Since my last blog post I’ve found an app with which I can manage my class completely. I take attendance, record grades, assign groups using a random student generator, and make notes about class period goals all in one easy to navigate app called AndroClass. It’s available in a tablet app for $9.99 and a tablet compatible phone app for $5.
The catch? The set up takes some time, patience, and willingness to play around with the interface. I was up to the challenge one afternoon and set the whole thing up in just a few hours. As long as you follow the well-explained format, you can import an entire class from a .csv file. You can include the students’ ID numbers, birthdays, special needs, etc. all at once. This is a major plus. Manually entering each student would be exhausting, but I simply downloaded a .csv file from my university’s course management website, made some adjustments to fit the program’s requirements, and voila! I had my class ready to go.
I spent the beginning of a class period playing photo booth so I could have each of my students’ photos attached to their names in AndroClass. Now I can quiz myself on my students’ names and take attendance without yelling names and interrupting their work time. This is the quickest that I’ve learned a class’s names. Now when students come in for conferences early in the semester I will be able to pull up an overview of their progress with out asking “And what’s your name again?”
The very best thing about this app is its developer. German developer Andreas Schilling and I have exchanged quite a few emails with my ill-informed questions. He responds very quickly with thorough and helpful answers. For a developer who has to answer questions in multiple languages from frantic instructors worldwide, I am very impressed. This is top-rate customer service.
As part of my technologies series I would like to discuss the apps I use on my Android tablet to make my life as a teacher easier and more enjoyable. I won’t mention apps for iPad users because I have no experience with Apple products. Plenty of more useful and extensive guides exist for iPad users. I will make a note of the applications that are cross-platform (available for iOS and Android devices) by marking them with an asterisk (*). What I look for in a good application:
Usability
Cost (preferably free)
Compatibility (with Word and other common programs)
As a graduate student, I don’ t have the luxury of buying extra programs on a whim, especially if I might find that they don’t serve my purposes. The multitude of free, high-quality apps to choose from in the Google Play store makes owning an Android tablet a dream for me. I will say that I usually download 3-6 apps that all do essentially the same thing, try them each out, and then uninstall the ones that were not up to par.
This application has been a game changer for me. My students submit all of their papers electronically into the cloud. From there I download their file onto my computer at home and then provide feedback through margin comments. Until recently, I was unable to do this on my tablet because it doesn’t support Microsoft Word. I tried Splashtop Streamer 2 as a remote desktop to solve this issue (see below) but this is an even easier to use and smoother option.
Splashtop Streamer is a remote desktop app. It allows me to access my home computer from my tablet on any wireless connection! This features costs around $10/year but if you primarily use your tablet and computer in the same place/same wireless connection you can use the free version.
Android users will delight to see this: Microsoft Word!
This app works with Box.com and is fantastic for brainstorming. Have students create a mind map for their projects as an assignment directly in the Box.com interface, and upload it from there!
I’ve spent the last few days focusing on online resources for teaching ENGL 101. My course this semester uses Colorado State’s Writing Studio for their course management site and although I like many of the features of this website (including their fantastic guides) I feel like I could be doing more with technology to make my class accessible, engaging, and multimodal. Some of my colleagues use WordPress as their course website and because I have years of experience with WordPress, I figured I might give it a try.
I chose the ever so corny URL http://englishoneohone.wordpress.com. I know it’s goofy, but so am I, and I feel like that’s a vital part of keeping open lines of communication with your students. I set up the basics: menus with my assignment descriptions (still in progress), my contact info, links to other websites with resources they need, etc. I always feel somewhat limited in what I can do with a wordpress.com blog due to the javascript restrictions, however, in this process I discovered a few key tools that WordPress offers that might be useful to other teacher/bloggers out there.
1. Milestone
Available in the widgets menu, this tool allows you to display a countdown to an important date or deadline (mine is the due date of their first assignment) in the side column of your blog. This can offer a little visual reminder of how much time they have to work on their papers before the due date without me verbally nagging them every day.
