The grey squirrel that visited the gutter outside our BR window every morning at 6:30 am yesterday branched out, first into the other end of the same gutter, then inside the walls somewhere, ending up behind the kitchen sink. That was IT for me.
So we captured him, easy-peasy, using the Havaheart trap and some PB crackers. Then he was "disappeared" into "the Witness Protection Program." The neighbors are actually pretty psyched - he was chewing on their house too, as well as their shed and, they said, eating bird eggs out of a nest in their eaves.
We don't "do" due process and there are no public defenders. Good thing Whitey didn't end up over here.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
winds of change
B is working on his thesis again. When I thought I would get a job in his department, I promised his chair that it would get finished this summer. Well, I didn't get the job and I wish I hadn't promised such a thing that is so out of my personal control.
He's keeping a blog as a way to keep track of progress/achievements/next steps, which I think is a really great idea. Researchers always think they'll remember everything they've been working on, but how quickly and easily we forget. Basically his blog will very easily be turned into a Materials and Methods chapter for the thesis.
In other news, my laptop wouldn't turn on this morning. B was able to take out the hard drive and connect it to our backup drive so as to back up all the files (whew!) but the laptop itself is dead. I have an appointment on Friday with the college laptop fix-it people, and I've already begun to agitate for a new laptop. Mine is 4 years old; I use it at least 16 hours a day; and it's my only computer.
He's keeping a blog as a way to keep track of progress/achievements/next steps, which I think is a really great idea. Researchers always think they'll remember everything they've been working on, but how quickly and easily we forget. Basically his blog will very easily be turned into a Materials and Methods chapter for the thesis.
In other news, my laptop wouldn't turn on this morning. B was able to take out the hard drive and connect it to our backup drive so as to back up all the files (whew!) but the laptop itself is dead. I have an appointment on Friday with the college laptop fix-it people, and I've already begun to agitate for a new laptop. Mine is 4 years old; I use it at least 16 hours a day; and it's my only computer.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
e-portfolios?
Just got a newsletter today with some feature articles about portfolios as a way to encourage students' making their learning their own. We have this feature (e-portfolios) in our learning mgt system (LMS), although I've not used it before.
I like the 3-fold system: students select work that shows their learning; they explain how/why that is; and professors comment.
I like commenting with a pen on student papers (although I have excreble handwriting and sometimes students ask, "what does this say?"). But for longer papers for more advanced students, I also like writing comments on the computer, either as a markup to their papers (if problematic) or as a word document of general comments (if the papers are reasonably good) This only is productive if there aren't too many students. I use this for indep studies and also for the cultural presentation in my World Regional Geog course, in which there are maybe 2-3 student groups presenting every week. I comment less on grammar/typos and more on substantive critical issues. That's the nature of the medium, actually.
I am thinking of pioneering e-portfolios for my week-long study abroad course next spring. Paris! Mostly I do indep studies for this (having less than 5 students) and the course template is already set up well for portfolios, as students do a pre- and post-trip reflection, a project of their own devising, and some mapping and a "review" of a cultural attraction.
I have them read some stuff (I have LOTS of stuff for Paris) and explicitly try to integrate it into a paper. It's a bit artificial, but they HAVE to engage with the ideas of the pieces even if it's unnatural. Teacher-cop: "did you read what I assigned? Show me!" (Surprisingly-to-me this strategy was used in a couple of my doctoral grad seminars. The assignment was to write a reflection/analysis of some papers assigned for the week. If you didn't explicitly work in ALL of them in equal detail, and make them relate, you got marked down. Silly me: I wrote about what grabbed me and skim-wrote about the rest, not understanding that this assignment was about gatekeeping, not intellectual engagement.)
My diss advisor had a similar assignment in HIS seminar, but if you wrote an intelligent 5 pp about one article and ignored the other 3, he was fine with it. RIP. He's been gone just a little more than a year now. Seems like forever.
I like the 3-fold system: students select work that shows their learning; they explain how/why that is; and professors comment.
