CTSE 5020/6020

Siobhan's class blog

[learningtoteachskg]

Leading Class

November 5, 2017

I can’t remember if I reflected on my opportunity to lead class a few weeks ago. 

It was weird for me to take any authority in our classroom. I didn’t know exactly what I needed to do since I was the first grad student to lead in this way. I think one student is working on the photograph yproject (I don’t know to what extent), another is assisting with ePortfolio (again, I don’t know to what extent), and the third hadn’t gone yet (except when she did, she did a phenomenal job leading discussion). 

For my other grad class I had decided to do a research project on Twitter in the ELA classroom to aide in this class presentation. The week or two leading up to my turn, I was reading several articles and trying to connect them to real-world situations. I originally had no clue how I wanted to tie in Twitter personal branding to our class discussion, until I was working on that research project.

Then it clicked.

I figured creating a worksheet would be useful to have my peers analyze different social media accounts. By understanding how celebrities and companies use their accounts, media, and tone, my peers might consider how they to best represent themselves online. 

The worksheet ended up being a homework assignment, which seemed to give students plenty of time to work through the options. I probably should have rotated to other groups more when we discussed our findings in class the following week, but it just felt odd to join pre-established groups when I had one to belong to. I guess I wasn’t comfortable in the setting, especially since I’ve been out of practice for about three years or so. 

As we were talking as a class, it hit me that I’ve used personal branding on another social media site -- WordPress. I had curated a How-To blog to pair my technical writing skills with a more leisure lifestyle writing. 

Overall, I would probably give myself a B for this assignment. I think the worksheet was well-prepared and it gave plenty of activities to work with, but I could’ve done a better job migrating out of my group (aka not acting so introverted).

[learningtoteachskg]

Rubric Creation

November 4, 2017

I struggled a lot in class the other night when everyone was debating graphic narrative assessment. I think the biggest point of contention for me was the fact that everyone (eh, a majority) had already submitted their assignment, so everyone had their own agenda to push. I see the value in seeking student opinion during rubric creation, but I think the final version should be completed prior to the submission deadline. That way everyone has time to make adjustments as needed and they aren't as stressed making sure their personal project doesn’t take a hit during grading. 

It was difficult to watch some of my classmates because I had just heard them discuss how stressed they were with the semester or how disappointed they were in a grade from a separate class. Their stress was visible during the debating process. There were also some who were arguing for the sake of argument as I heard during break they felt it was a game to play. 

I would have rather spent that time discussing the technology used for the upcoming video project and getting in small groups or our pairs to test out iMovie or whatever software we are planning to use. 

[learningtoteachskg]

Composing Process

October 24, 2017

I was reading for Wednesday’s class yesterday evening. The article was a study that involved candidate teachers and their experiences transitioning from the standard writing process to more of a composing process. The subjects were asked to compose digital media for an assignment, and many struggled with this concept, thinking that it would replace writing entirely and forcing them to leave their comfort zones of pen to paper.

Reading this made me think of my composition process and I tried to Tweet about this, but it’s hard to layout a process in 140 characters. It honestly depends on the project at hand, but I’ll provide a few examples from current and past projects.  

Work How To Document: Our graphic designer prepares an InDesign template for us to work with, so the detailed layout is already decided for us. My job yesterday was to meet with the subject matter expert (SME). I didn’t exactly know what process we were working on, so I just went to him with pen, paper, and my cell phone. We headed back to the shop to find an available product to work with and then he showed me exactly what “How To” procedures we were trying to illustrate to our customers. It took me a second to catch on because I was expecting it to be more complex than it actually was, but once I got that we were just explaining three steps, I made quick notes and verified some specifics with him. Afterward, I used my phone to take before and after photos of the product, emailing them to my work computer so I could manipulate them in Photoshop. Once I was back at my desk, I moved my handwritten notes to the designed template, incorporated the images, and then met with the SME to proof the document. After meeting with him, another round of revisions were made and he now has a second hard copy to proof. We’re halfway in the timeline of this project, but essentially the steps are: 1. Demonstrate process. 2. Document process. 3. Take photos. 4. Move notes and photos to template. 5. Review. 6. Edit. 7. Review.

