As Canadian as Possible... under the circumstances

April 14, 2008

Canadian Studies and the media

Late last week, a Canadian Press reporter looking for a story happened upon the Burlington Free Press article on the closure of our program office and the withdrawal of program funding to Canadian Studies. The resulting Canadian Press story hit the newswires on Friday morning and a media frenzy began. Even before I got to my office on Friday morning I was getting calls at home from radio stations in Canada who wanted to speak with me about this decision. Both AM 940 in Montreal and 1040 Hamilton interviewed me about this on live radio and one of our colleagues heard the story on the morning news on CBC Ottawa. Over the weekend, the story made it into Saturday's Globe and Mail (which would be the equivalent here of making it into the Sunday NY Times), Saturday's New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, and it was on the editorial page of Sunday's Edmonton Journal. Earlier today, the controversy was featured on Vermont Public Radio's Vermont Edition. It also made it into today's edition of The Vermont Cynic. It's even been blogged about.

What's fascinating about this, to me anyhow, is that very little of this attention was directly sought out by me or any of my colleagues. Aside from one inquiry by one of my senior colleagues to the Free Press to see if they'd be interested in the story, all of this coverage has been the doing of the media itself, who see this, especially in Canada, as a story worth covering. There are people on campus, I'm sure, who are surprised by this attention. The Administration undoubtedly expected fallout, but none of the people I spoke to there seemed to give much credence to my worries that this would soon be all over the news. Even I couldn't have foreseen this story making it across Canada in that country's most important and widely read newspaper.

Overall, I think the coverage has been balanced and fair to all concerned. The Administration's position has been consistent. What it fails to speak to, though, is the effect that the potential loss of our annual grant will have on the work that we do and on the students in our classes, who have benefitted enormously from the extracurricular activities we run on campus and from the research and program money we use to help supplement the $800 or so we each get from our departments for conference travel every year. The small grant ($9500 CDN this year, which converted to just over $10,000 US) goes an incredibly long way and has been one of the things that differentiates our circumstance from all of the other area studies programs.

Up until three years ago, the amount we brought in with external grants was well over $70,000 a year and that amount subsidized the staff our Center employed (an admin assistant AND a separate outreach coordinator). I happen to believe that we can get back to that point and I've been working hard to position ourselves to do this. We can get there in the next few years, I believe, but achieving this without an office or a dedicated support person will be much more difficult.

What's clear from the media attention and from the student outcry about this decision (the Student Government Association passed an emergency resolution this past Tuesday demanding the cuts be rescinded) is that there are many, many peple who are alarmed by this decision. There are few universities in the US better positioned geographically, historically, and politically to make Canadian Studies an area of study. Our program has been internationally known for decades and helped pioneer this field in the US, a country which now boasts over 50 Canadian Studies programs.

I think Bill Metcalfe said it well in the Canadian Press article: "The real question is not, 'Why are they cutting it?' it's 'Why don't we have more of it?"'

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October 1, 2007

Ottawa itinerary

We'll be adding a few more specific details to our Ottawa itinerary in the coming week or so, but here is a pretty complete look at what we'll be up to while we're there.

THURSDAY:

Depart from south side of Waterman Building (College Street) at 7:00 AM sharp. Arrive at 6:45 in order to assure a prompt departure, because Parliament won't wait for us (and we can't wait for you). Students ought to be dressed for Parliament (i.e. "business attire" -jackets and ties for men) because there is no time/place to change once we are on the bus. We will plan on arriving at St. Michael's at 7:05 to pick up the St. Mike's group.

Brief lunch at the Rideau Centre in Ottawa before walking over to Parliament.

Arrive at Parliament at 1:00 to get through security and line up for Question Period.

Attend Question Period from 2:00-3:00

Meet with Members of Parliament from 3:15-4:15 in the Commonwealth Room (room 238F).

4:30-5:00: Check in at the Lord Elgin Hotel

5:30: Group meeting in Pearson room at Lord Elgin

Dinner on your own

FRIDAY:

Breakfast on your own.

9:00-3:30: Tour at the National Gallery of Canada and visit the Canadian Museum of Civilization. (Grp1: NG10am, CMC1pm; Grp2: CMC9am, NG 1pm)

Lunch on your own at National Gallery or Museum of Civilization.

4:30-6:30: Walk over to National Arts Centre for reception in the Fountain Room – DRESS CODE: “business attire."

7:00: bus leaves for hockey game, Ottawa 67s vs. Peterborough Petes at Ottawa Civic Centre.

Saturday:

Check out of Lord Elgin by 9 AM.

9:30: Bus leaves for tour of Rideau Hall, the official residence of the Governor General.

Take bus from Rideau Hall to Parliament for guided tour.

Lunch on your own in Ottawa

Depart for Burlington

PARTICIPANTS SHOULD NOTE:

Crossing the border: A passport or birth certificate and photo ID (driver's license) is now required as proof of citizenship to cross the US-Canadian border.

Dress Code: Dress is "business attire" for Thursday’s Parliament visit and Friday’s reception, and "neat and clean" for Friday museum visits and for Saturday morning. In general, pack for chilly weather.

Money: Catering at Arts Centre reception is "on us". $75 - 100US should cover other meals. We suggest that students exchange at least some of this at a local Burlington bank before October 18.

Ground Rules: Attendance and participation at all scheduled activities is required. "Downtime" is your own. Be aware that your conduct and actions represent UVM, St. Mike's, Vermont, and the USA.

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July 18, 2007

This I Believe, by Michelle Gardner-Quinn

The power of this caught me a bit off-guard this morning. I was thinking about Michelle just yesterday as I walked past the fountain on the college green and saw her picture and fresh flowers there for her. She will not soon be forgotten here at UVM. It is inspiring to see the words of this remarkable young woman reaching a much, much larger audience through this moving short film shown at LiveEarth. It's also a great reminder of how some of our students may well go on to change the world, as Michelle continues to do.

