Teaching writers to read

I had a thought about my upcoming Freshman Studies writing class. After having met with my team leader (quasi-boss), I was reminded about how often college students have trouble reading well. That is, how often college students struggle to really understand what they read and to take notes in a way that is of use later on.

That merged in my head with an idea/concept that I’ve been mulling over: the more you read the better you write. Or, if you read a lot of quality stuff you’ll be better able to emulate that quality in your writing.

So, if college students have trouble reading well, and if college students have trouble writing well, could the two be connected? I think there may be something to that.

My plan, then, is to start off my Freshman Studies course (read Freshman Comp) with a class or two devoted just to how does one read well. I’m thinking I’ll post the assigned readings to the web with my annotations embedded. That could then lead to a conversation starter on how one reads and takes notes while doing so.

Then I’d like to revisit the issue again multiple times as the semester goes on. Give them a few weeks practice and raise the topic again. A few more weeks, and so on.

Anybody done anything similar? Or know of some literature on this style of tactic? I’d love to read up some more before the start of the semester.

Certify this!

Technical communicators, you can now be certified! This past week, STC just announced a new certification for technical communicators. And for those in the field (and for those who teach those in the field), this really is big news.

We have an identity!

The first thing that hits me – we can now definitively say what makes someone a technical communicator. Being able to have a specific, quantifiable definition of what makes someone a tech commer will really help to get rid of that image of us as simply “glorified secretaries.” No longer (we can hope) will the skills necessary to produce high-quality forms of communication be seen as something that anyone can do. When this certification becomes hard to come by, employers will most likely become more convinced that authoring well is a hard skill to develop.

STC, according to their post, has defined six areas as the basis of the certification:

• User analysis
• Document design
• Project management
• Authoring (content creation)
• Delivery
• Quality assurance

I’m not entirely clear on whether one can get certification in individual areas, or whether there’s a blanket certification that requires mastery of all 6 areas. But, still, these will now represent the six primary skills that TCers bring to the table. And that’s nice and defined.

We have something to teach!

And, for those of us who teach tech comm, these six bullets would make wonderful course and/or degree objectives. When we’ve got a student who shows interest in being a technical communicator, we can now pull out this list and say, “learn these six things and you’ll become one.” Ok, well not exactly. But it is a nice roadmap for the student.

What about all of those faculty meetings where the creative writers claim they can do as good of a job as the tech comm specialists in the Intro course? Well, we now have ammunition to challenge that claim. Can you teach a student how to analyze an audience, manage a project, assure quality, and define effectively if your training is in writing poetry? Hunh, can you? (No offense intended to any poets out there. I’m sure it’s very difficult finding a word that rhymes with “orange” 😉 )

STC did this one right, too. The certification is not something that can be gotten straight out of college:

Certification will be based on assessing portfolios and work artifacts, not examinations. (In other words, there are no tests.)

That is, we don’t have to follow the lead of public schools and “teach to the test.” Rather, we’re giving students skills that they can then use to develop a portfolio over a couple years – and then they get certified. (my guess is this clause is in there to satisfy all the instructors out there)

This does bring up an interesting possibility – can we have students develop an extensive enough portfolio during college so that they can get certified right out of graduation? STC doesn’t elaborate on what the detailed requirements are for certification (apparently in a yet-to-be-released webpage). But if we were to build our programs around developing a portfolio, could a student produce enough documents to at least come close to certification? Potentials for classes and projects abound, no?

But are we pigeon-holed?

My initial apprehension, though, is that we may end up limiting ourselves. A lot of effort over the last couple years has gone into broadening the reach of the discipline. If we limit ourselves to these six traditional areas — and especially if we set criteria for meeting those areas based on “traditional” tech comm documents — will we limit the fields that are legitimate to study? Will medical rhetoric still be in-bounds? Scientific rhetoric? Historical documents? Gaming? Or will those fields fall to the rhetors out there, becoming unjustifiable for a tech commer?

I know, I know. The lines aren’t that clearly cut between tech comm and rhetoric. But will certification for TC make those lines more distinct? And by extension, separate the two fields more than they already are?

