As a creativity challenge, I recently signed up for THE FICTION PROJECT, sponsored by The Art House Co-op. Registrants (before Feb) will be mailed a Moleskine sketchbook in which to tell and show a story using words and art, based on a [...]
As a creativity challenge, I recently signed up for THE FICTION PROJECT, sponsored by The Art House Co-op. Registrants (before Feb) will be mailed a Moleskine sketchbook in which to tell and show a story using words and art, based on a [...]
Thanks to the twitterverse, I was turned on to this video by author John Irving when asked about the future of the book:
The anxieties presently circulating about the marketplace for fiction certainly are causing a lot of changes in the publishing industry lately. In October, price [...]
National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) launched today, sending millions of people "with a book in them" to the keyboard in an attempt to churn out a rough novel-length manuscript (minimum of 50,000 words to 'count') by the end of November. People engaged in this activity all bond on [...]
The slides for my "Teaching and Learning" presentation today on Improv and Teaching are here on google docs:
For related topics (including a two-part review of Impro by Keith Johnstone, click the improv tag below.
[...]I watched this video this morning, as part of my preparation for a course in "The Teaching of Popular Fiction & Writing" next Spring. I liked the level of advocacy here for educational use of pop culture material in the classroom, as well as the emphasis on 'best practices.' You [...]
Good article by Josh Cohen on the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook today, called "Teachers Take To Twitter." Along with giving some tips for twitter usage, the key point is that twitter is building a community of teachers. Cohen cites Bill Ferriter, a 6th grade social studies teacher, succinctly:
[...]
Over on my other blog, The Popular Uncanny, I wrote this evening about a neat Prezi presentation on “Uncanny Digital Literacies” by Sian Bayne, from the ESRC seminar series on Literacies in the Digital University (University of Edinburgh, 16 Oct 2009). She mentions a book called [...]
This morning I was pointed to an article on "The Five Mental Habits of Innovative People" that I found interesting, because it identifies the skillsets I would want to foster in my students, especially in a course related to creativity (like writing).
Drawing from research by Jeff Dyer and Hal [...]
My quest for finding good books on creative writing pedagogy continues. A week or two ago, I decided to drop a chunk of my paycheck on titles I found on the cheap at half.com, and I've begun reading them with great abandon, as I prepare to teach a new' [...]
The blog run by Voicethread (which I've tested now with students in a current online class, and we adore it!) recently steered me to the American Association of School Librarians, which houses an excellent resource in their Best Websites for Teaching and Learning master list. Also recommended is' [...]
Today I noticed that PlanBook 2.06 has been released for the Macintosh. It's also available in a Windows version (which I haven't tested yet, but hope to). If you like to use the computer to organize your ideas, I recommend it!
The key focus of PlanBook is on weekly calendaring.' [...]
A few weeks ago I stumbled on VoiceThread and I keep mentally returning to it as a great model for hosting online discussions. It's an exciting format, and I am considering it for any online course I might offer in the future. Beyond the "sitting around the table" structure [...]
"Student Outcomes" is a continuing series of interviews with my former students who are now experiencing "real life" after college. Considering how much of our work is based on the assumption that "learning outcomes" will be met, I thought it would be a good way to catch up with [...]
The quote above comes from Schmier's reflective essay in the Spring 2009 issue of the AACU's journal, [...]
This week I'll be teaching in our weeklong, intensive graduate creative writing workshops for the MA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill U. It's always a great experience, and I particularly enjoy getting to teach and work with' [...]
My colleague down the hall, Dennis Jerz has been awarded the John Lovas Memorial Academic Award from the journal, Kairos, for his Literacy Weblog. Visit his site, browse around and drop him a note of congratulations.
He joins a list of other interesting academic weblogs in [...]
The latest issue of DISSECTIONS: The Journal of Contemporary Horror just went live online. The theme this time around is "Teaching Horror" which emerged as part of a series of panels at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in March 2008. It includes [...]
Follow me on twitter (user: arnzen). Once I figure out the code, I'm planning to use the site as a sideblog, so I can share links and snippets of thoughts related to teaching and academia that don't quite qualify for full-blown blog entries on Pedablogue.
[That twitter account is [...]
For a few years now, I've had this nagging worry that students are coming to college more and more distracted, less and less prepared to concentrate long enough to read -- and my intuition, like that of most, is to correlate this with the proliferation of cell phone texting, twittering,' [...]
Public Service ALERT:
The following search on my campus -- for a published mystery author qualified to teach creative writing -- has been RELAUNCHED, and will continue until filled. Candidates interested in this position should apply immediately. Please pass along or post this information as you see fit:
Assistant Professor of English
[...]
In my "Introduction to Literary Studies" course, I tried a new assignment: a Group Dramatic Performance (via Pod- or Video-cast). The guidelines were very general, allowing maximum room for creative expression on behalf of the students. Essentially, I just asked for groups of 4-5 students to independently "record a 5-8" [...]
Richard Hake has generously shared a super bibliographic resource: Over 200 Education and Science Blogs. He kindly included Pedablogue in the directory. Here's the abstract:
ABSTRACT: This compilation, an expansion of the earlier "Over Sixty Education Blogs," lists over two-hundred education and science blogs, providing for each blog: [...]
The trend for open source online teaching has recently reached a milestone, I think. YouTube EDU has launched, offering a good repository of instructional videos, streaming lectures from universities and elsewhere, to the globe. The Open Culture blog calls it a "robust collection" with over 200 full courses [...]
