I still remember my first experience with “professional development.” The year was 1966 or 67 and I was a new high school teacher, working with 10 th and 11 th grade students. A couple of years out of undergraduate school, I was thrilled to have a “real job” at last. So there I was, with a string of 30+ classes and tattered hand-me-down Warriner’s books, supposedly teaching “world literature” and “American literature.” I was a reasonably good reader and writer myself (stress on “reasonably”), and I’d been lucky enough to get an NDEA Fellowship to take summer courses on dramatic literature that offered some “development,” but I had very little understanding of how to teach others. In short, if anyone ever needed professional development, I was that person. So I was looking forward to an afternoon program on one of our teacher days—but not for long. Once there, our principal announced that we were going to take up “behavioral objectives” and would learn how to do so that day. There followed an incredibly tedious lecture by an “educational expert” about what in fact turned out to be an incredibly tedious and unrewarding task. For every class, every day, we were to write behavioral objectives (immediately referred to as BOs) describing each expected outcome in learning—in behavioral terms. These were to guide all of our classroom activities. I was too green at the time to understand why this process seemed so counterproductive and completely beside the point to me, and I didn’t yet have the knowledge to know why one might resist a behaviorist approach to learning. So I learned to crank these things out in no time at all—and then set them aside to make my real plans for each day. From that day on, I took a fairly dim view of “professional development.” But times have changed, and sometimes for the better (though not always). I’ve long been associated with the Bread Loaf School of English, which I regard as the best professional development program for teachers in the country. For six and a half weeks for five summers, teachers at Bread Loaf take a series of heavy-duty content courses that focus on helping young people read, write, listen, and speak with growing sophistication and depth. We live together, study together, eat and party together, and spend our time doing pretty much nothing but reading, writing, and talking about learning and teaching. I’ve seen this program change teachers’ lives and ripple out to affect tens of thousands of young people. Of course, not everyone has access to such in-depth professional development; while Bread Loaf has quite a bit of financial aid, it’s still an expense—and it demands being on campus for all those weeks during the summer. Fortunately, teachers have other good opportunities. I think of all the Writing Projects around the country, for example, and of how successful many have been.  Most recently, I have had a chance to meet and talk with teachers who are part of Stanford’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching’s Hollyhock Fellowship Program: So almost fifty years ( ! ) after I started teaching, I am encouraged to see such programs—and I’d like to hear about others you know of. But in my ideal teacher world, these programs would be ongoing—not just for two weeks during two summers. Rather than being regulated to the nth degree and boxed in with testing, testing, testing, teachers today deserve not only gratitude and a living wage: they deserve opportunities for ongoing and truly professional development. ... View more

As I grade multimodal projects, I’m always frustrated when I find errors that demonstrate that a concept didn’t stick with students. I ultimately spend about half my grading time wondering if the errors I find are my fault. Even though everything is explained repeatedly in assignments, course blog posts, and in the classroom, I fail to communicate some ideas to every student.   As an example, consider the multimodal course that I teach, Writing and Digital Media. Most of the students in course are English majors or minors. They enjoy writing and are usually fairly good at it, as the screenshot on the right from one student's final project shows. When I begin talking about multimodal composing however, they can struggle to follow the concepts, even though they are well explained in the textbook that we use, Writer/Designer, and we go over them repeatedly in class.   As I am planning the course for the fall term, I am thinking of directly addressing these ten issues that I hear students ask questions about most often:   Multimodal does not mean digital technology. Multimodal texts engage multiple modes of communication. You don’t need digital technology to do that. An illuminated medieval manuscript is just as much a multimodal text as a YouTube video is. It doesn’t mean multimedia either. A multimodal text may use multimedia (multiple media, like photos, animation, words, sounds), but it doesn’t have to. Everything in the composition classroom is multimodal composing. It’s impossible to write a text that engages only one mode. Take a traditional essay, printed out and stapled in the upper left corner. That text includes the linguistic, spatial, and visual modes of communication at a minimum. People have been learning about multimodal composition for centuries. Since everything in the writing classroom is multimodal composing, it’s not surprising that teachers have always taught about more than one mode of communication. When you learn how to use layout and design to make the words stand out on a page, for example, you’re learning multimodal composing techniques. What’s important isn’t how, but when and why. How to use multiple modes of communication when you compose is the easy part. What’s important is learning when to engage the different modes of communication and why they bring meaning to the text. Using every mode doesn’t necessarily make a text better. Use all five modes if they help you communicate your message, but don’t add modes just because you can. Make sure that they add to the meaning of the text. Communicating with the visual mode isn’t limited to using photos. Sure photos can be part of it, but you’re also using the visual mode when you add bold text or change the size and color of a font. The gestural mode includes both body language and movement. The word gestural does make you think of gesture, but gestural mode isn’t limited to things that people can do, like smile or wave their arms about. Any kind of movement that communicates with a reader uses the gestural mode. It’s easy to compose a multimodal text. It’s actually impossible not to create a multimodal text. When we add words to a word processing document, for example, we may not think about the multimodal communication we are using. We add visual elements when we choose specific fonts, when we add emphasis by changing a font to bold or increasing its size, and when we indent the words to signal the start of a paragraph or a blocked quotation. It can be challenging, however, to compose a rhetorically effective multimodal text. It is easy to compose a text that uses multiple modes of communication, but it takes work to make sure that the different modes contribute the intended meaning to the text. As you compose multimodal texts, think constantly about your intentions and make sure that the different elements that you add to the text help you say what you intend to.   I am thinking of sharing the list itself, creating an accompanying infographic, or maybe making some memes and posters. If I can convince students of those ten concepts during the first weeks of class, I think they will have an easier time as they work on their projects. I hope so anyway.   What are the ten things that you most wish students knew about the topics you teach? How do you communicate those issues to the class? Share a strategy with me by commenting below or connect with me on Facebook and share your experience. ... View more

