I am not quite sure if today or tomorrow is actually the longest day of the year, but today felt like the longest day to me. Without going into any great detail, today was one of those days where it seemed like I dealt with/experienced about three days worth of stuff. Some of it was good (kudos on my CHE piece, some other good news in the sense that I heard some “not bad” news, I finished grading for my spring term class, etc.), some of it bad (hearing about John, unbelievably bad traffic in town, I had to finish grading for my spring term class, etc.).
Interestingly, one of the things that really frosted my cake (so to speak) today is something I don’t think I should write about in any detail. All I’ll say is this: today, for the first time in 17 years of teaching college, I had a student hand in a final research project/essay that was blatantly plagiarized, meaning just flat-out stolen. I was reading along with this essay, came across a sentence that made me think “wow, that sounds not like a student essay at all,” typed that sentence into Google, and whammo, there was the essay. Or most of it. I felt sorry for and really pissed off at this student all at the same time.
Anyway, the day is finally over, as is the semester. Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving town until about July 10, give or take. I’m bringing my laptop with me, but I have no idea what sort of Internet access I’ll have, and I’m almost certain I won’t have a lot of “official” things to post. I might post some stuff to the unofficial blog if you’re really curious. If not, I’ll see ya in a couple of weeks.
Hi…I just read your article, “Blogs as a Tool for Teaching” in the Chronicle of Higher Education and really enjoyed it. I’m a high school English teacher in North Carolina but went to UM, so I was excited to see that you teach at Eastern. I used blogs for the first time this year with my 9th graders in response to 2 novels that we read in class. I found it to be a huge success but did notice that no one really commented on anyone else’s, although they did read each others. I thought about making it a requirement to respond but didn’t really like the pressure that it put on students to find something to talk about. Thanks for your insight-it was interesting to see how you used blogs in your graduate courses ( I don’t think my professors in graduate would EVER consider it as a tool of communication OR assessment-I hope your students are appreciative)