Bridal Brunch Invitations: When I designed my bridal invitations, I first trained myself in Illustrator and learned a specific technique. Then, I researched what size would fit in the envelope I wanted to use and I created a template design (I would slightly modify it along the way). Text was added after the template was designed and then I had a few friends review them. After getting their insight about font choices, I made a few changes, corrected alignment and spacing issues, and then I printed them.

Literature Class Project Video: In undergrad, we got assigned to groups of four or five to create an end-of-the-semester project. We were expected to present on a specific author to the entire class as our final. One of my group members was studying film and asked if we could create a video instead of doing a standard presentation. We got approved and our research began. We divided the roles and our process was similar to: 1. Research. 2. Team meeting to discuss findings. 3. Script writing/story boarding. 4. Group meeting. 5. Filming (luckily our school was hosting a state-wide drama conference, so we had skilled background actors for our fight scene). 6. Editing. 7. Team meeting to watch the video. 8. Presentation. Each step probably had sub steps within each one for each team member’s role, but overall, that’s what our plan of action looked like.

There’s no one-size-fits-all process when it comes to composing and a lot of it does happen concurrently. It is interesting to look at the differences and similarities along the way.

[learningtoteachskg]

Why Constructive Criticism is Necessary

October 22, 2017

I took time from writing reflections mainly for personal reasons. I had gotten sick for about a week, and really only concentrated on getting done what I could. There was an instance in class that I wanted to write about that was real awkward. When we were going over the sample comic books and a classmate yelled out negative comments about someone else’s work. Her reaction was definitely a learning moment for me.

I’ve been away from the classroom setting for several years. In my first grad school program, most of my classes had at most 10 people (except for two classes that were joined with undergraduate students). These 10 students were typically older and graduate-level, so we often talked more in discussion circles rather than in the traditional classroom setting. The classroom environment was usually calm, allowing space for others to share their thoughts. We were in charge of leading the class discussions and often spoke with research supporting us (except when the never-ending cycle of abstract questions such as “What is nature?” or What is science?” would come up. Those usually halted class or they survived only off of more abstract questions.)

So it’s been a while since I’ve had a more diverse class setting. Her reaction to someone else’s work reminded me how important it will be to teach constructive criticism in the classroom, helping my students understand that if they don’t like something, they need to have a reason or evidence to support them. If they don’t have a reason or evidence, then at least they need to offer some positive route for an author/creator/fellow student to follow to make adjustments. It reminded me that to make progress and to become better, dialogue is necessary.

[learningtoteachskg]

Group Chat

September 28, 2017

Last night’s class was probably my favorite one so far. I felt that my group had excellent conversations and everyone had a chance to speak. To be honest, the last two classes have been not as positive of an experience in the group setting, but last night was perfect. We worked more as a team and stayed on topic for most of the discussion setting. When the conversation did derail, everyone still interacted with each other and negative energy didn’t exist. Having this experience really made an impact on how I felt in class overall.

Keeping this in mind, in my future classroom I want to do group work, but keep it smaller to about four to five students. That way there are more opportunities for everyone to talk and they can have that collaborative environment to work through ideas, hopefully having similar positive reactions as I did in our small circle. I really also enjoyed hearing other group’s questions and seeing how they processed the readings.

My prior experience teaching revolved around students being broken into small groups and then I would write 5-6 questions on the board for them to work through. I can’t remember if I ever had them pose questions back, but it’s something I would want to integrate in the future. I think it was also good to have the understanding that not all questions have to have an answer or at least not immediately.

I took a lot of ideas away from Wednesday’s class and I look forward to when I get to implement them in the future.

[learningtoteachskg]

Classroom MGMT through Twitter

September 13, 2017

I still haven’t taken the time to read those social media (specifically Twitter) articles I pulled last week to review. I have been analyzing the interaction our class has had with Twitter the last few weeks, though. I noticed that a lot of people just post items, but they don’t respond, or if there is a response to a tweet, the originator doesn’t follow back with anything.