I explored Box because it too has been added as a standard WordPress widget. Because I know that WordPress is selective in which widgets they add, I decided to check this service out. Much to my delight, I found that Box offers many of the features we’re used to with Dropbox, but with 5 GB of free storage and tons of apps to make the service more usable. These apps include not only the standard Windows/Mac/Android/iOS applications, but also multiple apps to allow you to annotate PDFs, apps that allow you to print directly from Box, and above all, InstallFree Nexus. This app works in the Box platform and allows any user with a web browser to utilize the full capabilities of Microsoft Word . . . for free! This is a game changer for teachers who often run into the issue of students not owning a copy of Word and therefore finding it hard to get to a computer lab to write. Now they can read our comments and even compose directly from this web-based app! Above all, WordPress had the insight to add it as a widget where students can directly access files or click on the Box link to upload their assignments to a class folder.
Scribd is a fantastic service that allows you upload files and then integrate them into your website or blog. If you click on my CV link, you will find that Scribd is hosting my CV and allowing this aesthetically pleasing alternative to download links right on WordPress. After you upload a file, you simply choose how you want to embed it, in this case you select “WordPress” and they provide you with a WordPress-ready code. Voila!
I’ve long been a fan of Google Calendar (and all Google services) but only recently tried implementing it into a blog. This is another simple process in which you locate the embed link on your Google Calendar page, copy and paste it into the page you choose, and WordPress does the rest for you. I plan to keep a Google Calendar updated with all of the assignment deadlines for my upcoming ENGL 101 course.
These are just the few that excited me. If you have others, please share in the comments section!
Today I signed up for my last semester of classes as a master’s student. I am taking a course entitled Regionalism, Race, and Nationalism in Late 19th and Early 20th c. American Fiction taught by Dr. Donna Campbell. I am looking forward to this class as well as an opportunity to shadow Dr. Leeann Hunter‘s Women Writers course. What an exciting spring!
Earlier this fall I presented at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association‘s conference in Seattle. I had a fantastic time exploring the city and presenting my paper. My presentation employed Judith Halberstam’s theory of Queer Temporality on the Victorian prostitute and explored the ways in which women of the time could have used prostitution as a means to agency. My paper was very well-received. I was lucky enough to present on one of three Women and Work panels, led by Dr. Susanne Weil. I love presenting my work and this was perhaps the most supportive and fun conference I’ve attended. The keynote was Sandra Cisneros who put on a spectacular reading of some of her poems and her most recent work Have You Seen Marie? Her spirit and energy had the whole crowd in tears and was personally moving and inspirational.
In our hotel before my presentation at PAMLA.
The primary theme of this semester has been self-motivation. I have started waking up around 6AM every morning in order to take full advantage of each and every day. Through this I have been able to integrate a daily writing regime, better time management skills, and a more self-reliant and affordable daily routine (making my own breakfast, lunch, coffee, and tea.) This leaves me with more time in the evenings to do the things I love like knitting, baking, and mindlessly watching television with my partner.
The primary motivation for this new schedule is my thesis. I am two chapters in at this point and I feel confident that I will finish by my self-imposed February 1st deadline. My committee is made up of three wonderful WSU faculty members and I am excited to hear more feedback as my writing progresses. My thesis is about Virginia Woolf’s use of écriture féminine mecanique, my thoroughly modernist reinvention of Cixous and Kristeva’s paramount theory of bodily women’s writing. I am tentatively using To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando as my textual foundations. I’ll keep the blog up to date with further developments!
Daniela, Me, Aree, Sarah, and Owen after our presentation at LSU’s Mardi Gras Conference.
Since my last update I presented at LSU’s Mardi Gras Conference with several of my colleagues. We formed a panel entitled BAM! POW! CRASH!: The Under-Appreciated Power of Comics as Social Texts. My paper was on David B.’s Epileptic and discussed his work as applied to disability studies. My paper title was “Seizures, Samurai, and Saving the Family: Epileptic’s Reappropriation of Disability Stereotypes” and I feel like the panel was well-received. I enjoyed attending this graduate level conference, but look forward to pursuing larger and more prominent conferences in the upcoming semesters.
My ENGL 101 course is going well. I have been struggling to keep up with my grading, but that pain is self-inflicted. Seven writing assignments in a semester? Never again! The students seem to have enjoyed the format of the course otherwise, so I will be integrating some of my original ideas into my next syllabus with much more sensible applications. I have loved teaching Composition this semester and cannot wait to be able to focus my energies exclusively on teaching.
