Image credit: NASA If your students are creating projects that include images, video, and audio, public domain resources can contribute to amazing work that avoids many of the headaches of using copyright-protected assets. Since public domain assets are free of copyright protections, students can freely incorporate them into their projects without asking for permission or evaluating them for fair use. Here’s an example: If a student needs an image of Earth for a project, going to the NASA site for the photo (like the one on the right) is the best choice. Because NASA is a government agency, its work is automatically in the public domain. The student will find hundreds of high resolution, free images that can be incorporated into any project without asking for permission. All she needs to do is provide attribution and documentation for the source. Likewise, if the student is creating a video and needs a clip of the planet, she can find everything she needs on the NASA Videos site. If anything, she will have difficulty choosing among the many options. To encourage students to take advantage of the benefits of using public domain resources, I created a one-page overview of the basic details of what I see as the three most important questions people tend to have. I used the same model I did for previous resources on why you should use documentation and what needs to be documented. As in the past, I created the page below (shown as an image) on “Using Public Domain Assets.” The page is also available as a Google Doc or a PDF to provide full accessibility to students. This overview outlines the details that I hope will encourage students to search for public domain resources to use in their projects. Once we have reviewed this information, I would share places to find public domain resources as well as details on how to indicate credit for the creator and document their public domain sources in their projects. I’ll talk about those topics in future posts. Do you have questions about encouraging students to use public domain materials? Do you have feedback on my one-page overview? I would love to hear from you in a comment below!   Photo credit: Taken with NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite. ... View more

Earlier this year, I shared my strategy to bribe students by offering extra points for those who turned in their work before Spring Break. I had some success, but there is still room for improvement. I am currently teaching a six-week summer session class, and I’ve accidentally found a strategy that encourages students to turn in work sooner, rather than later. The challenge of a summer class is jamming fifteen weeks of work into six weeks. Every day in the summer needs to cover as much material and work as two and a half days in the fall or spring classes. My normal routine is to have a rough draft due one week and the final draft due the next week. That schedule allows me to provide feedback on the rough drafts so that students can use the information as they revise. As I set up the schedule for the course, I realized I would be unable to keep that set-up in place. Realistically, I have to cover a new project every week, assigning the project on Monday and then asking for a rough draft due on Wednesday and a final draft due on Friday. My late policy gives students a three-day grace period, during which they can still turn in their work without any penalty. I bet you can see the problem. I cannot push the rough draft any earlier in the week if I want to allow students time to process and work on their projects. I decided to tell students that I could not give them feedback on rough drafts that were turned in after Wednesday. Even with the small class size during the summer, it isn’t realistic to think students can turn in drafts later and still get feedback before the final draft is due. I added this paragraph to the assignment: I will not provide individualized editing or revision feedback on rough drafts submitted after 11:59 PM on Wednesday, July 17. I will provide everyone with collective feedback that goes over the issues that I see in the drafts all members of the course submit. I may use excerpts from your draft to provide collective feedback to the class, based on the Anonymous Use of Student Texts policy. There is no grade penalty involved. Students earn the same number of points no matter when they turn in their drafts. The firm deadline only relates to the individualized feedback involved. The surprise for me came that first Wednesday night when I checked to see how many drafts had been submitted. Eleven of my fifteen students had turned in a draft! That’s an amazing 73% of the class, far outweighing the 31% who turned work in early during the spring term. Amazing! I feel a little selfish about the policy. After all, my job is to give students feedback. Within the time constraints however, it was the only option that seemed reasonable. I never expected the policy to entice so many students to stay on track and turn work in on time. It seems as though I have found a bribery strategy that is working. Will it last through the entire term? I’ll have to let you know after a few more assignments. I am certainly wondering whether I should try it in the fall as well. What do you think? Do you limit the feedback that students can receive from you? I would appreciate hearing from you. Just leave me a comment below. Photo credit: wocintech (microsoft) - 114 by WOCinTech Chat on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license. ... View more

Students typically know about design in their own career fields. Civil engineering majors, for instance, typically know what a good bridge, a well-designed intersection, or an efficiently designed airport looks like. They may not be able to design and build one yet, but they can tell the difference between a good design and a bad one. This active learning strategy taps into students’ prior knowledge on design and then asks them to apply what they know to document design. The activity has two parts: first, students document their own knowledge, and second, they collaboratively draw conclusions about design and consider how the concepts apply to writing. The Individual Activity described below is presented as it would be to students while the Follow-Up Group Activities are presented as instructions for the teacher. The Individual Activity Before we begin our discussion of the principles of design that apply to writing, I want you to think about how design principles shape work in your own career field. For this activity, find an object related to your career field that demonstrates strong design principles and then prepare an informal presentation that explains the design principles to your group. Using the presentations from all your group members, you will reflect on what we can say about design across disciplinary and career fields. Instructions Focusing on your career field, choose a well-designed object. A civil engineer could choose a bridge. A software developer could choose a program interface. A packaging science major could choose a reusable packaging system. A building construction major could choose a hand or power tool. Whatever you choose, be sure that you would say it is well-designed and that you are familiar enough with the object to talk about it. Brainstorm a list of features that demonstrate the object’s good design. Just jot down the features that come to mind. You will come back to this list later in this activity. Find information on your object that you can share in class. Ideally, find digital versions that you can incorporate into your presentation. Possible sources include the following: Photos or screen shots Drawings or illustrations Instruction manuals Schematic diagrams Blueprints