February 27, 2006

Academic Presentations

I was hoping that people would take a moment to blog their favorite moments from the presentations that we're having this week in the eRhetoric sections. I'll start us off with two of mine (hard to pick since I enjoyed all the presentations today...):

From the 9am section: Erica's clever demonstration of the power of sampling.

From the 11am section: the smile on everyone's faces when Katie brought out her goodies for everyone to take home with them!

Feel free to add on any presentation favorites from Monday, