Steven D. Krause

I haven’t seen all the details of it yet, but WEMU is reporting that EMU has been rated as one of the best schools in the country in terms of preparing K-12 teachers. This is apparently according to one of these US News and World Report books. There’s a link about all this on EMU’s homepage right now. I’d link directly to it, but I can’t– go see it, you’ll see why.

Of course, you have to take any of these sorts of rankings with a grain of salt, but it doesn’t really surprise me. EMU has a very large and very good teacher preparation program, and it’s something that everyone at EMU is involved in. Our department has at least 800 majors (maybe more), and most of them are in English Education. We have folks who specialize in that of course, but everyone in our department– writing folk, lit folk, lit folk, and so on– have some kind of “claim” on the major and helping those students. And I think it’s a fair guess that just about every other department at EMU has a similar connection with Education.

Anyway, congrats to us. It’s nice to hear some good news about EMU for a change of pace.

I posted about this here just a few days ago, and I thought it worthwhile to post this link Nick Carbone posted to tech-rhet as part of the on-going set of lessons from the 2004 electoral maps. This analysis (by some folks in computer science at U of M) goes even further in reconfiguring the red, blue, and purple maps by adding a proportional element.

For example, while Rhode Island is considerably smaller geographically than Wyoming, it has twice as many people. So on this map, Rhode Island is twice as big as Wyoming, though neither of them are really that large in this map.

This gets a little weird-looking when they start rearranging the purple maps, but I guess that’s their point: we really aren’t red and blue states as simply as been portrayed.

Via Clancy Radcliff’s blog (she’s a grad student at U of Minnesota), I came across this post from a “Sad American,” who (basically) is an anonymous and young Southern woman who insist she would have voted for Kerry under slightly different circumstances. It’s kind of a long post and it has 281 comments attached to it, but it’s worth browsing through.

What makes all this all the more interesting is this response from a sadder American. This writer pretty much goes point for point what I would have said, so I’d encourage you to read this bit after reading the merely sad American.

Let me repost what I wrote over at Clancy’s blog in brief:

I can never remember who said it, but you can’t change someone’s ideology (or “beliefs,” for that matter) with the “facts.” What I think is really interesting in the “Sad American’s” message is that in my reading, she’s sort of struggling with what she seems to know (or think) is “true” and how that is at odds with what she believes. When I was in grad school, I personally experienced this sort of thing a couple of times when encountering post-structualist theories of one sort or another: for me to agree with “x,” I have to bring into question belief “y,” if that makes sense. I see this in my students (undergrad and grad) now, and what happens too often is they retreat back into the comfort of their own ideological framework. Something along the lines of this: “I realize we’ve read all this stuff for class about how feminist are really just striving for equality among men and women, and for equal rights and consideration for women, and I even agree with it. But you know, I still don’t think I could ever be a feminist because I don’t hate men, and that Rush Limbaugh has a point with the whole ‘feminazi’ thing.”

What I’m seeing here is “Sad American” really wants to believe in Kerry and while she deep down inside knows that Bush is wrong, her ideological apparatus is not allowing her to change course that easily. And I think you see this in some of the logical fallacies in her argument, as pointed out by “Sadder American.” Of course, that could be my own ideological aparatus creeping in….

Anyway, what I think is really fascinating about “Sad American” is the same thing I see in first year composition class essays once in a while: a sort of tone from the writer that is trying to convince herself that, despite the evidence, she is still right. It’s no wonder that there are 281 replies to the SA. A lot of people trying to convince themselves they made the correct choice, right?

There’s be a couple of posts on the mailing list tech-rhet today with the subject line “75 reasons for using Bb,” which is Blackboard, one of the larger course management system set-ups out there. The critiques on tech-rhet with these things have been (basically) a) Bb doesn’t do all of this stuff that easily, b) this isn’t a list of reasons “why” so much as it is a list of capabilities, and c) you could do most (if not all) of these things with other tools, either competing products or “free standing” content management systems and/or good ol’ fashioned web sites, email, and the like. I’d write more about this, but since I am in the midst of grading things tonight, I’ll just let this list stand for itself:

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The following list was compiled from responses made to the larger national Bb listserv.

