Minutes from Digital Writing Teaching Circle #2.

DIGITAL WRITING TEACHING CIRCLE--MEETING #2
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18--5-6 PM
On WebEx

Present: Brian Lewis (facilitator), Steve Anderson, Jacque Arnold, Bob Bledsoe, Laura Funke, Stephanie Laurey, Laurie Lykken, Brandy Opse-Weber, Sue Taylor

Absent: Dianne Gregory
  

1.  Brian reminded everyone about the wiki: that it's located at http://digitalwritingtc.pbworks.com, that all TC members have been invited to edit it as they wish, and that everyone should contribute to the "technology table."

2.  Brandy presented her voice recognition software, called Dragon.  It costs about $500; the basic version is $100.  It may be used in the classroom for several reasons: for D2L, to give students feedback on their writing, and for use of Outlook.

3.  Bob began a presentation on mashups, but he had video problems and was not able to finish his presentation.  Brian presented in his place--he talked about using Diigo as a research tool for students (www.diigo.com).  It is an online bookmarking and research site that provides RSS feeds daily to his e-mail on specific subjects.  Diigo also tags website so that you can do searching in your online library by subject.

 4.  Next meeting will be IN WEBEX, FRIDAY, MARCH 4, FROM 4-5 PM.   BRIAN WILL SEND EVERYONE THE WEBX MEETING LINK AT LEAST 24 HOURS BEFORE THE ONLINE MEETING.  Bob (and Dianne--added later) will share digital writing/new media techniques and explain why they would work well for the English classroom. 
 5.  HOMEWORK FOR EVERYONE BEFORE NEXT MEETING:--Find at least ONE new media teaching technique that you think might be worth sharing with the group if you have not yet done so.--Hold individual meeting #1 with Brian if you have not yet done so.--Work on individual goal/objectives (these need to be handed in to me by 2/28).--Reflection paper #1 is due 2/28--work on it.

Meeting ended at about 6:07 pm.  A recording of the meeting was done and is on the MnSCU WebEx site.

Brian

Summary of Teaching Circle work so far

I haven't been doing much writing on this blog lately.  My major excuse is that I've been busy with my teaching circle.  So I think it's only natural that I blog a bit here about what I've been doing with the teaching circle.  Yes, I've been copying meeting minutes here, but what are my impressions after the first two meetings?  Well here they are:

Digital Writing TC: My Impressions after Meetings 1 and 2. 

For our first meeting, we met at a restaurant in downtown St. Paul.  Everyone seemed to like getting to know each other.  I did have one person who quit the group because she didn't want to meet face to face, but this was fine--I was over-enrolled in the group anyway.  Officially, as of this writing, I have nine colleagues in the group: four from Century College (including me), three from Inver Hills CC, one from St. Paul College, one from Normandale CC, and one from MNSU-Mankato.  During the first meeting, we set our group goal and decided that we'd do presentations of technologies that we've found and talk about how they might be helpful to our English students.  In between the first and second meetings, we talked via e-mail about the objectives that we'd need to achieve that group goal.  And we decided on four, in particular.  A few days before the second meeting, we had a "practice" WebEx meeting to see how the technology worked--it seemed to work pretty well.  The actual meeting, unfortunately, was a bit more troublesome.  Even though one colleague was able to complete her presentation on voice recognition software, one person who was supposed to present did not "show up," and the third presenter had computer problems.  So I had to fill in and give an impromptu presentation on Diigo--they seemed to appreciate this.  Our next meeting will be Friday, March 4, at 4 p.m.

I have also created a wiki for this group (http://digitalwritingtc.pbworks.com/) where we can share our information, esp. our technology info on the "technology table" that I created.  I do wish more people were contributing to the wiki, but hopefully this will change over time. 

I've also been having individual meetings with the TC members; so far, I've completed 5/9.  Mostly, they want to talk about their individual goals/objectives for the circle.  I've heard very few complaints or concerns thus far.

(An added bonus--I met with Lynda today, and she introduced me to a cool new link--http://join.me, which allows for collaboration/screen sharing.  Thanks Lynda!!)

minutes for first teaching circle meeting--what did we do?

