Thoughts on Writing and New Ideas

There were recently a series of posts online that took a different look at the horrible writing that we as instructors sometimes (often) have to grade (and by extension, the horrible writing that we, as students, hopefully less than often, hand in). I especially appreciated the discussions about how writing style can go down the toilet when people are struggling to make sense of new ideas. I am appreciating it as a student, as I find myself writing in circles as I tussle with new ideas, theories, and applications. And I'm appreciating it as an instructor, as I know my students are encountering ideas and information completely foreign to many of them (physical anthropology; 'nuff said). Here are the links; I recommend each of them.

Tenured Radical, So You Think You Can Write During The Semester. Well, yes I did. And it's difficult to the point of not happening, at least not re: The Book. Though I have written other non-class stuff, including conference papers, an article, a book review, and two grant proposals. All of these are good, productive things, but they've also been procrastination about The Book. There is navel-gazing going on over this issue that will hopefully result in unjamming the jam. Back to TR! Though a lot of what she writes is about academics and squeezing in the writing, I saw several places where prof and student writing lives were not that different (last minute-ness; hopes for a social life; being unprepared...).

And two really great posts from Dr. Crazy about evaluating writing and why it's important (and where students need more direction, specifically: take what you learn here and apply it Over There...) and about writing quality when students run up against Unfamiliar Things:

Yes, English Majors Submit Crappy Papers, Too
I Know This Sounds Weird, but Thank You Dr. Crazy for the C-

And Flavia with a follow-up: Bad writing ≠ bad writer.

I think I'll talk with my students about some of this in class on Monday, and share with them some edits on one of my (not bad but still inked-up with edits) papers.

We're Modern Now, Put On Pants

The Fabulous Historiann had a recent post on The Intellectual Value of Being Wrong, where she argues that conferences should be places of playing with ideas and trying out new things. I agree entirely, though I've not yet had the gumption to do it. I have, however, committed myself to a conference at the dawn of 2012 where I just might, by necessity, if nothing else (I won't have actually done any sub-surface fieldwork by the time I present...).

The post is worth a read, as is, as ever at Historiann's, the comments section. Good, insightful, and crazy-knowledgeable. And funny. I had to share this one from Rustonite; in addition to making me laugh out loud (for realz), Rustonite makes a really good point about periods and timeframes that I think we'd all do well to remember:

I don’t get why there’d be controversy about applying the word lesbian back, any more than there is about periodisations like modern and medieval. Nobody in the middle ages though they were living in the middle (of what?), and it’s not as though somebody came out at new years 1600, ringing a bell and yelling “we’re modern now, put on pants!” Everything we say is a bit anachronistic. It’s important to be aware you’re doing it, but if we tried to write non-anachronistic history we’d find it impossible.

You'll just have to visit Historiann to find out what that lesbian comment is all about!

PS: I highly, highly recommend Judith Bennett's book History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. I can't recommend it enough; it should be required reading for historians and historical archaeologists.

Privilege Bleg

Anyone have suggestions for methods to encourage students to become aware of and engage their various privileges? In this particular case, it's white privilege.

I have tried leading questions, I've tried telling them that more evolution = white = better is just a plain wrong reading... I know you can only lead a horse to water, but suggestions on getting them to drink greatly appreciated.

Out of Grading Jail and Yay! Sun!

I just submitted my final grades for the semester, and am hereby liberated (temporarily) from Grading Jail (I have an approximately 3-week pass).

Happy lunar eclipse of a full moon on the winter solstice, all (yep, I'm totally setting my alarm). The ride to the darkest night of the year has been, well, dark. I am looking forward to welcoming back the sun.

Click here for some Ear Candy

Two Too Cool Sites

There are two, and they are too cool...

1. Abandoned America. Fantastic photography of abandoned sites including hospitals, asylums, steel works, commercial, military, etc. Gorgeous photos; the ones of Bethlehem Steel took my breath away. Alas, I don't remember where I came across this link.

