Results tagged “lecture” from PEDABLOGUE

The slides for my "Teaching and Learning" presentation today on Improv and Teaching are here on google docs:

Whose Class Is It Anyway?

For related topics (including a two-part review of Impro by Keith Johnstone, click the improv tag below.

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 Gregersen at BYU, called "How Do Innovators Think?" [available at Harvard Business Publishing's neat "Creativity at Work" page, which is worth a look-see], Jessica Stillman isolates (and explains) these five "mental habits":

* Associating * Questioning * Observing * Experimenting * Networking

The researches suggest 'questioning' is really the engine that drives all of the above, yet "questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others."

In my classes, I have been a big advocate for question-generation -- it is the trigger behind all "inquiry" -- creative and scholarly -- and it protects the teacher from doing all the thinking for the student (without thinking, no learning!). I run students through an activity I call 'question-storming'; I often give them prompts for writing that encourage them to raise their own questions-at-issue; I'll play devil's advocate to challenge them to question their own assumptions; etc.

When a writer approaches the blank page "questioning" rather than feeling as though they need to be the "authority" they are open to making discoveries through writing...and they never have block.

What would I add to the list? LISTENING.

By which I mean "Active Listening".

Although 'listening' (like 'reading') is related to 'observing', I don't think people think of 'listening' as a skill that leads to innovation and creativity. They think of it as a passive act, which it is not. Part of this assumption of passivity comes from the education system: we sit in desks our whole lives, listening, listening, listening...more than doing, creating, innovating. The invisible work of learning happens in our heads, if we are self-disciplined enough to pay attention and listen actively. But that skill is rarely cultivated or directly taught.

LISTENING is crucial to mastering the art of concentration, but it also factors into creativity. As a creative writer, I could never write dialogue if I didn't listen closely to how people actually speak -- and not just listening to the words, but also to the musicality of it. If I did not listen intensely I could not know what it means to be a reader, who mentally 'listens' to the author's voice as they read. Listening enables emulation and imitative learning, as well: when we listen, we see how others raise questions and discover the pathways available to us in an attempt to answer them. When we listen to an audience, we can test our own answers to questions by getting responses. So listening is a feedback loop into questioning. Listening fuels creativity. Not all creativity springs out from within us; sometimes it pools and settles in, before feeding into the outward flow.

If your teaching is in a rut, or if you want to try to do something innovative in your classroom to solve problems or enable excitement in the room, try listening to your students. You might learn something.

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 from leading universities, on top of campus tours and other features of that nature.

Unlike YouTube proper, which will accept content from any subscriber, from what I gather, educational sites from MIT to the Culinary Institute of America are providing the content in an "open source" way that gives them a "channel" in the collective, allowing them to not only share information but to some degree expose viewers to their identity as a sort of advertisement. When you click the "apply now" link at the bottom of the page, you get an application for institutional membership, with a stipulation that reads:

We request only one channel per institution that encompasses the entire campus, and you must have authority to open a channel on the institution's behalf. If you are a school, department, or educator within the institution, please coordinate with the proper department on campus - typically Public Affairs or Academic Technology.

Thus, while it is still "open source," there is still the brand identity of the academic institution at work which -- ostensibly -- will filter the content on the user side of the equation. This has pros and cons, and one has to wonder how much production value and censorship comes into play. I think this benefits larger, well-funded colleges who have a procedural apparatus in place for providing such content... ergo, the preponderance of lectures on YouTube EDU currently seem to be Ivy League colleges of high reputation (seeking pertinence in the digital age) and trade colleges the likes of which you might see advertised often on television.

Indeed, with the increasing boundary-loss between streaming online video and the television set -- aided by the rise of devices like the AppleTV, Roku Player, and XBox -- it seems sensible for academia to take seriously the potential of investing in video sharing.

Readers at the Open Culture Blog are recommending academicearth.org -- which LifeHacker compares to Hulu -- as a stronger alternative. I can see why, at first blush: it organizes material by subject right from the front page, seeming to be curriculum-centered rather than institution-centered. The videos seem to be high quality, and often offer transcripts and other material that make the vids seem much more "course" like. Moreover, the rating system is organized by instructor so that you can quickly jump to those who browsers feel are the best at delivering the content, rather than just (as in youtube edu) those videos that are given a generic "star" rating on who know's what criterion.

Another issue on YouTube EDU's format is the "comments" feature, which like any good weblog allows users to provide feedback. As I give a glancing look at various videos, I see comments that are littered with obscenities and smart aleck jokes, as if they were notes passed between virtual slackers and class clowns sitting in the back row. AcademicEarth, on the other hand, allows embedding of videos which would encourage users to post comments on their own sites, instead. (Of course YouTube EDU allows embeds as well).

The value of YouTube EDU, of course, would be greater visibility in google search and youtube search results. This, sadly, is the monolithic aim of far too much online content, but this is the way the cookie crumbles in the attention economy. Since most students would probably tend to search google long before they ever stumbled upon AcademicEarth, the site bears serious consideration for academic institutions.

There are uses I'd like to see sites like these put to: more academic debates, more streams of events that feature students as much as star lecturers, more faculty/research profiles or interviews.... perhaps we will see growth in this kind of material soon.

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 the course into the equivalent of two sections in one, and that means I'll have to employ more large classroom strategies and probably a bit more lecturing than I've done for awhile. I always worry that discussion will suffer in a large class, but I make up for it in group activities. And, luckily, the room they've moved me to has a great "smart podium" with an ELMO document projector in it, so my plan is to use this technology often.

Today I returned to a Pedablogue entry on Tickling the Elmo from way back in 2006. I'm reminded of how useful the document camera really is when teaching a large class and I hope to continue to use it in crafty ways. Last year I remember doing all sorts of fun things with it, from having my writing class interpret their textbook's cover graphics to working with graphic fiction as a writing prompt to projecting a student's laptop screen. My classes edited many of each other's essays on the screen, collaboratively workshopping and line editing the text. But even when it's use is somewhat frivolous, the ELMO can engage students. Turning to an illustration in a textbook and zooming in on a small detail can get students to look at things they take for granted more closely. One day I just put the contents of my pockets on display, as a placeholder (I often try to put something up on the wall as a "screen saver" so I'll have the projector on and ready for when I actually want to break out of an activity or lecture to project a document). A mini-discussion about the "germ killing" claims of my gum pack led to a conversation about "weasel words" -- which is something we later studied in the class. I also often had students use it to perform "show and tell" sorts of presentations. I fondly recall an activity in my Fiction Writing course, when I had workshop groups collaboratively choose the most descriptive passage from each other's stories, and then draw them on a sheet of paper. They then voted on the best, and the artist of it showed off their drawing while they read the passage. We analyzed them for how well they employed language to appeal to the reader's senses, and discussed whether the image in our minds matched what the artist had drawn.

Today I found eMints' collection of links, Teaching Tips: Classroom Use of ELMO Document Cameras and it led me to some good resources. One in particular, Tim Bedley's "Classroom Uses for a Document Camera: The Visual Learner in the Elementary School Classroom" lists all sorts of great ideas for teachers of young people that I hope to port into my new class this term. I like the notion of projecting a "backdrop" onto the screen that functions like a stage set (which students design)! There's also a tip for projecting blank ruled paper onto a whiteboard, to work as guidelines for students to practice blackboard penmanship. Interesting! What other ways could guidelines and backdrop shapes be used? I'll keep thinking about it.

