May 04, 2008

Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills (eSchool News)

Studies of the brain have pointed to data suggesting that repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli. -Laura Devaney

[From Elizabeth. The article focuses on possibilities with Second Life in a classroom.]

Posted by kuechebj at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2008

Students 'should use Wikipedia' (BBC News)

"You can ban kids from listening to rock 'n' roll music, but they're going to anyway," he added. "It's the same with information, and it's a bad educator that bans their students from reading Wikipedia."

In 2005, at the height of the controversy over the site's accuracy, Mr Wales told the BBC that students who copied information from Wikipedia "deserved to get an F grade". -Alistair Coleman

[Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's take on citing Wikipedia now and then. An important distinction is made here in that college attempts teaching students how to conduct research in an academic environment toward producing a new or overlooked argument. The constantly changing accuracy or possibility of inaccuracy robs students from finding niches and innovating older ideas. I continue banning my students from citing Wikipedia and I know I am NOT a bad educator. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 10:25 PM | Comments (4)

Naïve Teacher Believes In Her Students (Onion)

"I remember when I started here," said Jim Hawes, who has taught math at Bishop Kelly for 11 years. "I thought I could get the kids to appreciate the symmetry of math and the intrinsic beauty of a balanced equation. That got beaten out of me midway through my second year, when my car was keyed, my house was TP'ed, I got 12 magazine subscriptions I never ordered, and someone phoned me at 1:30 in the morning and called me a faggot. Now, I'm just happy if they can parrot back the quadratic formula and don't put soap in my coffee." -The Onion

[Amen! I honestly love teaching English in college, particularly composition, but bad students ruin everything for everybody. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 06:41 PM | Comments (2)

October 23, 2007

New Graphic Novel: Say "No" to Internet Piracy (Wired)

Initially, I was skeptical about a comic strip deploring online file sharing. But the 18-page story does what the NCSC set out to do: explain the court system in an interesting way. I guarantee you I wouldn’t have been able to read a black and white document on this stuff but I whizzed through it in its graphic novel format. -Miyoko Ohtake

Posted by kuechebj at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2007

In Some Schools, iPods are Required Listening (New York Times)

The Union City district, which has a $197 million annual budget, places a priority on bilingual classes because more than one-quarter of its students are learning basic English skills. District officials said the stakes are high; 4 of the district’s 12 schools have been identified as needing improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind law, largely because not enough bilingual students have passed the state reading and math tests. -Winnie Hu

[I theorized that my language skills, although I am a native speaker of English, derive from constantly listening to music on the radio and personal devices (Sony Walkman and Discman) and I thought if people struggling with learning English followed suit, then perhaps language acquisition would be easier. Now I see my hypothesis is right. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2007

Teaching Mr. Kuechenmeister (Discourse Chronicle)

[Today I taught my section of Introductory Writing with Elizabeth as an observer and I realized how far I come with my teaching. The lesson focused on giving my students practice with integrating sources using a handout showing small sample passages without quotes and then quotes alongside them. Students needed to copy the passage and insert the quote where appropriate with proper formatting. I originally planned on covering MLA style and giving students an opportunity to practice doing that as well, but time slipped away and we will deal with it next time.

I remember feeling self-conscious whenever someone observed me while I taught because I thought evaluation accompanied observation. For some reason, previous observations happened on days when I seemed not at my best, so I thought having Elizabeth watch me then would add stress because of our relationship. However, I conducted class confidently and completely forgot that I was being observed. I never experienced that before in my teaching and I take it as a sign that I am continuing to be an always improving instructor. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 08:37 PM | Comments (3)

July 17, 2007

Confessions of a Teenage Fug Queen (Go Fug Yourself)

Before we elect her the official ambassador of "how our society should be educated on," however, we thought we should put this budding young teacher to the test by taking a red pen to her screed**. And, sure, everyone makes mistakes now and then -- we certainly are not immune -- but we do feel that anyone calling us to educational arms (among other things) should be fairly well outfitted with weapons herself. -Heather

[A two page composition critique of an email sent from Lindsay Lohan's Blackberry. From Elizabeth. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2007

Six Flags Over Texas (Alliance Wake)

