Readings

I finished The Silenced Cry by Ana Tortajada this weekend. The descriptions of the purdah, or separation of men and women by walls, screens, clothing, etc. was fascinating. The diary might be interesting to use for the travel writing as she describes the "tug" Afghanistan has on her even before she steps foot there (Quindlen also discusses this phenomenon in her book).

Even the obvious discussions a class can have about othe contrast between how free we are to travel about, borders (physical and otherwise), space and landscapes would be infused with the experience of another culture.

As Turkey Day looms near, I am reminded that several of the early American explorers also would set the stage for the course. Other works I'm considering right now:

Gulliver's Travels
Kerouc's On the Road

Books for this weekend

I had time to kill between class and a meeting today, so I ran into our library to see what it had to offer in terms of literature, periodicals, and general resources for a class on travel literature. I was pleased to find the Fall 2007 issue of Out Traveler. I didn't even know this existed, but it will be fun to read. They also subscribe to Outside, which features articles on destinations. One caught me eye: "the World's 30 Greatest Trips Ever." I am fascinated.

The books I picked up include

• Conquer the Impossible by Mike Horn (journey around the Artic Circle)
• The Silenced Cry by Ana Tortajada (a woman's diary of her trip to Afghanistan)
• True North by Bruce Henderson (Peary and Cook's journey to the North Pole)
• Queenan Country by Joe Queenan (a trip to England)
• Imaginary London by Anna Quindlen (all about literary London)

I returned to my office at around 1pm, started skimming Quindlen's book, and before I knew it, I had finished it! At 2:30, I closed the book and transported myself back to the here and now. I don't believe I'll use it for my class, but it was a great read, nonetheless.

Other ideas right now include some Lewis and Clark (for the regional factor) and a colleague suggested writings by Theodore Roosevelt and Bruce Chatwin. She also reminded me of the title of the movie in theaters currently: Into the Wild.

Lots of research to do, but it will be a pleasure to do it!

A Break from Grading and Class

Halloween and the past two weekends have blown by. In addition to massive grading, I've been busy with MayMay. For Halloween she was a ladybug; we were harried parents.

We've discovered that MayMay loves jumping in the inflatable things. Unfortunately, she is not much of a jumper yet. She was more often pummeled by the other kids, but she yelled "jump!" the whole time she was in it.

We took a weekend to go to the Manitoba Children's Museum in Winnipeg. MayMay was fascinated with the train. She could play with buttons and levers and sit in the conductor's seat. She played with plastic food in the galley and made us breakfast. She also got to play with water, rocks, sand, pipes, a VW Bug, fun mirrors, slides, etc.

Then we went to the zoo. Yes, it was chilly, but no crowds and the animals were quite active.

MayMay saw this bad boy and yelled, "It's a puma!" Oh, you have to love Go, Diego! Go!

At the hotel, we had access to a kiddie pool, a hot tub, and a giant water slide. I've discovered that I hate dark, loop-dee-loop spaces filled with rushing water. I was certain that the local mounties and paramedics would get to practice their de-fib equipment and skills.

MayMay was not much better with water. We haven't really had an opportunity to have her swim in large bodies of water, so she was nervous but loved it. We bought her a new life jacket for the occasion. She can't balance herself though and keeps flipping over. Now, though, she wants a nightly swim in our hot tub. It's hard to say no and it's kind of nice to get more use out of it.

So this week it's been time to refocus. My accelerated class is nearly over; Wednesday night was workshopping of rough argument/research drafts. In two weeks, they turn in final drafts. The Gateway section of 1101 is just at the drafting stage; today they turned in their research notes. In 1102, the online class is working on their exam and poetry essays, and in 0050, students just wrote their in-class essay and tomorrow we discuss the next essay. There's a lot yet to do!

New Course

The English folks want to keep trying to offer a "Special Topics" literature course, but since my Intro to the Novel class was cancelled for this Fall, I'm nervous about offering another. What courses will students sign up for?

