Keynote Beverly Ann Chin
Arizona English Teachers Association Conference Saturday October 6, 2007 Keynote: Beverly Ann Chin “Sentence Combining: The Bridge Between Written Sentence Fluency and Improving Reading” Chin demonstrates how we tell students to draft by just getting ideas down on the page, even if it sounds like you speak. But we know that speaking is not coherent, it’s in fragments and run-ons. Chin demonstrated how doing oral sentence combing (working from lists of super-short sentences) that helps demonstrate a variety of sentences, style, tone, …
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| October 06 2007 | CommentsPosted in AETA
Eating and Ethics
I hope my colleague Richard doesn’t read this entry; he would be very angry! Susan and I have giggled about how we barely have to spend any money on food at CCCCs. Between the various breakfasts we pay to attend (WPA, see later post & TYCA, oops, slept in this year) and the Textbook Company parties in the evenings, meals are pretty covered. So this year was the typical line up, with conflicting parties so that you can’t possibly attend them all. But I made it to Bedford/St. Martin’s party at …
...Continued | July 27 2007 | CommentsPosted in
C&W 2007: A Usable Workshop on Usability
My colleague Susan Miller-Cochran (she’s trying to get going with this blogging thing…so give her some support!) and I are about to wrap a co-edited collection on the connections between Rhetoric and Usability, Rhetorically Rethinking Usability. Two of our good friends/colleagues who submitted a co-authored piece for the collection, Jason Swartz (check out that new baby) and Shaun Slattery, decided we should propose to do a workshop on usability in the composition classroom at the 2007 Computers & Writing Conference. Those fools reading the proposals excepted it …
...Continued | June 27 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
C&W 2007: The Forest vs. the Trees
While at the 2007 Computers and Writing Conference in Detroit—yes, I’m playing catch-up blogging—I attended a panel with Michelle Sidler discussing the co-editing of Bedford St. Martin’s professional development book Computers in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Although I may have disagreed with some of her perspective on science fiction as it relates to the understanding of bio-ethics (our discussion at lunch), I was happy with her “forest before the trees” approach to the edited collection. I also enjoyed her discussing the difficulty of doing an edited …
...Continued | June 27 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
C&W 2007: Power of Adjectivals
One of the nights that we were running around Detroit a colleague kept telling us stories about her former boyfriends. There was the boyfriend with the short arms. The boyfriend during graduate school. The boyfriend with the irritating mother who wanted to teach her to cook. ETC… And of course, the focus here is on the storytelling. We all got good laughs about these former boyfriend stories and what are colleague learned about herself in the process. Finally, at the end of the night, our colleague made a slip. She mentioned …
...Continued | June 04 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
C&W 2007: Serendipity
I had a shock last Wednesday (well...a couple weeks ago now) while boarding the plane to Detroit for the computers and writing conference--to my surprise my colleague and his wife (also a good friend) were sitting across the aisle from me. They were headed off to a conference about Arab American Writers. Look at the pamphlet in the lower right hand corner of the picture...it was for their conference, and another colleague and I found it at a local restaurant in Detroit. How weird! I guess we can all …
...Continued | June 04 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
C&W 2007: Open Source Workshop
Let’s just start with WOW! The folks who organized this workshop did a great job of providing resources, providing quick introductions and leaving time for play. As those of you who occasionally swing by and read my blog know, both my dissertation research as well as other assessment data from workshops I have facilitated indicates, faculty committed to technology generally just need more scheduled play time to keep up with technology. I felt completely at home with my laptop open, working stuff from this workshop, other materials, and asking questions along …
...Continued | June 04 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
Wacky World of Bathrooms
About five years ago, a couple of my friends/colleagues and realized that we all liked to keep track of funky bathrooms. Since then, when we find a funky bathroom we generally try to bring it to one another’s attention. This past week when I was in Detroit at Computers & Writing I was with one of my “funky bathroom” friends. Without knowing that the Cass Cafe was one of the places highly suggested by a colleague who went to school in Detroit, we ended up there late …
...Continued | May 25 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
NewComers’ Welcome Booth
Joe and I “opened” the Newcomer’s Welcome booth at 9:00am Wednesday morning at CCCCs. Well, at least we tried. Since we didn’t have a booth until about 9:55am, we hung out, chatted, said “hi” to people we hadn’t seen in a year, etc. Once the booth got set up we spent the last 5 minutes (of course it turned into 20) trying to get the fancy banner up. We could either pay the hotel lots of money to do it…or…figure out something ourselves. I think we did ok. Needless to say, …
...Continued | April 03 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
Technology is more than computers
I know this. Really, I do. However, like so many people today I still get caught up equating the term “technology” with “computer technologies.” Or, I know that they are not the same; however, I am very guilty of saying “technology” and meaning “computer technology.” This last week in NYC, I had the visceral reminder that “technology” DOES SOLELY NOT EQUATE to “computer technology.” Because the conference hotel was ridiculously expensive, I stayed at a hotel on the upper West side. This meant that I took the metro/subway to get to …
...Continued | March 30 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC