Recently I had an opportunity to speak to a group of two-year college writing teachers in Texas. The topic very much on their minds: guns in their classrooms.  As I learned, the Texas legislature has passed a new law, which takes effect this coming August.  Here’s what it says: (You can read more at http://www.armedcampuses.org/texas/.  This site also has a petition to keep guns off campuses.) The teachers I talked with are enormously concerned about this new law and what it will mean for their teaching and for their students’ learning.  More than a few of them described “training” they are taking to help them prepare for and deal with the new law:  they are warned to “be very careful” not to introduce topics that might upset students.  And if a shooter appears in their classes, they are to face the shooter and shield their students.  Of course we talked about other things—primarily about how to help all of our students develop into confident and competent writers. But these conversations about guns in classrooms are what have stuck in my mind.  Every. Single. Day.  Many teachers I spoke with seemed fearful but resigned:  “This is Texas,” they said.  Maybe so, but I came away thinking about the havoc this new law can have:  we all know that college students are at a vulnerable time in their lives, that many of them are suffering from anxiety and depression. Research also shows that college-age students’ brains have not fully developed, especially in the area controlling split-second decisions.  These facts make having guns in classrooms seem counterproductive, at the very best. In addition, this law is almost certainly going to have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and on one of the foundations of higher education:  the opportunity to encounter ideas across the spectrum, including those that may be difficult to understand or accept.  I am fortunate to have taught at a university without guns, and I hope that will continue to be the case.  What I would like to do, though, is join a national movement of teachers, especially those who teach on campuses where guns are allowed in class, to declare that we will not teach in an atmosphere of grave danger. Arriving at the Bush International Airport in Houston on my journey home, I was met by a large red sign on the outside door:  Would I meet a person carrying a concealed licensed firearm?  In fact, I did not—at least not that I know of—but I was more cautious than usual.  It was a long day, and I hated concentrating on people with guns rather than thinking about students and their learning. ... View more

I wanted to take a quick break from our tour of the third edition of Emerging to discuss how to teach the current controversy between Apple and the FBI.  As I write this post, the standoff between the two continues, with the FBI attempting to force Apple into helping them to gain access to the iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, whose shooting spree killed over a dozen people in San Benardino, and Apple resolutely refusing to cooperate. To provide students some background on the issues involved, you might ask them to read the letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook, which stakes out Apple’s position and its perception of what’s at stake, as well as the statement from FBI Director James Comey, which presents the FBI’s position on the matter.  These two documents are useful texts for analysis in and of themselves, played out as they are on national media stages.  And it’s also useful for students to consider the ways in which the specific positions of each side have been managed, marketed, repackaged, and flattened into simplistic questions of privacy and security. Emerging does offer a fantastic reading to help students explore this issue: Peter Singer’s “Visible Man; Ethics in a World without Secrets.” Singer’s essay has a bit of theoretical weight to it, opening with Bentham’s notion of the Panopticon and invoking the concept of “sousveillance” as well.  At the heart of Singer’s essay, though, is the question of privacy in relation to changing technology and questions of security—the very questions at the heart of the Apple v. FBI debate.  For Singer, the solution to some of these issues is for the watched to watch the watchers.  WikiLeaks is his example in that case.  And while that probably isn’t a solution in this current case, Singer’s thinking nevertheless foregrounds these vital issues and offers students tools to think through the complexities. Give it a try.  I think you’ll find it works great. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Last week, I heard from a colleague in South Carolina who had visited one of my technical writing course websites and wanted more information on the discussion forum activities that I ask students to complete. As I replied to her email message, I realized that there was a lot that I do with online forum discussions that I haven’t ever written down. I didn’t have any links to point her to! Today I plan to fix that problem by sharing the details on how I set up online discussions as a participation activity, how I manage students, and how I assess their work in these discussions. Next week, I’ll share the three kinds of discussion that I ask students to participate in. Setting Up the Discussions I require participation in the discussion forums as a part of my course, mentioning the requirement on the syllabus and on the course’s assignment overview page. Since the course I am teaching is 100% online, there is no classroom discussion. I use the Discussions tool in Canvas, our CMS, as a substitute for the interaction and conversations that would typically take place in a face-to-face class. I don’t bother with much discussion of netiquette. All work and participation in the course is already governed by the Undergraduate Honor System and the Virginia Tech Principles of Community, so troubling behavior is already covered. Along with those two documents, I use relevant information from Chapter 3 of the textbook I use, Practical Strategies for Technical Communication by Mike Markel. This chapter discusses how social media and other electronic tools such as messaging technologies, wikis, and shared document workspaces can be useful for collaboration in the workplace. I ask students to read that chapter in the first week of the course to address other issues of appropriateness and professionalism in online communication. Further, this overview of digital collaboration gives the class’s online discussion additional relevance as preparation for the workplace. Arranging Students into Groups In the face-to-face classroom, many of the discussion questions I use work well in a full-class discussion. Online, however, students have a harder time engaging with 21 other students in a full-class discussion. The long, scrolling list of replies creates a giant screen of text, with 22 students repeating one another’s points either because they haven’t read what has already been posted or because posts have been added while they are writing. The best solution I have found is to arrange students into small groups of five to six students each. Canvas allows me to limit students to discussing with the members of their group only. It’s much easier for a student to have an engaged discussion of ideas with four other people than it is with 21 others. There are ways to set up a similar situation with other CMS or discussion forum tools. Before I used Canvas, I set up copies of the same prompt with the group name in the subject line (e.g., Group One Biography Discussion, Group Two Biography Discussion). I assigned students to groups in a post on the course website, and then students were able to discuss the ideas by simply choosing the right subject line. Assessing Online Discussions Admittedly, all the discussion questions I use require a lot of reading and grading on my part. I typically grade discussion participation based on whether the student did the work and the amount of effort that went into the task. I consider the forum posts as first draft writing, so I do not mark errors in spelling or grammar. I do ask students to focus on a professional presentation of ideas, and I contact anyone who is being too informal privately to correct the situation. At the end of the term, I ask students to write a Completion Report that reviews their participation in the forums by looking at the frequency of posts, reviewing the best posts, and providing an overall assessment of their work during the term. Their self-assessment in this final project gives me all the details I need to determine their participation grades for the course. Suggestions? If you use online forums in your class, whether it’s face-to-face, hybrid, or online, please tell me about the strategies that you use in the comments below. How do you manage the discussion? What assessment strategies do you use? I want to hear from you! And be sure to come back next week for my post on the prompts I use for online discussions. [Photo: Detail from University Life 143 by Francisco Osorio, on Flickr] ... View more

