In today's "What We've Learned" video, Douglas Downs, one of the authors of Writing about Writing, pinpoints students' hunger for the social interaction they are missing due to online instruction and pandemic restrictions on campus. As a solution, he's been experimenting with having students use the comment feature in Google Docs to replicate the type of informal conversations that would have previously existed in face-to-face interaction.  ... View more

I love words: their sounds, etymologies, and inherent possibilities. One word that has dominated my inbox for at least a year now is information, along with its prefixed variants disinformation and misinformation. Simply put, information is that which forms—gives shape to—our thinking from within: our minds are given recognizable form through the propositions and interpretations we accept.    The events that have unfolded over the past few weeks illustrate how “in-forming” with problematic or inaccurate information leads to terrifying consequences. I have asked myself, time and again, as I’ve heard countless unfounded assertions about the virus and our election results here in Georgia, how we judge the veracity of information, and how friends, family, and colleagues can come to such vastly different conclusions about what is true, particularly in the face of what seems like incontrovertible facts. In their 1980 classic, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that conceptual metaphors shape our understanding of abstractions, grounding them in concrete or spatial realities. These conceptual metaphors are so deeply embedded in our minds that we may not be aware of them, but they shape (in-form) our thinking by constraining our speech. For example, one metaphor is that theories (or arguments) are buildings: they are founded (or unfounded), constructed, built, supported, undergirded, and in-formed by “raw materials,” aka evidence, facts, and data. We construct interpretations—and then our construction itself may serve as an arbiter of what additional “raw materials” we choose to incorporate into the whole, and those which we choose to discard. The work of theory or argument construction may take place in mental construction zones that we don’t see—but which impact our lives in powerful ways.  In my second semester composition class this term, I am going to invite my students to explore these mental constructions zones with me, and the information used within them. In other words, we will step outside of ourselves as much as we can and review the criteria by which we assess the validity and credibility of information. And then we will write about what we discover about our own “in-forming.”  The first major assignment will be a credibility assessment guide: I will be asking students to articulate a definition of credibility, develop a rubric of questions or criteria by which they can evaluate credibility, and apply their rubric to two sources presenting contradictory information on the same topic. Ultimately, I will ask the students to reflect with me on how we know things, and how an understanding of our own thinking can (perhaps) help us talk with those whose conclusions differ from our own. To get to that final assessment guide, students will begin by profiling a person, institution, or information source that they trust implicitly, considering why they trust them, as well as a source or person they are not likely to trust, and why not. From these initial profiles, students will begin to generate criteria of credibility—factors that are explicit and conscious, but perhaps also those that are implicit and subconscious. In the drafting and application of these lists, I will ask them to play both the believing game and the doubting game, in a variation of Peter Elbow’s approach to texts: how am I shaped (in-formed) by my assessments of credibility? What can my understanding of credibility contribute to larger discussions? What would happen if I applied someone else’s criteria for credibility? What if I found my judgments of credibility were incomplete or inappropriate? What would I do in response? I am looking forward to what I will learn about my students—and my own thinking—during this writing project. Are you addressing current events in your writing courses this term? How do you plan to approach these events? I encourage you to share your assignment plans.  ... View more

Greetings dear friends and colleagues: I took a few weeks off from posting in order to finish revisions of some of my textbooks and to get caught up on other writing commitments. I even took a day to read Louise Penny’s latest mystery! But throughout the holiday season, I was looking forward to putting 2020 behind me (good riddance to this terrible, pandemic year!) and to being able to say “Happy New Year” to you and to your students. Alas and alack. The white supremacist and anti-Semite and QAnon assaults on the Capitol and on Congress have left me stunned—though not completely surprised since violence had been called for throughout social media leading up to January 6. I grew up in the segregated South and have feared “good old boys,” like those I saw breaking down doors and beating guards with flagpoles, all my life. They and their brand have been a thick thread in the American fabric throughout this nation’s history, but to see them so thoroughly embraced (“we love you”) by the President of the United States, so completely entitled, and so easily able to breach the Capitol, overwhelm those police officers who tried to resist, and cause the death of six and counting—well, that was a new low. And as we approach the inauguration of a new president and vice president, these same people are threatening more insurrection, more violence. (And, of course, the virus rages on, killing one person every 30 seconds—with federal leadership on the vaccine nowhere in sight and states