Now that my grandnieces Audrey (11) and Lila (7) are out of school for the summer, they are engaged in all manner of activities: Camp (the sleepover kind!), hip hop and tap, volleyball, and, of course, reading. Their school has a voluntary summer reading program, and for the last few years, Audrey has been one of the top readers, gaining mysterious points for every book read. This year, Lila will be joining her, and she’s reading up a storm too. As near as I can tell, their public school offers suggestions, but pretty much lets them read whatever they want. They both love the Dork Diaries books, and Audrey is deeply into The Babysitter volumes while Lila any books about animals. Such programs are going on all over the country in elementary schools. But there are also dozens (if not hundreds) of beyond-school programs to get kids reading. It seems like everyone—from public libraries, to Barnes & Noble and Half Price Books, to Chuck E. Cheese, Pizza Hut, and Pottery Barn—is offering some kind of activity (online or in-person) for kids who want to read—or who can be cajoled to read. My little girlies are at camp right now but have promised to send me their summer reading lists when they get home. In the meantime, I’m wondering how much writing they are going to be doing along with their reading—and I wonder too if writing is involved in the programs listed above. I hope a lot. I have found some programs that focus on writing as well as reading, such as Scholastic, on whose site teachers offer writing activities, including the use of Kidblog, daily writing prompts, and writing journals. The Summer Reading at New York Public Libraries offers “Reading and Writing Fun,” where kids are invited to become storytellers, reporters, and more; and Start with a Book balances the focus on reading with writing activities like Create a Poetree, Review It, Explain It, and Write to Your Favorite Author. Perhaps schools across the country are inviting and encouraging young students to write as well as to read over the summer. If so, I’m very glad, since we all know that writing muscles atrophy just like any others if they’re not used. If Audrey and Lila don’t seem to be writing a lot, I plan to cook up some fun writing activities and games for them. So if you have any to recommend, or any information about outstanding summer reading AND writing programs, please let me know. ... View more

Last week, I proposed a compass-based activity for Discussing Ethics Scenarios in Professional Writing classes. This week I’m sharing ten scenarios to use with last week’s ethical compass. Most of the scenarios have alternative solutions or choices that you can discuss beyond the simple choice of where the situation falls on the ethical compass. Ten Ethical Scenarios You need an illustration for a pamphlet you are designing. You have saved the perfect image of the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, but you cannot remember the source and do not know whether the image is free to use under Creative Commons or in the public domain. You decide to use it anyway and hope for the best. Is the choice right? Your colleague has written a progress report that indicates the project is on schedule and on budget. The report does not mention that the colleague has been substituting cheaper, generic supplies, rather than ordering the brand of supplies that the client requested to avoid going over budget. The supplies meet safety requirements, and it’s likely that the client will not notice the change. Is the colleague doing the right thing? The marketing department has asked your supervisor for screenshots to illustrate the forthcoming features that will be added to the app you are developing. When you tell your supervisor that the features are not programmed yet, he tells you to fake something in PhotoShop. Is your supervisor choosing the right solution? The disposable knives, spoons, and forks that your company manufactures are not recyclable. Though they are made with 10% recycled materials, they go to the landfill, not the recycling bin. A customer has asked on your company Facebook page whether the spoons are eco-friendly, and the social media manager has replied that they are. Has he made the right choice? Your department has just learned of a significant security flaw in the shopping cart software the company markets. The director of software development is not releasing details on the flaw to the public, leaving millions of users’ personal information at risk. She wants to avoid giving hackers information that could lead to security breaches. Your team is working overtime to fix the flaw, and the director plans to send out a press release on the flaw when the fix is ready. Has she made the right decision? You are writing specifications for a project your engineering firm is designing. You confess to your supervisor that you are behind schedule, and he suggests that you copy several sections from a similar specification that a colleague in the office wrote for another project. Is the supervisor suggesting the right solution? You are preparing a resume for an entry-level job. Your friend tells you to change the details on your active membership in the military reserves to suggest that you are no longer serving. He explains that some employers may be concerned about your military service causing you to miss work. You know it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of military service, and you are proud of your service. You include the information against your friend’s advice. Did you make the right choice? An intern who worked in your department has asked you to fill out a recommendation form for a scholarship application. You agree, but when you review the form, you notice questions about the intern’s religious affiliation and her commitment to her faith. You do not feel it’s appropriate to answer these questions, so you write, “I do not have enough information to answer this question” in that section of the form. Did you make the right decision? Your company has been taking shortcuts with quality control, resulting in the manufacture of food products that barely meet health and safety requirements. You create anonymous accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and you post evidence of the quality control issues on the accounts, tagging the corporate accounts. Was your action right? You wrote an extensive manual for using petroleum drilling equipment that your company manufactures. To save money, an editor pared down the manual, removing 2 pages of information overall. You review the changes and restore half of the information, which consisted primarily of important safety warnings. Your supervisor is unhappy about the cost, but you stand firm that the information must remain in the manual. Have you made the right decision? Because I am teaching online, I plan on using the scenarios throughout the term, posting two or three each week on our online discussion forum for students to respond to. I’ll try beginning with an anonymous poll on each scenario to gauge where the class stands before discussing the nuances of the situation and possible alternative responses. In the face-to-face classroom, I think I’d have students work in groups to propose ways to deal with the situation and then as a class work to a solution we all feel ethically deals with the scenario. This activity grew from conversations during the Pathways Summer Institute, sponsored by the Virginia Tech Office of General Education. Where do you find your ethical discussion starters? Do you have resources to share? Let me hear from you. Just leave me a comment below, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. [Photo: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument by Kevin Dooley, on Flickr] ... View more

