A Look Forward: Spring 2012 @GSU

Dan Brown. “Burst of Blue.” www.danbrownart.com

Spring is possibly my favorite season. Back  home, the bluebonnets are in bloom and the atmosphere has a sense of renewal and invigoration. Sometimes, I feel I could climb a tree and look out at the bluebonnets all day. I’ve often found the art of Dan Brown captures that renewed and invigorated sense of Spring.  There is something about his ability to paint the past that always makes me anxious to see where the future will take me–both personally and professionally. Ironically, it’s taken me nearly two weeks to pull this post together because my last two weeks were so hectic with the start of the new semester. But now, it is time to look forward to the fresh air and bluebonnets (though I won’t see many of those in Georgia) that welcome us with open arms each semester. From the looks of this semester, it’s going to be quite hectic. Here’s a preview of just what I’ll be doing and where you can find me over the next few months.

Composition II: Controversy, Technology, and Discourse

At the forefront of my world this semester is the Composition II classes that I am teaching. The subtitle “Controversy, Technology, and Discourse” represents the theme my students are exploring for the next four months. I guided students to aspects of this topic in the past; students determined to write a Pro/Con paper after being instructed that this wasn’t an option for the class wrote some intriguing papers on similar ideas when helped to move past their initial stubbornness. So, I thought this semester would be a good chance to see what happens when I turn this into a course theme. It lets me offer students the chance to explore the pro/con sides of the issue, but from an objective standpoint. Instead of trying to persuade an audience to choose one side, they are looking at the various ways technology has changed the discussion. For me, this gives students a much better grasp on several areas that are important to their academic career (more on that in my next Critically Informed post, though). The course structure also requires students to learn and manage several technologies for the class. It’s looking (on paper, at least) like quite an interesting semester.

LILAC Project

I mentioned briefly in a previous post, that I am currently working with the esteemed Janice Walker on the LILAC Project. (You can see our campus flyer here.) LILAC, an acronym for Learning Information Literacy Across the Curriculum, investigates what students are taught about research by librarians and professors and how they actually conduct research for academic assignments. The study investigates a much broader research question than my dissertation, but uses similar research methods. For me, it’s the next step into Information Literacy research; a step I’m rather excited to take. Janice presents initial research at CCCC this spring, and we will have our first article on the research out soon after.

Allies of Veterans in Academia

On a related CCCC note, this year’s CCCC also includes a workshop focusing on Veterans in Academia. I will be speaking in this workshop on the topic of stereotypes of veterans and the ways we can enhance our pedagogy to challenge the traditional stereotypes and emphasize the maturity and leadership skills veterans bring to our classrooms. Many of you know that I come from a military family; my father was a Vietnam veteran who struggled through college on the GI Bill before becoming a successful businessman. I have also worked with many veterans in my classes and currently teach at a University with a very strong Army ROTC program. Much like the veterans in my classes, these cadets are strong leaders with perspectives that bring new diversity to my classroom.  Lisa Langstratt, Bob Hazard, and Sandra Jang deserve oodles of notoriety for spearheading this event. Their panel “Generation Vet: Composing with a New Student Population” (summarized on the KairosWiki and reviewed at InsideHigherEd) at last year’s conference brought this topic into the light for many of our colleagues. Additionally, Bob’s work to get a Special Interest Group (SIG) for this burgeoning area of academia further emphasized the need for more research and conversation in this area. So, this is another project I’m deeply entrenched in this semester.

Dissertation Part II

Now that I’ve been away from my dissertation for awhile I feel it has gelled a bit in my mind. When I first left my defense (with ideas about where to go next with the material), I felt a bit overwhelmed at the future of the project. Yet, the study should not die at this point. Reading the dissertation of a close friend of mine reignited the fire to keep pursuing this project. So, this semester, I’m working on a journal article tentatively titled “Not Always Intuitive: Social Bookmarking Pedagogy for Educators of Web 2.0 Students” that will pick up where my dissertation left off and move forward with recommendations for pedagogy. I’m hoping to eventually turn the dissertation into a book, but I feel I need several more studies to accomplish this task. I’m going to talk to a couple colleagues in my pedagogy group and see if we can schedule a summer course in Diigo and pedagogy for use in their Composition II classes next spring with an IRB approved pilot study. This will put me one step closer to the book.