Advertising materials Demonstration or instructional videos Review the information you collected for additional features that point to the fact that the object is well-designed. As you find characteristics, add them to your brainstormed list. Create a chart that aligns characteristics that make the object well-designed with the evidence from the information you have gathered. For instance, you might point to details in a photo that demonstrate a feature that contributes to the design. You can add or remove features from your list as you work. Create a slideshow presentation to share the features you have identified as integral to a well-designed object in your field, following these guidelines: Add a title slide that shows an image of your object and provides a title that identifies the object. For instance, you might use a title such as “Strong Design in the Humpback Covered Bridge.” Add a slide for each characteristic of good design you have identified, following these suggestions: For the title of the slide, use a word or two to name the characteristic. Include the evidence that you found that demonstrates that characteristic. Add a source citation for your evidence. Do not add any more description or bullet points since you will explain the details to your group. Add speaker’s notes if you like. Practice your presentation so that you are ready to share your well-designed object with your group. Aim to share your information in two to three minutes. Revise your presentation as necessary after your practice session. Follow-Up Group Activities After students have their presentations ready, arrange the class in small groups and ask students to share their presentations with one another. Have students listen for similarities among the principles that are presented. Remind them that the same underlying principle or idea may not use the same name in every career field. Once students complete the individual presentations to their groups, ask them to identify five characteristics that transcend a single career field. Explain that students are looking for similarities among all the principles that have been presented. If students need additional help, suggest that they look at what the principles focus on. For instance, are there principles that focus on what the object looks like? Consider how they are similar. Have groups share their five characteristics by writing them on a section of the board, on a Google Slide, or on chart paper. Ask each group to explain their five characteristics briefly. Use a full-class discussion to look for patterns and similarities among all of the characteristics that have been posted. Ask students to share their immediate observations, and use questions to help them see any details that are less obvious. Display a well-designed document, or pass out copies for students to observe. You can also point to a document in your textbook. Ideally, choose an example related to an current or upcoming writing assignment. Invite students to apply the characteristics posted by their small groups to the example document. As necessary, ask questions that help students apply their career-field knowledge to the example. For example, ask students to apply design principles about an object’s appearance to the appearance of the example document. Synthesize student observations by listing the characteristics that apply to document design. Take advantage of the opportunity to introduce and discuss key principles of design (such as contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity) by connecting to the principles that students have identified. Follow this activity with one of the ideas from Examining Design Principles through Active Learning Tasks or ask students to apply the design principles discussed in the class sessions to the drafts they are currently working on. Alternately, students can apply the design principles to their presentation slides. Final Thoughts Writing and document design can feel alien to students whose area of expertise lies outside the writing classroom. This activity makes students experts in the classroom, telling us all about their career field and then applying that expertise to document design. Students work as active learners, building connections between what they know and the work of the writing classroom. How do you help students understand concepts in the writing classroom that may not seem obvious to them? Do you have classroom activities or assignments to share? I would love to hear from you. Just leave me a comment below. Photo credit: Virginia's Oldest Covered Bridge, Humpback Covered Bridge by Don O’Brien on Wikimedia Commons, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

In “The Importance of the Act of Reading,” Paolo Freire wrote: “Language and reality are dynamically intertwined. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text implies perceiving the relationship between text and context” (6).   Our own stories of reading and writing are significant-- and at the same time those stories do not exist in a vacuum. My thoughts this summer return to the literacy narrative assignment, and how to complicate that assignment for first-semester students enrolled in their first writing course in college. The writing project that I envision would combine literacy narrative and analysis, as described below. This combination allows students to understand the broader contexts of the literacy narrative, and to practice analysis of a model literacy narrative.  Students would begin by reading Paolo Freire’s literacy narrative and lecture, The Importance of the Act of Reading. In Freire’s work, students are offered a model of analytic writing alongside a literacy narrative of reading, writing, language learning, and education inside and outside the classroom. After practice with the difficult language of this lecture, students are invited to analyze ideas from Freire’s lecture in concert with their own experiences of education.   Why Reading? Reading offers students opportunities to grapple with making meaning from difficult language. Working together in class and in journals, drafts, and revisions, students practice the skills they will need to be able to make sense of language and ideas in STEAM textbooks, and other texts that require persistence for comprehension. For more thoughts on the significance of this pedagogy for first-year writing, see McBride and Sweeney's A Place For Reading Instruction in Our Writing Classrooms and this post about reading and writing about a lecture by James Baldwin.   Supporting Class Activities Jigsaw Method: Jigsaw  “The Importance of the Act of Reading.” Divide the class into groups and assign each group a section of the reading to summarize and explain to the rest of the class. Students can use dictionaries and languages other than English to come to an understanding of their reading. An example of using the jigsaw method to discuss reading can be found here, with an appendix here.  Important Quotes: Using medium-sized post-it notes, invite students to choose important quotes from  “The Importance of the Act of Reading.” Post the quotes on the classroom walls and ask students to discuss how each quote relates to the main point of the reading. Unfamiliar Words: Ask students to select difficult quotes from the reading. Project the quotes on the screen, one at a time. Together with students, look up unfamiliar words and make meaning from the quote.  Topic Sentences: On the screen, project the topic sentences of each paragraph of the reading. Invite students to discuss how these sentences offer an outline of the reading.  Examples: Remind students that any of the course readings can be used as models for their own essays.  