Recently in Praxis Category

Navigators use the phrase "course correction" to describe the accommodations necessary when a vehicle or aircraft goes off trajectory and the pilot has to take control of the steering wheel to get back on track. Teachers -- especially those of us who use an intricately designed class calendar on the syllabus to guide most of our decisions -- sometimes need to do this too. But sometimes we don't realize it. We get caught up in the routine of instruction. We get too focused on the moment and forget the objectives that launched us on this journey or the end point we originally had in mind. Or maybe we get swept away by the tides of facilitating change and get caught off-guard by approaching deadlines or final exams coming right around the corner.

We need to make course corrections.

I did this recently in my first year Composition course. Every course in Seminar in Thinking and Writing at SHU contains an oral presentation assignment -- a formal speech -- that students are asked to perform in order to develop their communication skills. I always enjoy these and I am strong believer that practicing public speaking can help make a student a better writer. But the problem is that this assignment risks crowding out the attention to other issues in the class, like a research project. So I've always combined the two, and asked students to give a speech that shares their current research with their peers, under the assumption that they can kill two birds with one stone.

But this term, I was getting the feeling that my students were feeling worn down by the onslaught of short paper assignments. Their writing was becoming less genuine, and as I reader I was more and more feeling like many in the class were "phoning it in." There's always a degree of that in a "required" course like freshman comp, but I usually have success in getting students engaged and exciting about expressing their ideas through writing. In this case, I got the sense they were feeling midterm exhaustion, not just from my course, but from their entire raft of courses.

So I decided to make a course correction. I loosened up a bit. Instead of asking them to speak about research I made it easier: I asked them to simply tell us a story. They haven't really done much narrative writing in my class, so this would give them the opportunity. The revised assignment asked them to share a personal anecdote related to the class readings and themes so far. I still wanted them to do research of a kind, so I made it mandatory that they had to interview one of the people who were involved in the story. "And if you don't know what story tell, interview your mother or father," I told them.

The speeches so far have been phenomenal. Depressingly, most of the tales are about personal tragedies -- death and loss and health issues and victimization from crime and bullies -- but I really am happy to hear students speak honestly about a topic they're passionate about, and to trust the space of my classroom enough to share such touching personal matters. While I am not always satisfied with the connection they make to the class themes, I'm still learning a lot about my students (if not just "students today") and they seem to be engaging with one another more often and honestly now (since every speech is followed by a mandatory open-floor Q&A). And if the class has given them an outlet for "being heard" or better understood by their peers, I am pleased. I still grade them the same way I normally would, and I challenge their assumptions in the Q&A, but I'm glad I made this decision. If anything, I think it fosters bonds, but it also cultivates the vibe of genuine honesty that I will expect from students when they do their research to come.

Course corrections can be hard to make, but often I think it is important to "reconnect" to the students. To step down from the podium, and sit around the table with them. To take a quick survey or have them reflect on an assignment. To take a step back from the grading pile and think about what didn't work as expected, and whether it would be worthwhile to change the syllabus now rather than just next time the class is taught.

In my online graduate course in the Teaching of Writing as part of our MFA writing program, I have used a midterm evaluation (an online survey I build through qualtrics.com) to get the kind of feedback I need to know about their sense of workload, assignment foci, and what they feel they need to know to become good teachers. I feel this is necessary, because every group in this course includes a mixed level of experience when it comes to teaching, as some in our program are currently teaching high school, or have experience training others in some non-English field. So I solicit input on the syllabus and test whether they think changes or needed or if there are topics I didn't plan that they think they might need to learn. As graduate students, they are very forthright in expressing their desires as well as their feedback and I find it helpful. It also raises the course to a "meta" level since it is a course ABOUT teaching. Then I do what we so rarely get to do with end-of-year student evaluations (and something I think is a bit risky, actually, but what the heck): I post the results. Sharing like this lets them compare their own assessment of the course with their peers, in addition to asking them to do a little role reversal with teacher. I have done similar "polls" with students in other classes, and then used the results for a class discussion, while also delivering my own "evaluation" of how the class is going. I think these kinds of reflexive practices -- in concert with the students -- makes everyone more accountable and invested in the outcomes that stretch out on the horizon. And they generate a shared sense of agreement in making course corrections, as everyone now has a hand on the wheel...

