WordCamp Ed DC 2008

So, I've gratefully accepted an invitation to speak at WordCamp Ed DC 2008 on "Teaching Undergraduates with Blogs" at GMU's Center for History and New Media on Saturday, November 22. If you're in the area, come check it out. [Heck, it's free!]

I'm planning on talking about my uses of WordPress (MU) blogs in various classes. So, WordPress as: CMS-alternative, research log, reading reaction journal, individual project site, "permanent" group project site, and potential e-portfolio. Then I'll discuss how students have responded to the process, maybe show a few good examples of students taking it to the next level.

Any suggestions for my talk? Issues to raise? Points to ponder?

Speaking of Honor

I was honored to be asked to present the faculty perspective on our school's Honor Code at our annual Honor Convocation, a moment when all new students at the school are introduced to the Honor System and sign an Honor Pledge, committing themselves to that system.

I only had a week to prepare, so I turned to a number of colleagues and some fellow alums for ideas. Tim O'Donnell and Claudia Emerson were particularly helpful in shaping the direction of the speech.



Thanks to Anand Rao for recording and posting the video. If anyone's interested, I could post the text of the talk as well.

In any case, I think it went well. It was a real honor to stand up on that stage and start off the academic year in that way and represent the faculty perspective to the entering students.

A Radical Idea for the Teaching Center

As is so often the case for me, this post began as a comment on someone else's blog post (Steve at Pedablogy) and grew to a silly size, so here's my expanded version:

I've been having this radical idea lately (and it's one that may make no practical sense, given our institution's resources and structure), but here it is. In the conversation that the UMW University Committee on Digital Initiatives had with the CIO of Rhodes College, we learned that they had combined the IT and Library departments into one group. One advantage of this for students and faculty was that if you had any questions/ideas/interest about a research/informational topic/project/idea you went to a single place, where you would be referred to the person or people who could best help you (reference librarian, programmer, ITS, or some combo). From a user perspective it helps avoid the paralyzing question about where you go and it avoids some of the "siloization" that seems to be such a problem for academia.

What if the UMW teaching center worked in a similar way? [Here I'm thinking of combining, DTLT, the Speaking and Writing Centers, maybe even academic tutoring.] What if you had any kind of question about teaching or learning and you just had a single source to go to? E.g., I want to brainstorm new assignments to engage my students more fully in a text. Go to the single entry point and you have access to a number of options, a number of experts in various aspects of teaching and learning. Maybe you can talk with someone from the speaking center and someone else from DTLT to create a project.

Imagine what it would be like to be able to have all of those resources in one place, easily accessible to faculty and students. Imagine what collaborations might emerge. Another benefit of having all those groups under one institutional roof would be that they would be able to talk to each other and bridge some of those silos of effort and innovation. [I'm not so naive to think the silos would disappear.] Another potential benefit might be streamlining of spaces and resources and administration.

Obvious Cons: It would take a special group of leaders to make this work. It would require combining some radically different departmental cultures. It might result in fewer people working to support faculty and students in these areas (the dark side of "streamlining"). It risks restricting the nimble, creative nature of at least one of those departments. With the wrong leader, it risks overemphasizing one method or approach over others. Perhaps it should just focus on pedagogy and leave student services where it is.

What am I missing here? [I'm sure a great deal.] And, if the plan itself is impractical, how could we take some of best aspects of it and implement them now, in 2 years, in 5 years?

Faculty Academy 2008

I just finished my third session at Faculty Academy. All three went well and we got good feedback from the audiences. I continue to be jazzed and energized by this conference and it's good to see so many people from UMW and from other places here and talking about these issues.

I'll have more detailed posts on these sessions when I get through my other two presentations this week (on my First-Year Seminar class and to a group of local elementary school teachers).

It's all over but the grading....

...and as soon as that's done, I'll have a long post about the digital history class (if only because I have three presentations at three different venues lined up about it in the next 7 months and I need to start figuring out what I'm going to say...).

A Semester of Digital History -- Formal Presentations

The formal presentation of my seminar's Digital History projects will be part of the History Department's end-of-the-semester symposium. All four groups will present on Friday, April 25, at 3 PM in Monroe Hall 202.

Those of you in the area, please come see them present. We don't just want to present these projects to the class, but to the department, the university, and the alumni community.

[Over the weekend, I showed the projects to the Alumni Association Board of Directors and they were well received.]

The conference is finished

We had nearly 200 people come to the 3rd Virginia Forum last Friday and Saturday. It was a ton of work, but it seems to have come off without any significant problems. Now I can focus on my grading, teaching, presentations, and cutting the lawn. Ahhh, the free time....