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.
I’ll second this one… Always good to hear about innovative digital pedagogy. I’d also love to have a discussion about the FERPA issues, etc. with class blogs and how people are dealing with legal ramifications, etc.
This completely sounds like me!
I have two education jobs at the moment, at two divergent institutions. One is a 4-year college, where I am a first-year comp adjunct. The school relies on Moodle, which offers blogs, journals, and the like…but with nowhere near the design appeal (at either front or back end) that Google/Blogger, Flickr, and the like offer.
I’d love to look at ways people are using tech for composition.
I’ll second this as well. I’m particularly interested in what happens in the classroom (as opposed to assignments, syllabus creation, etc.), but open to talking about all of it.
I’ve got a lot of experience integrating digital technologies in composition classes, from first-year comp to senior seminars on digital composition, and I’d be happy to join in this discussion.
Having served as a computer-assisted instruction coordinator for Saint Louis University’s Writing Program and in various workshops, I’ve found that it’s generally useful to not only share ideas but to keep in focus why we’re wanting to use a particular digital technology or resource and how it supports our specific pedagogical goals for the activity, assignment, or course in question.
+1 to this session idea/notion/proposal. 🙂