Teachers always make little micro-changes that adapt to the flux of their classes, but if students aren't involved in changes somehow -- even if they trust the instructor's experience and expertise -- they can seem arbitrary or capricious to the students, and can backfire. I recommend working together with your students to determine the direction of the vessel, even if you are the one doing most of the steering, and plotting the outcome of the journey.

Yes, I've been playing with my ipad -- and have rediscovered the bad artist that lives inside of me by drawing and doodling things like that picture of my cat, Knipsy, up above. But I've mostly been thinking about teaching with it, as the ipad was a gift to all faculty and students at my school....

Here at Seton Hill University, our IT department has been working overtime, distributing new ipads to every student during the first week of classes. Our university was the first, I believe, to announce its decision to empower all its students with a free ipad, as well as a macbook which is supported by their technology fee. Our wireless infrastructure was smartly built in anticipation of supporting this massive load of new user logins, and so far (after the first day) so good.

Happily, the faculty, too, were given ipads at the top of the summer and asked to prepare ways of using it in the classroom. I've been doing that, but I've also just been playing with it, making it a part of my workflow and daily life. I even had some teaching opportunities this past summer where I was able to dip my toes into the ipad teaching waters, so I thought I would take a moment to reflect on what I did and what assumptions I have going into the class now. (The title of this posting is a little deceiving, sorry...it's more about the classroom than summer vacationing...)

And many have felt the device might not be ready for university classroom use. Right from the get-go, I realized that the device would be something akin to a portable entertainment player since it's really built on the paradigm of the ipod touch. Immediately, I worried that my classrooms would forever be altered into some kind of beeping, blorping, video game arcade, in which I would have to vie for my students attention while standing in front of the blackboard, patiently crushing the chalk in my hand into powder. But that's not the case. The trick to using the ipad lies in taking charge of the equipment and transforming the tablet into a device for creating, not just consuming, texts. And while there are plenty of websites, ebooks, and other texts out there to consume, our goal will be to have students use these as tools, in order to foster creative literacy. Not an easy task, but it should be right up my alley as a creative writing instructor with a mild case of technology fetishism.

I dipped my toes into the ipad teaching waters first in June, at the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction residency (technically, these grad students were the first class to receive free ipads from Seton Hill -- pictured above, where you can just barely make out the image of my cat in the photo). First test: used it as a timer. I used a free LED stopwatch app as a countdown timer when the students gave feedback during workshops. I just tapped the screen, and propped the ipad up on its hinged case so all could see, as digits started counting down the two minutes I'd apportioned each critic. It worked well, because the student could look up and see how much time they had left. But when it reached the last ten seconds an alarm would go off in very annoying way (bip, bip, bip, BIP, BEE-BEE-BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEEEEEP!). This cheesy "the bomb is about to explode" sound effect really threw some critics off and they didn't like the way it changed the tone of their helpful comments. I >could< have turned the sound off, but that defeats the whole intention of using a stopwatch, really. Free programs that don't allow you to control these elements come with such problems across the board, from poor aesthetic design elements to rude noises, to simply unwanted advertisements in the margins. But they are functional and can be helpful.

I had two guest lectureships this summer where I dipped further into the ipad teaching waters, going up to my ankles. Both were genre fiction writing workshops, and I taught similar material at both. I used the ipad to organize my thoughts (using an app called Taskpaper, which I like quite a bit) and I enjoyed the whole travel experience with a mobile app. But in the classroom, I used it very timidly for activities.

For the first, Odyssey: The Fantasy Writers Workshop, I planned to play a heavy metal song (the somewhat cheesy but effective "Black Sabbath" by none other than Black Sabbath) using itunes to the class and asked them to collectively identify and analyze all the horror tropes it employs, which I captured on the whiteboard. (There were a metric ton of these tropes -- corny stuff can be a good teaching text).