Concepts for Reading and Writing Interpretation: Cite a specific quote, paraphrase, or summary from Freire’s lecture. What is Freire saying here? What are the meaning(s) of Freire’s words, in English or another language? To aid understanding, use the context of the paragraph and surrounding paragraphs where the quote appears. Also consider the context of the entire lecture. Does Freire present the same idea in other parts of the lecture? Analysis: What are Freire’s main point? What is the relationship between specific parts of the lecture to the main point of the lecture? Why would the specific parts or the main point be important to Freire’s audience of teachers and university students attending the Brazilian Congress of Reading?  Supporting Evidence: Supporting evidence comes primarily from Freire’s lecture. Additional evidence can come from your own experiences, songs or other popular or social media, national, local, or international current events, and/or research on references used in Freire’s lecture (such as Gramsci). Suggested Prompts Following are 4 suggested prompts for essays that could be written in response to Paolo Frerie’s lecture “The Importance of the Act of Reading.” Note that each assignment invites writers to keep the main focus on interpreting and analyzing the meaning of Freire’s lecture.Your own experiences may be used as supporting examples to help interpret and analyze Freire’s lecture.  Research: Who is Gramsci? What is counter-hegemony? Why do you think Freire referenced Gramsci at the conclusion of his lecture (Freire 11)? Does Gramsci’s work hold relevance to your current or previous education? Why or why not?  How do your own experiences inform your response? Language: “Part of the context of my immediate world was also the language universe of my elders, expressing their beliefs, tastes, fears, values, and which linked my world to larger contexts whose existence I could not even suspect” (Freire 7).What does Freire mean by a “language universe”? Describe at least two different settings that form part of your own “language universe.” Some examples of settings are: elders and peers, home and school, school and social media. What connections and disconnections do you find in language use in these settings? How do your own experiences inform your response?  Education: On page 5 Freire writes: “Reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense continually reading the world.” What does Freire’s statement suggest about education? Do you agree or disagree with Freire’s statement? How do your own experiences inform your response? Multimedia: Take a look at the gif “Writing is the hardest thing ever.” What details stand out to you in the gif?  Why do these details stand out? What quotes and ideas from “The Importance of the Act of Reading” support and contradict the gif? How do your own experiences inform your response? Remember: Writing is the hardest thing ever -- and potentially the most rewarding. ... View more

I am currently revising my Technical Writing Course Manual, in preparation for my summer session course, and I want to share the document and how it has worked this week. I first created the manual, using a Google Document, for my spring courses to eliminate the dozens of web pages that I had created previously. The manual addressed several challenges that I had encountered in courses: With the information chunked out in a series of web pages, students had trouble finding details when they needed them. Placing everything in one manual meant the information was all in one searchable place. Students frequently needed a direct link to a specific policy, explanation, or detail in the course materials. The headings in the Google Document let me link to discrete information in the manual. Previously, I used a separate website for the kind of information included in the manual, but students were sometime confused about the need to go to a separate place outside the course management system (CMS) to find course information. The Google Document was easy to embed within our CMS, so I did not need to use a separate website. The manual proved successful during the spring term. Students consulted it it regularly throughout the term. Whenever I looked at the embedded manual on the course homepage in the CMS, I saw a collection of anonymous animals, from the Anonymous Anteater to the Anonymous Wombat. I came to value all those anonymous animals as evidence that students were going back to the course documents long after the first days of the course. I’ve never had that kind of validation with a traditional syllabus. One issue to address as I revise is the length of the manual. It currently comes in at 34 pages, and I’m still tweaking things. Naturally, I don’t expect students to read and memorize the manual; but what seems obvious to me may not be obvious to students. I have added the section below to explain how I expect students to use the manual in the course: How to Use this Manual This course manual is a guide to English 3764, Technical Writing, as taught by Traci Gardner at Virginia Tech. The manual is arranged in three large sections:  Syllabus and Basic Course Information: all the information typically included on a syllabus, including details on course assessment and the textbook. Requirements: explanation of the work that is expected in the course. Policies: all the guidelines that apply in the course, listed in alphabetical order. Do not feel compelled to read the manual cover-to-cover. This guide is a reference you should review at the beginning of the course and then return to throughout the term as necessary.  At the beginning of the course, you should skim through the entire manual. Read the information that provides key details on the class carefully, such as the “Tentative Course Schedule” and the “Late Policy.” Pay attention to the kind of information that is included in the manual as you skim.  During the course, check this manual for the answers to your questions first. You can check the Table of Contents as well as use the Find command to search the manual. Most general questions about the course are answered here. I’ll emphasize these instructions the first week of the course as well, when I point out some of the key details students should review. I’m looking forward to a second term using the manual, and I hope it will be a positive experience this term too. As you check out the document, note any questions or suggestions you have and leave them below as a comment. I’m planning to use the document again for the fall semester, so I can use your advice and feedback! ... View more

As I have written in my last two posts, I presented on the ways that image macro memes (the memes that usually consist of an image and a text caption) at the Computers and Writing Conference in June. Specifically, I focused on political memes and how these memes are a form of activism as the people who make and share them spread their message. As Limor Shifman explains in her book Memes in Digital Culture (2014), memes are a way of expressing opinions in political conversations, undertaking advocacy and grassroots action, and participating in political movements. Given these functions, political memes are perfect for the classroom: They ask students to use critical analysis, persuasion, and argument in authentic conversations. Encourage students to think about the use of memes beyond Internet sharing by examining this version of the Distracted Boyfriend meme, updated to focus on gun control: The meme was shared in a Tweet from @rachel_handler. It shows the distracted boyfriend with the object label “Trump,” looking back at the woman in red who is labeled “NRA,” while his girlfriend who is labeled “Our Lives” looks at him in disgust. Under the meme, the political protest poster states, “We call BS!” The