Discourse Chronicle

“You can ban kids from listening to rock ‘n’ roll music, but they’re going to anyway,” he added. “It’s the same with information, and it’s a bad educator that bans their students from reading Wikipedia.”

In 2005, at the height of the controversy over the site’s accuracy, Mr Wales told the BBC that students who copied information from Wikipedia “deserved to get an F grade”. –Alistair Coleman

[Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’s take on citing Wikipedia now and then. An important distinction is made here in that college attempts teaching students how to conduct research in an academic environment toward producing a new or overlooked argument. The constantly changing accuracy or possibility of inaccuracy robs students from finding niches and innovating older ideas. I continue banning my students from citing Wikipedia and I know I am NOT a bad educator. BK]

category: Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

“I remember when I started here,” said Jim Hawes, who has taught math at Bishop Kelly for 11 years. “I thought I could get the kids to appreciate the symmetry of math and the intrinsic beauty of a balanced equation. That got beaten out of me midway through my second year, when my car was keyed, my house was TP’ed, I got 12 magazine subscriptions I never ordered, and someone phoned me at 1:30 in the morning and called me a faggot. Now, I’m just happy if they can parrot back the quadratic formula and don’t put soap in my coffee.” –The Onion

[Amen! I honestly love teaching English in college, particularly composition, but bad students ruin everything for everybody. BK]

category: Humor, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Initially, I was skeptical about a comic strip deploring online file sharing. But the 18-page story does what the NCSC set out to do: explain the court system in an interesting way. I guarantee you I wouldn’t have been able to read a black and white document on this stuff but I whizzed through it in its graphic novel format. -Miyoko Ohtake

category: Comics, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

The Union City district, which has a $197 million annual budget, places a priority on bilingual classes because more than one-quarter of its students are learning basic English skills. District officials said the stakes are high; 4 of the district’s 12 schools have been identified as needing improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind law, largely because not enough bilingual students have passed the state reading and math tests. -Winnie Hu

[I theorized that my language skills, although I am a native speaker of English, derive from constantly listening to music on the radio and personal devices (Sony Walkman and Discman) and I thought if people struggling with learning English followed suit, then perhaps language acquisition would be easier. Now I see my hypothesis is right. BK]

category: Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

[Today I taught my section of Introductory Writing with Elizabeth as an observer and I realized how far I come with my teaching. The lesson focused on giving my students practice with integrating sources using a handout showing small sample passages without quotes and then quotes alongside them. Students needed to copy the passage and insert the quote where appropriate with proper formatting. I originally planned on covering MLA style and giving students an opportunity to practice doing that as well, but time slipped away and we will deal with it next time.

I remember feeling self-conscious whenever someone observed me while I taught because I thought evaluation accompanied observation. For some reason, previous observations happened on days when I seemed not at my best, so I thought having Elizabeth watch me then would add stress because of our relationship. However, I conducted class confidently and completely forgot that I was being observed. I never experienced that before in my teaching and I take it as a sign that I am continuing to be an always improving instructor. BK]

category: Life, Pedagogy, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Before we elect her the official ambassador of “how our society should be educated on,” however, we thought we should put this budding young teacher to the test by taking a red pen to her screed**. And, sure, everyone makes mistakes now and then — we certainly are not immune — but we do feel that anyone calling us to educational arms (among other things) should be fairly well outfitted with weapons herself. -Heather

[A two page composition critique of an email sent from Lindsay Lohan’s Blackberry. From Elizabeth. BK]

category: Humor, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

The University of Texas won the Spring 2007 Collegiate Team Challenge hosted by Texas A&M and North Texas on April 28-29 in Beaumont Texas at Set-x Lake. The weather could not have been more perfect with blue skies, temperatures averaging 85 degrees, and zero wind. Six schools represented in the event including North Texas, Texas A&M, Texas, Texas Tech, Louisiana Tech, and Steve F. Austin. The tournament was pulled by Texas Tige with their new 2007 RZ2. The first day of the event was packed with competitive riding from all of the teams. Key riders in the first day included John Aulick (Texas A&M), John Marshall (Texas Tech), Mark Heger (Texas), Joram Hadden (Louisiana Tech), Slayt Ebeling (Texas A&M), and Clint Hibbard (SFA). –Leo Lasecki

[Leo was a freshman in my Composition and Rhetoric course this semester and he shared his online publication with me soon after our course ended. I understood teaching as a thankless job from an earlier time, but once in a while, instructors see things like this come around. The best feeling is knowing that maybe I had something to do with it. BK]

category: Life, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Graphic novels are a loose genre comprising lengthy comic books — often hundreds of pages long — that contain literary elements such as a plot and characterization. Some graphic novels feature favorite comic figures, such as Superman. Others are fantastical adventures, Japanese comics, or attempts to retell Shakespeare.

