« May 2007 | Main | July 2007 »

June 18, 2007

Back from the Big Apple

I made it back from NYU and the Faculty Research Network Summer Seminars! And not only that, but my luggage made it back with me!!

Seriously, can air travel get much worse?

WARNING!!! OBLIGATORY WHINY AIR-TRAVEL HORROR STORIES FOLLOW.
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

0220K.jpg

Upon arriving at the Burlington airport for our vacation to the moon, the Spouse and I were informed that our flight to Newark (motto: "Gateway to the Moon") had been cancelled, and that we wouldn't be able to get to the moon for at least a day until they could get us on another flight.

No one screws with The Spouse's vacation.

The Spouse used his super-Spousal powers to psychically beat the ticket counter into submission, and we were put on a flight on another airline to JFK (motto: "Gateway to Newark, Gateway to the Moon"), where we would have to get ourselves to Newark. The airline, we were told, would reimburse us for our ground travel. We also ran into a group of UVM students heading to the moon for a field trip, who were in the same situation we were. We banded together and prepared to fly to JFK. Once at JFK, we would have 4 hours to get to Newark and make it through security to our departure gate. No problem.

What we didn't know is that when you change airlines, even when it's the airline's fault (bad airline! bad!) security takes your suitcases and dismantles them in front of everyone. They take every single item out of your suitcase, parade them around the ticketing area, and then cram them back into the suitcase, wrinkling and breaking as much as they can in the process. How ridiculously violating!

Well, after that, the flight to JFK was delayed. Once we finally took off, we had 3 hours and 15 minutes to get from JFK to Newark.

After arriving at JFK, the belt that carries baggage to the baggage claim broke. It took them an hour to get that fixed. Once we got our bags, we had 2 hours and 15 minutes to get from JFK to Newark. At rush hour. In the New York greater metropolitan area.

We'd missed the last airport shuttle bus ($20 per rider) between the airports, so we took a cab ($120 total with tolls and interstate surcharge, which came to $25 per rider). Our cab driver took us through every borough he could think of, up through Harlem, and then, finally, down to Newark. He did manage to avoid traffic, but really! When we finally arrived at Newark, we had 1 hour to make it through ticketing, bag check-in, and security, and then to get to our departure gate.

Oh, and we had to fight with the airline staff about our reimbursement. Grr.

Somehow, we magically made it to our gate on time, only to learn that we had no plane. And then we had a plane and a flight crew, but no gate personnel. So the flight crew was stuck with us in the departure gate area, waiting for someone to come around and let them onto the plane. So that we could then get onto the plane, too.

Eventually, the Spouse and I (and presumably the undergrads on the field trip) made it to the moon. Miraculously, our luggage did, too. Of course, our luggage didn't make it back from the moon. They'd left the bag in Newark, and I had to go back to the airport in Burlington the next day to pick up our bag, which had decided to spend one last fun-filled night in the greater New York metropolitan area without us. I'd ask it what happened, but what happens in Newark stays in Newark. At least, that's what the bag says.

This was not to be the case with the trip to NYU, however. When I arrived at the airport, I was told that I had no seat on the plane. They'd switched to a smaller plane and had thus fewer seats. So my seat, which I'd paid for a month earlier, was no longer on the inside of the airplane. And not only that, but the only flight they could put me on would arrive at JFK (motto: "You've Got a 1 1/2 Hour Subway Ride Ahead of You!") after the check-in for the Faculty Research Network would have ended. That means no room for you-know-who.

I channeled my inner Spouse and good-cop/bad-cop-ped the ticket agent mercilessly (it's much harder when you're doing this by yourself) until she put me at the top of the stand-by list for the flight I was supposed to have been on. Then I pestered/flattered the gate agents until they removed the people who were supposed to be on the plane but who hadn't shown up yet. I got a seat. On the smaller plane.

Because it was a smaller plane, they didn't have enough room for the luggage. So they took four pieces of luggage off the plane and sent it on the very late flight. Mine, of course, was taken off of the plane.

And the desk staff at NYU refused to accept the luggage when it was delivered. Which meant that I had to be there to get it, no matter what I was doing at the time, or where I was.

My luggage wasn't delivered until 7:45am on Monday, just in time for me to get a very quick shower (with soap!) before the start of the seminar.

On the flight back from JFK, my flight was on-time, and my luggage made it back with me. I can only assume that this is just to keep me off-guard so that I do not expect or prepare for the next preposterous indignity they have in store for me.

I like being in other places. I just hate getting there. I thought the getting there was supposed to be "half the fun." If that's still the case, we really need to rethink our vacations. Getting there by air is no fun at all.

Here endeth the obligatory whiny air travel diatribe. Regular blogging about actually-interesting stuff will resume on Wednesday.

Posted by reparent at 10:02 AM | Comments (1)

June 13, 2007

Online-ifying and Online Identity

Today's assignment is intended to prepare us for our final projects. And yes, at this point the laughter from the malicious glee of my students is positively deafening.