Recently, I read an article in the New York Times about Snapchat, the video messaging app that has barnstormed its way toward valuations in the billions of dollars. The article’s title, “Snapchat: A New Mobile Challenge for Storytelling,” caught my attention and got me looking around the Snapchat site and watching some of their “stories.” The ones I watched were mostly reportorial, with someone giving information accompanied by images. But they got me wondering about other kinds of stories and how they might be told and circulated via Snapchat. One aspect of the app—its claim that snaps are deleted after 24 hours and can’t be retrieved—has been challenged by some who say that nothing on the Web is completely irretrievable, and by others who object to the cursory nature of snaps. Privacy issues aside, I like the idea of the ephemeral nature of Snapchat postings since it seems to open a special space for experimentation and creativity. I’m much more interested in this aspect of Snapchat than in the ability to “follow” people (aka celebrities), as detailed in a Time article on viral Snapchat stars. I also like the way this app demands multimodality—telling stories with words and images. And I’d particularly like to hear whether Snapchat is being used in classrooms. So, if you have any information on this topic, please let me know! ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Caitlin L. Kelly, a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she teaches multimodal composition courses using 18 th - and 19 th -century British literature and serves as a Professional Tutor in the Communication Center. Alongside work on the intersection of religion and genre in British literature of the Long Eighteenth Century, she is also interested in exploring applications of a multimodal approach to composition to traditional literature pedagogy. One of the most difficult assignments to teach is the one at the heart of most college composition courses: the research project. Taking students from brainstorming a topic to a polished argument over the course of a semester is daunting; in the composition classroom, we are tasked with teaching—under very inorganic circumstances—a research process that should evolve organically. And one of the most challenging parts of that process for many students is learning how to engage with sources once they have found them. This is where the listicle comes into play in my courses. The listicle provides a dedicated space where students can explore the many different arguments that they can make with the sources they have found in researching their topics. It can then become a form of multimodal outline and first draft. The listicle can also help to emphasize that any presentation of research—written, oral, visual, and multimodal—has a narrative and tells a story. In this way, it has much in common with Andrea Lunsford’s Storify assignment in which she harnesses the affordances of that multimodal platform to collect evidence and “pull all the pieces together to see what results.” What’s a Listicle? A listicle is a hybrid genre, an article in list form. While listicles can be found in a variety of print and digital publications, the genre is best known for its use on the websites Buzzfeed and Cracked. As a result, listicles are often not considered as “professional” and appropriate for “serious” subjects. Slowly, however, that view has been changing, and that is good for composition teachers. Not only does it make the genre more accessible to us as educators but also it allows students to participate in its evolution. As defenders of the listicle have pointed out, the genre is responding to our need to deal with the ever-increasing multitudes of data that are readily available to us. Listicles give us a tool with which to “curate” that information, and they provide “additional ways to interact with [it]” and act as “jumping off points” for further research. As Maria Konninkova explains in the New Yorker, listicles do the “mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis” at the outset. In a digital environment, this improves the chances that readers will indeed read—and understand. Learning Objectives Jessie Miller, writing about her multimodal annotated bibliography assignment, describes the way that using “a visual display of information to map out the interplay between their sources” can be an effective way “to get students to see source use as an engaging and active practice.” The same can be said of listicles. Additionally, in composing a listicle, students gain: a space to explore the many stories their research can tell, a chance to focus on how the parts of their argument relate, an opportunity to explore communicating specialized, academic topics in a way that is accessible for wide audiences, a better understanding of copyright, and practice in attributing sources in a digital environment. The Assignment After spending the first 4-6 weeks of the semester reading and exploring potential research topics, students first put together a robust annotated bibliography. Using those bibliographies, the students remix the information into a listicle. In the process, I also make a point of discussing how the structure of the listicle maps onto more traditional writing assignments. Assigning readings on drafting, constructing arguments, and revision from texts like The St. Martin’s Handbook are all options, depending on your students’ needs and how you are using the assignment. Chapter 1 of Everything’s An Argument would be a particularly good pairing if you want your students to identify a specific type of argument that they want to make in their listicles. In terms of what platforms the students use to present their listicles, I leave that up to them to determine. They have found that free website builders like Weebly, Wix, WordPress, and the like are good options for this project. With its emphasis on images, Tumblr can also be an effective platform. A few students have even posted their work on Medium and on Buzzfeed Community. Each platform presents a different range of affordances, so students also have a chance to reflect on the ways that various platforms inform their composition strategies. The assignment also affords students with a unique opportunity to practice using images alongside textual evidence in their arguments. An effective listicle uses images to advance its argument and to connect with a wider, nonacademic audience. These are vital skills for students, particularly those in STEM fields. Images can be used to present evidence, help readers to visualize complex concepts, or to demonstrate significance or perspective. Students can even create images to use by taking their own photographs and creating their own graphics. Determining what permissions are required to use these images and the appropriate ways of attributing them provide invaluable lessons in applying traditional methods of citation to digital environments where the rules are still emerging.  