The University of Texas won the Spring 2007 Collegiate Team Challenge hosted by Texas A&M and North Texas on April 28-29 in Beaumont Texas at Set-x Lake. The weather could not have been more perfect with blue skies, temperatures averaging 85 degrees, and zero wind. Six schools represented in the event including North Texas, Texas A&M, Texas, Texas Tech, Louisiana Tech, and Steve F. Austin. The tournament was pulled by Texas Tige with their new 2007 RZ2. The first day of the event was packed with competitive riding from all of the teams. Key riders in the first day included John Aulick (Texas A&M), John Marshall (Texas Tech), Mark Heger (Texas), Joram Hadden (Louisiana Tech), Slayt Ebeling (Texas A&M), and Clint Hibbard (SFA). -Leo Lasecki

[Leo was a freshman in my Composition and Rhetoric course this semester and he shared his online publication with me soon after our course ended. I understood teaching as a thankless job from an earlier time, but once in a while, instructors see things like this come around. The best feeling is knowing that maybe I had something to do with it. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 11:39 PM | Comments (1)

January 30, 2007

Going Graphic (Deseret News)

Graphic novels are a loose genre comprising lengthy comic books — often hundreds of pages long — that contain literary elements such as a plot and characterization. Some graphic novels feature favorite comic figures, such as Superman. Others are fantastical adventures, Japanese comics, or attempts to retell Shakespeare.

[....] He recommends adults curious about graphic novels start with "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" by Art Spiegelman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the author learning about his father's experiences as a Jew in Poland during the Holocaust. -Laura Hancock

[I wonder what "loose" means here because both comic books and graphic novels are capable of achieving unity in an Aristotelian sense, although I believe graphic novels accomplish that task more successfully due to its independence from serials, but I notice nothing is said here about the content.

I commend Dr. Stephen Gibson for choosing Maus as an option for graphic novel reading, but as a starting place, I might suggest Will Eisner's A Contract with God instead since that title is an "original" graphic novel. I recently fielded questions from friends and colleagues about how graphic novels might be incorporated into college English classes. For Introduction to Literature-type courses, I suggested titles such as Watchmen, Maus, Sandman, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen along with McCloud's Understanding Comics and Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art. For Creative Writing, I recommended those same titles, except I would use Eisner's Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and McCloud's Making Comics. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)

November 14, 2006

Spring 2007 Book Order (Discourse Chronicle)

[Here is my list of assigned textbooks for my freshman composition students next semester with rationales:

Writer's Harbrace Handbook (Third Edition)
Texas A&M University uses the Harbrace Handbook as a standard adoption, but our department is not switching to third edition until next year, due to custom cover requests. Despite that, I received permission to assign this new edition early because I learned about a new chapter on visual rhetoric after a recent meeting with its author, Dr. Cheryl Glenn.

Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (Fifth Edition)
An excellent collection of popular culture essays about topics ranging from Barbie dolls to comic books and film. I chose this text as my reader because my students provided feedback wishing for in-class examples that may seem more familiar to them. I may develop lessons from its readings, but more importantly, I am assigning oral presentations about them as a means of encouraging in-class participation on a regular basis. I am also able to speak better on popular culture than some other topics, thus improving my teaching due to increased confidence over material.

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud's text discussing comic books in comic book format. I assigned a few chapters from this book already and students responded extremely well and claim McCloud's presentation helped them learn difficult concepts such as Aristotle's Model of Argument (Ethos, Logos, Pathos). Many of its chapters relate with our four paper topics and will act as a supplement to our handbook readings.

Writing Traditions
A compositional exercise workbook containing sample student essays and covers concepts such as summary and paraphrase, plagiarism, MLA format, peer review, and others. Non-negotiable.

Typical American
Gish Jen's novel about Ralph, a Chinese immigrant graduate student working on his PhD in Engineering, and how him and his family become Americanized. Non-negotiable. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 12:49 AM | Comments (2)

November 11, 2006

Mr. Kuechenmeister and the Green Pen (Discourse Chronicle)

[Today I spent all afternoon grading half of my freshman composition students' papers on Argument and I wished for comment stampers again. All of my students are aware that I grade using a nice green fine-point pen, which some of them believe is symbolic of kryptonite because we previously talked about Superman, but perhaps some make the connection with Green Lantern. As I graded my students' papers at Sweet Eugene's, my nice green fine-point pen became a lifeless thin plastic tube refusing to express my comments, almost preventing me from finishing papers 9-12.