We've offered two with great success: Supernatural/Horror Fiction and Banned Books. I tossed around ideas about genre fiction (but what should I call it it to garner attention? Naughty Novels and Western Wonders? Blechk.), and then my hubby asked why I didn't teach "those darn travel books that you talk about all the time?" You see, I've been on a Bill Bryson binge. I started reading A Walk in the Woods last summer after a colleague mentioned she used it in her Nature Writers course. I loved it and bought all his other travel books (and one on the English language). His other titles include (in the order I read them):

• Notes from a Small Island (which is about his travels through the United Kingdom)
• I'm a Stranger Here Myself (a collection of essays about moving back and adapting to America after 20 years abroad)
• The Lost Continent (traveling across America)
• Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (as the title suggests, it documents his trip through numerous European countries)
• Bill Bryson's African Diary (a small hardcover--proceeds to go a non-profit organization--about a quick jaunt into Africa)
• In a Sunburned Country (travels across Australia)

Of course, he was on to something. I am excited by the possibilities of a class on travel literature. I can use a Bryson text, of course, and I can also use travel blogs, biographers of travelers, poetry like Wordsworths' The Prelude, novels like Gulliver's Travels, and so on. I thought about Whitman's Song of the Open Road but the excessive use of exclamation points remind me of bad emails and, frankly, irritates me.

Ideas for marketing: Escape winter! Take Travel Literature!

There's a lot of planning to do for this: what authors to include, do I limit the class to certain eras or geographies? How to blend fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. into a cohesive approach to the topic of travel writing. What kind of projects? It's not a writing class, but it would be fun to have the students create their own travelogue of sorts. At the very least, have them research and write about places they would like to visit.

This reminds me of the blog created based on Samuel Peyps' diary. I think this is a great way to update the text for modern students. I would love to see this done for Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere journal.

To do

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Must read more about this when I find the time. Figure out a way to motivate students to read and comment to others' posts. Better to do individual blogs? Hard to track? Harder to get others to go to? How much can I get them to write? How often to grade and on what criteria? Grammar or not? If journal--no; if public--yes. Much more to figure out here.

What? No work? Right...

This weekend I have graded research notes, blog posts from 1101H, discussion questions from 1101H, and the last of the process essays from 0050. Left to grade: classification AND comparison essays from both 1101 sections, 15 or so fiction analysis essays from 1102, and a smattering of late work from all courses (mostly revisions I asked for--when will I learn?)

I read about 50 pages of Bryson's In a Sunburned Country and re-read the end of Alastair McLeod's No Great Mischief (only because I couldn't remember if I had finished it when I was reading it about a month or two ago. The answer: I don't think I did! But I don't know where I left off either, so I've put it aside to re-read after Bryson. I do know that it was a good read and I want to finish it).

My daughter was whisked away by the grandparents this Thursday, so I've taken advantage of the freedom to take in a movie (Elizabeth: the Golden Age. Ho-hum), to complete some fall projects (pack away the patio chairs, clean up flowerbeds, etc), and to listen to some loud music
(98.7 has been on for 4 hours--this is rare in our house now-a-days (I hate that phrase. Why do I use it?)

Now, however, I must return to those essays and get some content created for my 1102 online class.

The Kite Runner

I just finished The Kite Runner. I bought it when I thought I was going to be teaching Intro to the Novel class this fall. That fell through due to low enrollment, but I kept it in my TBR pile. This past week, after hearing two different colleagues rave about it, I made it a goal to start reading it at night instead of watching TV. I started it Friday night and finished it tonight. It was a nice break from reading essays and creating online content, which is what I did from 9-5 (and 9 to 11 pm too) Wednesday and Friday.

It's a heart-breaking story, which I won't retell here as I want people to read it. I was very much caught up in the pre-Taliban and Mujaheddin descriptions of Kabul, though.

Anyway, I won't go into detail, but I will say it was a good read, a welcome learning experience, and very memorable.

Now I go back to grading essays (example, comparisons and processes from three different classes) and prepping.

Concert

When I moved to Fargo, I was pretty excited by the prospect of going to concerts and shows. Now that I've been here, though, I'm sad to say I have not attended many of the offerings at the FargoDome. Now, I completely understand that it is not their job to cater to my tastes in music or entertainment, so all I ask is that I get to attend at least one rock concert a year.

My mom, one of my sisters, and I went to Nickelback last year. We were standing, not too far from the front, and had a great time. The music, of course, was the most important thing, so I won't belabor the lack of pizazz regarding the stage setup.

One of my students was there. Let's just say that I don't think he remembers anything about the show or teaching my mother how to bang her head. It's simply too hard to explain, so I won't. She was a good sport about it all, but we soon tried to move away.

The only other drawback was standing. Let's face it: I am not a teenager anymore. My feet were killing me by the end of the show!

