Good Ideas of AY 2008-2009
April 19, 2009
The end of the year the pundits round up major accomplishments and newsworthy ideas and such and use them to fill a few news cycles. It's time for person of the year, gadget of the year, story of the year. Instead of aggregating other ideas, I thought I'd go through my notebooks and generate a list of my ten best ideas of the last academic year. Why not? Who else is going to? I also thought that for teachers the calendar year isn't as important as the academic one, so here goes.
1. Library Economy vs. Bookstore Economy.
One of my good friends and colleagues, Matt Nickerson, is a librarian. Through my association with him, I have learned that library use has changed a lot over the last decade or so. A lot of that change seems to be due in part to computer use. In any case, one thing librarians want to achieve is getting books and students together.
This has led us to a number of discussions on the subject of how professors get students into libraries. I responded at one point by saying, "They don't. Teachers bring the books to students in the form of text books. Then once or twice a semester they send them off to the library to find support materials."
The big idea is this: what if the library was the primary text? What would happen in a class in which you said that on a certain day the discussion would be on the subject of "first person narration," use the library and be ready for discussion? I am also imagining all kinds of hybrid assignments where I assign one text and students need to add two more two the mix—their choice.
2. Using Cloud Computing On-line Applications in the classroom.
This is now a no-brainer. Google Docs is my number one choice for managing tons of documents. The searching means that the Google Docs account can really be one big bucket into which I throw these documents. No complex filing directory is necessary. It is kind of a blunt instrument, though. It's almost just an online text editor. I don't think Google Docs is a good composing tool, but it is great for sharing documents and collaborating on them as well.
Adobe's Buzzword, is really beautiful and actually easier on the eyes than most on-line apps. It outputs really nicely to a PDF, which I can have students integrate very nicely into a digital portfolio. I have tried Zoho tools, and they just don't seem to work quite right for me and from my perspective. I have tried to like them.
The use of online apps for collaboration makes the most immediate sense, but once I gained a little facility with the tools, I started to learn a little about how to hack the basic use for some interesting results.
My best discover is the use of what I'm calling the Standing Evaluation. Because I use narrative rather than quantitative evaluation in my courses, I need some way to communicate my responses and feedback to the students. I have discovered that if I instruct a student to share a google document with me, we can use that document as a platform for the evaluation. It's ongoing, so I get to see everything I've written for that semester, and whenever I add anything it's within a context of continuity. I can really chart growth. Students like it because they have a chance to respond, like with your credit report, it's just less difficult: they are free to respond to any comment. The best students do, and it's a real joy to have a conversation about their performance.
3. The Hobbit is a heist narrative.
I have been working on ideas about heist films for a while now, and it hit me over the head like a sack of money: The Hobbit is a heist, Gandalf's 14, if you will. More on this later. I have the seeds of a conference paper germinating at the moment. I does foil my initial heist paper thesis that the heist isn't a good genre for fiction but that it works best in film.
4. Putting an old lampshade iMac in the kitchen.
It's not the fastest, but man, that rotatable, tiltable screen is great for brining up a recipe or watching the Daily Show on Hulu when you're cleaning up.
5. Not getting a snow blower.
We're getting to the point that (a) I can be outside without worrying that the kids will kill themselves, and (b) Alisa's been helping, and it's kind of nice to be out there shoveling with her. It can be quite lovely, in facr. Not an issue, though, for another six months probably. I do have a leaf blower, which I pretty much can't do without.
Posted by todd at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
Proud Parenting
December 21, 2008
The other day my kids were having breakfast in the kitchen, perched on stools at the counter. My youngest looked at his sister, swallowed a bite of his cereal, and said, "It's duck season."
Zoë, without a pause, said, "Rabbit season."
Just as quick, Ike said, "Duck season."
Back and forth they went until Ike said suddenly, "Wait, stop. Okay, Zoë now it's rabbit season. Boom!" Then they both collapsed into fits of laughter. It was a pleasure to watch.
I was beaming. This meant that my labors had been successful, at least partially so. You see, this is a triumph in parenting for me. I have been trying to give my kids what could be called a classical education in cartoons. I started them with Steamboat Willie and moved them on to Felix the Cat and Fleisher Brothers Superman serials. They are well acquainted with the more contemporary Pixar and Miyazaki. Thanks to YouTube and Netflix, I have been able to widen the survey to include Warner Brothers.
I had no idea if any of this was working until that morning. I am so proud of these kids. Nothing shows me a literate mind more than getting a joke. And, did they ever get it. Bravo, kids. Bravo. You make your old man proud.
Posted by todd at 9:33 AM
Old School/New School
December 13, 2008
We try to have simple rules around my house, real simple principles that can govern a lot of situations. The baby/toddler principles were this:
- You can't say no to parents.
- No throwing unless it's a game, and the other person wants to play.
- No one can remember rule #3.
- No one can remember this one either.
The new principles are coming out like this:
- You are responsible for your own mess.
- The dining room table is not a storage unit.
- If it's not yours, ask.
We are also working on one kind of additional practice with the kids. They are getting frustrated a lot these days. So, when frustration mounts, particularly with something we are helping them with, my wife and I are trying to train them to say, "Thanks, but that's not how I want it."
We want them to say this instead of screaming.
It might be too much to ask, but if we don't start now, it'll just be terrible for the next 15 years of our lives.
