Well-Swept Yard

I met today with a a summer general education class. I like gen ed classes. They provide the greatest potential for reaching students. They also present challenges when a goodly number of the seats are occupied by students who have a commitment to a strict path to a degree that satisfies a yearning for money or another life desire. With first-year students a discussion of what could happen to the in four years' residence. For so many students the first year of college is the thirteenth grade, something they do because a college degree is what comes next. Parents think so, friends are on board, somebody told them that a college degree is worth money in the world of work. Do not overlook the prospect of independence and fun. Ask about any one of the usual reasons, ask if that is what put them here, and one notices a hesitation, as though the student is thinking about the reason for going to college for the first time. In thinking about the usual answers some students exhibit some

Pannapacker at MLA: Digital Humanities Triumphant? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education : "I wouldn’t worry about community colleges. Although two-year schools sometimes show little interest in theory, they have been ahead of the rest of us in using new technologies, at least in pedagogy." That is a comment by Henry_Adams on Pannapacker's post in the Chronicle. The comment is right on target. I made the same observation when I was directing a tech center for faculty (some years ago--during that fuzzy time between Web 1 and Web 2). The two-year faculty had pedagogical question but mostly they had questions about how to stretch capabilities of common software--from presentation media to web work. As Blackboard made its appearance at the four-year campus, the community college regulars asked for accounts. I gave permission and even assisted in moving content from their WebCT LMS to our Blackboard system. The reasons? I find them embedded in the post a

The weatherman predicted freezing temperatures for the region, a swath of land in the impoverished black-belt. My friend teaches in a consolidated school for the region. He said to me, "We will have a full house tomorrow; the school is warm; and the students will get something to eat."