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Friday, December 13, 2002

Sitting in class again, last day of semester. 5 students here, one in the building but not here. The other 9 have more or less finished up their portfolios and these 5 are putting the finishing touches (or new foundations) on their materials.

Started working on a portfolio this am. Told myself, 1 hr / student tops, = 14 hrs this weekend. Also assumed that some could be handled in less than an hour. Took me about 2 hrs! Had a software crash that set me back, but found myself needing to read and write more closely than I thought I would. I need to learn to be a better portfolio reader.

I also need to be clearer about what students need to do in portfolios. For example, the student I spent so much time on had good drafts, and I told him that he mainly needed to focus on sentence level or local revisions. I started reading his stuff, paying more attention to local issues than I had on the earlier docs, and his writing is often a mess. So I started commenting extensively. I think I just should have noted a few problems and said, X, you haven't really made any significant revisions. Could have been done with him in an hour.

Part of me also felt like I let him down. He actually said in his memo that one of his strenghts is catching his grammar problems (which may be true), but he isn't a very careful editor. I really struggle to teach sentence-level writing because students have a hard time seeing the vagueries of their prose, and have a hard time caring enough about their writing to bother. This student frequently exhibited signs of boredom and write about it as well. Don't know if I could have reached him earlier or not.

I'll keep you posted on the portfolio process. The second one I took on is going more quickly--but still around an hour.

Monday, December 09, 2002

Sitting in the computer classroom from hell, according to Cindy, while my students work on revisions. One is looking at a forum that has lots of images about pornography (a nun saying "POrnography? On my Computer?), another is looking at a forum about Mazda cars, another posting to a blog, a fourth is looking at some web site about animals, and you know what, they are all on task. Seems like an interesting class to me. I get to blog, which also seems like a good use of my time.

Two beside me are working on papes, and the last time I looked, most other people are also working on their papers.

One just got up to print.

Maybe the class worked out after all.

Sunday, December 08, 2002

Sunday morning blogging. Finally added an entry over on the individual blog; cruised some student blogs (4 have been used within the last 3 weeks--is that really low compared with your students?). Discovered that my students' archives are sketchy. My student who has put the most work into his weblog has only one entry in the archives. Have you two noticed this problem too?

Are you both willing and interested in keeping this communal blog going? And the study? Next semester we would have an opportunity to study blogging in at least 3 different kinds of classes--120 (Sybil), Poetry of Rock and/or CW (Cindy); Intro to WS and Comp Theory (me). I think we would see some interesting (predictable?) differences.


Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Whoa, where am I? In a blogspot? Been a while. Haven't touched my personal blog in 2 weeks--I'm a failed blogger!!!

Class: I asked everyone to produce a short paper quickly, and they almost all did (seem to have lost one more straggler, however). I'm not sure that my assignments are adding up the way they should. I need to get "goals and objectives" out front more effectively, or just assign good cool stuff so that when done well, students learn without worrying about "the goals."

Moving into revisions and portfolios--this seems to make sense to me and them. I'll see how it goes. I posted a page about global and local revision if either of you are looking for some guides.

I did back off the online portfolio. IN other words, they can if they want to, or they can turn in paper copies.

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