75 Reasons to Use Blackboard

Content

1. To put unlimited additional resources in the hands of students
2. To post course syllabus for easy access
3. To add content and learning objects
4. To link to library resources and databases
5. To post daily news, quotes, words, trivia, etc.
6. To publish classroom notes or study guides
7. To provide supplementary reading material
8. To create a virtual art gallery
9. To post movie clips
10. To post audio lectures
11. To provide links to useful websites
12. To allow students to read or listen to material repeatedly for understanding
13. To provide students who must miss class with easy access to materials
14. To include a glossary of course terminology

Communication

15. To enhance student-to-student communication
16. To enhance faculty-to-student contact
17. To distribute email messages to students
18. To encourage out of class discussion via discussion boards or chat rooms
19. To provide online homework help (virtual office hours)
20. To encourage collaborative learning
21. To connect students with community leaders and outside experts
22. To get 100% participation in class discussions
23. To reach “shy� students and allow them to express their thoughts
24. To provide opportunities for learning communities
25. To share community events
26. To set up groups for classes (large or small)
27. To send specific emails to a subset (group) of students
28. To facilitate group projects by allowing students to discuss particular topics or exchange certain files
29. To remind students of important deadlines
30. To share student ideas and projects
31. To develop a mentoring system
32. To collect student quotes
33. To help students find study partners
34. To assist in creating connections and inclusion
35. To communicate expectations and objectives
36. To provide advance organization for in-class discussion

Assessment

37. To allow students to monitor their own progress
38. To post assignments and allow students to submit work digitally
39. To assess student progress with just-in-time methods
40. To record, display, calculate, and analyze student scores
41. To publish student writing
42. To conduct student surveys for quick feedback
43. To provide self-help or self-improvement quizzes
44. To create drill and practice exercises
45. To post extra credit work
46. To post answers
47. To give students immediate feedback on quizzes and assignments
48. To keep students apprised of “how they are doing�
49. To facilitate test review
50. To measure student access to course materials and tools
51. To develop formative and summative assessments
52. To provide interactive activities
53. To gauge student understanding and interests
54. To eliminate time consuming exam grading
55. To encourage reflective thinking
56. To organize student papers electronically
57. To promote peer editing for review and suggestions
58. To gather suggestions from students for course improvements

Other

59. To time control access to information by students
60. To copy things from one place to another (within the same course or between courses)
61. To provide continuous access to a student roster
62. To reduce printing and copying costs
63. To provide more time for classroom instruction and activities
64. To encourage students to read their textbook
65. To help students come to class prepared
66. To put an end to the “lost papers� excuse
67. To engage students with different learning styles
68. To provide consistency in course structure
69. To improve retention of course material
70. To engage students outside of class
71. To allow students to review lecture before or after class
72. To meet student expectations
73. To integrate technology into curriculum
74. To provide 24×7 access to course materials—anytime, anywhere
75. To make teaching and learning fun!

See this article, Bush cancels agreement between nouns and verbs, which is from the kinda funny Borowitz Report. I like the sub-title here: “‘I Has a Mandate, and I Intends to Use it,’ Says President.”

Go to http://www.bopnews.com/, which is the “Blogging of the President” web site, and scroll down a bit to take a look at all the maps and graphs and such. I don’t have a lot of patience for the “they stole the election” kind of stuff personally– that’s a bit too paranoid for my tastes– but I do like the wide variety of maps an interpretations of the data here. Might be interesting to compare these maps with what’s being posted on some of the right-wing sites….

See this entry from the blog Many-to-Many, which I came across via Kariosnews. One of my many side projects (with the “billhd” who posted to Kairosnews) is an article about course management systems, and this situation of being forced into using a specific package (Blackboard, WebCT, etc.) to teach a particular class. A couple of thoughts:

* You know, I’m not so sure how often this sort of thing is actually happening nowadays– I guess some research on this might be in order.

* I’m scheduled to teach an online class in Fall 2005, and the way that it works at EMU is online classes are supported through Continuing Education and they use something called eCollege. I haven’t talked with these folks about the details of all this yet, but as I understand it, the main incentive they give here to people to use eCollege is they provide quite a bit of support to teachers. I think you can even do stuff like give these folks hard copies of materials and they will digitize it.

* What I hope/assume that I will do when do this class next year is to use the eCollege interface as a “front end” for the class and then direct students to web sites and such of my own making. And I’ll probably direct them to this web domain, too– that is, I’ll send them to a site I “own” instead of an EMU web site.

* One of the things that Bill and I need to talk and then write about is the metaphor for CMS. It could be said that the institution sees CMS as the same thing as the brick-n-mortar classrooms. If that’s the case, CMS forces folks into a box that is only inches away from the classroom boxes we get forced into in face-to-face teaching. CMS might also be said to be like a required textbook or set of assignments, the sort of approach common in a lot of first year writing programs.

In either case though, it seems to me that what “good teachers” do is figure out how to work within “the system” while simultaneously attempting to subvert it. Of course, that’s easier said than done….

Here’s Annette at her birthday party, which was last night. Forced to sit on the floor at her own party…. Well, actually, there were a lot of people sitting around on the floor.