This post was originally published on April 15, 2014. At CCCC last month, I found myself in my room one night, reflecting on all the wonderful sessions I’d attended and ideas I’d heard. In one session, Elisabeth Kramer-Simpson from New Mexico Tech and Elizabeth Tomlinson from West Virginia University inspired me with their discussion of internships and open writing assignments in the technical writing classroom.            As I thought about their presentations, I realized that I wasn’t content with the project I was planning to introduce the Monday after I returned from the convention. I had an odd desire to go into the classroom and say, “Let’s scrap the plan for the rest of the term. What do you want to know about technical writing this term?”            I knew it wouldn’t be the most responsible plan, but I was tempted. If students would engage, it could lead to a great series of activities. I wasn’t sure that they would engage though, and I feared that the more structured activities we had completed before I went off to CCCC would clash with such a completely open plan.            I found myself searching for a middle ground. The next project was to be job-application materials. The assignment I had always used was to ask students to find a job posting and write a cover letter and resume to apply for the job. I wondered, though, what would happen if I asked them all to write their own assignment for the project.            I began wondering how opening the assignment to more choice would customize it to what the student truly needed or wanted. If the student was trying to get a summer job, she could write the application materials the job asked for. If she wanted to establish an online portfolio, she could write the texts for that. If she was trying to network with people interested in the same discipline, she could write the documents that would help her do that.            I imagined that the deliverables for the assignment could include all of the following:            a traditional resume and cover letter an application essay a personal website a cleaned up public Facebook profile a  Linked In profile a GitHub repository and profile an Academia.edu profile            The more that I thought about the options, the more I found myself wondering why I should be the one to define what they need as job application materials. Why not let them tell me what they needed?            So I scrapped my original plans and created a new, open assignment that let students choose the project they would work on. The result? Students actually smiled when I explained that they could do whatever job application materials were appropriate for what they wanted to do in the near future. I had students who excitedly told me they never had time to work on GitHub, and that they were so glad that they could do so as homework now.  Other students told me that their academic advisors had been urging them to set up a LinkedIn profile but they hadn't gotten to it. Now they could.            We wrapped up the project last week, and it has been one of the best activities I’ve taught. There was enough overlap in what the different tasks they chose called for that we had plenty to talk about and work on in class. At the same time, they have all had the chance to work on documents they needed and wanted to work on. Why didn’t I  choose this option before?                       [Photo: Jobs Help Wanted by photologue_np, on Flickr] ... View more

I just returned from a visit with grandnieces Audrey (11) and Lila (8) and, as always, I loved observing what they were up to regarding literacy/ies. They had a two-day holiday from school, so in all, we had three days for fun. We started by seeing the new Star Wars film, which they judged to be “way too long” but engaging; they were outraged by the death of a favorite character, and they loved Finn. They also deftly pointed out several product placements, showing that their critical antennae are up at least part of the time. The next day we had rain and even some snow, so that meant—reading! We have our own book clubs when I’m not there: each girl chooses a book, and we read two chapters and then have a text or FaceTime talk about it. I am constantly impressed with their reflections and with how they anticipate what may happen next (and why). This day, though, we could read together. Lila chose one of Frances O’Roark Dowell’s Phineas L. MacGuire books, and over the course of the day she read the entire volume to me out loud. She has a wicked sense of humor and a very soft heart, so we had to pause and laugh or commiserate often as the adventures piled up. Once she misread, saying “He rode his book” rather than “He rode his bike” and got so tickled that she lost her breath laughing—and then rode around the room on her book. She also took to correcting Phineas (known as Mac), who is prone to refer to “Me and Marcus.” Lila silently changed this to “Marcus and I,” nodding disapprovingly as she did so. This book’s lessons are pretty obvious—compassion and kindness win out over obnoxiousness and selfishness every time—so we talked about that and about experiences she had had with both in her second grade class. Eight-year-olds have a lot on their minds, as this reading experience reminded me. And so do eleven-year-olds.  Audrey and I took turns reading the third book in Lois Lowry’s Giver series. Since we’d already read the first two books in our typical book club way, we spent some time talking about what had happened in The Giver and Gathering Blue, including a meditation on “utopian” and “dystopian” and the role these words played in the series. Then we plunged in to The Messenger, which Audrey soon said “cut to the chase” better and more quickly than the first two. She picked up right away on the word “trade,” saying “there’s something going on with this word!” And she was right, as the plot turns on an ominous Trade Mart that comes to threaten the village. We stopped often to reflect on events and talk about our expectations and hopes for the characters, our assessment of the story (“really gripping!”), and words (“Wow, ‘subtle’ has a ‘b’ in it. How cool!”). We didn’t finish the book in one day, but did so in the car on the way to the airport. Now we are embarking on the fourth and last book in the series, Son, and I look forward to many text messages and emails and phone calls about it. After a day of reading and with the weather still bad they turned to building. They each had a Roominate kit (started by girls and meant for girls—and boys—who want to build things). The kits come with four pieces of plastic (about 10” by 8” ) meant to serve as three walls and a floor—and then a bunch of other smaller plastic parts that can be fit together in different ways, colored paper and felt, and a few other things. There are some pictures but only bare-bones instruction:  “just build whatever you imagine!” they say. Lila quickly announced she was going to build a restaurant called Avery’s. She papered the walls, built four tables for two, fit them out with napkins, menus, and candles, and set up a serving station. She made a big menu board (ice cream sundaes for $4; chicken tenders for $3; grilled cheese sandwiches “on the house”) as well as a “daily specials” board, a welcome sign, and a tipping policy (“give a lot”).  Audrey took more time to think but then decided to build her ideal cabin for Camp Kanata, where she and Lila will spend two weeks this summer. If you can enlarge the photo below, you’ll see how intricate the work is: the stack of tiny felt t-shirts on the top shelf of a cupboard, next to a dress hanging on a paper hanger; the two bunk beds with quilts and pillows and signs for the girls assigned to them (Eva, Audrey, etc.); the windows, broom (made with a cut-off pencil) and paper dustpan; the bedside table with its candle (“really, really hard to make”) and The Giver on it; a bookshelf (Smile is there, along with Moby Dick); and what she called “signage”—Cabin Clean Up Score Card, Camp Rules, Chore Chart, even a fan (top right) that she rigged up with batteries (it works!). Audrey and Lila worked all day on these construction projects, chatting away, often to themselves, about challenges and problems they had to solve and the effects they were trying to create. Since they were working with very small items like candles, a lot of hand-eye-brain coordination was called for, along with concentration and focus. I had a hard time getting them to take a break for lunch! They graciously let me join the team and I was sometimes allowed to help out (“Aunt A, would you cut another circle just like this one?”). So the maker movement—and reading—are alive and well in Chapel Hill. And on these two days, while both girls used the Internet to look up things they needed (definitions of terms, how to do this or that), they were not as tied to the iPads as they are sometimes wont to be. For now, I’m starting our next “book club” books and watching for additions and improvements to the Roominates! ... View more

Recently, Jerry Nelms posted a very interesting comment on procrastination to the WPA listserv. In it, he reviewed some research on procrastination and recommended Eric Jaffe's "Why Wait? The Science Behind Procrastination," published in Observer 26.4 (April 2013). I expect as many teachers procrastinate as do students. I am certainly not a procrastinator (described in the literature as people who chronically put things off even though they know doing so is harmful). But I have had my moments: I vividly remember having an assignment to review Mina Shaughnessy’s Errors and Expectations shortly after it came out. I was still in graduate school and awed at the opportunity to review a work I greatly admired. In fact, I felt intimidated, and these feelings led me to put off and put off and put off. Eventually, I recall giving myself a stern talking-to and deciding that I would not allow myself to do a single thing until I had written five pages of the review. It took me more than eight hours and I was sweating it all the way through, but I sat at the typewriter until I had those pages. In his WPA listserv post, Jerry points out that he sees students procrastinate out of such intimidation, or out of fear that they won’t do a good enough job. These students may not be “official” procrastinators—the twenty-some percent of us who are chronic procrastinators—but even occasional procrastination in high-stakes circumstances can be a serious challenge. In J. R. Ferrari’s Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done (2010), he recommends several ways to combat procrastination, including offering rewards for those who get things done early rather than punishments for those who are late. He uses the tax deadline as an example, saying that even procrastinators might get their taxes in early if they had a financial incentive. This strikes me as a sensible idea that could easily be adapted to the classroom: for major assignments, students could get a bonus of some kind for early submission. Better yet, individuals could offer themselves an incentive: a special treat if they get the assignment done ahead of time. Source: Post Memes on Flikr​ In his post, Jerry Nelms recommends putting the topic of procrastination front and center in the classroom, talking through some of the research on it, pointing out that chronic procrastinators often don’t do nearly as well on assignments as their non-procrastinating peers, and asking students to join in conversation about their own putting-it-off habits, and how to overcome them. When my students are working on a major project, we almost always break it into smaller parts or tasks, so that the deadlines are less intimidating and hence easier to meet. In addition, I ask students to make a term calendar, working backwards from the due dates of all their assignments (we try for all classes) and then figuring out when the assignment needs to be started in order to get it in on time (or earlier). Many students keep electronic calendars, though I still see a good number who like to hold onto a paper copy—or who keep both an electronic and a paper calendar. I first started keeping such a calendar in my first year of college: my week-at-a-glance book was always with me, and it served me very well. The transition from high school to college, where students must take charge of their own time, is a difficult one for many, as it was for me. An assignment calendar can help! Research shows that for chronic procrastinators counseling can be valuable, and such help is usually available on college campuses. But most conclude that in the long run, dealing with procrastination is a matter of failing to self-regulate. That’s something most people can do a little work on, and it’s worth discussing with our students. ... View more

The gap between the study of comics and the study of serious literature within academia has been shrinking in recent years, as campuses include more graphic novels in their first-year composition courses and in “one book” programs.  The “highbrow”/”lowbrow” divide has also been diminishing as works in comics format win prestigious literary prizes and rave reviews.  This year at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association a dozen sessions were devoted to panels on comics and graphic novels, including a panel held in a guarded room about the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons satirically depicting the prophet Mohammed. For those teaching writing courses, the session I participated in on Developments in Comics Pedagogy drew a particularly lively crowd, despite its early morning slot on the first day of the conference.  The panel had been organized by Derek McGrath of Stony Brook University, who has been championing comics in his regional MLA NEMLA for many years.  You can read the way he frames the session here: Primer for “Developments in Comics Pedagogy.” McGrath opened the session with a discussion of two-way communication with fans that seems to be central to the cultural conversation about manga, comics produced in Japan or in the style of Japanese comics. He noted that the process of “scanlation” encourages rich forms of engagement in which readers of comics may develop or enhance story lines as they participate in the scanning, translation, and editing of comics from one language into another language, as in the case of an issue from Soul Eater. He also talked about the way that comics functioned as “tangible objects,” even as the rise of e-books might dematerialize the text. Co-organizer Keith McCleary of the University of California, San Diego, showed several impressive examples of comics developed by his students, and he emphasized how instructors needed to manage the “high anxiety” that students have about performing as artists and how digital retracing and other computational tools might assist students worried about reproducing unrealistically dexterous production.  Those interested in McCleary’s comics pedagogy can check out his online teaching portfolio, which is packed with prompts and examples. He also chortled about his own naiveté in underestimating “the very strong political feelings that they had” and the frankness of opinions that students might express, even about superhero comics like Batwoman: Elegy and Marvel’s Civil War:   “I thought we would be on the same page.” But he acknowledged that comics helped them engage in more substantive political debate and grapple with real disagreements more than they might otherwise.  McCleary warned that too often college courses assigned the same “politically correct” memoirs in graphic novel formats, which might enforce uniformity in classroom discussion. Nick Sousanis of the University of Calgary continued the theme of ameliorating student fears, particularly among undergraduates who might identify as “non-drawers.”  Sousanis has been getting a lot of attention of late for his innovative graphic dissertation, Unflattening, which is now available from Harvard University Press.  