2. Insignificant Topographies. Zoom in super close for the history (?) of things you see (and ignore) every day. Link gleaned from the Contemporary Archaeology email list (check it out if you're into the archaeology of the recent past, or happen to be a theory wonk). This big-to-small zoomy thing is a bit clunky, but has a ton of possibilities for presenting sites to the public.

Courseblogging: Course Blog

One week from now, this online course will be behind me. Which is good, because then I can sleep!

I have to say that my students really stepped up. The online discussions, conducted in blog format, have been particularly successful, in my opinion. I start with an overall theme, pretty general -- for example, "culture and evolution," and give them a few resources to start from. I've used radio podcasts, websites, YouTube, TED talks, and blog posts (secretly exposing them to The Internets Beyond Google). They need to summarize and respond to the posted resources (at least 2 posts), and to each other. As the course has progressed, the students have increasingly engaged each other in discussion, including posting their own internet resources. Some of what has been posted has been fantastic, and I'll be using myself next semester. Periodically, the discussion gets off track, or someone draws an incorrect conclusion from the material, and I'll hop in to push things back on track.

I may well try integrating a similar discussion blog into my real-world classes.

Courseblogging: Holy Crap

I am fried. This pace is relentless. If I teach an online course again, it can't be less than 6 weeks, unless it's 1/2 a course.

Holiday weekend plans: Away! Somewhere peaceful. Yay!

Hope you all enjoy the long weekend!

Courseblogging: The Perils of Multiple Personalities

Yep, it happened. I posted to my course blog under my pseudonymous identity. Fortunately, I caught it -immediately-. Hopefully, no one is getting email updates when someone posts a comment...

Courseblogging: Dear Students,

Dear Online Students: Thank you for being proactive and for (at least most of you) reading the instructions. I have not graded your first assignment yet, but I am encouraged. Keep it up, and we'll all get through this!


Dear Plagiarist: I did not make you fail; you made all sorts of choices that resulted in you failing my class. I do not grade you on the number of other courses you are taking. I do not care that you insist that you are acing those classes. Do not blame the unwitting student you plagiarized from for the fact you submitted their paper as your own, and then announce that their paper was crap. When you get busted for plagiarizing, do not hand in a second assignment to me that is also ripped off from somewhere else. Also, you got a raw deal on the essay you paid $100 for; I found it for free.

Courseblogging: Here goes!

I start teaching an online introductory course in physical anthropology tomorrow. It is thirteen weeks of regular semester squashed into four weeks. I know there are lots of folks who teach online, but it's all new to me!

So far, the challenges I see are that the students will have to be exceptionally self-motivated in order to complete the course, and that I won't have that in-person contact with them that I get in lectures, where I can see on their faces if they are puzzled about something.

I do see possibilities for applying some of the self-directed learning they have to do for the online course to in-person classes. The online format is making me totally renegotiate the material and figure out how to direct the students to it, rather than feeding it to them. This is a good thing.

So far, I have plans for individual exercises where they must retrieve and apply information from their textbook and supplemental material; online discussions in a blog format, with points for participating and more points for valuable contributions; and a group project tackling some of the larger issues in physical anthropology to be presented as a website, but with ongoing chunks submitted for grades and comment throughout the course. I'm also excited to try a grading method for the group project that I recently was told about that very elegantly combines my grade with the students' assessments of who pulled their weight in the group assignment.

I hate not assigning an essay; I will have to work that into the textbook/supplemental material section. It is a delicate balance between keeping them engaging and working with the material, and my ability to keep up with the grading. This is largely a function of the seriously compressed time line. Even so, I will be taking in and grading material three times a week. I think I'd have been happier if the course was six weeks, but that's me now, before it starts. I'll see how I feel at the end...

Grading Jail, WTF, and Yikes a Bleg

I am in grading jail. One more class and the final exam, but I have a stack of essays and other assignments to grade and get back to my students. At least it is only one class.