text of the Tweet provides the context where the meme was shared: “great sign my little sister sent me from today’s #nationalschoolwalkout pic.twitter.com/i0WqRMdaDF.” What interests me about this image is that the Internet meme is no longer bound by the Internet. Instead, as was also the case with the Grumpy Cat protest poster I shared previously, the meme has been recreated in an analog world, printed out in this case and glued to a piece of poster paper with an additional line (“We call BS!”) to emphasize the message. The shift from Internet meme to protest poster seems a natural one. What works for political advocacy online can make a similarly strong message in an analog situation. While some Internet memes would not translate to nondigital messages (think of animated gifs and memetic videos), image macros make the transition smoothly. For more examples of memes on protest posters, check out the Medium post “Teens March With Memes.” After students examine a meme that has crossed from the Internet to an analog existence, ask students to consider these questions: Why would someone use a meme on a political protest poster? How would the purpose of a political protest influence the kind of meme someone would choose? What audience(s) would a political poster using a meme target? Consider specific posters and the memes they use. Why do you think the poster maker made the choice of the specific meme for that specific poster? What underlying messages does the meme on a particular protest poster communicate? Think about the assumptions and “unspoken” messages in the poster. What existing meme template would be a better (or worse) choice for this message? Why would someone use this Internet meme on an analog poster? What can you say about how it transitions from the Internet to a poster? What guidelines would you propose to help someone choose and customize a meme for a political protest poster? As you may guess, these question work students toward creating a rubric for effective memes, which can then be applied to their own political memes. My post last week offered a range of online tools that students can use to create memes. Do you have ideas for using memes in the classroom? Do you have questions that you would like me to consider in an upcoming post about memes? Just let me know by leaving a comment below. I can’t wait to hear from you. ... View more

LOLcat defining Politics, with captions, Politics: n - frum Greek. Poli - many, tics - blood sucking parasites Last week, I shared a Political Meme Scavenger Hunt activity, one of the resources that I also shared at the Computers and Writing Conference in East Lansing, Michigan last week. My session focused on how political memes work and strategies for using them in the classroom. Today I am sharing another resource from the session: online meme generation tools. The tools listed below all create image macros, the kind of meme that consists of an image and usually some text caption. An image macro can also include an emoji or other drawing as part of the message. The LOLcat on the right is an image macro. Constraints of Online Meme Makers The meme generators I collected are free and offer many options. Those strengths come with a down side however. The sites appear to do little review of the memes that are generated and posted. Since the sites are free, they are wide open to anyone who wants to create an image-based meme. Some of the memes on the sites are problematic. You will find images that are racist, sexist, and graphic. Some of the meme templates are also problematic, relying on stereotypes or questionable images. You will also find that trolls can attack a site, either making it inaccessible or overloading the site with questionable content. The screenshot below shows the recently created memes on the Meme Generator site at the time I was writing this post: The page was flooded with a pencil meme and text that taunt the website managers. The top left meme includes the caption, “The entire main page will be nothing but this meme.” Other messages on the page continue the theme, criticizing the website and boasting about the attack. This example demonstrates the problems what you may encounter with using these sites. To address these issues, I suggest the following guidelines: Review the site(s) you want to use well, and then narrow the list down. Choose the site(s) that best match your needs and local expectations for classroom appropriateness. Recognize that these sites can and do change in a matter of seconds. A site that may have been fine when you checked the night before class could have a flooded homepage, like the Meme Generator site shown in the screenshot above. Have a backup plan. If a site is down or has problem images when class meets, have an alternative ready. Before asking students to make memes, discuss the nature of the site(s) with students so that they will not be surprised if they encounter problematic content. Explain the ground rules for your class use of the resources—what students should do if something problematic appears on their screens, and what kind of content is appropriate for their own memes. Generators for Specific Memes One way to avoid problematic meme templates is to send students to specific generators that match the topic you are discussing and that do not begin with an inappropriate image. All of the generators listed here could be used by those who attended my conference session to make political memes: What If I Told You Generator Willy Wonka Generator Doge Meme Generator Distracted Boyfriend Meme Generator Trump Bill Signing Meme Generator Marked Safe From... Meme Generator Who Would Win Meme Generator Laughing Men in Suits Meme Generator All the Things Meme Generator Uncle Sam Meme Generator Presidential Alert Meme Generator Warning Sign Meme Generator Meme Generators These links take you to templates with a range of options. Some of the images may be inappropriate, but these sites give students the widest number of options. Another way to avoid problematic meme images and templates is to choose one of the sites that allows the upload of students’ own images. Students will need to take photos or find images to use, but avoiding the templates does limit the likelihood of encountering inappropriate content. Meme Generator (for iOS & Android) ImgFlip Blank Meme Templates ImgFlip Meme Generator (allows upload of images) QuickMeme Cheezeburger Builder (allows upload of images) Imgur Meme Generator (allows upload of images) Kapwing Meme Generator (allows upload of images, details on options) Kapwing Meme Templates Final Thoughts Image Macro Memes give students a chance to combine social media and cultural knowledge with visual rhetoric. To be effective, the image and text have to work together to communicate their message. Students typically have experience with the genre. They know what makes a meme successful and what makes one fail, so their prior knowledge make image macros a strong tool for introducing the design and visual composing strategies that build upon their expertise. Have you used memes in the classroom? Do you have advice to share or examples that you love? Add a comment below to tell me more. I’d love to hear from you. ... View more