Education Week is reporting on a study that the makers of the ACT have recently put out that points to the gap between what high schools and college teachers want their students to be ready for when they come to college.
The new survey found that college professors generally [...]The last time I gave a quiz to my Intro to Lit course, I tried a new variation on my collaborative quiz methods (see this blog's articles tagged with keyword "testing" for others)... and it seemed to work really well.
Have you ever posted a question on your quiz [...]
Mano Singham at the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University has published a great page of advice for faculty in Managing Time More Effectively. It kindly reprints a handout I produced for a Teaching and Learning Seminar a few years [...]
I'm teaching an Introduction to Literary Studies course this term, and one of the early assignments in the class asked students to create a "collage that reflects your perspective on literary study". To explain the assignment, I developed a handout that explained what collage artists think they're doing and other [...]
Today's edition of The Irascible Professor provides a sobering overview of how the economic downturn impacts colleges and universities -- and especially the students who want to attend them. It recommends overhauling the financial aid system, which is probably a very good idea.
There's a degree to which the "downturn" [...]
A course I'm going to begin teaching later this week -- Introduction to Literary Studies -- is enrolled to capacity, which means I'll have ten or so more students in the room than I'm used to teaching. Even that little bit turns [...]
Michele Martin at The Bamboo Project just posted a link to an interesting Reflection Flow Chart (authors Alan Chapman and Sharon Drew Morgan call it a 'diary tool') that might might be useful for teachers engaging in reflexive practice through journaling (I discussed this in a book [...]
Dennis Jerz's Literacy Weblog today points to the new Humanities Resource Center and "a major study that aims to establish benchmarks for assessing the humanities" from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This looks like a terrific resource for guaging the Humanities and a good assessment [...]
"Buried in Paper" by writer couple Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem was recently posted at Storytellers Unplugged. It uncannily reflects my own recent resolution to declutter a lot of the paperwork that's piling sky high in my home office. I've been meticulously cataloguing and reorganizing my home bookshelves [...]
I have to thank Marc Sheffner for turning me on to Ed Nuhfer's excellent Nutshell Notes -- a collection of tips for teachers hosted at Idaho State U (earlier copies are also gathered in a big .pdf file by CU Denver, where it used to be published). [...]
I stopped at a Half-Priced Books store in Monroeville this past October and found myself burrowing around in their really great section in the back of the store, for "Teaching." In it, I picked up some really great titles cheap, including a book I want to call attention to in [...]
I have always believed in running some kind of "closure" activity on the last day of my classes, as a way of reflecting on learning from the term and thinking about its applicability and/or importance in the future. It's a lot more rewarding than just collecting papers or tests (though [...]
In "The Bigger Bailout" -- the latest posting to Irascible Professor -- Peter Berger draws some interesting parallels between trends in education and the current economic crisis, claiming that "the sickness in our schools, like the sickness on Wall Street, is symptomatic of a national disease."
What is that [...]
[NOTICE: The deadline for applications has ended and we have begun vetting a parcel of strong contenders. Should a viable candidate not be chosen, I will repost.]
*** A Public Service Announcement! ***
FACULTY WANTED TO TEACH WRITING OF POPULAR FICTION
Assistant Professor of English
Location: Greensburg, PA
Category: Faculty - Liberal [...]
Peter Schmidt contributes an article to the Chronicle on the problem with the rising reliance on adjunct faculty across academe, called "Use of Part-Time Instructors Tied to Lower Student Success." I found this section interesting:
Of particular concern to some education researchers is the tendency of colleges to use part-timers [...]
The National Education Association is celebrating the election of Barack Obama. The American Federation of Teachers is celebrating the election of Barack Obama. My students and many of my colleagues are celebrating the election of Barack Obama.
I cheer along with the crowd. But the confetti is thinning out [...]
Good food for thought: Clancy Ratliff posts a wonderful "Collection of Good and Not-So-Good Reasons for Assigning a Personal Narrative as the First Essay in a Composition Course" on the CultureCat weblog.
If I understand it correctly, Ratliff is responding to a lecture by Bruce Horner that suggested [...]
In "Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students" (Campus Technology, Oct 2008), Dr. Ruth Reynard talks about the mistakes she's made using weblogs with her grad students. It's a fantastic, enlightening essay, revealing how to not only avoid errors but how to utilize weblog [...]
Halloween is fast approaching, so horror literature is in the air. If you're teaching it, you might want to look for the "Writer's Talk" series on WCBE (Ohio's NPR station), which will be airing interviews with horror writers Michael Arnzen, Gary Braunbeck, Lucy Snyder, and [...]
"Student Outcomes" is a continuing series of interviews with my former students who are now living life after college. Considering how much of our work is based on the assumption that "learning outcomes" will be met, I thought it would be a good way to catch up with them [...]
My essay on the teaching of horror fiction -- "The Unlearning: Horror and Transformative Theory" -- just went live in the debut issue of the journal, Transformative Works and Cultures. Here's the abstract:
"The Unlearning: Horror and Transformative Theory" by Michael A. ArnzenAbstract:
Building on the foundational concepts [...]
I tried something new in my introductory-level fiction writing course this term: using a page of graphic fiction to show students how structure and the other elements of fiction (character, setting, viewpoint, etc.) work in tandem to make a story. I think it worked well, so I'm sharing the exercise [...]
The article is a couple of years old, but it's worth noting: "College, My Way" by Kate Zernike, published in the NY Times in 2006, notes the rising transfer rates among college students is becoming the new normal -- claiming that "about 60 percent of students graduating from college [...]