He has been praised by luminaries such as Cathy Davidson for producing a document pointing toward avenues for completely reinventing the deliverables of a Ph.D., and by Andrea Lunsford for advancing multimodal composition.  Like McCleary, Sousanis showed the prolific work of his own students, particularly as a venue for health graphics, including a publication-worthy comic on depression.   He noted that emphasizing a full range of narrative techniques could be important and praised Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story as a useful pedagogical graphic text.  In talking about the value of sketch notes and visual analysis and annotation, he also showed the results of assigned exercises for using tracing paper atop a comics layout as a way to demonstrate graphically “how much they can notice.”  As an instructor, he characterized his task as helping students to “figure out what they don’t know that they know.” Susan E. Kirtley of Portland State University described some of the unique challenges that she faced as an administrator developing the PSU post-baccalaureate Certificate in Comic Studies and her successes recruiting faculty from multiple disciplines to teach elective courses such as Jewish comics or manga that rounded out a curriculum requiring rigorous preparation in theory and history.  She observed that participation from the local comics community had also enriched the program.  Kirtley also laughed about a student initially querying if “you want to get fired?” She credited the program’s continued good health to “speaking the administrative language” and navigating “the sheer amount of red tape,” as well as benefiting from wise counsel from peers in similar positions championing the academic value of comics, such as Ben Saunders of the University of Oregon. Maria Elsy Cardona of Saint Louis University talked about teaching Spanish literature with comics and the benefits of advertising courses with disarming cartoons.  In addition to using comics as a means to introduce students to Spanish Literature, she uses comics to address difficult issues of social justice such as gender discrimination.  In her course "Between Laughter and Tears, Gender Stereotypes in Spanish Comics"—a cross-listed course with the Department of Women and Gender Studies at SLU—she uses Spanish comics to talk about issues of gender discrimination. The course, thus, looks at gender inequality both at the local and the global level. As an expert in children’s literature, Joe Sutliff Saunders talked about the value of a comparative exercise with comics and picture books in a graduate course. He noted the value of teaching a comics course not firmly within the established body of knowledge, but at the edge of disciplinary exploration.  Eventually he dedicated a whole course to examining comics and picture books alongside each other and asking how the theory of each illuminated the other.  Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam of the University of Michigan, who has taught writing with Understanding Rhetoric, described a variety of uses for comic books in the college classroom.  She argued that teaching history with comics could be an extremely effective way to use them pedagogically, particularly in the case of covering photographic and visual representations of the Holocaust.  Like Cardona, she has used comics for teaching a foreign language, and like Sousanis and McCleary she has found herself attending to lowering classroom anxiety about artistic competence.  She plugged the online software package Pixton as a helpful tool and distributed one of her own comics to attendees. In the question and answer portion of the panel there was a wide-ranging discussion that covered everything from questions about assessment (and a possible answer in contract grading) to questions about containing textbook costs.  Of course, given the intensive review and production processes of traditional textbooks, there can be plenty of sticker shock to go around. Given this lively panel, I am pleased to have McCleary on board for the instructors’ manual of the forthcoming edition of Understanding Rhetoric. ... View more

Sometime in mid-June 1977, I queued up with a whole lot of others in the Ohio State Stadium to receive my Ph.D. I had my first post-Ph.D. job—at the University of British Columbia—and the summer ahead to pack, move across the country, and relax. But first, I had a bit of catch-up reading to do, like the May issue of College Composition and Communication, featuring Janet Emig’s “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” It’s a short article, and I remember reading it straight through and then straight through again. I knew Emig’s work, of course, and admired it (and her) tremendously. But this brief essay summed up so succinctly and so well the powerful connection between writing and learning that it practically took my breath away. In Emig’s view, writing “involves the fullest possible functioning of the brain.” With writing, she says, “all three ways of dealing with actuality are simultaneously or almost simultaneously deployed” (10). Those three ways, “enactive,” (learning by doing), “iconic,” (learning through images), and “representational or symbolic,” (restating in words) encapsulate the active, participatory, originary, collaborative view of writing that we celebrate today. But Emig wrote this almost forty years ago. I’ve gone back to that essay a number of times over the years, particularly to rethink what she says about speaking and listening. But as for writing and its deep interconnection with learning: she nailed it. Much more recently, I’ve read with great interest Paul Anderson, Chris Anson, Robert Gonyea, and Charles Paine’s report on “The Contributions of Writing to Learning and Development,” a study conducted in collaboration with the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). This study draws on data collected from some 30,000 frosh and 40,000 seniors at 80 U.S. undergraduate institutions. These individuals responded to special questions added to the NSSE survey, questions about writing and about learning, based on twenty-seven effective writing practices identified by a panel of WPA members. In analyzing the student responses, the research team confirmed many of Emig’s insights, eventually naming three factors that are particularly related to higher-order, integrative learning: interactive writing practices, meaning-making writing tasks, and clear writing expectations. “Interactive writing practices” reflect the participatory, give-and-take ways of learning that the students in the Stanford Study of Writing identified as THE most important factor in their development as thinkers and writers. So learning by doing, as Emig noted, is crucial. In the recent study, writing assignments turn out to be crucial as well: those that call for rote response or for a paint-by-the-numbers approach do not forward student development in the ways that those asking them to make meanings of their own do. Another echo of Emig. I don’t remember Janet talking about clear expectations explicitly, but the protocols she used with the twelfth grade writers certainly embodied such expectations. Teachers of writing will immediately recognize the importance of the factors identified in “The Contributions of Writing to Learning and Development.” Some may, along with me, hear echoes of earlier work, including that of Janet Emig. But what the current research team has done is to provide “hard” empirical evidence for the relationship between these factors and student learning, evidence that is extremely useful to all of higher education but especially to those who are struggling to build and sustain rigorous writing programs in a time of huge pressure to slash budgets. So I am very grateful for the work of Anderson, Anson, Gonyea, and Paine, and look forward to their ongoing work. If you haven’t already read it, check it out! ... View more

