« Mint Green | Main | The Small Convex Kind You Stick On »

Monday, December 8, 2008

TAGS grades nomadism practice teaching travel

Comfort Inventory 6

In typical C.I. fashion, a list:

  • Is. asked to play this song over and over and over today.  And at lunch she kept saying, "Tee-ka-lee."
  • Grades. Check.
  • To cap the semester, a meeting tomorrow and a mock in-person interview on Friday. Mock: I am to sport a turtleneck and then all of my questioners heckle me about the answers when it's over. Kidding aside, I'm grateful for the simulations.
  • In the spring I will be teaching an online section of WRT205 associated with University College.  I have some decisions to make.  Today I've been thinking about a focus on attitude: worldview, manner (a split of Burkean agency), and so on.  I saw something about Carol Dweck's Mindset, but it also could tie in with a whole range of stuff: cool studies, believing/doubting, standpoint theory, perspective.  Due to my insufferable pre-course-configuring nomadism, tomorrow I will be thinking something else, no doubt. The semester begins January 12, which means I have until 11:30 p.m. on January 11th to make up my mind.
  • WRT195ers finished last week with Pecha Kucha presentations--re-makes of their six week sustained research projects.  The switch from the textually intensive "paper" to the visually intensive and improvised presentational-performance: a hit, and something I'd definitely like to do again. 
  • One of the presentations included the uncanny (and unintended) substitution of "digital naives" for "digital natives" (on a slide). I know Weinberger has mentioned "digital naives" before, but it was sort of a surprise fit here in that the point was made in the context of the adeptness of "digital natives."
  • My bags are packed and ready for MLA later this month.
  • No, no they're not.  That's a joke (a real side-splitter, I'm sure, for anyone both type A and on the market).  But I do have the itinerary for a trip embedded in another trip: first to Detroit by car, then to SF by plane, then back to Detroit by plane, and "home" to Syracuse by car.
  • Is. has been busy at the whiteboard sketching humanoids.

Sketch

Bookmark and Share Posted by at December 8, 2008 11:00 PM to Unspecified
Comments

D, glad to see you're teaching for us in the spring! Quick reminder though (Mike putting on his professional hat), while the semester does begin on January 12 (and you have the leisure to take until 11:30 p.m. on January 11 to make up your mind), you are required to post at least a syllabus and open the open the course space for preview no later than January 5 (one week prior to the start of the semester. I don't think you were included in the pre-semester email to spring 09 online faculty.

Posted by: mike at December 9, 2008 8:24 AM

Thanks, Mike. I should be able to have most of it ready by the 5th.

Say, do you know whether we're explicitly required to use Blackboard? I'm thinking of using Moodle instead, and I haven't been able to find anything that says unequivocally that I must use BB.

Posted by: Derek at December 9, 2008 8:44 AM

i love the mixing of personal and professional in this post. the image (both of your daughter and the humanoid) is precious ;)

good luck w/ the job search.

Posted by: bonnie at December 9, 2008 9:06 AM

Is Is. left handed?

Posted by: Jo at December 9, 2008 9:48 PM

Thanks, Bonnie. I've been finding it difficult to unmix the two of late.

And, Jo, it seems so. It's not settled as far as I know, but she does seem to prefer her left hand for drawing, coloring, painting, and so on. Who knows how much genetics plays a part in handedness (somebody, probably, just not *me*), but I have some left-handed tendencies myself. Never did hold a pencil "correctly", even after years and years of goofy finger positioners designed to convert me into a righty through and through.

Posted by: Derek at December 9, 2008 10:59 PM

MT Random Line