“Whisper” Goes Quiet 1/18/12 to Protest SOPA & PIPA

Protest The “Protect IP Act”

Many websites are blacked out today Weds. January 18, 2012 to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

From personal blogs to giants like WordPress and Wikipedia, sites all over the web — including this one — are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed. Learn how this legislation will affect internet freedom and please take action.

According to Gizmodo,  “The momentum behind the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we’re finally at a saturation point. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, WordPress, TwitPic: they’ll all be dark on January 18th. An anti-SOPA rally has been planned for tomorrow afternoon in New York. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long but shrinking, thanks in no small part to the emails and phone calls they’ve received in the last few months.”

So what is SOPA? or PIPA? At first, it sounds like a good idea–it is supposed to protect content providers. But Gizmodo argues that “SOPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet which would go almost comedically unchecked to the point of potentially creating an “Internet Blacklist” while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily and potentially disappearing your entire digital life while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective but stands a shockingly good chance of passing unless we do something about it.”

So call. Or email. If you’re a subscriber, go see the site for yourself–there’s plenty posted today about ways you can show your protest. Then boycott the internet yourself.

After I post this and publicize this, by 930am I am planning on joining in as well and staying off the internet today. This site will be “dark” from 8am-8pm and post a flag and info about the issue until January 24, 2012.

Which Presidential Candidate Should You Support?

On the USA Today website, you can play the “candidate match game” to see which candidate’s views are closest to your own:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/candidate-match-game

You might also want to check out:

https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVoteSmart

Do you know of others ways to evaluate how well your opinions match with the candidates? Please share!

“Seeing” by Annie Dillard from “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

“Seeing” by Annie Dillard
from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (HarperPerennial 1974)

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of
my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been
seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk
up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off
piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block,
draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled
the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this
arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way,
regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight
home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again
by the impulse to hide another penny.

It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There
are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and
strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.

Readings to start a new semester

• Today starts a new semester for my students and I. For Thursday, please read:

• From 50 Essays edited by Cohen:
•  Intro
•  “Seeing” by Annie Dillard (also online here),
• “Letter from Birmingham” by Martin Luther King (online info, link, pdf here)
• recommended “Regarding the Pain of Others” by Susan Sontag
• recommended “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato
• VC Reporter 1/5/12: editorial (online here),
  forecast 2012 (climate + 1–online here)
• Read  MLK’s “I Have a Dream” (online here)
• Listen to MLK’s “I Have a Dream” (online here

Write what you’d like in a page or two about these readings and turn in at our next class for extra credit.

What are some of the connections that you “see” between the various readings? Can you connect them with what we’ve talked about so far in class?

Remember English 2 and English 1A are 5 unit classes which = 10 hours of study a week. This may seem like a lot of reading but you should be able to finish it in less than 5 hours.

I hope you enjoy the readings! The Annie Dillard essay is one of my favorite pieces of writing.

Textbooks for Spring 2012

–50 Essays edited by Samuel Cohen 3^rd edition (2011)

–Nowtopia by Chris Carlsson (AK Press 2008)

–The Everyday Writer by Andrea Lunsford 4^th edition (2010)

English 2:

The Craft of Revision (Thomson Wadsworth 2004) by Donald M. Murray

English 1A

–Choose ONE for your  “Reading on Writing” (RonW) assignments:

n  Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life  (Bantam 1990) by Natalie Goldberg

n  Bird by Bird  (Pantheon 1994) by Anne Lamott

n  The Craft of Revision (Thomson Wadsworth 2004) by Donald M. Murray

Is There Life Beyond The Lecture?

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” Chinese Proverb

Some faculty are wonderful, engaging lecturers. Some are not.

Regardless, the classroom lecture continues to be the dominant form of instruction in the college classroom today–even though all the pedagogical research I have read shows that this is NOT the best way to teach–if you want students to remember what they are learning after the class is over.

In his article “Exploding the Lecture,” Steve Kolowich examines the example and strategies of a charismatic lecturer who has turned to creating online videos. Students watch Mike Garver’s lectures on their own time and as often as necessary then come to class where they have time to discuss, engage and apply the ideas in large and small groups. Kolowich writes:

Garver remembers his supervisor affirming the young lecturer’s confidence — before blowing it apart. “He basically said, ‘Mike, that was a great lecture. Have you ever heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning?’ ” Garver had not. His supervisor explained Benjamin Bloom’s 1956 formulation, which divides learning into higher and lower orders and emphasizes the importance of putting learned ideas to work.

“Even though your lecture was spectacular,” Garver recalls his mentor saying, “you’re down here at the bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy.” He challenged Garver to infuse higher orders of learning into his teaching methodology. “I have been chasing that dream ever since,” Garver says.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/15/professor-tries-improving-lectures-removing-them-class#ixzz1dtMOR1RT
Inside Higher Ed

I too have been chasing that dream. I knew from my own educational experience that most lectures made me sleepy and that even taking good notes didn’t mean I didn’t retain the material. I learned best and most deeply by “doing” something with the material: talking about it in groups, presenting it to the class, writing about it, applying it in a service learning context, using it for problem solving.

Until recently, it was relatively easy for my students and I to hold seminars in class to discuss material by moving our desks into a large circle or smaller groups. Unfortunately, new buildings at the college where I teach cram as many students as possible into the classrooms using tables that go from one end of the room almost all the way to the other making it very difficult for us to do anything other than sit in rows at the long tables.

And I am finding, when students are in those rows, it is easy just to stay on the stage.

What teaching strategies work for you to retain information from classes beyond the final exam? What classes do you remember the most? What information from a class have you used and how did you attain that information?

