Canned Goods

Last night, after watching the guys get it together on American Idol, K. and I watched Fox’s Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?. Hopefully, in my humble opinion, those advocating for high stakes testing will take step back and re-evaluate their goals . . . if they watch this program.

The APA has a statement on their website calling for the “Appropriate Use of High-Stakes Testing in Our Nation’s Schools,” but I often wonder how large a footprint it can make compared to this new game show? While taking courses over in C&I, I often heard from students in Ed. policy (experienced teachers, too) the argument against this sort of testing: “high-stakes decisions should not be made on the basis of a single test score, because a single test can only provide a “snapshot” of student achievement and may not accurately reflect an entire year’s worth of student progress and achievement” (APA).

Okay. I can see their point, but when watching 5th Grader, I think back to my own school experience and coming to ask (often) questions such as Why am I learning who the first President of the U.S. to be impeached was? Ask any number of other trivia questions and you’d get the same response: “You’ll need this in your future.” Maybe by future they meant college–since I’ve never dealt with any hypotenuses since my undergrad dayze. So, beyond college (more learning and testing and gatekeeping), what else is this knowledge good for?

At this point, I’m not sure how I might go about answering this question for others. However, as I’m working on my prelims reading, I do see how much of what I reading will help me to do the work I hope to do in the future. It’s more than trivia or proving I’m worthy to start a dissertation. For the most part, I am deeply engaged with the texts–as knowledge I feel having true use-value on a number of levels.

But what good is knowing who the first President of the U.S. to be impeached was? Money!

The first contestant was a graduate of UCLA and a lawyer. The kind of middle-class white guy who would be expected to do well. One of the 5th graders even observed that “He looks smart!”

How’d he do? He made it to question 5 but decided to “Drop out” and take the $5000 dollars he had already won. But wait! He didn’t win a single penny because he didn’t answer a single question correctly. The kids gave him the answers–all of them (they were the life-lines).

Here’s the “smart” guy, failing questions that children in 1st thru 5th grade are expected to get correct.

I guess the question is (at least for me) is why do we expect children to hold encyclopedic knowledge that will (only?) serve them well in tests and Jeopardy? Knowledge adults don’t need to retain. Is this how we judge intelligence? Ingesting the forgettable. Is this what we base admission decisions on? Regurgitative competence.

One of my colleagues asked, “Why is it okay to let adults specialize yet expect children to learn everything?”

Whew. The faculty candidate search is complete and the committee made it’s recommendation–accepted by the department’s executive committee. I’m happy to report, I’m happy with the results. I, and a few others, had particularly strong feelings about the who should be selected (and were vocal about it), since it could have very well ended in a substantial reshaping of the program.

I can understand, only somewhat, how difficult this process was for the committee and the students in the program. I tried to make it to as many of the events as possible, missing everything for one candidate–relying, then, on evaluation of the application documents. And I have research interests that easily match up with all the candidates, so I made my decision based on what my weakest area of study was and advocated for that person. For me it was about balance in the program and my education.

I don’t feel like I should say more than that. I’m not sure why, though. Spilling beans, stepping on toes, etc.?? Of course, the person hasn’t accepted yet.

But all these behind-the-scenes, administrative, committee happenings are difficult to understand, I guess, without actually being a part of it. They don’t offer courses in this stuff.

I was visiting Scot’s class today; they were discussing Hayles’ Writing Machines & Lexia to Perplexia. The conversation got around to Cyborgs–thinking of ourselves as cyborgs. One student gave Star Trek as an example; maybe he was embarrassed to admit it or possibly, he didn’t know they were called the Borg.

A few seconds passed (felt like minutes) before I burst out, enthusiastically, “Robocop.” No response, except for from Scot, who quoted the movie poster: “Part man, part machine, all cop.” It’s possible they don’t know the reference. The movie’s from 1987. 20 years. And most of the students range? 20-22.

About this time last year, Scot and I were showing “The Merchants of Cool” to our EN100 sections, and part of the response from students was how dated the material was to them.

