This book review points to the challenge of memoir: we often remember things differently than the people around us.
Deborah Feldman Isn’t Telling You the Whole Story – Forward.com.
Albert Einstein explains my teaching philosophy
Image from “It’s a Lovely Life” FaceBook page
Acquiring Empathy through Essays
“I know, I know. I’ve probably lost you. Everyone hates essays” writes William Bradley in Utne Reader piece “Acquiring Empathy Through Essays.”
But just look at the title! Don’t we all need a little help in the empathy department? Would it help motivate student writers to create clearer, more precisely details works if they knew it would generate increased understanding of their position on subjects they care about from people they wish really cared? Yet another reason to revise the curriculum for “real life writing.”
The 15 Most Downloaded Smartphone Apps in the U.S.
Getting my mind focused on mobile apps for the upcoming Teaching Professor Technology Conference. I’ll be presenting there in 2 weeks!
The Next Greatest Generation? : NPR
I love the positive spin this TedTalks piece puts on today’s young adults.
Challenges of Hybrid Learning :: Northern Virginia Community College
Today is my first day back in the classroom. I’m so excited to meet my Wednesday Composition group! We are definitely going to talk about this list of challenges, and I hope by confronting possible pitfalls TODAY, we can find coping mechanisms for sidestepping them in the weeks to come.
Challenges of Hybrid Learning :: Northern Virginia Community College.
Back-to-School Spending Surveys Reveal Differences About Tech Buys – Marketplace K-12 – Education Week
This article proves a point I often make, which is that there are no right answers. I’m excited to add it to my introduction-to-research unit.
17 Personal Essays That Will Change Your Life
“Think essays are just something boring you write for class?” I love it when the Internet takes away all need to pull out my hair making decisions over what additional reading to recommend. This round-up of CNF essays was written just for my first semester Comp students.
New Year, New Routine
Today I stood at the head of a classroom, presenting information about NOVA’s Technology Applications Center to new adjuncts. This was a change of pace for me after teaching only online classes for the past academic year. I actually had to get dressed and leave the house to meet my class!
This fall I’ll be teaching 3 hybrid sections of Composition I (ENG 111), and I’m also the new Annandale campus Technology Applications Center (TAC) mentor, which means I’ll be working with faculty and staff on technology training. I’m excited about this new development because it means I’ll be working with faculty from all disciplines, not just English, and I’m always excited to help my colleagues, since collaboration often leads to new inspiration in my own courses.
I’m also getting ready to present at a technology teaching conference in October. I’ll be talking about mobile apps similarly to the sessions I gave at the VA Blackboard Users Conference at George Masson University last fall and the Power Up Your Pedagogy Conference (PUP) at NOVA last winter. The big difference is going to be location: this time I’m flying to Atlanta!
What a lot of running around this year will be.
Evernote Pilot Run
Today I did a couple of things for the first time. Anyone who says teaching online is not fun does not enjoy playing with technology like I do. For starters, I declared recently that I was going to embrace Evernote this semester, and I have already begun to do just that.
Yesterday I spent the morning reading a textbook chapter for an online instructional design course I am enrolled in this semester… (Yes, folks, the online teacher is also an online student!) I sat at my dining room table with the book and my iPad with the bluetooth keyboard from my desktop, and I used the Evernote app to type my thoughts, comments, and questions as I read. Then I got to a point in the chapter where I really wanted to capture a bulleted list. Instead of retyping the whole thing, I used Evernote’s camera feature to photograph it. I was so excited to see that it inserted the pictures right into my document, and then I was able to keep on typing under the photos. If anyone wants to see what that looks like, click here.
Today, as I lounged in bed taking a break from work–since that is one of the benefits of working from home–I found an article on my iPhone that I wanted to keep for one of my online courses. Instead of bookmarking it, I opened the Evernote app and copied the URL into a new note. That’s when I saw the audio icon. Instead of typing a note to myself to explain why I was saving the link to the article, I recorded one! Now that is interactive technology. Here’s a link to that file, in case you are curious.
Overall, I’m very excited about the potential for this multiplatform service. Evernote seems to be a great app on the mobile devices, and also nice to use when I’m on my desktop, which is an iMac, (of course).
You were just waiting for me to say that, weren’t you? 😉
Note: this blog is not in any way supported by Apple.