[….] He recommends adults curious about graphic novels start with “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” by Art Spiegelman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the author learning about his father’s experiences as a Jew in Poland during the Holocaust. –Laura Hancock

[I wonder what “loose” means here because both comic books and graphic novels are capable of achieving unity in an Aristotelian sense, although I believe graphic novels accomplish that task more successfully due to its independence from serials, but I notice nothing is said here about the content.

I commend Dr. Stephen Gibson for choosing Maus as an option for graphic novel reading, but as a starting place, I might suggest Will Eisner’s A Contract with God instead since that title is an “original” graphic novel. I recently fielded questions from friends and colleagues about how graphic novels might be incorporated into college English classes. For Introduction to Literature-type courses, I suggested titles such as Watchmen, Maus, Sandman, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen along with McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art. For Creative Writing, I recommended those same titles, except I would use Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and McCloud’s Making Comics. BK]

category: Comics, Literacy, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

[Here is my list of assigned textbooks for my freshman composition students next semester with rationales:

Writer’s Harbrace Handbook (Third Edition)
Texas A&M University uses the Harbrace Handbook as a standard adoption, but our department is not switching to third edition until next year, due to custom cover requests. Despite that, I received permission to assign this new edition early because I learned about a new chapter on visual rhetoric after a recent meeting with its author, Dr. Cheryl Glenn.

Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (Fifth Edition)
An excellent collection of popular culture essays about topics ranging from Barbie dolls to comic books and film. I chose this text as my reader because my students provided feedback wishing for in-class examples that may seem more familiar to them. I may develop lessons from its readings, but more importantly, I am assigning oral presentations about them as a means of encouraging in-class participation on a regular basis. I am also able to speak better on popular culture than some other topics, thus improving my teaching due to increased confidence over material.

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud’s text discussing comic books in comic book format. I assigned a few chapters from this book already and students responded extremely well and claim McCloud’s presentation helped them learn difficult concepts such as Aristotle’s Model of Argument (Ethos, Logos, Pathos). Many of its chapters relate with our four paper topics and will act as a supplement to our handbook readings.

Writing Traditions
A compositional exercise workbook containing sample student essays and covers concepts such as summary and paraphrase, plagiarism, MLA format, peer review, and others. Non-negotiable.

Typical American
Gish Jen’s novel about Ralph, a Chinese immigrant graduate student working on his PhD in Engineering, and how him and his family become Americanized. Non-negotiable. BK]

category: Comics, Life, Literacy, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

[Today I spent all afternoon grading half of my freshman composition students’ papers on Argument and I wished for comment stampers again. All of my students are aware that I grade using a nice green fine-point pen, which some of them believe is symbolic of kryptonite because we previously talked about Superman, but perhaps some make the connection with Green Lantern. As I graded my students’ papers at Sweet Eugene’s, my nice green fine-point pen became a lifeless thin plastic tube refusing to express my comments, almost preventing me from finishing papers 9-12.

For a few moments, I contemplated going back to my apartment and changing over to a black ball-point pen, or better yet – blue. However, then my comments may blend with the typeface on my students’ papers, so I needed to find a new green pen. I never imagined replacing a green pen as difficult until I arrived at Target and browsed its miniature office supply section. Target stocked a variety of pens, but none are green, mostly red, black, and red. Occasionally I saw a green pen amongst an assortment, but I decided not paying however much those sets costed for a single green pen. I left Target as empty-handed as I entered and drove to Office Max.

I hoped to find a box of green pens for sale at the office oasis known as Office Max and so I did. I found said box, but these pens are ball-point and nowhere near as nice as my original green pen. No, these green pens are probably a step up from those disposable Bic pens I use when I write checks. However, once I returned to Sweet Eugene’s and began using it, I noticed this new green ball-point pen’s ink was a duller shade of green – but green nonetheless. I finished my half stack of papers and plan on returning tomorrow to finish the other half with my new green ball-point pen. BK]

category: Life, Pedagogy