Protest Poster showing Grumpy Cat holding an Ethernet cable, with the message, “#NSA Killed My Internet. Now I have to build a GNU one.” Sometimes a LOLcat is just a humorous comment on life. Other times, there is a specific social, political, or cultural message behind it. Take the Grumpy Cat protest poster on the right. The description on Flickr explains that the image is from “the ‘Freedom not Fear’ protest rally against global internet surveillance at 7.9.2013 in Berlin, Germany.” This Grumpy Cat poster is part of a presentation I will give at the Computers and Writing Conference in East Lansing, Michigan this summer. To provide some background, the proposal for my session, “Making Memes that Work for Change,” explains: Political messages in the news and on social media timelines frequently borrow from the strategies of familiar Internet memes, like the captioned images we see on Facebook and Twitter. The rhetorical choice of memes for these political messages enables their authors to respond pointedly to issues that affect them, for as Limor Shifman (2014) explains in Memes in Digital Culture, “[P]olitical memes are about making a point—participating in a normative debate about how the world should look and the best way to get there” (121). In short, political memes work to persuade, to engage, and to move the public to action, all as the authors work to communicate their views of the possibilities for the future. In the case of this Grumpy Cat poster, a well-known Internet meme (Grumpy Cat) is used to communicate the protesters’ dissatisfaction with Internet surveillance. To kick off my presentation, I will ask participants to try the following scavenger hunt activity that I use with students, using the Grumpy Cat as inspiration. The goal is to provide a quick introduction to the political moves that are used in these memes and build a collection to use as the class (or presentation) explores deeper issues. Political Meme Scavenger Hunt Class Activity Find political image-based memes that feature An animal (cat, dog, bird, etc.) A new take on a well-known meme Puns or other word play A stock photo A still from a video (movie, tv show, YouTube, etc.) Be sure that the memes you find are appropriate to share with the entire group. Aim for an image that would be appropriate for a PG-13 movie, and language that is no worse than an R-rated movie. While you are free to share your political beliefs, what you share must align with the Virginia Tech Principles of Community. If you are unsure about any meme, ask me. I’ve included details in this activity to avoid potential problems that can arise when students examine memes. First, I suggested five specific kinds of memes that students should find to keep them from searching endlessly. They need to find five, so they have to use their time wisely. Second, I provided standards for the images and language that are acceptable. I want to avoid some of the gruesome memes I have seen, but I did not want to censor topics. For example, there are some graphic abortion memes that I find unacceptable for the classroom. I want to avoid anything of this sort that might trigger students. The movie rating system has always worked well for me. I do make sure that everyone is familiar with the system, as there are occasionally international students who are used to different ratings standards. Finally, I don’t want to force students to approach topics from any particular stance. They should be free to share any position: pro, con, or somewhere in between. That said, there are some topics that are not appropriate. Students usually understand that things like hate speech are off limits, but my reference to the Virginia Tech Principles of Community reminds them. I did not include details on how the memes will be shared in the activity. The particular class circumstances and resources determine what will work best. Options I have used include the following: Share the memes in a discussion forum, especially if students are doing the activity for homework. Post the images in a collaborative Google Document or Slides file, which is useful for small group work (give each group its own document). Paste the images in an online white board, like Padlet or Note.ly, which is fun for real-time, whole-group discussion. Email the memes to you (the teacher) and then choose those to share in class, which allows you to review the images beforehand. Enter the link to and name/title of each meme in a Google Form, which will create a list of the memes that you can use later in the course. Once the memes are collected, you can use them to discuss argument and persuasion, the underlying political messages, symbolism, language strategies, and visual rhetoric. They also provide the background knowledge for a meme-making assignment—and I will share resources for making memes next week, so be sure to come back! Meanwhile, if you have a suggestion or reaction to today’s post, please leave me a comment below. Credit: Grumpy Cat by Frerk Meyer on Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0). ... View more

Writing a simple email message can turn me into an overthinking scaredy-cat. Am I using the right phrase? Do I sound like I’m apologizing too much? Am I oversharing? Am I being too vague? Ugh. I end up evaluating, re-evaluating, revising, writing, and then erasing any time I have to send an important message. What should be an easy message telling someone my manuscript will be late or I can’t make a meeting becomes agony. Imagine my joy when a friend shared Dani Donovan’s “E-Mail Like a Boss” matrix on Twitter. Even better, her “Write This, Not That” style suggestions are a perfect model for a classroom activity. In the image below, Donovan (@danidonovan) concentrates the kinds of sentences I struggle with into short, direct ideas that avoid unnecessary apologies or padding: For students, this matrix can demonstrate two things. First, there is the obvious face value of the information: students gain some stronger ways to say things in emails and elsewhere. Second, each pair demonstrates the value of revision, showing stronger ways to phrase the same idea. To use the matrix in class, I would follow these steps: Students can work in small groups or as a whole class to discuss how the suggested alternatives improve on the original. Together, brainstorm other email sentences and messages that can be difficult to write. Students are sure to come up with some ideas immediately, such as telling a professor that they are ill and won’t be in class. While you will want to keep the scenarios they come up with appropriate for the classroom, try to push students to get beyond simple scenarios. If time allows, students can search their email for messages that they have struggled with and add those ideas to the list. As a class, review the brainstormed lists and identify nine situations to focus on. Assign each of the situations to a small group or pair of students. Ask students to create their own “Write This, Not That” style suggestions, using Donovan’s matrix as their model. The groups can record their suggestions in a shared class document if desired. Once all the groups have completed the task, ask groups to present their recommendations to the class, and arrange for everyone to have a copy of the suggestions for future use. To go beyond the original matrix, students can think about other writing situations that they encounter frequently, creating “Write This, Not That” suggestions for other tasks they complete, such as description, persuasion, and research essays. As another option, students can review their own drafts, identify sentences or phrases that they have struggled with, and then work together to create “Write This, Not That” alternatives in a group peer review activity. Final Thoughts If you use this “E-mail Like A Boss” image with students, be sure to share Donovan’s ADHD Explained Using Comics collection as well. Donovan explains these ADHD webcomics this way: ADHD can be difficult to explain, and even harder to talk about. We're creative, friendly, and misunderstood by a lot of people. My hope is to help people with #ADHD feel understood and seen, and be able to share their experiences with others. Her comics can inspire other writing activities as well as discussion of how to communicate ideas that readers may not be familiar with. If your class is exploring comics and graphic novels, this collection demonstrates how a comic designer has used the genre to share her message with readers. If you try any of these activities, I would love to hear from you. Please leave me a comment to tell me how it worked in your classroom or share other ways to use these resources. ... View more