Posted by todd at 10:28 PM
To Do List: Making it Public
December 6, 2008
My friend Scott Rogers faithfully publishes a to do list at the end of every semester, which he makes public, and for good reason. Every time I read it, I feel more compelled to push forward on my own projects.
To finish out the semester, I need to:
- Read 2020-01 Portfolios
- Read 2020-02 Portfolios
- Update 1010 Figurator™
- Draft 3030 Acceptance Letter
- Send 3030 Acceptance E-mail
- Follow up on Illustrations for Bullhorn
- Read 4000-level Playwriting Assessment Submissions
- Notify 2020 Students Who Need Final Conference
- Enter Grades for 2020 Courses
- Enter Grades for 3030 Course
- Grade 1010 Final Essays
- Enter 1010 Final Grades
- Work on 3030 Magazine Template
- Go to Honors Final Screening
That should just about do it.
Posted by todd at 6:00 PM
Ramadan Trash Talk
October 12, 2008
A few weeks ago, I was in Boston to work on ideas for a text book I may be writing for a publisher I really respect. After the day-long battery of meetings, I returned to my hotel, and seeing that I'd have another hour or so of daylight, I headed out to Newbury street to scare up a meal and see if there was some book store I could skulk around in for a while.
I walked a few blocks, maybe a quarter of a mile, and I found Newbury Comics. For a while, I looked at comics and graphic novels and some really awesome kitch that would never fit in my suitcase. Over the store sound system was playing some very new, very early-eighties-sounding band, something I'm sure that cool people everywhere will soon be dumping on their iPods.
After I lost interest in the rest of the store's obscure Manga robots and badly done anti-McCain bumper stickers, I walked along the street, checking the menus of the street side bistros. While I was stopped and reading the menu of an Indian restaurant called Kashmir, I noticed two Middle Eastern dudes in their early twenties. They were dressed like they were part of a hip-hop entourage: pants sagging, ball caps perched high on their heads.
The one closest to me went up to the short iron fence and leaned across it. "Khalid," he said. "Yo, man. Khalid." I looked to where he was throwing his voice, and I saw another young middle eastern kid, dressed up in a white shirt buttoned to the collar and dark jeans. His shoes looked remarkably expensive.
He was with the kind of girl who I, when I was in college, would have thought was twenty-six but who I now understand, having taught in universities now for twelve years, just appears to be sophisticated. She was remarkably pretty, like someone going into broadcasting. Her hair was blonde and cut expensively, piled up for her date with calculated abandon. She appeared to wear no makeup at all, though that was certainly an illusion. Her fair skin was even and unblemished. She wore a light grey dress that lifted her breasts into view. Around her thin shoulders was a cream knit shawl. In college you could guarantee that I would have gone for the girl in the shawl.
Then there was a hand on the iron fence, rapping against the metal. "Khalid, don't pretend you don't see us."
The blonde asked Khalid if he knew these guys. He nodded. "They're my roommates," he said, and he took some of the flat bread and dipped it into a bowl and ate it.
The two dudes next to me on the street, groaned. The guy next to me pointed to the west above the roofs of the shops on Newbury Street. "The sun does not go down for another ten minutes, dude. You should not be eating."
Khalid looked at his date and shrugged. She checked her phone and then set it down. Khalid jerked his head to one side, to get the guys to move along.
"Aw, shit," the guy next to me said, then looked at his buddy who straightened his cap and repeated the oath back to him.
"I'm gonna call his moms," the other guy said. "He should be fasting. This is bullshit and he knows it."
"Ten minutes, Khalid. Ten minutes," the guy next to me shouted at his friend in the restaurant. Then the two of them made a show of dismissing him with a broad wave like two old men on a stoop. The waiter setting down more food at Khalid's table looked like he thought was doing to die in a hail of gunfire.
As they walked away, the guy who was yelling from the street shook his head and said, "But she's hot for a white girl."
"I know," the other guy said. "Damn hot." Then they walked off, joining the flow of foot traffic on the sidewalk.
I live in a deeply religious community in Utah, where the thought is that by living together and sharing the faith, we can support and sustain our shared beliefs. Though I have lived in this community longer than I have lived at any one address in my life, I have never seen the young people of my own faith reaching out (however ineptly) to preserve the integrity of a friend. Not to this extent.
I can see now, the fear, that religious leaders have about mingling of faiths. Until this moment on Newbury Street I hadn't seen that scenario, (as old as the Old Testament) at play in reality, and I was strangely impressed.
I also felt as ambivalent as those young men must have felt. Khalid's date was hot. I can only wonder what was the rest of that date like? Did Khalid get lucky? If he did, how much would Ramadan observance have actually mattered in the face of that other indiscretion?
It's strange to say it, but really hope that one day, in my own home town, on the first Sunday of the month I might see two cowboys hauling a buddy of theirs out of some house, a fork in their buddy's left hand and a plate full of pie in the other. I hope they throw him in the bed of their truck and drive off, with a beautiful dark haired girl from Vegas in a tank top and jersey shorts watching on, screaming after him, "I'll text you."
I hope one of them says, "You can come back for dinner, bro, and you can kick my ass if you want to, but you're riding out your fast with us."
I know that doesn't say much for agency, but it would make a great story for General Conference.
Posted by todd at 8:31 PM