tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54584722024-03-23T13:49:22.571-04:00TechNotes: Teaching Writing in an Online WorldWelcome to Teaching Writing in an Online World, a TechNotes experiment in blogging.
-- Nick CarboneNick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-29344540104671712592010-04-09T13:21:00.001-04:002010-04-09T13:21:17.752-04:00Twitter of GATS2010Here it is:Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-52094864671751029712010-03-02T07:26:00.000-05:002010-03-02T07:26:38.834-05:00Alternative Careers for PhDs in non Academic FieldsFirst, the traditional route . . .
http://tinyurl.com/mvjsg7
What to Do When You’re Looking For A Job, Part 1
By Gina Barreca in The Chronicle of Higher Education
This gently tweaks the usual advice for following an academic career path. Also see the CHE's jobs section for advice on being on the market the first time: http://chronicle.com/section/First-Time-on-the-Market-/146/
Remember,Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-91460751802346467732009-08-12T10:26:00.004-04:002009-08-12T11:01:31.253-04:00Rebutter in ChiefThis post by Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly blog features excerpts from a New Hampshire Town Hall conducted by President Obama.It occurs to me, on reading Benen's summary, and having listened to some of Obama's press conferences and speeches, that his legal training combined with his writing ability make him a master of rebutting, through explicit counter-arguments, the critiques of his Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-73073022436061572872009-07-26T11:27:00.000-04:002009-07-26T11:33:11.316-04:00Blogs vs. Social Networks: How Identity is ShapedSo much of writing is about the author shaping how he or she is to be perceived; it's about ethos, persona, and voice.What's fascinating in this early Internet age are the increasing number of places and ways writers can write. All the print forms persist -- articles, papers, books, profiles, newsletters, and more. And added to these are new ways of being via writing: blogs, social networks, Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-65047355890250000752008-05-21T07:25:00.003-04:002008-05-21T07:33:38.196-04:00Computers and Writing 2008, Athens, GAI arrived in Athens, GA last night, getting to the hotel about 9 pm.Happily, despite some heavy traffic made slower by some intermittent hard rain, the ride from the airport to Athens passed quickly because I had good company: Carole Clark Papper and Lynda Haas.We met up at Budget counter -- me coming from Boston, Carole from Long Island, and Lynda from the LA area.The conference --http://Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1156775540966359992006-08-28T09:52:00.000-04:002006-08-28T10:53:03.693-04:00Useful API for FirefoxWhy am I posting about a Firefox API on a teaching tips blog? Because it's so useful for teaching, even though it's not a teaching tool per se. The API is called Flashblocker --you can get it here: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/.It blocks Flash movies from playing automatically when you land on page. For a lot of my browsing, and often when I'm showing sites in workshops or the classrooms, the Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1155734079983669822006-08-16T08:49:00.000-04:002006-12-05T06:15:50.146-05:00Student Advises: Don't Cite WikipediaSoumya Srinagesh, a student intern at C|Net News, advises her peers not to rely on Wikipedia as a primary source.This advice comes to the same end conclusion as that given by Wikipedia co-founder Jim Wales' own advice not to use Wikipedia --or any Encyclopedia-- as a sole or primary source.The usual back and forth in this debate is that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and that you might use anNick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1154695400735192402006-08-04T08:42:00.000-04:002006-12-18T20:13:36.466-05:00Wikimania conference: free text bookIn today's Boston Globe, there's an article called "A new high-tech take on school group project," by Kim-Mai Cutler. The piece describes how one professor, Sheizaf Rafaeli at the University of Haifa in Israel, "hated seeing his students shell out money for expensive, outdated textbooks. So he let them write one themselves."What technology did he use? Why a Wiki of course because it's an ideal Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1154629729257630032006-08-03T14:01:00.000-04:002006-08-03T14:28:49.323-04:00Mash Up FunIn a Washington Post piece called "Art and Marketing All Mashed Up," Sara Kehaulani Goo reviews how mash-up videos are being used to comment on popular culture, products, and current events. Goo explains that a "mash-up video mixes original images or sounds with music, quick-witted narrations or creative transitions. The result is a video dialogue of sorts that makes a statement that is Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1147788106763530152006-05-16T09:52:00.000-04:002006-07-13T15:16:30.086-04:00Converting PracticesIn a Writing Center discussion list exchange, the issue of using Turnitin.com as a tool in the writing center to help students see where they have uncited text came up. As much as I don't like Turnitin.com, I found myself agreeing with the approach and the particular use of the tool in the Writing Center. Here's what I wrote:The strategy of using Turnitin.com (or MyDropBox.com, for that matter) Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1134066674850859102005-12-08T13:12:00.000-05:002005-12-08T13:35:49.913-05:00Experimenting Matters -- Why Everyone Needs a SandboxIn my job -- Director of New Media for a college textbook company -- one of the dangers we face is overthinking a new idea. So we might have a new idea for an interactive WWW activity, something we haven't done before.A meeting is called. The idea is pitched. And then sometimes --not always, but often enough to notice-- the idea falls apart because the right questions are asked too soon: who willNick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1131417936880613802005-11-07T21:42:00.000-05:002005-11-07T22:20:01.390-05:00Choosing: The Internet Over TelevisionWe live in the northeast, just outside of Boston. The winters are cold and sometimes long, with the furnance humming from mid October to mid March, and pretty regular into April often. We heat with gas. Katrina. Soaring fuel prices predicted for this winter. And so because my income isn't tied to the cost of basic necessities, to keep things in budget balance, the money for heat has to come from Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1130421886232484002005-10-27T10:01:00.000-04:002006-09-22T01:05:45.236-04:00SparkNotes Come to the iPod: Chronicle of HE Points to the DarksideBrock Read, writing in "After Songs and Videos, Crib Notes Become the Latest Offering for iPods," Chronicle of Higher Education. 