Today's featured guest blogger is Shane Bradley, Administrative Dean, Writing Program Director, and Assistant Professor of English at Erskine College.  The following dictum still bothers me: “Just write what comes to mind. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation. Write what you feel.” This vague instruction does little for student writers who need to develop academic thinking and writing skills. In reality, what students need is less “do what you want” and more “here’s a specific set of guidelines.” Instructors turn to the ubiquitous journal assignment for any number of reasons: to begin the class, to transition from one standard to the next, or to consume time. While students often meet this much-clichéd strategy with disapprobation because they’ve been “journaled to death,” by providing a few specific objectives, both students and teachers can benefit from an otherwise mundane activity. Working with first- and second-year college writers clarified two (among others) distinct realities:   Students need more instruction about how to organize body paragraphs. Students have been allowed too much time to write what they feel, not why they feel.   Many students leave high school having spent hours and hours expressing their opinions without having to justify (or support) those ideas. “I believe this law should be changed.” “Why?” “Because I don’t like it.” “Why don’t you like it?” “It doesn’t work.” “Can you provide examples of how and when that law doesn’t work?” That’s usually where that dialogue ends, for asking students to justify their opinions with logic and fact also means not blindly validating what they think simply because they think it. While changing said law might be necessary, the student bears the responsibility of being able to think and write critically about those ideas. Our blind assertion that students’ feelings must be spared in our efforts to give them voice discounts the reality that many are leaving high school without the foggiest notion what critical thinking is. Professor Digory Kirke in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe laments this fact when he asks, “Don’t they even teach logic in schools anymore?” Unfortunately for our students, life today depends heavily on emotion and feeling while routinely discounting logic. In order to prompt students to understand an organizational structure that can help them begin to critically analyze, I use a specific template for in-class journal responses (which most often come in the form of body paragraph practice): topic + support + analysis The topic consists of the points that support the thesis. The support (evidence) comes from poems, plays, short stories, novels, movies, songs, National Geographic articles, etc. The analysis, the most difficult part, starts with students’ ability to think logically and critically about specific issues. While the analysis component will take time to cultivate, the topic and support can begin immediately. The journaling assignment can be simple: How does Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” exemplify a theme from the Harlem Renaissance? Students’ responses will vary, and much of what they write may feel like simple summary; however, as the instructor exuberantly lends guidance - maybe walking from desk to desk, peering over shoulders – old habits begin to crumble, newer, effective writing strategies taking root: topic + support + analysis. Students begin to focus on why instead of what. Instructors can add increasingly structured guidelines to the template: the use of signal phrases to announce quotations (support); weening students off their dependence on the second-person you; employment of the third-person point of view when responding to literature; more developed transitions (beyond the tired standbys like first, second, finally, for example, and in conclusion) that utilize diverse syntax and punctuation; and more attention to spelling, punctuation, agreement, and usage.   Give it a try. Educators already know that students perform better when they know their boundaries. Provide some guidelines and watch students’ thinking and writing skills grow. At the very least, the final product of journaling with a purpose will be more palatable when you’re wading through that stack of papers next weekend. ... View more

With television's arguably most prominent dramatic series ending amidst the ashes of King's Landing and the outrage of many of its most loyal fans (including a remarkable Change.Org petition demanding an entire Season 8 redo), I find myself reminded of Frank Kermode's classic study, The Sense of an Ending (1967). Exploring the ways that human beings use storytelling in order to make sense of their lives and history, Kermode focuses his attention on the "high art" literary tradition, but the same attention can be paid to popular art as well in ways that can explain, at least in part, the extraordinary reaction to GoT's final two episodes. Here's how. First, let's note that fan pressure on creative artists is nothing new. Charles Dickens' readers pleaded with him, in the serialized run-up to the climax of The Old Curiosity Shop, to please not kill Little Nell, while Arthur Conan Doyle was successfully lobbied by disappointed readers to bring Sherlock Holmes back from the dead after apparently killing the popular detective off in "The Final Problem." And movie producers routinely audience-test their films before making their final cuts. So all the popular uproar is not really different in kind from things that have happened before, but it may be different in degree, which is where its significance lies. Because no one, except for the series' writers and actors, appears to be fully satisfied with what finally happened after eight long, and violent, years in the battle for the Iron Throne. The most common complaint seems to be that Daenerys should have been allowed to follow her "character arc" to become not only Queen of the Seven Kingdoms but also a kind of messiah. However, it isn't my purpose to wade into the controversy to offer my own opinion about what "should" or "shouldn't" have happened, for that's an esthetic, not a semiotic, question. Rather, I want to look at the extravagance of the negative response to what did transpire and what it tells us.   To understand this response we can begin with the fact that Game of Thrones ran for eight years as a continuous narrative—conceived, in fact, as one gigantic movie: a TV "maxi-series" if you will. Eight years is a long time, especially for the show's core audience of millennials who effectively entered adulthood along with GoT's main characters. This audience largely overlapped with the generation that grew from childhood to adolescence as the Harry Potter novels were published and filmed, and who also were on hand for the definitive cinematic Lord of the Rings: the fantasy novel to beat all fantasy novels first raised to cult status by baby boomers and turned upside down and inside out by George R.R. Martin to create A Song of Fire and Ice.   Such a long wait, at such a formative period of life, is simply bound to build up a great load of gestaltic expectation, a longing for the kind of ending that would redeem all the violence, betrayal, and heartbreak of this essentially sadistic story ("Red Wedding" anyone?). Both The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter novels prepared viewers for such an ending, one in which, to quote Miss Prism from The Importance of Being Earnest, "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily." Instead, everyone got something more along the lines of King Lear.   