Academia: November 2008 Archive Page

"It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online," said Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the report's lead author. "There are myths about kids spending time online - that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age."  -- MacArthur Foundation

Some details:

The researchers identified two distinctive categories of teen engagement with digital media: friendship-driven and interest-driven. While friendship-driven participation centered on "hanging out" with existing friends, interest-driven participation involved accessing online information and communities that may not be present in the local peer group.

Significant findings include -

• There is a generation gap in how youth and adults view the value of online activity.
  • Adults tend to be in the dark about what youth are doing online, and often view online activity as risky or an unproductive distraction.
  • Youth understand the social value of online activity and are generally highly motivated to participate.
• Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online.
  • Young people are learning basic social and technical skills that they need to fully participate in contemporary society.
  • The social worlds that youth are negotiating have new kinds of dynamics, as online socializing is permanent, public, involves managing elaborate networks of friends and acquaintances, and is always on.
• Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online.
  • The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another.
  • Young people respect each other's authority online and are more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.
• Most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet.
  • Most youth use the Internet socially, but other learning opportunities exist.
  • Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible to pursue interests that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups.
  • "Geeked-out" learning opportunities are abundant - subjects like astronomy, creative writing, and foreign languages.

I'm already aware of much of this. Knowing that students would rather learn from peers, I've added more group work, and I've added a requirement that students in my advance media classes publish a screencast about their final project to YouTube.  In future classes, I'll have students review those videos as part of their research process. 

My younger students (in the entry-level class) are generally much more excited about new media than the upper-level students (some of whom either barely tolerate or openly loathe the "new media" component of the "new media journlaism" program).  I've got to watch my lower-level students closely, so that I can adapt the upper-level classes to their strengths, and keep that process going throughout the major. That means I'm probably going to have to introduce more experimentaton in the lower-level classes, since I've got to cast a wider net to find out which techniques are the most productive.

As a professor, I collaborate with other authors all the time.  But I rarely assign collaborative writing assignments. I often ask students to critique each other's papers or beta-releases, but that's not the same thing as having them collaborate to create a single, coherent document.

I'm teaching a literary criticism class next term. The last time I taught it, students expressed a lot of frustration at how long it took them to get the hang of what criticism is. You're not writing summary, or personal opinion, or factual investigations about the author's life.  So what do you write about?  I can't really think of a way to get students to learn how to do lit crit, other than having them read models, talk about it, and try it.

Even though I always hated group work when I was an undergrad (and I never did any as a grad student -- not once), after a conversation with my colleague Lee McClain, I think I'm going to have my literature students write their first few papers in teams. I'll probably have some mechanism so that a student who is part of a successful team paper can request to write the next paper individually. That way, the students who are sure that they can do better on their own can opt out of the group work quickly. 

Great little feature from the Chronicle

Here are some of the things you learn when you participate in a Milton marathon:

1. Milton is not as boring as you think. Paradise Lost has something for everyone: Hot but innocent sex! (You thought Adam and Eve spent all their time in Eden gardening?) Descriptions of hellfire that would make The Lord of the Rings' archfiend, Sauron, weep with envy! Epic battles, with angels hurling mountains at their demonic foes! This is edge-of-your-seat material. "It's a really cool story, which I wasn't expecting," said Anna Coffey, a sophomore who took part in the reading to get a jump on her homework for a "Great Conversations" core-curriculum course.
2. Milton is not that hard to read out loud. As Mr. DuRocher pointed out in a set of "Guidelines for Reciting" he handed out before the marathon, "Paradise Lost is written in modern English." Compared with Beowulf, Paradise Lost is a walk in the park.
3. Milton is really hard to read out loud. Very few people get words like "puissance" right on the first try. Milton loved a runaway sentence and just about any now-obscure classical or geographical reference he could get his hands on, many of them polysyllabic nightmares. Partway through Book VI, Mr. DuRocher offered advice to the tongue-tied. "Whenever you encounter a word you don't know, that's a word to pronounce with special certainty," he said. "It's probably best to mispronounce demonic names anyway."
4. It's worth it. "It's really a good poem," said Mr. Goodroad. "It's a lot better to hear it than to read it."

It's pretty cool to see a Chronicle of Higher Education blog covering text games:

It's noon and you've still got 1,000 words to type. That might not seem like much, but it's been months since you've last worked on your dissertation and distractions are plentiful. To make matters worse, your girlfriend, Violet, says she's out the door and flying back to Australia if you don't finish the paper by the end of the day.

