CCR Instructor Blog

This post comes out of my very real gratitude for our amazing staff of student tech workers here at Stanford CCR: shown here hard at work prepping for a video conference, Jonathan, Anya and Eethar are all now in their second year working with our project, supporting the video conferences, and every day I am grateful for their help.

We didn't always have student tech support -- while our Stanford Tech Guru, Bob Smith, has always been on hand to help us out with our connections, for several years, Alyssa and I have balanced the logistics of curricular planning with the hands-on reality of hooking up wires, checking for hot ethernet ports, troubleshooting bad network connections, solving echo problems, realigning webcams -- all the very necessary work that goes into trying to create a "transparent" tech interface for our students to use in talking with their globally distributed partners. And, in fact, ironically, despite our strong student staff, some of our connections this quarter are completely UN-supported for the very first time (because of scheduling conflicts), leaving the instructor to field the tech issues him/herself during the session. Of course, this is the situation that many of our partners face every time they connect with us: we know that many schools that we work with DON'T have any infrastructure to support video conferencing and that it is in fact the teachers who are managing the tech aspect of things on their own.

It occurs to me that we need to think hard about the tech requirements of participating in a video conference exchange. As much as we try to streamline participation in the project, what level of tech expertise is still necessary on the part of the instructor? And what is the base level of buy-in needed from the university's tech support structure to make these connections work? How can we best facilitate these exchanges from a logistical point of view, both for those with tech workers, and those without?

I'd be interested in your ideas about this issue!

Posted by Christine Alfano at 02:13 PM | Permalink

Today we are piloting our first cross-cultural rhetoric video-conference WITHIN the US.

Students from Aurora, Colorado are connecting with students at Stanford.

Thanks to Susan Achziger, English Composition Faculty, Community College of Aurora

The task today?

Rhetorical analysis of image of the American Flag - from diverse perspectives! Not only are there diverse nationalities at each institution, but Colorado and California have very different cultures. In addition, Aurora is a small community college and Stanford is a research one graduate university - so what can we learn from each other? How might we better understand America and its diversity?

Posted by Alyssa O'Brien at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On Thursday, October 1, Professor Bill Foley from the University of Sydney gave a talk to students and faculty about his scholarly perspective on cross-cultural rhetoric. As Chair of the Department of Linguistics, Professor Foley brought a unique, interdisciplinary perspective to CCR. He also penned a most captivating title for his talk: ARISTOTLE AMONG THE HEAD-HUNTERS, OR PUTTING THE CULTURAL INTO CROSS-CULTURAL RHETORIC"

In his talk, Professor Bill Foley presented a new way of approaching the concept of "identity" based upon his years of field research in traditional New Guinea cultures. He shared with the audience instance of ideological beliefs about language practices and their meanings and then made the bold claim for rethinking rhetorical practices in traditional oratory. The talk was inspirational to those interested in contrastive rhetoric, comparing the rhetorical traditions of the West drawn from Aristotle and classical rhetoric against those from New Guinea social groupings. His talk made us all think about the central role that anthropology and linguistics can play in cross-cultural rhetoric studies.

His talk was well attended in the Hume Writing Center, and students remained afterwards to ask Professor Foley questions.

Next week, his own students at the University of Sydney will connect with Stanford students in 5 (five!) CCR video-conference connections, spanning three days. It's a great opportunity for global learning - meeting both universities' initiatives to foster globally educated citizens. Plus, we expect it will be great fun for the students to meet their peers across the ocean!

Posted by Alyssa O'Brien at 12:34 PM | Permalink