struggling to manage distribution as best they can.) So 2021 is not the “happy new year” I have been so long anticipating. But it is here and it demands our attention, and our action. Most immediately, we must engage our students in projects that will help them understand not just this moment’s crisis but the deep roots of the crisis—the origins and development of the militia movement; the relationship between law enforcement/police and the tradition of slavery and its continuation; and the complex, dense web of groups devoted to white supremacy. All of these call out for investigation and research, from tracing the historical roots to identifying their presence in our local communities today. My students of color know some—sometimes a lot—of this history. My white students. . . not so much, though those who don’t flinch from hard truths are willing, even eager, to learn. If I were teaching full time, I would scrap my plans for this term and work with my students to carve out research projects on these issues and to publish the results of their research in every possible venue, particularly on social media sites—this work could help counter “the big lie” continuing to spread there and to educate others. I would also encourage at least one group to devote the term’s work to learning about just how an African American pastor and a young Jewish person won election in the deep southern state of Georgia: Digging in deep to the work Black women have been doing to fight voter suppression and to register voters of color could teach a lot about the power of the vote, about citizenship, and about creating a blueprint for more fair and just and inclusive elections in other places. In short, I would ask students everywhere to do everything in their power to understand those forces that have brought us to the present moment—in all their tremendous complexity—and to share that knowledge, to insist on sharing that knowledge, as widely as possible. I’d ask them to write as if their lives depended on it. Because they do. Image Credit: "Washington DC - Capitol Hill: United States Capitol" by wallyg, used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Peter Adams, author of Hub with 2020 APA Update, reflects on the need for community in ALP courses, and overcoming the online instruction barrier through gamifying learning and class activities.  ... View more

In this "What We've Learned" video, Jeanne Bohannon, author of The Writer's Loop with 2020 APA Update, reflects on the challenges of engaging with students in the spaces they already occupy, the responsibility instructors have to embrace and support students, and on students' desire for adaptive and personal learning.  ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, John O'Hara (@johnohara), author of Current Issues and Enduring Questions, Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing, and From Critical Thinking to Argument, discusses how to read student engagement in online (and potentially camera-less) instruction, and offers tips for re-engaging students who may be struggling. Some tips: dealing directly with current events that students are already engaging with outside the classroom, and getting students physically outside to change the learning environment.   ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, the first of the new year, John O'Hara (@johnohara), author of Current Issues and Enduring Questions, Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing, and From Critical Thinking to Argument, breaks online instruction down into three core challenges: hardware, software, and pedagogy. Watch to see how he tackles each to engage students.   ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition   Overview Ralph Waldo Emerson in his famous essay, Nature (1836), talks about becoming a “transparent eyeball,” a philosophic metaphor that he describes as a state of being that can only be achieved in nature.  It gives him peace and allows him to see beyond the structures that define him and see things in new ways. He says "I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing, I see all."  Emerson believes that in order to truly appreciate nature, one must go beyond merely looking at it and instead feel it and engage with it as both a sensory and intellectual experience.  The transparent eyeball is “absorbent rather than reflective” and therefore a path to symbolic meaning and unexpected connections.  I send students outside, to a place of their own choosing and ask them to spend time in nature and practice the intellectual exercise of moving between the micro and the macro.                       1 - The Micro                                                                                        2 - The Macro Steps to the Assignment Have students read and respond to Emerson’s Nature essay. It is important that students have a strong understanding of his philosophy and the metaphor of the transparent eyeball. Ask students to post 3 thought-provoking questions and 1 passage from the text.  Ask students to post the passages from the reading onto a collaborative Google document to guide discussion. Engage in full class discussions about the passages and questions and ask students to explain and interpret particular passages for a deep understanding of the text.  Next, I ask students to go physically into nature and see what they can learn when they focus on it. Encourage students to focus on both sensory and intellectual experiences of nature.  They can find a place in nature--a tree, a park, their back yard, a field, somewhere on campus, etc.  and choose a place that is relatively free of distraction.  I ask them to spend at least 15 minutes writing (no need to type this assignment) and try to record what they see, hear, notice, think.  I want them to shift their attention back and forth from micro to macro and engage their “transparent eyeball.”  