I have included sample assignment instructions​, and below is a template showing the first section of a listicle and the defining characteristics of the genre. Finally, because the listicle is such an exploratory assignment, reflection is an especially important part of the process. That reflective work can be done formally by making reflection an explicit part of the assignment or, as I have done, reflection can occur in the course of peer review. I schedule two class sessions for peer review. In the first I ask students to bring several copies of the written parts of the listicle–the title, section titles, and short paragraphs for each section. Then, they cut those up and have classmates reassemble them. Many students find that the story they are hoping to tell is not the one that their readers anticipate or find engaging. So, in drafting their listicles the students have taken the first step in determining what it is they want to say; in giving a fragmented draft of the listicle to their peers, they get to see how readers would use the same sources in different ways. The next step for students is reconciling those different views and determining which path it is that they want to take—how they want to enter the conversation. For the second peer review, then, the students bring a draft in which they have assembled all of the parts of the listicle in the media they will submit it in. Here, they refine the presentation of their research narratives and the emphasis shifts to tone, style, design, and attribution. Concluding Thoughts One of the most exciting things about incorporating a listicle assignment in a composition class is its newness as a genre and its flexibility. A listicle might be one step on the way to a larger project or it might be the larger project itself. A listicle could also be formal or informal, left in draft form or polished, composed offline or online—depending on the instructor’s needs and learning objectives. An emphasis could be put on research, genre, public writing, digital writing or any combination thereof. There is plenty of room to develop the listicle as a genre and assignment for a variety of purposes, making it highly accessible for composition teachers at all levels and institutions. Want to collaborate with Andrea on a Multimodal Monday assignment? Send ideas to leah.rang@macmillan.com for possible inclusion in a future post. ... View more

Several weeks ago I promised in one of my blogs that I would share the results of an exercise in critical thinking that I was preparing to conduct with faculty in my role as Director of Assessment and Program Review at my university.  Since the outcome of this exercise is equally relevant to the teaching of critical reading and writing—not to mention popular cultural semiotics—I am glad to be able to keep my promise here. Let’s begin with my premises and anticipations.  My fundamental premise is that there is an elemental core to all acts of critical thinking, no matter what the academic discipline or real world context.  As I mentioned in my earlier blog, I call this the what .  .  . so what then? basis of critical thinking.  That is, in all instances, critical thinking constitutes a precise identification of a problem or topic (what) and moves from that to an exploration of its ramifications, meanings, or (as in the case of a problem) possible solutions (so what then?). Now, I anticipated (and will continue to anticipate) some objections to this claim.  Its worst feature is its claim of universality, which is a frequent characteristic of definitions of critical thinking, including those that are currently most influential in the teaching and assessment of critical thinking in this country.  Most standardized tests of critical thinking, for example, lean heavily on the traditional philosophical definition: that critical thinking constitutes the ability to spot—and formally identify—logical and argumentative fallacies.  I happen to agree that such an ability is necessary to effective critical thinking, but I also think that it is too narrow a definition, and, more importantly, too passive.  It enables one to identify a fallacy in somewhat else’s thinking (critical reading) but it does not describe how to think critically (and creatively) oneself, beyond pointing out what to avoid. A second extremely influential definition of critical thinking in assessment circles is based in educational psychology, and centers on something called Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is a hierarchical description of the cognitive functions that take place in the course of critical thinking.  Once again, I have no quarrel with this approach, but it, too, is rather narrow, and, more importantly, too abstract.  I mean, when thinking critically one doesn’t say, “now I am going to use my knowledge,” “now I am going to comprehend,” “now I am going to apply,” “now I am going to analyze,” and so on and so forth.  Critical thinking is a lot more like riding a bicycle: when you are doing it you are doing it, not consciously isolating each muscular and mental component in your movement. But what about the what  .  .  .  so what then? descriptor?  What I wanted to demonstrate to my faculty is that that is precisely what is going on in their minds when they are engaged in critical thinking, whether their initialwhat is a problem to be solved in business and marketing, or a topic to be taught and analyzed in an ethnic studies course.  I was way up on the high wire without a net in trying to do this, but I didn’t fall, even when business/marketing and ethnic studies examples were volunteered from the participants in the session.  In fact, those two examples, serendipitously proposed by my faculty colleagues, served as the core examples for our discussion and helped establish the fundamental continuities between otherwise widely diverging acts of critical thought. One of the key elements of the movement from what to so what then? in our discussion was the importance of the analysis of assumptions (this is one of the features of critical thinking that you can find on the VALUE rubric for critical thinking)—in cultural semiotics, this analysis is called the evaluation of cultural mythologies.  Another point that a faculty member brought up was the importance of considering alternatives in thinking critically—in semiotics, this is referred to as the overdetermination inherent in semiotic analysis. For my part, I stressed the importance of being very clear on the what (in semiotics, the denotation of the sign) before moving to the interpretativeso what then? (in semiotics, the connotation of the sign).  I also noted how the movement from what to so what then? required historical and situational contextualization (in semiotics, the construction of systems of association and difference.) In other words, the semiotic model worked as a fundamental descriptor of what we are already doing when we are thinking critically.  This was even the case when a colleague who is a composition specialist noted that in rhetoric one is concerned with a who, not a what.  But when I pointed out that a who stands in the place of the what that a rhetorician must first identify before moving to a persuasive strategy, we were able to agree that whos are whats, too. OK, I know that I’m starting to sound like Dr. Seuss.  The point is, my exercise worked.  The complete practical description of how to teach, and perform, critical thinking according to this model can be found in Signs of Life in the U.S.A.  ... View more

