the glory and the challenges

It is billed as a directory of blogs and other resources on writing. There are a lot of good sources there.

I’m going to take a look at some of the ones I didn’t recognize to see if there is something else I need to be reading. (Yes, I think there probably is. No, I really don’t have time for that.)

I’ve been reviewing the phonetic alphabet. Apparently I did not remember as much of it as I thought. I do think it’s fun to listen to the British pronunciations.

I was just reading The Digital Divide over Christmas. One of the authors (Johnson?) said that when Nietzche began to compose on a typewriter, that his work became more terse. I talked to someone about the idea, which they immediately pooh-poohed. However, I think there probably is some validity to the technology changing the way we write. I’m betting that not having to kill and skin deer for vellum made people more likely to write…

Because of this, Has MSWord affected the way we work? was an article that really caught my attention.

The author refers to an article in the Journal of Pragmatics:

The most interesting academic study I looked at found that writers using computers “spent more time on a first draft and less on finalising a text, pursued a more fragmentary writing process, tended to revise more extensively at the beginning of the writing process, attended more to lower linguistic levels [letter, word] and formal properties of the text, and did not normally undertake any systematic revision of their work before finishing”.

I follow the 99percent.com blog. Recently one came up that sounded interesting, so I kept it open to read. Turns out it will be relevant to my linguistics class.

It’s The Noun Project.

If you haven’t read the article yet, do you know what this is?

I recognized it immediately. It is iconic, if you are South American or have been around Argentinians.

Reading the CHE fora the other day, T-Notetaking was mentioned as being the skill taught that turned a belligerent, angry student (a year later) into one who was acing his majors classes and teaching the skill to others.

T-Notetaking is apparently another name for the Cornell Notes method.

If you want to teach your students to take notes, this might work very well.

I knew most of Dr. Karen’s Rules before I read her post. Some of the advice I don’t like, but I’m not sure it is wrong. In fact, I am sure it is most likely correct. In a time when job searches are scary and often end without offers (or sometimes even interviews), it pays to make sure every jot and tittle is done right.

Because of that, I recommend reading the post. (Which has been updated to respond to things left out that were mentioned in the comments.)

How much reading/preparation would you expect a grad student to do each week? Where I am, we require them to read a book a week. That usually provides enough material for a 2 hour long discussion.

If you’re in a science-based field, you should consider assigning empirical articles rather than literature reviews ; the former seem to inspire more critical discussion because there are procedural and analtyical specifics to hang arguments, criticisms, and questions on (although the latter may be useful as “background reading,” especially for students with less experience in the field). I usually assign 3-4 empirical articles per 2.5 hr class session.

from the CHE fora

Grant McCracken wrote in Harvard Business Review about Play as an Investment Strategy.

I read his blog regularly and the post that directed to this article caught my attention because of the fun that the Sterling employees had.

I think we can suggest a model that shows how the value created by mannequins ends up on the bottom line. Sure, it will look a bit Rube Goldberg-esque. But let’s try.

The mannequins begin with an act of unlicensed “borrowing.” This gives a tang of illegality (or “liminality”, as it’s called in anthropology) to the proceedings. It’s no longer business as usual.

Posed around the office, the mannequins are anomalous. What are they? Why are they reconfigured, dressed, and or gesturing that way? This provokes questions, conversations, and eventually play.

People begin to find away of making the mannequins mean . . . something, anything. Dress them, decorate them, reassemble them, reassign their identities, give them secret identities, build stories around them, tell jokes at their expense, and otherwise save them from their composure.

Most of what this office does is work performed to client expectation, under pressure, to a deadline. These mannequins don’t come with a deadline. This activity is pure play, creativity for the sake of it, so the mannequins get quite a lot done even when they’re just standing there.

Sterling is of course a creative enterprise, so anything that revivifies and animates the creative process is a good thing. This isn’t distraction and it isn’t tomfoolery. It restocks the good fellowship and creativity on which Sterling depends.

And then he goes on to explain why mannequins such as those borrowed from the neighboring business DON’T belong in every Sterling office.

Play, remember, is one of the seven Conceptual Elements I’ve been touting in my FYC classes.

I think this shows both play and innovation, using play as a means of rejuvenating the workplace. These are the aspects which I am trying to introduce my students to within the classroom.

Grins for grammarians everywhere. Found at SMBC-comics.