Andrew  Ferguson

  
  • Title / Position: Grad student
  • Organization: University of Virginia
  • Twitter: epiktistes

I'm a Ph.D student in English at UVa, working mainly in 20th and 21st-century literature, media studies, science fiction, and amnesia.

  • Pedagogy

    6

    The other session I’d like to propose is a show-and-tell pedagogy session about making (better) use of the various digital tools now available, and especially your experiences with them in the classroom.

    At UVA, the writing curriculum is based on the Little Red Schoolhouse curriculum pioneered by Wayne Booth and Greg Colomb, and a number of grad students here are hard at work producing a digital companion to this curriculum. But only with the greatest hesitation have I brought extracurricular digital tools into play, either in first-year writing or lit surveys, leading to abortive-at-best experiments with class Flickr streams, Twitter discussions, and blog posts. My pedagogical toolbox already feels dusty and out of touch, and I haven’t even been at this two full years yet!

    I’d like to hear what has worked–or not worked–for others (wikis? nGrams?), and what seems to hold promise for the near future (Neatline? others?). Basically, I want to figure out ways to shake up my classroom, and others’ as well, and preferably in ways that get students more excited than apprehensive.

  • 5K Run (for varying values of “fun”)

    2

    I’m proposing, as one session, participation in the 5K run being hosted by the English Dept’s grad student association. The run will start at 10:30 just outside Alderman Library, so not far at all from the Scholars Lab. I believe also I’ll be able to get THATCampers access to shower and locker-room facilities nearby, though whether that is directly next to the library or one bus stop away is not yet nailed down.

    The registration link is here: graduate.engl.virginia.edu/gesa/fivek.html

    Hope to see some of you at the starting line!

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