As I was being introduced, I set up the ipad, and accidentally pressed play, interrupting the speaker in a very rude way with an unexpected guitar riff. No big deal, but remembering to turn down the volume before doing such preparatory actions was my first lesson learned. I also learned that the built-in speakers on an ipad are pretty decent and can reach across a classroom fairly well. Exercise: success! I repeated this lesson in the Alpha Science Fiction/Fantasy Workshop for Teen Writers in a larger space and to a bigger crowd, which confirmed it. (The students there seemed much more comfortable with my use of an ipad, which I tried to carry with me everywhere in lieu of a notebook to model the digital professional at work...I read from it, and even took notes from what they were saying on it at one point).

So my first lessons with teaching with ipad -- which is a glorified ipod mp3 player at its basest level -- were lessons in controlling and employing sounds. Much of the attention has been placed on the visual elements of this device, but the sound is still ever present and very important. I can reach more ears than I can eyes with this thing, unless I'm employing the document projector.

I've used sound in the past to shape writing activities, so this wasn't earth-shatteringly new. I had previously used my laptop to play "nature sounds" using itunes while students prewrite their stories, or to help shape poetry, to good effect and I will probably use these tactics again, in a way which will be much more convenient with a lightweight and portable ipad in tow. And having access to the itunes store on the go can allow me to download sounds and songs if inspiration strikes during a class.

What I haven't done yet is record my lectures or podcast student work with the ipad. And what's more important is how the STUDENTS use them. During one of my graduate level workshops, I was appalled when a student began playing a shooter game while another student was giving a critique. Others, however, restored my faith in mankind by calling up information on wikipedia when there was a factual question about setting in one story. As with any technology, it's how students use it that make all the difference.

Final point: summer is now over and I taught my first freshman writing class yesterday morning. Only half had brought their laptops. They remained dark. No one multitasked during class, no one decided to record the opening discussion, and no one used them to take notes. I was glad they were well-behaved, but I actually put in my syllabus a recommendation for them to bring either the ipad or the macbook to class -- whatever input they find most easily and naturally allows note-taking -- and for the first time ever a few "app" recommendations appear in my syllabus, underneath the required books. I will try to get us to use these like musical instruments in a band class. I will try to post reflections on these here from time to time, and share related resources and apps I discover, using the tag ipad. There is a lot of experimentation and development going on among virtually all the faculty on my campus right now, so I hope to share what we learn here as well.

Last semester I tried out Voicethread as a new format for instruction in an online course. I found the software kind of fun to play with; the format it uses for virtual (asynchronous) discussion of any given "slide" really appeals to me. Instead of using a "threaded" discussion (ergo the name "voice thread", student responses all appear around the slide (or video or text) in a way that is very collaborative...you get the feeling that you're all "sitting around a table" and having a seminar-styled conversation.

But -- as with most things online -- there is a lot of 'front loaded' preparation, with both the slides, the questions, and the comments. While I had originally assumed that I would be using voicethread software for the entire term, it occurred to me that it might be more useful to employ it just twice: at the beginning and at the very end of the term. This allowed me to set the tone for the course while also giving me a strong "closure activity" to wrap things up.

One of the problems of teaching online, I think, always happens at the beginning and the end: at first, everyone is trying to learn the technology and the system the teacher is employing. At the end, students usually just conclude by turning in some document, rather than having a genuine conversation. Voicethread gets students involved in a way that can break expectations and get students talking to one another right away.

I'm not sharing my voicethreads from last semester here, because I want to respect the privacy of the students. But I can give snapshots, followed by a quick overview of what I did at the beginning and the end, if you're looking for a practical tip.

