Catching Up

So, I haven't posted in a very, very long while but I have decided to change that status immediately! I spent the weekend of April 25 & 26 with an amazing bead artist, Marcia DeCoster, who was kind enough to grace us with her talent & presence at the Alaska Bead Company for 4 amazing classes in seed bead work!!

Marcia is a serious blogger (check out her website at http://www.marciadecoster.com) to see her amazing designs, read about her life, and link to her fun blog! So, after hearing Marcia talk about her daily blogging & reading some of her entries (hey, my picture is even on one of the blog entries), I realized that I needed to get my blogging butt in gear. Hats off to you Marcia; you've accomplished what few can -- motivating me (LOL!)

I've been busy working on my Marcia DeCoster jewelry items (Romantica & La Boquita), finding inspiration at every turn, now that finals week is over at UAA. Get this -- I even posted my grades early (for me anyhow!); its just an amazing time all around.

The weather in Anchorage has been dishing out mass amounts of sunshine. We still get down in the high 30s at night but the days are heaven. In fact, Saturday (May 2) we had record breaking temperatures -- thank you God! It was awesome after the dreary, cold, & rainy summer last year. I planted the zucchini, summer squash, acorn squash (we're trying this new this year), sunflowers, strawflowers, and cucumbers in their started pots in the sunroom. I also had to move the cabbage & lettuce plants out to the greenhouse to start hardening them off the same day. Course, silly me, I spaced about how hot it was & put the baby plants in the top shelve of the greenhouse. Thank goodness my dad was around. He noticed where I had put the plants, thought he'd go have a look/see & found the poor babies wilting from the direct sun & heat! So, he moved them down a shelf to get them out of the direct sun & they've perked back up extremely well.

Next, I've got to plant the herbs (cilantro, basil, thyme, & rosemary) as well as the marigolds. I was going to do them on Saturday but ran out of little starter pots. I think I'm planting way, WAY to many seeds -- sure hope Paul & Dad can get the garden cleaned out in time! I've also got radishes, beets, peas (two types -- yummo!), and carrots to plant in a few weeks once the night warm up a bit. At the rate the weather is going, we're going to have a bumper crop of everything from the garden. Good thing we're in a new house -- the neighbors are unsuspecting & have no clue about our ways (you know, dropping zucchini, crooked neck, cucs, etc. on their doors late at night so our refrigerators & freezer don't explode!)

Ok, off to bed. Paul & I started a new weight-loss program & we have to eat at the same time each day so my "summer vacation" won't include sleeping in much!

Blog Project: Findings

Although I have not completed reading all of the evaluative responses from my students, I have found several things of great interest already as I have watched my students work through this project. One of the first things I noticed was that students were clearly split into two groups; those enjoying the new experience and those fearing negative feedback from unknown participants. I believe this came from their confusion about who their audience was since blogging can be, as a fellow graduate student put it, “like screaming into the void.” Still, even with these fears and hesitations, I saw that, overall, my students seemed more willing to write since their occasional grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors were less of an issue in this format. This, then, created higher amounts of blog posts and greater participation in both personal blog entries and peer comments. Also, although side conversations frequently cropped up, most commenter adhered to the topic presented and full-blown rants were rare. Ironically, the only rants I saw were between fellow classmates who knew each other; it was as if having a known commenter say something negative felt like a personal attack while an unknown commenter may have misunderstood or could be more easily ignored.

These findings have lead me to the realization that I need to spend more time helping my students understand their audience and how to deal with situations where an audience may not be easily identified. Also, it quickly became obvious that there was a need to solicit comments for people outside of the peer group in order to truly enter into a more global conversation. When (not if) I do this project again, I will restructure my lesson plans to include sessions on audience identification and presentation. My other change will be to assign students the task of researching and participating in another person’s blog who is discussing a similar or related topic. The one student I had who received comments from an outside source, has found his blog work very enlightening and engaging as well as having the benefit of getting a perspective from a person from another part of the world. This student has not only continued to communicate with this other gentleman but has also gone to his blog and made comments. In a recent email from my student, he told me that he had just joined a discussion group on the topic of socialism around the globe – a great addition to both his knowledge base and his global awareness!

Blog Project: Evaluation

The process of evaluation of this project will require several steps and many participants. I will begin by evaluating the initial entries each student makes on their blogs to see how they present their argument. This portion of the evaluation will involve looking at each student’s choice for blog form (colors, layout, fonts) as well as how each blog post is titled and written. After evaluating initial posts, I will focus my further evaluation on received comments and responses to these comments. I will be looking to see how each blog master initiates conversation in their blogs and how they respond to comments they receive from various participants. My hope during this time is to see how well my students present themselves is a less familiar form (blogs) as well as to see how they respond in an environment that, for many, is less threatening because of the unfamiliarity factor where participants may or may not know who the person is who they are responding to. Finally, each student do a two-fold analysis: 1) they will present an evaluation of one of their peer’s blogs they were involved with, basing their analysis on how well they see the blog master presenting their information and how well they feel the responses were to comments made on their posts; and 2) they will write a short evaluation of their own blog, focusing on their use of rhetorical strategies, audience acknowledgement, and participant response, to analyze their strong and weak points in conversing about their argument.
I believe that success or failure of this writing project will be fairly easy to evaluate since students will be required to participate in both their own blogs and the blogs of others. Also, the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of this particular pedagogical choice will be seen in the final evaluations each student presents. Of course, it is my firm belief that the true value of this lesson will not be known for some time; in fact, it may never be well-known to me. This is because I believe that what my students do today will, if the gods are kind, stick with them through their college careers and, possibly, into their future, as they step into new and extended discourse communities where they will be able to present themselves effectively and efficiently.

