Posted in Digital Pedagogy, Pedagogy, Social Media, and Teaching
Time for a midterm evaluation of how the course is going and what type of job I’m doing as a teacher. Credit where due: Nirmal Trivedi hepped me to this last spring. He’s very wise. And yes, I wrote “hepped.” On purpose.
Deep breath. Here goes.
Posted in Digital Pedagogy, Pedagogy, Social Media, and Teaching
This week my ENGL 1102 students will begin presenting their short research projects. I’ve used this assignment twice before, but this time there are a few new twists. The project still involves the development of a class-wide knowledge base designed to help students better grasp the context of medieval and early modern culture and society, and is designed to reinforce best credible research practices. But whereas the past two iterations involved a complex of technological platforms and communication modes (oral presentation w/ PowerPoint or Prezi-based visual aids, complementary wiki entries, visceral Twitter feedback) this time I’m trying to streamline the process and experience. Students choose from this list of topics that relate to either Elizabethan or medieval England (as identified in the second tetralogy.)
Posted in Digital Pedagogy, Pedagogy, and Social Media
I’m taking today to finalize my syllabus for the ENGL1102 courses I’ll be teaching this fall. Classes start a week from tomorrow, so it’s probably a good idea for me to get a move on. Last night I shifted my plans somewhat and made the decision to conduct the entire course in WordPress (except for the absolute minimum in the LMS for essay submission and grading purposes). This is not a complete surprise – I’ve used WordPress as a central component of the composition courses I’ve taught at Georgia Tech for the past two years. But in the past I’ve dabbled in other platforms as well: Mediawiki and Twitter, primarily. This semester I’m going to use WordPress as the core of the work we do. I want to see how far I can stretch it to reinforce the multimodal foundation of the writing and communication courses we teach here.