My online course was a literature class for graduate students in our MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. Before the class began, I set up a voicethread as an introduction to the course content. The first slide was a generic "hello" and introduction by video that framed the course in a personal way: it humanized the relationship right away, because they heard my voice and saw my face and could tell that I was interested in what they had to contribute because I was soliciting feedback. In the slides that followed, I shared images, one slide after another, of the covers for the texts we were reading in the semester ahead. This allowed me to give an overview of the readings, and to explain some of the concepts that we would be learning that term. But more than this, I made the subject of book cover art -- and how it relates to genre fiction -- the very subject. I briefly analyzed the implications of the art on each book cover a little (e.g., "notice the red font...implying danger"), or compared and contrasted different covers of the same book (eg., "notice how this earlier edition of the book uses art deco rather than photorealism") -- and then invited students to analyze the covers in their comments as well. They all got into the task, and showed me more than I myself had seen in the covers. This was a raving success, in my mind, because it got us in an analytical mode right away, while also cultivating interpersonal bonds via virtual discussion.

At the end of the course, I returned to voicethread and used it to get feedback on the class. I returned to using some of the book covers we analyzed at the beginning of the class, and "wrapped up" some of the class content with commentary. But then I shifted the focus to my main purpose of this "closing" exercise through voicethread: to solicit feedback on the class in a sort of virtual, shared, class evaluation. I had only five slides or so, each with a question typed on it that addressed a broad area of the course objectives. I specified the area of my question in caps. Questions I asked included "Which books this term taught you the most about the craft of writing?" and "What knowledge did you most glean from your classmates?" While my main intent was to foment student reflection on their progress of learning objectives, the comments included evaluation of the course, and were insightful to me as a teacher piloting this class for the first time.

Whether you use my approach (or voicethread) or not, I recommend that if you're teaching online, you pay special attention to the beginning and ending of the semester. While learning is asynchronous, every course is predicated on the notion that there will be a synchronous experience: a period of time that the teacher has organized into a beginning, middle, and end. Technology can be employed to "bookend" that experience in a meaningful way.

Great post on Dennis Jerz' blog about experiencing the "ritual" encounter of freshmen writers with the difficulty of learning at the college level, and the gentle way that teachers should respond to it. It includes a sad-but-true clip from a Charlie Brown movie that revolves around the typical student approaches to a paper assignment, and knock-out quotations like these from William Zinsser (Writing to Learn):

"Whenever I hear [students] talk about their work, I feel that few forms of teaching are so sacramental; the writing teacher's ministry is not just to the words but to the person who wrote the words.... Through the writing of our students we are reminded of their individuality. We are reminded, whatever subject we are charged with teaching, that our ultimate charge is to produce broadly educated men and women with a sense of stewardship for the world they live in."

Zinsser and Jerz aren't advocating some religious dogma here, but instead articulating the "reverence" one must have to be a real sponsor for another learner's efforts to grow. I admire this. This reverence is composed of "ministry...not just to the words but to the person who wrote the words". This is well and good when it comes the instructor's affect, but to push it even further, what form does that ministry take in praxis on the classroom floor?

First, there are many ways in which college teaching should probably not be like Ministry with a capital M. One shouldn't "preach" through lecture. One shouldn't "worship" the books taught in the class like they are a "gospel" that cannot be open to criticism. One shouldn't "bless" the A students and "damn" the Cs. One shouldn't turn class journals into "confessionals". And one certainly shouldn't use the classroom as a conversion machine for one religious doctrine, but have tolerance and respect for diverse faiths and backgrounds.

One should "minster" not in the clerical sense, but in the broader sense of the term: "To attend to the wants and needs of others." So I've been thinking about how I've tried to do this in the classes where I've had the most success. Here are a few ways I think the "minister" metaphor might be extended in fruitful ways (with the caveat that this advice always depends on the context):

Establish Sanctuary.
The classroom has to be a place where students trust that the professor has their learning and not their own personal agenda in mind for all class activities. They have to feel that if they reveal their "secret selves" through their writing or speech, they will not be harmed by the teacher or others. This means speaking up to protect the innocent, when conflicts occur during peer workshops, responding with politeness and affirmation when leading discussions, avoiding privileging some students over others, cultivating a sense of class unity by fixating on the diversity of the issue at hand, rather than one dominant idea alone. Cultivate an environment where people want to read their writing aloud, and want to listen to what one another has written, too. Applaud often. When I ask my students to formally perform "readings" of their papers and stories to the class, I flat out tell them, "This is church."

