Teaching Carnival 3.2

• 24 February 2009
• blogging,
• teaching

I’m deep in the thick of the best semester I’ve had in several years, so it’s taken some doing to pry me away from teaching in order to see what teaching-related stuff is going on out there in the blogosphere. Having spent some time poking around, though, I’ve found a bunch of exciting stuff for this fortnight’s only one day late Teaching Carnival! Before we start, a few reminders about the nature of the ride, a warning to keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times, and a big thank you to our guide last time. Now, off we go!

Lots of folks other than me are having good semesters, and are doing some cool stuff:

• Collin Brooke updates us on his experiment with his graduate course.
• David Silver took his class on what sounds like a yummy field trip to North Beach.
• Scott Eric Kaufman builds on his “how to teach film responsibly in a comp class” essay (also linked in the last TC) by posting more of his teaching notes on film (also a bit more), as well as thinking about teaching comics (of which there’s also a bit more).
• Chuck Tryon’s graduate course on teaching with technology is producing some fascinating posts.
• The Undergraduate Historian discusses the research essay.
• Lanette Cadle and her class are working on a basic writing wikibook.
• Michael Arnzen’s students produced some impressive collages.

Many of us are nonetheless faced with the semester’s frustrations:

• Sisyphus, for instance, struggles with ambivalence.
• Professor Unexpected Terminal Degree faces thoughtless language amongst her students, and finds a great way to deal with it, but then hits the trifecta: absences, tears, and plagiarism.
• Dr. Virago wonders whether some dissertation directors have too much power.
• Dr. No, however, dares to ask that question.
• Flavia is tickled by a comment in her course evaluations.
• And ScienceWoman reminds her students that she’s human.

Lots of us are similarly thinking about the relationship between our lives and our jobs:

• Dr. Crazy, for instance, ponders the relationship between identity and academic life.
• Julie Meloni points out the value of staying politically neutral in the classroom.
• Mike Edwards ponders the quotidian nature of heroism.

And we’re not the only ones:

• David Silver’s twitter assignment leads to a great discussion of the value of asking students to do public, internet-based work under their own names, with key input from the students themselves.

Many of us are pondering the future of the profession, our fields, or our institutions:

• Horace ponders the MLA’s Teagle Report and its recommendations for the future of the English major.
• (At the risk of over-blowing my own horn, I’ll point out that I did too, but a bit more, um, against the grain.)
• Dave Parry argues the case for the elimination of tenure.
• Steve Krause considers the library website of the future.
• Annie Em gets the wake-up call from the new epistemology.
• Alex Reid answers the question, what do you do with a degree in English?
• And JBJ altruistically offers to stretch outside his field, for the good of the institution.

Others of us are less sanguine about things, though:

• Mills Kelly worries about the relationship between good teaching and the cash nexus.
• And it will not shock you to hear that lots of us are thinking about the grade inflation and student effort, including Timothy Burke, Robert Farley, Scott Eric Kaufman, Dr. N, Hube, and Jonathan.
• Analepsis uses the issue as a teachable moment.
• Silvia ponders the disconnect between faculty expectations and student perceptions of responsibility for their own learning.
• Dave Mazella thinks about teaching p*rn, and returns to consider student resistance.
• Dean Dad considers the effects of student fears of failure.

Finally, this episode of Teaching Carnival could not be complete without a section devoted to the Facebook TOS dust-up of February 2009:

• Rana presents an excellent analysis of the issue.
• Amanda French compares the new Facebook TOS (now the old-new Facebook TOS, I guess, sort of like New Coke, so I guess we’re all drinking the Classic Facebook TOS now!) with the terms of a number of other social media sites.
• Chuck uses the occasion to think about public media 2.0.
• And several of us invent our own new TOS.

That’s it for this carnival! Tune in, well, 13 days from now for Teaching Carnival 3.3, hosted by the probably more responsible and on top of things Alan Benson, and remember, tag posts of yours or other folks with “teaching-carnival” on Delicious or Technorati if you’d like them included.

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