Professional Podcasts:
Podcasting has become a great way to enhance using the Internet (including using blogs) in classes. Because I'd like to intertext with weblinks that include podcasts, I've linked to some important podcasts below that highlight the focus of using the internet (specifically blogs) in support of ecocomposition. Take a look at http://www.nature.com/nature/
podcast/index.html, Nature's podcast directory, and scroll down to the June 1 podcast. You can then listen (by way of .mp3 file) to recent discussions on "The balmy Arctic, levee lessons, Hobbit origins, dangerous chemistry, Saturn's hot moon, secrets of REM sleep, and lab animal endings" (Nature, 2006). For those students who either do not have the software or the capability to listen to the .mp3 can read the accompanying text file.
Creating our own Podcasts:
For an assignment studying place and sustainability, for example, students in my class could access my blog to listen to the podcasts I create, or find links to podcasts that I've found related to course topics. Linking is especially important in working within blogs, and these links can help promote podcasting as a more interactive tool while working in an online environment. Students can also create their own podcasts, providing neighborhood interviews or taping the street dialogue as it happens.
Podcasts can be used for more than neighborhood studies: One of my colleagues, Melody Wise, actually uses podcasts to discuss student papers. She records her commentary and sends the .mp3 file along with the attached paper, to students in e-mails. This is a novel approach with student learning, especially for students who are auditory learners.
References
Nature. (2006). International Weekly Journal of Science. Podcast, June 1, 2006. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index.html, June 26, 2006.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Recent Reading List...
I've just finished Derek Owens's Composition and Sustainability, a book that highlights the ways our places influence our views on the world. Even more, Owens discusses how it is that we should bring the concept of "sustainability" into the classroom.
I am going to attempt to write about my neighborhood (at home in Reston, VA), just like I'll have my students do this fall. The hope is that, in addition to critical issues like race (whether you believe it's a social construct or not), gender, and class, important issues of environmental concern get left out of the critical pedagogy mix.
I'd like to not let that happen. I'm including a link to amazon.com with some of these titles. Buy them. Read them. Use them!
Composition and Sustainability:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814100376/sr=8-1/qid=1150928144/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0168146-2575160?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Composition and Resistance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0867092815/qid=1150928355/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-0168146-2575160?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This is a edited book by one of my professors, Dr. Claude M. Hurlbert, and Dr. Michael Blitz. They focus on issues of resistance in composition, not only in the classroom but in our departments, across full-time faculty and adjuncts, within the debates that rise from our many theoretical positions. Interesting!
About to read:
Don McAndrew's "Ecofeminism and the Teaching of Literacy" College Composition & Communication v47 n3 p367-82 (1996). What's great about this is Don was also my professor for the research methods class. He's the guy in the Hawaiian shirt, much too smart for us mere mortals! But what's great about this is that his article covers both ecology and feminism (I bet). I'm into the environment, I'm a feminist. What's to lose?
More for the reading list later...
I am going to attempt to write about my neighborhood (at home in Reston, VA), just like I'll have my students do this fall. The hope is that, in addition to critical issues like race (whether you believe it's a social construct or not), gender, and class, important issues of environmental concern get left out of the critical pedagogy mix.
I'd like to not let that happen. I'm including a link to amazon.com with some of these titles. Buy them. Read them. Use them!
Composition and Sustainability:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814100376/sr=8-1/qid=1150928144/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0168146-2575160?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Composition and Resistance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0867092815/qid=1150928355/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-0168146-2575160?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This is a edited book by one of my professors, Dr. Claude M. Hurlbert, and Dr. Michael Blitz. They focus on issues of resistance in composition, not only in the classroom but in our departments, across full-time faculty and adjuncts, within the debates that rise from our many theoretical positions. Interesting!
About to read:
Don McAndrew's "Ecofeminism and the Teaching of Literacy" College Composition & Communication v47 n3 p367-82 (1996). What's great about this is Don was also my professor for the research methods class. He's the guy in the Hawaiian shirt, much too smart for us mere mortals! But what's great about this is that his article covers both ecology and feminism (I bet). I'm into the environment, I'm a feminist. What's to lose?
More for the reading list later...
By way of Pittsburgh
Here's a photo of us "first years" on Mt. Washington, right across from Pittsburgh's skyline. I'm not the one in the Hawaiian shirt--that's our professor who was happy to put us through our paces for a day of investigative research.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Starting the Blog
This blog is inspired by the idea that students in English Composition courses might be interested in a new forum/genre/template/context for their writing. What you'll see here is the beginnings of my foray into cyborg space so that I can practice what I preach. Here goes...
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