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July 9, 2007

Staying under the radar, or trying to....

After a great time and successful presentation at the EdMedia 2007 conference in Vancouver and a few days off with family in beautiful Montreal, I'm back at the office today and focusing on making July my most productive month in a long time. So, I'll be blogging less frequently than usual (I hope) and keeping my eyes on the clock and my growing book manuscript.

That said, it's always hard to turn down opportunities that tie in with my teaching and research interests. The morning after my return to Montreal last week, I had a chance to stop by Charlie Rathbone's great grad course on "Current Directions in Curriculum and Instruction" (you can check out the course wiki here). I was there to talk to the students about my use of blogs and podcasts in my teaching and I was impressed by the students' comments and questions on these topics.

One of the things I talked about was the importance of modeling the use of these technologies. It helps tremendously when trying to persuade others of what great tools blogs and podcasts can be if they can see you using these media at the same time. Little did I know that Charlie himself was planning to create a podcast about my visit there. What a great example of how we might think about using podcasts in the classroom!

Take a quick listen to the resulting podcast, created simply by passing around an iPod equipped with an iTalk microphone and a bit of post-production by Charlie using Garageband. I think I'm going to have to try this with my upcoming freshman seminar, English 005: From Pucks to Parliament: Exploring Canada's Cultural Landscape.

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Canada's other green revolution....

In his neverending quest to get more students to take Canadian Studies courses, Paul ponders the ethics of posting this news on his blog...

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June 14, 2007

Blogging at UVM gets some more media attention

Virtually academic:
Students in Paul Martin's course on Colonial and Postcolonial World Literature at the University of Vermont start discussing Canadian authors in class and then continue their conversations online, thanks to the class blog.

"You've now had some time to sit with 'Kiss of the Fur Queen,'" Martin writes to his students in a blog entry dated Feb. 26. "What are your reactions to the novel? What surprised or struck you most about Highway's novel? Have your thoughts about the book changed as we've spent more time discussing it in class?"

In their 26 responses, his students elaborated on the classroom discussion and further explored the book's themes.

"It really does encourage students to reflect on what they are reading and to write something about it often," Martin said. "Often we don't know what we think about what we've read until we write about it. They learn something about the book from the exercise."

Lots of discussion in this Rutland Herald article (May 13, 2007) by Susan Youngwood about how colleges and universities in Vermont are using blogs.

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June 6, 2007

UVM Canadian Studies program featured in upcoming documentary

Earlier this year, a crew from Vermont Public Television came to film my English 182 class. Afterwards, they spoke with me and one of our Canadian Studies majors, Laura Pedro. They were filming a segment for part of a larger documentary on the connections today between Vermont and the province of Quebec.

The documentary is set to air on June 14 at 7:30 PM on VPT.

Here's the press release from VPT:

PRESS RELEASE
For release 6/6/07
Contact: Ann Curran at (802) 655-8059, acurran@vpt.org
or Jeff Vande Griek at (802) 655-8062, jeffv@vpt.org

Vermont-Quebec Relations on June 14 VPT Program

Vermont Public Television looks at life on both sides of the border
between Vermont and Quebec in “Good Fences, Good Neighbors,” a new
documentary followed by a live discussion Thursday, June 14, at 7:30 p.m.
Stories and interviews about everyday life, trade and tourism highlight
the documentary, and the challenges in all these areas since Sept. 11,
2001 are a common theme. Even viewers familiar with the issues may find
some of the information surprising.

(continue reading for more details)

The documentary begins in the border towns of Derby Line, Vt., and
Stanstead, Que. The girls hockey team from Vermont’s North Country Union
High School has its home ice in Stanstead. The Haskell Free Library and
manufacturer Tivoly Inc. literally straddle the border. Fire departments
from both sides of the border frequently help each other out.

Trade in hard goods is an engine of the relationship between Vermont and
Quebec, and IBM of Essex, Vt., is Vermont’s largest exporter, sending more
than a billion dollars’ worth of chips north to a sister factory in
Bromont, Que. In Bristol, Vt., a visit to the A. Johnson Company
illustrates the state’s second-largest export, wood products. An official
with the customs broker A.N. Deringer describes how the company keeps
goods moving across the borders amid tight security. The program looks at
resources for Americans who want to do business in Canada.

Energy is one of Quebec’s largest exports to Vermont. A third of the
state’s electricity and all its natural gas come from across the border.
The head of Vermont’s Public Service Department talks about the recent
sale of Vermont’s Green Mountain Power to the Canadian company that also
owns Vermont Gas. A segment from a forum of New England governors and
eastern Canadian premiers held recently in Quebec City illustrates the
importance of cooperation on energy and environmental issues.

Tourism is another major focus of the documentary. Quebecers travel to
Vermont to ski at Jay Peak, shop in Burlington and fly out of Burlington
International Airport. Vermonters head north for vacations. The program
looks at the impact on tourism of the U.S. government’s efforts to require
passports for Canadians crossing into the U.S. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy
has worked to postpone implementation. France Dionne, the Quebec
government’s delegate to New England, notes that it would be a challenge
for teenagers in border towns to carry passports with them as they travel
back and forth for hockey games.

Lieutenant Governor of Vermont Brian Dubie, who has been working to
improve relations with Canada, notes the importance of building
relationships for cross-border security and disaster preparedness. At the
University of Vermont, Paul Martin, head of the Canadian Studies Program,
notes that when his students study Canada, they also learn a lot about
their own country.

