Second Life Best Practices in Education

Friday I "attended" some sessions of the Second Life Best Practices in Education International Conference:

• Beth Ritter-Guth (Desideria Stockston-SL) on "Monsters to Monarchs: Teaching Literature Using SL"
• Catherine Dutton & Lillian Chenoweth (Catherine Soderstrom & Prof Kuhn - SL) on "Asynchronous Student Orientation to Second Life"
• Cynthia Calongne (Lyr Lobo-SL) on "Colorado Technical University in Second Life: The Amusement and the Maze Game Class Projects"

All of the sessions were in Second Life.

I also wanted to "go to" one of the keynote presentations (by Sarah Robbins (RL)/Intellagirl Tully (SL)), but I couldn't see or hear anything in the overflow areas I tried.

I can see some potential for using Second Life in my classes, but I want to work into it slowly. I've found several "in-world" groups that should prove helpful.

My SL name is Floria Beaumont. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to pay for a premium membership. It might be nice to own some land and build my own place. I probably won't have time for that until later this summer unless one of my classes is cancelled.

Wikinomics

This week I finally finished reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. There's a companion web site for the book. If I had known that the book was more about economics than wikis, I probably wouldn't have bought it. However, it was in this book that I first heard about Second Life, which I joined this last week (more later). In addition, reading about the Geek Squad and Best Buy in the book convinced me to go to Best Buy yesterday to get a new video card and additional RAM for my computer. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble with the video card, so I may need to use the Geek Squad as well.

Use of Blog and Box.net in RRCC Classes

For the Spring semester at Red Rocks, I created a blog where I posted what we did in class so that students who were absent (and present) could keep up. I also created folders, which could be reached through links on the blog, at Box.net so the students could download handouts I created.

I did a survey at the end of the semester to see how many students actually accessed the blog and the files. I've posted the results on a page on my website. (The website is still under construction.)

Since 61% of the students checked the blog, I think it was definitely worth creating. Fewer students (34%) downloaded files from Box.net. I didn't find out until just recently that some students didn't know how to download the files, even though I went over that in class at least a couple of times.

Sloan-C Workshop

I joined the Sloan Consortium as an individual member so I could get a discount on a workshop they're offering this summer. The title of the workshop is Learning 2.0: 20 Engaging, Interacting and Syndicating Applications. I've been interested in Web 2.0 applications, and this sounds really interesting. In addition to the workshop content, I'll be using Elluminate Live! and Moodle, so I'll have a good opportunity to become familiar with them.

Spring Semester at Red Rocks Ending

My classes at Red Rocks end tomorrow and Tuesday. Final grades are due by May 15, but I hope to get mine done sooner than that. I'll have to grade narrative essays for my ENG 090 classes and formal reports for ENG 131.

It's a Wiki Wacky World

I recently read Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools by M. Katherine Brown, Brenda Huettner, and Char James-Tanny. I learned about the book when I read an article on "Using Wikis" by Huetter and James-Tanny in the January 2007 issue of intercom. Part II, "Evaluating the Tools," was particularly useful, but I was disappointed by their companion wiki, It's a Wiki Wacky World.

I'm currently reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

Summer Classes for Westwood's Denver South Campus

For the May term at Westwood's Denver South campus, I'll be teaching two sections of HUM 300, which is an overview of the humanities. One section is a blended class, and the other is completely on campus. It will be interesting to compare the two.

5Cs Conference

Friday I went to the 5Cs Conference at Aims Community College in Greeley. The weather forecast promised 10 or more inches of snow, but we didn't get any. The speaker and sessions at the conference were interesting, but the best part was talking to other writing instructors.

Technical Writing Textbook

I've selected the textbook for my hybrid technical writing class this fall at Red Rocks. It's a new book published by Pearson-Prentice Hall. The title is Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, and it was written by Sidney I. Dobrin, Christopher J. Keller, and Christian R. Weisser.

Humanities Class for Fall

As of Thursday, I'm scheduled to teach a humanities class at Red Rocks this fall:

HUM 121, Survey of Humanities I--Introduces students to the history of ideas that have defined cultures through a study of the visual arts, literature, drama, music, and philosophy. It emphasizes connections among the arts, values, and diverse cultures, including European and non-European, from the Ancient world to 1000 C.E.

The textbook for the course is Vol. I of The Humanistic Tradition (fth ed.) by Gloria K. Fiero. It's published by McGraw Hill.

Textbook for Developmental Classes

I've decided to use the newest edition of Sentences, Paragraphs, and Beyond for my developmental classes this summer and fall. I have to have my book order for the summer semester in tomorrow, and I'm waiting to hear back what the ISBN would be to include the access code for Houghton Mifflin's WriteSpace with the textbook. I hope I get it in time. If not, it's my own fault for waiting so long to contact the publisher.

5C's Conference

On Friday, April 13, I'll be attending the 5C's Conference. Some of the sessions look pretty interesting. Several of them are on grammar, so I'm hoping to get some ideas for my developmental classes at Red Rocks this summer.

Serious about Writing Poetry Again

I guess I'm getting serious about writing poetry again and having it published. I bought a copy of 2007 Poets Market and have been looking for markets for the type of poetry I do and want to write, primarily traditional lyrical forms.

I ran across a form I hadn't tried before: the cinquain. This form has five lines (hence the name) with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively. It can be iambic, but that isn't necessary. When I first read about this form, I thought it would be interesting to write one with all synonyms for being alone. Here's what I came up with:


One

alone --
solitary --
solo -- isolated --
segregated -- separated --
lonely


I like the way the syllable "lone" frames the middle three lines. I also like the irony of all the words for being alone having an even number of syllables.