With all this in mind, I purchased seats for last night's quadruple hitter: Skillet, Seether, Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace. About four hours before the show, a student who also had tickets, informed me that there weren't "assigned" seats (that sounds very teacher-ish, doesn't it). It was open seating, but he offered to save two seats if he could find some.

My mom and I arrived about an hour early and found seats in one of the back side sections, but this was unacceptable. We quickly darted across the dome to find seats in the first section to the right of the stage. I soon discovered that my student and his fiance were sitting not too far away. I'm confident saying that they both remember the show much better than my previous student!

I really hate to admit it, but these bands no very little about showmanship! The stage set up was bland. The singers rooted themselves almost solely to the center of the stage and did not utilize their stage well. The exception to this was the lead singer of Breaking Benjamin who, at one point, walked amongst the crowd to distribute bottled water to the fans sans body guards. I thought, only in Fargo with relatively newer band could such a person trust the crowd not to mob him! Jon Bon Jovi surely couldn't do this!

This, of course, reveals my age, so let me elaborate: in the 80s, the concerts were wild! There were pyrotechnics, elaborate set designs, and much interaction between the crowd and band. There was also more smoke, barely concealed substance abuse, and a lot more hair, but I digress. I was particularly struck by the body surfing. It happened back then, too, but I never recalled the point of body surfing to include being delivered to the security team at the front so you could be dragged out of the masses. That would have been considered a failed attempt back in the day. However, the body surfing was much more entertaining to watch from our vantage point than the lead singer. After all, if I turned to find him, he was always still center stage. The whole experience brought back the memories of past concerts when I was in that crushing throng. At one concert in particular, I don't think my feet touched the floor for an hour. I wasn't body surfing--I was simply helplessly adrift in the swaying tides of the crowd.

Now Three Days Grace was really good (It was enjoyable, but not particularly memorable). They played all their hits and I knew all the songs as their CDs are what I listen to as I drive to and from work. I love when a band actually sounds like they do on their CD. Three Days Grace does. The front man was a little more lively than the others at the beginning of the show, but then also found himself stuck in front of the mic stand.

Now here comes the zinger: there was no encore. None! The last song finished, people started filing out, and the lights came on. WHAT???? This is the first concert I have been to where there was no encore. I couldn't believe it.

All in all, I'm glad we went. I did, however, have more fun people watching than band watching. I don't know if I'd go to their show again, but I'm certainly looking forward to next year's opportunities.

Texting

ICU TXTING. IMHO, it is rude. TTYL.

Favorite assignment

In two classes I have already given out one of my favorite in-class writing prompts:

Write three paragraphs. 1. Tell me what you are doing to be successful in this class. 2. Tell me what you can do to be more successful in this class. 3. Tell me what you need from me so that you can be more successful in this class.

I like that the students often start strong: I attend class, I read the assignments, I turn in my work on time. All of these are admirable traits.

Then comes the humbling: I can read more. I can pay more attention to when assignments are due. I could come to class more. Yes, all of this is also admirable.

The answers to the last question are either usually positive though I do not say this to toot my own horn. Some are amusing (give less homework). Some are negotiable (I don't put assignments on the board because they are in the syllabus, but I understand why you would like that).

I've seen an increase in effort, though, based on this prompt and will use it in my other classes soon!

Grading...

I haven't posted for a little while. I'm grading! I have 20 ENGL 0050 example paragraphs and workshops to grade, 25 ENGL 1101 process essays and prewrites to grade, blogs in 3 classes to read and grade, and discussion boards for two classes to read and grade. Then there is the prep work to get ready for each class. I'm not complaining! I'm just making sort of a checklist of what I need to get done this week to ensure I return all student work within 2 weeks of when they were submitted to me.

5 minute blog post

My challenge: in no more than five minutes I want to respond to today's 1101 class at the HEC:

I am really intrigued by many of the essay topics that emerged from the prewriting today. Some were very creative and fresh. Some I worry about being "rants" much like the second sample we read today. I like the "rap is important" idea because it has a message for the reader. The topic throws out the misconceptions people may have about rap music (or at least I hope it does). I am surprised by the babysitting topic presented. I never would have thought about it the way the writer proposed to construct it. For some people who didn't produce much writing today, I worry about how your draft will form. Will you wait until the night it is due and churn out a first-draft-perfect essay? I hope not, but I do not know. Will you finally discover what your purpose is? Who are you writing for?