Our final project is to take a face-to-face (f2f) class (or a hybrid class that mixes f2f with online elements) and turn it into an online-only class. I will admit that I spent the past two days completely at a loss as to what class I should transform, or whether I should just start from scratch with a new one (after all, both of my classes in the fall will be new preps for me).

But then I realized that the answer was staring me right in the face -- when I get back from NYC I'll be teaching a summer course on children's literature that I taught several times in my Ph.D. program at Pitt. The class is a pure f2f class; in the past when I've taught it I haven't even used a course blog. This time, however, that's going to change.

One of my students from the CyberCulture course asked me if he could take the children's lit class. I told him sure, but then he told me that he was going to be out of the state during the class meetings. He said he'd do all of the readings and writing assignments... and so of course I said sure. At first I wasn't sure what to do with this twist: a dozen students sitting in a room with me, and one lone satellite student orbiting in deep space. Then it hit me: I'd ramp up the online aspects of the course for everyone in a pilot of a purely-online course I'd offer next time I taught the course.

I don't mean that I'm going to send the f2f students away. Instead, I plan to replace the writing assignments I usually use with this course with a series of online collaborative elements to the course. This will help my exiled student to feel connected (because he will be -- he'll be working with the f2f students), be more interesting (and challenging, but in a good way) for everyone, and will help me to get this class up-and-running as an online course, which it needs to be to reach all of the students who want to take it but who don't stay in Burlington (I got a lot of this when I announced the course). I'll post more about this tomorrow.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Since I started blogging for this seminar, I've been thinking more about my blog. I'm not, frankly, used to colleagues reading my blog. I know that a few at UVM do, but they're a distinct minority and they're bloggers themselves. (As I wrote that, I realized that I have no idea why that makes a difference, but somehow it does.)

Here, I've got a different audience who come from widely varied technological backgrounds and with widely varied technological experience, and I'm feeling a little self-conscious of the backlog of housekeeping and aesthetic work the blog needs.

So, you may notice a few minor cosmetic changes around the old blog, and you may even note things that don't seem to work or load properly. Grrr. If you do see anything that needs work, please let me know. Thanks.

Posted by reparent at 7:43 PM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2007

You Can Call Me AL ...

"Authentic" tasks is a buzzword in this seminar, and have I no objections to the idea. I am struggling, however, with the task (is it an authentic task?) of applying these ideas to what I do.

So let's back up and get the big term/idea out on the screen:

Authentic tasks are defined as having (at least) the ten characteristics you can read here. My biggest stumbling block is the first one, which is also the characteristic most commonly associated with it: "authentic tasks have real-world relevance." This feels, in some ways, to be oxymoronic in the context of English literature.

Maybe that's my problem. Maybe last week's intensive effort (successful!) to finish a literary theory article, and the class I will be teaching on children's literature when I get back from New York, have combined to really cram my brain into lit mode.

I'm going to lunch now. I'll try to de-compartmentalize my mind a bit to bring in possibilities from the CyberCulture class or the digital composing class. (Or the composing digital narratives class I'll be teaching in the fall.) So many options!

Back from lunch. While a poorly-wrapped chicken ceasar salad wrap disintegrated all over the sandwich tray as I tried to pick it up, I also realized that the rhetoric class provides bunches of examples of real-world, complex tasks.

I also reminded myself that in Herrington's big article* on authentic tasks, she only requires her examples to meet 6 of the 10 criteria. That makes me feel a little more comfortable.

Some Contenders:

And, to top it all off, I just found an article** that argues that "those who read and teach literature have been speaking authentic learning all their lives." So there. More on this later when I've had a chance to read beyond the first few pages.

For now, I'll just take the first one, the motivated opinion piece, and think about ways to make it more authentic. (You know what? I really, really hate that term. From now on, I'm going to refer to it as "AL" (for authentic learning; I'm sure Herrington et al. are very proud of themselves for coming up with the label, but I really hate the way it stigmatizes everything else).

The motivated opinion piece was one of three options for Invention One, the first major writing assignment in the Writing Bodies: Rhetorics of the Flesh course. Invention One was intended to get the students working critically with the rhetorical terms and techniques we had been studying in class. Knowing that I had students in the class with different interests and strengths, I tried to give them the option of either performing a sophisticated analysis of a rhetorical performance, or composing a sophisticated rhetorical performance of their own. Perhaps not surprisingly, most students chose to write their own rhetorical opinion piece.

I required the students to ground their piece in their own lives and experiences by addressing an issue that affected them directly as UVM students. The results were mixed, with some being very good, and others... not so much.

It's already pretty AL. It has "real-world relevance;" it is "ill-defined," as almost all of my writing assignments are (I'm a hard-core constructivist in my composition pedagogy); to perform well, it requires "complex activities to be investigated by students" (and, though this isn't really one of the criteria, it requires complex application of complex issues and tools); it is "integrated and applied across different subject areas and leads beyond domain-specific outcomes;" it "creates polished [I hope] products that are valuable in their own right;" and it "allows competing solutions and a diversity of outcomes." That's a lot of AL right there.