Yesterday I also wrote a couple of haiku, scifaiku, actually. I'm not going to post them because I want to try to get them published, and some publishers apparently consider being posted in a blog or on a web site to be prior publication, which means they will pay less or not accept them.

Classes I'll Be Teaching

During the March term at Westwood's Denver South campus, I'll be teaching HUM 400, Creative and Critical Thinking. I've taught the course on campus before, but never online or in a hybrid format, as I will be this time. When I've taught the class in the past, I've selected a controversial topic for the class to examine and then required each student to follow the process on his/her own and write a paper about it. I'm thinking of using global warming as the topic this coming term.

I like to show 12 Angry Men (the original black-and-white movie, not a remake) in classes when we discuss critical thinking.

For Red Rocks, I'm currently scheduled to teach one section each of ENG 030 and 060 (developmental classes) this summer and one each of ENG 030 and 131 this fall. The section of ENG 131, Technical Writing I, will be hybrid, which will be an interesting experience. I developed and taught a technical writing class for Westwood College Online in addition to teaching it "on ground."

The Red Rocks English Department (along with some others) had a book fair on Friday where faculty could exam publishers' offerings. Choosing textbooks will be hard because there are so many options.

Just for future reference, I'm going to include the course descriptions for the Red Rocks classes here. I got them from the Colorado Community College Common Courses page.

ENG 030, Basic Writing Skills--Focuses on sentence and basic paragraph structure and development. Enables the student to review and improve grammar, usage, and punctuation skills while employing critical thinking strategies and the writing process to respond to a wide variety of writing situations.

ENG 060, Writing Fundamentals--Focuses on paragraph structure and development and introduces the formal essay. Enables the student to review and improve grammar, usage, and punctuation skills while employing critical thinking strategies and the writing process to respond to a wide variety of writing situations.

ENG 131, Technical Writing I--Develops skills one can apply to a variety of technical documents. Focuses on principles for organizing, writing, and revising clear, readable documents for industry, business, and government.

Another Haiku

The Comet

Solar-wind-blown hair
frames the crater-marked face drawn
always toward her sun.


I'm not entirely happy with it, but I've had this idea in my mind for some time.

My First Haiku

--at least it's the first one I remember writing. Yesterday I mentioned to someone that, having grown up in Missouri, one of the things I missed here in Colorado is fireflies. It occurred to me later that fireflies would be a good subject for a haiku:


Fireflies

flitting, flickering
in the darkness, delighting
enchanted children


I liked the idea of linking the words in the lines with alliteration, though the alliterating sound should be on stressed syllables, which it isn't in delighting in the second line.

Technical Writing and Web 2.0

The theme for the January issue of Intercom was technical writing and Web 2.0. The best articles were "Writing and Web 2.0," "Podcasting: A New Layer of Communication," and "Using Wikis."

In "Writing and Web 2.0," Keith Hoffman discussed social networking, AJAX-based web sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS, as well as web-based word processing. There are several items in his list of "Suggested Readings" that I'd like to look at.

The authors of "Using Wikis," Brenda Huettner and Char James-Tanny, along with M. Katherine Brown, have used a wiki, It's a Wiki Wacky World, to write a book titled Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools. I bought a copy of their book, along with copies of Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration by Jane Klobas, which I've already read, and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Change Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

These should be useful for the formal report assignment I'm planning for my technical writing class.

I decided that to find time to read these books and others related to my work, I had to stop reading the murder mysteries I was getting from the library.

Handouts for RRCC Classes

I finally got smart and moved the Word files with handouts I've created for my Red Rocks classes to folders at Box.net. I had been uploading them to the WebCT course shells, but that meant I had to create each folder and upload each file for ENG 090 three times, once for each section. With the folders at Box.net, I only have to do it once for all three sections. I also had trouble opening the files from WebCT; I'm hoping it will be easier this way.

Writing versus Literature and Humanities

I finally realized (duh!) this week that I'd much rather teach literature and humanities courses than writing classes. Of course, that's what most of my classes are in. I'm working on my c.v. so, hopefully, I can apply to some other colleges or universities to teach more classes in those areas.

I also wouldn't mind teaching some poetry-writing classes, though I probably need to do more poetry writing myself. All that I've done recently has been lyrics for political songs, and I did that more than a year and a half ago.

The other day, I did write another poem that is less political. I was going to make all the lines end in a rhyme with weary, but I decided to break that up:


Snow Weary

skies dreary
eyes bleary--
kids cheery
snowballs forming

still leery
of “theory,”
my query:
global warming?


I do like the way the title rhymes with most of the lines as well as the way I used punctuation but no verbs.

I'm going to have to start carrying a notebook with me so I can do some writing when I have the time--or the inspiration.

Technical Writing Textbook

When I taught technical writing for Westwood College, we used Technical Report Writing Today by Riordan (Houghton Mifflin), and others for earlier editions. I liked the book, but when I needed to select a book for my class at Red Rocks, I picked Technical Communication (8th ed.) by Mike Markel (Bedford/St. Martin's). I'm beginning to regret that decision.

First, I don't care for Markel's definition of technical communication as "workplace communication" There's a lot more to it than that.

Second, when he presents the writing process, he treats technical documents the same as any writing assignment the students would do for a class. He leaves out considerations of budget, deadlines, publication, distribution, etc.

I didn't care too much for Riordan's definition either, but he did a good job of covering the writing process as it occurs in the workplace.

In Riordan's last edition (9th), the page layout was changed so there are wide outside margins. I didn't care for that or the effort to expand the textbook to cover technical "communication" instead of technical writing despite the title. I also don't agree with his assertion in the first chapter (an addition to the latest edition) that "technical writing is global." I also wish he had a chapter on fliers, brochures, and similar documents.

However, I may go back to his book the next time I teach the class.