For a few moments, I contemplated going back to my apartment and changing over to a black ball-point pen, or better yet - blue. However, then my comments may blend with the typeface on my students' papers, so I needed to find a new green pen. I never imagined replacing a green pen as difficult until I arrived at Target and browsed its miniature office supply section. Target stocked a variety of pens, but none are green, mostly red, black, and red. Occasionally I saw a green pen amongst an assortment, but I decided not paying however much those sets costed for a single green pen. I left Target as empty-handed as I entered and drove to Office Max.

I hoped to find a box of green pens for sale at the office oasis known as Office Max and so I did. I found said box, but these pens are ball-point and nowhere near as nice as my original green pen. No, these green pens are probably a step up from those disposable Bic pens I use when I write checks. However, once I returned to Sweet Eugene's and began using it, I noticed this new green ball-point pen's ink was a duller shade of green - but green nonetheless. I finished my half stack of papers and plan on returning tomorrow to finish the other half with my new green ball-point pen. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 11:38 PM | Comments (2)

October 24, 2006

Look What I Learned! (Newsweek)

An FAS study released this week, titled “Harnessing the power of video games for learning,” reports that best-selling games are built in surprisingly pedagogical ways. Players improve at their own pace. Beating a level requires experimentation, failure and learning from mistakes. -Nick Summers

[From Nick. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 11:48 PM | Comments (2)

October 13, 2006

No Undergrad Left Behind (NY Times)

Take a look at what passes for subjects of scholarly and instructional focus on campuses. Should taxpayer dollars really go to underwrite courses in such things as the history of comic book art? Policy makers and tuition payers need to be made aware of what sorts of courses institutions consider appropriate to fulfill core academic requirements, if anything resembling an academic core even exists. And there needs to be a greater emphasis on teaching students what they need to know, rather than what faculty want to talk about. -Eugene Hickok

[Thanks, Ted. I am obviously going to give an emphatic "Yes" to funding courses like history of comic book art. Comic studies are interdisciplinary and its applications are probably as flexible as rhetoric. However, increasing awareness and encouraging disciplines to dialogue with one another is a current goal, evidenced by the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. I also disagree about faculty interests conflicting with students learning necessities. I always try and incorporate my research interests with comics and popular culture into my lessons as examples when teaching essential concepts such as composition or literature. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

Comment Stampers (Discourse Chronicle)

[I contemplate about whether or not having stampers with our frequently used comments on them such as "Comma splice - move clause and revise sentence" or "Pronoun disagreement" is more efficient than writing those out each time, but then our students may not be able to tell how much energy is invested into reading and commenting on papers.

A student forgot to pick up his homework from my stack along with his rough draft a few weeks ago because he said "it wasn't green enough" referring to how much I dig into them. I only dig hard on rough drafts because a chance (albeit a small one) exists for my students to work on problems in revision, rather than no chance if I dig into final drafts since our students do not receive opportunities to revise once we complete a paper assignment.

I remember commenting on papers when I mentored as an undergraduate under Dennis G. Jerz with his freshman composition students and learning how to plow through papers thoroughly, yet efficiently. Efficiency equated to a total of six hours working with 30 papers, but four years later, my best is three hours with 24 papers. However, each new paper assignment seems to introduce other pitfalls for composition students to fall into along with common errors from previous work. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 09:04 PM | Comments (2)

September 21, 2006

Facebook - A Badge of Honor (Discourse Chronicle)

[I am in my office holding an extra day of office hours waiting for any students to come and ask for help before we turn in our first papers tomorrow. As I wait for anyone to visit, I am working on my coursework for next week along with blogging and checking things out on Facebook. I decided to try searching for my last name on Facebook and I found one student group called "Kuechenmeister's class. Fall 2006." I am beaming with pride as my students communicate with one another thinking I am not on Facebook. I view that as a badge of honor and I love it! BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 03:24 PM | Comments (1)

September 15, 2006

Our Father, who art in MySpace (Telegraph)

wjesus15.jpg
The campaign, which is run by the ecumenical charity Churches' Advertising Network, aims to provoke debate about God among young people this Christmas.

[...]

The group, which has no formal links with the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England, has ruffled feathers in previous years by depicting Jesus as Che Guevara. It has also portrayed the Last Supper as a boardroom meeting of multinational companies, with Judas as Microsoft.