I like commenting with a pen on student papers (although I have excreble handwriting and sometimes students ask, "what does this say?"). But for longer papers for more advanced students, I also like writing comments on the computer, either as a markup to their papers (if problematic) or as a word document of general comments (if the papers are reasonably good) This only is productive if there aren't too many students. I use this for indep studies and also for the cultural presentation in my World Regional Geog course, in which there are maybe 2-3 student groups presenting every week. I comment less on grammar/typos and more on substantive critical issues. That's the nature of the medium, actually.
I am thinking of pioneering e-portfolios for my week-long study abroad course next spring. Paris! Mostly I do indep studies for this (having less than 5 students) and the course template is already set up well for portfolios, as students do a pre- and post-trip reflection, a project of their own devising, and some mapping and a "review" of a cultural attraction.
I have them read some stuff (I have LOTS of stuff for Paris) and explicitly try to integrate it into a paper. It's a bit artificial, but they HAVE to engage with the ideas of the pieces even if it's unnatural. Teacher-cop: "did you read what I assigned? Show me!" (Surprisingly-to-me this strategy was used in a couple of my doctoral grad seminars. The assignment was to write a reflection/analysis of some papers assigned for the week. If you didn't explicitly work in ALL of them in equal detail, and make them relate, you got marked down. Silly me: I wrote about what grabbed me and skim-wrote about the rest, not understanding that this assignment was about gatekeeping, not intellectual engagement.)
My diss advisor had a similar assignment in HIS seminar, but if you wrote an intelligent 5 pp about one article and ignored the other 3, he was fine with it. RIP. He's been gone just a little more than a year now. Seems like forever.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Administrivia
Our dept is working (in violation of our sacred contract that bestows summer vacation free from required committee work) on tasks that I think the chair was supposed to have assigned during the regular school year. My part of the first task took about 15 minutes, which was less time than it took me to read all the emails from my colleagues opining that we shouldn't have to do this task in the first place.
Three of my colleagues have filled out the mandated paperwork incorrectly, which has already been pointed out via email by our most senior colleague. It's a simple fix, but Senior Colleague chose to read their errors as disagreement with his position, which will probably lead to a bit of hurt feelings.
But the analytical fix (Senior Colleague complains of the lack of analytical rigor in our program and I guess some of the faculty suffer the same malady!) is simple: if you are filling out a course matrix for program planning, the number of boxes with the same unique course options has to be equal to the number of unique course options in the box. That is, "Course A or Course B" can only appear in two boxes. If a student takes Course B the first time, and Course A the second time, then what does she take the THIRD time you list "Course A or Course B"?
For the second task, which has to be done by the chair, no one noticed (or commented) that he is conflating a reporting of what WAS done this year (annual report) with our strategic plan for next year (goals we developed during a very painful session called "faculty retreat"). My question is, will the Dean read closely enough to notice? And if she does, will she kick it back to him for R&R? Or is she just collating this admistrivia and passing it up the chain of command?
Back to course planning, which is infinitely more interesting than all this stuff!
Three of my colleagues have filled out the mandated paperwork incorrectly, which has already been pointed out via email by our most senior colleague. It's a simple fix, but Senior Colleague chose to read their errors as disagreement with his position, which will probably lead to a bit of hurt feelings.
But the analytical fix (Senior Colleague complains of the lack of analytical rigor in our program and I guess some of the faculty suffer the same malady!) is simple: if you are filling out a course matrix for program planning, the number of boxes with the same unique course options has to be equal to the number of unique course options in the box. That is, "Course A or Course B" can only appear in two boxes. If a student takes Course B the first time, and Course A the second time, then what does she take the THIRD time you list "Course A or Course B"?
For the second task, which has to be done by the chair, no one noticed (or commented) that he is conflating a reporting of what WAS done this year (annual report) with our strategic plan for next year (goals we developed during a very painful session called "faculty retreat"). My question is, will the Dean read closely enough to notice? And if she does, will she kick it back to him for R&R? Or is she just collating this admistrivia and passing it up the chain of command?
