Academia: April 2007 Archive Page

One Iota of Difference (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

*Sigh.*

I've already fixed the one I found on Wikipedia.

I can't hear you, Bert. (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I walk into my classroom about two minutes before class starts. It's a great hybrid room, with 24 workstations around the outer edges, tables in the middle, and a huge projection screen up front.

As usual, a few students who aren't in my class are using the computers. Some have obviously just come into the room and are just logging on.

"A class is about to start now," I say to a group of students. The students start to pack up.

One student in another corner of the room has headphones on, and I can hear his music blasting from across the room. I walk towards him.

"A class is about to start now," I say.

He does not hear.

I walk over to him.

"A class is about to start now!" I say, louder.

He does not respond.

I stand very close to him, and this time he looks up.

"A class is about to start now!!" I say, even louder.

"What??" he says.

"Number one, your music is rather loud, and number two, a class is about to start now!"

"When is the class going to start?" he says, looking around for a clock.

"Now!!"

But of course, by this time he has finally turned down the volume.

"You didn't have to come at me so hard!" he grumbles, annoyed and offended, and ready to defend his turf.

From his perspective, I came up to him and yelled at him... but of course the only reason I was speaking loudly was because he couldn't hear me when I talked normally.

Even though I was annoyed, part of me wanted to laugh, since I couldn't help thinking of Ernie and Bert doing the "You've got a banana in our your ear" sketch.

I'm sure that fellow found another lab in the building, and although I prefer to start class without fighting battles first, life goes on. Maybe I'll just make a mental note to get to class a little earlier next time, so I have time to clear out the room with less fuss.

It was six hours before opening night. Sarah Holdren, director of a Yale student production, had just entered the theater for a routine pre-performance errand when the man who runs the hall gave her an update: In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a Yale administrator decided that she didn't want any weapons used or portrayed during theatrical productions. --Elia Powers --Stage Fright (Inside Higher Ed)

Puh-leese.

Grown-ups and all but the youngest kids know that the swords on stage aren't real. And those young kids probably won't be able to sit through a live theater performance that isn't tailored to them, so they would not likely be in the audience.

The Mercury News posted an Associated Press package that included a video news story, accounts from witnesses and a disturbing home-made cell phone video that recorded dozens of gun shots and angry and disturbed screaming, presumably from the gunman.

Perhaps most troublesome was that whoever was shooting the cell phone video, actually moved toward the gunfire instead of away from it. Some obvious advice: It's not worth it. Do not endanger your life for a YouTube moment.

News coverage aside, technology potentially played a key role in informing those most at risk. The way school administrators used their digital tools may even have saved lives. --Mike Cassidy --Digital tools were potential life savers during Va. Tech massacre (MercuryNews)

My brother is a Va Tech alumnus. At the University of Virginia we enjoyed a friendly rivalry with our larger land-grant sibling.

This time of year I have lots of papers to mark and lots of stressed students who need attention; further, three days this week I'm leaving early to attend to family business (today was a birthday party for both my kids, Wednesday I always leave early so I can watch the kids while my wife prepares for her night class, and Friday my son will be in an art show), so I haven't been following this as closely as I really wanted to.

Someone else will write a thoughtful analysis of the Wikipedia and Wikinews articles on the events, and someone else will track what the Va Tech students were saying to each other on MySpace and Facebook while the Va Tech authorities wondered how to get in touch with students and what they should say.

I'm glad my kids don't mind being hugged and kissed in public, since I was doing a lot of that today.

Update: the Roanoke Times has been covering the event on its breaking news blog, changing the title to reflect recent developments, adding time-stamped items to the top of the page.

CITY COUNCIL is based on an actual city council meeting I covered while working for a small twice-a-week newspaper early in my career. Some of the items here have been fictionally enhanced for educational purposes. And, of course, some names have been changed to protect the foolish.

Even as an assistant editor at this small paper I knew that someday I wanted to teach journalism and I had the feeling after the meeting that the notes from this particular meeting would come in handy some day, so I filed them away. Coincidentally, my solution to writing this story was to write eight of them. The editor was out of town and I was the only one who had to make a decision on what to run in the paper. So I wrote eight separate stories on different aspects of the meeting.

Alas, the poor journalism student in my newswriting classes these days does not have that option. Instead, my students must write one mega-story that covers the whole meeting. I use it as a kind of final exam in my newswriting classes. --Rich Cameron --City Council (rcameron.com)

Only nominally interactive, which is especially notable when you are faced with all the questions that you can possibly ask each source. Still, it looks like a good tool for teaching accuracy, cross-referencing, and news judgment.

It's a stretch to call this a "game" but I'll file it there anyway becasue I don't have a separate category for "simulations."

"It's almost always the first play I teach," she said. "I do that because very often students have only encountered Shakespeare in high school and have a misunderstanding of him as safe, moral, and dull. This one really dislodges the idea that Shakespeare is full of eternal moral truths. It takes place in a different world from what they expect."

And how does Titus go over with her students?

"Many of them have a very hard time with it," she told me. "They expect to be able to like somebody in a piece of literature, to find somebody they can identify with, and that is quite difficult in this case. It's hard to identify with Titus, who kills his own son for dishonoring him. The moral ambiguity of the play is very, very difficult for some of them." -- Denise Albanese, interviewed by Scott McLemee --A Dish Best Served Cold (Inside Higher Ed)

Great analysis of Shakespeare's slasher farce, Titus Andronicus.

I still swell with pride when I recall that as an undergrad, I asked Gordon Braden, who was teaching the Shakespeare survey at the University of Virginia, about the role of rhymed verses in this play. I pointed out that we are most likely to see rhymed verse when Aaron is either performing or talking about his most wicked, most violent deeds -- a detail that suggested to me that Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing, rather than than that Shakespeare made a terrible play.

Prof. Braden said that Shakespeare often used rhymed verses to end scenes, which is true most of the time, but, as I pointed out in the 100-student lecture hall, "Not in this play." Prof. Braden cocked his head, opened up his book, and checked a few scenes, then agreed with me that Shakespeare's use of rhymed verses is unusual in this play. (He didn't actually agree with me about what I thought the unusual rhyming meant, but that was all I needed to feel like I was pretty hot stuff that day.)

I ended up writing a paper on "Head-hewing, Limb-lopping, and General Nastiness in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus."

Students at the George Mason University School of Law received a double whammy last week: First, Dean Daniel D. Polsby sent an e-mail informing them of a "special town hall meeting" scheduled for Monday where they could meet a candidate for a tenure-track job -- a 22-year-old candidate who had once posted online class notes containing a racial epithet while a law student at Harvard in 2002. Then the next day, Polsby canceled the meeting, writing that the controversial would-be professor "is no longer a candidate." --Andy Guess --Words He Can't Escape (Inside Higher Ed)

Yet another example of the power of words -- especially words posted online. I'm often amazed at how frequently students believe that something that they post online won't or shouldn't be found by an audience wider than their original intended readers.

Colleges and universities must inform students about the particular dangers they face online. But if schools actively monitor their students' online activities and students are aware of this policy, they may have a duty of care that includes preventing any illegal acts committed as a result of information posted online.

Thus, schools should inform their students about the potential dangers of using social networking Web sites, but should also be careful not to become liable if the students engage in illegal behavior. --Sheldon Steinbach and Lynn Deavers --The Brave New World of MySpace and Facebook (Inside Higher Ed)