For the follow-up discussion, host Stewart Ledbetter will welcome France
Dionne, as well as Michael Quinn, commissioner of the Vermont Department
of Economic Development, and Tim Shea, vice president of the Lake
Champlain Chamber of Commerce, as studio panelists. A group of local
Vermont and Quebec residents will be linked via satellite to the
discussion from The Goodrich Memorial Library in Newport, Vt. Viewers
will be invited to call in or email with their comments during the show.
There will also be a live web chat.

The producer of “Good Fences, Good Neighbors” is Catherine Hughes.
Executive producer of the program is Joe Merone. Production funding is
provided by USDA Rural Development.
# # #
Vermont ETV Inc. is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

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May 23, 2007

Teachers who blog, or is it bloggers who teach?

Earlier this month, I led a workshop at the wonderful Teachers Who Write (PDF) conference in Montpelier. Sponsored annually by the Vermont Council of Teachers of English Language Arts, The National Writing Project in Vermont, and the Vermont Department of Education, the conference brought hundreds of teachers together to attend workshops and network. It was a fabulous event and I hope to go back next year as an attendee.

I'd hoped to get this post online in time for my presentation at the conference as a sort of virtual handout, but grading and other end of semester chaos got in the way. Finally, though, here are links to some of the things I told the two groups of interesting teachers who came to hear what I had to say about blogging and podcasting.

I frequently give a short presentation at the UVM Center for Teaching and Learning's "Blogging Your Course" workshop at UVM and this 2005 post summarizes what I usually talk to them about.

As I've said on this blog before, starting to read blogs and creating your own personal/professional blog, to me, will have a far greater impact on one's daily academic life than creating course blogs. Blogs are a great teaching tool and these days I can't really envision myself teaching without a blog for each class, but if I had to choose one or the other I'd probably ditch my course blogs and keep my own one running.

One of the things I always tell faculty from UVM, and I repeated this at the Montpelier workshop, is that it's not at colleges and universities where we're seeing the most cutting edge uses of blogging in the classroom. It's actually in the k-12 classroom, and sometimes right in those earliest grades. I had a great chance last year to help lead the month-long summer writing workshop put on by the National Writing Project in Vermont and, after spending all of July working alongside teachers from across the state, I found myself more enthused about teaching than I've been before (and I have always loved that part of my job).

As part of that summer 2006 workshop, I gave a presentation called "The text in the machine: Writing, publishing, and the blogosphere" in which I talked about blogging and talked about some of the best practices I've seen in the k-12 context. My virtual handout for that presentation can be found here, and it encompasses a lot of what I had to say a couple of weeks ago in Montpelier. For this latest presentation, I also found a number of new examples of some great blogging work going on in the K-12 context and you'll find those links below.

What follows are some of the links I showed everyone in my latest workshop.

Creating a blog

Externally hosted services:
Blogger
Typepad ($)
Vox
edublogs

Server-based solutions:
WordPress
MovableType

Key Resources for educators

weblogg-ed, the blog of Will Richardson.
WIll Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms is an invaluable resource

EduBlog Insights

supportblogging.com (lots of great info and links to class blogs)

Best practices

Blogical Minds (5th grade)

Excellence and Imagination (grades 7/8)
Joseph H. Kerr School, Snow Lake, Manitoba

AP Calculus
Darren Kuropatwa

Room 9 Nelson Central’s Blog (Ages 6-7, Nelson, NZ)

Podcasting Tools

Audacity (a free sound editing tool for all platforms)

garageband (Apple's amazing audio software has some great features specifically designed for recording podcasts)

iPods with microphones attached or any other mp3 players with recording capabilities

A few more links worth checking out:

Blogging 101--Web logs go to school | CNET News.com:

David Warlick's thoughts on School 2.0

Stay on top of your field with feeds

Weblogg-ed: It's the empowerment, stupid

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April 15, 2007

Wow... the day has finally come.... The Tragically Hip are in town!

This might be something that only Canadians can truly understand, but you would not believe how excited I am to see The Tragically Hip on Tuesday night at Higher Ground.

The Hip are a Canadian institution, but for far more than simply making great music. Already inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the band's lyrics touch on everything from hockey to Canadian history to Canadian literature and their sound captures in some way the essence of the entire country. More than any other Canadian band, they've built a huge national following while maintaining a rich, yet down-to-earth connection with the people and the landscape. They are poetry, they are passion, they are the puck in the net as Team Canada scores the winning goal. If that sounds hyperbolic, so be it; it's hard to talk about them any other way. Explaining the significance of the Hip in Canada to an American audience is almost like trying to explain Don Cherry to them. I've tried and failed at the latter, by the way.

For me, the errant Canuck, it just takes a few bars of At the Hundredth Meridian, Fireworks, or Yer Not The Ocean (among many, many others) to make me feel at home no matter where I am. The new album, World Container, is brilliant, by the way, and has only recently been released here in the US.

The fact that we get to see these guys in two days at a small club here, while fans in Canada have just been turning out in droves to see them play in arenas, explains what a treat we're in for in Burlington. On my way into the office this afternoon, I saw what I'm certain was their bus across the street waiting at the light. Before I knew it I was waving frantically out the window at them! With luck, none of my students were also waiting at the light.... ahem.

More to come on the Hip's visit to Burlington and my thoughts on their place in Canadian culture.

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April 5, 2007

Perspective...

from the cool site I just discovered: teachertube.com

If you haven't seen the original video by Carl Fisch that inspired this one, make sure to watch it. I'm also rather fond of the "Did You Know?" Winipege remix

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March 13, 2007

Podcasting at UVM

Caught this article today about students producing podcasts as part of Heather Schell's freshman writing class at George Washington University and in Nanette Levinson's International Relations courses at American University.

I've had great success over the last couple of years with my English 005 students' podcasts and group blogs and I'm looking forward to doing more of this next fall. You can hear my Fall 2006 English 005 students' podcasts at our test UVM iTunes University page. Just follow the links until you wind up in iTunes.