Model the Golden Rule.
I realize this is loaded with Christian implications, but I simply mean that teachers should "do unto others" in the way that members of an academic discourse community implicitly are expected to. This is true of writing workshops, but it's also true of the entire teacher/student relationship. This requires responding to writing and grading with the same degree of energy you expect from students, meeting deadlines, arriving to class on time, putting effort into handouts and documents as if they were papers you too were submitting to the class, etc. Good writing teachers will write in class while their students are writing in class, for instance. Working together is the great equalizer that foments collaborative learning. Similarly, it means taking spoken comments in class seriously, even if the student is slacking or goofing or rebelling (these actions often mask some insecurity about the material or their preparation, and feel like personal affronts, so it's often hard to contend with this... the trick is to shape your responses to these students in a way that is actually redirecting attention to the whole class interest, and to try to get the student to see it that way too).

Respect the Sabbath.
Students always over-determine days off (snow days, holidays, weekends) and so do faculty, because the "work" of school can become a grind. Use this to your advantage by employing rest time. Do it consciously, aware of when taking a break (whether during the period, or during the semester) can actually make students' learning more productive. Schedule breaks in the center of courses longer than an hour and a half. Ease up once in a while on the drill routines. See if you can avoid dumping huge assignments into student breaks just because they wouldn't fit into your class syllabus. Make Fridays the "fun" day. Now I'm not saying you should let go of the wheel and turn the course into a pleasure cruise, or you risk losing student respect, commitment, and growth. All "fun" activities should still be related to the course content, but in a way that relieves concentration on one thing and allows coming at it from a different, looser angle or context. Buffer time between projects allows learning -- and an awareness of growth -- to sink in. Use reflection paper assignments to ask students to stop and take stock of what they're learning, to measure their own self-development. Vacillate between contemplative tasks (reading/listening) and productive tasks (writing/speaking). Watch a course-related movie and host a conversation about it once in awhile. You might find it also allows you to take stock of the students real understanding of the material by letting go of what you "need" to cram into the course calendar.

Listen.
Too often we think our job is to transmit information like a non-stop broadcast antennae. To minister to student need and revere student thinking is to stop talking and "just listen." It isn't always the case that students don't know how to write; it's more often the case that they've never written for an audience. We need to be that audience, and they need to understand the variety of audiences that they will be engaging as a scholar. Moreover, conferences should be a chance to listen to students, to be their sounding board, to be their audience. It seems self-evident to me that to minister means to pay attention to the needs of others as they emerge in the present tense, not just the act of planning to serve them in advance. If we want our students to be good listeners, we might have to show them the art by doing it ourselves. If your mission is to teach, you need to be a missionary of education and go to where the student lives, not spout from the hilltop and expect them to know how to climb up.

As a creativity challenge, I recently signed up for THE FICTION PROJECT, sponsored by The Art House Co-op. Registrants (before Feb) will be mailed a Moleskine sketchbook in which to tell and show a story using words and art, based on a surprise random theme. Most participants scan and share their work-in-progress, with commenting available much like a weblog. The deadline is in April, when sketchbooks are returned to be put on permanent display in the Brooklyn Art Library.

The length of the experience nicely fits into a college semester-length calendar for the coming Spring, so I thought I would recommend it to others who are considering a creative class project for their art or writing courses. The "rules" are flexible enough to allow collaborative creations for the class as a whole, or to allow individual entries. The site offers an educational discount for groups over 10.

Visit my profile and feel free to friend me if you sign up. I don't know what I'll be doing for this project, or if I'll even succeed, but I know it will be very weird.

Thanks to the twitterverse, I was turned on to this video by author John Irving when asked about the future of the book:

The anxieties presently circulating about the marketplace for fiction certainly are causing a lot of changes in the publishing industry lately. In October, price wars among booksellers splashed on the headlines, causing many -- including the New York Times -- to worry about the economics of publishing and the resultant devaluation of the printed book itself. Some speculate that this is all due to the mainstream attention and interest that ebook hardware is finally getting, especially the Amazon Kindle.