Bedley also had the idea to use the projector as a giant timepiece:

Use the document camera to project a countdown timer. Sure you can buy an overhead timer for about $40. But when you have a document camera, the old kitchen timer works just fine. Use it to keep the kids focused on the task, knowing that the clock is ticking, and they will soon be out of time for that assignment.

I often have to set time limits on in-class writing, and brashly end up reciting the countdown ('ten. nine. eight...stop!'); this tip alone gave me a new way to approach the timing of activities. I'll likely set up the stopwatch on my PDA and zoom in on the spinning digits.

One plan on my syllabus that I'm looking forward to doing is asking students to make a "Literary Collage" -- a cut-and-paste exercise that I want them to use to encapsulate the field of English visually -- and have them present these using the ELMO. I might also bring the practice of mind-mapping back into my classroom on a more regular basis.

Mrs. Levin's Pre-K Pages has a number of tips for the early childhood classroom which might be modified to any classroom, with creativity. Her notion of "word walls" and projecting the "question of the day" are great ideas. Even just keeping a class outline on the screen while the hour passes is a good idea to help as a visual organizer for presentations and would prompt student notetaking.

See the entries tagged 'elmo' (below) for more on this topic, or share your own unique approaches in a comment.

Sir Ken Robinson's lecture, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" (Technology, Education, Design Summit, 2006) is an inspiring 20 minute lecture on the goals of education.

"Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. They're not afraid of being wrong... If you're not prepared to be wrong you'll never come up with anything original. By the time they are adults, kids have lost that capacity. They have become afraid of being wrong. [But as they grow up in the classroom and the workplace] we stigmatize mistakes. We are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make...the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Why is this?"

Here's the video (with apologies for the BMW commercials):

Robinson's home page itself is very creative and includes information about his writing on creativity and the arts in education, including a link to his article, "How Creativity, Education and the Arts Shape the Modern Economy" (pdf).

I was browsing through a list of open source academic journals on the web this morning and found Critical Studies in Improvisation -- a journal of music and performance theory, mostly -- whose latest issue [Vol 3, No 2 (2007)] is a Special Issue on Improvisation and Pedagogy.

Having studied Keith Johnstone's book, Impro, as a source for ideas in the teaching of writing, I found it a worthwhile follow-up. Teaching is always improvised, to some degree, but what these writers focus on is how improvisation in the classroom generates learning.

Of particular interest to me was R. Keith Sawyer's essay on "Improvisation and Teaching" which draws on cognitive learning scholarship to define the skills of "expertise":

1) Deep conceptual understanding. Experts haven’t simply memorized a large repertory of facts. Of course they know a lot of facts, but in the expert’s mind, those facts are embedded in complex conceptual frameworks. Experts understand the mechanisms underlying phenomena and are able to explain surface features in terms of underlying mechanisms and conceptual structures.

(2) Integrated knowledge. Each piece of knowledge is highly interconnected with all of the other pieces of knowledge. Expertise does not result from possessing distinct compartmentalized knowledge; everything known is related in an integrated framework.

(3) Adaptive expertise. Experts have mastered a large range of standard procedures and solutions. When first encountering a new problem, they typically will quickly recall a variety of similar problems they’ve encountered in the past, and they will begin by considering one of the solutions that has worked in the past. But experts do not simply apply these memorized procedures in rote fashion; they are able to flexibly modify the routines they’ve mastered or to combine elements of distinct routines as is appropriate to the new problem.

(4) Collaborative skills. Experts work together with other experts in teams and in complex organizational structures. Unlike the hierarchical corporation of old, where everyone’s job description was quite specific, the boundaries between each team member are fluid, and many tasks require the simultaneous and joint contributions of multiple experts to be successfully accomplished.

Sawyer draws specific connections between these skill sets and the needs of the improvisational musician, but argues that too often, the Industrial age classroom model (chairs lined up in rows, teacher-centered lectures, "banking model" frameworks etc.) inhibits -- and even prohibits -- these skills from fomenting. Such outdated models, moreover, are inappropriate for contemporary culture, which "requires a new learning environment" that is project-based, inquiry-based, or problem-based. "These new learning environments are unified by their improvisational nature—they place students in loosely structured environments, where they work together in a relatively unstructured, improvisational fashion."

One of the reasons this article spoke to me was because I recenty saw a news report on MSNBC that revealed new studies in the brain function of jazz performers, in which scientists have musicians play keyboards while inside an MRI machine. They hope to unravel the "secrets of creativity," and so far their findings suggest that the brain of a creative artist in action, performing live, functions in the same way as a dreaming brain does. This does not come as a surprise to me at all, but I think it is important to recognize the way that irrationality and the unconscious always play roles in the overly rational space of the college classroom, and that what we sometimes see as nonsense is often the most productive classroom experience.

As I prepare to teach some graduate learning modules in the Writing Popular Fiction program later this month, this article reminds me to keep the environment improvisational and not to over-plan the courses into dull singalongs. I think I often have approached teaching in an improvisational way, creating an open and collaborative learning environment, but I tend to think of the literary texts or student writing that we employ as "composition" -- that is, like sheet music. But, no, perhaps the texts are the instruments themselves in the student hands, not a set of directions. Learning occurs when that texts are processed, following student comments and discussions that riff off one another. The teacher can conduct, or perhaps better yet, play along. In the cacophony of student group work and open class discussion, an outsider might hear chaos -- but I need to remember that that's what learning sounds like, as I try to assist students toward a sense of knowledge mastery and expertise.

...one question we might ask is: "Do we always know when we are teaching?" I do not think we do. The single most important thing I learned as an undergraduate may have been that I was capable of graduate study. I learned this from a professor who had no idea he taught it to me. Brief remarks that seem innocuous to us may have a lasting impact on our students. Hopefully, the influence is positive. I do not mean to give us more importance or power as teachers than we actually possess. However, a different but equally significant error may be to ignore the potential impact we can have at moments when we are least aware of what we are saying. -- Peter J. Giordano, Teaching and Learning When We Least Expect It

I had a similar experience, when an American Literature teacher named Beth Ann Bassein answered one of my annoying questions by saying, "Oh, you'll learn all about that when you get your Masters." It floored me. She just continued on in her lectures, not missing a beat. I barely even knew what graduate school was, let alone felt I'd be able to get into one, and here this professor was, assuming I would get my master's degree...heck, she didn't even bother trying to talk me into it! Beth Ann Bassein taught me many things when I took her classes, especially her poetry writing courses (because she's a knockout poet herself), but she was one of the toughest teachers on campus and that one passing comment -- with all its unexpected acceptance and faith in my ability -- alone gave me courage to try. (I had another moment like this when, during my Masters, a Medieval lit professor wrote in the margins of a critical essay: "Oh, shut up and go get your PhD already!") These little para-educational things mean nothing -- and yet they mean everything.

So what a wonderful essay Giordano's "Teaching and Learning When We Least Expect It" is. He reminds us that we are not always in control, that learning often happens between the cracks of the syllabus, and that what we say and do informally with (or around) our students can often teach them far more than we realize.

In his essay, he raises a very pithy question: "Do we always know when we are teaching?" And the answer is, of course not. All we really have is faith and speculation and a whole lot of intuition. Sure, good teaching is mentored, learned, and practiced, grounded in deep, lifelong study and professional development. It's based in what people call "best practices"...but I think we often draw on our unconscious well when we are teaching -- modeling our strategies and challenges off of how we ourselves learned best, and refining our techniques and personal style in a series of never-ending encores of successful teaching strategies we've employed in the past. New teachers really do make it up as they go along -- and might be surprised to learn that older teachers (usually the ones who are still engaged and excited about teaching) are making it up even still.