I urge them to exercise the cognitive practices of moving back and forth between the whole picture and the parts--from the forest to the trees to the trunk to the bark to the ant to the blade of grass. It is important that they write freely and pay attention (and record) what they are seeing, feeling and thinking.  Let them know it is OK to let their minds and writing wander wherever the experience takes them. Have them record the waves of their thoughts and the ways new thoughts emerge the longer they sit there.   Using their phone cameras, have students take 10 total images – 5 micro and 5 macro. Choose one from each category (micro and macro) and post them to an individual slide to contribute to a collaborative Google slideshow.  Have students include their names, location they visited and a significant passage from their experience transcript. Show or post the slideshow and have students share with the class.      Reflections on the Activity Students experience a range of feelings and ideas from this assignment.  They are often surprised at their reactions and ideas that surface during their time in nature. The concept of the transparent eyeball and the intellectual act of moving between the micro and the macro acts as a new lens and emphasizes the value of this kind of meditative experience.     Here are some of the responses and ideas generated through the assignment:   “I am noticing I am having a hard time separating the humans from the environment during this exercise. Probably due to the human geography/GIS course I am taking, probably due to the kids who are currently here playing on the other side of the park. Either way, humans ultimately are part of the environment, arguably even more now than when Emerson wrote his essay.” Brody “How many others, like me, have let society overpower their sense of adventure and discovery?” Sydney “It’s just wonderful how the world falls together to create little pockets of peace, and how those pockets are different for everyone.” Kelsey “Nature is cool like that; it can give you what you need without you knowing exactly what that means. Nature is freeing. It's a place where when everything in the world doesn't make sense, nature is there to slow you down and zoom out- help you look at the bigger picture.” Hannah “Just by concentrating on nature, I can block out everything that I haven't been able to get out of my head for days. . . This experience has brought a significant surge of happiness.” Litzy   The assignment is both experiential and multimodal and reminds us of the importance and connectedness with nature.  Students are usually motivated to incorporate these ideas into their daily lives and find a deeper sense of gratitude and awareness of their surroundings. ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. If you’re teaching a literature or fiction course, use one of the ideas below to add Grammar Girl podcasts to your classwork! Podcasts are well-established, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.  LaunchPad and Achieve products include collections of assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. You can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.  If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts." If you are using Achieve, you can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Using Grammar Girl Podcasts with Literature Assignment: Assign students the following two podcasts and ask everyone to listen to them before class. Using Flashbacks in Fiction (9:06) Using Present Tense When Writing about the Past (7:10) In class, evaluate some of the literature you’ve read using these podcasts. Consider placing students into groups and assigning each group one book read in the course; alternately, student groups can select the title they would like to evaluate, or each student in the class can individually evaluate one selection. After the time allotted to discussion and/or note taking, discuss the findings as a class. Students might consider questions such as: What tenses are used in this work? Does the author use more than one tense? Why might this tense or these tenses have been chosen; how are they used in the work? Does this work and its use of tenses align or differ with what we learned in the Grammar Girl podcasts? How would a different tense impact this piece of literature?   Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Write Fiction Choose one or more of the following exercises for your fiction writing class.  Assignment A - Figures of Speech: Assign students the following podcast, or listen to it as a class. Then, ask each student to choose 1-3 paragraphs from their most recent fiction piece & rewrite it using at least two of the figures of speech mentioned in the podcast. Five Uncommon Figures of Speech to Spice Up Your Writing (8:04) An alternate version of this assignment would be to ask students to include one example of each figure of speech (five total). In pairs or small groups, ask students to review the revisions. What figures of speech worked? Which did not? Why? Assignment B - Slang: Assign students the following podcast, or listen to it as a class. Then, ask each student to evaluate their most recent fiction piece for use of slang. Writing with Slang (4:51) In pairs or small groups, ask students to discuss their findings. In their own work, did they use slang? If so, how was it used? If not, where might it be used? If not, is there a reason it shouldn’t be used? For a fantastical work, is there space in the world-specific slang, or, if the author attempted this, how could it be improved?  Assignment C- Redundant Language: Assign students the following podcast, or listen to it as a class. Then, ask each student to evaluate their most recent fiction piece for redundant language. When Is It OK to Be Redundant? (6:40) Ask each student to write a short paragraph evaluating their use of redundant language. Do they have any instances of redundancy? Does it work, or should it be edited out of the piece?  