Malcolm X

“I’ve seen black musicians when they’d be jamming at a jam session with white musicians—a whole lot of difference. The white musician can jam on something that he’s heard before. If he’s heard it, then he can duplicate it or he can imitate it or he can read it.

But the black musician, he picks up his horn and starts blowing some sounds that he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates, it comes from within. It’s his soul, it’s that soul music. It’s the only area on the American scene where the black man has been free to create. And he has mastered it. He has shown that he can come up with something that nobody ever thought of on his own before.

Well, likewise he can do the same thing if given intellectual independence. He can come up with a new philosophy. He can come up with a philosophy that nobody has heard of yet. He can invent a society, a social system, an economic system, a political system, that is different from anything that exists or has ever existed anywhere on this earth. He will improvise; he’ll bring it from within himself. And this is what you and I want.”

Malcolm X, Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (1964)

MLA Formatting Video

A project I have worked on this year was making tutorial videos for my classes. It took me awhile to get the right app/platform/etc for it, but this is the first video I am publicly releasing on MLA formatting in papers.

PhillyDH: An Overview

I had a great time at PhillyDH's unconference last week. This was my first time attending one of PhillyDH's events; I missed last year's event by just sort of randomly not hearing about it. I attended very interesting sessions on making literary texts interesting in the classroom, Wikipedia, and crowd sourcing a digital project. I also ran my own session on Wikipedia in the classroom.

I will post notes in the coming weeks.

ThatCamp Digital Pedagogy: An Overview

I had a great time at ThatCamp Digital Pedagogy last week. It was nice to go home to Stockton for the day (in fact, the main room we were in was where I had a class with Scott Rettberg back in 2005!). I will post my notes from various sessions, including the one I ran on the differences between art and craft in the writing classroom, in the coming weeks. Big thanks to Adeline Koh for organizing this ThatCamp! I was able to do some promotion for ThatCamp Community College next year and I believe a handful of campers will be coming.

Update: Here are the shared Google Docs from the unconference.

Adeline Koh beginning the day.

Adeline Koh beginning the day.

Pictures From The Fall Semester

Some pictures from the fall...

The Lit Bash 2014

I had a great time at this year's Lit Bash down at Stockton. It was nice to come home for an afternoon and, especially, for the first time, get to see some former students of mine down there. I spent time with a handful of those, attended The Bash, where I caught up with a lot of former professors, and then headed to dinner with my parents down the shore before going home late in the evening. This is always one of my favorite days of the year.