10-17-05, observes, "That [SparkNotes text and audio] could be bad news for professors, who may worry that such small devices could easily become digital cheat sheets in the hands of unscrupulous students." It's not the technology that makes SparkNotes a cheatsheet.Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1130079425719441062005-10-23T10:57:00.000-04:002005-10-23T11:33:00.666-04:00Frankenstrunk is Shrunken StrunkAt http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/10/23/frankenstrunk/, Jan Freeman's The Word column, "Frankenstrunk," looks at the latest, cartoon enhanced edition of Will Strunk and E.B. White's The Elements of Style and asks, why, why is this book still revised and republished.Of course, the answer is, as Freeman says, because even though the book itself is now irretrievably --to use a Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1129905619818085102005-10-21T09:35:00.000-04:002006-01-04T17:12:44.163-05:00No Writer is an Island -- A TYCA-SW PresentationThis is a miscellany post, a collection of rough ideas and links for a presentation I'm giving today at TYCA Southwest : No Writer is an Island; All Writing is Connected to Sources Students know, on one level, that they need to acknowledge sources and use them wisely, but on another, they're also faced with being graded as individuals. Sometimes, in the push to meet criteria for theirNick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1129894580980750052005-10-21T07:33:00.000-04:002005-10-21T07:49:30.830-04:00Avoid Fared Use: Assert Fair UseInside Higher Ed has an essay by Tarleton Gillespie -- "Between What’s Right and What’s Easy" (http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/10/21/gillespie) -- which argues that technologies such as the Copyright Clearance Center's new plugin for Blackboard (and soon, with the merger, WebCT as well most likely) that is designed to ease the ability to seek permission for using materials and content in Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1129507850693242712005-10-16T19:35:00.000-04:002005-10-24T06:40:49.706-04:00Free Student Papers -- For TeachersWe all know that there are plenty of term paper sites out there. You practically trip over them. The first impulse is to warn students against using them and to worry that they will use them. When I'm teaching, I find a more useful impulse is to use them for my own ends.If you go, for example, to Schoolsucks.com, you'll find plenty of student papers. Here are two ways to use a site like this: Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1128989671658834592005-10-10T20:14:00.000-04:002005-10-10T20:14:31.690-04:00Beyond the four walls: what it means to teachWill Richardson over at weblogg-ed describes (emphasis mine) the shifting notion of what it means to teach:Provided we have access, we're not the best source of knowledge in our subjects any longer. We're no longer the only teachers our students can have on any particular subject. We're not the only audience for our students' work. We're no longer limited by the four walls of our classrooms. And Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1128786849157159642005-10-08T11:54:00.000-04:002005-10-08T11:54:09.890-04:00Writing about Literature in the Media Age | NEXT\TEXTA copy of a comment I wrote over at Next/Text. I'm putting it here because I'm not sure it posted there (got an error message after posting):
I've seen the same behavior Kathy's described -- students despising the books they're assigned to read. Sometimes they should. The books are bad. Sometimes they don't like the book for other reasons -- they don't care for the course; the subject doesn't Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1128592653396784342005-10-06T05:57:00.000-04:002005-10-06T05:57:33.456-04:00The Blogosphere as a Carnival of IdeasIn "The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas" (http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i07/07b01401.htm), Henry Farrell describes how and why academics are using blogs, noting along the way how they differ from some forms of traditional scholarly publishing, but recall other forms.
Of note and use are some of the links to blogs referenced in the piece, and for me, this observation and prediction:
Why are soNick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1128513170153072762005-10-05T07:52:00.000-04:002005-10-05T23:03:51.203-04:00Peer Review: Writing and Students' Engagement*In Peer Review: Writing and Students' Engagement, Richard J. Light, reports on a student who in her senior discovered the value of peer review. In this excerpt, the brief description of the rules of the group are telling and useful:The friend told her that, at the newspaper, editors criticize one another's writing ruthlessly. Relentlessly. For many student writers, this tough but constructive Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1128511071109917052005-10-05T07:17:00.000-04:002006-12-18T18:21:12.246-05:00The Power of PeersIn Writing Portfolios: What Teachers Learn from Student Self-Assessment, Kim Johnson-Bogart wonderfully describes --through her students own words-- the power and benefits of peer review.
The Power of Peers
Students' portfolios and reflective essays have also taught me that they learn from each other and want to contribute to each other. They want to be useful. And what I find is that Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1128367128112808402005-10-03T15:18:00.000-04:002006-12-18T18:20:41.383-05:00Teaching about CheatingWhat some students forget is that if they can find an article to steal from, I can probably find it, too. When I edit assignments, I plug random quotes, clauses, and full sentences into search engines to check for similar word patterns. I look closely at poetic turns of phrase or quotes that seem too good to be true and verify the names of all sources and affiliations. If I can't confirm the Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1127156420977583892005-09-19T15:00:00.000-04:002005-09-19T15:00:21.026-04:00Videogames and Good TeachersJoel Foreman at GMU has a good little piece on the similarities between videogames and good teachers.
Good teachers and good videogames motivate students/players to pay attention, for example. The article is short and just touches the surface of things, but there are some useful links to books worth reading and leads to follow.Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458472.post-1126380586489544812005-09-10T15:21:00.001-04:002011-12-21T10:01:38.671-05:00Notes on Creating an Online Writing ClassJust posted a version of this on WPA-L in response to a query on setting up an online course.
1. Put the goals of the writing course first. What do you want students to learn about writing; how do you want them to think about writing?
2. Online courses struggle most often to sustain a sense of learning community. Without proper activities that require student to student interaction -- Nick Carbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13965878135277592695noreply@blogger.com2