One of the joys of teaching, for me, is coming up with a really good discussion question off the cuff, or dreaming up an impromptu writing prompt, and watching what happens when students get inspired by it. It's magic. I'll sometimes run back to my office and make sure I write down what I did, so I'll remember to do it again in the future. But sometimes we'll run a really great exercise or discussion prompt one year and it'll come as a surprise to us just how good it can be, but when we repeat it the following year, it doesn't click and we wonder what we did wrong. The idea is only half of it; it's the fuel -- but the classroom dynamic provide the fire.

Giordano mulls over metaphors for teaching, and how none of them are quite right, though "midwife" comes closest. I like his idea that teachers need to be "good company" to students. We have to let go of control fantasies for that to happen. Giordano's essay reminded me of the basic principle of learning: it can happen any time. The best thing a teacher can do is try to create an environment where there's lots of flint that might spark fire. But it's up to the student -- and an infinite number of variables beyond anyone's control -- to strike it.

I think it's crucially important to remember these lessons during times of (what Carolyn Segal has termed) Assessmentdelirium.

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I found this article on a site I often mention here on Pedablogue: the Tomorrow's Professor mailing list run by Rick Reis out of the Standford CTL program. Their mailing list is worth subscribing to. I'm currently researching "Transormation Theory" for a pedagogy paper I'm delivering next weekend at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, and I found Giordano's essay very useful.

"Half my job is asking questions of those who can’t generate questions, in order to model the will to curiosity." -- from "Creative Writers in the Academy," by Orante Churm

Churm got me musing over this great line in his otherwise provocatively subversive essay. As a creative writing instructor, I see my role as very similar to Churm's, particularly when it comes to raising questions, because this is at the core of creative writing, literary interpretation and, well, all forms of critical inquiry. When I teach using the "permeable lecture" method, I am modelling this will to curiosity.

A short while ago, I was asked to guest blog about "critical reading" for author (and SHU WPF alum) Kaye Dacus' weblog. In response, I wrote a short article called "Questionstorming" that looks at the sort of questions that writers should ask when they read a story -- but mostly, I assert, they should ask the question why:

Every drop of ink that you see on a page is a choice that a writer has made. That choice has a motive. A reason. A rationale. Thus, critical reading is — at its base — a search for that reason. It simply involves ASKING THE QUESTION WHY.

What Churm calls "the will to curiosity" is often not merely a desire to raise this question, but also the courage to find the answers, no matter how much work it might require, how complex those answers might be, how radically life-altering they might be.

Why ask why? Because there's a thrill in the risk, and a satisfaction in knowing that you've moved one step closer -- but never all the way -- toward the cliff-sharp edge of the truth.

During my sabbatical, I had the opportunity to be a guest writer for a weekend at the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop -- an outstanding workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror literature, run each summer out of St. Anselm college in New Hampshire (a place you may recognize from the recent presidential primaries) by my former editor from Dell Books, Jeanne Cavelos.

Today, Odyssey posted their latest podcast: a recording of my guest lecture on "Humor in Fantasy Writing" from July 2007. Here's the full description of the event from their site:

Michael A. Arnzen was a guest lecturer at Odyssey 2007. Michael led the class in a wild exercise that revealed some of the qualities that make us laugh and discussed the fascinating connections between humor and horror. In this fun and illuminating podcast, Mike explores the characteristics of humor. What qualities are necessary for humor? When is the weird and gross funny? Mike reads his amazing story "Domestic Fowl" and discusses how you can develop a comic perspective, how to be funny without trying, and how to make humor arise organically out of your story. How is a funny story different than a joke? What joys does comedy provide the reader?

You can download this lecture on the Odyssey Podcast page, or even subscribe to all the Odyssey lecture podcasts on iTunes.

If any of your students is (or if you yourself are) a writer of fantasy stories, horrific tales, or science fiction odysseys, you ought to consider the Odyssey workshop. We get a number of Odyssey graduates in our Master's program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill, so I can attest that it is not only a well-run and fun program, but that it also produces great writers who are very savvy about the genre and publishing.
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I'll no doubt be writing a lot about horror genre writing workshops this term, since I'm running an undergrad course in Horror & Suspense this term. See also my horror writing blog, The Goreletter, for a post on this, Odyssey, and other Horror Writing Courses & Academics in 2008.

At Seton Hill University, our "smart classrooms" are equipped with these wonderful document projectors, called ELMOs. "ELMO" is the name of the company that makes these "visual presenters," but on our campus we use the term affectionately as a pet name for these two armed wonders. They work by using a digital camera instead of a mirrored lens like the usual overhead projector -- ELMO projects anything a camera would: documents, book pages, photographs, and even 3D objects that you place under the lens onto the big screen. They're GREAT!

Like most of the faculty on my campus, I typically just use the ELMO as an overhead projector to show handouts, but without having to go through the trouble of making a transparency, since it will project anything you put on it. In my mind, it's even easier to operate than a PowerPoint presentation, and I'll sometimes print out a quick outline for any lecture or class plan (in large font) and just project it, moving as we go through the class outline, keeping the hour organized. But I also like to experiment with the ELMO and see what other things it is capable of doing. After all, people's eyes are naturally drawn to a big screen spectacle and there is a way to tap into this for educational purposes and to reach out to visual learners. These devices are fantastic for visual aids, but I haven't seen professors using them very creatively, let alone with much expertise. It's something worth taking advantage of to not only project information, but to put into action to keep a class' attention (without, of course, using it as a DISTRACTION).

The ELMO (and I really should be calling it the HV-5000XG, since that's the model we're using) can zoom in, zoom out, auto-focus, and more, by pressing buttons on the "stage" at the base. The "stage" can be backlit from underneath or use the two large arms to cast light on the front of the page. But tonight I decided -- after four years of using it -- to actually read the technical manual (online pdf). And though there are some buttons on the machine that I've never used, I was surprised to learn it can do even more than I imagined.

For example, there's apparently a remote control for adjusting the focus and so forth, hidden in a compartment on the stage. So I can walk around the room and zoom in on something if I need to (though the infrared sensor might be shielded by the lecturn). I notice quite often that lecturers will neglect to "enlarge" whatever it is they're projecting, but one should remember to zoom in so that one line of text on the handout will occupy the entire width of the screen and make it easier to read. Students really appreciate this, even though you sacrifice height for width (i.e., you won't be able to see the whole paragraph or passage of text -- or the whole outline...but paper can be slid up and down to accommodate this as you need it). I like to try to use the frame of the screen to both focus and block out things as I go; sometimes the mystery of what's still to come as we make our way through an overhead keeps students alert and taking notes.

I also learned that the lens on the camera can pop off and reveal another lens inside the camera. That means that what we're using as the default lens is actually a secondary "close-up" lens! I had no idea. But I have often played around with the camera by swiveling the camera head around to project the class itself up on the screen (among other things), and now I know how to make the image less fuzzy. There's also an "iris" function on the remote, which might be useful for my film class, when I teach the idea of the "iris" and also might make for some interesting transitions (since we have a switch to turn from the ELMO to a computer monitor and back again). The ELMO has an option to include a small LCD monitor (which we don't have equipped on ours and I wish we did...so I wouldn't have to turn to look at the screen behind me everytime I use it)...perhaps I could use a laptop or the computer monitor in its stay?