Back to course planning, which is infinitely more interesting than all this stuff!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
take me to the shredder
May-June is always a good time to clean up the home office. (The office office is spare and requires only about an hour's worth of work at the end of the semester to tidy and toss out.)
I think I didn't do a very thorough weeding of files last spring, because I was trying to get ready for my research trip to Europe. This year, the file drawers are bulging and the cleanout must be done.
The old paper-versus-electronic copy rages in full force: e-copy means out of sight, out of mind. But there's soo much more room in the file drawers if you toss everything you have electronically! I am also tossing dated newspaper articles (yep, I'm one of THOSE people!) and background materials I've had for a couple of years but have never used for courses.
And then I'm tossing all the stuff I collected for projects I'll never do in part because the materials are so dated. Example: all the ads for econonomic development in magazines I collected when I was in Poland in 2005. If I am able to get a book contract to write up my work about tourism in Eastern Europe, it will NOT focus very much on economic development. It was a topic I could never make much headway with because it's vast and has always been tangential to my smaller subject.
I'm also rearranging as I go: my concept of how to organize my stuff is always in flux, as new interests surface and old ones die. So some topics need more files; others need to be weeded or tossed altogether.
Also, I don't tend to keep old lecture notes in paper copies anymore, unless I am planning significant course realignment in the upcoming semester. I am doing that for the spring in the global cities course, and a bit in the fall for economic geography. Otherwise, bring on the shredder. I estimate that in less than 24 hours, I'll be able to see the surface of my desk again!
I think I didn't do a very thorough weeding of files last spring, because I was trying to get ready for my research trip to Europe. This year, the file drawers are bulging and the cleanout must be done.
The old paper-versus-electronic copy rages in full force: e-copy means out of sight, out of mind. But there's soo much more room in the file drawers if you toss everything you have electronically! I am also tossing dated newspaper articles (yep, I'm one of THOSE people!) and background materials I've had for a couple of years but have never used for courses.
And then I'm tossing all the stuff I collected for projects I'll never do in part because the materials are so dated. Example: all the ads for econonomic development in magazines I collected when I was in Poland in 2005. If I am able to get a book contract to write up my work about tourism in Eastern Europe, it will NOT focus very much on economic development. It was a topic I could never make much headway with because it's vast and has always been tangential to my smaller subject.
I'm also rearranging as I go: my concept of how to organize my stuff is always in flux, as new interests surface and old ones die. So some topics need more files; others need to be weeded or tossed altogether.
Also, I don't tend to keep old lecture notes in paper copies anymore, unless I am planning significant course realignment in the upcoming semester. I am doing that for the spring in the global cities course, and a bit in the fall for economic geography. Otherwise, bring on the shredder. I estimate that in less than 24 hours, I'll be able to see the surface of my desk again!
Thursday, June 9, 2011
I am NOT a Luddite
The title should give you fair warning on my defensiveness, right? Here are a couple of recent examples that made me shake my head.
1.My department bought those of us who wanted one an iPad. No training, no account setup (and Academic Computing is really PO'ed that we have them without being part of a coordinated effort run by THEM. They are so proud that THEY just got iPads and they are running a pilot this fall in a different department. Nothing like my department trying to steal their thunder!).
Nevertheless, Academic Computing has some really nice, helpful staff, and they tried to get me started. We looked at the features of the device (Wow! I can change the wallpaper! - if you know me in the slightest you know that how the display is is about one-millionth on my list of things to care about) and they tried and failed to end-run the system to get me an account without giving up a credit card number.
So B got me the account and I've looked at some free or cheap apps. Either they are things I do competently other ways already (I still use a paper calendar; I can't bear to switch to device-based as long as I can scribble a quick note) or things I have no use for. I don't need an iPad stopwatch (try dragging THAT on a long walk) when I have a perfectly fine free one on the laptop, which I use for timing presentations. I don't need two cameras on one machine (although the res is pretty good and I could probably figure out how to email the files to myself). Bottom line: the iPad has not yet demonstrated its value and I'm not willing to spend countless more hours "playing" to see if I can wrest value out of it.