Keeping up with the times is work:

http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2006/10/22/keeping-up-with-the-times.aspx
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/4161/1/
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Update/keeping-up-to-date.html
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4022/is_200311/ai_n9312474
http://qna.live.com/ShowQuestion.aspx?qid=E5314A2561624F80AB3F801C45354355
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/footshooting/IVthe_times.shtml
http://cjournal.concordia.ca/journalarchives/2005-06/mar_9/006445.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/k/keepingupappeara_7773960.shtml
http://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=13
http://www.ahns.info/opinion/docs/cassisi.php
http://chr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/39/2/247
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/cat/2004/00000009/00000001/art00004
http://www.springerlink.com/content/fh45w27l20588235/
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6083432.html

Context: the celebration (put emphasis on the word celebration. really emphasize it) of new computer lab. My role: presenting my use of the lab (unexpected role: defender of new media in a composition course). Occurrence: A couple responses, at the end of my prez, to the Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us video and what I’m doing this semester:

Q1: How do you document the students sources in a video like this? It’s a mash of sources. Isn’t this the problem with all this technology?
A1: Ah, the image in the video says Wikipedia, and the next says YouTube . . .
A2: I understand concerns over plagiarism in writing classes, but there are many cases of scholars and professional writers plagiarizing, even if it’s unintentional. Here, the appropriations are intentional and not disguised.
A3: And I’ve found that when I’m writing with a source next to me, I begin to take on that voice. Aren’t all research papers, essentially, a mashup in print form? Tracking what’s plagiarism and what isn’t in print is messy.
A4: Sure, in a writing classroom students should understand issues such as plagiarism, copyright, and appropriation. By actually having students perform these actions with digital media might be a way reaching that understanding in ways that handouts warning students of the ramifications of plagiarism might not.

Q2 ( I don’t think I understood it really): this video was so fast. everything on the web seems fast. Sitting down to write on a piece of paper takes time to do. (seem to be a conflation: the end product is fast? so the process is too?).
A: Students have to consider the affordances of a particular medium, and they spend an incredible amount of time composing in the media we use.

Q3: Not all students have access to the technology you’re using. How do you respond to that?
A1: Well, maybe that’s a good reason to incorporate the technology into the classroom; this computer lab gives everyone in the course an opportunity to work with technology; a student who doesn’t outside the class gets it here.
A2: And those students who are privileged enough to have it already begin to understand the issue of access when it’s discussed in class (costs of software, hardware, high-speed internet connections, to start).
A3: Students not only gain some technical proficiencies but, ideally, they also gain an understanding about privilege, civic engagement, collective intelligence, and personal expression in these new media landscapes.

I definitely didn’t have the best responses prepared, simply because I wasn’t expecting an after-conference paper delivery q&a. So I learned: “Don’t leave home without [them]” (Karl Malden, American Express slogan).

So it’s 2:30. I don’t think I’ve accomplished anything today, and my workout time is at 3pm.

Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know

So I’ve been working on my prelims, the faculty question (#2, 2006-7) more so than my own. However, I’ve got to get final approval for my question (3 down; 1 left to go). But I think I’m stuck at the statement of the problem stage. What problem? you might ask. Exactly. Perhaps because this is a new system (maybe 4 people have gone through the process) we may get our signals crossed as to exactly what these essays are meant to do. They are to demonstrate a broad knowledge of the field, which was also the aim of the old exams. However, these essays also need a strong argument (apparently), and I think that’s what I’m missing.

How do new literacy & new media studies and participatory culture address these aims? What gaps in the field of composition and rhetoric might they address?

These questions will get me through the first hurdle, but what’s my claim? I really see the questions as investigative/exploratory. I don’t want to argue that NMS should take over the curriculum, but I do want to validate it as a legitimate way of addressing foci of the field as well as suggest that new media might just do some things better. Is that enough?

Maybe I need a bad guy, even if I don’t want one. Who really, really hates New Media? And how can I sneak up on them so as to shoot them in the back with my evidence? Or maybe from a window position. I’ve got ‘em in my cites.

