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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Thursday, August 17, 2017

Change of plan

I decided not to go in to campus today, opting to work on the online Nature in Lit instead of on photocopies for my classes. Part of the decision was sheer laziness, but part of it was the sense that I will feel better, psychologically, if I at least dip my toes back into the online course, get a sense for what I have and haven't done, and what I want to do. I will say, there is a truly daunting amount of work to be done, and not just scut work either, but real thinking. If it were just cut-and-paste organizing, that would be challenging enough (making sure all the right links are in the right places and so on), but I actually have to write out some ideas I want students to consider as they read, provide the kind of guidance that would normally arise out of my responses to whatever they bring in to class. I did a little of that kind of written guidance for the SF class this fall (and god, do I ever hope it works), but this is a bit more complex--because the students in the Nature in Lit class will be reading something new/different almost every week (instead of an entire book taking up several weeks of class time). So--leaving out the first and final weeks, when no reading will take place--that means 13 written "lectures." I have to decide what I'm going to have them read first; then I have to figure out what I want them to notice in particular as they read, or what background I think will help them, or (usually) some combination of the two.

I also feel compelled to provide images for each week's reading, something to lighten up what is otherwise very text heavy (and daunting for students who aren't used to doing a lot of reading). And--in terms of the overwhelming aspect of text itself--I am compelled to keep my "lectures" as brief as possible while providing at least the big landmarks (as it were). Searching for images is actually pretty fun; the challenge is getting any kind of reasonable information about the images to provide as photo credit. I can always say where I found the image, but sometimes the place where I found it doesn't bother to mention where the poster found it. For instance, I found a very nice print of the streets of Philadelphia in the 18th century--and no clue about the artist, when it was made, what collection owns it: nada. I'm trying to set a good example for my students by always giving credit for the stuff I find elsewhere (something I do not do, I have to admit, when I'm on Facebook--or even in this blog). It's all too easy even for me to fall into the "it's on the web so it's public property" thing.

No wonder students struggle with understanding plagiarism these days: they're used to treating everything on the web as belonging to any and everyone. Makes me realize I need to spend more time talking with them about why we can't get away with that sort of common use in academic settings. The main point is to get them to understand that it's important for them to actually do something with their own brains: to originate material, not rely on someone else's brain to do all the work. I think that may be a more challenging concept than it seems to someone on my side of trenches.

Be that as it may. I realize that I have run out of gas for more work on anything today. I did change the syllabi for this fall's classes--again (adding the technological requirements for what word processing software will work for them--and letting them know they can't do all their work on their phones but actually have to use a computer every now and then)--but my mental channels have all silted up for the moment, so I'm going to call a halt to the proceedings for today. I don't know if I'll get any work done tomorrow, or when I'll next be productive in terms of my actual job. (I will certainly be productive in other areas of my life, including enjoyment.) But whenever I'm back at it, you'll be sure to know.

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