DIGITAL WRITING TEACHING CIRCLE--MEETING #1

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5--1:30-3:30 PM

at Great Waters Brewing Company in Saint Paul

Present: Brian Lewis (facilitator), Steve Anderson, Jacque Arnold, Bob Bledsoe, Laura Funke, Dianne Gregory, Stephanie Laurey, Laurie Lykken, Brandy Opse-Weber, Sue Taylor

Absent: Wanda Synstelien

1.  First we ate--heartily.

2.  After lunch, we all introduced ourselves.  We explained where we were from, what we taught, and what we wanted to learn from the teaching circle.

3.  Brian went over the contracts with everyone present.  Everyone present handed in their signed contracts.  We tentatively agreed to have our final FTF meeting on Friday 5/13 at Century College from 3:30-5:30 (to share information).

4.  Everyone signed up for an individual meeting with Brian.  The purpose of the individual meeting is primarily to help participants refine their individual goals and objectives and to ask questions. 

Individual meetings set up so far:

Steve, 2/10, 2 pm, (but where?)

Laura, 2/15, 11 am (Skype or phone)

Brandy, 2/15, 3:45 pm, phone

Stephanie, 2/17, 9 am, phone

Sue, 2/18, (what time?), Facebook

Bob, 2/22, 2pm, Facebook

Laurie, 2/24, 1pm, Facebook

Jacque, 2/25, 10 am, D2L chat

Dianne, 2/25, 1 pm, D2L, Sykpe, AIM, FB, or Adobe Connect

5.  We went over what "SMART" goals were and talked about some examples of SMART and not-so-SMART goals.

6.  We decied that our group goal would be as follows:

To explore, share, and synthesize knowledge about new media teaching strategies for English classrooms in both online and non-online environments.  (Changed slightly from our original discussion for the sake of clarity; in retrospect, "individual" seems a bit vague to me...)

7.  Next meeting will be IN WEBX, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, FROM 5-6 PM.   BRIAN WILL SEND EVERYONE THE WEBX MEETING LINK AT LEAST 24 HOURS BEFORE THE ONLINE MEETING.  Brandy, Bob, and Dianne will share digital writing/new media techniques and explain why they would work well for the English classroom. 

8.  HOMEWORK FOR EVERYONE BEFORE NEXT MEETING:

--By 2/18, use "Reply All" on e-mail to answer this question: What objectives do we need to accomplish to achieve our group goal?  (Everyone in the group should be able to read your response.)

--Find at least ONE new media teaching technique that you think might be worth sharing with the group.

--Hold individual meeting (if you signed up for one before next group meeting)

--Work on individual goal/objectives (these need to be handed in to me by 2/28).

Meeting ended PROMPTLY at 3:30 pm.

Brian

prior to my first tc meeting.

Well, tomorrow afternoon is my first teaching circle meeting.  Since I last wrote here, I've had to change the location--it will be at the Great Waters Brewing Company in downtown St. Paul.  Currently, I have ten (possibly eleven?) members--if these numbers keep up, two of them will have to audit.  But we'll see. 

Right now, I have a set agenda for tomorrow's meeting--a lot of paperwork--but the main focus will be on both group and individual goals and objectives for the circle.  Tomorrow we have to do a lot of thinking about what the main purpose of this circle is.  And this is not always easy. 

I will have more to report after tomorrow, once our group has made some concrete decisions.

What's up in Jan 2011...............

Here's what I'm working on lately:

1.  Most of my work has been MEJ (Minnesota English Journal)-related.  I am trying to get the entire journal edited and proofread by Jan. 24.  Then I will send it to Sandy Hayes (both as a whole journal and as individual articles) so she can post it on the web.

2. I'm also working on the online teaching circle.  As of this writing, I have 8/9 possible people who've expressed an interest.  I have sent them an e-mail asking them to pick a meeting time during the first couple days in Feb. 1.  I've also set up a meeting place for our first meeting: Trattoria Da Vinci in St. Paul (at Lynda's suggestion--it sounds great to me).  At the meeting, we'll need to set group goals/objectives, talk about ind. goals/objectives, sign up for ind. meetings and sign contracts.

