Times Higher Ed: Margins Aren't Meant to be Written In
The London Times Higher Education Supplement has an editorial up on the practice of marginal annotation in paper grading. Here's the link:
Margins Aren't Meant to be Written In
My comments after the break ...
Backward Design
A couple of years ago, my CWRL project group set out to determine how Second Life could be used in the rhetoric classroom. Starting with the tool, we tried to imagine an assignment that would fit--somehow--into our curriculum. Only one person in the group tried the assignment we developed. It was irrelevant to the rest of our courses.
Helpful and Educational Online Press Release Services
As writers, we often have to be versatile and flexible in order to gain new clients - or to keep old ones. Good writers are seldom one-dimensional; we often wear many hats, functioning now as a feature writer, then as a publicist, and at another time as a sort of media communications specialist. We are sometimes called on to write ad copy; at others times we are needed to write biographies or brochures. We are asked to edit or proofread academic essays, and at other times we are summoned to write a speech for a local politician.
A new way to comment on Microsoft Word Documents
Thanks to a tip from someone over at the Blogora, I've started testing out a new tool called Annotate (check out their website for a 30 day trial). Annotate is an add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 (a version for Word 2003 is forthcoming) that gives you many more options for commenting on student work. There are a lot of stock comments for things like comma splices or transitions.
Roger Ebert on film analysis
If you are going to be teaching video in any of your classes this year, you might be interested in this article on Roger Ebert’s blog:
Now what do I mean by "positive" or "negative?" I mean that these are tendencies within the composition. They are not absolutes. But in general terms, in a two-shot, the person on the right will "seem" dominant over the person on the left. Does this apply even to films from cultures that read right to left or top to bottom? From my treks through many Asian films, yes, it seems to.
Finally A Career Path for Philosophy Majors Other Than A Professorship!
A Degree Is An Investment (Whether You Like to Admit It or Not)
When I graduated from UT '98, I was totally clueless about my future career path. Like most philosophy majors, I wanted to continue utilizing what I had learned in philosophy, but didn't have really the first clue about where to start or how to find careers that utilize philosophical methods, other than the Ph.D. track.
More rhetoric in the Atlantic
At the risk of being a one-trick pony, I'd like to call your attention, once again, to the Atlantic Monthly. The latest issue has an article by James Fallows that very directly addresses the issue of rhetoric in the presidential campaign.
Narrative arguments
On Monday during the DRW orientation, I’m going to be presenting a workshop on tools for investigating narrative arguments. One of the tools I’ve been playing with is Dipity, a website for making timelines that can be shared with other users. Because timelines force a narrative into a strictly chronological arrangement, they can be interesting tools for helping students to see how narrative arguments can be manipulated for the best effects. In conjunction with the use of Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side as this year’s First Year Forum text, I have taken a section of the book—from the end of chapter 10 to the beginning of chapter 12—and created a Dipity timeline based on an outline of the events described in this section.
One interesting result of this exercise is that it makes it easier for students to see how Lewis has rearranged the events he describes so as to achieve particular effects. The most prominent of these effects is suspense, as Lewis introduces a violent episode in the life of his protagonist, Michael Oher, but doesn’t provide the resolution of this event until after resolving another mystery he as set up in the book: where Michael, or Mike, a 6' 5", 300+ pound teenager who was found living on the streets of one of Memphis’s worst housing projects, came from. In bringing these stories together, Lewis has not only used their arrangement to provide interest in and catharsis for these stories’ eventual resolution, but also conflated to very different time-scales: Mike’s history from his birth to the age of 16 when he was admitted to Briarcrest Christian School, and the unfortunate events of a single afternoon in Mississippi.
Research Aids for Writers
As I've written in another post, one key to good writing is, of course, good research. I think good research is both an art and a science. It requires not only the use of credible, authoritative and comprehensive sources, but it also requires something of the researcher herself.
Research Aids for Writers
As I've written in another post, one key to good writing is, of course, good research. I think good research is both an art and a science. It requires not only the use of credible, authoritative and comprehensive sources, but it also requires something of the researcher herself.