The latest image of Jesus among the beer dregs is supposed to highlight the trend for finding religious faces in ordinary objects and selling them on eBay. Examples include the Virgin Mary on a toasted cheese sandwich. -Amy Iggulden and Alex Wellman

[I dislike blogging on religious issues or stating my faith publicly (especially in Texas), but here is an advertisement with rhetorical merit. I might use it when I teach English 104 again in the spring. Iggulden and Wellman also point out an accompanying MySpace page featuring this Jesus ad. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

'Tweens' curl up with graphic novels (Christian Science Monitor)

Not everyone is impressed by graphic novels. Some teachers refuse to assign them to their students, claiming they aren't challenging to read. But many librarians and teachers stand by the books.

"Reading graphic novels leads to reading other things," says Robin Brenner, a young-adult librarian with the Brookline Public Library in Massachusetts. "There's a value in and of themselves, not just as a bridge to reading 'real books.' " -Randy Dotinga

[Believing graphic novels are not sophisticated reading is a serious mistake and teachers who are refusing to use graphic novels on those grounds must be members of an uninformed persuasion. I am convinced people holding such an attitude are hindering scholarly progress each time I read an article making a similar statement.

I am wrapping up a four-week unit on Analyzing Visual Rhetoric with my freshman composition students next week and two things made it especially hard. First, high school curriculums divorce rhetoric from composition and only focus on the latter which leads to value being assigned to the final draft (product). Second, students lack a necessary background in rhetoric to discuss analysis and argument, so instructors must fuse rhetoric and composition again and emphasize the writing process. Theoretically, if we improve the process our students use to produce the product, then the product is improved as a result.

Brenner's comment fuels the unnecessary negative stigma associated with comics and graphic novels by alluding to these texts as if they are gateway drugs, which may be an apt metaphor, if we substitute books for drugs. Comic books and graphic novels are capable of leading young readers to read increasingly difficult texts if we are willing to make connections between literature and comics or graphic novels, but I am thinking the answer lies in encouraging people to read. I know one reason I became an English major to begin with is because I knew if I did not, then I may never read texts most people encounter, but I also love reading. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 02:14 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2006

Teaching Mr. Kuechenmeister (Discourse Chronicle)

[Teaching my freshman composition students proved especially difficult for me this week because I noticed many of them are unable to remain interested during a full 50-minute period. Many students lose interest, fall asleep, or show visible signs of boredom about halfway through a period. Looking at such a situation as an instructor who is passionate about English studies (particularly rhetoric and composition), I instinctively blame myself and my presentation style, which leads me walking out of my class feeling less confident and that lack of confidence infects everything else I do. I feel like a failure at something I wanted to do since I can remember.

I imagine freshman students having a much harder time understanding rhetoric compared with me during my third year of undergraduate when I learned about it. Therefore, I spent one week on learning about rhetoric and the rhetorical situation; one week on reading visuals and argument; one week on basic composition and drafting; and then next week I plan on devoting one period to MLA citation and one period to peer review before my students turn in papers next Friday.

I hoped my students learned how to identify parts of the rhetorical situation, move from identification to explanation using sentences, change those sentences into an introduction, and then apply concepts of argument to develop body paragraphs analyzing details from their visual before providing a conclusion. I notice most of them succeeding at these tasks in their homework, but not in class. Maybe I am asking for too much or not guiding them enough...I feel like I failed teaching this unit. How will I teach my students to write the other three papers if I failed at the first one? BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 06:54 PM | Comments (1)

September 08, 2006

Comic books for Christians (Charlotte Observer)

Some Christians question whether comics are appropriate for religious content. Some apparently shy away from the books because they think "graphic novel" means adult material. Some mainstream stores are reluctant to carry books appealing to what they view as a small niche. -Tonya Caldwell

[Why do people automatically assume that "graphic" means "adult"? I remember teaching literature students taking a course on The Novel that graphic novels differ from comic books in two significant ways. First is length since comic books are mostly 22 pages in length with a comfortable maximum number of panels being nine (graphic novels are at least 100 pages following a similar convention). Second is the audience because graphic novels are not targeting younger readers as a monthly comic book supposedly does. Instead, graphic novels target more mature readers and may not relate with its monthly title companion, which I taught separates graphic novels from trade paperbacks. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2006

Rhetorical Situation Breakthrough (Discourse Chronicle)