3. One last thing: I found a cool site on Diigo again--this is called BiblioBouts, a research/bibliography game that students can play.  It's at http://www.bibliobouts.org/ (also on the link at the top of this entry).  It seems like it would be fun and useful for 1021, 1022, and lit. courses.

some final 2010 musings.

Just a short entry to say that today I (and DeeGee and Lynda) finished the flyer to advertise the online teaching circle.  I sent it on to Richard Jewell.  Now I have to think about when the first meeting will be, where, how much food to order, etc.   Oh decisions, decisions!  Still, I hope it will all be fun.

I also finished editing Daryl Parks's paper for MEJ today and sent it back to him.  I have only one more paper to finish editing--and hopefully I will be able to work on it tomorrow, when I get my flash drive back from my sis (yeah, I left it in Michigan...............silly me!!!)

I wish the many readers of this blog a happy and prosperous new year.  :)

Peace,

Brian

12/16---mid-december musings.

Well, if I were at school this term, it'd be the end of the semester.  It's strange not to be caught up in the frenzy of grading papers and such.  Quite peaceful and relaxing, actually. 

I want to include some reflection here about what I've done so far with my sabbatical and what I still need to do.  But before I do that, I want to mention a site that caught my eye on cnn.com yetserday called http://www.crowdrise.com/.  It's an online philanthropy site and operates very similarly to facebook.  People can start their own donation pages, donate to other pages, and even "earn points" for their invovlement.  I have not yet joined (apparently it's easy to do so), but I was thinking that this would be an interesting service learning project for an online class, especially.  Perhaps for GLBT studies?

Okay, what have I done so far on my sabbatical:

• Updated syllabi for 1021, 0090, 2011.
• Updated all Class Plans for 2011 (Summer 2011).
• Updated some handouts/assignments for 1021 and 2011.
• Created new Week 1 Agenda for 1021 online (Summer 2011).
• Worked on Pearson custom readers for 0090, 1021, and 1022.
• Learned how to use a lot of online tools, including the following:  Google Apps (including Reader, Calendar, Docs, and Talk), WebEx, Yodio, Wordle, Mapskip, Vocaroo (for online voice messages), TitanPad (for online collaboration), Diigo, Delicious, and others.
• Read/skimmed several books to facilitate the learning of these tools and others involving social networking and collaboration (such as Facebook).
• On the basis of these new tools I've been learning, I created a new "Group Technology Project" to use in my composition courses (and possibly in my literature course as well).
• Prepared an ad and grant application for an online teaching circle on "Digital Technologies," to be completed next term on my sabbatical.
• Attended TYCA Conference in Des Moines.
• Along with an editorial committee, selected pieces to be published in MEJ (Minnesota English Journal) and worked individually via e-mail with selected authors to revise/edit their work for publication.
• Worked on and revised Precious/Push article for publication in MEJ (it was selected pending minor revisions).
• Worked on article on use of avatars in online/hybrid classrooms.

Here's what I need to do next term:

• Update Agenda, materials, and handouts through (at least) Week 3 in English 1021 online.
• Update Agenda, materials, and handouts through (at least) Week 3 in English 0090 online AND English 0090 ftf (for Fall 2011).
• Update syllabi, schedule, materials, handouts through (at least) Week 3 in WGST 1071.
• Post all materials to D2L that I can for 0090, 1021, 2011, and WGST 1071.
• Attend CCCC in Atlanta and MCTE in Brainerd; also possibly attend Computers and Writing Conference in Ann Arbor, MI in May.
• Submit proposal for MCTE (by Jan. 1, 2011)
• Continue working with authors to revise/edit their work for MEJ.  They must send me revisions by Jan. 15, 2011.
• Get MEJ DONE AND POSTED by Feb. 1, 2011.
• Update Google website and personal e-folio to reflect sabb. work (by May)
• Complete avatar article (end of Feb.)
• Perhaps start article on Writing Centers and/or book review(s).
• Facilitate the Online Teaching Circle through the CTL.

I don't think I need to spend as much time next term on looking for classroom tools, nor will I need to spend as much time on MEJ.  However, I think more of the focus will be on using and applying the information I've learned so far.  It'll be nice to have MEJ done in February (I hope).

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all who read this humble blog.  :)

Brian