If you also look at the Canadian Studies lecture links in iTunes U, you can also download a video of Eden Robinson's terrific reading she gave here in October. Her book Blood Sports has just come out in paperback in Canada and my English 182 course will be reading it about a month from now.

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February 28, 2007

This made me laugh...

On a day when I'm truly mourning the loss of Ryan Smyth, I caught this snippet from a USA Today article on Brett Hull that Paul Kukla posted on his excellent Kukla's Korner blog:

“You need to have some sort of pregame or postgame show so we can sit down and talk about the trade deadline — or the Buffalo-Ottawa (brawl),” Hull says. “I have a lot to say. But in 20 seconds, you have to be some sort of English lit professor to do it with any style or bravado.”

Uh, gee Brett, thanks for that. Well, um, I don't know, I think most all of my students would tell you that, more often than not, it usually takes me more than 20 seconds to say... What? Time's up?! Darn.

On a more serious note, Smyth deserved way, way better than this.

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February 14, 2007

Snow day!!

Having experienced the only day in the history of the U of Alberta where the entire university shut down because of the weather (I don't think I've seen a storm like that one since), I can now add the Valentine's blizzard of 2007 to the list!

We knew the storm was coming, but by 3 AM last night it had only just begun snowing. So, I figured I would definitely still be teaching today. By the time I looked out at 7:30 though, we'd already had about a foot of snow. I cancelled my classes early this AM, and by about 10 AM the university announced they would be shutting down entirely. Given that it took me about 90 minutes to clear the driveway this morning, I'm glad I don't have to head in today and can work from home.

The snow and winds have not let up and, apparently, are only going to get worse today.

Snow day!

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January 22, 2007

Plagiarism

I'm in the process of writing up my own statement on academic honesty and plagiarism to include in all my future syllabi. In the meantime, here are some links to the relevant UVM policies and to some external sites that have good information on how to avoid plagiarism.

UVM's Code of Academic Integrity (pdf)

UVM's Center for Student Ethics and Standards

The UVM Cat's Tale Student Handbook

Plagiarism: What it is and How to Recognize and Avoid it ( a resource for students from Indiana University)

Plagiarism and Intellectual Honesty (an excellent resource from Dalhousie U)

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December 13, 2006

Something for you to watch while you're waiting for this blog to resume...

Watch this! Talk about a brave kid, er, red Power Ranger. If only I had a suit like that and could scare away the piles of essays currently holding me hostage....

Thanks to Heidi for the tip.

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December 8, 2006

A few stats on my blogging efforts here at UVM

I was happy to notice a few minutes ago that the comments on my English 180 blog have surpassed the 700 mark, with close to half of these coming this semester. I'll be the first to point out that I require that my students respond to the prompts and comment on each other's prompt, but I think that the level of "discussion" that has gone on there has helped my students get a better handle on the novels we've looked at this semester. I've been really impressed with many of the observations they've made there.

Looking at how much I've posted in the last couple of years, since I began blogging here at UVM, the total combined number of posts I've made currently sits at 463. That's not bad, at all, though I'd like it to be higher. Then again, I'd also like to be publishing more, so maybe I should be regretting it wasn't lower.

Regardless, I'm enthused to see such great work on the part of my students. I also highly recommend that you check out the great blogging work my English 005 (Canadian Culture) students did this semester with their group blogs. They really impressed me and are all now bloggers, at least for the time being.

I wonder if we'll see a "Great White North" alumni blog appear? HINT HINT, you intrepid English 005 bloggers...

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November 30, 2006

Talking to Americans

Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans special was on CBC again last night. That show just doesn't get old. I do, with some reservations, show it to my students from time to time, but only after exposing them to a great deal of Canadian satire. It's hard to explain our relation to political satire, really. Showing them, though, that our political satire, unlike say the Daily Show, are shown in primetime on the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster helps a bit. We also spend a lot of time looking at how eager Canada's politicians are to play along, which I think also helps them to situate Mercer's special.

Canadians even more willing to laugh at/with themselves as they are to poke fun at anyone else. I don't read Talking to Americans as being cruel or making too much fun of Americans. Canadians really like Americans and, although Mercer's special makes us laugh at just how ignorant many Americans are of even the most basic facts about Canada, I find that when watching this special we're laughing with the Americans rather than at them. That's somewhat hard to fathom, I realize, but it's true. Some in the US might view Mercer's special as anti-American, but I think what Canadians find most amusing, and even endearing, is how willingly and generously they go out of their way to answer Mercer's questions.

If we take it personally that Americans know little about their neighbours to the north, we only need to listen to this clip (which incidentally I first heard broadcast on CBC Radio the day following the midterm elections) to see that it had nothing to do with us. Thanks to Michael Bérubé for digging this up again. Of course, it's one thing for people on the street not to know the name of Barack Obama, it's another thing for potential leaders not to know the name of the leader of its nation's most important trading partner and its sole neighbour to the north.

Like the end of the audio clip, many of the people Mercer talks to in his special are attending or are even, um, professors at some of the USA's top universities. This clip from Talking to Americans, though, does give me some faith in the American education system after all....

For more of Rick Mercer, take some time to go through the archives of previous shows on The Mercer Report website, or check out Rick's great blog.

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November 29, 2006

Blogging in the English department

Blogging continues to flourish at UVM, as Meg Thomas discovers in a nice article in today's issue of UVM's The View. This blog gets some good exposure there, but I'm lucky to be in a department that is pretty blog savvy. Last night Philip Baruth (the mastermind behind Vermont Daily Briefing), Huck Gutman, and I attended a great talk on "Why Read Blogs" by our colleague Richard Parent, whose blog Digital Digressions also deserves a spot on everyone's blogroll. Our colleagues Lisa Schnell and Andrew Barnaby have also been using blogs for some of their courses. Thanks in great part to the fine work of UVM's Center for Teaching and Learning, this is a pretty exciting place to be these days.