The fact is, because the ELMO is a digital capturing device, with enough ingenuity (and the right cables), one could use it as a camcorder or still capture camera for a variety of pedagogical reasons. One could point it at huge maps on the wall and thereby project them onto the screen to make them even larger, or one could zoom in to, say, one region to expand it so everyone can see it from a distance. Or lectures and student speeches in large lecture halls could be simultaneously "shot" and projected onto the larger theater screen, concert style. Student exhibits, speeches, and more could possibly even be recorded using the ELMO and a cable routed back to the computer or a laptop. I'm wondering if my PDA could work with it somehow. Indeed, now that I've read the manual, I see that there are numerous types of connections that could be made on the fly.

I do like to tickle the ELMO. I will often, as I said above, twist the camera head to point at the students en masse, showing them what the class looks like from my perspective. When I'm not directly talking about a handout, but want to keep the ELMO warmed up for when I will, I put objects that are interesting to look at on the stage. A bottle of water, shot from above, makes an interesting spiral pattern. An extreme closeup of a small element of the textbook cover reveals a nuance previously ignored. It's handy to have artwork or a comic at the ready for filler. But anything will do. If I'm showing a film later in class, I project the DVD cover on the wall, or a still from the movie (or image from the textbook) that I want to analyze. Sometimes I'll put objects in motion, lifting them off the stage and bringing them closer to the camera lens, creating my own zoom effect without relying on the awkward push-button technology.

Any document editing can be shown well using an Elmo, so it's a great device for a writing classroom. I'll often have students walk the class through their writing intentions using these devices on their manuscripts -- or we'll workshop a piece as a class and collaboratively edit it by hand that way. It can be used for off-the-cuff show-and-tell, too -- in poetry class, for example, I'll often show "concrete poetry" that isn't in our book using the device, so students can analyze the shape in addition to the words themselves. I could imagine a biology teacher using it to show how to dissect a real frog live, or a sign language teacher using it to project images of hand signals.

When I project using the ELMO, I sometimes get self-conscious because my hands are projected as uncanny looking body parts onto the screen. I notice the dirt under a fingernail, the odd coloration of my skintone through the projector, the inkstains on my thumb. So I might use a pen or some other device as a pointer, or use a laser pointer on the screen.

For more tips on using the ELMO, I refer to Ray Moses' advice for lawyers on how to present evidence in the courtroom using a document camera... (he talks, for example, on how to use a ruler to show scale or what color marker works best for hilighting). More can be found using Google.

Hot on the heels of my posting about how to make lectures more permeable and interactive, Richard Reis' wonderful resource, Tomorrow's Professor, has posted a very helpful essay advocating the use of "Activity Breaks" to enhance and increase class participation.

Since the attention span of almost all students is between 10 and 20 minutes, you can expect to lose most of your students if you lecture for 50 minutes straight. Even professionals fall victim to the "my eyes glaze over" syndrome. Not only do students tune out once that "dead" period is reached, the energy level of the class also flags. The solution might be to structure a 50-minute class something like this: a mini-lecture including an introduction, an activity break, a second mini-lecture, an activity break and finally a third mini-lecture, including a wrap-up. The mini-lectures contain an introduction, a body and a closing, similar to a straight lecture except they are shorter.

Great advice! Using mini-lecture methods to "bookend" an activity is a great way to think about how to structure a class. I often intuitively do this in writing classes, but I'm going to try to more actively apply this method to my content-based courses in literature, as well.

Breaks -- whether for activities or just to break up a multi-hour course -- are imperative, I think. Even plays have intermissions. Sometimes I'll ask students to do something clever during a break and give them a longer break to accomplish it (like in my poetry classes, I'll say -- "take your break outdoors today, and write down every smell you encounter" -- or "go write a poem that describes a 'secret place' you find on campus, but don't mention it by name; then come back to class and read your poem and we'll see if we can guess where it is"). Students really get a charge out of the change of pace and the moment of "escape" from not only the classroom but the monotony of routine.

And by a "charge" I don't just mean having fun. Let's call it a learning "recharge" instead.

I subscribe to the Tomorrow's Professor newsletter; now they are delivering in BLOG FORMAT! I highly recommend it.

In one of my classes this morning, I caught one student repeatedly turning to another and talking. I couldn't tell what they were talking about -- the weekend? the weather? or was it related to my discussion point? -- but I interrupted anyway, as I usually do, to remind the student that if they're going to speak, they should speak to the whole class.

It turned out she was answering questions that the woman beside her had asked about some terminology I was using.

I thanked her for helping, but suggested that the student could have just as easily raised her hand and asked me to clarify.

I notice this sort of sideline commentary behavior a lot. Not because I'm using strange jargon, but -- I'd speculate -- because college students often are either "too polite" to interrupt the lecture, or "too embarrassed" to expose their lack of understanding to their classmates. But what they don't realize is that there's a degree to which such sideline comments not only interrupt the focus of the conversation with distracting sounds (people turn to see what they're talking about, etc.), but that it also takes TWO students away from the focus rather than just one. I'm pretty hard-headed about this -- if I'm pursuing an idea, I want to make sure that everyone stays with me, and I also want to make sure that everyone understands it. Sometimes one student might misinform the other.

But there is something else lurking behind today's event. Our class has had a series of open class discussions -- several, in fact, led by student presentations -- so the students in question may not have realized that I thought I was lecturing. There was a shift in mode from student-centered to teacher-centered delivery that I assumed was obvious, but it wasn't as self-evident as I'd assumed. I neglected to "signpost" that I was going to take center stage.

I've been reflecting on my approach to the lecture and the ways in which I try to retain focus on the ideas while at the same time keeping the conversation open for dialogue, dissent, exploration and other forms of interactive discourse with the students. My lecturing style is very porous; I expect interruptions and sideline discussions. And I will ask questions that aren't only hypotheticals, but also solicit answers to them. And I will always try to get students to argue with me or test examples that I toss out -- often playing devil's advocate -- primarily in order to catalyze active learning and critical thinking rather than the rote taking of notes.

This often takes a lot of energy and concentration. In his weblog, my colleague Dennis Jerz speculates about the relative energy it takes to lecture about literature (versus leading a discussion of a text)...a lesson culled from an experience of teaching a class while feeling under the weather. His contention is that it requires less energy to lecture than to facilitate a discussion -- and this puzzled me, because I didn't see how they were really so different. An hour's worth of teaching is an hour's worth of teaching, no? But then I realized what he was raising an inquiry into the performative activity of the teacher and the amount of energy it takes to pull off a successful performance. One way to think of the lecture, in conventional terms, is that lecturing is to running discussion as monologue is to dialogue. Jerz's revelation is that dialogue can be tougher than monologue, even though the "weight" of the conversation is ostensibly evenly distributed in a discussion. Monologues can be prepared and don't require much "off the cuff" processing even if the onus of the communication is on the teacher, whereas a dialogue requires spontaneity, impassioned interest, quick thinking on the feet, and a vim for interpersonal exchange.

Understandably, when a teacher is ill, as Jerz was, it's hard to drum up that vim. Personally, if I'm really ill, I'll quickly move some of the "work" into group tasks to give myself a little recuperative break. The students usually are understanding in this regard.

But I'm still trying to figure out if I, personally, would feel any difference in the energy required to run a discussion as opposed to a lecture. I tend to approach virtually all of my lectures as a form of dialogue to begin with, even when addressing a large crowd in a formal setting. Perhaps this is because I teach English courses, where interpretation of a text is usually open to dispute, and where I solicit multiple viewpoints in order to enhance collaborative learning. Or maybe I do this because I fear boring an audience. But if pushed to define the difference in my own methods, I would probably say that I define a discussion as student-centered process of discovery from the bottom-up, whereas a lecture is a content-centered discussion of material the teacher delivers from the top-down. From my view, neither is a monologue. What I'm saying is that, pedagogically, both are interactive processes, with different levels of "call and response" activity and numerous dialogic demands that attempt to reach people with different learning intelligences (such as visual, auditory, etc.). So even when I prepare what might amount to a "speech" to present to the class, I think of my lectures as open discussions to some degree. If they're not, I see students eyes get droopy, and it troubles me. So I try to keep them on their toes. I may be authoritative, but I will often declaim being the sole authority, citing not only the sources I'm drawing on but also student work from the past or student comments in the now.