Composition II: The Complete Text (with Instructor’s Guide)

On my list of things I want to start working with this semester is a multimodal Composition II textbook. I’m considering this one of my pipe dream projects right now. I have the entire text and instructor’s manual outlined in my head and I know this will be a massive project, but it’s one I want to start working on at some point this year. I’m hoping to devote a few hours a week (probably weekends) to this to see how far I can get with a draft proposal and pulling together some of the information I want to include.

Who to Believe?: The Rhetoric of Biography in the Life of Virginia Woolf

The other pipe dream I’m tinkering with (at this point only in my head) is a rhetorical analysis of the biographies of Virginia Woolf. This project stemmed largely out of my Master’s thesis and the different rhetorical approaches I noticed several of her biographers took in presenting the same moments in her life. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a few extra hours a week to start working out this project as well.

Final Thoughts

I reach the end of this ambitious plan for my spring semester realizing that I would do well to find a way to avoid sleep so that I can get work done on each of these projects. Since that will not happen, I will just take everything one step at a time. I plan to update this post and create one for the summer as well. This blog has always been a good way to track the progress I’ve made from the beginning of my doctoral studies, and I hope that adding a look forward for each semester helps me track my progress through the next few years. I can be ambitious and say through tenure, but I am curious to see if I can maintain the same blog until I reach that life goal.

Academic and Scholarly Nesting

It’s taken me about five months to really find my groove and get back in the teaching/researching/writing saddle that my universe centers around. That’s not to say that I’ve not done some work toward this, but I’ve struggled to find a real rhythm to my semester. When I graduated, I had a plethora of creative and scholarly ideas I wanted to pursue. However, once we got to Statesboro and the semester kicked off, I couldn’t work–not at the office, not in the 1-room cabin we were renting, and barely (and only when I had an upcoming deadline) at a coffee shop. I attributed this to the new job and feeling certain that everybody had a bit of a scholarly block when starting a new job. I went about my daily routine almost on auto-pilot.  Up at 5am, struggle through the morning routine, teach 8-10, lunch, teach 11:30 – 3:00, office hours until 5, home, nap, try to work on student paper assessment, rinse and repeat. In all honesty, it was my worst scholarly semester ever.

I did manage to pick up speed and start pondering new topics to explore, but that quickly fell by the wayside. I also picked up an awesome research opportunity this fall working with Janice Walker on the LILAC Project. This, I think was when the motivation began to return. LILAC investigates student research habits to explore ways that we can improve pedagogy to better the research methods and results of our students. When Janice and I first spoke about the project, she explained the research methodology and I was hooked immediately. The methodology resembles stages from my dissertation, thus making me even more eager to join the investigation. I spent a good portion of the semester reading and researching and getting familiar with the background for the LILAC project, but I still wasn’t really finding my stride. In fact, planning my spring course syllabus was the one thing I became productive at during the last month of the semester. That, however, seemed more an attempt to procrastinate portfolio reading.

Before I knew it, the semester ended. We kicked off our winter break with a quick visit to family and then settled in to our private break. During the next two weeks, I built a massive desk for my home office. I gave myself about 9 feet of desktop, and two bookcases. I planned out specific spaces for both computers and a large flat space for laying out research. It took about 2 weeks to build, and almost 3 days to get moved into the desk–books, computers, and everything else. I went shopping for new desk organizing accouterments, decorated, and admired the work. Interestingly, as I was unpacking the books and sorting them into shelves, I had three brilliant ideas for large projects. Before I could get the ideas written down, I started thinking about the CFP draft that needed completing. As I was scribbling away madly with these new ideas, I realized my scholarly block much less emerged as a result of the new surroundings, but as a a result of not having the opportunity to properly nest before the semester kicked into full swing.

We all work in specific locations, at specific times, and with specific conditions surrounding us. I find this important enough to teach my students to study and reflect on their productivity and adjust to make themselves more productive for academic time management. I always assumed that for my own productivity, I needed a cup of coffee, my computer on a table of some form, and a desk. Apparently, I was quite wrong. I need my stuff around when I’m productive. The first realization of this should have come in the arrival of my office furniture. This happened the end of the 3rd week of classes, and nothing productive happened. Only once my stuff was moved into the office in mid-October did I start finding the office a more productive place.  At home, because I was planning to build my desk, I continued working from a folding table in the corner of an empty office. The brilliant scholar I knew resided in my head refused to come forth. Yet again, as soon as my stuff began adorning the shelves she ran right out and started tossing ideas at me.

