- How to bridge gaps between the two required composition courses here at BCC.
- How to deal with differences between hypothesis and thesis?
- How to deal with creative students versus those who need more formal training?
- Differences between peer review via wikis versus Google Drive.
- Reader versus writer based feedback.
- Peer review speed dating.
- Class size is a concern for face to face versus digital peer review.
- Bias versus agenda in secondary sources.
- How do we teach what is RIGHT about a source?
Tri-State Best Practies: Teaching With Technology
While at the Tri-State Best Practices conference last month, the most interesting panel I attended was the one on teaching with technology. I had spoken earlier in the day about wikis, so I was interested in seeing what others would do.
Rich Lauria spoke on wikifying your classroom
- More than a blog, less than a CMS
- Can do things Blackboard cannot
- Wikis organize your work
- A lot of attendees interested in paperless syllabus because students lose them
- I am interested in getting them info immediately
- In other words, if it is Saturday and we don’t meet until Wednesday they need and deserve access even if they lost it.
- Rich uses PBWORKS too
- Some debate about whether wikis should be viewable by all or only logged in students
- Every semester I have a number of students who show my eng101 wiki to their friends to help them with their work
Maria Schrita from Hudson CCC up next on using Youtube in classroom
- Students can view Youtube at home or their convenience
- Using short youtube videos to intro debateable issues
Jessica Fargnoli from Bergen speaking on using audio/video captures in the classroom.
- This is something I would like to do more of in the future.
- 84% of internet users download or watch video
- Echo 360 is a popular software
- A lot of people in the room curious about why you would publish student work publicly versus privately
Books Read 2011
- Beowulf & Other English Poems
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Roland Barthes by Graham Allen
- With A Tangled Skein by Piers Anthony
- Collection of Aristophanes’ Plays
- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
- Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
- Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes
- Incidents by Roland Barthes
- Writing Degree Zero by Roland Barthes
- The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
- Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
- High Druid of Shannara: Jarka Ruus by Terry Brooks
- High Druid of Shannara: Tanaquil by Terry Brooks
- The Path To The Nest of Spiders by Italo Calvino
- Six Memos For The Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
- Under The Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino
- The Cambridge Companion To Chaucer
- Spray Paint The Walls: The Story of Black Flag by Stevie Chick
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Matched by Ally Condie
- Context-Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century by Cory Doctorow
- Makers by Cory Doctorow
- With A Little Help by Cory Doctorow
- Ten Plays by Euripides
- Discipline & Punish-The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault
- H.P Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
- Virgina Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: Invisible Presences by Molly Hoff
- The Odyssey by Homer (Butler translation)
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
- Basrayatha: The Story Of A City by Muhammad Khudayyir
- New York Hardcore 1986-1991: A Time We’ll Remember by David Koenig
- Teaching Literature & Language Online (Edited by Ian Lancashire)
- Piers Plowman by William Langland
- The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean-Francois Lyotard
- Italo Calvino: A Journey Toward Postmodernism by Constance Markey
- Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos by McAlinden
- Utopia by Sir Thomas More
- Plato-Euthyphro
- Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
- Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott
- Civil Disobedience & Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau
- Look At The Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
- Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf
ThatCamp Jersey Shore: An Overview
One of the highlights of the spring semester was being accepted to attend the latest ThatCamp, this time here at the shore in Atlantic City at the Carnegie Library. Even more thrilling was the fact that The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey was the sponsor and host for it. I did some work with Stockton’s own John Theibault, vetting applications, and doing some general organizational work for the conference.
Over the next few weeks, along with NJCEA posts, I will post my notes from ThatCamp Jersey Shore. I made a point to heavily tweet my notes on the #thatcampjs hash tag. For now, however, here are some pictures.
(Amanda French discussing our written, voted upon, schedule for the conference)
One of the biggest highlights of ThatCamp was getting to meet my internet pal Amanda French. After meeting up with John on my way in, she was the next person I saw and we greeted each other with a big hug. Amanda explained that everyone hugs at ThatCamp, which I will keep in mind, and we spent some time together while she, as a representative of ThatCamp, worked on organizing some aspects of the first day.
By far, the coolest aspect of ThatCamp is that the session for the conferences are completely “camper” driven. At the beginning of day one, after Amanda introduced the conference, those of us who wanted to propose a panel wrote it in one of the squares on the board. Campers then voted on which they would like to participate in or view. I proposed a session on using wikis in the classroom, which is something I am doing as of the spring semester. My session got, I think, the most votes, which gave me a lot of confidence heading into it.
John talking to the assembled group of campers on the final day.
Amanda French speaking during a session.
A nice surprise at ThatCamp was running into and spending time with Deborah Gussman, my first ever literature professor at Stockton. She has gotten very interested in the digital humanities in the past few years.