I first taught Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle during an intensive 3-week online course during the 2020-21 winter break, during the Time of Covid. The nature of that course was such that I could only reasonably require students to read 6 of Wilson’s 10 plays; I think I required everyone to read 4, and then split the…
I planned ahead pretty well this term. I like the pace in all my classes.
After marking a set of bibliography exercises, I created this graphic to focus on the kinds of citation errors I found in submissions that students clearly aren’t proofreading. I’m amazed that students don’t correct the capitalization errors (often caused by the keywords the student was searching for) or when they don’t notice that entries repeat…
My years of watching MacGyver definitely paid off. (Not that my GenZ students got the reference.) I’m doing a lot more in-class work with paper, giving students handouts to annotate in class, asking them to write in copybooks. For the midterm I gave students a short academic article, excerpts from a play we haven’t read…
Here’s my letter responding to an recent article about the future of the student newspaper I advised for over two decades. A pause. The Seton Hill University student paper is on what my English department colleagues described in a recent email as “indefinite hiatus.” At the time, we didn’t know for how long. I was…
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I felt like a capitalist, buying in bulk on the cheap and selling individual books for $2 (about a 20-cent profit, per book, but I’m really rounding up so I don’t have to deal with change). Students will spend time in class annotating printouts and writing in their copybooks. They’ll still do online activities but…
I’m also thinking of the cost to the students who have to repeat a course or fail out of a demanding program because they couldn’t AI their way to a passing grade. “People use it much more than we expected,” the cofounder wrote, later adding in response to another user that he “personally chose the price and…
I’m far from perfect, and injustice and suffering and tragedy in the world won’t be much affected by the story I’m about to narrate, but as I was walking in the mall with my son, I dictated a 500-word email response to a student whose paper topic didn’t work out and who asked for my…
The daughter missed her graduation ceremony because she was performing in Kinetic Theatre‘s A SHERLOCK CAROL. Thank you, David Whalen for officiating in this “irregular” backstage ceremony! Similar:Shakespeare did not leave his wife Anne in Stratford, letter fragment suggestsPater Noster Pedestrian ElevatorsNotes on Teaching August Wilson's Pittsburgh CycleBy Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5,…
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When I went off to college to be an English major, my father (who passed last December at 90) told me a story about how his respected professor at Northwestern University spent a whole lecture on the seven levels of symbolism in Melville’s Moby-Dick. Being of an analytical mind and precise mind, my father copied…
When I ask my students to use the library database to find scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, some students stick with the search methods they’re already familiar with, and they submit works cited lists that include articles written by undergraduate interns, or articles from low-value pay-to-publish ecosystems like “Frontiers.” While I don’t read every article students…
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What have my students learned about creative nonfiction writing? During class they are collaborating on a Google Doc that’s coming together very nicely before our eyes. Similar:Pater Noster Pedestrian ElevatorsNotes on Teaching August Wilson's Pittsburgh CycleAP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch…
I first started teaching with this handout in 1999 and posted it on my blog in 2000. Like the Ship of Theseus, I’ve made gradual changes so it’s not really the same document, but just now I spotted hilariously out of date references to bringing along transparencies with you as a backup. Similar:Shakespeare did not…
I was perhaps a bit more conversational and chipper than usual during class today. A grinning student asked what I was drinking. (It really is just iced tea.) Similar:Pater Noster Pedestrian ElevatorsNotes on Teaching August Wilson's Pittsburgh CycleThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m…My crowd…
Predatory publications are not concerned with writing quality (or even coherence), and thus also do not care about writing tools (although we could, perhaps, include generative AI as a tool that replaces those used by human authors). The rules change pretty radically as the predatory version does away with nearly all of the rules in…
Touched up and created an infographic for a web page that I first posted in Nov 2000. Similar:Notes on Teaching August Wilson's Pittsburgh CycleMy crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die…
Happy to see a familiar face in a slide during today’s Academic Affairs Workshop. Classes start Monday. #syllabusforward Similar:Shakespeare did not leave his wife Anne in Stratford, letter fragment suggestsPater Noster Pedestrian ElevatorsNotes on Teaching August Wilson's Pittsburgh CycleThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m…My…