(Note to my English 2 students: you can read and respond to this blog post and to the article referenced for one of your 20 reading responses. Remember to use quotes and cite your sources.)

How Much Time Do You Spend Per Class Unit?

I usually teach 5 unit classes at the local community college. We meet for 2 hours and 15 minutes two times a week.

The number of units a class has is the number of contact hours you have with the instructor. It presupposes students spend 2 hours per contact hour on homework.

That means my students are supposed to be spending 10 hours a week on the class in order to master the material and be prepared to move on to the next level of writing.

So I assign homework with the expectation that students will commit to devoting ten hours a week on reading, writing, and researching.

Other community faculty have admitted to me that they assign homework expecting the students will spend about one hour on homework per contact hour. We know that community college students typically have more responsibilities and work more than the typical university student. My night students usually have a full time job AND families AND often they are taking a full load of classes.

That’s 12 units x 3 = 36 hours per week for classes + 40 hours for work + x responsibilities etc. It’s an equation that quickly goes beyond the hours of the week even if you reduce sleep from 8-9 hours to 6 or 7.

In contrast, university classes are more in line with these expectations of time devoted to class. When I attended community college, I could race through the readings and rip out the few papers in very little time (which was a good thing since I was working almost full time and took 18 or more units each semester). When I transferred to UC Santa Cruz, I was shocked by how much time I had to spend to do the reading and the writing required to prepare for class–I was unprepared by my community college experience for the expectations of college.

In this article “YouTube U: The Power Of Stanford’s Free Online Education” about free classes in engineering being offered this semester at Stanford University, author EdSurge says that even Instructor

“Thrun warned many off by cheerfully promising they’d have to clock the same amount of time on homework as a “good” Stanford student—up to 12 hours per week”

the class had an initial enrollment of 160,000 with 35,000 turning in the first week’s homework.

Any ideas on how to motivate community college students to commit the time and devote up to 10 hours a week on a writing class?

(Note to my English 2 students: you can read and respond to this blog post and to the article referenced for one of your 20 reading responses. Remember to use quotes and cite your sources.)

An Argument/Analysis Assignment For Book Clubs

In mid-October I took over two Ventura College writing classes. I think a syllabus is a contract between students and faculty so I was cautious about changing it. One I instituted requires the students to read a book and to respond to reading with more depth and complexity. They had an argument essay on the syllabus so I adapted that to this Book Club project I frequently assign. Here’s a link to the books the students could choose from. Because the assignment is a combination group and individual assignment, I require students to complete a process analysis to discuss how their group produced their essay.

During a class earlier in the week, students met with their book club to discuss the book, read over each other’s drafts, and develop a thesis with what I call the 4 Ts: Topic, ‘Tude, Telegraph, Tension.

During the second class this week, students will have two hours of class time to work together in groups to produce a 3-4 page essay which they will turn in with their own papers and drafts about the book as well as a process analysis.

Analysis/Argument ESSAY: Book Club

What’s The Writing Process?

In class the other day, we read Anne Lamott’s famous and irreverent essay about the “sh*tty” first drafts we all write and her take on the writing process: http://thewritealley.com/2010/06/08/the-writing-process-shtty-first-drafts/

We’ve also discussed how to do Natalie Goldberg style writing practice as part of the writing process. Here’s a blog post that lists and discusses Natalie Goldberg’s “Rules for Writing Practice.”

Here’s more tips on how to get your writing going: http://thewritealley.com/2010/11/02/tuesday-tips-getting-your-writing-going/#more-640

Here’s a few ideas about “writer’s block”: http://thewritealley.com/2010/06/22/tuesday-tips-seth-godin-on-writers-block/#more-262

Happy writing!

Natalie Goldberg’s “Rules for Writing Practice”

Natalie Goldberg, author of Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life, starts every writing class she teaches with “The Rules of Writing Practice” and so do I.

She says that if you want to be a writer, or to improve your writing, or to come to know your own mind,  fill a notebook a month by writing for 20 minutes or longer on specific topics from “I remember” to “I don’t remember” to your grandmother’s kitchen to your favorite teacher to teeth to…you name it.

What follows are Natalie Goldberg’s rules in bold from Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life and with my interpretations:

1. Keep your hand moving. No matter what, don’t stop. Write whatever comes to your mind. Outrace the editor with your writing hand. If you keep your hand moving, the writing will win.

2. Lose Control. Let it rip. Don’t worry that someone will judge you.

3. Be specific. Get in the habit of using nouns, verbs, colors, textures. If you realize you’ve written a sentence that’s full of general vague language, don;t scratch it out but make the next sentence more specific.

4. Don’t think. Stick with your “first thoughts” not your thoughts on thoughts. forget everything else outside of the immediate words you are writing down. Stay with those words, in that moment.

5. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar. That’s right! Who cares? Why does this matter? Keep your hand moving adn write clearly enough so you can read it later if you want.

6. You are free to write the worst junk in the world. Yep, you are. So don’t let that fear stop you.

7. Go for the jugular. If something comes up while you’re writing, keep writing about it. Let it out. Hemingway said, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

If you write often, about topics of your own choosing as well as those assigned, it’s like a workout.

If you work out regularly, when it’s time to do the heavy lifting, like move a piano or take an essay test, or write something super important, it will be easier because you have developed the muscles.

Natalie Goldberg tells people to write by hand and I encourage you to do so. Do your best to follow the rules of writing practice–and just let the writing flow without judgment. No one should be reading your words to judge you, to say this is good or bad. The writing just is. You are writing it for you, to know your own Wild Mind.