Let's call this approach the "permeable lecture": one that is pre-organized to cover certain information that the teacher knows is essential to deliver, but which is at the same time open to interruption, dialogue, debate, questions, and micro-conversations. Order that makes room for chaos. The teacher is still center-stage, but the students are solicited to participate as fully as possible; it is not only the expectation that they remain attentive listeners, but that they also genuinely prove it. I suspect all teachers are open to interactive discussion, but I bet such interactivity is usually reserved for Q&A time after the lecture is over. However, there's always a degree to which lecturing can be receptive to discussion during its delivery, and it can even foment a collaborative process of "working" the ideas together in a decentered way.

Although the techniques that follow are probably nothing new to you, here are some strategies I personally use to try to keep my lectures permeable (if possible -- granted, not all content should be open to dispute or philosophical musing, but it's preferable to groom interest in the audience, rather than ignore disinterest). The trick to the "permeable" lecture is to keep the potential for chaos, diversions, and other interruptions at a minimum, while still keeping the conversation "on task":

• I'll put an outline of my lecture on the board, usually before class begins, and leave it there for the entire hour. This keeps us all on track. Maybe just three bullet points is enough. Students will usually write these down, and then fill in notes during the discussion. I might model this by also taking notes and putting the key words or concepts that I would expect them to know (for, say, a test) on the board, as well. If we don't get to the latter points on the board, this is a visible reminder that the lecture isn't over yet, and we'll get to it next time. Or I'll think on my feet and generate an assignment about those points for homework.
  
• Alternatively, I'll prepare an overhead that uses questions rather than "talking points" and ask audience to answer the questions. This method generates lots of interest. Then, after the answers have been exhausted, I'll reveal parts of the overhead that I've covered up which have my prepared answers on them. If there are any subpoints that haven't been addressed yet, I'll give a mini-lecture on those. Having the overhead shows that my lecture is prepared, but also open to student contributions to the issues that the questions raise. Sometimes I'll write their answers on the overhead alongside my own. [Alternatively, I've used handouts of outlines with very large blank spaces or columns to invite students to put their notes in the margins or fill out the form as I lecture.]
  
• I will physically point at the bullet points on the board and use "tugging" hand gestures to remind students to draw the connections between their points and mine. The idea is to keep coming back to the lecture, keep on track, allow the rest of the class to keep focused on the issue at hand.
  
• I try to remember to ask for questions routinely after each main idea that I have to communicate, not just at the end of the hour. But I also will pause midway through a "talking point" to raise my own questions. This approach does not just espouse the Socratic method. I'll actually call on students who might seem to be drifting off and see what they think about what I'm saying, as I'm saying it. If they've been daydreaming, I'll even give them the chance to recalibrate their attentiveness by restating a point I've just made, but I still demand that they answer the question. I want them to test my ideas, to think of them as claims or hypotheses rather than simply authoritative truth passed down from the oracle. The burden of teaching is on me, but the burden of learning is always on them.
  
• Naturally, knowing you could be called on at any time to answer a question can keep you attentive. But some students get caught off guard or, otherwise, genuinely aren't sure how to respond. My students are perfectly free to say "I don't know," and I'll assume that I haven't worded my question well, so I'll rephrase it and give them a second chance. Or I'll ask if others do know and wait for the hands to pop up.
  
• If someone blurts out something highly irrelevant, I either ignore it, laugh it aside (if it's a wisecrack), or, in a humorous way, actually say "irrelevant!" using a faux European accent. If it's a joke that tries to disrupt the class, I might start asking that student hard questions, maybe even work with the material of the joke itself, if I can directly push the student to connect it to the content of my lecture.
  
• I will use student names in hypothetical examples or imaginary test cases. ("Let's say Charlie is on a dinner date with Jane...... is it sexist for Charlie to pay the check without asking if she'd like to split it?"). I'll also often use second person plural to discuss topics, while making direct eye contact with student after student. ("When you pay for the check, what are you communicating about gender relations? When you let the other person pay, what are you assenting to, passively?"). Then I'll pause. Sometimes students will think I've asked a direct question rather than a hypothetical. That's okay. That means they're actually playing out the line of thought. If they answer the hypothetical example in a "real" way, I'll work with them on their turns, but get back to the point at hand as soon as I'm able.
  
• If students raise their hands while I'm speaking, I will call on them. If I have to get through my point and can't sacrifice the time to enter into dialogue, I will either ask them to "hold that thought" for later, or give a subtle, "I see you but we don't have time for it," non-verbal gesture (perhaps a subtle head shake or a hand signal that signs "put it down"). When I finish my point, I'll ask "Did that answer your question, Horatio?"
  
• I pay attention to student habits in my classroom. If a student has always been argumentative about every point raised in previous discussions, or if their comments are often superficial or ego-centric, I will be less likely to invite his or her comments during a lecture; if a student rarely volunteers a conversation point but they want to do so during lecture, I'll leap at the chance to get them to participate.
  
• In a class that is usually discussion oriented and highly student-centered, students sometimes are slow to recognize that I'm lecturing, not facilitating open conversation. So I use subtle non-verbal claims for "the floor" when lecturing, so that students know that this isn't a WIDE open discussion. I might dress more formally, use the podium more stiffly, adopt all the cues of the presentational mode of speech delivery. Sometimes I'll use direct "recentering" language like "listen up" or "okay, let's begin."
  

These techniques don't always come into play at once. The circumstance determines the approach. But I do try to keep the class student-oriented, even when it is teacher-centered. Although some lectures demand less permeability than others, I often prefer the open lecture style to the closed lecture style -- because the more invested I am in my listener's attentiveness, the more they're invested in the topic at hand. Plus it gives me a way to gauge their level of knowledge about the topic at hand and adjust to take it up or down a notch, or, for instance, to apply a different element of Bloom's taxonomy to the matter at hand.

For the past -- what? -- seven years or so, I've been spoiled. Virtually all my classes have been either hour-and-a-halfers (i.e., a "Tuesday/Thursday" schedule) or 3 hour night classes. But this term I've got a pair of one hour (Mon/Wed/Fri) writing classes. Make that 50 minutes each, with 10 shaved off so folks can make it across campus from one class to the next.

It's common, really. I've taught one hour courses before. But this term, I'm really feeling the difference. Part of my problem is that the classes I'm teaching were all originally designed for 1.5 hour meetings, and these are redesigned calendars covering the same amount of material. I may not have planned well for the shorter hours. But that's not entirely responsible for the difference. As a teacher used to having a good 80 minutes to work with, a period with enough elbow room to pursue student questions and comments in depth, the time now zips by in the proverbial blink of an eye.

Everything's rushed. Take roll. Get everyone on topic. Move chairs, if necessary. Stick to the plan. Begrudgingly cut people off or close a conversation to move forward -- or table a point until the next meeting (and mourn whatever I'll have to sacrifice to accommodate it). Scramble to cover things they need to know for homework. Return papers as quick as I can before the next teacher comes in the room weilding a machete.