It will be a number of months before Sonia Maasik and I begin work on the ninth edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A. but, given the continuing evolution of American popular culture, I am always watching and assessing the current signs in anticipation of whatever new directions the next edition of the book will need to take.  So I was rather taken this morning by an L.A. Times headline to the effect that Mad Max: Fury Road stands to "lead the pack" with as many as ten Oscar nods, when the nominations are announced on the day this blog is scheduled to appear . And, no, I am not going to make any predictions about the matter myself in this blog.  That isn't what popular cultural semiotics is about. What I find so striking about this successful return of the Mad Max franchise is how it reflects a continuation and, perhaps, intensification, of a popular cultural trend that receives a good deal of attention in the current (eighth) edition of Signs of Life.  This is the phenomenon explored in Chapter 3, "Video Dreams," of the "new Westerns" that have been appearing in both television and the cinema.  Such entertainments as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones reset the stage of the traditional Western while maintaining the basic situation: an endless battle for survival conducted by armed men and women in a lawless wilderness.  When you add to this the predictable (and predicted) mega-blockbuster success of the latest Star Wars episode—which, with its desert settings and echoes of the very first movie in the series (remember that famous saloon scene?), may well qualify as a new Western as well, especially in its vision of a world permanently at war—a fairly obvious, yet nonetheless important significance appears. As we put it in the current edition of Signs of Life, the new Westerns (and related fantasies) "appeal to a society suffering from an apparently eternal threat of terroristic violence and economic malaise.  As individuals we may feel helpless in the face of such forces, but as audiences we can find in the new Westerns an imaginary freedom to resist, while at the same time being reassured that everyone is as badly off as we are."  (There is also the possibility, I must add, that the imaginary prospect of a life filled with the constant excitement and stimulation of perpetual combat—no boring cubicles or bills to pay here!—is also one of the big attractions of the new Western.) Thus, there is a significant difference between the Westerns and war stories of the past and those of the present.  Sure, The Lord of the Rings is about a war: but that war ends, decisively, with the destruction of the Ring.  And certainly, the American cinema is awash with war stories—especially with respect to the Second World War.  But those stories too portend an end to the violence.  In High Noon Marshal Will Kane confronts the bad guys, blows them away, and that's that.  But the new stories make it a fundamental premise that the violence not only has no ending, it really has no interruptions.  Each of Tolkien's ages of Middle Earth end in a climactic battle (implying future wars, of course), but at least the wars are thousands of years apart.  But in Mad Max—which is a new Western if there ever was one—the whole point is that battle is all that there is, and no victory is ever complete in the Star Wars, Walking Dead, and Thrones sagas. What with the rise of ISIS/ISIL, the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, and the continuing evisceration of the American middle class, the conditions that helped foster the new Western have only been intensified since Sonia and I addressed them for the eighth edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A.  The return of Mad Max is a sign of this continuation and intensification.  America appears to be stuck in a very bad place.  The preface to the eighth edition begins with the words, "The more things change, the more they .  .  .  intensify."  I am beginning to suspect that the ninth edition will be composed under similar conditions. ... View more

Guest blogger Daniel Creed is a PhD student in the Comparative Studies program at Florida Atlantic University and teaches first-year composition and sophomore level literature courses for the English department. His current research focuses on genre fiction, mythopoesis as postcolonial healing in twentieth century literature, and theoretical constructions for reading fantasy literature. His work has been featured in The Explicator and North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies and is under review in three other journals. I’d like to begin this post with a confession. I have read everything in the Emerging textbook more than once. I’ve taught most of them more than once, and for years (and multiple editions of the textbook), Francis Fukuyama’s “Human Dignity” has flummoxed students. The essay is one of the longer ones in Emerging, and it is full of complex thoughts and ideas that many first-year composition students have difficulty grasping with any depth of understanding. It was a nearly impossible first reading in my courses, and often still confused students when I placed it at the end of a sequence. The essay, like all of the essays in the textbook, leeches out into various ideas and subjects, but what has been most promising with regards to my students has been focusing on ideas of human exceptionalism and exceptional humans with the text. In “Human Dignity,” Fukuyama asserts the idea that one of the greatest dangers to civilization is the future of biotechnology and the movement towards transhumanism. It is an idea that he extended in an interview where he cites the social and economic inequalities that could arise from artificially enhanced human beings in our near future. Within the context of the interview, he argues that Western society is less likely to develop these technologies because of the Christian morality that dominates social thought, noting the same passage in Genesis that situates humans above the animal kingdom that Jacques Derrida cites in “The Animal that therefore I am (more to follow).” This originally led me to create an activity for students where I crated small slips of paper with different dollar amounts on them which the students blindly pulled from a sealed container. The students were then given a worksheet that gave them categories of “enhancement” (for make believe children) and the corresponding costs for doing so. As students filled out their sheets, allocating their very limited or nearly limitless wealth, they began to shy away from those not like them. Their self-segregation was furthered when I asked each of them to locate a mate for the “pretend child” they had created with their dollar amounts. In a perfect parallel to Fukuyama’s teachings, the genetically wealthy mated their children and the genetically poor were forced to mate theirs. This allowed them to see how generational pairings would further increase the stratification until the idea of human would either need to have multiple meanings, or cease to have meaning for one group or another. It is the explanation of this moment through their own experience that allows them to clearly understand Fukuyama’s ideas regarding biotechnology and transhumanism, which begins the conversation regarding whether the highly modified or less modified beings are the “true humans” and what social problems those ideas could result in for future generations. This conversation works well with the following essays: Brian Christian, “Authenticating” – discusses transhumanism and cyborgification Patricia Churchland, “Networking: Genes, Brains, and Behavior” – looks at genetic causes for cooperative traits and the roots of morality The Dalai Lama, “Ethics and the New Genetics” – considers the need for a rethinking and balancing of ethics regarding biotech Tom Vanderbilt, “Shut Up, I Can’t Hear You” – discusses how cyborg identities and mechanization can be linked to aggression However, the conversation also opens into ideas that have little to do with how we determine humanity and more to do with how we participate in human exceptionalism. This conversation leads into a sequence that could include David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster,” Michael Pollan’s “Practicing Complexity,” Elizabeth Dickinson’s “The Future of Food,” and Hal Herzog’s “Animals Like Us.” Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Tahmina Urmi, our guest blogger this week, is an MA student at Florida Atlantic University who loves English in all its forms. She hopes to further her education while working on her goal to break down walls, ceilings and boundaries through her presence as a modern Muslim woman in classrooms. Although her degree focuses on Shakespeare, her passion lies in advocating change through written and spoken words while donning colorful hijabs in place of a red superhero cape. When students meet me on the first day of class, the first thing they notice, and sometimes are confused by, is the scarf on my head. I always witness a wide range of reactions: some whisper quietly to their classmates while looking nervously at me, others avoid eye contact, and some are simply disinterested. At first I thought I felt this way because of the nervousness many instructors feel in the beginning of the semester until I started noticing a pattern—as soon as I went out of my way to discuss my cultural background and mention that I am, in fact, a Muslim woman living in the land of the free who made the active decision to wear the hijab, many of the students look less tensed and less guarded. I have actually had several students tell me, “I am so glad you said that. I wanted to ask you but didn’t want to offend you!” This confused me at first. Why would asking me a simple question regarding my headscarf offend me? In recent years, women adorning the hijab have been splashed all over the news, in both good and bad light, so the students may have had some idea of its significance. But then I began to understand; although they might have seen it discussed on the news, the ones who talked about it always had political reasons for doing so. Many times, these very same people had little understanding of the cultural and religious significance of certain symbols, such as the bindi and dreadlocks, and were called out for “stereotyping” or being “ignorant” about another culture and accused of attempting to divide citizens of the United States. It dawned on me that because of reasons like these, these students were growing up in a culture in which people were becoming culturally hypersensitive as a result of always wanting to be politically correct (PC). Although at face value it might seem like it is better to have a society of people who were trying to avoid conflict, what it really means is that, although the ones who wanted to be PC avoided asking questions, the ones who were ill-informed have no issues being loud and perpetuating incorrectness. For this very reason, I think it’s that much more important to talk about cultural diversity in our classroom in a way that goes beyond the traditional and cliché. Currently, universities do have activities that cater to “(Insert Race) Heritage” month, but these only discuss surface level topics, like food and clothing. There are several selections from Emerging ​that can help facilitate this conversation to transcend the politically correct.  In “The End of Race: Hawaii and the Mixing of Peoples,” Steve Olson looks at the stereotyping and racism in communities even as mixed and diverse as Hawaii. This can open up the floor to a discussion of what the current practices are of distinguishing the different races we see in our own communities and question how logical and sound these methods of distinction are. An in-class activity can include students going through the entries in “Portfolio of Postcards” by PostSecret and create postcards of their own about questions regarding race, religion and culture that they are too afraid to ask or voice. “Leave Your Name at the Border” by Manuel Muñoz would be helpful when discussing how something as simple as a name can cause unwanted reactions, which can be tied to what Yang says about the higher expectations from Asians. Wesley Yang’s “Paper Tigers” can be used to talk about the different stereotypes that are in circulation. Leslie Savan’s “What’s Black, Then White, and Said All Over” can then be used to discuss the reasons behind the uproars mentioned earlier. Students can learn not only about cultures beyond the surface level, but it’s then that the students can, hopefully, start to understand what “appropriation” and “assimilation” really mean and why they can be upsetting. Finally, Rebekah Nathan’s “Community and Diversity” talks about the sense of togetherness amongst college students. This essay can help start the discussion of what makes a group of people a “community.” Each semester, I’ve seen students come up with their own definitions of “community” that sometimes varied even within a group of friends. This particular reading can then open up a discussion on how we can celebrate our differences while still belonging to and being an active member of a community. To try to make students more comfortable asking questions without worrying about offending people, more complicated and uncomfortable topics need to enter the classroom. Giving students a platform to discuss different stereotypes and cultural matters without having to be PC provides an opportunity for both the instructor and students to respect each other’s differences while still attempting to create a unified community. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

I’ve been reading and hearing podcasts lately about how storytelling is being used to help students—and especially multilingual students—learn to read and write and speak English. Of course I’ve known about TPRS—teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling—for a long time, with its three-step method. But lately I’ve been reading about other methods, some of which just simply call for students to tell stories—like a couple of pieces on Edutopia by Matthew J. Friday. Here’s what he says in “Why Storytelling in the Classroom Matters”: Whether in caves or in cities, storytelling remains the most innate and important form of communication. All of us tell stories. The story of your day, the story of your life, workplace gossip, the horrors on the news. Our brains are hard-wired to think and express in terms of a beginning, middle and end. It's how we understand the world. Friday is absolutely right, and reading him reminded me of Celia Genishi and Anne Dyson’s 1994 The Need for Story, a book that elaborates on and illuminates Friday’s claim. I taught that book for years: it helped to reconfirm my commitment to story as being at the heart of our discipline as well as the heart of our culture—and many, many other cultures. So I was excited when I read about Friday’s insight that “storytelling is the oldest form of teaching,” and about his work with third graders at an international school in China where 97% of the students are English learners. Friday begins by telling stories himself, and he does so with style: he moves around the room, acting out the story, pausing to ask questions and using physical humor to keep his students captivated. He’d been using storytelling for quite some time, but in this particular circumstance, he says, he got a surprise: Firstly, a German student who was in the listening phase of language acquisition began spontaneously writing her own fairy tales and requested to tell them--the first student storyteller. . . . Within a month, I had a list of students wanting to tell stories, and this continued for the rest of the year, right up to the very last day of term. Those first EAL storytellers went on to make rapid progress in the wider curriculum, with writing and telling fiction remaining their favourite activity. Friday goes on to reflect on the enormous power of storytelling, deciding that stories are innately “a form of human experience” and that while not all cultures have writing systems, all do have stories. So he establishes an open and friendly atmosphere in his classes as he tells story after story, sometimes dressing up in funny hats or costumes—and then the students take over. He and the class give positive responses, which also helps build self-confidence, and he doesn’t worry about spelling, punctuation, etc.: rather, he encourages “the freedom to take risks and make mistakes,” knowing that the surface issues will work themselves out with practice. Friday and the other storytelling teachers I’ve read about are working with young students, but I think we can take a lesson from them in terms of our college students, especially those learning English as a second, third, or sixth language. I know from my own experience with The Stanford Storytelling Project that undergraduates are as excited by and devoted to storytelling as Friday’s third graders and then some. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to include a storytelling component in all of our classes: my bet is that it would soon become students’ favorite part of the course! ... View more