As a bonus assignment, ask students to take one paragraph and purposefully add in redundant language, then evaluate its effectiveness.   More Grammar Girl Activities If you are looking for other activities, be sure to check out the other Grammar Girl posts, especially: Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Reflect on Writing & Accomplishments Using Grammar Girl Podcasts in an Online Classroom Grammar Girl & Ideas for Teaching Online Using Grammar Girl Podcasts for Fun, Low-Stakes Activities Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Improve Student Writing Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Discuss Pronouns   Credit: Pixabay Image 984236 by Free-Photos, used under a Pixaby License ... View more

As a lover, and close observer, of words, I always look forward to seeing what major dictionaries will choose as their word of the year. They typically do so based on their own data of what word or words have been searched for most often in that year. For 2020, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com both chose “pandemic,” with Merriam-Webster reporting that on the day the first patient in the U.S. was released from a hospital in Seattle (February 3), “pandemic” had been looked up 1,621 percent more times than in all of 2019 and that by March of this year the word had been searched for 4,000 percent more often. Dictionary.com, saying “pandemic” represented “life upended, language transformed,” reported a 13,575 percentage leap in searches of the word over 2019. Other dictionaries chose coronavirus-related terms. The British Collins Dictionary used its 4.5 billion word Collins Corpus (which gathers usage from websites, newspapers, and books as well as radio and television) to settle on “lockdown,” defined as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces,” as its word of the year. Runners-up for Collins included “coronavirus,” “furlough,” “key worker,” “self-isolate,” and “social distancing,” which are all related to COVID, though they also listed “Tik Tokker,” “Black Lives Matter,” and several other very prominent 2020 words or phrases as well. The venerable Oxford English Dictionary, however, could not settle on one word of the year, even using its 11 billion words gathered from sources across the English-speaking world. The OED issued a report explaining their method and choices, including some newly-coined words such as “Blursday” or “doomscrolling” and ending up with a group of words they found characterized 2020, including “coronavirus,” “pandemic” “social distancing,” “lockdown,” “stay-at-home,” and “in-person,” along with “Black Lives Matter,” “Juneteenth,” and “allyship.” What the editors found startling in 2020 was the way that coronavirus-related words surged above all others as the year went on: “coronavirus,” for example, quickly became one of the most common words in the English language, even more so than a word like “time.” The OED’s editors say their choice of word or words of the year are intended “to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations” of the year while also having “lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.” And the choices of all these dictionaries seem to do just that, to reflect the national and global obsession with a virus that is killing more than 3,000 Americans a day as this year draws to a close. And it seems important to notice what are NOT words of the year: “impeachment,” for example, or “MAGA” or any number of political terms or slogans. For all the chaos, disruption, and endless, frivolous lawsuits surrounding the 2020 election, national attention seems to have focused on what matters most: life itself. It’s worth asking our students to consider 2020 in light of these words of the year, and to spend some time choosing their own word or words of the year. I wonder what they will have to say and what words will speak most directly and forcefully to them. For my part, I’m left thinking hard not so much about what words were used most often in 2020 but about what word (or words) I would choose as my watchword of 2020, a word or words to live by.  At the very top of my list this year is “perseverance,” the ability to endure, to persist, to stay the course, and to hold on in the face of heart-stopping challenges. After that, in this time when we need to protect ourselves, yes, but also and especially all those around us, I’d fall back on the golden rule as not a watchword but a watchphrase to guide me in 2021. If we truly did unto others and said about others and acted toward others as we would have them do, say, and act toward us—well, 2021 would be a year to celebrate and to cherish. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 2563457 by StockSnap, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Matthew Parfitt, one of the authors of Pursuing Happiness, discusses building an online community among students by assigning a shared text and holding discussions across course sections. ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Matthew Parfitt, one of the authors of Pursuing Happiness, reflects on the pace of student discussion in online classes.   ... View more