[Today I experienced a breakthrough with my freshman composition class! I finally got them to understand what the "context" part of the rhetorical situation means. Last week, we spent time learning the parts and being able to identify them in a given packet of popular culture visuals from my collections, but I noticed in the homework some students struggled with the "message" and "context" part of the rhetorical situation. I worked with them today interactively on the 2-Disc Deluxe Edition Batman Begins DVD image and one of my students said, "So once the message is established, then the context is the support." I made that student repeat what he had said and I beamed with pride because I managed to get them to overcome a hangup and it is only week two. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2006

Where Does the Time Go? (Discourse Chronicle)

[Today my section of students in English 104: Composition and Rhetoric and I began our first "real" day of class. I say "real" day of class because we started working with rhetoric concepts from our textbooks. I am teaching a MWF section with 50 minutes each meeting and I wonder where the time goes. I planned on introducing the rhetorical situation (sender, receiver, message, context), starting to work with the rhetorical situation using a packet of sample visuals (Death of Superman cover, Lego Batcave ad, Batman Begins DVD cover and back, political cartoon about John Mark Karr), and show them Aristotle's Model of Argument as a means of approaching how to react to visuals. I planned too much stuff into a 50-minute period.

I managed to introduce the rhetorical situation and identify its parts before launching into a group activity identifying the rhetorical situation in those sample visuals for 10 minutes, but that time vanished almost as soon as I said we were going to do it. However, good discussions resulted as one group debated about what "context" means when looking at an ad with an image and text, plus the group I worked with made a connection between detail in a visual and context. I feel proud about our beginnings because it tells me how to pace myself through these remaining three weeks and students are picking up on what I planned on. We did not make it to Aristotle's Model of Argument.

Tentatively, I imagined Week 1 being about rhetoric and the rhetorical situation; Week 2 being about beginning college writing; Week 3 about research; and then Week 4 being about peer review as a precursor to turning in their first papers at the end of Week 4. Now I am thinking about spending two weeks on rhetoric and rhetorical situation and discussing basic college writing with research the following week. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

College students assigned comic books, best-sellers (News-Record)

Salisbury also uses "Birth of a Nation," a comic-book novel by Aaron McGruder, creator of the popular cartoon strip "Boondocks." And she's not the only professor outside the art department assigning comics. An English 105 class this semester was required to read "Watchmen" -- a dystopian comic about superheroes who are outlawed by presidential order and struggle with existential dilemmas.

[Joel Pace, one of my undergraduate mentors, taught Neil Gaiman's Sandman series for a long time in his Introduction to Literature course. Now he is switching to Blackpool. David Myers assigns Maus and Sally Robinson assigns Watchmen in their curriculums here at Texas A&M University. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2006

Census Foresees an Older, and Wiser, America (Washington Post)

"Education is a particularly powerful factor in both life expectancy and health, and we're not quite sure why," Richard Suzman, associate director for behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, said in the teleconference. Better-educated people may have more money to pay for health care, and they may know more about a healthy lifestyle, he said.

[According to this article, "education" is defined as having an undergraduate degree, so "higher education" is not being factored into it. I am actually glad that post-undergraduate degree holders are not included. I am always willing to talk about graduate school since now I am "in the trenches," but I also tell people that graduate school is not for everyone. I usually say, "Don't go. If you have a choice between going and not going, then I say don't go, unless you are absolutely sure that is what you want or you have no choice." BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 12:13 PM | Comments (2)

March 06, 2006

Finding Inspiration Through Comic Books (CBS 3 Philadelphia)

“His uncle suggested that he start reading comic books and with that. his uncle Neal introduced him to the X-Men,” described Axel.

It started way back when he loved dressing like the very characters he was reading about, just "kickin’ around" the idea scored a major interest.

“This is the first X-Men issue that I ever received from my uncle, the one that started this sick obsession of mine,” said Nash Axel.

[...]

“It’s easier for me to read now. I can honestly say I’m the only person in my class reading Hamlet. When everyone else is using Spark Notes, I’ll actually read it cause I enjoy it,” he said. “I can’t wait to go to college to get a degree in accounting.”

[A literacy success story using comic books. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2006

All Eyes on Google (Newsweek)

Let's face it—it's good to be Google. Every minute, worldwide, in 90 languages, the index of this Internet-based search engine created by these Stanford doctoral dropouts is probed more than 138,000 times. In the course of a day, that's over 200 million searches of 6 billion Web pages, images and discussion-group postings. Searches for golf clubs, song lyrics, tomorrow night's blind date, recipes and the unaltered screen shots of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl boo-boo. Amazingly, the majority of those queries evoke satisfactory, even revelatory, results. Google has changed the way the world finds things out, and enticed it to look for things previously considered unfindable.

