to our learning.

2. Write small.
This doesn’t mean that handwriting should be small. When you write, stay focused–work on concentrating on small details. Don’t try to tackle huge topics or entire life experiences in one short piece. Instead, focus on a specific moment in that experience and help your reader to really feel it. The more you focus on small details and moments in your writing, the more your reader will be able to experience what you are writing about as he or she reads. (As I write, I’m realizing that’s a problem with my blogging–I need to learn to focus on small details, realizing that there’s always another blog post…)

3. Write before you write.
In other words, do some drafting. Write in a journal. Work through some different ideas before committing to a piece of writing that will be shared publicly. It’s okay to go through a few revisions before sharing something with others–in fact, it’s preferable.

4. Honor your own authority as a writer.
The final rule is, I think, the most important. You are the final authority on anything you write. We need to recognize our own voice in our writing and take ownership of it. Commenting on and receiving feedback on writing is an important step. The author, however, has to read through the responses received and decide which direction to follow. Sometimes conflicting feedback from different sources makes that difficult, but ultimately your writing is yours.

The challenge I see for myself is figuring out how to incorporate what I find important and inspiring about writing into what I teach in classes that are very different in focus than my old personal writing class. Can you really follow all of these rules in a class that is focused exclusively on academic writing–especially 1 and 4?

I just returned from a great Spring Break trip to Hilton Head, SC with my husband and son. Part of what made it so great was that I was able to stay in touch while I was away–I had unlimited free wireless access where we were staying. Now THAT’S luxury! I was able to finish some work on a textbook project I’m finishing with my co-author (who is in Arizona) and my editor (who is in Delaware), and I could keep up with friends’ blogs, travels, and musings. I even caught up on my email (my inbox is under 20 messages!). I updated my status and profile picture on Facebook.

But I can’t decide how I feel about having such ready technological access while I’m on vacation. Am I ever really “away”? I spent time responding to queries from folks at school. I feel like I’ve completely blurred the boundaries between personal time and work time. But don’t we all blur those boundaries in this profession? Or does anyone have good advice for how to keep them separate?

I presented at the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators’ meeting in Charlotte last Friday with my good friend, Tony Atkins. (We were also scheduled to present with Paula Rosinski, but her baby is due any day now and she was ordered by her doctor to stay close to home. We missed you, Paula!) Tony and I talked about using new media for teaching writing–Tony focused on visual arguments and using Facebook, and I talked about using new media to help students conduct research (drawing on much of the work I’ve been doing with Shelley Rodrigo that is posted on this month’s Teaching Composition blog).

Tony’s resource website for his talk includes some wonderful assignments for video composition and some great resources for incorporating multimedia into a writing classroom. Great stuff!