If you’ve been teaching for some time, I wonder if you’ve seen some of your favorite assignments evolve or change over time. I’m realizing that a number of mine have, almost without my noticing. Right now I’m thinking of my much loved “long sentence assignment.” I started giving this assignment to break up the lengthy research project my students all do, and in particular to focus for a bit on syntax and style. It’s a low stakes assignment, much like finger exercises on the piano, meant for fun and practice, though I do assign a few points to it. Here’s how it started out: I asked students to write a “perfectly punctuated, 250-word sentence,” providing some models for them from Martin Luther King, Dylan Thomas, Will and Ariel Durant, and others over the years. We spent some time analyzing the structure of the model long sentences—King’s sentence, for instance, is a periodic sentence, built up of a series of dependent clauses and holding the main clause, “Then you will know why we can’t wait,” until the very end. That gave me a chance to introduce the concepts of paratactic and hypotactic structures and give a brief history of English syntax. Students were horrified at the assignment, saying that it can’t be done. But of course then they found that it can be done and were quite proud of their results, which we also analyzed in class. Then we returned to the research project, looking at some individual sentences and seeing how they could be made more effective. After some years of working with this assignment, I went a step further and asked students to rewrite the 250-word sentence into precisely 25 words. That turned out to be quite a challenge, but fun too, and we worked together to analyze those shorter sentences and to debate which was most effective—and why. Then came Twitter, and I decided to ask students to take another step and turn their sentences into Tweets. Now we had three sentences on the same subject matter but with radical differences that we could explore together. Most interesting to me were discussions about when and where each sentence might be most appropriate: students had strong opinions about that! Best of all, I could see them paying closer attention to all their sentences, realizing that their rhetorical choices mattered and that their sentences were definitely connected to how an audience received their work. And today? I now add a fourth challenge: take either the 25-word sentence or the Tweet and illustrate it. I was inspired to make this addition by the animated sentences on Electric Literature. Some of my students do indeed have the skill to animate their sentences, but those who don’t or who don’t want to do so can illustrate in any other way, using crayons or colored pencils, cutting and pasting, or creating digital illustrations. Now we have an added layer of visual rhetoric to analyze and think about, and I find that students especially like rising to this challenge. So that’s how one of my tried-and-true assignments has morphed over the years, one layer at a time. I’d love to hear how some of your assignments may have changed! ... View more

When Susan Miera—who did her MA degree at the Bread Loaf School of English and is a leader in the Bread Loaf Teacher Network—invited me to join her and colleagues and students in Santa Fe, I jumped at the chance.  I’ve known “Ms. Miera,” as she is lovingly known by legions of high schoolers, for many years, and I’ve worked with a number of Native American students she has mentored—and sent to Stanford.  She’s a whirlwind of energy, and I know that I will always learn something new from her.  This visit was no exception. With support from Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS), the Bread Loaf School of English, and Write to Change, Susan, who directs the writing center at SFIS, and her colleague Alicia Fritz put together a day-long workshop on Writing and Teaching Writing in the Digital Age.  The workshop brought together middle and high school students and teachers from SFIS as well as from Pecos (public) and Monte del Sol (charter) high schools, so bright and early on Friday morning about 30 of us gathered on the gorgeous SFIS campus to begin our day. This eight-and-a-half foot bronze statue, by artist Estella Loretto, welcomed us to SFIS Colleagues at SFIS describe it as a “grant” school, meaning that they receive some federal funds.  But they are also supported by the nineteen pueblos of New Mexico, along with other local and state sources.  What I sensed immediately was a strong sense of ownership among the students and faculty at SFIS, captured in what they said about their relationship to the school as well as in many posters and art works throughout the school that stressed commitment and pride: After introductions and greetings, I talked about the necessity of collaboration for learning and for writing, enumerating four challenges I think we need to address:  the individualistic premises on which most institutions of education rest; the fact that our classrooms are now public spaces; alternatives to the “lecture mode” still common in many schools; and the need to retain the best of the “old literacy” while embracing the best parts of the “new literacies.”  Then we divided into groups, making sure to have students and teachers from all three schools in each group, and we got to work designing activities and assignments and policies we thought could address these issues. The day went by in a flash, as groups presented their ideas and plans:  everything from designing a Think-a-Tron machine that would allow people working in groups to immediately access each other’s thoughts (!), to presenting PARCC (State test) WARS, in which the students designed a movie trailer to parody the test, to designing a unit on Romeo and Juliet that is thoroughly interactive, participatory, and performative—and a whole lot more.  Watchword for the day came from Steven Johnson, who in his “Where Good Ideas Come From” talk says “chance favors the connectedmind.”  Once again, I had the privilege of spending a day with insightful, thoughtful, witty, and wise young people.  And once again I came away convinced that today’s youth are prepared to use literacy—together—to reimagine classrooms, schools, and themselves. Susan, Alicia, and me ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Monica Miller, a Marion L Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the school of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, specializing in digital pedagogies and multimodal composition. She received her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 2014, where she studied American literature, with concentrations in Southern Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her work focuses on the intersections of region and gender. Her current book project, Don’t Be Ugly: The Ugly Plot in the Work of Southern Women Writers, examines the ways in which ugliness marks fictional characters who are excluded from traditional gender roles of marriage and motherhood. “My friend said that his 1101 class was the best, because they watch videos all day—but he doesn’t get to play with Play-doh like we do!” –Overheard in my first year, multimodal, “maker culture”-themed composition classroom. The students in my class were to some extent open to the idea