We had the slow chat this past Sunday (that I almost forgot about while getting too OCD on another class project!) and there was more engagement there, but outside that hour, it’s a one-way street. I’m trying to get better at responding to those within our class to create more of a community environment and to lead by example, so hopefully it’ll pick up some steam.

I’m trying to decide on the best approach to say “Hey, so no one is talking to each other, fix it.” What I decide to do here can also be used in the classroom one day, if I notice students aren’t actively participating in an assignment or aren’t making substantial progress on research papers.

A great real-world look at classroom management.

[learningtoteachskg]

Tying in two classes to learn Twitter instruction

September 7, 2017

I’m still thinking through how I can best assist the class with Twitter instruction. I was looking over a separate course’s upcoming assignments, specifically a research paper, and found that it’s required to choose a topic that would improve reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. After thinking about this assignment, I’m considering to write this paper on how multimodality plays a role in the English classroom, with a more concentrated focus on social media in the classroom.

This afternoon I’ve found at least 10 articles to read through later this weekend, so hopefully several will provide insight in how social media is used in secondary education curriculum. As examined in my last two posts, I’ve had the experience using social media in higher education, but I haven’t in the high school classroom.

By starting this research project early, I should hopefully be able to get a better understanding of how we can use social media in our class (CTSE 5020/6020) and how we can use this practice in our future work.

[learningtoteachskg]

Multimodality in Grad School Classroom

September 1, 2017

In my last post I discussed how multimodality was used in the classroom in my earlier years of education, but it wasn’t until graduate school (the first time around) that I saw it in full effect.

I was taking a rhetoric course (we discussed early influencers B.C.E. through women rhetoricians in the 1900s) and my two friends pushed for the multimodality lifestyle. We had an instructor completely on board for my peers’ ideas, but there was some pushback from other classmates. It wasn’t required that we participate in this new venture, so really it was mostly my group executing the plans.

We had a class hashtag and would tag authors/professors from class readings if they were available or we would generate questions/thoughts that we didn’t have time to discuss in class. You can still go on Twitter and see some of our tweets with the #AUrhetor. That class was in spring 2014, so it’s great that all the tweets are still made available for reflection and reminder of several topics we discussed.

In addition to the tweets, we had a class Prezi. Every group was required to use this on their designated presentation days. Prezis are great because they’re expansive PowerPoints that I consider as large landscapes. Each group could pick out their own lot to grow their research on. Here’s a link to the Prezi for reference: http://prezi.com/vcffrtydngub/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

We used that Prezi to note highlights from the text, create memes, share videos, and share images. Sometimes it would lock up while editing because of the amount of content, but overall it was a good experience.

During one presentation, a group created a card game reflecting key characters/authors from the semester readings. I’ve included a photo below. 

Cards were divided based on era and placed in clearly marked envelopes. We were then expected to define how that individual viewed rhetoric and key concepts we learned from their writings. This type of activity required extra preparation by the group leaders, but it was a fun activity and one I would definitely want to deploy in the classroom.  

[learningtoteachskg]

History with Multimodality Learning

August 30, 2017

When I was first considering the options to incorporate multimodality tools in the classroom, I wasn’t too sure where to start. After reviewing the articles for the week I soon realized that these tools have constantly been in play for several years. I remember in my senior economics course in high school, my class partner and I worked diligently to create an entertaining, but informative, class PowerPoint. Before then in 8th grade, our history teacher required a video project, though I opted to do the essay-writing option instead. While in college I was in a larger group project for literature where we were asked to participate in a presentation. With a film student in my group, we quickly changed the plans from a speech-based presentation to a feature film (it was featured in class, so I’ll still call it a feature film 🤷🏻‍♀️). We were fortunate that the same week we were filming was also the same week our undergraduate institute was hosting the statewide high school drama camp, so we were able to easily recruit background actors for our war scenes.Taking a new approach to the presentation made the experience a lot more fun and more memorable. The concept of multimodality has been there this entire time, but I just never thought twice about it when I was a student (well, except when I opted to do that paper in the 8th grade because I was camera shy at the time). It also became a key player in my first round of graduate school.