Guest blogger Jessica Saxon​ is a faculty member at Craven Community College in New Bern, North Carolina, and she teaches composition and literature courses. A former WAC coordinator at Craven, her primary interests are WAC/WID programs and creating partnerships with other community colleges and universities. She is also pursuing a PhD in narrative theory and nineteenth-century British literature at Old Dominion University. This post is the third in a series. View previous posts: First Time WID Jitters and My Comfort Zone and Natural Sciences and My Magic Bullet             I am nearing the midway point of my semester in ENG 112, which means I have to plan the upcoming social sciences unit. When I was building the course in August, I was not sure what I wanted to do in the social sciences section. When I created the course calendar, I used a generic “research paper” marker throughout the unit. “Social sciences, something, something, research, APA, something interesting” was still all I had figured out for the unit until just a few weeks ago. Between talking with my colleagues in the social sciences and reading through An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing, I finally have a plan and a project: a social sciences theory evaluation with primary and secondary research. Creating a new assignment can be daunting. While I borrow liberally from my colleagues and from textbooks, I also want the assignment to be uniquely my own and to work for my specific students and institution, which means that I revise or redo assignments every semester. Sometimes I only make small changes. But other times the changes are pretty radical. Creating the theory evaluation assignment—even with the support from colleagues and An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing—has been challenging, and I am sure that as I get into teaching the project I will have to make some adjustments. But here’s what I’ve got so far: The Assignment and Schedule Students are asked to choose a theory from a social science field. I encourage them to choose something from a social sciences class they have already taken. But I will also be supplying them with a list of possible topics in case they get stuck. They will have to find at least four secondary scholarly research sources on their topics, and they will also have to conduct some form of primary research (documenting their personal experiences, interviewing someone, surveying a group, or observing a group). Their final project must be at least six pages of essay with title page, abstract, and references in APA format. In their essays, they will have to explain their theory, discuss the research on the theory, and apply the theory to their own experiences and/or the experiences of others. We will also work through various ethical concerns with primary research (such as the privacy of participants). Students will have the month of November to complete the project: 10.29 Writer’s Journal #12: Writing an Argument Introduction to Social Sciences Writing and Theory Evaluation Paper 11.3 Writer’s Journal #13: Primary Research Introduction to Primary Research Skills 11.5 Process Assignment #12: Theory Evaluation Questions Theory Evaluation Questions Workshop 11.10 Process Assignment #13: Theory Evaluation Sources Theory Evaluation Sources Workshop Introduction to Formal Outlines 11.12 Process Assignment #14: Theory Evaluation Outline Theory Evaluation Outline Workshop 11.17 Process Assignment #15: Theory Evaluation Draft 1 Theory Evaluation Draft Workshop 1 11.19 Process Assignment #16: Theory Evaluation Draft 2 Theory Evaluation Draft Workshop 2 11.24 In-Class Work on Theory Evaluation and Theory Evaluation Self-Reflection  Theory Evaluation Paper (Due by the End of Class) Process Assignment #17: Theory Evaluation Paper Self-Reflection (Due by the End of Class) Reflections I still have a few weeks to tinker with the theory evaluation paper and the social sciences unit. I think I have a solid foundation for the project. However, I have never written one of these papers before. I have experience with every other writing genre/project that I have assigned for this class. This project is truly a step into the unknown for me. But I think I have a strategy for tackling the unknown: I may try to write my own theory evaluation with my class. In completing the project with my students (ideally working a few days ahead of their schedule), I may be able to see potential gaps in my assignment or lesson plans and be able to address the problems before my students get to them. Plus, I think it might be interesting to let my students see me working alongside of them—it might open up occasions for larger discussions of writing processes. Of course, what sounds like a great idea in October may fall apart in the harsh realities of November. Other classes will need to have assignments graded and classes taught. This ENG 112 class will still need feedback on their journals and process assignments. Administrative reports for other projects I work on will have to be written as well. So while I might not actually be able to write the whole theory evaluation paper with my ENG 112 class, I’d like to at least make it halfway through the process with them. How do you approach creating a new writing project assignment? What resources do you draw on when creating assignments? How often do you revise or create assignments for a class? Have you ever written a paper with your students in order to test out your assignment? If so, how did students respond? And did it help you improve your assignment? Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Or share it with others and start a conversation? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

During the years I and my research team were collecting the 15,000+ pieces of student writing that went into the Stanford Study of Writing, we had a running joke that the most “closeted” group on campus were poets. Because as the texts rolled in, we found poetry coming from everywhere: engineers, pre-med students, computer scientists, athletes—poetry, poetry, poetry. Now some of it was pretty bad poetry, but it was ubiquitous in our study, and heartfelt. In fact, I had asked students to submit all the writing they wanted to—not just that prepared for a class—without much thought. But that “other” writing turned out to be the most interesting to us as researchers, as it showed us what our students cared about when they weren’t working on assigned writing tasks. And one thing they cared about was poetry. So I was not surprised when I read a few weeks ago about “Instapoets” on the web. If you didn’t see this piece in the New York Times, check out Alexandra Alter’s “Web Poets’ Society: New Breed Succeeds in Taking Verse Viral.” The article opens with a brief profile of web poet Tyler Knott Gregson: Seven years ago, Mr. Gregson, 34, was scraping by as a freelance copywriter, churning out descriptions of exercise equipment, hair products and medical imaging devices. Now, thanks to his 560,000 Instagram and Tumblr followers, he has become the literary equivalent of a unicorn: a best-selling celebrity poet. Gregson’s first book, Chasers of the Light, has sold well over 100,000 copies, a figure the author of the essay compares to Louise Gluck’s Faithful and Virtuous Night. Gluck’s book, which won the National Book Award for Poetry last year, has sold only 20,000 copies. And Gregson’s latest book, All the Words are Yours, had an opening print run of 100,000 and, at the time I write this, is number 3 on Nielsen’s top 10 bestselling poetry titles. One of Gregson’s daily haikus from his Instagram feed: http://www.instagram.com/tylerknott/ Gregson is just one of many young authors who are publishing their poetry on the web: Alter cites numerous examples from around the globe to support her claim that “Instapoets” are everywhere. And while the Instapoets are not winning major literary awards (yet), they do suggest that the American habit of turning away from poetry may be changing: the 440,000 subscribers to YouTube’s Button Poetry channel suggests that readers/listeners are responding to poetry in powerfully positive ways. In this regard, the web has opened up a space for creativity that had been pretty much sealed off to all but a few poets able to publish their