of playing in the classroom, as the course theme of “Maker Culture” was one which encouraged play, seeing it as a key to innovation. “Play” is actually one of the guiding principles of Mark Hatch’s Maker Movement Manifesto, as important to his philosophy as other guiding principles such as “Share,” “Learn,” and “Tool Up.” Hatch encourages makers to “Be playful with what you are making, and you will be surprised, excited, and proud of what you discover” (2). Although there is much less awareness of maker culture in FYC pedagogy than there is in STEM classrooms, I have found that maker culture’s emphasis on digital tools, play, and collaborative learning make it an ideal approach to the multimodal composition classroom. Let me clarify, however, that this kind of “play day” is not the same as the “safe space” featured in a recent New York Times article which has been subject to much debate. While students in such safe spaces play with Play-doh, crayons, and bubbles in order to find emotional security, in my classroom, these craft supplies served very specific pedagogical purposes. Goals To learn and reflect upon collaboration. To introduce the concept of affordances. Background reading before class Ask students to plan for the presentation by reading relevant content from your handbook or rhetoric: The St. Martin’s Handbook, section 4m, “Reflecting” The Everyday Writer, section 11b, “Reflect” Writing in Action, section 5i, “Reflect” EasyWriter, section 2j, “Reflecting” The Activity In small groups, construct “creatures” from Play-doh and other “play” materials. The students worked hard on their presentations, and many of them had been terrified by the public speaking. To reward their efforts, the class period following their presentations, we had a “play day.” I gave students Play-doh, construction paper, yarn, glue sticks, and scissors, with the vague instruction to “make a creature.” The only parameters I set were these: each group was to collaborate on one creature; the creature had to be finished by the end of class; and they couldn’t mix the Play-doh colors, because other students would be using them. When asked why we were playing with Play-doh in class, I said that I did have some pedagogical motivations for the day, which I would reveal on Thursday, but I asked that they trust that there was a pedagogical foundation to the exercise and try to immerse themselves in the play. As the photographs throughout this post show, it was generally a fun day—something about the smells and textures from childhood coupled with relief from having a big project behind them allowed most of them to really let go and enjoy themselves. (Also, engineers have some skills with craft materials!) Reflecting on the Activity The class period after our play day, I began by focusing on the collaborative learning aspect of the exercise. My students were used to frequent collaboration in their assignments, whether brainstorming, peer review workshops on drafts, or more formal group projects. That day, I started class with a writing assignment, in which I asked students to reflect upon the following: The nature of their group dynamics while making the creature, comparing the experience to their group presentation project as well as the other group work they’ve done, both in English 1101 as well as other situations. How the nature of the project affected how they worked as a group. How their group dynamics had changed over the course of the larger project. We then looked at the photographs I took of the different creatures. Each group explained their process, what media they used for the different parts, and how their vision changed over the course of the construction. As we looked at the pictures, I asked students to think about what different purposes were served by different media. Yarn works well for hair as well as for being crocheted or knitted into clothes; Play-doh is good for larger body parts; construction paper can be used not only for details, such as eyes, but also for construction–several groups used it to make tabs to attach tails to bodies, for example. Moving Forward These observations allowed me to introduce the concept of “affordances” to the class. By first talking about the affordances of Play-doh in creature creation, I could then transition to a lesson in digital tools: a discussion of the affordances of different media—whether photos, video, or written text—in website design, which was their final project in the class. I was quite pleased with the results of our play day. Maker culture is on to something—play encourages not only innovation, but also an atmosphere of openness which helps bring about the kind of community I strive for in my classroom. Playing in the classroom not only gives students a chance to catch their breath but fosters an environment of trust and (dare I say?) fun which I believe ultimately produces happier, more engaged students. Want to collaborate with Andrea on a Multimodal Mondays assignment? Send ideas to leah.rang@macmillan.com for possible inclusion in a future post. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 10th, 2015. I began the multimodal composing course I’m teaching this term with an exploration of digital identity, working from an assignment shared as a Multimodal Mondays post. I asked students to compose a “Statement of Your Online Identity,” combining a digital image with a brief linguistic text. To help them get started, I asked students to think about the personas they developed online. Informally in class, we talked about the ways that they presented themselves online (for instance, on Facebook with friends, on LinkedIn with potential colleagues and employers, and on gaming sites with other gamers). While I felt students had the general idea, I wanted to give them a more structured way to gather thoughts about their identity. I found the perfect tool in a Digital Identity Mapping grid, from Fred Cavazza (blog in French): In the grid, students noted the different places they inhabit online, and then worked from the grid to find the aspects of their identity to focus on in their projects. To simplify their notetaking, I created a Digital Identity Mapping form in Google Drive. (Make your own copy by opening the link, then go to File → Make a Copy in Google Drive). I encouraged students to type the names of the various sites rather than tracking down the icons, as in Cavazza’s image. The icons make a pretty and colorful display, but I wanted students’ energy focused on their project, not on gathering icons. The Digital Identity Mapping form was a great supplement to the project. Rather than going with the first idea that came to mind, students had to think deeply about the different places and identities that they had developed online. As a result, students had more evidence to use as they developed their identity statements. They quickly went from having little to say to choosing among a variety of options. I’m definitely using that grid again to get students started on their projects. Could you use it in your course? Want to share some feedback on my project or share another tool I can use? Please leave me a comment below, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. [Photo: Digital Identity Mapping by fredcavazza, on Flickr] ... View more

