Live From Blogspot: It's the Top Five Words I Want To Know More About!

5. Making of Knowledge/Knowledge
4. Empowerment
3. Freshmen Textbooks
2. Modes of Discourse

AND THE NUMBER ONE WORD I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT IS.....
1. Invention in classical literature.

Blog Talk: In Which I Discuss How Blog Assignments Like This Can Bring Up Sprinkles of Post-Process Theory and "Diving In" Into Everyday Generalized First Year Writing (Wanted: One Shorter and Snappier Blog Title)

One big assignment that I’ve considered including in my syllabus carried the post-process thinking of Breuch’s article as well as Selfe’s idea on mapping through technology for discursive purposes. The assignment, which would be 10% of the final grade so as not to overshadow the brief assignments and essay writing of a composition course at Tech, would involve the same type of blog-writing that we’ve been doing for this whole semester. Only instead of having students make their own blogs, I would have them comment on their choices in a selection of 5-7 arguments and topics that I’d post on my blog each week. I got the idea from a government class that I took during my senior year of high school, where the instructor would set up a blog with different current events, and each week we as students would have to comment on at least one of the current events. Adapting such a weekly exercise meant for a political science class into the structure a First-Year Writing class would be less of a stretch than it sounds. I could upload articles on the craft of writing or articles on composition writing like the ones we’ve read all semester long, and then have students give 300-500 word comments on what they think of the argument or how the articles could be applied to their own experiences with composition writing. Also, unlike the more structured brief assignment writing expected from RaiderWriter people, the blog comments would allow students to write in any subjective or objective form that they feel comfortable in writing. The goal of this assignment would be to dive into student opinions on composition writing, as well as get to know the students and their writing styles that go beyond the more generalized process-theory style writing.

            Of course, I would discourage them from typing in text speech or emoticons, since I’d state as a restriction to “be legible” with the comments. At the same time, I’d encourage multinational students to write in a language they are comfortable with while still helping them with making their English translations have the same voice as their more comfortable native writings. But that last part is still a work-in-progress, and I’d be welcome to any ideas on how Selfe’s interface mapping can be applied to multinational students. All that aside, the blogging exercise that I’ve cannibalized from similar weekly blog assignments works best for balancing more modern post-process theory ideas with the generalized writing process that’s been applied to our first-year writing classes now. The blog process that we’ve been doing all semester long, for instance, helps give us a gateway to express our own opinions without really being restricted to process theory techniques. The blog exercise in my syllabus likewise gives my theoretical composition students an opportunity to think outside the box, which can help them establish a definitive writing style without reliance on things like Engfish. That way, students can experience post-process ideas that can be used in developing effective compositions while still following Tech's First Year Writing program's generalized writing process in some form.

The Four Stages of Pedagogy and Symbiosis: Why The Heck Are These Two Connected?

I think that Mina Shaughnessy’s ideas about the four stages of the teacher’s emotional development were one aspect of our class that I really noticed in relation to the teaching philosophy that I invented, as well as the andragogy and pedagogy lectures I learned for this course. My interest in teaching has gotten in this class to the point where I’ve been completely interested in any other interpretation of the way that a teacher emotionally engages his or her students. I never really knew a professor who just viewed a student the way that a doctor views a patient, as Shaughnessy mentioned in her opening paragraph, but I can probably infer that there have been professors who thought that way, there are professors who think that way, and there always will be professors who will think that way. Therefore, the four stages on guarding the tower, converting the natives, sounding the depths, and diving in strike some interest in how a teacher sees his or her students. The idea of a teacher diving into being a student of these students after a long period of time really seems off, but after our discussions of using pedagogy to reach students at a personal level, I feel like students do end up teaching their own teacher about how to discipline, how to teach, and so on and so forth. First, we guard them from outside resources, then we convert them to our rhetoric, then we dive in to know them on a personal level, and we finally learn new disciplines based around those new students who end up teaching us how to be better teachers.

