Happy Birthday, Laila

Having just discovered Wordle, I thought I'd see what my CV looked like as a tag cloud.

Yeah, Mikey!

It had better be the thought that counts.

Consistent with the mission of this blog, I hereby post a multimedia notice of an informal educational opportunity available to anyone traveling in Central New Jersey.

This is our cat Buster.

I just learned of a design blog over at 37signals called Signal vs. Noise, which is where I found this video about making music videos.

Read and Discuss

A recent post on the NCTE Inbox Blog gives teachers suggestions about how "to explore movies based on short stories and novels in the literature classroom." The links on Read, Write, Think lead to a discussion that connects the Macintosh 1984 commercial to Orwell's 1984. That got me thinking about the SoBe Life Water "Thrillicious" cpmmercial which, eventually, led here.

MIT sketching

I was already a convert to the benefits of SMART Boards before I saw this demo of a wonderfully intuitive simulation tool.

Here is a link to a YouTube video by Richard Miller, Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University. It speaks, eloquently, I think, to my concerns about English, English Education, and Teacher Education. If only I could get faculty in some of those areas to speak to the issues addressed in this video.

A Vision of Students Today

This most recent product of Michael Wesch and Digital Ethnography prompted several negative responses from faculty members who may have felt indicted or threatened by what the students were saying.

Information R/evolution

This is the second of Michael Wesch's videos that I think is especially relevant to my interests in literacies, including information literacy, digital literacy, and multimodal literacy.

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

I have been meaning to post this video, and two others by the same author, to this blog.

What Good Teachers Say

I was looking something up online and happened upon two sites that mean a lot to me. The first was the 826 National site, which I elected to add to my links on the right. That site is meaningful for several reasons, a few of which have to do with my roles and goals as a teacher of writing. One, however, has more to do with my personal history, which happens to include a prolonged stint as a beast of burden for a business just down the street from 826 Valenica, i.e., Harrington Brothers Moving and Storage.

The 826 link led to research Dave Eggers, and that led me to do a quick Web search for signs of the late Art Quinn, and that led me to a posting on Berkeley's Office of Educational Development website by Art about teaching. His brief statement on teaching included several tasty nuggets including this one regarding his preference for thin syllabi: "No schedule should be allowed to inhibit a fruitful line of inquiry."

I expect that I will be going back to Art's thoughts on teaching quite a bit now that I find myself in faculty development. I may also find myself at some 826 sites, as well, both virtual and physical. We shall see.

New Job, Fresh Start

I started this blog two years ago, and posted to it three times. Each time my purpose was to experiment with the technology, playing with RSS feeds and the like. Now, I may actually begin blogging here. Why now? Because I have changed jobs and may actually have not only time, but powerful incentives to get serious about the stated goal of this blog.

I used to direct two graduate programs, one in Instructional Design & Technology, and one in Digital Design. I now serve as the Associate Director of Faculty Development at Rider University. In that capacity, I am charged with promoting effective and innovative instruction by all faculty.

Included among them are the English Department faculty, the faculty in the College of Education, and in the Graduate School of Education. I will soon learn who among them might be interested in this project of mine.

The Greek word aschematiston means "without form" or "without figure," but, in English, this rhetorical term describes two, nearly opposite phenomena :

• the use of plain, unadorned language
• the artless use of figurative language

This blog is about language; more about its instruction than its use. As a student, I studied language(s) in various contexts; as an educator I have worked mainly with first-year college students, teaching oral and written communication, mostly argument. As an administrator, I am excited by the possibilities that digital communication technologies offer to students and teachers of effective communication.

While more teachers at every level employ more technology in their English Language Arts curricula, certain aspects of English as an academic discipline inhibit the integration of new technologies into the rhetorical education of college students, and, as a result, the literacy education of all K-12 students .

Also, several contemporary assessment practices discourage the integration of new communication technologies into curricula because they test primarily for proficiency in print literacy, and there are powerful political and economic incentives to teach that which is tested.

My goal is to support the integration of new digital technologies into the English Language Arts curricula by influencing both the university-level teacher education programs and K-12 assessment practices for English Language Arts.

This blog is a place where I will collect (and post) my thoughts on this project, along with links to news, information, and research findings that relate to my goals and the challenges before me.

Tim McGee