[...]

Of course, Google's biggest problem may well be (cue soundtrack from "Jaws") Microsoft. Bill Gates is constitutionally unable to countenance the idea that a cheeky Silicon Valley start-up can claim even the mildest role as an Internet gateway. Last autumn Gates told NEWSWEEK that his company's complacency in search was a grave error that would soon be corrected. "We didn't make it as much of a priority as we should have," he said. "We recognized that, and we're on the job." At the World Economic Forum earlier this year, he was even more frank: "[Google] kicked our butts," he said. The last time Microsoft felt similarly embarrassed—when it failed to notice that the Internet was kind of going to be a big thing—Gates started a companywide jihad that didn't stop until his competitor, Netscape, was eviscerated.

[Last night, a colleague brought up Google during a reading group discussion about current composition pedagogy, or what is being taught and not taught, along with for whom. Many people believe that Google returns results based upon how many times a certain search is initiated, but that is not how results are determined, which I learned after reading Dr. Dennis G. Jerz's online seminar presentation about Assessing Google as a Teaching & Research Tool. Instead, Google's rankings are based upon how many other sites are linking to the web page containing your search terms. Therefore, a user cannot "stuff the ballot box" by repeating a search term umpteen times. It was a great discussion! BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2006

Superman Helps Children Understand Religion (Superman Homepage)

"Teenagers visit the cinema and see films on television and DVDs so it's hardly surprising that their assessments of what is heroic and what is evil, possible or impossible, are partly based on what they watch," says Ms Cook, the head of post-graduate teacher training in religious education.

She sees many parallels between Superman and Jesus:

[I am unsure if I would compare Superman with Jesus. I see two points of contention about Superman / Clark Kent here (depending on what denomination of Christianity or religion one subscribes to). First of all, many Christian branches believe Jesus came to be from an immaculate conception, whereas Superman was not. Second, Superman's childhood and teen years are covered in comic books and other mediums like The WB's Smallville, whereas Jesus's childhood is covered in the Gospel of Thomas. Nevertheless, I agree with this article in that Superman / Clark Kent is a positive role model for our society and I believe that image provides an explanation for Superman's over six decade existence. I know that learning what my parents taught me about morals and seeing them in action with Superman significantly contributed to my maturity as an adult. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 12:02 AM | Comments (2)

February 02, 2006

New Exam Aims to Measure Tech 'Literacy' (Yahoo! News)

The ICT Literacy Assessment touches on traditional skills, such as analytical reading and math, but with a technological twist. Test-takers, for instance, may be asked to query a database, compose an e-mail based on their research, or seek information on the Internet and decide how reliable it is.

[...]

The new "core" version that will be sold to high schools can be taken in a school computer lab over about 75 minutes and consists of 14 short tasks, lasting three to five minutes each, and one longer task of about 15 minutes. Students may be asked, for example, to determine what variables should go where in assembling a graph, and then use a simple program to create it. They could also be asked to research a topic on the Web and evaluate the authoritativeness of what they find.

[One of my colleagues in the English department is interested in how students use technology in and out of a classroom. I am impressed that one task on this assessment might be "to determine what variables should go where in assembling a graph," but I wonder how secondary education might pull that off, since rhetoric (even visual rhetoric) is not taught in schools. I know I had to wait until my third year of college work to even begin learning about rhetoric. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Parappa M-I-Xes flour into a bowl, LIVE! (Joystiq)

Andreas Wieslander's bachelor thesis, entitled "IN REAL GAME," is "a project about marketing games through live performances, in order to focus on the games feel, rather than its graphics and sfx."

He has chosen the infectious beats and charms of the PlayStation classic Parappa the Rapper to illustrate this concept. They act out the roles of Cheep Cheep and Parappa in a rendition of "Cheep Cheep Cooking Chicken's Rap," complete with seafood cake, live backing band, and Parappa's jerky delivery. "Crack. Crack. Crack. The egg. Into. The bowl."

[From Nick Stepaniak. The link shows a three and a half minute video of this project. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 08:23 PM | Comments (1)

January 30, 2006

Lack of math, science teachers prompts U.S. alarm (USA Today)

With a certificate to teach several high school science subjects, recent University of Texas graduate Steve Sinski is getting the kind of attention usually reserved for the football players on campus.