Updike speaks to the impact of all this on young writers. I am starting to wonder how the role of creative writing programs and the teaching of creative writing professors will change as a result, since young writers are who we serve. Here are my thoughts -- a rapid fire of brainstorming, more than fully-composed thoughts -- about what, perhaps, creative writing teachers should be considering.

For one thing, we should neither give up on the book, nor hide from the realities of the trade by squatting behind a library shelf or the literary canon. We need to be engaged with the present AND the past, with a toe dipped into the future of our students, as well.

We should adapt to paradigm shifts not by teaching to the marketplace but by teaching to the long-view and by persistently putting publishing into historical context. Students need to be aware of current industry realities, and we need to be engaged in it to understand it completely as teachers. But there is wisdom in our experience and we need to share that experience, in order for students to recognize that publishing as an ever-changing process, and is never "stable" in any fixed way. It has always been historically-contingent, and always been in a state of flux across time. The "book" has always been an artifact of the marketplace of ideas -- a trace artifact of a cultural movement always in-process. This is as true of business trends as it is of artistic movements, and often one change is simply responding and/or adapting to the other.

We should discuss electronic publishing not as the "new" or the "best" but simply one medium for messaging which is as equally valid for expression as any other. When it comes to publishing contracts, ebooks are just one license among many that a writer can act on, and while one license may be more economically viable at any given time than another, all are equally legitimate ways to transfer intellectual property to an audience.

We should inform students about intellectual property law, and advise them to protect their property -- or to know what rights they're donating to the public domain when they unleash it free online or in free ebook giveaways.

We should encourage experimentation with format just as we encourage experimentation with the blank page to poets.

Too often writers glom on to one format or medium or genre and fixate on it (usually because they derived some success within it) -- and this includes everything from the Kindle of today to the illustrated manuscript in days of old. We need to engage new technologies while also understanding the book as a technology itself. But more than that, the key point for new writers to understand -- after they've learned the art of writing and become interested in pre-professional, career trajectories -- is that the products of their imagination and craftsmanship are also ultimately social texts once they become published. Writing, when all is said and done (and revised and marketed) is a form of property that can be traded, and graduates of writing programs rarely learn enough about this stage of the process.

Publishing needs to be considered a stage of the writing process. It is the end stage, but not necessarily the terminus of the process. Books get printed, but the life of the book does not end when the ink dries. There are dialogues that open up (such as in reviews) and books are often updated and revised, serialized and sequelized...and one book experience always informs the next book experience, for writers who survive it.

It is good to teach students "the book life." To think of writing as a way of life in a culture that is not inherently friendly to that way of living. Texts like Jeff Vandermeer's recent title, Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer are movements in the right direction. Courses like our own "Publication Workshop" at Seton Hill U, are others.

Sharing the end results of work produced in a classroom -- in end-of-term class readings, in class-generated anthologies, in online literary magazines -- are all forms of publication. Many teachers neglect to exploit this as an arena for learning the way. Because it's the messiest part of the process, and the part where "rejection" (beyond grading systems) looms. Bridging the conventional forms of classroom publishing (such as a reading of revised work to the classroom at the end of the term) with emergent formats (such as video recordings to be uploaded for public comments from youtube) will engage writing students with the marketplace of ideas today.

In addition to the "book life" and being aware of the status and reality of the economy of writing, there is also something simply called the "reader's life." We should remain role models for engaged readers as much as writers, with an interest in the output of the publishing world. We should advise students to take literature courses and spend time in the library. We should buy books, and practice what we preach by investing in the world that invests in us as authors. We should share and explore new technologies and trends in publishing and talk about these formats with our students. We should show that we are readers as much as writers -- we are bookish. Students need to see us reading, hear us reciting published works, spot us in the faculty break room reading a kindle, recognize us in the audience at a public poetry reading, see us browsing the shelves at the local Barnes and Noble, sit across from us at a table in the library. When they do so, they will see themselves reflected in the world of books as a real, lived experience.