2. Steve Jobs and his iCloud. I like my programs and my documents right where I know where they always are: on my laptop, which I back up reasonably conscientiously. I don't like being dependent on some infrastructure "out there" in the ether to do every single thing that I do and manage all the information I manage. I know that the Internet is redundantly structured, but it seems like there are a LOT of things that could go wrong between me sitting here (wherever "here" is) and my information: ISP breakdown; telecomm overload (every time there is a "natural" disaster the cell network is the first casualty); even terrorism.
3. At one of the workshops in the previous entry, one of our tech people suggested we deal with banning cell phones in the classroom by allowing students a start-up reward at the beginning of class, which is to use polldaddy to answer a question. And then make them put the cellphones away. Seems ass-backwards to me. How about a reward at the END of class? Why give them license for cell phones at the BEGINNING, when they have just seconds ago checked for new texts?
4.On the other hand, why isn't our campus working on ways to let us text students, since that is "meeting them where they are," which is always touted as our go-to strategy?
5. I am really tired once again of hearing about "digital natives" who take to any technology and dive right in. Here is the technology our students hate most and seem to need the most help with: the Learning Management System (LMS) for which we make them buy laptops. It's a clunky system to be sure - but they just try one thing and can't do it (which apparently absolves them of any responsibility of completing the relevant assignment) or whine that they couldn't find what you wanted them to read, or it wouldn't load, or they couldn't print it, or whatever.
In better news, I've finished the first of six modules of my online course, all but testing the links. It looks my course at the other college may not run, although I won't know for sure for another 3-4 weeks, and I'm only short one student for their minimum enrollment. There is significant start-up for THAT class so it won't be the worst thing if it doesn't run.
1.My department bought those of us who wanted one an iPad. No training, no account setup (and Academic Computing is really PO'ed that we have them without being part of a coordinated effort run by THEM. They are so proud that THEY just got iPads and they are running a pilot this fall in a different department. Nothing like my department trying to steal their thunder!).
Nevertheless, Academic Computing has some really nice, helpful staff, and they tried to get me started. We looked at the features of the device (Wow! I can change the wallpaper! - if you know me in the slightest you know that how the display is is about one-millionth on my list of things to care about) and they tried and failed to end-run the system to get me an account without giving up a credit card number.
So B got me the account and I've looked at some free or cheap apps. Either they are things I do competently other ways already (I still use a paper calendar; I can't bear to switch to device-based as long as I can scribble a quick note) or things I have no use for. I don't need an iPad stopwatch (try dragging THAT on a long walk) when I have a perfectly fine free one on the laptop, which I use for timing presentations. I don't need two cameras on one machine (although the res is pretty good and I could probably figure out how to email the files to myself). Bottom line: the iPad has not yet demonstrated its value and I'm not willing to spend countless more hours "playing" to see if I can wrest value out of it.
2. Steve Jobs and his iCloud. I like my programs and my documents right where I know where they always are: on my laptop, which I back up reasonably conscientiously. I don't like being dependent on some infrastructure "out there" in the ether to do every single thing that I do and manage all the information I manage. I know that the Internet is redundantly structured, but it seems like there are a LOT of things that could go wrong between me sitting here (wherever "here" is) and my information: ISP breakdown; telecomm overload (every time there is a "natural" disaster the cell network is the first casualty); even terrorism.
3. At one of the workshops in the previous entry, one of our tech people suggested we deal with banning cell phones in the classroom by allowing students a start-up reward at the beginning of class, which is to use polldaddy to answer a question. And then make them put the cellphones away. Seems ass-backwards to me. How about a reward at the END of class? Why give them license for cell phones at the BEGINNING, when they have just seconds ago checked for new texts?
4.On the other hand, why isn't our campus working on ways to let us text students, since that is "meeting them where they are," which is always touted as our go-to strategy?
