Some teachers just can’t keep their classrooms under control!
Actually, this is my face-to-face Technical Writing class last Monday folding airplanes then seeing if they fly. That takes about two minutes, tops.
Everyone Knows How to Fold a Paper Airplane!
Tricky step one:Now they write out the instructions for folding their planes. The more complicated their plane, the longer this takes.
Some People Know How to Fold Really Complicated Airplanes
Tricky step two:Exchange instructions with a partner and use their instructions to fold their plane–without looking at the prototype!
Sometimes good instructions don't need any words at all.
Tricky step three:Compare the airplane folded by following instructions to the prototype.
Boeing doesn't want to hear "Close enough!" when that brand new 747 comes rolling off the production line!
We all brainstorm on the white board, “What do we learn from flying airplanes in the classroom?”
Voice from the back of the room shouts, "Sandy can't control her class!" (Sadly, too true!)
Voice from the front of the room observes, “It took me one minute to fold my plane and fifteen minutes to write the instructions.”
“What do we learn from that?”
“Writing takes time!”
“Oh yeah. What else?”
“Graphics!”
Fold this!
“What about them?”
“They are better than words, and they have to be clear. I had a good drawing, but I didn’t say which way the paper should be oriented, so my user tester got stuck.”
Graphics are cool but they have to be perfectly clear. Fold this!
“I just asked the person who wrote the instructions to clarify something in the instructions.”
“In technical writing your readers rarely have the opportunity to ask you to clarify, so it needs to be clear and correct before it reaches your readers.”
“How many of you used words like fold an isosceles or right triangle?”
[Discussion of word choice and assumptions about audience ensued.]
Two different interpretations of the term "paper airplane."
“How many of you began by telling your audience what they were building, or how many of you just started with a step instructing the reader to start folding?”
[Talk about organization and goals]
Paper Seaplane from http://www.amazingpaperairplanes.com/Favorites.html
“How many of you designed the instructions so that the instructions themselves folded into the plane, using lines and labels to show readers where and how to fold?”
[Talk about material delivery of information]
So is this guy really thinking outside the box, or is he just another smart alecky kid being romanticized by the film maker? HINT: The Death Star was a sphere…
As of this morning, when you open a new Google doc, you will have a new discussion feature. Docs have always had a commenting feature, but this discussion threads down the side of the page in the margin. You can direct comments at a specific person by putting at @name in front of the comments. You also subscribe to follow-ups via e-mail.
I think all this is good news for teachers. We’ve always been able to comment and give feedback to students, but this really enhances the peer review process.
Digital Storytelling and All the Excitement from iLane 2
I am so happy to be a Lane Faculty Technology (ahem) Specialist at this exact point in time. Lane has fifteen or twenty years of wired world experience under its belt. We’ve got some basic systems in place, but not so many that we’ve built our own cement booties.
Image of Cement Booties ganked from oldmoldy.com
We’ve got the vision thing for Lane, so when we throw one of these big tech parties under the guise of a conference, new ideas pour down on fertile ground. And what with the cement booties and fertile ground, that should be enough mixed metaphors to warrant a wet spaghetti attack from my Englisher colleagues.
Quick overview: All looked normal. One hundred fifty people in the CML (da-yum those CML peeps do a good job!), a guest speaker, a panel of innovators struttin’ their stuff, lunch (oh yeah!), more speakers, lively q and a, Mark Harris wins the coveted i-Pod Touch, and we’re outta there…
Sounds so ordinaire: Hand kudos around to my pals Brad Hinson, Kevin Steeves, make smiley, go home.
So why is my head still spinning?
Rewind.
Keynote speaker Brian Lamb from UBC, neighbor to the north. He’s the one. You want to know about this guy, but I don’t need to repeat what has been said elsewhere. Check his affidavits out at the i-Lane Blog or at his own blog called Abject Learning: edu-geek, edu-punk, edu-blogger, “thought-leader in the areas of open courseware, online education, new media, digital storytelling, and overall teaching outside the box”; what’s not to like? I’ll add smart, funny, clear moral compass, and full of great ideas and resources for the likes o’ me.
Our theme was “digital literacy.”
I used to think I was quite digitally literate; now, not so much!
Obviously, I am an edu-blogger myself, and I plan on putting all my WR 121 students on blogs in about two weeks. I’ve done it before, but I have lots of questions about how to create cutting edge assignments that are “out of the box” but still meet students where they are. Brian Lamb showed me I don’t need to reinvent this particular wheel. There’s no shortage of Web 2.o tools to intellectually and creatively engage both me and my students.