Scot sent the link to this video on one of our listservs–from someone’s blog post. I haven’t had a chance to ask him about it, but since this is perfect for my 201 students to watch, I’ve posted it here.

[ADD: just got word that Jenny originally posted this. Very cool. Do you imagine this sort of project could be a CV line?]

[ADD 2 (feb. 7): “A LESSON IN VIRAL VIDEO
Professor gives his class a real-world demonstration of how to
use often-viewed sites to quickly spread content.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/07/web” (WPA-List post)]

So I’ve been downloading some cool themes for Blogsome, but I can’t install them because I don’t know php or something called smarty code which many in the blogosphere have determined is easier than php–”just convert the php to smarty code.” Okayyyyyyyyyy. Maybe I’ll just wait until things are easier or I have time to take the php class.

What I can do is mess with the stylesheet. And have I ever. This was the best look I could achieve. I like the fluid content width, but maybe it needs to be a little more narrow for a maximized window.

I got an iPod for my B-Day and I’ve been using it for runs and the ride to/from campus. Funny thing is–I’m not sure how long my runs are taking if I don’t wear a watch.

I spent many a morning of teen years doing a morning paper route (every one, actually)–waking up at 5am. My walkman(s) got me through much of it, especially listening to The Police. And I always knew how long the route took me by how many times I had to flip the tape.

This semester Thursdays are no longer simply Thursdays; they’re Prelims Thursdays. Actually, that’s a pretty sucky title. But I don’t have time to think of a better one. Got to work on the faculty question: “In what ways is writing organized by circumstance? And how do our answers to that question impact our theories, practices, and pedagogies?”

There are a lot of ways to answer this question, and one way is with a literacy autoethnography–the kind of assignment we sometimes give our students (write about a literacy experience . . . mine usually starts with getting Ds in handwriting). It’s an idea, but I’ve written about some of these experience as reflections in my coursework. I don’t think I’ll end up going that direction. After making the lit review move (with a bunch of Literacy Studies research), I’m hoping to move into new media literacies by pulling out some Gee and the New London Group (situated learning and multiliteracies) so as to focus on the acquisition of Discourse.

One of the other moves I need and want to make is to problematize my own use of new media technology in the classroom. People are learning to work with new media technologies within social networks–Harry Potter fan fiction on Muggle.net, Photoshop image manipulation on Worth1000.com, machinima on Machinima.com. That’s what’s missing from my classroom, situated learning.

As a MA student/TA I made service-learning a part of my FYC curriculum because I wanted students to have real-world (or post-college) rhetorical situations in which to write with non-profit agencies in the community. One of the problems: Even though they had a dozen sites to choose from, they had a dozen sites to choose from. Were they interested in what any of these agencies were doing? On the rare occasion a good match was made (a mother worked with the YMCA because she was concerned that the Y and the community didn’t offer any recreational opportunities or events for teens; the age group of her daughter), there was intrinsic motivation to work on the project, and my deadlines and those of the Y were the extrinsic motivation. But most students were rarely invested in the work/writing they were doing. It was just another assignment.

So what makes these assignments, the Photoshop visual argument or the Flash juxtaposition of word, image, and sound any different? Why am I teaching Photoshop and Flash?

Gee’s differentiation between language and literacy acquisition and learning: “acquisition is good for performance, learning is good for meta-knowledge.” Ah. So my students are gaining meta-knowledge? On the surface my course may seem like software tutorials (a criticism that has been made), but in conjunction with all the readings and discussions we have about language and literacy & new media and networks, the aim of the course isn’t apprenticeship into a Discourse but rather meta-knowledge, which Gee sees as liberatory. Talking about grammar, form and superficialities is good for developing meta-knowledge but not for “getting people to actually acquire Discourses . . . .” Is meta-knowledge the best we can ever hope for in comp? Is that enough?

Maybe we need to talk about the goals we have for our Intermediate Composition courses at the next meeting of the 201 instructors. Are we shooting for acquisition or meta-knowledge? How would our approaches affect our pedagogy?