Personally (and keep in mind I’ve done very little research on this process) I’m convinced this is the equivalent of a pregnant woman nesting. If you are unfamiliar with the idea of nesting, this occurs when a pregnant woman is close to entering labor. Nesting doesn’t happen to all pregnant women, but in those that do nest, it causes a frenzy of last minute organization, cleaning, and preparing for the new baby. This is something I’ve always done as a new semester approached, but I never realized how important having the full environment for nesting was to my scholarly pursuits. Thinking back on it, the concept makes sense. I nested several times during my graduate school career–rearranging the office before my M.A. comps, rearranging again before writing my thesis, once again before my doctoral comps, and at least twice during my dissertation.

So what’s the point to all this nesting talk? Awareness. Try googling nesting with any set of academic or scholarly keywords; you will find the results are all related to pregnant women nesting. I know I’m not the only academic out there who nests, and I know there are plenty of other reasons people nest. So why are pregnant women the only ones who get the chance to validate their nesting via Google?

The (EdTech) Candy Store

I am  a technology junkie. There is simply no other way to explain this. However, I’m also an educator with a more practical side. I realize that not all technology is practical for the classroom. I also realize that not all technology is FERPA approved in the classroom. I recognize that not all campus computer labs are equipped for the tools and gadgets that I’d love to see my students use, and not all students have a laptop on which they can download extensions and free software. They also don’t have the time to explore everything that I’d want to present to them as a possible tool for their academic career. I will be the first to admit that new technologies turn me into a 5 year-old in a candy store. I always think they are all just the most fascinating tools and gadgets in the world. At least for the first 10 minutes. My venture through a new technology–be it an iPhone app, new piece of software, or web tool–always begins with my own tinkering and toying quickly followed by what is now my standard question:

What can I do with this in my classroom?

Sometimes, the answer is nothing at all. Sometimes the answer is introducing this to my students and letting them decide on their own what to do with the tool outside the classroom. Other times the answer is a detailed “tech day” in class. Over the past few years, I think I’ve introduced my students to some very worthy technologies. There is Dropbox to avoid the “I left my flash drive and can’t work on my paper in lab” problem, and there is Diigo to prevent that “I don’t know where I put the article/where I found the article/what page the quote was on” problem.  But there have also been a few technologies that I used for one semester before deciding that the tool did nothing but take away from class time to reteach students a skill they already had with another program. (For instance, Pikiwiki and Prezito “replace” PowerPoint). Sure, these tools are fun, fresh approaches to traditional software, but they don’t solve a problem for my students. That, for me, is the key to shopping in the EdTech Candy Store. Incorporating any new technology into my classes is a balancing act. I plan my semesters very carefully. This planning is not only in terms of the readings and assignments I require, but also in terms of the technologies incorporated in the course. I keep in mind the number of different places I require my students to use and how many new technologies I am requiring them to learn from these sites. For instance, my Composition II class this semester will use Google Groups, Google Sites, Blogger, and Google Docs as required sites. I am introducing a few other technologies, though these are not required for use, but rather recommendations. Of course, one of these sites will be Diigo for many reasons. Realistically, I’m not happy with this number of sites, but I will make it work this semester. I am hoping to greatly decrease this number for my next Composition II class by replacing both Google Groups and Blogger with Diigo. Unfortunately, that is just not possible this semester. Why not?  Well, it doesn’t fit the balance of my technology pedagogy just yet.

Visiting the Candy Store Like an Adult

Each semester break, I spend an unfathomable amount of time online checking out new tools and gadgets. I am always looking for appropriate technologies that aid my students and further specific literacies I expect students leaving my courses to have in their toolboxes. So, before I begin planning a new semester, I sit down with my shopping list and start to think beyond the 5 year-old mentality about the technologies I’ve selected. Below, I explain this selection process using the tools I considered for this semester’s Composition II course. Keep in mind, that this process always begins with the tools I used in the previous semester’s course (e.g., Composition I in the fall semester) and tools I used the previous time I taught this course if they are still available. The last time I taught Composition II I was using Blackboard as a requirement, and Diigo and Dropbox as optional tools (based on the reading of FERPA and the guidelines provided by TWU).