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November 17, 2006

A good piece of advice, if you ask me...

Will Richardson's weblogg-ed is one of the best around, especially if you're interested in the role of blogs in education.

Overlooking for the moment that I'm currently an assistant professor at a great school, I can't say that I disagree with Will's advice to his children. Maybe my kids will go to Cappucino U. Maybe we'll go together!

More blogging to follow in the coming days during the WEEK-LONG American Thanksgiving Break here at UVM. After a super-long week of grading and teaching, I can only say "God Bless America, eh?"

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November 13, 2006

These are a few of my favourite blogs...

Too busy grading to blog much this week, but thought I'd put this up to keep the blogmonster fed....

Got a follow-up question today from someone who interviewed me a couple of weeks back for a piece she is doing on blogging at UVM.

She had asked me about which blogs I read, so I thought I'd share here a list of some of my favourite regular reads:

Here are a few of my faves:

• Michael Bérubé
• professorial confessions
• scribblingwoman
• librarian.net
• Blog of a bookslut
• The Literary Saloon
• The Elegant Variation
• 43 Folders
• The Battle of Alberta
• Seen Reading
• Rick Mercer's Blog
• Book Ninja
• Heidi's café

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August 31, 2006

New blog for Canadian Studies and pictures of the new TransCanada Lounge

Check it out!

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August 27, 2006

Syllabus for 180 now posted

You can find my syllabus for this fall's version of English 180 here.

Posted by pwmartin at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2006

Blogging and academia

I had a nice chance earlier this week to give a brief presentation to the latest round of faculty and staff taking the UVM Center for Teaching and Learning's "Blogging Your Course" workshop. One of the main things I always try to get across is that if the participants are only thinking about using blogs for their course(s) they're missing out on what i think are the biggest effects blogs can have on their academic lives, something Fred Stutzman summed up really well this past week in a post called "Blogging: Academia's Digital DIvide".

I talked on Wednesday about the importance of reading blogs, something I've talked about before when speaking to new bloggers at UVM, and we also got everyone started using bloglines so that they could understand how feeds work and see some of the great potential of RSS.

Starting to read blogs and creating your own personal/professional blog, to me, will have a far greater impact on one's daily academic life than creating course blogs. Blogs are a great teaching tool and these days I can't really envision myself teaching without a blog for each class, but if I had to choose one or the other I'd ditch my course blogs and keep my own one running.

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August 6, 2006

Links roundup for August 5th

As some of you may know, podcasting is, I hope, about to take a big leap forward at UVM. We've been approved to join the iTunes U program and my courses this fall will be part of our official test of the system. I just need to get the University to sign off on the whole thing which hopefully should not be too difficult.

So, tonight I started out at Cole Camplese's blog checking out his posting on the new Belkin TuneTalk microphone for the iPod. I've been waiting for months for a recording solution for the latest generation of iPods, so nice to see that finally on its way. Cole's blogroll led me to an interesting blog I've not yet seen before called Podagogy. Lots of interesting stuff on that site, but I was especially glad to discover the NCQ podcast and a great site called Geek's Guide to Teaching. All of these sites are places where I expect I'll be spending more time soon...

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July 25, 2006

The text in the machine: Writing, publishing, and the blogosphere

Here's much of the content from my presentation today for the National Writing Project in Vermont's Summer Institute. I've had a great month of July watching teachers from all over the state give great demos of lessons or projects they use in the classroom. I head back to classes this fall full of ideas as to how I might integrate more writing into my literature courses. Thanks everyone!

As I am not positive that the computer lab we're in today has a projector where I can hook up my laptop, I decided simply to put all the links and resources we'll be looking at up on my own blog. We've required everyone of the fellows from our Summer Institute to print out a packet of materials for each of their demos. As I'm going to mention today my thoughts on using blogs to help avoid using a lot of unnecessary paper in the classroom (handouts with the syllabus, essay topics, bibliographies etc.), it would be hypocritical of me to print out all that follows.

So, fellow fellows (and other interested parties), here's your handout. Feel free to add to it by commenting on this post. I'd love to get your feedback online rather than on paper. You can also bookmark this page via its "permalink" so that you can come back to these resources whenever you like.

the text in the machine

One of the reasons I wanted to do my teacher demo on blogging in the classroom is that I've been using the Internet as a teaching tool since the first time I began teaching in 1993. At first, I used e-mail and listservs, but in 1994 I was the first instructor at the U of Alberta (that I know of) to create webpages for all of my courses and use the web as a crucial component of my teaching. Back then, I had to bring all of my students into a lab, arrange for them all to get an official U of A e-mail address (I don't even recall any of that first bunch of students having one yet), and showing them on their computers the World Wide Web for the first time ("You may have heard reports on the news over the past little while about this thing called the World Wide Web. Here it is!"). It's hard to believe how much things have changed in twelve years.

One of the things I don't know that I would have predicted twelve years ago is the degree to which interacting text (and texts) is a fundamental part of lives today. Thanks in great part to e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and the extraordinary and sometimes suspect wealth of information available to us online, we are always transforming our ideas into the written word and finding ourselves having to interpret and act on the written words of others. More than we've ever been perhaps, we're still a text-based culture. Students today at all levels are writing, texting, and chatting online ALL the time. Yet, they often don't connect this with the work they're doing in the classroom. What I think blogging has the power to do, is to connect these two parts of their lives, these two types of writing they are doing. Blogging can help them to think more critically about all the content they are producing and turns each student into a publisher, with an audience that might well exceed the walls of their classroom and school.

so what is blogging anyway? Or, "whose bright idea was it to put the Canadian in charge today?"

Coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger, the term weblog, popularly shortened as "blog" is now immortalized in the Oxford English Dictionary and can be used as both a noun and a verb. There are lots of helpful definitions of the term "blog" online, but one of the best attempts to define it that I have seen is by Sébastien Paquet of the Université de Montréal (there go those Canadians again...). He argues that five defining characteristics of a blog are:

• Personal editorship
• Hyperlinked post structure
• Frequent updates, displayed in reverse chronological order
• Free, public access to the content
• Archival

This definition from the quite good Encyclopedia of Educational Technology is also very helpful.

Let's get blogging!

There are lots of different ways to create your own blog, some of which (typepad, for instance) cost a bit of money, and others, like blogger.com, that don't. A great resource for teachers of every level is edublogs.org, which offers free blogs to teachers. To keep matters simple, though, today we're going to try to create a blog via Blogger.

So, head over to http://www.blogger.com and follow the instructions at blogger on how to create an account and start your first blog!

Once you get your blog up and running, I'd like you to take ten minutes to write your first post. In it, I'd like you to reflect a bit on what you think some of the applications for blogging might be in your classroom.

Once your post is up, give your blog address to two of your classmates and ask them to post a comment on your blog.

Best practices

We're going to take a bit of time now to visit some other blogs that I think will give you some great ideas as to the potential for using blogs in the k-12 classroom.

Will Richardon's Weblogg-ed blog is a great place to start your exploration of the world of education blogs. He has a great list of reasons to use blogs as a teaching and learning tool, as well as a short but significant set of links to best practices from a variety of levels and areas of study.

Let's take some time to go through some of those great examples of K-12 blogging identified by Richardson:

Blogwrite: a class weblog from J.H. House Elementary School in Conyers, GA. If you look around, you'll see that there's lots of blogging going on all over the school, including in the principal's office. Take a special look at the entries from August 2005 as teacher Hilary Meeler gets her class rolling with the blog. Clearly, at the end of the year, the fifth grade students were really taken by blogging. Look at what Derek had to say about having to leave his blog and his school behind upon leaving for Middle School. The school worked closely with Anne Davis at Georgia State University to get this project going. Davis' blog EduBlog Insights also makes good reading for anyone interested in this field.

Here's a site that features kindergarteners PODCASTING (!) and a good seventh grade (or Grade 7 as we call it in Canada) Math blog

I've long thought that this website from Mabry Middle School is a great example of how schools might use blogs and podcasts. The Principal, Dr. Tyson, is leading the way here at his school and also around the country, I'd imagine. There's lots to learn from spending a bit of time at their school site.

One of the principal's blog posts to the parents offers a great explanation of how blogs can be used effectively school-wide, and also gives a great explanation of something else I want to touch on today: RSS feeds.

Overview Information About Our New Website

MabryOnline is our new web presence. The site is really a collection of nearly 100 blogs designed with a front end that appears to be a web page. We have done this in the hope that our staff will more easily be able to keep information on the site current. Posting to a blog is substantially easier than having a web master who knows a lot about html, xhtml, css, asp, js, and blah, blah, blah. We don't. And even if we did, then the webmaster has to track everyone down to get their information to post it.

So, what is a blog? The term is an abbreviation for weblog and can be most easily understood as an online journal. Teachers post journal entries (or posts) to their site (or blog). The teacher assigns each post to a category that s/he has already created. When the post is published on the site, it is automatically linked to the category (listed in the sidebar on the right), to the date it was posted (via a little calendar in the sidebar on the right), and also is placed in a monthly archive (which, you guessed it, is also listed by month in the sidebar on the right).

Finding information in a teachers site could not be any easier. To read everything that has been posted to this blog about the Film Festival, simply click on the name of that category in the sidebar on the right. To read everything related to the Beginning of the Year, click...you have the idea. You could also go to the archive links for July and August to read things that were posted in those months which might relate to the beginning of the year.

Aside from having a powerful organizational structure for content management, a blog also has a very powerful search feature. Each teacher's site (or blog) has a "Search this site:" area in the sidebar on the right side. Simply type in the string for which you wish to search, and the script will bring up everything in the teacher's site that matches your search parameter--powerful, fast access to content.

Every time the site is updated, the blogging system is programed to update the syndication files. You can setup an RSS/Atom feed reader to automatically notify you when new content has been posted to the site. Most feed readers provide you with a quick summary of the new information, which, if you find relevant to your need, can serve as a link to the entire post of new information.

We will find that RSS/Atom feed readers are going to have a huge impact on learning and research. Rather than going out to find current, relevant information, you can set up a RSS/Atom feed reader to have the most current information about a research topic come to you. Software is now coming available that will even automatically annotate in a bibliography the source from the major online libraries . This is cutting edge and very powerful! The digital divide between those who know information literacy skills and those who do not is going to grow exponentially in the next few years. And who thinks students do not need laptops?!

Conclusion

There is, of course, tons more that I could say on this topic. I hope you've had a chance to see some of the ways in which students and teachers might benefit from using blogs. We've talked a lot over the last two weeks about the students writing for others and publishing their work. Imagining an audience beyond their classmates makes a huge difference in their writing. Promoting blogging also might help to get some students writing outside of class. They will wind up connecting writing to their lives in a new way. Blogging makes them active producers instead of moderately passive consumers of culture (I think kids are the least passive of all consumers)

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July 19, 2006

Yes, I'm still alive. Barely.....

I guess a few people have been wondering where I've been lately. Readers?! You mean people read this? Cool.

I've been super busy of late helping to lead the National Writing Project in Vermont's annual Summer Institute. I've had a great time with these folks and am learning a ton, much of which I hope to bring into my own classroom in the fall. It really amazes me sometimes how little we actually talk about pedagogy in higher ed. It's been a revelation to me.

Here's a picture of the group taken the other day.