Some of their work is very, very good. But, because they didn't actually complete the assignment as given, they're not getting full marks. I read them the riot act at the beginning of the semester about doing the assignments they're given; I re-read them the riot act mid-semester. A lot of them got burned on their in-class presentations for not following instructions. And still? Their written work = incomplete. WTF. I am at a loss.

Finally, Yikes. I'm teaching this summer, but the class will be online. And I have 4 weeks to cover 13 weeks of material. And most of my in-class course is designed for in-class -- films, in-class presentations, handing around casts of human bones, etc. Despite being told that teaching online is just like teaching in-class, but online (another WTF), I have to rejigger my class and somehow do it so that I can get a sense that my students are engaged and understanding the material. I will gladly take any and all suggestions!

Ahh, end of term...

Four weeks to go, including the final exam, and the flurry of excuses and requests for extensions etc. have begun. So far, they are being polite. That may well change, they're out of the blocks on this kinda early this semester.

I need to massage this course into an online offering for the summer. It will be a challenge!

New Science Scout Badges!

Yay, the Order of Science Scouts has new badges! There are two more I can claim and add to my roster. Ok, one and a half, but I'm rounding up:

The I Have Survived Dangerously Inclement Weather in the Name of Science Badge. It comes with working outside, I suppose. No actual tornadoes, at least not in the line of work, but heat waves, hail, lightening storms, flooding, blinding snow and ice, yes, all of the above. All in cases where we really, really should have packed up and gone inside. I've gotten much more careful with my own safety now that I'm in a supervisory position. It's one thing if I do something stupid, it is quite something else if I let someone else/encourage someone else to do something stupid on my watch.

The I Have an Actual Human Skeleton in my Office Badge. I don't now, but I did. The skeletons I have around now are either real ones (from animals) or casts (from people). When I was an undergrad and a grad student, introductory physical anthropology classes were taught using real human skeletons. In some cases, they were purchased from medical supply houses; in other cases, they were archaeologically-recovered remains. In my opinion, however, there is absolutely no good reason to use real human skeletons in introductory courses. It is not respectful. And all of the skeletons used in these settings suffered damage as a result. The bones were from -people-, people! I think there is a need for exposure to real skeletal material in upper level and graduate classes, particularly when you get into the huge variations that actually exist between individuals and when dealing with pathologies and trauma, but hopefully by the time students have reached this point, they have developed a different way of being around human remains. But this also is ethically fraught, and the wishes of descent groups and living relatives must, imo, be taken into consideration, as must how the teaching will work. There is a big difference between having bones around that get dragged out for classes, and having an assemblage with which students can get important experience by helping to record and analyze.

Weekend Randomness

Field of Brussel Sprouts and Apple Orchard, January 28, 2010

A post of randomness, with a photo. Alas, apparently there was no market for brussel sprouts this year.

• There are two job openings I'm *very* interested in. Except they'd interfere with PhD aspirations. I am considering applying anyway to see where the cards fall. Where is the line between keeping options open and burning bridges? They're both at an institution I would love to work for.
• A CFP for an interdisciplinary symposium entitled "The Body On Display from Renaissance to Enlightenment" sponsored by the Society for the Social History of Medicine. Symposium is in July of 2010. A little late to get an abstract in, but the symposium looks very, very interesting.
• Did you know the dictionary contains "words of concern?" A school district in South Carolina has pulled dictionaries from the classrooms while they decide whether to ban it. Yep, you read rightly... ban the dictionary. For containing words. [h/t Banned Books]
• Flavia makes a post about teachers being public intellectuals. I think the premise is an important one -- that our students are not just students, but are also The Public. I really appreciated the discussion of approrpiate/inappropriate invocations of the present in the classroom. I agree that what is appropriate is likely field-specific. There is a lot of politics in the world of physical anthropology, and I try to address those in context. In my other life, clients in the world of CRM are also members of The Public. Yes, the work we do for them is so they can get their construction permits, but occasionally you get clients who (although they don't want to pay for it) are actually interested in the sites and the process. I do wish that CRM reports were not so "gray" when it comes to public access, however. Reports are all filed with the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), and are therefore "public," but certainly not public in the sense of Public Archaeology or Public History. And neither my employer nor our clients (unless mandated by the SHPO) are paying me to get results out there either through publication or presentations.
• Copper is being stolen from historic sites. This isn't just limited to the copper piping in unattended buildings; thieves are now stealing historic site markers and other copper signs from sites. Keep your eyes peeled; if you notice a sign that has always been there is suddenly gone, don't assume it's off being repaired. Contact whoever is in charge of marking historic sites in your region, and let them know it's gone. In the US, your local SHPO/Tribal HPO can help you find out who to contact; a list can be found here.
• Some very cool digital restoration of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, integrated with GIS mapping. A very, very cool application for GIS and education. A lienzo maps both the geography and the history of a place in one document, aka historical cartography. The previous link is to an article about the process; the link to the project website is here.