Usability

The first step to selecting technologies is to consider usability in the classroom, in students’ work outside the classroom, and in relation to assignments required for the course. For example, this semester’s shopping list included Dropbox, Diigo and the Google Apps suite as potential technologies. Considering a technology, I ask myself the following questions:

• How much time in class is required to teach students the technology?
• How many students are familiar with technology already?
• Which specific assignments will the technology assist?

I look for technologies that provide usability benefits throughout the semester and require less than a class period to teach students the technology. I also look for technologies that function in ways intuitive to student’s existing literacies. For example, my students can set up their basic Dropbox site in under 5 minutes from the website and it takes approximately an additional 5 minutes to download the program on their personal computers. Diigo takes approximately the same the amount of time to set-up and install the toolbar. Google Apps (Google Groups, Google Sites, and Google Docs) don’t require any installation or sign-up since I teach at a university where Google is native to student accounts. I also look for technologies that work across assignments. For example, Diigo will assist students in all 4 of their major assignments and 2 of the minor assignments this semester. Dropbox can be an aid to all the major assignments, but not the minor assignments. The full Google Apps suite will work with all the assignments I’ve planned for the semester. Once I assess technologies for their usability, I eliminate those that will simply demand too much time in class for set-up and those that are not beneficial to more than one assignment. The key to good technology pedagogy is that the technologies you use in the class do not overwhelm the students with detailed set-up/installation/learning needs. Technology needs to aid students in their semester, not require endless hours of learning in the classroom. Technology also needs to be something I can model in the classroom and answer student questions without leaving the classroom. If I can’t use Diigo in my classroom, how can I teach my students to use the site for their own assignments? This brings me to the next phase of my technology selection–IT support.

IT Support

No matter how well you know a technology, you must consider IT in your course selection. Trust me on this–I’ve made this mistake in the past and will not make it again.All of the technologies I select have a basic web component, which can be used without the support of IT. Often, though, technologies I select have some external component that may not be accessible without the blessing and support of IT. Google’s features are completely accessible online with no additional computer needs. Since Google is used by the university, I don’t have to get permission to use their tools in my classroom. However, this is not true for all technologies. For example, Diigo’s advanced features require a toolbar installed on the computer used; Dropbox has a small program that assists in using the site’s sync features without needing constant access to the website. Now, I can walk my students through both downloads either in class or via a tutorial on the class website/blog/YouTube channel depending on what I feel will work best for the majority of the students. This still leaves me with three areas that I need to explore with the IT staff before implementing in my classroom:

• How are these technologies currently being used on campus?
• How many hours of troubleshooting should I expect?
• How do students access the technology on campus computers?

One lesson I’ve learned in the past few years is that technologies may be accessible to faculty and students even if they are not openly advertised on the school website. Now, this is not the case with all technologies, obviously, but you don’t know if you don’t ask. I return to my example with Dropbox. When I first started using Dropbox, the product was new and I thought it was brilliant. I immediately downloaded it to the office computer. Before my files were through syncing, IT had taken over access of my computer and started looking for the program that was “pinging their software oddly.” IT had not discovered Dropbox yet and thought my computer had downloaded a virus. I learned my lesson. So this fall, I inquired of IT about using Dropbox (it’s now been around at least 3 years, and has gotten a good bit of publicity). I spoke to our IT Specialist, Matt, about installing Dropbox on my office computer. Matt gave me a peculiar look and asked if I hadn’t done that already. I quickly found out that not only was Dropbox supported by Campus Computing, it had been endorsed and recommended. When I talk to IT, I like to find out what they know about the technology I’m implementing, whether they are aware of other tools that may work more effectively, and what I need to get the approval of IT to use the technology. With a tool that requires a computer component or a browser plug-in, working with IT is crucial to successfully helping students learn both the technology and the literacy skills that drive the pedagogy. Trust me–I’ve tried this; I wrote a dissertation on the topic. Without appropriate modeling and in-class instruction, students are more prone to abandon technologies unless required for class grades. If required, students who struggle may not always turn to the instructor for help; some will turn to IT staff. This is just one more reason to enlist the support and advice of the IT staff before incorporating a new technology into a course.