As I skimmed through your work today, I tried to provide some guidance. If you don't feel you got any, let me know!

In short, if I can sum up today's experience in a sentence:

If you are excited about what you are writing about, it makes ME excited to read what you are writing about. And my five minutes are up.

SWEET!

I am such a nerd when it comes to historical dramas. I absolutely loved Elizabeth, so I'm estactic to see previews for Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Huzzah!

Some other favorite costume dramas:

HBO's The Tudors (I'm impatiently waiting for season 2)
Pride and Prejudice (all versions, though I'm biased toward the A&E version) and other Jane Austen flicks (Emma, Northanger Abbey)
Vanity Fair
Jane Eyre
Braveheart
Ridicule
Jefferson in Paris
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (A&E version)
Mayor of Casterbridge (also a Hardy book)
Dangerous Beauty
Quills
The Messenger
Shakespeare in Love
and so many more...

Yes, the week was filled with possible blog-worthy topics.

No, I had no time to do it.

Before I dive into the grading for the week, I spend a minute or two surfing other blogs. This is one post on plagiarism I found today that is a refreshing point-of-view from a student.

Blogging

I just read a fascinating article on blogging in education. I do have my students blog, but really, I agree that posting one response to a prompt or assignment is not real blogging. Thoughts: how to encourage real blogging? If it's not tied to a grade, will students do it? What of the quality? Does it matter as long as they are writing? What is the motivation to blog? Do I require them to read each others blogs? To comment? It gives me a lot to think about, but since I'm just now implementing blogs in the 1101 (on-campus and hybrid) and 1102 classroom, I don't think we're off to a bad start. Would I like to see it evolve? Yes. To what? Links, more reflective, less self-centered. More reader-based, not writer-based. Engaging.

What I'm currently reading

Before I can fall asleep at night, I usually need to separate from the course and project work that I probably just set aside five minutes before collapsing into bed. To help "separate," I read or watch mindless TV. Yes, I'm not afraid to admit it. The more horrendous my day has been, the dumber the show has to be.

Last week, after spending hours on the computer, I've been reading Alastair McLeod's No Great Mischief which is about Scots living in Canada, and it is steeped in Gaelic language and culture. Even if I don't read it for a day or two, when I do pick it up again, I'm immediately drawn in.


The mindless TV? Two are absolutely hilarious to me: Rock of Love and The Pick-Up Artist. Can shows get any dumber? If you want mindlessness and to shake your head at the stupidity of others, these are the shows to tune into. Silly, silly shows.


I'm waiting for the next season of Amazing Race though. I love that show! I could never be a contestant; I'd want to do touristy things, not run like mad through a muddy field before hopping on a ostrich, finding an obscure shop, eating weird foods unpronounceable to the average American, and then jetting off to Machu Picchu to do it all over again. :)

And there is my unwind for the night.

Is it possible?

Has another week already gone by? Where did it go? My week looked a little something like this:

Go to neighbors for BBQ Saturday night; spend most of weekend getting online and hybrid course materials created and posted. Kick hubby and baby out of house for most of the day Monday in order to work.

Tuesday: work on online/hybrid classes in the morning to finish the work from last night. Go to HEC for one class. Go back to office to make copies since some textbooks are MIA. Must also make copies to give my 0050 class tomorrow. Go to hubby's volleyball game to watch our rugrat and another guy's. An hour later, I'm home, reading to the little one and tucking her in before logging on and reading posts and emails again.

Wednesday: class at 10, run to another at 11. Have lunch and check/answer emails for an hour. Office hours from 1-2:30 (spend time grading, prepping for next classes, working on the student anthology project I'm co-chairing, answering emails from students, reading discussion posts, watching the blogs, etc). Instead of leaving, I stick around to get all this done and then I ran to get pizza and pop for the Phi Theta Kappa meeting (I'm one of the two advisors) at 6. Finish office work (stop might be a better word) at 7 and head home. Meet hubby and daughter at home. She goes to bed at 8, and I start work again.

Thursday: go into office at 11 to get some work done. Meet with Dean at 2. Rush to HEC, and in the middle of my process lecture--the laptop dies. Clearly, I need a new battery. Afterwards, I lug all my stuff to the Jeep and think how nice--I'll be able to head home soon. But first, I must write a model blog post for the students in that class and hope they start to post soon instead of waiting until the last minute (as of this posting, it's looking grim). Somehow I spend another two hours in office copying pages for students since books have not come in as expected and then go home. I find out father-in-law is in town to take us out to dinner; I decline in favor of some quiet time at home (and to get some diagnostic tests graded for 0050 students). Prep for Wednesday class. Stay up way too late.