Students in the writing and digital media course that I teach have started work on their final project, the “remix a story” project that I have mentioned in previous posts. For this project, students choose a story (fiction or nonfiction) and retell that story using digital composing tools. The goal is to get beyond primarily linguistic stories to create stories that engage multiple modes of communication fully. Many students will include social media as part of their remix. I have had projects that included things such as Twitter updates from Little Red Riding Hood and Facebook updates from characters in The Little Mermaid. As creative and fun as these projects are, they bring challenges: Facebook does not allow fictional sites, so students risk having their project removed if Facebook finds it. Creating logins for multiple characters can be at best tedious and at worst impossible for sites that allow only one account per email address. Project assets made with the real social media sites sometimes include extraneous information Students may need to know how to edit screenshots to remove timestamps, for instance. Students shouldn’t have to use their personal accounts for such projects. Their private social media stream should be private, not filled with updates from Little Red Riding Hood and the Big, Bad Wolf. To address these challenges, I point students to these online tools that allow them to fake social media updates. Facebook Fakebook, Fake Facebook Generators, The Wall Machine Twitter Fake Twitter Generators, LemmeTweetThatForYou, Twister Text Messages iPhone Fake Phone Texts, iOS7 Text Generator, SMS Generator,IFakeText SnapChat Snapr, Fake Snap Others iPad Message Generator, Sign Generators, Ticket-O-Matic, iFakeSiri There are additional tools at ClassTools.net and BigHugeLabs that could work, depending upon the story and remix goals a student has. I do talk about ethical use of the tools when I share the list in class. It’s not that I don’t trust my students, but many of the sites talk about pranking people with your fake creations. That isn’t our goal, and I want to avoid any mixed messages. I’m always on the lookout for tools to add the list. If you have a suggestion, please leave me a comment below, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on March 5th, 2015. When I say I am a teacher of writing to a new acquaintance, I often get the response no doubt familiar to you: “Oops; better watch my language.” This stereotype of the English teacher as a nit-picker extraordinaire is widespread and seems to be deeply ingrained in the national psyche as “Miss Fidditch.” This character’s name seems to have been coined by linguist Henry Lee Smith in the early 1950s—though H. L. Mencken had earlier referred to “old maid schoolteachers who would rather parse than eat.” So the stereotype is surely an old one. I became familiar with Miss Fidditch, however, when I read a book on style, Martin Joos’s The Five Clocks: a Linguistic Excursion into the Five Styles of English Usage (1967). Joos’s book (along with a brilliant and witty introduction by Albert Marckwardt) left a lasting impression on me, introducing me to the notion of contextual appropriateness and convincing me that where English is concerned, there is never one solitary right way to proceed: everything depends on the rhetorical situation and the intended purpose. Joos describes five styles: intimate, casual, consultative, formal, and frozen or formative, the last the kind of language that needs to remain the same in all situations: a phrase from the Bible, for example. Apparently, Joos was inspired to write this book when he was teaching a grammar course to a group of teachers. When he asked them to respond to a short passage, they set at it with a vengeance, marking it up in every direction and finding it woefully lacking. Joos then had to tell them that it had been written by a Pulitzer prize winner (!). What he also no doubt told them was a lot about the importance of purpose and situation in style, from the intimate language appropriate to spouses or partners to the formal writing of the business world—and everything in between. You may have run into Miss Fidditch in the work of Ken Macrorie or Peter Elbow, for she makes appearances there. But it’s worth going back to Joosas well; his is an important work in understanding how to talk to young writers about style. Miss Fidditch was (is) no doubt a “comma queen,” a phrase that Mary Norris applies to herself in “Holy Writ: Learning to Love House Style,” which appeared in the February 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker. Norris is a grand stylist herself, straightforward, witty, self-deprecating in just the right way, and friendly: she takes us on a journey through her life, from “foot checker” at a local swimming pool, to milk truck driver, dishwasher, mozzarella cheese packer, and eventually as a minor clerical worker in the editorial library of The New Yorker. There she has remained, working her way up from one job to the next and honing her love of style—and especially of the comma. She began reading everything as if she were copyediting it, and commas were her special territory: she could spot an errant one a mile away. But she learned to control her ardor, remembering that commas don’t bow to hard and fast rules but are situational and contextual. Backing up a bit, she tells us that The comma as we know it was invented by Aldo Manuzio, a printer working in Venice, circa 1500. It was intended to prevent confusion by separating things. In the Greek, komma means “something cut off,” a segment. (Aldo was printing Greek classics during the High Renaissance. The comma was a Renaissance invention.) As the comma proliferated, it started generating confusion. Basically, there are two schools of thought: One plays by ear, using the comma to mark a pause, like dynamics in music; if you were reading aloud, the comma would suggest when to take a breath. The other uses punctuation to clarify the meaning of a sentence by illuminating its underlying structure. Each school believes that the other gets carried away. (Paragraph 21, if I counted correctly in the article, which you can find here.) A corps of commas ready to serve comma queens and comma commoners alike Later, Norris tackles the question of the use of commas in a series (often referred to as the “Oxford  comma”), coming down on the side of those who advocate putting that final comma in, before the final item. I’ve always told students that putting that last comma in is easiest because then they can be consistent, not having to stop and think whether they need it there or not. Norris agrees, as indeed does New Yorker house style, and she gives some goofy examples to prove the point that leaving that last comma out can indeed sometimes produce confusion, consternation, or worse: “We invited the strippers, J.F.K. and Stalin.” (This has beenillustrated online, and formed the basis of a poll: which stripper had the better outfit, J.F.K. or Stalin.)