The only downside (and it's also an upside) to the whole gig is that it runs from about 8:30 to 3:30 four days a week, for the entire month. On top of all that, there's my new job directing the Canadian Studies program (and we're in the midst of huge changes that have to happen in the next few weeks for budget reasons) and there's also my day job to consider.... I'm beat! I've not worked this hard in a long time. Needless to say, there have been days of late where I've been wondering about changing my line of work so I can actually get work done. I wonder if there's an opening where this guy works....

More from me very soon....

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June 29, 2006

Resurfacing

Wow, it's been an insanely busy couple of weeks. I've been wrapping up teaching my online course on Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, and Jacques Poulin, getting settled in as the new Director of Canadian Studies (as of July 1), and prepping for teaching starting next week for the National Writing Project Summer Institute here at UVM. On top of all that, I managed to squeeze in teaching a one-day writing workshop and a three day holiday with Mona!

The online class has been great, though not surprisingly given everything that's going on I fell behind by a couple of days. The students have been excellent, though, as I usually find to be the case with online teaching. As usual, I wind up at the end of an online course wondering if I should be teaching all of my classes online, rather than the reverse. For the next month or so, I'll also be facilitating a course for UVM faculty on Teaching Effectively Online. It helps to be doing that right after finishing an online course myself.

The writing workshop in St. Albans was invigorating, too. I taught to a group of students ranging from incoming high school freshmen (given that we don't use those terms in Canada, I still find them bizarre) to recently graduated seniors. The school, Bellows Free Academy, is a really interesting one. I met with Don Tinney's Canadian Lit class a couple of times earlier this year and was thoroughly impressed with the people there. I gave the students some challenging reading this time: a chapter of Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction and the first few chapters of Poulin's Volkswagen Blues. This is material I usually cover when I teach English 086: Critical Approaches to Literature. The group did great work with the material and really impressed me. Some of them could have easily fit right in with my sophomore 086 students at UVM.

It's been a busy summer! But an interesting one and, while I sometimes dream of just getting a little bored once in a while, it's hard to complain about getting a chance to do for a living some of the things you love to do.

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March 16, 2006

Just when you thought you knew everything that was going on at UVM... there's UVMrocks.com

This website and battle of the bands that Continuing Education has created is very cool. Who knew they were up to this?!

Anyhow, check out uvmrocks.com. You can listen and vote every week and the then the top bands play a showcase at Higher Ground. This part of their site explains the details.

I was pretty impressed with the bands this week. My vote went to Video Pigeon, whose tune Bunny Ears is very, very cool. Loved it.

If only professors were allowed to enter....

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March 15, 2006

More on podcasting at UVM

It seems like every day now there are new articles about podcasting in schools and at colleges and universities. These are really exciting times on the technology front. As I start to prepare for my fall semester's courses, I can really see podcasting becoming a more integral part of what I do. On July 1, I'll officially become the new Director of Canadian Studies here at UVM, and I can anticipate us creating podcasts of future Canadian Studies events. The same goes for the English Department. We have great writers coming through here every week it seems. How great would it be to make their public readings available for others to hear? Maybe we could also start to interview each of those writers when they come through and podcast the results. The opportunities here are limitless....

Here are some links to some excellent articles I've seen over the last few days:

• This article from THE Journal, entitled "In iPods We Trust" is a must read.
• From USA Today, "iPods now double as study aids" gives some good examples of podcasting in action.
• iTunes U making an impact at Duke gives a great example of how podcasting can be used for language teaching.

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February 23, 2006

More on iTunes U

Well, it sounds like universities are signing up for iTunes U in droves, in Canada as well as in the US. Many people I talked to are enthused about the possibility, though many of us also have some reservations.

My colleague Richard Parent and I had an interesting chat the other day about whether or not universities will want us to lock up our content to make it exclusive to our students. I like the option of being able to have most content open to everyone and some closed to everyone but students in a particular course, but only so long as I am the sole person to decide which file is freely distributed and which is not.

The other concern many people have is Apple's connection to all this. I'm an Apple fanatic, as most people know, so I am not all that bothered by this. But what if it were Dell, for instance, offering a solution that only synched automatically with their players?

No word on when (I won't say "if") UVM will be signing up. I figure that if I keep blogging about this, eventually it will happen.

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February 16, 2006

The imminent arrival of iTunes University at UVM

This posting from Michael Feldstein's e-Literate blog discusses some of the reasons that I'm excited about the imminent arrival of iTunes University at UVM. For me, this will be a perfect way of distributing content to my students. I'm not sure yet how I might use this to distribute copyrighted material to my TAP students next fall, but in any case they will all have iPods where they can receive anything new that I add. iTunes U will also provide the perfect way for the students to share with each other the podcasts they will be creating. I can't wait!

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January 16, 2006

Teaching Carnival V

Teaching Carnival V is now online here.

These regular Teaching Carnivals are an excellent resource and a great example of how blogging can help us to have meaningful conversations about what we do with people outside of our own institutions.

Technorati Tags: Academia

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January 11, 2006

"Internationalizing" UVM

I just came back from an excellent workshop where many of us at UVM working in the areas of International Studies and other fields discussed the internationalization of UVM. Our focus was on how we could make UVM more connected to the rest of the world and the world more connected to UVM. What we envision must go much beyond simply sending students out on study abroad trips and should focus more on having students graduate with more of a global consciousness. Of course, one of the ways we can do this is by making more concerted efforts to have them study other cultures and languages (a certain country to the North of us immediately springs to mind).

Most of us were caught a bit off guard by this week's move from the White House to promote the study of foreign languages in schools and universities. It seems on the surface to align itself perfectly with what were talking about this afternoon. Then, I caught this posting on Laila Lalami's fabulous Moorish Girl blog. She sums it up far better than I can.

