Blogs

I'm trying to get back into the flow of work and shake this out-of-sorts feeling I'm experiencing. Last night I got back from a far-too-short trip, a place and a person it always twists and bends my heart to leave. My prospectus defense is Wednesday afternoon, 1:00-3:00, and I'm anxious about that. I have writing deadlines looming and grading to do this weekend.

But enough about all that. The most important thing in this post is this link to a recent presentation by Samantha Blackmon, David Blakesley, and Charlie Lowe titled "Teaching Writing, Collaboration, and Engagement in Global Contexts: The Drupal Alternative to Proprietary Courseware." You should all read their slides immediately; they've really done a great roundup of problems with hegemonic course management software like WebCT and Blackboard, and they've done an even better job spelling out most of Drupal's features. When I try to talk to people about Drupal, I find myself not even knowing where to start. I guess what I need to do is rank my two or three favorite things about it, or, rather, two or three salient differences between Drupal and the major course management applications.

I got a brief mention in my college's newsletter (I'm under "People.").

Are Sam and I the only ones who will be knitting at CCCC? It makes no difference to me whether those in attendance knit or not; I just want to have a lively group there. Email Sam or me if you'd like to find out the time and place.

Speaking of knitting, you can get in touch with Betty Burian Kirk if you'd like to have a knitted item made of your dog's fur. (Via Marginal Revolution.)

I hate it when people confuse the words "reign" and "rein." I wish Brendan would devote one of his Writing Pedantry posts to this problem.

This summer, I'll be teaching "Group Process, Team Building, and Leadership." It's a course I haven't taught before, and I'm quite excited about it. The course description, from the catalog:

RHET 3266 - Group Process, Team Building, and Leadership (C/PE)
(3.0 cr; Prereq-1223 or equiv or #; fall, spring, summer, every year)
Group processes, team building from perspective of managers/leaders. Communication techniques in small group decision making process. Theories of team/small-group communication. Case studies. Group project for each student.

I'm already going mentally overboard in thinking about using wikis and weblogs in the course, readings on collaboration, etc. There's probably a specific textbook I'll be required to use, but I might have a course pack too. Any suggestions? I'd especially appreciate the newest, most innovative theories of effective management and leadership.

(I'm resisting the urge to show The Office, The Apprentice, and Office Space in class...)

Brendan Watson, a student at the Missouri School of Journalism, has put up a podcast of a speech by Steinem she gave after accepting the Missouri School of Journalism's Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. I'm thrilled that Brendan emailed me to let me know about it. Listen to her thoughts about journalism -- "the first draft of history."

You know, I met Steinem back in early 2002. :-) Photograph below the fold:

Inspired by a discussion at the Blogora on dream curricula and by Kieran Healy's nod toward an interesting-sounding essay by Harry Frankfurt released as a book*, I'm wondering what books (or films, music, etc.) you'd assign in a first-year rhetoric or composition course, assuming you have total freedom to choose. I say a composition or rhetoric approach because I do think there's some difference between the two in that they're not completely interchangeable (not that you can't do both in the same course, though), a difference that the latest issue of Enculturation explores. Especially provocative is Sharon Crowley's Composition Is Not Rhetoric, which you should read if you haven't yet. Consider this claim:

The fact is that the situation of the first-year composition course, inside a universal requirement, staffed by a scandalously low-paid and contingently-hired faculty (no matter how capable and well qualified), renders intellectual sophistication a luxury. Furthermore, intellectual sophistication that immerses students and teachers in political and social critique, as a full-blown course in rhetoric would do, is dangerous for contingently-employed teachers, particularly in times like the present, when the prevailing regime of truth carefully monitors teachers to insure their intellectual conformity.

But back to my question: What texts would you assign in a first-year rhetoric and/or composition course? I'm thinking maybe A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, which I've assigned several times before, George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant! along with several of the articles that criticize Lakoff's argument, and if applicable, perhaps Frankfurt's book.

* I realize the essay isn't new, but I hadn't heard of it before and am now curious.

I've been hemming and hawing about posting this, but hey, why not. Back in Fall 2002, my first semester in my doctoral program, I took a theory and methods survey course, and one of the assignments was to write a review essay. I wanted to write it on weblogs, but at the time, most of the sources on weblogs were popular rather than scholarly. I pitched the idea anyway, though, explaining that it was a new technology, etc. The essay I've attached to this post is the result. Parts of it make me cringe, well...just about all of it, really, but it is a general representation of what I was thinking around two and a half years ago about blogging.

Dippin' Dots has been "the ice cream of the future" for at least sixteen years now. When I see those sad little Dippin' Dots kiosks at malls, I think back to the salad days of Dippin' Dots, the first time I tried them: It was in Nashville, at Opryland*, and I was in eighth grade. They were promoting Chaos, the new indoor roller coaster, and I ate my Dippin' Dots while standing in line waiting to ride it. The Opryland Hotel is still around, but Opryland the amusement park closed down years ago. It is Clancy I mourn for, I guess.

It upsets me when people write first-person statements on behalf of creatures who lack the power to signify. Like when you see a sign on an animal's cage that says, "I am an Asian elephant. Please don't feed me."

Sigh. Now I'm depressed. :-(

* Edited to add that I looked at the history of Dippin' Dots, and under the timeline, it says: "1989: Opryland U.S.A. in Nashville, Tenn., is the company’s first amusement park account."

Via Dennis Jerz, a report from the American Council on Education's Office of Women in Higher Education: An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers. Recommmendations from the (PDF) executive summary include:

• Uncover and eliminate the preventable causes of talented PhDs [sic] opting out of tenure-track faculty positions.

• Create re-entry opportunities (e.g., postdoctoral fellowships) for PhDs who seek tenure-track faculty careers later in life after having decided to stop out of academia or work part time in order to manage career and family responsibilities.

• Abolish penalties in the hiring process for documented dependent care–related résumé gaps.

• Provide assistance to new faculty hires with spousal/partner employment needs and other family-related relocation issues.

• Create flexibility in the probationary period for tenure review without altering the standards or criteria. Longer probationary periods should not be required for all faculty, but flexible time frames of up to 10 years with reviews at set intervals should be offered. This option could benefit faculty who may need to be compensated for lost time or given additional time to prepare because of unanticipated professional or personal circumstances.

• Provide quality, affordable childcare to tenured and tenure-track faculty, particularly new hires (or information about available services); establish or provide information for childcare programs for emergency back up, evening and overnight care, and school and summer breaks.

I'm happy to see that these problems and possible reform measures, which have been discussed in a recent issue of Academe and on blogs like Invisible Adjunct and Crooked Timber, are being exposed and called for at this level.

Inspired by recent dream posts, I bring you the dream I just woke up from:

I wake up at 5:00 a.m., stressed out in anticipation of all the work I have to do that day. In a daze, I wander around the apartment, walk out the door but don't close it behind me, and cross the hall into an unlocked, furnished vacant apartment. I leave that door open too. A documentary about Motley Crue is on TV, so I sit down in a ratty chair and get comfortable, but then I'm jolted out of my dazed state when I hear Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," the "This is not my beautiful house!" part. I get up to go back into my apartment, but a few people who are leaving for work have gathered around my door on their way out of the building. They're sticking their heads into my apartment and are ridiculing it: "You mean a grown woman actually lives here?!" Ashamed, I hide in the vacant apartment and wait for them to go away. On the floor of the vacant apartment is a big pile of my clothes, not the clothes I wear now, but clothes I had my first couple of years of college. I start gathering them in my arms.