I firmly believe it is impossible to have a satisfying class discussion in 50 mins, let alone to fit in a group assignment and/or mini-lecture. In one class -- an upper division writing workshop -- we barely have enough time to discuss the assigned reading before we start critiquing manuscripts. In another class, freshman comp, the students like to talk...a LOT...and because it's a class in critical thinking as much as writing, I encourage open dialogue. But we veer chaotically off-topic quite a bit, because of competing desires for the floor.

We're meeting course objectives, sure, but it feels like we're only touching them with the very tiny tip of our fingers before people start packing their books and moving toward the door.

I'm trying to be proactive about this. Time management needs to become a bigger concern. I'm going to start crunching the one hour class. Here's some things I'm trying or considering:

• pass around a sheet for roll, so I don't chew up time ticking off names
  
• alternatively use roll call taking to have every student answer a question that's on the class topic for the day
  
• use a student to distribute handouts while I lecture/facilitate discussion
  
• use group work to allow more students to discuss while taking up less time
  
• embrace student-centeredness even more than I already do; less me time, more them time
  
• starting right on the top of the hour with an exercise that quickly gets us on track, like a one paragraph writing exercise
  
• dedicating the last five minutes of class to having students do a writing exercise or get a head start on the assigned homework...and using that time to return papers or jot down notes on what we need to do next time while they write
  
• enforce hand-raising during full class, open discussions
  
• look forward on the calendar to see if there's anything I can move out of the classroom and into homework or to drop altogether
  
• spend less time giving directions by distributing printed guidelines and asking students to read them for homework (and to come to class with questions next period)
  
• minimize transitional time-wasters, like pushing desks into a circle. I will still have a circle, but one technique I'll try is to arrive to class early and invite students to set it up before the period actually begins.
  
• show up early and put directive material on the board at the beginning of the hour; make the class outline "visible" and the homework assignment unecessary to speak aloud
  
• try to free up a few class periods for looser discussion so we can catch our breath and do some reflecting (i.e., possibly screen a film outside of class instead of in it; possibly assign peer editing outside of class as homework)
  
• rethink and reprioritize the reading selections with an eye toward cutting content that can be sacrificed; emphasize depth over breadth; possibly spread one reading out over several periods to allow deep/close reading
  

Well, that's a scattershot list of things I'm trying to do to compress time and maximize the learning that goes on in an hour. But I know that once I get another 1.5 hour class, I'll appreciate the luxury of flexible discussion time all the more.

[Things I'm thinking about in the mean time (and I invite comments). Why do we assume that MWF meetings should mostly consist of 1 hour classes in the first place? I've read that the average attention span is 20 mins... perhaps there is merit in the phrase "less is more"? Does meeting thrice work better at reinforcing course content? How free are teachers to influence the calendar, when the students' lives are organized by so many other extra-curricular elements, from sports to jobs?]

I was invited to give a talk with a colleague's small class yesterday. When I entered the room, I was taken aback by the way the students were seated: all were against the walls, spread around the room. I felt this was bizarre and so I immediately took a seat in the middle and with the encouragement of my colleague, pulled them into a tighter circle so we could talk. But that image of the students -- spread as far away from the lecturn as physically possible -- really struck me as an anomoly.

I'm very conscious of spatial dynamics in the classroom. I don't mind students sitting in the back, but when I lead a conversation, I'll walk the rows and often speak right next to them. I want it to be clear that everyone is expected to participate and pay attention -- often because my classes are highly interactive spaces where participation matters.

Currently I work a very WIDE room for my freshman composition class. I'd estimate it's about four seats deep and ten seats wide. When I lead a standard class discussion, I have to march the length of the room -- from the door to the window at the far end -- and project my voice rather loudly when I'm on one side or the other. But that doesn't bother me. What's troubling is that it spreads the students far apart from each other. It divides them; and there is a sort of "faction" mentality that seems evident to me when debates get hot: one side argues against the other, from the comfortable distance of the double-wide trailer sized room.

You don't have to be a communications theorist to recognize that students tend to territorialize their space in a learning environment. If you teach, you see the same students in the same seats virtually every day -- as though some invisible seating chart were put in place even though you didn't assign it. It's predictable: students sit in the same seat each class, claiming it as their own. Some consciously choose to sit where they can better hear, better see, better learn. Others consciously choose places where they can better hide, better doodle, better sleep. Some have stock preferences -- conscious or not -- that they carry with them throughout their college careers, built long before they ever stake a claim to a chair in the room: the back row slacker, the teacher's pet in the front row, the loner who prefers not to have anyone in a three seat radius. There are myriad motives behind a student's choice of seat (one source (.pdf) even suggests that students sit based on whether they're left- or right-brain dominated). And I think that it's fine to allow students to choose their locations, actually, so that they can find a "home" site where they can feel comfortable in the classroom. It's human nature to return to the same place, time and time again. It reduces the anxiety-producing stimuli that an unfamiliar position can generate. This is, perhaps, why no one likes to have their seat taken (and everyone's heard of students getting into fights, even, about "taking my seat" -- in fact, some might claim specific seats time and again out of a fear of intruding on another student's turf).

But I wanted to mix things up a bit today. I like to try to get students to break out of their habits and to more consciously make choices about their own learning. Calling attention to a student's "situatedenss" can really open their eyes, and I like to use the classroom as a means toward that end. In the past, I've done things like rearrange the desks before the students arrive, or asked everyone to turn their desks around so I could lecture from the opposite wall of the room. This can have a "renewing" effect, sometimes.

Today I tried an experiment to consciously raise the class' awareness of their seating habits and to point out the limitations of the overly "wide" classroom. Borrowing an exercise called "The Dynamics of Sitting" (from John Suler's site for Teaching Clinical Psychology), I reported to the students what their seating preference might suggest about them ("people who sit by the window are daydreamers, like the 'freedom' of having wide-open space next to them (but often pay the price of being far from the door") and asked them to think about the subtle messages that such structures send to their teachers and classmates. Then I asked them to all pick up their books and coats and stand up by the blackboard. I gave them the opportunity to pick a new seat, just to try it out...and stipulated that, a) they could sit wherever they like next time; this wasn't necessarily permanent, and b) that they couldn't sit on the sides of the class (so that the center columns would be filled and I wouldn't have to march the length of the room anymore). It was like playing musical chairs, because many raced to grab the chair they had their eyes on. And when the dust settled, the dynamic instantly shifted: some seemed relieved that they could get a "better" seat, closer to the board or closer to their friends...while others were visibly uncomfortable and even a little upset by the changes. I asked them to talk a little bit about what was different, what was unfamiliar, what was upsetting. Then, sadly, before we really got anywhere, it was time to end class. I recommended they perform an experiment and for a day try to consciously sit in a new chair in each of their classes, just to see what kind of difference it made.

We'll see what happens...whether they'll have interesting conclusions to report about these experiments, or whether they'll choose to go back to their trusty territorialized chairs when we return on Monday. For now, I feel like this broke some students out of a comfort zone that was actually a blockage to open dialogue and I'm hopeful that they've learned something new about their "situatedness" in the classroom. There's an old line that's become something of a mantra for me as a teacher: sometimes you have to take a fish out of water to make it see the water.

I'm going to try to change the seating in my film studies class next week, as well. In that course, which is located in a very large media room, students almost HAVE to sit in the front row if they want to see the subtitles on a foreign film. But inevitably, a large number of them choose to keep their distance (which is odd to me, since half the seats aren't filled). For some students, I think it's hurting their grades. Time to grab another fish by its tail....