[...]

"You have to want to (teach). They're not paying teachers like the glamorous research jobs," said Sinski, who had thought he'd follow his parents' footsteps and become a pharmacist. But "research science doesn't appeal to me. It's monotonous. Teaching exposes you to different faces and new and exciting things."

[One thing I know is that nobody goes into teaching for the money (at any level), so if getting rich is part of a person's grand scheme of things, then I would strongly urge them to reconsider education as a field. I find it interesting that there is a math and science teacher shortage because humanities fields are always in a crisis. I am aware of division among disciplines (humanities vs. sciences or history vs. english or english vs. communication), but I would rather see interdisciplinarity happen, especially since these areas are all able to co-exist happily. I know some of my longest-time friends are scientists, historians, or science enthusiasts converted to English. However, such a dream is much farther away. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 03:00 PM | Comments (2)

January 26, 2006

What's Cool (Bluegoose on the Brazos)

One crucial act of nerdism is to obsess over cool stuff. On the technological side, cool stuff is usually gadgets. A new program, a new game, a new tool. If it's cool, it demands your attention and nothing can get in the way.

For educators who think they can appeal to nerdism by making college courses into computer games, several problems arise. First, school is always decidedly uncool. Second, the educators themselves fall into a kind of nerdism and tend to get excited about their tools and then neglect what they wanted to teach in the first place.

[From Bluegoose on the Brazos. My response (also on this blog): [...] although I am able to see how this problem with courses surrounding video games may arise, I would like to offer a counterexample. Dr. Dennis G. Jerz was an undergraduate mentor of mine who enlightened me about technical writing, hypertext, usability, and new media as our interactions continue to this day through blogging. Anyway, he is teaching EL 250: Video Gaming at Seton Hill University, a course that contextualizes video games as Interactive Fiction with new media and he is getting a positive response from students who say they want to be there. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 11:11 PM | Comments (1)

December 05, 2005

Graphic novels catch eyes and minds of students (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Much of the criticism, librarians say, comes from parents who dislike the books' reliance on pictures. And some schools simply don't use the discretionary part of their budget to buy graphic novels. At West Bend West High School, librarian Patti Geidel said she prefers purchasing books with more text than the graphic novels.

[Hey, hey! (claps twice) Ho, ho! (stamps twice) Naysaying has got to go! Hey, hey! (claps twice) Ho, ho! (stamps twice) Naysaying has got to go! Eric Blodgett (a colleague in the English department) also showed me this link. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2005

Welcome English 603! (Discourse Chronicle)

[Dr. Ives's Eng 603 students may post here about their research guide projects as an alternative to a poster session. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 03:33 PM | Comments (15)

November 09, 2005

College Times interviews Dr. Steve Gibson who plans to teach a graphic novel class (Net X News)

COLLEGE TIMES: When someone typically thinks of a class on literature, they think Shakespeare, Twain, Hemingway etc. How do you explain to the skeptics the appeal of an English class centered on graphic novels?

GIBSON: According to U.S. News and World Report, "The comic books of your youth [have] grown up.... And that's not all. The comics are also winning more respect. Literary honors, respectful reviews, museum exhibits - and even academic attention."

[...]

Graphic novels are of interest to English majors because they provide a unique opportunity to look at written and visual rhetorics. Comic books have been parts of arguments about censorship and huge debates over creating or destroying literacy. They've been the focus of Senate hearings on how words and images influence culture.

[Gibson plans on teaching Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Art Spiegelman's Maus, Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Season of Mist, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons, and Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2005

Kids are Quick (David J. Fehringer)

TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America.
MARIA: Here it is.
TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America?
CLASS: Maria.
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TEACHER: Why are you late, Frank?
FRANK: Because of the sign.
TEACHER: What sign?
FRANK: The one that says, "School Ahead, Go Slow."
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TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
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TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell "crocodile?"
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L"
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
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TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
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TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
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TEACHER: Goss, why do you always get so dirty?
GOSS: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
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TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with "I."
MILLIE: I is...
TEACHER: No, Millie, the teacher interrupted..... Always say, "I am."
MILLIE: All right... "I am the ninth letter of the alphabet."
_________________________________
TEACHER: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
______________________________
TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking
When people are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher

[Thanks for the forward, Thurston. I always like pedagogical humor. BK]

Posted by kuechebj at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)