I am so excited about digital storytelling that I am beside myself. I feel that a whole new world is opening up for me.
“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. but mostly they’re darked.
But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Hi, there! I’m your uber-blogger, back from the dead!
The best way to start a Lane Blog is by celebrating something Lane-ish. Here are a few shots from last night’s 2011 Winter Classical Cuisine Dinner entitled “A Feast of Tales” which was a Shakespearean theme.
Check this out: it's a Pickled Herring Platter, both beautiful and delicious. And that was just the appetizer!
It's a digital, digital world. Guest Kat Chinn shows pictures of her grandkids not with wallet shots but with iPhone shots. Her appreciative audience is Susan Carkin, Dean of the feisty Language, Literature and Communications Dept.Our Merry Crew: Kevin Steeves (birthday boy--33 today--wahoo!). He's a new addition to Lane's IT Team. Beside him is Jamie Guyn, IT's Michael Levick's better looking half. Kevin and Jamie are being regaled by Lance Sparks, English prof extraordinaire and everyone's favorite Eugene Weekly wine columnist.
Yo! Kudos to the entire Culinary Arts Department for a job extremely well done!
My husband is having a techno-meltdown! (Source of image: mediafuturist.com)
He’s trying to use the online job application tool here at Lane CC, which he was assured by somebody somewhere was “intuitive.” If his blood pressure goes any higher, our cats will implode with their efforts to absorb his energy and calm him down.
Only cats understand how "intuitive" computers really are! (Source of image: mediafuturist.com
I agree that technology is crazy making. It has a whole set of rules that are no where made explicit to the poor casual user. If there’s one word my husband hates to hear about anything remotely techie, it’s “intuitive.”
I could have helped him. I tried to help him. I scanned his transcripts and gave them back to him as .jpgs. Which made sense to me. The system wanted .pdfs, although that wasn’t presented to him as an option. Eventually, he turned them into .pdfs, but they were larger than 2 mgs, although that load limit is nowhere announced. It took a nail-biting e-mail to HR to find out that obscure piece of information.
I could have made them smaller, but he didn’t know to ask me that question. My ordinarily seraphically calm, centered husband was a seething hunk of steamin’ junk by the time I came back on the scene.
Honey? This is me. Let me say it sloowly one more time, "STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!" (Source of image: efan78.com)
Sound familiar? Ever been so angry at the mute intransigence of some so-called “intuitive” software that you could bite the head off a rattlesnake?
The word “intuitive” implies you aren’t in touch enough with your feelings to understand this delicate flower of a software engineer’s brain that promises to do so much for you if you are only sensitive enough to its needs.
Like a high maintenance lover, you eventually get more maddened than gladdened by its increasingly dubious charms.
Yeah, I’m getting around to you new or potential Word Press users. If everyone says it’s the greatest CMS (content management system) in the world and that millions of users are happily blogging away on it–what the BLEEP! is the matter with you?
Um. Secret here. Personally, I am not one of those people who tries to put the toy together straight out of the package. Destroy toy first? Read directions later? Nope. Sorry. Not that person.
I know it’s freaky, but I read about my new software of choice first. I go online and find screencasts (little movies that show what buttons to push–they’re all over the web–I’ll find some for you). I talk to other users. Think about it. Then I jump in with a life preserver on.
For example, to learn how to blog on Word Press, I first bought and sorta read four books (or checked them out from the library. Whatever.):
Using WordPress also by Tris Hussey. This is my favorite because with it comes an online access code to his great screencasts. Starting to see a pattern here?
I guess I'm an intermediate blogger now, and this is my current reading. I heart the brain science of learning!
4. Head First Word Press: A Brain Friendly Guide by Jeff Siarto. This is when I really started to get obsessed, but Head First is written by a guy who just kinda takes you by the hand and says, “See that?”
Hmm what else? I took an online webinare from Writer’s Digest University about blogging (very useful!). I poked around in the software, watched screencasts and just kinduv crept up on it, and now here I am, ready, willing, and able to help the Lane CC community with their blogging dreams!
In other words, I open myself to learn. In a sick sort of way, I kind of like the feeling of knowing nothing and then both systematically and randomly learning something new. Along the way, I’ve done my share of heaving computers through closed windows into the snow.
I’ve snarled, snapped and acted out.
I've snarled, snapped and acted act... (Source of image: bethharte.posterous.com)