Wow--we're actually going to teach kids here about other languages?!! What a great way to tell them about the rest of the world. But I should have known better. Because the goal isn't to teach kids another language, but rather:

Bush portrayed the enhancement of foreign-language skills as a way of enlarging U.S. capacity to spread democracy. "You can't convince people unless you can talk to them," he said. (...) "When Americans learn to speak a language, learn to speak Arabic, those in the Arabic region will say, 'Gosh, America's interested in us. They care enough to learn how we speak,' " Bush said.

So the goal of learning the language isn't to learn something about a different culture, but merely to communicate well enough with the rest of the world to convince them to get on with the program already.

Sigh. Just when you think that guy might finally have a bright idea....

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Blogging takes off at UVM

What a nice surprise today to walk into a packed blogging workshop here at UVM's Center for Teaching and Learning. It wasn't that long ago that few people other than Steve Cavrak had done anything at all with blogging. Now, we have faculty, students, and staff creating blogs and looking at ways to use them in their work. Very cool to see.

I had the opportunity to speak to the group a bit about how I use blogs for my courses and in my own work and directed them to the links I posted in May, the last time I spoke to one of these workshops. It's great to see blogs really starting to take off here. With the addition of Richard Parent to our department and my colleagues like Andrew Barnaby and Lisa Schnell starting to blog, I can really see blogs a regular part of many English courses as well.

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November 10, 2005

Podcasting chat today

Here are a few links to some of the articles, podcasts, and software I referred to in a talk I gave today on podcasting as part of the Center for Teaching and Learning's new Colleague Teas series.

Podcasting how-to:

Podcasting DIY is a great new podcast that is part of Canada's new Rabble Podcast Network.
Audacity

Garageband
iPod + iTalk

What people are up to around the continent:

Here's a great conversation with Middlebury College's Barbara Ganley about her use of podcasting and blogging in her teaching. This is part of a regular podcast series called EdTechTalk. Recently Ganley posted a really interesting entry on her blog about Podcasting as Part of the Learning Process

Stanford podcasting
Mabry
Chronicle article on podcasting

My English 005 class

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September 14, 2005

David Allen coming to Vermont!

Later this month, I'll be attending a one-day workshop with David Allen. I've been a fan of David's work for years, long before his book came out and brought him a great deal of attention.

If you're reading this from UVM or somewhere nearby, it would be well worth trying to grab a seat before they are all gone. David's visit here is being sponsored by the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation and the seminar price is far below what David usually charges.

You can learn more about David and his work at davidco.com. I highly recommend his books Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life. His blog and newsletter are also great sources of hints and ideas about being more productive.

Anyone who has seen my office of late will know that I'm not quite there yet, but I'm sure that David's seminar will be a great inspiration to get my inbox finally under control.

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August 29, 2005

English 005 podcast now available at iTunes!

The first podcast for my English 005 class is now available at iTunes. It's a short test podcast that I did to make certain the feed was working, but I'll be following it up in a day or two with a longer podcast describing the course. I'm hoping to make that podcast a chaptered one with a few images. I also hope to post the syllabus as a PDF so that people subscribing to the podcast can download that as well.

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August 18, 2005

"Technology and the Pseudo-Intimacy of the Classroom": online versus face-to-face teaching

Via a link on someone else's blog that I forgot to note, I came across this interesting interview with Gerald Graff, author of Professing Literature (1987), a book I like a great deal, and Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (2003), a book I've been meaning to take a look at for some time now. The most interesting part of this interview for me is what he says about the "pseudo-intimacy of the classroom":

I have long thought that there is something infantilizing about the standard classroom situation, where the very face-to-face intimacy that is so valued actually encourages sloppy and imprecise habits of communication. That is, the intimate classroom is very different from--and therefore poor training for--the most powerful kinds of real-world communication, where we are constantly trying to reach and influence audiences we do not know and will probably never meet. We should be using online technologies to go beyond the cozy pseudo-intimacy of the classroom, to put students in situations that force them to communicate at a distance and therefore learn the more demanding rhetorical habits of constructing and reaching an anonymous audience. We have begun to do this to some extent, but our habit of idealizing presence and "being there," the face-to-face encounter between teachers and students, blinds us to the educational advantages of the very impersonality and distancing of online communication. Indeed, online communication makes it possible for schools and colleges to create real intellectual communities rather than the fragmented and disconnected simulation of such communities that "the classroom" produces.

I've been in discussions over the last couple of years with people who tell me that online communication can never replace the intimacy of the classroom. I like how Graff questions that here. That is something we don't spend enough time thinking about. How much attention do we pay to what kind of learning occurs in the classroom. I've now taught two courses fully online and in both cases I've wound up thinking that the students in the online course have had a much better command of the material than the students in the classroom. That may, of course, be simply an illusion generated by the comments every student has to write in an online class. Those students who never say a thing in class may well have as nuanced an understanding of a particular work as those who are very articulate in the course. The problem is that as instructors we don't have the same way of measuring what they know and don't know when they are not obliged to comment regularly.

It will be interesting to take all that I've learned teaching online this past summer back into the classroom this fall.

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August 15, 2005

iPods in the classroom

I am happy to announce officially that in my TAP class this fall UVM will be lending all of the students 20g color iPods. This is the result of a $5000 Instructional Incentive Grant I received earlier this spring from the Center for Teaching and Learning, which is enough for iPods and iTalk microphones for 15 students. The College of Arts and Sciences recently came through with additional funding for me that will allow me to outfit all 21 students with iPods and iTalks.

This project will allow us to test this technology as a teaching tool that, hopefully, we will be able to deploy on a wider scale in coming years for courses that would most benefit from access to audio materials. I will be using the iPods in my TAP class on Canadian culture. In this class, which I've entitled The Great White North (a reference,