This is the big “four-o” for Annette, and all she wanted (or so she says) was a great big birthday party. And it was a great party, too– lots of good friends, good talk, good food. Annette actually ended up making most of the food, which I guess kind of defeats the purpose of receiving a birthday party as a gift, but I helped. And I will keep cleaning up the mess after I post this message, too. Rachel brought an excellent cake– can’t say enough good things about that woman’s baking.

This isn’t all Annette is going to get for her birthday, though. Will and I have some small gifts up our collective sleaves, and I’m trying to convince Annette that she ought to give herself a new laptop computer as a combination 40th birthday/book contract/tax write-off celebration sort of deal. And I guess in a way, she already got a new TV (which we bought last week). Though I suppose that’s more a “gift” for Will and me, really….

It makes me think a bit about turning 40 myself, which is still a year and a half away. I’ll be getting ready for some sort of minor mid-life crisis by then, and I am considerably more greedy and materialistic than Annette, so I’ll probably want a new computer or a new car or a new car with a computer in it. At one point, I thought about getting my ear pierced when I turn 40, but I doubt I’ll do that. A pierced ear on a 40 year old man who is short and who has a big bulbous head isn’t a good look. Maybe I’ll get a tatoo though…

Okay, I’ve been reading a fair number of blogs lately (including my own), and I guess it occurs to me that some of this does sound a bit chicken little-like. Maybe we need to take a moment here to take stock and to calm down a bit.

Sure, I’m disturbed that people seemed to vote for Bush because a) they’re too stupid, b) they’re too afraid (despite the fact that they’re voting for the guy who made them afraid), c) they’re full of hate, and/or d) they felt like they were voting for God’s candidate. There are a couple of very good op/ed pieces in the NYT right now about all this.

Still, it isn’t as if this all happened over night, either. For one thing, most of the polls before the election gave the edge to Bush. So I guess I’m sort of surprised that I was surprised– maybe I was just in denial before.

For another, we were pretty much a right wing/red versus blue state nation on Monday, too. (Though, as I point out here, there are compelling reasons to think that we’re actually a purple nation). And really, that’s not too surprising given our origins. I mean, the Europeans who started coming here 500 years ago were religious nuts and capitalist pigs intent on exploiting resources. These people have always been a part of us (and us them, for that matter). It’s just that every once in a while, these nut jobs run the show.

It also seems to me that it’s possible to make the argument that what happened on Tuesday isn’t really a “moral referendum” per se; what happened is the democrats just “lost” because the republicans ran a better campaign. We had a lot of faith in getting young people and other first time voters to the polls, but despite the pictures the showed on TV, not enough of them turned out. The dems had this big and flashy rock n’ roll tour to get people on their side, and the repubs went low-key and to traditional places like churches and such. But it turns out that, despite the efforts, young people don’t vote– or, perhaps more accurately, there just aren’t enough of them to make that much of a difference. The dems probably would have been better if we could have gotten “stars” like Bob Barker, Andy Rooney, and/or Andy Griffith (is he still alive?) to go out and do a tour for Kerry in retirement communities. (Imagine the crowds screaming “Matlock for Kerry! Matlock for Kerry!”)

And of course, there always has been Kerry’s personality problem. I’m not trying to say that Kerry wasn’t the best candidate for the dems to put forward– he won the primaries fair and square, and I think any sort of argument along the lines of “maybe we should of gone with Howard Dean” is just not fair. But Kerry did have a problem… connecting, I think. Bush is a big idiot, but he’s also comes across as a simple and a “nice guy.” Kerry is smart, but he out-thinks himself too much and he doesn’t seem approachable. I heard some pundit on some show talking about how since the 60s, the candidate who has the broadest “popular” appeal is the one that wins. And even though he’s a rich bastard from a political dynasty family (not to mention the President), Bush won the “who would you want to have a beer with” contest.

Well, we’ll see what happens. A number of people have pointed out that had Kerry gotten in there, he would have been blamed with the mess that Bush made in Iraq and beyond. That will probably help the dems in 2008.

Now I gotta go shop for a “Don’t blame me– I voted for Kerry” and/or a “Hillary 08” bumper-sticker….

Okay, okay, this is kind of a political post too, but the reason why I’m putting this here is because I can really see using this stuff in a course that has something to do with “visual rhetoric:”

I came across this post at boing-boing where a reader came up with a “purple map” graphic that reflects what happens if you try to reflect actual percentages of the vote instead of the more simple “winner take all, red for Republicans, blue for Democrats” map we’ve all seen on TV news. Here it is:

Now, just to again point out the contrast here, see this map from USA Today, which reflects the “winner take all” colors county by county and which is explained and discussed a bit in this article here:

If those visuals aren’t “rhetorical,” I don’t know what image would be…