Courseblogging Spring 2010

Fist class of the semester tonight, and it's a full house. 30 students; at least the classroom is big enough to hold us all! They're already thinking, which is good. I had several light bulbs go on when I explained that, although we study non-human primates to help distinguish things we do that are biologically hard wired vs. culturally learned, there is not a one-to-one correlation between our fossil ancestors and living primates. Living chimpanzees have, just like us, had millions of years of evolution and successful adaptation to changing environments. They are not some living fossil, though many seem to make this assumption. So, while it's not a one-to-one correlation, it's the best we have.

The class I have this time has a white board, with the projection screen off in the corner. I kind of like whiteboards because I can use lots of colors, and wow the class with my spectacular mind maps and visual aids (read: multicoloured squiggles). I -really- like it when the projector is positioned so that it projects onto the whiteboard; then I can annotate my powerpoints with multicoloured squiggles. On a practical level, though... it's the first class of the semester, and none of the dry erase markers were working. By next week, there won't BE any dry erase markers (I pack my own!)

Whiteboards are kind of fun, but really, for me, nothing beats chalk and a blackboard. The tappity-tap of writing, the size of the chalk, the chalk dust everywhere; I love it. Last semester, I was in a classroom with a blackboard back to back with the blackboard in the next class; we tappity tapped our lectures back and forth. And I always feel like I've accomplished something when I finish up a little dirty -- covered in chalk after a lecture, covered in ink after writing, covered in dirt after a day in the field. It's just... satisfying.

And, no one steals chalk.

Almost Done!

I am in grading jail... though it *is* only 20 essays. Then I give my final exam at... wait for it... 7pm, Wednesday, December 23. Nice, yes? I will be returning essays that night, and be happy to see the backs of them. Then I put my butt, my ungraded finals, and assorted holiday presents in the car, and high-tail it North of the Border for holiday dinner on the 24th and a few days with old friends and family. Thankfully I can submit my grades online while I'm up there!

Good holidays to all, if I don't manage to post before then.

PS: Current vice: Hell's Kitchen, via my new nemesis, Hulu.

Class Starts on Wednesday

I'm getting ready to start teaching again; class starts on Wed, so far there are around 30 students registered. While in the past, I've had up to 6 drop out for various reasons, that hasn't been the case with this particular course (Intro to Physical Anthro). This course seems to average 1-2 drops, so I have a big class.

I have to tweak the syllabus a bit, in part to compensate for an anticipated H1N1 outbreak (easy on the attendance, have a backup plan, etc. At least the uni has a plan to deal with it, at least initially), and in part to change up a bit how I'm lecturing. Although there is some technical stuff that they have to get (meiosis, mitosis, and the mechanics of natural selection), I'm going to try moving a little away from the text, and make them more responsible for the content. It should make things more interesting, encourage attendance, and make it easier to keep on schedule.

I think I'll also move the essay due date earlier in the semester, so I don' t have a giant stack of papers to grade right at the end.

Beloit College has a "Mindset" list for incoming students. It gives a glimpse of how different the world of my students is from my own. For example, the Class of 2013 has never used a card catalog to find a book. The KGB has never officially existed. And women have always outnumbered men in college. I've also discovered that they don't edit or compose on paper, but do everything on the screen.