Still, happy day

But given these fears, I still think this is a good thing for the field. That question broached in every graduate level intro course — “what is technical communication?” — at least has a good start at an answer.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go begin putting together my portfolio for certification…

Teaching Multi-taskers – new research

Scientific American posted an article discussing the physiology of multitasking today (04.15.2010). Turns out the brain really can do two different tasks at exactly the same time – by delegating the different tasks to different hemispheres of the brain.

I guess that means if you’re trying to teach multi-taskers, you’ve got to decide whether you want them to use their left brain or right brain in class! They can be creative or logical while multi-tasking in class, but not both.

Just thought I’d share.

Teaching Multi-Taskers

An issue I’ve been playing with reared its ugly head yesterday in class. How do you teach muti-taskers? Or, more accurately, how do you teach students who really are capable of maintaining their Facebooking/text messaging while also accomplishing a great deal of “appropriate” work during a class workday.

Class time yesterday was partially designated as a work day for my students’ final projects, due in a couple weeks. And so, when the work day portion started, I gave my students a list of tasks I wanted them to complete before the session ended. I was amazed at the number of students that would have Facebook running in the background as they whittled away at their projects. Every 60 seconds or so they’d whip over to Facebook, read a bit, write a quick comment, and go straight back to their project.

Now, I didn’t say anything about this. I figured it wasn’t distracting and that the work day is largely their time to use as they chose. But what struck me was that the students who did this actually accomplished more than the students who didn’t.

This is something I’ve noticed in lectures/discussions as well. I have several students who will send the occasional text message during discussions. And, being a teacher, I used to be offended by this. What I’ve noticed is that the students who send the occasional text actually pay attention for a longer time than those who don’t. (there’s the case of students who only send texts without paying any attention to the class, but that’s a different issue for me)

So this multi-tasking has gotten me thinking about pedagogical techniques. What I see this as is my students doing multiple tasks at roughly the same time – personal communication blended with class activities. And doing this seems to extend their attention period – from the typical 20 minutes to easily an entire class period. Given the advantages of students who maintain attention longer I’ve been inclined of late to let this behavior go. (I can’t bring myself to actually encourage it, but I may get there eventually)

The question I have for other teachers out there is how do we bring this class/personal muti-tasking into their personal lives? That is, if they’re able to blend these two elements during class time, can we get them to blend the elements during personal time? Is it possible to integrate learning activities into their evenings and weekends?

I’m thinking beyond simply assigning homework. That, to me, just extends class time.

Ideas?

The Internet Bus (Part II)

Well, the post last week elicited enough interest that I thought a follow-up may be in order. Last week, I laid out my complaints of the deployment of “technology” in public schools (technology is in quotes, as I’m purposefully misusing the term, but that’s a post for another day).

So, I thought that this week’s post would be a little more constructive and offer some advice on how public schools can deploy technology better. I want to hit two major themes: obtaining technology and using technology.

Obtaining technology

By this, I mean how do schools get their hands on computers, laptops, iPhones, decent connectivity, etc. I’ll be honest – this isn’t an area where I have a lot of experience. I’ve been lucky enough to spend time at schools that could pretty much afford some pretty decent hardware. But I was talking with my sister about this issue, and I thought she had some good insights.

Last week, I mentioned that parents should try to raise money for their schools to purchase computers. She pretty handily dismissed this possibility. (my sister, by the way, has two children in elementary school) Her argument was that if parents wouldn’t contribute a couple dollars to buy the teacher a Valentine’s gift, they were definitely not going to contribute to buying iPhones for other students. And, I think she’s really got a point there.

She mentioned, though, that most (all?) school districts have a certain discretionary budget for each fiscal year. And, in her experience, districts would occasionally use that money for technology purchases. That, to me, seems like a fantastic source. School administrators seem to have a pretty good grasp on the state of things, and would be willing to spend money on projects like laptops for classrooms. Especially, if they could get their district profiled in the NYTimes for being cutting edge.

So, if you’re a school administrator reading this, go spend that discretionary money on technology upgrades. The football team’s jerseys will last for another year. If you’re a parent reading this, go bug your local school administrator. Streams of parents at each month’s school board meeting will eventually get their attention.