work through traditional means. This opening up of publication to ordinary folks is one of the hallmarks of the democratizing potential of the web, and one that seems to be working for poets. Teachers of writing have argued for the creative potential of all writing and have been at the forefront of keeping a focus on creativity even in the face of the national craze for standardized testing. Of course the Common Core puts emphasis on creativity—and even China seems to have realized that its approach to rote learning has left its students unable to compete in the creative arena, leading its education policymakers to introduce goals for “creativity” into their national curricula. In this country, we see “creative writing” courses in greater demand than ever—and an outpouring of creativity in both poetry and other forms of discourse on the Internet. Certainly this outpouring of poetry online offers great opportunities for our classrooms and students, both in terms of reading the work of others and of getting their own work out there for others to share. I’m hoping to do a small informal survey of the first-year writing classes at Stanford, asking how many students in them are putting their poetry online. I expect I’ll find a number of these students to be Instapoets and I hope that I can read and learn from what they are doing. Poetry to the People!! ... View more

Guest blogger Ashely Tisdale is an English MA candidate, writing consultant, and graduate teaching assistant at Florida Atlantic University. She is the curator of StoriesofSisterhood.com, and contributor to the digital lifestyle magazine Black Girl Fly. She hopes to pursue a PhD in English, concentrating on contemporary African-American fiction. Her research interests include race, gender, and sexuality, hip-hop/pop culture studies, and the digital humanities. Helen Epstein’s “AIDS Inc.” compares several different attempts made by African countries to heighten HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness. Epstein’s focus was on South Africa’s loveLife program, that merged the “cool factor,” “lifestyle branding,” and community centers in the hopes of reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. She decided that despite these “bright” advertisements and methods, the program was ineffective because of the lack of direct conversations about the virus. Our writing program asked students to “evaluate the effectiveness of direct versus indirect approaches to educating and changing the behavior of young people.” Students were urged to consider how HIV awareness could be marketed effectively, and how the “cool effect” could be balanced with education and raising awareness. Although the writing assignment for this text was relatively straightforward, I felt it necessary to push my students and myself. I felt that ignoring the racial and sexual stigmas that often run parallel to those surrounding HIV/AIDS would do a disservice to my student’s development of critical thinking and analytical skills. As a first-time and first-year teacher, I found myself extremely nervous with the task at hand. I wondered how I might prompt discussion about sexuality, race, HIV/AIDs, and Africa in my apathetic 8:00am class. In order to meet my goal of making a positive and lasting impact, I would need to revise our syllabus and make room for “Cultural Connections.” Armed with my Emerging textbook, “newbie” optimism, and a PowerPoint, I mapped out a presentation to address stigma surrounding Africa and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. First I assigned the reading (with the threat of a quiz) to be sure that students would have some context to frame our discussion. We then had a discussion about what stigma is and how it develops and spreads. My students recognized that stigma is a negative association that in some cases develops from a lack of understanding. Next I revealed the Cultural Connections PowerPoint. This set of slides was important because they were prefaced with some simple but powerful rules. One of those rules included stating which country in Africa a person was referring to, whenever they addressed anything surrounding the continent. Students were not allowed, for example, to simply say “over there” or “In Africa everyone…” or make any similar generalizations. The point of this conversation was to clearly identify the people being discussed out of respect and understanding of their differences. The content of the first set of slides dealt directly with some stereotypes and misconceptions associated with the African continent. One such misconception was that it was completely destroyed by the HIV/AIDS virus. I wanted to share the reality of Africa as a diverse continent and also real examples of Africans’ lives.  Here, I wanted to create an opportunity for interactive engagement. Luckily, one of my incredible co-workers provided me with the hashtag, #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou. Its function is to combat archaic popular media images of Africa as a disease-ridden and impoverished continent.  Since most of my students were familiar with Twitter, it intrigued them to use it academically. We scrolled through the tagged images, and watched a short video summarizing the frustration of Africans with negative images of their cultures in popular media. Using Twitter to have a conversation about the misconceptions about Africa worked well because the tweets are being produced by people with no other motivations than to broadcast their reality. The tweets also work in “real time” so students can watch the tags and perspectives increase at the same time as their own perspectives change. I learned later from one of my students that this medium and hashtag was a useful example of the power of united digital activism. We then shifted our focus to a YouTube video explaining the HIV/AIDS virus. We discussed who was at risk and reviewed local statistics for our area. Our final slide was a set of exploratory questions I presented to the class and had them respond to with no risk of penalty. These questions asked students to consider how intersections of class, race, gender, and/or sexuality could affect HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness campaigns. Here are some of the questions I presented them with: What kind of economic obstacles exist that prevent all people from gaining access to the same helpful information and medication as others? What about people who don’t conform to either gender (they are non-binary)? If campaigns are solely heteronormative, how do people outside those boundaries protect themselves? These questions were not simple, or comfortable. But they got my students to (re)consider some new and familiar subjects. They analyzed HIV/AIDS, class, race, gender, and/or sexuality alongside stigma and surprised themselves. Because we tackled such a big set of issues so early on, we were well equipped to deal with Dan Savage and Urvashi Vaid’s “It Gets Better and Action Makes it Better” essay on the bullying of LGBTQA students. I believe that if we had not created an open and exploratory environment earlier in the semester, we may not have been able to discuss the comments on Savage’s YouTube video as well as we did. That’s right, we read the article, and broke internet rule #1. We read the hate filled comments below some of the It Gets Better videos and read the stigma associated with homosexuality. I realize now that our previous discussion on Epstein provided a frame of reference with which students could more easily approach social issues like stigma and sexuality. Source: It Gets Better Project It Gets Better: Dan and Terry - YouTube Integrating technology helped me broach Epstein and Savage. I was able to place my students in control of their learning, by utilizing modes of technology they were familiar with. They were also able to participate in conversations non-verbally, which was an excellent option for those students who are uncomfortable speaking in class. I am proud of the work my students did, and I’m excited to integrate more technology/social media into my pedagogy. For more information on the benefits of teaching with social media check out this article or scroll through the Bedford Bits tags like multimodal, social media, digital composing, or teaching with technology. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more