Last week I bought a Kindle. I carried my ebook device around all week not to show off some new gaget, but to say Look...this might be what our future looks like. I'm interested in where this is heading...are you? I opened up a dialogue with readers on my horror writing weblog, about the ebook watershed. I uploaded documents for a Dean's Council meeting to my Kindle and brought it to the meeting instead of printing them out or using a laptop. I showed my Kindle to almost every student who came to my office for advising this past week, for both the "wow" factor and to say "hey, you might be getting your textbooks this way someday." Down the hall, my colleague ordered a Kindle DX for his journalism courses, and posted an interesting blog about the kindle's impact on academics. Teachers and writers open up conversations about books; books are portals into conversations about culture. Writers shouldn't be worried, but engaged and thoughtful; we need to be steeled up against the fluctuations inherent to the industry, but also willing and able to transcend it. That's the skill of the creative writer -- telling a good story transcends the medium and the economics of the exchange. But we also have to be creative in finding ways for getting our stories heard.

And we need to keep publishing our own writing, creative or not, as well. That's the only way to truly learn what it's like out there. To accumulate knowledge of the book world and bring it back to our classrooms, whether explicitly or obliquely. The skills and knowledge that we've always taught will never go out of fashion, but we need to recognize what is at stake in our students' lives when changes are on the horizon.

It seems almost criminal to advise a student to become a novelist without also arming them with some sort of knowledge and wisdom about the marketplace for fiction. The power of an educated writer is not simply to write well, but to join a community of like-minded thinkers and to participate smartly in the world in which they hope to operate, economically as well as discursively. We can react to changes in the industry with optimism or skepticism, but we should never abandon the one certain thing we have to give writers of the future: hope, balanced by wisdom and intelligence.

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) launched today, sending millions of people "with a book in them" to the keyboard in an attempt to churn out a rough novel-length manuscript (minimum of 50,000 words to 'count') by the end of November. People engaged in this activity all bond on the nano website, encouraging each other and sharing tips, posting and boasting their latest word counts all the way to the end.

I've never done it, but I've always been intrigued by this collective endeavor of binge writing. I've signed up on the site and lurked, just to see what people are up to. It appeals to me, as a writer who works in manic, highly-caffeinated spurts, and as a teacher who believes in the collaborative learning inherent to a writer's workshop community. A number of our more productive Writing Popular Fiction students and even some faculty dare to "nano"...it's awfully difficult for a full-time faculty member to take on such an enormous task during the endgame of a Fall semester, when term papers come pouring in and advising for the next term is afoot, but it can be done.

Maybe college profs need a NaSchoWriMo for writing scholarship? Now is the perfect time to get to work on those conference papers you want to present next Spring, after all.

In any case, I noticed that teachers are actually beginning to use NaNoWriMo in the classroom, and that the site has a Young Writers Program that fosters an educational mission. The site includes some GREAT novel writing workbooks for young adults -- and the program can even lend out NEO word processing hardware to students in need.

It's a great idea. And it can be used creatively. From a class-collaborated story to simply a study of the novel itself, teachers are tapping into NaNoWriMo as a form of learning that reaches outside of the walls of the classroom and participates in the "outside world" even as it focuses the attention needed for cultivating the intimate and interior setting of the imagination.

Daniel Moulthrop shares his experience "Teaching NaNoWriMo" in a google doc, suggesting that the main benefit is "a month of unbridled creativity vs. school as we know it" which leads to increased writing fluency and -- after the initial hurdle of starting to climb what seems to be a very high mountain -- a reduction of fear about writing.

To any teachers out there doing this: GOOD LUCK!

I don't have much to offer, but over on my horror writing website, I have a section called "Instigation" that offers "twisted prompts" for creative writers that you can crib from to get your students working on a dastardly plot point.

You also might get your class involved in twitter.com for this project. There's a lot of activity on that site -- just search for the #nano hashtag or "follow" NaNoWriMo.