Student Needs

Once I know which technologies will receive appropriate IT backing, I assess them based on the specific needs of my students for the specific course I am planning. Introducing a technology that does not benefit the students’ academic needs is futile and monopolizes precious class time. Keeping this in mind, I continue my assessment of course technologies with the following questions:

• What course goals and assignments does the technology enhance and assist?
• How many different technology sites are students required to use?
• How will the technologies assist students in their academic pursuits after this class?

Considering technologies that assist student needs in a course should look at all 3 of these questions concurrently. Technologies in a classroom need to supplement the learning of students for the specific course, but should also introduce students to technologies they can use in other classes both during and beyond the current semester. The goal to using technologies in any course, beyond supplementing the course materials, is to help students acquire technological literacies useful in the course, the student’s academic lives, and later in the student’s career. However, overwhelming students with too many technologies to master in a semester becomes detrimental to student learning. Thus, looking for an individual technology or two that will meet student needs is more beneficial than introducing students to a plethora of new technologies. This also reduces the number of entry points for the course. To return to my previous example, this semester’s Composition II class could go two ways. My students are required to blog, keep up group discussions, write an annotated bibliography and a research paper, and put together a multimodal version of their research paper. With IT approval for Diigo, the blog and group discussions along with research for the other projects, can all be accomplished using Diigo. If Diigo cannot be used for Composition II, my alternative plan would be to use the Google Apps available through the university. This suite lets me use Blogger for the blog, Google Groups for the discussions, and teach students to use their research blog to store their research. It also allows me to provide them with the ability to submit their papers through Google Docs. While this sounds like a lot of different access points, each site is reached through the same link on the students’ email. In both cases, the students learn similar technologies and expand both their information and technological literacies.

Course Pedagogy

Ensuring the technologies not only align with student needs, but also with my course pedagogy is another concern I explore before finalizing my decision. To date, I haven’t considered a technology that works against my pedagogy, but I have found that some work better than others. I look for tools similar to the ones I am considering before making this decision to ensure the technologies I introduce in my class are the ones most aligned with what I want the students to carry away from my class. For example, when I first introduced Diigo to my students, I explored both Delicious and Stumble Upon before choosing Diigo as the most beneficial to reinforcing my pedagogy. All 3 sites provide users with a way to classify and store web links, which helps me encourage students to collect their resources in a single location to refer back to as the semester progresses. Diigo, unlike the others, also allowed students to highlight portions of the text and make annotations for future reference. These features gave me the chance to further encourage my students to annotate the texts they read. I have always encouraged annotations, so Diigo furthered that portion of my pedagogy more than similar sites.

Practicality

The final consideration I give to these potential technologies is practicality. I believe that part of our jobs as educators is to enhance students’ information and technology literacies. I am passionate in this belief, but I do not believe these literacies need to be enhanced with redundant technologies. Earlier in this post, I discussed the elimination of PikiWiki from my technology toolbar. This occurred because, after using the site for a semester, I realized that there was a much more practical way to teach students the lesson I was trying to enhance with PikiWiki.

I introduced PikiWiki after several semesters of bad presentations in courses. Students, required to use PowerPoint, were creating lengthy presentations that were packed with text they then read to their peers. Pikiwiki gives users a specific amount of space to use, and I thought this would lead to better presentations. In the end, the site had no effect on the student presentations because the time spent in class teaching them PikiWiki was time that should have been devoted to further explaining how to use a visual. I realized quickly that giving students a limit on the number of slides they could use and expanding the discussion on PowerPoint as a visual aid was much more practical to the goals I tried to accomplish with PikiWiki.

Final Thoughts

In the end, you are the only person who knows specifically which technologies are best for your courses. All I can do is provide some guidance I have found works with my courses. I always experiment with a technology on my own before introducing it to my students. I also make certain to build in the technology as an option before using it as a requirement. This I do because there is honestly no way to predict how students will take to a technology,  nor is there a way to predict the tech support issues and troubleshooting that will come up in  a semester. Technology can be an excellent addition to a course, but the technology has to practically mesh with the course, be usable to students, address their specific needs in the course, and have appropriate IT support to work with the course. I’ll be using Google’s App suite this semester and providing Diigo as an optional too for my students. This decision was made because I want to spend the time I need during this semester talking and working with IT before I fully implement Diigo into my Composition II course.