5. I am really tired once again of hearing about "digital natives" who take to any technology and dive right in. Here is the technology our students hate most and seem to need the most help with: the Learning Management System (LMS) for which we make them buy laptops. It's a clunky system to be sure - but they just try one thing and can't do it (which apparently absolves them of any responsibility of completing the relevant assignment) or whine that they couldn't find what you wanted them to read, or it wouldn't load, or they couldn't print it, or whatever.
In better news, I've finished the first of six modules of my online course, all but testing the links. It looks my course at the other college may not run, although I won't know for sure for another 3-4 weeks, and I'm only short one student for their minimum enrollment. There is significant start-up for THAT class so it won't be the worst thing if it doesn't run.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Pedagogy central
After the spring semester, I usually spend about a month on a combination of pedagogical activities, organizing, and thinking strategically about courses. (I should spend the time writing articles for publication, but that's a different story.)
The week after finals, I attended four workshops on pedagogy in various forms, plus a planning meeting for an institute I'm teaching in August. These events tend to be heavy on broad concepts and light on applications, but if you can spend some time after the fact thinking about how to apply them, it's not totally wasted time.
First up was a workshop on assessments using a modified Kitchener-King cognitive development model. Allegedly our students are best at memorizing random chunks of information. They don't think critically about this - meaning that they can't sift through evidence to find out what's valuable and what's garbage, much less synthesize all that into a cogent argument.
I don't totally agree. Some students come in with this capacity but what they lack is enough knowledge of "how the world is" or general life experience to be able to contextualize what they know properly. (I am forever making assumptions about what they know - often wrong. For example, although all of them have had at least one year of world history, I can't assume they remember that WW2 was in the mid-20th century or know what (generally speaking) the sides were, Allied versus Axis.)
Two days later, another workshop dealt precisely with this point - how to understand your students and what they know and care about. Not a lot of answers (the mood at our table was fairly cynical) but at least we are asking the questions and trying to put ourselves in their shoes. But I hope that I bonded with my co-facilitator for my first-year class, and we met the following week to hash out some of the scheduling stuff.
The worst was the strategic planning retreat. Working with my colleagues to try to dream up new initatives within the framework of our institutional core values was pure torture.
I teach at a teaching college. It's interesting to see the rigor (and cookie-cutter-like methods) taught TO students in the name of early ed pedagogy. But are our young students better educated because of it? Many of my students rail against standardized testing. I don't; to me it's a first step. You need knowledge and perspective to be able to think critically about ANYTHING.
The week after finals, I attended four workshops on pedagogy in various forms, plus a planning meeting for an institute I'm teaching in August. These events tend to be heavy on broad concepts and light on applications, but if you can spend some time after the fact thinking about how to apply them, it's not totally wasted time.
First up was a workshop on assessments using a modified Kitchener-King cognitive development model. Allegedly our students are best at memorizing random chunks of information. They don't think critically about this - meaning that they can't sift through evidence to find out what's valuable and what's garbage, much less synthesize all that into a cogent argument.
I don't totally agree. Some students come in with this capacity but what they lack is enough knowledge of "how the world is" or general life experience to be able to contextualize what they know properly. (I am forever making assumptions about what they know - often wrong. For example, although all of them have had at least one year of world history, I can't assume they remember that WW2 was in the mid-20th century or know what (generally speaking) the sides were, Allied versus Axis.)
Two days later, another workshop dealt precisely with this point - how to understand your students and what they know and care about. Not a lot of answers (the mood at our table was fairly cynical) but at least we are asking the questions and trying to put ourselves in their shoes. But I hope that I bonded with my co-facilitator for my first-year class, and we met the following week to hash out some of the scheduling stuff.
The worst was the strategic planning retreat. Working with my colleagues to try to dream up new initatives within the framework of our institutional core values was pure torture.
I teach at a teaching college. It's interesting to see the rigor (and cookie-cutter-like methods) taught TO students in the name of early ed pedagogy. But are our young students better educated because of it? Many of my students rail against standardized testing. I don't; to me it's a first step. You need knowledge and perspective to be able to think critically about ANYTHING.
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