A professor drones about chemical compounds in front of a lecture auditorium brimming with students. The kids dutifuly take notes. The hip ones have laptops -- HP Pavillion notebooks. The camera takes turns closing in on different students in the room, dodging the teacher's attention to press a button on their keyboards. Each produces a fantasy that materializes in the room, intercut by shots of the boring lecture: a metal band leaps out on to the desks and surrounds a girl, performing a show for her; elsewhere a boy clicks his mouse a motorcycle bursts into the back door, pops a wheelie, and rides down the stairs; ninjas fight on the lecture room floor. "Everything is Possible" the ad campaign promises.

As you can imagine, as a teacher, I was immediately insulted by this television advertisement. I've seen plenty of commercials that mock the lecture theater, but this one went way over the top in its celebration of the irresponsible student. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the screen: a commercial advocating that students buy a computer so they can tune out the teacher and play games, play music, and watch DVDs. Sure, some students "drift off" into fantasy all the time, and many do use their computers cell phones and pdas for escapism during class. And sometimes the circumstances of a large lecture hall make it all but impossible for a teacher to prevent it. But what troubled me most, I think, was the complete anti-intellectualism of the ad -- and the assumption that computers in the classroom are good only for taking notes at best (and avoiding learning altogether at worst).

Doesn't HP market to educational institutions? Don't they sell at a discount to college labs and in college bookstores? Don't they target the very same profs they're insulting with this ad? Only in the amoral universe of corporate advertising culture can such contradictory messaging make sense.

Ironically, this spot aired while I was watching A&E channel's Investigative Report (inspired by Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Nickle and Dimed), called "Wage Slaves: Not Getting By in America Today". One minute, I'm watching families talk about how they don't know how to buy school clothes for their kids on their minimum wage salaries; the next, I'm watching spoiled 18 year olds watching martial arts films on their $1000 toys, under the pretense of taking notes in a classroom. And I wondered, with just the slightest sense of poetic justice: Are these not the wage slaves of the future?

Just did a google search. Good to see that even parents, like Bob Bly, are also outraged by this ad.

Earlier in the week Jerz's Literacy Weblog pointed to a news story on The Denver Channel about a teacher who tore a bible in half in front of her classroom during a discussion of Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, in order to illustrate the concept of censorship. Sure, it might be a sin to destroy "the word of god" in some folk's eyes (but hey, even Moses broke his tablets)...but more importantly, I have to wonder: As a teacher did she do something wrong? Was her approach pedagogically unjust?

I took the poll at the news site which published the news report, and was relieved to see that about 60% of those polled agreed with my vote -- that she shouldn't be suspended because ultimately she was "just making a point."

Or more precisely, she was being overtly theatrical in order to drive home a concept with emotional impact. I'm certain her students will be more conscious of the dangers of censorship for quite some time... if only because now they have a story to tell. Good teaching is often highly theatrical -- energetic, animated, passionate, and engaging the students in the learning experience as if engaged in a true event. Lessons can be consciously performed, rather than rotely spoken about in a lecture. And outrageous acts of theatricality like the teacher and the bible can really stick with a student for life. My wife tells a story about her freshman composition teacher, who once calmy read Swift's "Modest Proposal" to the class while dismembering a baby doll, limb by limb, without batting an eye. She's forgotten a lot about the texts she's read for that class, but I know she remembers Swift's famous satire to this day.

Although I don't usually go to such lengths to make my points, I fancy myself as being somewhat theatrical from time to time in the classroom, too, when warranted. For example, earlier in the week I put a very poor poem on an overhead by a former student (for a class unit on "how to critique poetry") and I read it in a very puffed up and emotional manner...I even made the horrendous piece sound good! I was trying to get the students to see that even when a poem is poor, the author usually imagines that the piece is wonderful because she hears it filtered through her own voice. We tend to enunciate the words in a particular way in our mind. The tone of voice and intention of the author color our assumptions about how the poem communicates ideas. But the words on the page are all that readers really have to go by. If you've ever been to karaoke night, you know what I mean.

My exercise in theatricality was nowhere near as "shocking" as pulling a Sinead O'Connor move on the Holy Bible, but I still risked offending students because I was rudely mocking a past student's work -- which implies that I'm not as nice as I might seem on the surface, and that I might do the same to any of them (which, of course, I wouldn't... a core of kindness is something a teacher really needs to have to be effective).

Nevertheless, theatricality teaches through direct experience, especially when it generates cognitive dissonance intentionally as a learning strategy. When a topic is defamiliarized, students will often do a "double-take" which requires them to step outside of their own skins and challenge their own assumptions. Cognitive dissonance generates, for example, a particular psychological stance -- often defensive -- in relation to the educational experience. As James Atherton suggests in his website on "Learning and Teaching," cognitive dissonance in the classroom can help students become more invested in understanding the material. "If learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are not likely to admit that the content of what has been learned is not valuable. To do so would be to admit that one has been 'had', or 'conned.'" So students who are shocked by theatrical performances in the classroom -- those acts which cut against the grain of what teachers are "supposed" to do -- can learn, and often generate critical responses rather than just simple gut reactions of anxiety or offense. More often it's the parents or administrators or colleagues who weren't in the classroom during the event to begin with who are riddled with all the anxiety and fear.

However, I would add, too, that it's imperative for the instructor to contextualize or explain their theatrical behavior after the shocking event has transpired. If I mock a poem in class, I tell them afterwards that I'm "joking" yet also being melodramatic for a reason (e.g., to show how the poem might ideally sound in the writer's mind...and how wrong we often are). The teacher who tore up the bible explained to her class, I'm sure, that their emotional reaction approaches what it would feel like to exist in a world like Bradbury's novel portrays.

Indeed, theatricality for its own sake is exhibitionism at its worst. As in all cases of teaching, the student's need to learn should be more important than the teacher's emotional need to perform (and receive its concomitant psychological rewards -- often feeding a neurotic desire). But a student's need to learn should not mean they are required to be sheltered from shock. Shock teaches. And sometimes we need to shock students to help them to see things more objectively in the future.

For example, when I teach Literary Criticism, I often throw a horror film like The Exorcist on the syllabus, alongside all the heady literary readings. One of the rationales for this is that I believe one needs to practice observing objectively those texts from popular culture that are crafted primarily in order to have us react emotionally. Ideally, students learn to critique a "shocking" film in a way that trains them to resist the demand by such texts that they bracket off their critical faculties in the name of entertainment. It prevents them from being "had" or "conned" by mass culture. Shock, cognitive dissonance, a moment of theatricality in the sober venue of the classroom, the unexpected use of a joke, defamiliarization -- these methods of teaching all have some validity. You shouldn't use them all the time, naturally, but sometimes you have to take a fish out of the water long enough to make it realize what it's really swimming in.

Today's our first day of classes at Seton Hill U. I'm teaching a Freshman Composition class after a blessed year's hiatus from the course after teaching composition annually at one campus or another since -- could it be? -- 1992. I'm also beginning my sixth year of teaching at Seton Hill (the beginning of a lengthy tenure process starts in Dec) and I've recently realized that I've never resided at one academic institution for this long before.

So I don't want to get stale or cop apathy with the routine. Usually a room full of eager students on the first day gets my blood pumping with the responsibility and the thrill of teaching and learning. But on top of that, here are some goals I have this morning before I head back into the fray after a productive and relaxing summer:

• Remind myself of the best practices in teaching to challenge myself to always strive to be a better teacher.
  
• Remember that less is more in lectures, especially in an environment where students are overwhelmed by crowded curricula.
  
• Don't waste too much time on housekeeping alone.
  
• Value openness.
  
• Enjoy the first day.
  