I do enjoy the teaching, and I'm looking forward to it. Unfortunately, personal shit is hitting the fan, and that will likely take a lot of my energy.

Pedagogy and Working With Documents

I've been working on the book this morning (yay), and took some time out to mess around online while I switched gears (moving from checking sources to writing).

School starts soon, and I'm always interested in improving my teaching. I teach drive-by introductions to various subfields in anthropology; this semester it is physical anthropology. There is SO much to cover in one of these introductory courses, that I just can't. I want to give my students a tasting of all the various things you can do as a physical anthropologist, how it is relevant, how dynamic a field it is, a basic understanding of the processes of natural selection, the importance of biodiversity, and an overview of hominid evolution that ties together physical evolution and cultural development. Still an awfully tall order for 13 weeks of lectures. Yes, I could just yammer at them (and have... and will again, I'm sure), but I want them to think about and engage with the material. I want them to roll it around, compare it to their beliefs and experiences, play "what if," and ask questions - of themselves, their classmates, and me.

I'm always tweaking the course; modifying assignments, messing with lectures, etc. I don't want to emphasize style over substance, but would like my classes to be more engaged. As I was muddling about the 'net this morning, I found this: Secrets of Great History Teachers part of the History Matters: The US Survey Course on the Web. I've skimmed just a couple of the entries, but it looks like there are some good ideas in there, even for non-history teaching (though some have proposed that aren't all studies of the past history?; I will have more on that). I will have to pick out one or two to try.

Also part of the History Matters website is a section called Making Sense of Evidence, with tons of material on working with maps, diaries, letters, ads, speeches, newspapers, etc. I use primary documents all the time; good to get a refresher in approaching them (that, and I'm trying to incorporate more historiography into my historical archaeology).

T Minus By The Gods I'm Late; Where Are My Textbooks?

I start teaching an evening summer session this week. I love teaching! I don't love the fact that I put in for my textbooks MONTHS ago, received confirmation, and there are apparently no textbooks to be had. Also not forthcoming is a reply from the bookstore to my slightly panicked email.

So. I've been thinking about overhauling the course anyway. But for a summer session (marathon classes more than once a week, 13 weeks of material in 5) during the busy field season, and while I'm desperately trying to finish a book draft, would not be my first choice of timing. Eh, I work better by necessity than choice sometimes anyhow!

If I go textbookless for this course, it stays textbookless!

Edited I (Thursday): The textbooks exist! As does the bookstore manager. Though both, for different reasons, had been relatively inaccessible. I am relieved.

Edited II (Friday): The textbooks exist, but cannot be located. Emergency order: ETA soon; Quantity: not enough for the number of students in class.

Frontloading Wonderment

Now that would be a good blog name, "Frontloading Wonderment."

I love teaching. And I'm always looking for new things to try, new ideas, new ways to present information. I need to break myself of the powerpoint, even though I have good reasons for using it the way I do. The reason, actually, it still good (to give the students an outline of the lecture so they can pay attention to the content and not to copying stuff verbatim)... but perhaps the format for that is wrong. Maybe I'll bust the outline stuff into a separate word document they can download for class, and liberate my powerpoint... Terminal Degree has a post about Using Powerpoint Effectively. The class liked the study guide questions? Huh.

Powerpoint Liberation will have to wait, though. If my class runs this summer, it will be Very Small (as in, PERHAPS 10 students, vs. the 30 I usually have). I hope it runs; I would love to teach this class (even though it's a 101 Drive By Intro to one of the Anthropology subfields) as a seminar. I'll get to try lots of different things, starting with ditching the powerpoint, I think...will see what happens.

Inside Higher Ed recently ran an article about effective lecturing. There is some good stuff in there for me; I especially liked the idea of "Frontloading Wonderment." It's the hook that gets them paying attention (fait attention!). I need to frontload more wonderment in my lectures.