Friday: drag self out of bed. Have class at 10 and 11. Lunch at noon with hubby. Work on anthology project, Phi Theta Kappa projects, read my favorite blogs, create tutoring schedules and lessons for students. Try to leave office at 4 but get stopped by student wanting someone to look at a paper she has due soon. Leave at 4:30, run to daycare, take baby to grocery store, get home and put on Dora so I can make supper, feed family, run to post office, run after daughter for a few hours. Am currently blogging while baby plays musical destinations (wants to be in bed, then in living room airchair, then back in bed, turn on Dora, turn off Dora, turn on Veggie Tales CD, turn on light/off light, etc).

Tomorrow I meet my sister in DL for a car swap (she will detail my Jeep while my hubby installs her car stereo). I get to drive her truck this weekend (unfortunately, she sports a window decal reading "If it ain't country, it ain't music." Oh, gross! GAAA. I will jam a Rage Against the Machine CD in her player and correct her decal with a mighty red marker. :) The rest of the weekend looks much like last weekend minus the fun parts.

So far, I'm just summarizing the weeks; I hope to be able to post reactions to individual classes soon! So far, though, 2 of the 3 classes I meet with F2F are pretty quiet and I've yet to get to know the various personalities. Nor have we launched into any philosophical debates :)

Summary of the week

The first week of classes is complete. I've met over 60 new students in person and over 20 via email/internet posts. The week started with ENGL 1101 at the Higher Ed Center. It is, overall, a lively group! Unlike my other classes, this group was asked to answer questions like "what is in your CD player right now, what are 2 goals you have (barring money, family, skills and other restrictions), and a fear. Then I asked them to tell me what they thought were traits of an effective teacher and they came up with quite an impressive list including honesty, understanding, effective communicator, funny, laid back, etc.

My next class was ENGL 0050 at 10 am Wednesday. It was a much quieter group, but I saw several smiling faces. In ENGL 0050 at 11 am, it was even quieter! This group isn't as talkative as the others...yet. In both these classes on Friday, we had an ice-breaker activity based on 20 questions the students answered on Wednesday. Students were asked to find a person in the class who matched a description such as "owns a motorcycle" or "has lived outside the U.S." Only in the 11 am class did a few students break out of the group and ask the instructor which description was applicable to her :) While not required or expected, it was fun to see.

The hybrid, or accelerated, class has started with mixed results; several students report not having seen the note in the class schedule that we don't meet until September 12th. Others were unaware it was an accelerated course. These are bugs that will be worked on as the hybrid course offerings are expanded. This is our first semester with these courses, so we're learning as we go! This class if working on basic tasks that aim to get them familiar with D2L and the course policies and structure.

The online 1102 course has started without a hitch! They too are working on basic introductory tasks.

In three of the five classes, blogs are being used in lieu of journals, so that will be a new twist to each class. I can't wait to see how they turn out!

All in all, it was a productive week! Next week, we start diving into content for all three classes!

Behind the scenes

Classes start Tuesday and I (and my colleagues) are amped. We are looking forward to the new school year; we're ready to do what we do! We've been working long hours to prepare syllabi, answering quesitons about our classes and enrollment, attending meetings in DL, Fergus and on campus, working on committees to improve what we do and what the campus does to make students feel welcome and successful, and preparing for the first week of classes.

The week begins with a bang: Monday is New Student Orientation. Faculty will meet new students and help get them acquainted with the campus and our services. Tuesday is not only the first day of campus classes, but we also have orientation for students enrolled in our new accelerated courses.

My own to do list:

finalize 4 completely different syllabi and copy them Monday
make sure my two online course sites on D2L are ready to go Tuesday morning (this includes a lot of proofreadings, tweaking of settings, and other mundane details)
get the first day materials ready (create, copy)
try to find time to do a little grocery shopping and to clean my house! I won't have time once classes start :)

I believe my students are:
getting back-to-school supplies (for themselves and for their own kids)
spending time with family and friends
finalizing course registrations and schedules
working as many shifts as they can before classes start
some are moving
etc.

Medieval helpdesk with English subtitles