Expos-i-story: telling the stories of our teaching lives in ENG105

Technology required for students to participate in a digital/hyrid of ENG105 (this is for those who do NOT want to use BlackBoard)

1. a wordpress blog

2. Google Reader – this is an RSS reader that will hold all of the class blogs in one place, so that students can easily access, read, and comment on the blogs of their classmates. This is also an important emerging technology that is changing the way we read and write.

See also: Cory Doctorow — chapters 5 & 6 in particular — these videos from novelist and blogger, Cory Doctorow, discuss many of the benefits of blogging (blogging as commonplace book, blogging as powerful mneumonic device, etc.) and address the rise of RSS and how it affects they way we write.

Read also: Blogs for Learning — “The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is Crucial for a Blogging Classroom” by David Parry
“How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way” — This blog explains RSS “the Oprah Way” for the technologically confused part of all of us.

3. RSS application for Facebook and MySpace – this allows students to see updated class information when they log into their MySpace or Facebook accounts.

a. Facebook users simply choose “my RSS” by browsing applications and add the feed for the class blog site.
b. MySpace users need to visit SpringWidgets.com and obtain the code for a widget to place onto their MySpace site.

4. Chatzy is a free private chat service that can be used for online discussion. (I used it for peer review).

5. Searching for topics relevant to class and subscribing to RSS feeds via search engines like blogpulse’s advanced search option and Google News (must also choose advanced search option).

Assignments that might help:

1. Practice linking, quoting, and summarizing and analyzing – give them opportunities to practice blog posts that integrate some of the key features of blogging (i.e. linking to and referencing other materials on the web, quoting in block quote format, etc.).

2. Practice using chatzy in class and model a workshop or class discussion (borrow a computer lab for one class session if necessary).

3. Have them watch the Cory Doctorow videos and read materials online that discuss blogging and digital forms of composition as a writing tool and valuable literacy.

Suggested Readings:

“What We’re Doing When We Blog“
“Blogging to Teach Reading”

The book that can teach you how to do almost all of this:
Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Corwin Press, 2006.

This article, “Community-based Assessment Pedagogy” by Asao Inoue discusses a student-centered pedagogy that includes student control over assessment criteria. One section in particular focuses on the development of rubrics in collaboration with students.

University of Miami offers their evaluation rubrics for each various drafts from first to portfolio via CompPile’s CompFAQs.

For yet another approach to grading that is not a rubric (and for an explanation on why it’s not a rubric), check out “Dr. Crazy’s” checklist concept.

This article by Richard J. Light covers various topics associated with student writing including the students’ engagement and discovery of the value of the writing workshop. Nick Carbone excerpts the article and responds.

Here are some guidelines for peer workshops: Helping Students Respond Helpfully to One Another’s Writing

In our last “Comp Conversations,” which was on the topic of responding to student texts, we began by freewriting on and discussing the difficulties we encounter when it comes to responding student texts. In response to a concern about get bogged down in correcting grammar and mechanics, Megan suggested thinking about the first draft as one students may or may not return to. She shared with us ideas for responding to student texts that directs them toward later drafts, and she gave us a guidelines for revision sheet that she uses in her 105 classes.

Also, check out this article by Richard Haswell:
Abstract: In all academic disciplines college teachers respond to student writing with shortcuts—checksheets, correction symbols, computer style checkers, etc. But while these methods save teachers time, do they help students improve their writing? A survey of research into teacher commentary, conceived of as a contextual discourse activity, initially questions the efficiency of many shortcuts because it finds complexities in all activity areas, in regulation (criteria, rules of genre and mode, disciplinary styles, and standards), consumption, production, representation, and identity. The research, however, also recommends particular shortcuts and methods of revising them for better efficiency and effect. It especially recommends restricting the volume of teacher commentary in ways that are task, discipline, and learner specific.

Or, for “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Responding to Student Writing,” check out Doug Hesse’s advice.

He is a list of resources that relate to the upcoming Comp Conversations topic, “Responding to Student Writing.”

A number of the resources are gathered from a recent discussion that took place on the WPA (Writing Program Administrators) listserv around the topic of grading and evaluating student writing (the focus in particular was on marginal comments and the ideal “number” of written comments a paper “should” have).

• From the Penn State WAC program.
• From Richard Straub’s “Guidelines for Responding to Student Writing“
• In Richard Straub’s collection, A Sourcebook for Responding to Student Writing, Peter Elbow has an essay called “Options for Responding to Student Writing.” He writes:
  

  “I find commenting much easier if I read the whole piece before making any comments — except sometimes putting straight and wiggly lines where I am pleased or somehow bothered. I save lots of time by reminding myself that students can seldom benefit from criticism of more than two or three problems. The most crucial decision in commenting is which problems to focus on, and I can’t make that decision until I read the whole paper through.”

• From Erika Lindemann’s A Rhetoric For Writing Teachers:
  

  p. 233:

  1. Read the paper through without marking on it.
  2. Identify one or two problems. In deciding what to teach this time, view the paper descriptively, not to judge it, but to discover what the text reveals about decisions the writer made [. . .]

  p. 235:

  10. Write out a careful endnote to summarize your comments and to establish a goal for the next draft. Endnotes can follow a simple formula:
  a. Devote at least one full sentence to commending what you can legitimately praise; avoid undercutting the praise with *but* (”I like your introduction, *but* the paper is disorganized.”)
  b. Identify one or two problems and explain why they make understanding the piece difficult.
  c. Set a goal for the student to work toward in the next draft.
  d. Suggest specific strategies for reaching the goal (”In your next draft, do this: …”).

A book — almost in its entirety — via Google Books: The Theory and Practice of Grading Writing: Problems and Possibilities by Frances Zak and Christopher Weaver.

Please peruse these resources and bring your ideas, interests, and inquiries to this week’s Comp Conversations on Thursday, Sept. 20th from 12-1 on the third floor of Marcelle. And feel free to continue the conversation here — on the ENG105 faculty blog!

Here is a link to a copy of the Comp Conversations schedule for Fall ‘07.

(Qtd. passages — thanks to Clancy via the WPA listserv)

Yesterday a group of 105 instructors met to exchange ideas on the teaching of first-year writing. One of our first activities was a freewrite on the “best” or most memorable writing assignments we had ever been given. The assignment didn’t have to be from an English class or from any particular level of education. After writing, we collectively culled some of the elements of the assignment that made it work so well that all of these years later (some were remembering writing assignments from fifteen and twenty years ago) they stand out to us. In doing so we were able to create a list of “best” writing assignment characteristics.

We came up with writing assignments that contain(ed) the following:

Welcome to the blog for ENG105 faculty. This is a space for all of us teaching 105 to exchange ideas, catch-up on readings in the field, share assignments and syllabi, and just generally keep in contact about what is happening with our individual teaching experiences.

In the sidebar you will see links to relevant readings and a blogroll that includes blogs the focus on first-year writing (with a special focus on writing and technology). Please feel free to respond, in a post of your own, to anything you read here. Or, if you have readings that you find relevant to the teaching of first-year writing, please let me know, and I will link to it.

Using this blog also gives you the chance to experiment with the genre as something you might consider for your own classes.

Please consider sharing your syllabus (or ideas for your syllabus). For the sake of space (and aesthetic), send me your syllabus as an attachment (preferably in RTF) and I will create a page for it that others can link to (see the sidebar for syallabi to link to).

Finally, please remember that this is a public space. Because of that, other teachers of writing can access our discussions and thoughts here as a resource, but know also that students and other members of the community can read this as well. Keep this in mind when posting about classroom concerns and issues.