I received word today that I was accepted to a position at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, ID this summer working for their Institute of Intensive English where I will be tutoring and monitoring the language lab as well as teaching a Conversation course. This will be a fantastic opportunity to work with international students and experience an ELL classroom. Wonderful professional development and well worth the hour commute.
Additionally, I will be participating in the grading positions the university offers to 101 instructors. In this position I will be reading entrance exams and placing the students into an introductory composition course. This job will be sporadic and I will only be able to attend about a session a week due to conflicts with my IIE job, but it seems like a great way to experience the testing side of college composition.
I have submitted proposals to a few semi-local conferences for next semester including but not limited to PAMLA and Sirens.
I’ll try to keep the blog updated more frequently in the future.
Okay, they have some things in common, such as involving words and images, being bound into books, and being created by humans.
If you’re still waiting to be convinced that graphic novels are a valid form, I have two examples to convince the most skeptical reader and rebuttals to a few of the more common arguments against the 9th art.
Comics are for children. The graphic novel is just an extended form of the Sunday funnies.
Now that is funny.
I completely understand the common tendency to assume that all things comic-related are childish, easily digestible, and base. This is a long-held assumption in the Western world. The association is backed by the simplicity of images, the superhero association, and the 10-year-old male audience base for newspaper comics we all know so well. The graphic novel certainly can take on this form, but many of the biggest names in the field work against these associations. Take a look at David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp for a moment and reconsider.
CMYK Sophistication
Mazzucchelli uses CMYK to make meaning in his text, giving the two main characters more dimension through colorization. He uses drawing styles to denote conflict between characters. He uses images to say something about the subtleties of romance that words fail to convey. A master both of word and image, Mazzucchelli’s masterpiece could be broken up into individual images and praised page for page, but as a medium to tell a moving and devastating story, it is more than just a sequence of breathtaking imagery. It is likewise more than a moving written story.
Simplistic?For children?
Graphic novels are dumbed down and too simple. They’re for people who can’t read and need images to help them understand what’s going on.
Wow, anonymous critic, you’ve led me to my next point perfectly! If Asterios Polyp disproves the misconception that the images in graphic novels are simplistic, Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home does the same for the words between those images.
Key Term: Tragicomic
In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic we see the boundaries of comics simultaneously upheld and crossed. Detailing the events of Bechdel’s unusual childhood and strained relations with both of her parents, Fun Home is meticulously pieced together, producing something more archival and literary than one might expect. While maintaining traditional panel layouts throughout most of the comic, the content is often text-based and life-like. The reader feels like a voyeur pouring over every suspect detail of Bechdel’s life. Unlike the autobiographical comic that one might expect in which an explicit chronological narrative unfolds by illustrating those events which make for a good story, Bechdel includes painstakingly recreated pages from her diary entries, from her father’s letters, from literary texts, maps and even her family’s behemoth dictionary to create a non-chronological masterpiece that reads more like a novel, interwoven with literary parallels than a standard autobiography.
Text overpowers image
The text so predominates the image that I’ve heard others say that they found it difficult to read. I don’t necessarily agree. I found it wildly engaging and well-written, riddled with references to classic literature (both of Bechdel’s parents are English teachers. How could she resist?) and effectively convincing the reader to stay captivated. It is her obsessive nature which makes Fun Home such a hit. If Bechdel had lost her childhood diaries, had not found her father’s police records, posed for each image in the novel (proof below), the novel would not have the precision which makes it so impossible to put down.
Let's just pause here for a moment.
Without the images, Bechdel’s story would still be phenomenal. She would still be a gifted writer and I would probably still appreciate her work. When juxtaposed with her simple yet explicit images (clearer and more exact images representing archival recreations and classic comic style representing elements of the story) it is another masterpiece of its own right.
You’re very convincing, Courtney. Where should I look for more graphic novels?
Well, anywhere books are sold, my dear lady! There are so many choices out there! I’ve introduced you to two of my favorites, but you might also consider two others, Craig Thompson’s Blankets or Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World. In the upcoming weeks I’ll have a review of David B.’s Epileptic on this very blog. Here’s a list of the basics if you’re interested in diving in!