And there you have it, for as Miss Prism tartly adds, happy endings are "what fiction means”—or as Frank Kermode might put it, the triumph of the hero and the defeat of the villain is one way that our story telling makes sense of (one might say, makes bearable) the realities of human experience.   But that isn't what George R.R. Martin—who knows full well how the triumph of the House of York only led to Richard III, whose defeat, in turn, brought Henry VIII and Bloody Mary to the throne—ever appears to have had in mind for his epic saga. Mixing historical reality with a lot of Tolkiensque fantasy, Martin (whose own conclusion to the tale is yet to come) thus put the show's writers into quite a bind. Because a completely conventional "happy" ending would have contradicted the whole point of the story, while a completely dismal one (say, Cersei triumphing after all) would have really enraged the customers. I use that word deliberately, for in popular culture audiences really are customers, and they expect to get what they pay for (the complaint on the part of some fans that by making GoT's producers and actors rich they were entitled to a better wind up than they got is especially significant in this regard). So Benioff and Weiss essentially compromised in the way that pop culture usually does. The really bad villains do end unhappily, and the Starks do regain power after all, but Martin's fundamental thesis that power itself is the problem is preserved in the madness of Daenerys at the moment of achieving absolute control.   It wasn't a bad compromise in my view, but it quite clearly hasn't been a successful one either. Still, because of the odd reversal in the relation between novel and film, with the film being concluded before the novel was, the game isn't over. If the novels ever are concluded, I suspect that Martin will have more shocks up his sleeve, beginning, I suppose, with King Bran turning tyrant and bad trouble between Jon and Sansa.   Photo Credit: “Game of Thrones Paperback Book” by Wiyre Media on Flickr 7/15/17 via a CC BY 2.0 License. ... View more

Google Forms make an easy task of collecting information from students for class discussion and writing activities. Just gather student responses your Google Form, and use the collected responses as the basis of class discussion and related activities. All you need is a Google Drive login and one question, meant to gather information on the projects that students are working on or their recent reading assignments. For demonstration purposes, I’m using the question, “What is the title of your report?” I’ll suggest some other questions at the end of the post. Once you log into Google Drive and have your question ready, it’s a matter of these three basic steps: Step 1: Create Your Form Set up a one-question survey that asks for no personal or identifying information. Since responses are anonymous, you avoid any FERPA complications. Once you log into Google Drive, create a new blank form. Give your survey a title, replacing the default “Untitled Form.” Replace the default “Untitled Question” text with the question you want students to respond to. Change the type of question to “Short answer” if Google does not change the type automatically. Note: Google tries to interpret your question and adapt the form, so it may make this change for you. If desired, click the palette icon on the upper right corner of the page to change the colors and add a background image. With your form ready to go, give students the link to your form. Click the SEND button in the upper right corner of the page to choose one of several options: Send via email Get a link to share Copy code to embed the form on your page Post to Facebook Send out as a Tweet Once you send out the link, all you have to do is wait for students to respond. You can look at my Title Survey to see an example of a student-ready form. Step 2: Check the Responses Once students have submitted their answers, spot check the questions to prepare for discussion and to check for any problems. Log into Google Drive. Open the Form you created. Click “Responses,” as indicated by the red arrow in this screenshot: The form will switch to show the responses that students have submitted. You can select the list and copy it, so that you can edit it in your word processor if you like. You can also have Google Forms show the responses in a Sheets spreadsheet. Read the Response to determine the likely topics for class discussion and to remove anything that doesn’t belong. For example, the Responses to the Title Survey show that students would benefit from revising for length and wordiness and should review the rules for capitalizing titles. There is also a title that shows the student has chosen a topic that does not fit the assignment, so I would remove that response to avoid any embarrassment in class. I would write to that student privately before class. Step 3: Lead Your Class Discussion Kick off class discussion by sharing the Responses to the question. You can share a link to the responses or a link to the word processor document you created with the responses. Give students several minutes to review the list, and then let their observations guide the discussion. Begin by asking students what they notice about the Responses. Encourage them to look for patterns and idiosyncrasies. Try sorting the answers alphabetically to group similar responses. As a class you can collaborate to revise Responses if appropriate. Final Thoughts I used this activity to ask students to examine and strengthen their document titles. You could use a similar Google Form to ask questions such as these: What is your thesis statement? What is your favorite sentence in the paper (or in a reading)? What is the biggest question you have about the assignment? What do you emphasis in your conclusion? What is the first sentence of your document? How would you summarize today’s reading? In addition to asking student to respond to these questions by thinking about their own papers, you can have peer review partners respond with their observations as well. This activity is simple but powerful. Students can quickly see how everyone has responded to a particular task, and then they can make observations about what works and what doesn’t. By asking students to add their information to the Form, you can concentrate on what you want to talk about, rather than the busy work of setting up the list of responses. Do you use Google Drive in the classroom? Have you used Google Forms? Tell me about your experiences by leaving a comment below. I’d love to hear from you. ... 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.     Today’s blog post is the last one for the spring semester! To send students off into the summer months, we’ll look at some easy-to-confuse words that they might use in day-to-day communications.   Podcasts have been around for a while, 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. Podcasts about Commonly Confused Words Affect versus Effect [9:15] Between versus Among [4:00] Can versus May [4:29] If versus Whether [3:05] Less versus Fewer [6:34] Jury-Rigged or Jerry-Rigged? [3:45] Riffle versus Rifle [2:34]   Students can do a lot more with podcasts than simply listen to them. Use one of the following assignments to encourage students to engage further with the Grammar Girl podcasts.   Assignment A: As a class, listen to one or more of the above podcasts. Discuss what it is about these words that make them easy to confuse. Is it their meanings? Their spellings? A combination of the two? Some other reasons? Then, strategize ways to remember when to use the correct word.   Assignment B: Ask each student to find an example of a word they’ve used incorrectly in a recent paper or another form of writing, such as a text message or post on social media. (Alternately, select an example for the class to look at together.) Have each student write a short paragraph explaining how the word was used incorrectly, what word should have been used instead, and ways to remember the correct word in the future.   How have you used podcasts about word usage in your class? How else do you discuss commonly confused words? Let us know in the comments!   Credit: Pixabay Image 1767562 by qimono, used under a Pixaby License ... View more