But to make this assignment even more AL, here's what I'm thinking about changing.

I want them to do more research at all levels. I want them to research the issue they're addressing, I want them to research the previous discourse on the issue, and I want them to research the rhetorical strategies they're employing. The personal connection I insisted upon between student and issue seemed to suggest to the students that they already knew enough to write persuasively about it. And for some of them, that was the case. But all of them would have benefitted from more research. (And the number of research venues is massive, which makes this especially "ill-defined" and "student-directed.")

I think I would also like students to work together in groups. I might also want them to work against other groups. The challenge of listening to and thinking through the arguments and concerns of actual human beings is much tougher than just thinking up a devastating smack-down for the evil voices in your head.

I was thinking when I started this post (years and years ago... I know, I'm rambling) that I wanted this experience to include more discrete steps, and at first I thought that should include a more concrete module about choosing the topic. Now, however, I think I would like to shift that additional work from the beginning to the end. Instead of working more with the topic-selection phase, I'd rather have them respond to each other's positions in writing (or in whatever medium they have chosen). Like a debate in slow motion.

Hmmm.... What do you think about this?

* Herrington, Jan, Thomas C. Reeves, and Ron Oliver. "Authentic Tasks Online: A Synergy Among Learner, Task, and Technology." Distance Education 27.2 (2006): 233-247.

** (Fitzsimmons, John. "Speaking Snake: Authentic Learning and the Study of Literature." Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education. Ed. Anthony Herrington and Jan Herrington. Hershey, London, Melbourne, and Signapore: Information Science Publishing, 2006.)

Posted by reparent at 3:57 PM | Comments (5)

June 11, 2007

Back from the Moon & Reflecting on Online Learning

Hi everybody. The Spouse and I returned from our sojourn to the moon. We had tremendous fun, and we'll spare you all the tedium of our hundreds of vacation photos.

I'm writing now from New York City, the city that never freaking sleeps. And from my dorm room on the 17th floor of NYU's Hayden Hall, I can assure you that its drivers never sleep, either.

Anyway, I'm here for a week at the Faculty Resource Network's Summer seminars, participating in a seminar on "Ensuring Successful Online Learning." Day one is almost over, and our seminar convener has instructed us to BLOG OUR REFLECTIONS!!! (Back in Vermont, hundreds of my former students are laughing hysterically, the memories of my own incessant demands that they reflect on their readings and experience having unbalanced the poor dears....)

Anyway, this morning we had a lively discussion of what exactly "instructional technology" is. I'm a big-picture kind of guy, and I argued that everything technological that can or could be used for teaching or learning should be included in our definition. I offered the surprisingly controversial examples of pens and eyeglasses. (I also mentioned blogs and other high-tech stuff, of course.) It seems to me that part of our mission as educators of/with technology has got to include educating the public about the mind-boggling vastness of technologies that they already use every day. Tech isn't just digital. (Of course, this issue keeps coming up in my scholarship, which invariably blends discussions of digital texts with paper and codex texts. Note to self: spend some time and make that point more explicit in my next paper.)

So far in most of my classes at UVM I've blended online elements with face-to-face instruction. I've used the online parts, like the course blog for the CyberCulturalStudies to aggregate course materials and resources, and to make clear to my students that the class really is about issues that they face every day, and that compartmentalizing away the work they do in this class from everything else that's going on with them is just plain foolish.

I think I was pretty successful with this last part in the CyberCultural Studies class. Many students came to talk with me before or after class or sent me e-mails with links to stories they'd seen on their own that related to cyberculture, and they didn't just want to show off what they'd found -- they wanted to talk about these things!

I don't do much with BlackBoard/WebCT, largely because it's such a sterile and dead-feeling environment. However, after talking with two colleagues in the seminar from Johnson C. Smith University, I'm ready to give Moodle a big try. Obviously, I'll blog about that as I try to get up to speed on the program and work it into my Fall courses.

In my experiences with online-only courses, I've been struck by how much of the time and energy of the professor is spent trying to make the course feel populated. Surfing web pages is great fun, but it's the sense of voice and personality (and connection and community) that comes from reading my favorite blogs (and even from watching YouTube videos) that keeps the experience from feeling devastatingly lonely. In online-only courses, there's only as much voice as you/I put out there. And if you're a reader of this blog, you've probably noticed that I don't type that much voice here that often. It's easier to talk for an hour or so two or three times a week in class than to type the same amount of verbal presence to a course blog or in class discussion boards.

My thoughts on the student/professor dynamic and their particular roles is still evolving following several of our discussions today. I'll try to put that here as it becomes clearer in my sleep-deprived brain.

Finally, here are some online learning programs I'm working with, playing with, and thinking about working/playing with more often:

More later. Our convener has threatened (BWA-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! my students laugh) to make us blog our reflections every day. That'll be more posts than this humble blog has seen in a while. I hope it can handle the stress. :-)

Posted by reparent at 4:39 PM | Comments (1)