Using technology

Ok, so now that your school has that beautiful piece of technological innovation, what does it do with it? Here’s where I have a few ideas that you may be able to modify.

1) In-class research.

Give the students access to the Internet at their desks. Wikipedia is a click away. So is census.gov. And data.gov. And Google Scholar. And, well, you get it. Oh, and this is probably a great time to give your students that lesson on judging the quality of a source. Just because a website says “x is a fact” doesn’t really mean that x is a fact.

And in-class research doesn’t mean that the students can go to the back of the room to a computer. It means that they can do the research at the desks where there’s not the mortal shame of drawing attention to oneself during school hours. Besides, do you go to the back of the room to look up something, or do you use the computer at your desk?

Ok, now how do you handle students doing what they shouldn’t be doing? Coincidentally, scnow.com ran an article this past week about that very issue. The school in Virginia they profiled supplied students their own iPod Touches (that couldn’t leave school grounds), but locked out social networking sites and illicit content. Now, there’s some understandable discontent in that, as the students are given a filtered version of what is supposed to be an unfiltered source for information (the Internet). But, for now and until teachers get more comfortable with monitoring and filtering computer use in the classroom, it seems like a good solution.

2) Social networking

Yes, believe it or not, social networking does have a role in the classroom. I personally use a Facebook group and Twitter handle for my courses to communicate with students about course related news. They tend to be really hesitant at first to let their class infiltrate the Facebook realm that’s normally reserved for more leisurely pursuits. But they warm up to it.

Imagine if you could have “poked” your high school Chemistry teacher to ask if the quiz tomorrow was on Chapter 9 or 10. You might have read the right chapter and gotten a higher grade. But better than that, imagine being able to correspond with your English teacher about The Great Gatsby and what the symbolic references meant to you. Or forward a news article to your Geometry teacher that showed how class content actually had some real world relevance. That kind of dynamic would break the teacher-student relationship out of just the classroom and motivate students to learn in hours outside of 9-3.

3) Inter-class collaboration

Ok, this is an idea that is easily ridiculed. By this one, I mean getting one class to collaborate with another. At least to me, this conjures images of the television commercial with American students talking on a video screen to Asian students. Or, a little geekier, a Google Wave collaboration between U of Illinois & Ireland.

But I really think there’s some potential here. This doesn’t have to be trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific. It doesn’t even have to leave the boundaries of the school. Just getting Mrs. Johnson’s 2nd period class to collaborate with her 4th period would be a great place to start. I’m thinking social bookmarking as a real possibility. Delicious, Digg, Diigo, and the like all would be great ways to get students to share that research they did back in bullet 1.

I remember a high school geometry class project where we had to research spherical geometry. The teacher told us to go and write a paper on what it was and how it differed from Euclidean geometry. And I remember that we all went to the local library and each looked up the exact same books. Then we all wrote papers that were pretty much synonymous. Now, what if we were able to share our research? Rather than all that wasted time duplicating the efforts of other students, we could have pooled our efforts and dug a lot deeper into the topic.

4) Students publishing their work online

This is something that I’ve found to be a great motivator in my class. Let the students publish their final project in a public site for their friends and parents to visit. And, hopefully, others from the Internet community.

I’ve had my students publish their instructional videos to YouTube. One last semester got some immediate response – some positive and some negative. And that was terrific. It motivated him for the rest of the class and gave you a sense that his work might be relevant to somebody else.

I’ve had my students post their research reports as blogs. And that’s been another great motivator. Having the chance that some real person might get something out of their effort made them try harder, produce a better final product, and learn more from the assignment.

And, while my experience has been with undergrads, I think the idea would hold quite well for K-12-er’s. Perhaps even more so. Giving the 4th grader a forum to post that creative story she just wrote might make her try a little harder when writing. Giving the high school sophomore a place to disseminate that paper on Catcher in the Rye might motivate him to start writing before 9pm the night before it’s due.

Such possibilities would also make the students creators of content and not just consumers. And that’s a powerful position to be in.

So, I guess I’m left with the same thought as last week. If this is to happen, schools are going to need somebody to teach the teachers how. And the geek dads out there still seem like the most logical sources of wisdom to me. I’ll end, then, with the same proclamation as last time

Geek dads of the world unite!