One of the readings that Sonia and I have carried over into the 10th edition of Signs of Life in the USA is Massimo Pigliucci's "The One Paradigm to Rule Them All: Scientism and The Big Bang Theory." This amusing yet highly informative analysis of one of television's premier comedies focuses on the way that the series made fun of the belief that everything in the world can be reduced to one sort of scientific explanation or another. Called "scientism," this reductionist credo is constantly on display in The Big Bang Theory, running its protagonists (especially Sheldon) into absurdities whenever they try to push it too far.  The current belief in "big data" and "analytics"—the conviction that all of our problems can be solved if just enough numbers can be crunched and the right software can be developed (remember MOOCs?)—is an expression of scientism. So, The Big Bang Theory's entertaining reminders that there is more to being human than meets the algorithm can certainly be seen as a useful corrective. But as I contemplate the astonishing resistance in America to the most fundamental medical realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, I see something in far more need of correction than scientism: this is what I will call anti-science-ism, which is practically the exact opposite of scientism. From climate change denial to the anti-vaxxing movement and beyond, anti-science-ism is one of the most powerful forces in America today, and it can be found across the political spectrum. So, without singling out any particular example for close analysis in this blog, I'd like to offer a brief semiotic explanation for what is going on. Of course, entire books can be devoted to such an analysis, and all of them would do well to begin with the battle between religion and science that erupted during the Enlightenment and which has been reflected most prominently in America through a continuing resistance to the teaching of biological evolution. But the current virulence against science is something else again, raising the temperature beyond anything we have ever experienced before. The Scopes Trial almost seems quaintly provincial in comparison to what is going on now. I think the key to the matter lies in the Greek origins of the word "physics": phusis. Phusis is "nature," material reality, and that is what physics—or more generally, science as a whole—is concerned with. Now, reality has an obdurate way of getting in the way of human desire, so at a time when very large numbers of people have become dissatisfied with their reality (and the ongoing collapsing of the American dream has been contributing a great deal to this dissatisfaction), they are rejecting both reality and the scientists who study it—along with any other duly credentialed authority who tells them what they don't want to hear. Thus are born conspiracy "theories" (note the cooptation of the word here), which redefine reality according to what the spinners of such tales want to believe is true, rejecting as "hoaxes" anything that gets in the way of their beliefs. Given the fact that things only stand to get worse in the years to come, with more and more political polarization as the gap between the educated "haves" and the less-educated "have-nots" continues to widen, we can expect to see only more anti-science-ism in the land, more versions of "realities" that are completely ungrounded in reality, and more denial, even as the temperature, literal as well as figurative, continues to rise. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1044090 by geralt, used under Pixabay License ... View more

As the fall term of this dreadful year comes to a close, as exams and final essays and endless grading face students and teachers alike, I think it’s a good time to take a deep breath and a break from end-of-term tension—and declare that silly season is here. Over the decades, I’ve done this at the point when students were glassy-eyed, sleep deprived, and often very tired of the major projects they were trying to complete for our class. So just for a day or two, we would devote ourselves to having some fun, with language of course! One of my favorites was to do some playful imitation—writing the opening of a fairy tale in the style of a favorite author, actor, or singer: say Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Lin-Manuel Miranda, or Jay-Z presenting the opening of “The Three Little Pigs.” On other occasions, we would go for limericks: “There once was a sophomore from Stanford” or “There once was an upstart from Ujamaa” (a Black Culture theme house on Stanford’s campus—that was at tough one to rhyme!). Your students would surely come up with lots of clever ones based on your own campus. Or we might go for haikus, which can lead to all kinds of inventiveness and good fun. I’ll never forget the haiku a five-year-old in the writing club I started on a Semester at Sea around the world voyage wrote:              I love Tater Tots.           Tater Tots are potatoes           in a weird disguise. I still remember watching him count out the syllables on his fingers and learning that even five year olds know tater tots are weird! My first- and second-year students are even more inventive, often coining new words in order to make a rhyme work. And we perform these amusing, tongue-in-cheek works of art in fancy dress or costumes and using props of all kinds. In the pre-pandemic days, we did all this in person, and each student could invite one or two friends to attend so that we had a responsive and often participatory audience. But I’ve found that these performances can also work well on Zoom or other platforms: in fact, students often have resources they can call on wherever they are staying—and they can also perform outside as long as their laptops will cooperate. The point, of course, is to reduce levels of stress and tension, to loosen up, to be silly, and to be purposely playful with language. In my experience, doing so can add up not only to helpful practice in writing, speaking, listening, and performing but also to remembering that learning is often a whole lot of fun. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 4232776 by sweetlouise, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Lauren Springer, one of the authors of Science and Technology, discusses the need to shape students' expectations of what online learning entails and how it compares to in person classes.  ... View more