That's not being too Pollyanna is it? Even if it is: no matter how coldly pragmatic or objectively distant you might be as a scholar, I think you've gotta be an undying optimist way down deep in your heart if you really want to have staying power as a teacher. The first day of classes is a day to tap down into that core all over again.

Yet again, I find inspiration in Jerz's Literacy Weblog, which is updated so often that I read it regularly. A recent entry on mobile technology muses over how cell phone customs might be behind some problematic student behavior. But in that entry he used a phrase -- "Just in Time teaching" -- which gave me pause. I'd seen him use that phrase once before, in an interesting entry about "just in time handouts", a plan to generate paper guidelines "live" in collaboration with the students in his class. In Pedablogue, I questioned the effectiveness of this method, arguing the need for a teacher to set the "rules of the game" before the fact. But seeing this phrase "just in time teaching" again made me realize that this is actually a catchphrase already in parlance that I was unaware of, rather than a term Jerz himself coined, and a quick google search on the phrase taught me something new. Now I realize that Jerz's conception of these "just in time handouts" is linked to a particular pedagogical approach outlined in a book called Just-In-Time Teaching : Blending Active Learning with Web Technology (aka "JITT").

The primary author, Gregor Novak, has a website dedicated to Just in Time Teaching that outlines the approach rather nicely and I hope you'll take a look at it, especially if you use the web for homework activities. In a nutshell, "JITT" has students answer prompts or respond to readings online with a deadline shortly before class meets. The teacher then reads this homework and decides what needs to be covered "just in time" for the upcoming class meeting. In theory, this makes students more active in their learning, better prepared for class, and ready to take their knowledge level up a notch. It also exploits web technology to help the the teacher tune in to where students are at, and what needs they have, in a way that ritualized lectures prepared too far in advance do not.

I like the ideals behind Just in Time Teaching quite a bit. It sounds good and I've used similar tactics to have students utilize web discussions before a class meets. In fact, I usually spend some time right before a class session to reflect concretely about my students' needs and either revise my course plan or come up with a new assignment "just in time" for class, irregardless of the web or homework I've already seen. Indeed, I'm not sure I always need to read this homework electronically before the fact to generate the same active environment in the classroom. But in principle, a JITT pedagogy is an engaged one, because it takes a workshop/discussion approach to the course in a way that may be more anticipatory than the usual "your homework for next time is to do XYZ" sort of manner.

A super approach. But the reality of the teacher's workload mitigates against some of this. One problem I see with JITT is the temporal burden it places on the teacher -- especially the overworked teacher who may have poor time management skills. Aside from asking the teacher to prepare the prompts and web materials in advance, it also demands the teacher do particular work at a very stressful point: up to the very last minute before a class meets. Will the teacher always be prepared "just in time"? What if they have three classes back-to-back? A night class before the morning "just in time" course? The stress of scrambling could weigh heavy and the looming deadline pressure and anxiety could backfire. If teachers don't carefully design prompts that can make the last minute scrambling to read everything optional, JITT could exhaust the teacher. And if the prompts are too directive or flat, they might not facilitate the upcoming class activities very well.

JITT prompts are essentially the same as any other form of homework, but they are tied into an upcoming class rather than graded after-the-fact. I almost always guide my assignments toward class discussions anyway, so I don't see this as an essential difference. The only difference is that I would be grading homework before a class session rather than afterwards. And that might be difficult to "time" given a heavy workload. Yet the principle of the idea is a very good one: teachers need to be just actively engaged in the class as the students are, and this approach forces teachers to do "homework" along with their students, before the class, rather than afterward -- as part of a learning process in motion, even, rather than as simply a product to be graded.

In any case, I learned a lot researching Just in Time teaching. In some ways it's a phrase for something I already do, a pedagogical approach to using the web, and a good way of thinking about course management. While I'm still not so sure that this would work with generating paper assignments, perhaps my reticence on that score is tied to my assumptions about the role of a teacher in a writing class. Regardles, I do recommend instructors consider JITT, if their students have access to the web. And if the teacher has a little time to spare before the next class begins.

Chock full of tips and theories, the free Teacher's Handbook (.pdf format) is worth a read, whether you're just getting ready to lead your first class or if you're an old hand at running lectures. I really liked the list of tips for running interactive discussions and what to avoid. Brought to you by the Center for Teaching and Learning at U Penn.

Not to be confused with the Teacher's Handbook of Dirty Tricks.

I guess I can brag a little: last weekend, I won the Bram Stoker award for my newsletter, The Goreletter, at the Horror Writers Association conference in NYC. Although my newsletter has very little to do with teaching -- besides, perhaps, the creative writing prompts I include in each issue -- the HWA conference hosted a lecture by Tim Waggoner on "Teaching Creative Writing" which was very well attended.

[update: here's a copy of Waggoner's handout for the lecture in Word format]

A lot of writers are looking for teaching gigs (it helps to have a higher degree, of course, but as Waggoner rightly pointed out, writing is a skill and there are lots of people eager to learn it from someone who is skilled at it -- whether they have a PhD/Masters or just a few publications under their belt). I picked up a few new tricks of the trade which I thought I'd share here.

As perhaps the only other full-time teacher in attendance, I was nodding and affirming a lot of what Waggoner had to say. When asked how bad teaching cuts into his writing time, he admitted that it can really cut into productivity, but he also said that "paying bills alleviates financial stress you'd have otherwise" that would impinge on your writing. Very true. I would add that having a secure job allows me to pursue the sorts of writing I want to pursue. It gives me extra focus when I get to teach something related to my writing. I also write in the mornings, before classes. Waggoner does the same: "I write in the morning before the day to come steals it all away from me." One tip he had that I hadn't thought much about is doing snippets of writing during "between time": office hours, during student exercises, on the bus, etc.

Speaking of student exercises, Waggnoner had a lot of examples. One that I particularly liked was his notion of "being mean to a character." When young writers describe characters, they almost universally make them flat goodie-goodies who might have problems, but little psychological depth. Or they don't have enough conflict at all. Waggoner has students first write a character description, then pass that description to a neighbor. The neighbor is told to "do something mean to the character." Then they pass it back and the writer must work with the problem that's given -- often a violent one.

In another lesson, he teaches brevity. Although they're always picky about page count in essay writing, students often don't understand the need for writing tight, and sometimes roam aimlessly through a plot without thinking about what's significant and necessary -- and what's not. Waggoner brings a CD to class with the most long-winded, overtly "literary" fiction he can find and plays it to them, without any explanation. He purposely chooses the sort of stuff that would put most people to sleep. Afterwards, the lesson is self-evident: readers are impatient.

Another technique I liked: he has them write a newspaper story about "what happened" in the plot of their stories, after they've written them. This helps them to see the crux of their plots and "what's important."

Waggoner also integrates a lot of writing from personal experience into his classes, as do most creative writing teachers. He has them write about "the examined life" where they describe their earliest memories, their favorite places, and then pontificate bout what they would change. One exercise -- "write about a personal horror" -- led to his worst workshop ever, in which people began confessing all sorts of experiences and traumas...one almost drove him to the point of getting the student psychological help. I've had this experience myself, teaching "Memoir Writing" -- and yet, courses and exercises like these often do get students to tap into some meaningful vein, where the writing is as easy to mine as found gold.

If you teach writing, or if you're a writer, you might want to browse Tim Waggoner's essays online.

[Speaking of my e-newsletter: writing teachers might find my other newsletter, The Handy Job Hunter for Writers, more useful than The Goreletter. It can help with advising journalism/creative writing majors into careers.]