“This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” The example I always use is “She ordered several sets of colorful socks:  banana yellow, turquoise, magenta, orange and lime.” Did she order four sets—or five? The comma makes the difference. Later in the essay, Norris tells readers of her fascination with comma usage in the work of James Salter, who uses a comma where she ordinarily would not put one, as in this sentence: “Eve was across the room in a thin, burgundy dress that showed the faint outline of her stomach.” Eventually, Norris runs across a number of such usages in Salter’s work, enough to let her know that they are intentional uses of the comma. She frets about this for some time and eventually writes to him. He gives a response that underscores how individual comma usage can be and especially how tied to purpose and situation it is: As I had suspected, with the comma in “Eve was across the room in a thin, burgundy dress that showed the faint outline of her stomach,” [Salter] was trying to emphasize the contours of the stomach under the dress. “It wasn’t a thin burgundy dress,” he wrote. “It was a thin dress, burgundy in color. I wanted the reader to be aware of the thinness.” Across the decades of my teaching career, I’ve met students whose comma use ranged from the “sprinkle in a few for effect” to as carefully chosen and deployed commas as the ones in Salter’s fiction. And I have certainly talked with students about the need to choose all punctuation with an eye to what is appropriate and effective in their particular rhetorical situation: which one of Joos’s five clocks they are telling time by. But I don’t think I have spent enough time demonstrating to students the full range and power of the lowly comma. Maybe I can be a “comma queen” without turning into “Miss Fidditch”! [Image: a row of commas by Moira Clunle on Flickr] ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 19th, 2015. You may have seen an article in the New York Times called “Writing Your Way to Happiness.” This essay corroborated earlier research that has connected writing with improved health, though the author here focuses on if and how writing can lead to behavioral change and “improve happiness.” A number of studies indicate that writing can indeed lead to such changes. As the author puts it, “by writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of better health.” I found the article fascinating, and encouraging, although the behaviorist leanings of some of the studies reported on left me less than thrilled. But closer to home, I have seen the benefits of life writing/revising at work. Bronwyn LaMay’s (brilliant) dissertation reported on an ethnographic study she had done of students of color who attended a very tough high school. She followed one class for an entire year, during which they read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and wrote about love in their own lives. Bronwyn is working on a book that describes the study and her students, and I’ll be reviewing and recommending it to you as soon as it is available, because the results were truly remarkable. Bronwyn led her students in reading—word for word, line for line—Morrison’s book, and talking about the kinds of love represented there—and about the way that some characters attempted to intervene in the plot lines of their lives. Slowly the students began to apply this concept to their own lives: what stories or plot lines could they see their own lives taking—and how might they write their way toward interventions and changes in those stories? They tackled this question with energy and passion and commitment. Recently, Bronwyn and I had a chance to introduce the same questions to a group of students participating in Stanford’s Project WRITE, which brings students from East Palo Alto high schools to campus on Saturday mornings during the winter for writing workshops of all kinds. The one Bronwyn and I led began with a simple question: what is love? We showed the group some things Toni Morrison has to say about love (“actually, I think all the time when I write, I’m writing about love or its absence”) and some quotations from Bronwyn’s former students, like this one: As I was growing up all I heard around me was “I love you,” “te amo,” without showing it. My definition of love when I was growing up was somebody hurting you physically and emotionally, but that was just a way of them showing their loved ones love. The students then wrote on their own in short spurts about their definitions of love, and during discussion we asked them what kind of a story these definitions told about their lives. Once we got there, the students were hooked: they talked to and often over one another, and then they wrote. And wrote some more. We left them with the assignment to carry on this piece of writing during the week and to return to the workshop the following Saturday. I was certain they would come prepared as never before. As Bronwyn points out, students in their high school years are focused (inevitably and as they should be) on themselves, on who they are and who they might be. Writing that guides them in exploring these questions is the kind of writing I think of when I hear about “writing your way to happiness.” Writing alone can’t change the cold hard facts of many young people’s lives. But it can begin the work of interrogating those facts, of interpreting them and shaping them. And revising their lives in the process. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 13th, 2015. Because my son Jonathan is a film scholar, I am probably even more aware than most that this is awards season. The Academy Awards ceremony each year is for our household what the Super Bowl is for others. Jonathan recently posted on Facebook that in his lifetime he has seen 2,502 movies. The fact that he knows that speaks volumes about his obsession, along with the fact that he was watching classic silent movies before he could read the subtitles. I came naturally to use the movie review as a means of teaching the claim of value, but my approach can be adapted to other types of evaluative writing as well. First, I ask my students to bring in or upload examples of movie reviews that are essay length. My goal is to let my students discover the conventions of the genre. I put them into groups to share the reviews and ask them to come up with a list of rules for writing movie reviews. An example would be that one never gives away the ending. More useful is the observation that a good review is focused—it has a point more specific than that the movie is good or bad. After the group work, we work as a class to come up with a master list of rules, and I ask them to share some of the best examples of claims that they discovered. They can use the list of rules as they write their own reviews and can model claims for their own writing on the best examples we have discovered. Second, I find it useful to check students’ claims before they write their essays so that I can head off problems such as claims that are too broad or that are not actually claims of value. Third, I have them write their review for a specific publication. It makes a difference if a review would appear in Parents magazine rather than Rolling Stone. They can adapt their content and their language to their audience, and I can evaluate their writing accordingly. Through this process I am trying to teach them an important point about all evaluative writing—that a work of art, or anything else, is evaluated according to a set of standards.  Readers are not going to agree with a review if they do not agree with the standards the writer uses to judge it. It is widely believed that the Academy Awards are slanted to the perspective of “old white guys” because of the make-up of the organization. They are more conservative, for example, than professional critics, who err on the side of rewarding risk taking. Whatever the audience, whatever the standards being used to judge a work of art, it is ultimately the responsibility of the reviewer to build a convincing case, using specific references to the work, that it meets or does not meet a clearly established set of standards. [Photo source: Loren Javier, "Academy Award..."] ... View more