Idea Warehouse

Of semesters, American Idol, and resume makeovers

I have taught for so long and have gone to school for so long that I feel time as measured by semesters, rather than months. Dan's quarter system makes me a little confused. I have to ask him all the time when is it over or when does it start, etc., because I don't have that instinctive feel for the educational time measures in quarters. Should be easier but it's not. It's all what we've become used to. I had a special treat today--getting my CV critiqued by someone very young. It was a humbling experience to me and made me realize how much we CAN'T see in our own writing or work. When I received it, I had to agree, and now am pondering what to do next.

Well, what to do NEXT, as in the next few hours? Well, I'm going to watch American Idol! I think they should ax Phillip Phillips this week. He's just doing the same thing every time. I get really sick of seeing him squinch up his neck and face and lift up his leg a certain way and I don't think he's as good of a musician as the rest. Hollie did much better this week. I sure hope she stays, although last week I would said--Boo! Let her go!

Okay, now, I better get off of here and do some exercising. Tomorrow I go to Healthworks.

 

Last week of regular classes Fall 2011

This week is crammed with stuff to complete. I have research papers to grade, some earlier assignments to complete that haven't been returned, and many things I have to send via email to students.

My students are great! I truly enjoy teaching them, so it's natural that, as the semester winds down, I feel sad a little bit. That seems so crazy, though, since one would think that since I am finally able to  live with my husband in a few weeks, I'd be ecstatic. Well, I AM ecstatic about that, of course, but just sad that I don't know when I'll be teaching again. Will it be a new job? An old job done online? A completely different job? I don't know what the future holds. I only know that I will be out this semester on medical leave, and I appreciate the job that provides the means for me to do this. I need to learn how to cope with my Multiple Sclerosis better, learn how to deal with my emphysema, if I do actually have it, and if I don't, to learn to deal with my sleep apnea, if that's what I have instead. I'll need a whole new set of doctors, but in Boston, that won't be hard to find.  I did like my old doctors, though. They were nice. One thing I am absolutely going to commit myself to, is to lose at least 50 lbs. That may help with a variety of ailments I have, and it certainly will make me healthier and feel better. So, there, I said it, and committed myself. I certainly have a horrible "before" picture that won't see the light of day until my "AFTER" picture is fabulous.

Anyway, I am going to miss all  of you students very, very much. I didn't really think this part would bother me, but I think it's the part that I most enjoy: interacting with them all both intellectually and interpersonally.

Writing my "example paper" on "public intellectuals"

Just as I do each semester I teach ENGL 102, I choose a topic and stay a few steps ahead of the students in the assignments that I make them do. Right now, I'm creating the Annotated Bibliography of 10 sources on the topic of "public intellectuals" and previously posted and talked about the Research Paper Proposal which I've posted online at http://users.edinboro.edu/warren/researchpropexample.pdf . Astute readers may or may not notice that I made a few mistakes in that example, enough to drop me down to a 92 or 91 --yikes! For example, I left out an entire book's information, because I was getting lazy and in another case, I left out 3 pertinent pieces of information about another book. That and I didn't capitalize the main word in one of the titles. I am THAT picky, even with my own work.

Now that I'm choosing the 10 sources I will annotate, I realize that I have all of their bibliographical information EXCEPT the database where I found the source(s). So I had to go back in and locate each one, but it wasn't hard, just took an extra half hour.  Then, of course, I need to annotate each one before Tuesday's class to have the example to show them. 

On a personal note: I am going to lose 27 lbs. at least--as soon as I can. If I lost 2 lbs. a week, it would take 14 weeks. Oh, that seems sooo long! I suppose I could do it by the end of  June, if I cut myself some slack and didn't demand 2 every SINGLE week.That would give me 4 times when I wouldn't have to meet that quota. Okay, I'm checking in today--you don't get to know the starting weight (unless you know me), but I will tell  you the pounds gained or lost each week on here.

First week of classes down--how did they go?

Finished my first week of Jan. 2011 classes at Edinboro University. In my opinion, they went well. I was on time to all of the classes, I had a clear plan for each of them, and except for a few computer issues, all went very well. For some odd reason on Thursday, about 3/4 of the thin clients in Wiley 114 wouldn't let students log in. No problem, though; I just went to Plan B. I'm eager to read the students' blogs in the T/Th classes next week.  One thing that was kind of funny, though, that happened in my 2nd ENGL 102 class of the day: I was showing students Wordle and how that works, when one student who seems quite well engaged in class, asked the ultimate question that should be asked of nearly everything I do in the class: Yeah, that's neat, but how does that help us? or it was something like "how is this useful?" I just have so much fun with Wordle that I was at a loss for an explanation and laughing sheepishly, said, "well, it's just really COOL! Isn't it? I can't just show you something because it's cool?" Then I knew how idiotic that sounded, so I said it can help you when you are brainstorming for ideas; the words that are repeated show up in bigger type, and so that might give you an idea of ideas that have more importance for you. Meanwhile, they agreed that it was cool, also, but I LIKE that they challenged me with that question. I should always be able to answer that question to the students' satisfaction (and myself). Click on the above picture to see it full sized. The content used is this blog entry minus these 2 sentences. (BTW, I did see a few online slideshows called 38 Ways to Use Wordle in the classroom," and another "25 Ways..." --so there ARE ways to incorporate it legitimately.