Transitioning: Beginning Life after the Ph.D.

It’s been a full semester since I’ve posted. In some ways, this is a sad statement on my transition into the “real world.” In others ways, it’s both ironic and appropriate that I return to this blog. The semester was overwhelming, hectic, fun, and a learning experience. In many ways, I was a lot like the bright-eyed freshmen filling the seats in my 5 classes. Just like my students, I had to stumble through the semester trying to keep up the appearance that I wasn’t completely overwhelmed, sometimes lost, and not spending my nights studying the various FAQs on the school website. But the purpose of this post is not to elaborate on the stresses of my first semester in the “real world,” but rather to reteach the lessons, rethink the struggles, and refocus the successes.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Start with a single spoke. This is a lesson I learned the hard way partially out of necessity and partially out of that kid in a candy store mindset I had with my first “real job.” I left graduate school with a toolbox full of skills and knowledge that would greatly benefit me in the real world. I had routines. I had time management skills finely tuned for a busy work week. I had an organization system that did wonders to sync between my iMac, MacBook Pro, and my iPhone (yes, I’m a Mac girl–and I have been since OS 7.1). Most of these skills I’d developed during my dissertation writing after realizing that without specific due dates for papers, I’d have to establish my own due dates. However, I apparently made an unconscious decision to just dump all my tools in the middle of the road and let a parade of 18-wheelers run them over as soon as we arrived in Statesboro. I don’t know what brought on this change–and I wasn’t even aware it had happened until close to midterms. I made some decisions I *thought* would be improvements to my time management and organization skills. As it would turn out, these changes were the equivalent of removing all the spokes from the wheel and expecting the wheel to not crack under pressure.

How bad was it? Well, let me give you an example. In grad school, I was known for my collection of Moleskine journals (one for each project and a calendar). I carried these with me everywhere so that I had ready access to my to-do lists and all my notes for any project. When we moved, the Moleskine collection was packed away (in a box I expected to see in a week). Instead of spending a cool $100 to replace the journals, I decided to integrate my calendar and tasks into Google Calendar. I created a task list for each project I was working on–or hoping to work on–during the semester. I added tasks and gave myself due dates. It should have worked just fine, but it didn’t. Google Calendar only displays one set of tasks in your calendar at a time, and I wasn’t quite good at remembering to switch task lists each day. There were plenty of other mistakes I made as well, but I won’t get into detail with these. Some are a bit embarrassing, while others just drive home the same point.

The point I want to make here is both ironic and appropriate. I give my freshmen advice about time management and organization skills very early in the semester. This advice comes from my own development of time management and organization skills throughout college and graduate school. What I tell them is simple–Don’t reinvent the wheel, just adjust the spokes and add new ones as necessary. I remind them that they developed time management and organization skills in high school and now it is time to adjust those to the new situation that is college. In college, you don’t have parents reminding you to do homework and nagging you to start large projects early. Well, I have come to realize the “real world” is much the same. I don’t have deadlines, but I still need to write, grade, and teach. I don’t have professors nagging me about deadlines, but I still need to research, write, and publish. In a lot of ways, the transition from grad student to full-time faculty is quite similar to the transition from high school to college. I had to learn to take my own advice when it comes to honing my skills.

Write Every Day

Another pointer I give my students is simply to write every day. When they complain about writer’s block, I tell them (also quite simply) to just start writing from left to right. Nothing happens immediately in writing, and nothing happens without the appropriate research and drafting. Ironically, this foundation of my own pedagogy and writing was another thing I seem to have thrown out the window this semester. I also remind them that writing has to be comfortable and in a welcoming environment. I started this blog at the beginning of my grad school career. The first posts were what I called “tinkering” with blogging for a class project. However, these first posts could also be considered procrastinating on the assignment. In retrospect, it was both. Before long, the blog became a comfort zone for writing. I could get ideas out with less formality than I found necessary in typing the final Word document. I incorporated blogging into my Composition classes, and it has proven an asset to my students as well. Five years of writing on the same blog has made this one quite a comfort zone for me. I know my readers, and my readers know my style. This was the perfect place to continue writing, yet for some reason I thought it better to start a new blog. In my About Me page on that blog, I wrote that I needed a new, more focused blog.  So, I started writing there. The posts are polished, more formal, and more professional. That is a good thing. However, I stopped blogging in October. I also stopped writing regularly in October. But I didn’t realize why I stopped blogging until earlier this week.

