Metaphive | Inventio Repositoria

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Notice to Vacate

Moving over to tumblr. Thanks for the brief stay, Blogger.

http://mattmorain.tumblr.com

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

ISUComm Workshop: Eco-Composition in FYC

came in late...sorry guys.

+Joe Bartolotta - Photo Documentary Midrash:

-local surroundings, new perspectives of place
-multimodal by design: students construct a web page or blog entry for the project
-example: Landscape Architecture (TA offices) as work spaces

?'s I might have for implementing this assignment:
-what's the learning curve for the E part of this assignment? what blogging site did they use to construct these?
-of the numerous perspectives students offer in their midrash, how many of them are fluff?

+Londie Martin - Culture Jamming:

-changing an ad to penetrate and parody its context
*(this sounds a lot like my "changing an ad to change its meaning" proposed assignment...is that a good sign because I arrived at the same idea independently or a bad sign because my "original" ideas are, in fact, not?)
-examples: "Welcome to Marlboro Country" w/ cowboy and cigarette might be changed to a group of smokers shivering outside of their work building
-tied together with the visual analysis essay

?'s: again, what's the learning curve for photoshop or other image editing software?
-how long is this assignment? what are the related readings? evaluation criteria: is it focused more on the change or on the written component?

really cool idea!

+Callae Frazier - Capstone Magazine Development Project

-semester-long unit, students choose their own concept for a magazine (self-themed units)
-example themes: social issues, technology, sustainability, cultural history and current impacts, design,
-students collect research sources throughout the semester and compile them all as articles in a themed magazine (this is a group project, I assume)
-unveiling presentation at end of semester to see which group made the most sophisticated rhetorical choices

?'s: -how much is this assignment worth as part of their total grade? what sort of implementation schedule? how do you evaluate each member of the group's contributions to the magazine?

-seems like a novel idea, and a different way to approach the documented research essay

Respondents
Mendy -- Quintilian's book 11, on memory: a different mode of looking at the subject, separate of analysis
-WOVE is an ecology of positions
-Can students understand that the W and V will yield different things, unless you call attention to it explicitly?
-If you ask them to reflect on what they're doing, does it become clearer to them that the V and W produce different materials?

concept of "space" vs. "place"

Friday, November 9, 2007

Link Dump

Audacity
Grazr
iJot
Pipes

Web 2.0verload

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Research/Classroom Assignment from Lunch...

Have students examine the first ten search results on a person (accessed by intelligent, Boolean-driven search phrases)

what sorts of impressions do you get from these 10 results?
what does this "online snapshot" say about this person?
[insert other compelling critical question here]

GPACW 2007: iMacro Browser Plug-in

Justin Blessinger, DSU

Using FireFox (or IE...ha!) macros to save time and automate annoyingly redundant tasks

Use in Word to automate common student feedback (be sure to create an icon to make it quicker)

ex: opening a host of research tabs (EBSCO, LexisNexis, OED, Academic OneFile)

Spend a little bit of time to set up the initial script, save a lot of time later on.

...must...ask...Justin...to share...plagiarism...macro...

Semi Automatic Grader

PlagTest

GPACW 2007: SGML Text Analysis

John Laflin, DSU

Using SGML to analyze texts:

-macros+ could be used to analyze two passages--or two complete papers--side by side to see how statistically different the voices of the author could be

-analyzing passages from online discussions or blogs for word frequency to determine how well the students are grasping key concepts (terminology, e.g., ethos or chunking)

-analyzing passages from online discussions to see how frequently and in what ways students are contributing to minimum word counts

-is there a simple way to design these SGML analyses? how much time would it take for me to learn how to do this in an efficient and meaningful way?

-huge time commitment, but it seems worth it
-needs context to analyze keywords or meaning of discussion
-what's the learning curve?

see more: http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml

Monday, November 5, 2007

Wikipedia in the FYC Classroom