One reason I showed it to them yesterday was because each letter and picture in Google's logo of JFK and his presidential speech was done in Wordle or something like that, so I thought it was especially relevant to know how they did that. Nevertheless I plan on having multiple answers for that anticipated question for every thing I teach.

I also noticed a new sign on the street that goes onto campus (forget its name) in back of the Compton parking lot.

Problems with Education

My colleague, Bob Holderer, pointed out this YouTube video to me a few weeks ago (or maybe longer), and I'm just now getting to it. Very interesting thoughts here.....

p.s. It's my BIRTHDAY today, so feel free to wish me a happy birthday! 

Wednesday Workday

  By the way, that's NOT ME up there! But it's my name, at least part of it. I like her jacket, though. I wonder which Wendy Warren it is: the one who writes romance novels, the Irish newscaster, the doctor?.....there are a few of them I've encountered on Internet searches. This is actually me.

Looks like I may have to post some pages to this blog for my ENGL 102 classes in Research Writing. I haven't been able to post material to my webstorage account at school, which stinks because that is how I organize my units and post material so as to reduce "my carbon footprint." Maybe it doesn't really do so, because students print out the material, but if just one student does not, then I guess I am. I like this unit the best in my classes because it's fun and follows all of my own advice from my articles and dissertation. I wish I didn't have to teach so many students (100 per semester; i.e., 4 classes/sections per semester, but considering they're all full very quickly, that must mean that I'm not a terrible professor.)

Black Saturday?

With yesterday being Black Friday and all, do we call today "Black Saturday"? Just wondering about this. Meanwhile, I got blocked out by my university for changing my password too many times I guess, and now I can't upload anything....but it just occurs to me that I can upload stuff to here! :) So maybe that's how I'll solve this frustrating problem.  Although I am awash in research paper grading (my quota is 17 a day, but it's really hard to keep that up), all I want to do is shop, or read, or watch TV, and be with my husband who is here for one more day.......before we have this difficult separation time. I hate it.

Leading Thinkers of Today

I've been investigating who our "leading thinkers" are today, based on various polls, think tanks, surveys, and my own general knowledge. I believe that two things are necessary for college students to succeed both in school and afterward are a sense of leadership that they put into action, and a greater understanding of the world around us and who influences the public. These two ideas--leadership and big thinkers--are not mutually exclusive, of course, but they beg different questions. Since I am going to a Leadship Workshop next week held by my school, I'll be immersing myself in the leadership aspects. Now, however, and beyond that workshop time, and especially in the first week of class, I want to explore who my students think are especially influential ("today's leading thinkers"), and we will work on that list all semester. Having done some research on this yesterday from some library sources, I've found that Foreign Policy and another magazine get together and put together a list of 100 of the leading thinkers of the day, partly based on a poll by their leaders. Christopher Hitchens did a follow-up article analyzing the fields in which these thinkers are found.
In order of the most number of thinkers in these professions:
1. Political scientists
2. Economists
3. Philosophers
4. Scientists
5. Journalists
6. Artists and Novelists
7. Leaders
8. Historians
9. Activists
10. Religious Leaders
11. Environmentalists
He also included a map indicating where the leading thinkers come from/live:

36 from North America
4 from South or Latin America
30 from Europe
11 from the Middle East
4 from Sub-Saharan Africa
12 from Asia
3 from Souteast Asia and Oceania
What I think is very interesting is that Stephen Colbert was a top write-in candidate for the top 20. It IS true that he has leading thinkers on his show very often. However, it is true that he is a comedian and satirist, a category not found in the recent list I just included. But then we need to realize that often in history, many satirists can be considered "thinkers" because they turn common sense on its head, mock current policies and actions so that we actually think about them more deeply, and make us think about issues we might not have before. I suppose you could put him in the category of journalists, but that doesn't seem to fit too well. My reaction to these lists is that there are very few women on them. Let's see how many: I counted 6 out of 100. Mmmm...I would say that there are more leading thinkers that are women than that.I welcome comments that discuss this issue or add certain women to the list.

Securexam

Technology does NOT solve every problem. I don't know what to make of Securexam.....

Kill Switch for Technology Use in Classroom

A recent Chronicle article reports that Bentley College has an on/off switch installed in their wired classrooms with 5 options:

• Turn Off Internet Access But Allow E-Mail Access
• Turn Off E-Mail Access But Allow Internet Access
• Disable Internet and E-Mail Access but Allow Computers to Reach Campus Web Pages
• Shut Off All Access
• Allow All Access

With wireless classrooms, you can also have a 6th option: Turn Off Wireless Access. (Or maybe it's part of the "Shut Off All Access" option; it's hard to tell the way the article reads, but it's not that important a difference). What I was interested in is this Kill Switch in general. Maybe it's SynchronEyes that they're talking about ....where we can monitor each of the the students' screens from the instructor's station and toggle settings there. I'll have to check that out.