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

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

I watched this video this morning, as part of my preparation for a course in "The Teaching of Popular Fiction & Writing" next Spring. I liked the level of advocacy here for educational use of pop culture material in the classroom, as well as the emphasis on 'best practices.' You can download the full report from the Center for Social Media.

I share these professors' enthusiasm. But fair use can be a muddy area to define and the issue can get complicated. Even so, the essays available at EDUCAUSE on educational fair use are enlightening for those who are trying conscientously to sort out these matters. One essay from EQ that struck me was "Managing Intellectual Property for Distance Learning" by Liz Johnson, which offers a decision-making model for breaking down the numerous choices that a teacher could consider when sharing materials in an online course, for instance.

Most of what I know about copyright, I learned as a writer, not an educator, and the coverage in the Chicago Manual of Style stands at the foundation of what I know of the subject. I'm no lawyer (so please don't ask me any legal questions on this topic), and whenever I reseach the subject of copyright and fair use in online environments on the web, one of the things that trips me up are nagging questions about new laws: "am I reading the most recent law? does it cover new emergent technology and the latest digital copyright standards or is this an outdated article?"

Regardless, I think it is important to be clear with students about the 'situational ethics' of using copyrighted material in the classroom or in an online environment. I once had a student download an article I shared in an online course, only to turn around and post it to their blog to share with others...I had to inform them that this was a copyright violation, because when I shared it the first time, it was only for educational use and that the author's rights were protected because it was online downloadable behind the firewall/password-protected CMS service. Now I go out of my way to make sure students understand that the principle of fair use is in place in the classroom, and explain that it is a little bit different than how material is shared in the outside world. It might even make sense to make 'fair use' itself a topic for students to study, particularly in any course where the students are learning how to work in an area that produces intellectual property (the arts, writing, journalism, etc. etc.). If one thing is clear to me about fair use doctrine, it's that the context of any use is everything.

A few additional informal points that guide my own praxis on this subject (your mileage may vary):

+ Avoid using outside sources as "window dressing" -- they should be the lumber of the learning mill. Analyze, utilize, discuss, work with whatever you bring into the room.

+ It is wise to do a little research and contact an author if you wish to use their material in a classroom. I have never met a writer who said 'no' and having permissions gives you license to use the work in a way that might expand what 'fair use' dictates. Some will expand your permissions, or offer tips on how to acquire more material on the cheap/free (e.g. have their publisher send you an instructor's guide, or point you to a discount on a book); some will even offer to appear in an online chat or take interview questions. This also expands your network.

+ When in doubt, err on the side of conserving the copyright holder's rights, and be clear about the 'boundary lines'. Not only does this reduce your likelihood of violation, it teaches by example and will set a precedent for respect of property in your classes and with your own intellectual property.

+ Cite as you would like to be cited. Teach as you would like to be taught.

Good article by Josh Cohen on the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook today, called "Teachers Take To Twitter." Along with giving some tips for twitter usage, the key point is that twitter is building a community of teachers. Cohen cites Bill Ferriter, a 6th grade social studies teacher, succinctly:

“Searching Twitter is searching the minds of teachers. It’s collective intelligence. When you can pick the brains of 200 highly accomplished teachers, you’ll get good success.”

I set up a separate account on twitter for my teaching-related work at http://twitter.com/arnzen. I enjoy the connection with that "collective intelligence" that Ferriter mentions. It's half faculty-lounge, half-development conference. The trick is to 'follow' other teachers...do searches for words like 'pedagogy' and connect with the most interesting 'tweeters' by following them. Your network will spread.

Of course, twitter can be used in the classroom, too (though I have yet to try this). Emerging Ed Tech gives six good examples. Academhack gives a great overview of its possible applications in "Twitter for Academia" (which was picked up by The Chronicle). H Songhai gives even more depth and anecdotes about it.

I can imagine setting up a specific account name on twitter for a class, with all students doing the same, and each 'following' each other on the site -- and using these short tweets for chats, or live (if everyon has the technology in a lab, or laptop situation) as something akin to 'clickers' in the classroom, but with many more options and critical thinking applications than simply polling quantitative reactions.