Blog Project: Pedagogical Application

During my research, I discovered that the brain process of today’s youth has drastically changed from that of previous generations. Where once we scanned in a Z-pattern (think about how you read a book), many now scan in an F-pattern (think about how you view a web page). Another factor that plays into the pedagogical process of teaching composition is Lankshear and Knobel’s notion of the recent development of an “attention economy.” due to the influx of vast amounts of information readily and rapidly available to today’s discourse community participant. People today seem to be moving from a goods-drive economy to a media-attention driven economy where the more attention you gain, the more successful you are. Both of these fairly recent developments point to the need to rethink how we teach composition and how we instruct our students to present themselves and their positions in the various discourse communities they are involved with. By using blogging as a form of presentation, I will be taking my students out of the more archaic “norm” of written presentation and introducing them to just one of the numerous forms of attention gaining, F-pattern styled formats for presentation that are available in today’s information-glutted, hyper-linked world where less (in words) is often more (in outcome).

Blog Project: Theoretical Underpinnings

I have always preferred the theoretical notion that literacy is related to discourses we participate in. By viewing a person’s communication, whether it is spoken, written, or presented in a mixed media format, as that of a participating in a discourse community, the senses of relationship and responsibility come into play; each participant is a member of a community and all the pieces and parts that go with that concept. Lankshear and Knobel (2006) define literacies as “socially recognized ways of generating, communicating and negotiating meaningful content through the medium of encoded texts with contexts of participation in Discourses (or, as members of Discourses)” (p. 64). This definition fits snuggly into my theoretical followings of discourse communities and the recognition that literacy is, basically, the way we present our ideas and texts in a socially recognized format.

One of the things that I enjoy most about the “new” literacies we find on the internet and in mixed media presentations is that these forms of communication are much more participatory, more collaborative, and less author-centered than the texts of the past. Plato believed that all literature was a meager imitation of the real thing; no new ideas came from anything written. Yet, today we can find numerous sources where authors around the globe have collaborated on an online journal article, written a short story together, or had brainstorm sessions in online discussion forums, chats, and via instant messaging or text messaging. Inside information comes through blogs, youtube videos, wikis, and websites. People even fall in meet and fall in love while gaming online! So, the idea that nothing new is ever written or discussed, that literacy is a minor imitation of reality is no longer a plausible argument – fortunately, Plato has been proven wrong.

Blog Project: Project Details & Goals

My intention with this project is to have my students present their argument topic along with their research using blog entries instead of the more traditional written essay. Students will be using the subject they have been working with all semester to formulate and argue their position on one side of their issue using information they gathered during the research essay portion of our course. Before beginning their blog, students will clearly define stance in a thesis statement and outline their argument presentation based on how they see their blog entries progressing. Students from both of my English 111 courses will be required to review the blogs of their peers and become involved with at least two blogs which pique their interests by commenting on the blog entries, asking questions, and generating conversation. In addition, by using an online blog source such as blogger.com, the students may receive additional comments from the broader community. My goal for this project as well as for the overall semester is to see my students each develop a level of expertise in a chosen area. This not only allows them to engage intelligently and clearly in a discourse community but provides them with the understanding that it takes more than words to make a point or win an argument – it takes understanding of language usage and rhetorical strategies as well as topic knowledge.

In addition to my students presenting their argument in blog format, I will be using my personal blog, “Beth’s Mental Wanderings,” on blogger.com to record and track my findings and observations with this project. As I work towards my personal goal of finding ways to break down the barriers of language in composition, I will focus my comments on the literature I review, my own musings, and feedback from my students as the project progresses in an effort to determine if, as I suspect, Web 2.0 technology is the force which will finally break down the walls surrounding English composition and its access to students from different countries and different backgrounds, even those within the physical United States of America. I firmly believe that somehow, somewhere, there is a source or sources which will bring our world together on a more level playing field so that we can communicate, through writing, globally in ways that create better understanding instead of further separation.

Blog Project: Research Question & Literature Review

Research Question: How does blogging as a technology and a pedagogical process aid in the writing process of specific groups of college-level freshmen composition students?

Literature Review

Through my research on blog technology and the use of blogging in the classroom, I found a number of articles which provided statistical information and background about blogs and blogging as well as some suggested writing activities involving blogging. Although these resources were helpful in understanding the changing face of blogs and how blogs are being employed in academic settings, most of the current literature is directed towards K-12 teachers and not college instructors. This, in my opinion, leaves a huge gap in the Web 2.0 technology and education knowledge base which needs to be addressed. My hope is that by designing and implementing a composition activity intended for a college-level group of students, I will be able, in at least a small way, to begin filling the knowledge gap I have discovered. I have created a list of the articles I found to be most helpful in my research in the comments section of this post.