            I think that teaching a class and pedagogy in general is a symbiotic relationship at its best and a learning experience for the teacher at its worst. At its best, a teacher teaches to a level that appeals to and engages students, which teaches you what you want to know about them and about how to teach a class. Student responses can be constructive criticism, yet they shouldn’t make you bow down to their needs in any sense of the word. You still have to be disciplinary as a teacher, and that means guarding students from distractions and other perceptions. Thus, filling their heads with new information and outlooks on learning material, be it compositions or creative writing or even mycology, becomes easier now that there aren’t any outside distractions like Facebook to interfere. I use Facebook as an example in an iffy sense, since we have mentioned that most classrooms don’t allow electronics. All the same, a symbiotic relationship between teacher and student can come from even flunking a student, instead of flunking an entire class, on one assignment early on. By flunking that student in a required ENGL 1300 course, you can rope him or her into at least taking the subject seriously and learning from his or her mistakes. So if done right, we could have a scenario where everybody wins. If pedagogy or andragogy is done wrong, on the other hand, someone still wins by learning: the teacher. Adjusting to screwing up with pedagogy is not an easy pill to swallow in any of its myriad forms, but it should teach the teacher how not to handle or reach a class in a very firsthand experience. As long as one or two factors gains knowledge from the process in any way, the practitioner of pedagogy still stays on the right track regarding becoming a better teacher of students.

Critique on Extended Analysis by Rachel De Leon, Colleen Harrison, Mary White, and Jill Elberson Murphy

 http://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/rice/5060/plagiarism-podcast.mp3

I wasn't expecting a podcast, since the version of the analysis you all chose said to do a video about plagiarism. But I liked how the four of you managed to each have your own discussions of types of plagiarism well within 15-20 minutes, which kept the whole podcast going at a huge pace. There was no snazzy intro or any incidental music or audio editing, but only a round table of you four talking about types of plagiarism and how to avoid them. The fact that you just jumped into the subject material showed me how well you could start the discussion without really digressing beforehand. The audio quality also had a low resolution to it, but it still sounded fine to me. In my opinion, the subject material of a podcast really matters more than enhanced editing software or NPR-style interludes. The project had a bluntness to it that worked in favor of its argument, despite some awkward beats that don't really detract too much from the whole production. The podcast was well constructed with each argument too, because it felt like each one of you could give an argument without stepping on someone's toes. The topic of plagiarism, especially the non-intentional plagiarism you talked about in the beginning, is a deep and complex one. I could understand why paraphrasing something could cause some form of plagiarism, especially when all that student does is copy a quote and use a thesaurus to replace some words with different-sounding words. Yet that's not just plagiarism to me, but laziness too. All plagiarism could come from some sort of laziness stemming from not wanting to put effort into a project and instead copying other papers without looking at what those papers are talking about.

            The points you brought up on plagiarism, and ways to handle them, helped your podcast appeal to a broad audience because you all used personal experiences as students that student listeners could relate to. If any of you were to play this podcast to a class of students, then they would eventually hear these learning experiences and come to an understanding with either of you. If Mary played this podcast for her class and they got to the beginning where she talks about getting marks for not citing a paraphrase before going to college, they’d not only learn about how paraphrasing without citations is plagiarism, but they’d learn that Mary has been through the same road that they have been in. By talking about personal experiences and opinions with plagiarism, the podcast gains the ethos needed for a project that's meant to get a complex topic like plagiarism across to students. The discussions explaining how derivative works like fan fiction can avoid plagiarism if they do not follow the story down to the smallest detail and create an alternate universe or story informed me of an aspect of plagiarism vs. inspiration that I had little to no awareness. The discussion of how parody is legal instead of satire due to its following of the source material without raising satirical points even opened my eyes to how parody gets away with copying the material when something like "The Wind Done Gone" is a more serious novel that got in trouble for using Margaret Mitchell's characters without the estate's permission. The dense research on different types of plagiarism helped this podcast's credibility the most as a result of these discussions of how fan fiction and parody can fit with plagiarism. Your displays of knowledge on the topic further supported your chemistry and presentation within this podcast, making the whole thing a balanced and enjoyable listen.