As the academic year ends, it’s time for me to turn to revising Elements of Argument and The Structure of Argument. What do I have to keep in mind about argument in the headlines as I look ahead? Given the political situation in America, it would be easy to say that there is no such thing as logical argument anymore. Emotion sometimes so far outweighs logic that it is almost naïve to give any credit to the seemingly old-fashioned notions that were at the heart of teaching classical rhetoric. Partisan politics so distorts people’s thinking that common ground seems impossible to reach. Family members have in many cases given up trying to reason with each other and have had to agree to silently disagree—or to unfriend each other. News is condemned as fake, and journalists are labeled enemies of the people. People of all ages depend increasingly on social media for their news and their opinions about it, and we now have an idea how much those opinions were shaped the last presidential election by a foreign government. Religious leaders dictate public policy, and the system of checks and balances built into our federal government seems to be dangerously out of balance. The next editions of my textbooks will be published shortly before the 2020 elections. I will write them not knowing how the elections will turn out. That shouldn’t make any difference, and ultimately it doesn’t. I can’t ignore the fact that young people, more than ever, need to be able to construct an argument to defend their opinions and to deconstruct an argument to reveal its flaws, even if the other side seems unwilling to listen. In looking at the current editions with revision in mind, reviewers stressed that we need to keep in mind that there are often not just two sides to an argument. We too often think in terms of a debate, pro and con. An issue like abortion cannot be reduced to those terms. Even gender cannot be viewed as a simple binary anymore. We need more emphasis on finding common ground. In some cases, it is not which side wins but what compromise can be reached. That was the idea behind having whole chapters in Elements entitled "Multiple Viewpoints." From the time our students started using the Internet to find sources to document their writing, we have had to teach them to evaluate sources. It was so easy—and quick—to accept the first source that popped up online. Now that is most often Wikipedia, in which entries can be written by anyone. Students used papers by students no more advanced than themselves as sources. We have to teach our students to investigate the source for legitimacy and for authority. While we have always had to do that, it was a little easier when an opinion had passed the bar of finding its way into print. We aren’t very likely to force our students back to using solely print sources. After all, many print sources are available online as well. Instead, students need to learn to question who wrote the words on the screen and what authority those writers have. They need to research the organization behind a web site, not just accept information uncritically. They need to understand the biases of sources. It seems so simple, but we have to teach our students that there still are such things as truth and facts. Yes, photos can be doctored, as we all know, but when multiple sources have on video a person making a statement, it is pretty hard to deny those words came out of his or her mouth. Facts about funding sent to victims of natural disasters, troop deployments, crowd size, voting records, redistricting, numbers of votes cast, numbers of crimes, citizenship status of those convicted of crimes—the list could go on and on—can be verified. Biased as our news sources have become, there are still facts that arguments can be built on. Sure, a writer may have to do some digging to find them, and definitely will have to consider the source, but facts are facts in spite of what anyone says. There is no such thing as an alternative fact. We have to hold our politicians, and everyone else, to a standard of truth. Textbook authors have acknowledged for years that critical reading goes hand in hand with argumentative writing. Students need practice in understanding arguments and seeing flaws in them before and while they are learning to write their own. They need to go beyond the headlines to read whole opinion essays, to see carefully structured and well supported arguments. And those do exist, from classical readings to the most recent editorials. They need to go beyond the surface of the news to see the reasons behind it. And they need to read opinions that differ from their own. The first steps toward the common ground that we are eventually going to have to find are understanding another point of view and recognizing that on any given subject there may be more than two opposing points of view.   Photo Credit: “Calendar*” by Dafne Cholet on Flickr, 01/20/11 via a CC BY 2.0 license. ... View more

In two days I will be in Vancouver for the meeting of the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing held at the University of British Columbia, where I taught from 1977 to 1987. What a treat it will be to be back in that glorious city! The topic I’m working on is a rethinking of the relationship between speaking and writing, and I have been having a lot of fun tracing this relationship from ancient times to the present. I’ve been pondering the effects that the hegemony of writing has had and the recent resurgence of speaking and orality/aurality as major means of communication, not to mention the importance of sound and soundscapes to understanding, learning, and knowing. (I have also re-read, with admiration, Cindy Selfe’s dynamite article from a decade ago, “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Mjultimodal Composing” in CCC, June 2009.)   And I am puzzling over the contrast between Plato’s notion of speech as “the living word of knowledge, which has a soul” and the work of artificial intelligence to bring us talking robots and digital assistants who speak to us and seem, according to my students, “almost real.” What to make of these innovative “speakers” and the voice recognition technology that offers both powerful opportunities and perilous pitfalls. How will teachers of writing and speaking define “talk” now that speech is clearly “post-human”?   I will be writing more about these issues soon. But first, I am going to go to Vancouver and immerse myself in its beauty, see old friends, and walk around the campus I once knew so well. And then, I am going to take a bit of a summer break. I’ll be working on writing projects, for sure, but I will also be catching up on the latest Louise Penny books, taking long soaks in the hot tub, and being grateful for all the summers I’ve enjoyed—and hoping for more!   I wish you a summer of rest and restoration, and some happy reading and writing!   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3076954 by Nietjuh, used under the Pixabay License ... View more