What's your next move?

This is the premise for Violet, a text-based computer game in which a graduate student is the main character. As the student, you must fight through countless distractions and solve a number of puzzles to finish the paper in time to save your relationship. The story is told by Violet, who allows you to examine objects in your office and ask for hints.

Created by Jeremy Freese, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, Violet recently won the 14th annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

Two positions.

Assistant Professor of Composition

Institution: Seton Hill University
Location: Greensburg, PA
Category: Faculty - Liberal Arts - English and Literature
Posted: 11/10/2008
Application Due: Open Until Filled
Type: Full Time

Seton Hill University invites applications for an Assistant Professor position in Composition, beginning fall, 2009. The faculty member will teach first-year composition courses, with a secondary teaching responsibility as a generalist in undergraduate English.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in Composition/Rhetoric with an M.A. in literature (or related area). Background in writing assessment and/or writing in the disciplines a plus. An outstanding candidate who has completed all but the dissertation may be considered.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, and a statement of philosophy of teaching composition, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, a developmental composition syllabus, a set of teaching evaluations from a composition course and three letters of reference to. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Seton Hill University is a Catholic, liberal arts University, educating traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students. Classes are offered in a variety of formats - day, evening, and weekends. Seton Hill has a student-centered campus culture based on Catholic values, acceptance, community and service. The campus is located 35 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Postal Address: Dr. John Spurlock, Chair
Humanities Division
Seton Hill University
Seton Hill Drive
PO Box 507F
Greensburg, PA 15601
Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu
http://www.setonhill.edu

Second Position:

Assistant Professor of English
Location: Greensburg, PA
Category: Faculty - Liberal Arts - English and Literature
Posted: 11/10/2008
Application Due: Open Until Filled
Type: Full Time

Seton Hill University seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in English, MFA considered. Background in journalism, publishing, and/or editing a plus. Teaching experience/potential at undergraduate level desirable.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, a statement of philosophy of teaching, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, and three letters of reference. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Seton Hill University is a Catholic, liberal arts University, educating traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students. Classes are offered in a variety of formats - day, evening, and weekends. Seton Hill has a student-centered campus culture based on Catholic values, acceptance, community and service. The campus is located 35 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Postal Address: Dr. John Spurlock, Chair
Humanities Division
Seton Hill University
Seton Hill Drive
PO Box 507F
Greensburg, PA 15601
Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu
http://fiction.setonhill.edu
http://www.setonhill.edu

Professor Philip Busse blogs about his adventures stealing political signs. 

Sure, I understand that stealing a sign will not change anyone's mind, and, most likely, will only embolden McCain supporters' disdain for liberals. Even so, yanking out the signs and running like a scared rabbit back to my idling car was one of the single-most exhilarating and empowering political acts that I have ever done. -- Huffington Post

Stealing signs is bad enough. He blogged about it, and expressed surprise that he got a negative response from his readers.

Writing the essay was an opportunity to explore and talk about political speech and the desire that most of us have to express our politics -- both in mature and immature ways, and sometimes a mix of the two.... I'm disappointed that most readers seem to have focused on the thefts, and not on the larger thoughts. -- Northfield News

Many professors will spend countless hours putting together elaborate and voluminous course packets of photocopies for classroom use (I used to be one of them). And now, it is more frequent for technologically minded teachers to file-share large numbers of PDFs through password protected sites on campus. This is so wrong it hurts. We are killing our own chances to have readers in the future or be remunerated for the scholarship we do. It's not only about the modest royalties that faculty authors may or may not receive, it's about the principle of valuing each other's scholarship and editorial work. I order good, attractive and useful paper-and-binding books or textbooks for my classes because I want there to be a system in place to support my work as an author and editor in the future.

If the paper and binding book vanishes as a dominant commodity, as it seems to be, maybe the new virtual system of book distribution, reproduction and delivery will allay some of the problems I describe in relation to photocopies and PDFs. It is becoming increasingly easier to put together affordable 'readers' or anthologies culled from existing print material without bypassing rights and fees and without overloading students with unnecessary expense. If this wave of the future takes hold and becomes the new standard in textbook publishing, I think it will be good for all parties involved. But what about the paper-and-binding book? -- Christopher Conway, Inside Higher Ed