If you look at my other blog, you can easily see that I had a lot of energy in the early posts, and then they just stop. In retrospect, that is when I should have returned to the comfort zone to work out the new direction. I write on that blog right up until the time that I articulate exactly what I want to focus on. Then it stops. It stops where most of my students stop their early writing–when it is time to begin research. I did begin my research, but I never wrote about that research. When I didn’t write about any of the research, my process became stymied because writing about my research is part of my process. However, I felt that a more draftish post would “taint” my polished blog. I needed to return to this one and write a few precis, organize a few thoughts, and then return to the writing there for the polished posts. In a pedagogical thought, it’s no different than asking students to write about their research in a blog and presenting their final polished paper in a Word document. At the same time, it’s a world of difference in my mind. Critically Informed is a blog for polished thoughts and ideas on my area of expertise. However, I do not want the blog to be the final stopping point for my writing. I want (and need) to be published. It’s taken me a bit of time to reconcile how I’ll work between drafting (here), presenting information (Critically Informed), and creating solid arguments (published works). This became a bit overwhelming to me last semester, but like the time management and organization advice, it’s time I listen to the advice I give my own students.

I tell my students to write every day–even if what they write doesn’t directly relate to their major assignment. Yet, I have neglected to do that myself. It’s easy enough for me to say I’ll write my brainstorms and research thoughts here, then articulate ideas and information on Critically Informed, and then work toward solid articles or multimodals to have published. But that organization isn’t what’s tripping me up in the long run. I have a tendency to get it in my head that if I’m writing, it must relate to my project. That (as we all know) just isn’t true. To that end, I’ve started the Thoughts Ramblings and Advice category here. I’m not starting a “Dear Abbey” column, but I’m going to use this blog more to clear the clutter in my head as well as do the research related posts and early brainstorm ideas. I’m also going to have to retrain myself to recognize that I don’t have to publish a post every day–but I have to write on a post every day. Eventually, this will build to writing posts and working on published ideas. But one step at a time right now.

Final Thoughts

I’ll keep these brief. I’ve been working on this post for almost 3 days now, and it’s ready to be published. Much like my freshmen, I’m starting to feel like I’m settling in with my academic life. I’ve only really touched on two important lessons I learned last semester, and I know there are many more to come. I am putting these lessons to use this semester already. My hectic schedule is already planned (including specific time each day for writing and research). I’ve condensed all my tasks in one list on Google so they are all visible all the time. However, I’m also downloading Producteev for a trial run this semester. I will let you know how that one works out once I decide. For now, I have a task list to accomplish today and I’m already loosing daylight.

Hello Georgia Southern!

The past two weeks have been quite busy for me, but amazingly productive. I’ve recently taken a job with Georgia Southern University (GSU for short, now) in the Writing and Linguistics department. I’m very excited about this position because, from what I can tell thus far, much of what they are doing is focused around the same pedagogy we used at TWU.  I’ll also get to blend my teaching between standard classrooms and computer classrooms (which I’m thinking is the best way to go after years of grappling with the ADD students often have when always in a computer classroom).

I’m also very excited to be working for a university that’s using Google Apps as part of their standard package for all students and faculty. I’ve used many of the Google features in my everyday life and my personal academic life, but I’ve never had the chance to use these with students. I can’t wait to see how that goes.

Right now, there’s not much to report; classes don’t begin until the 22nd, and I’m just getting into town and settled. But I’m sensing I’ve just found a gold mine for research into collaboration and technology. This is exactly where I wanted to be at this stage after graduation. I’m also thinking that with a military base not too far from the city, I can further my research on veterans (though I have some ideas for the upcoming CCCC presentation that will take SNS use to a new domain for me. More on that later as well).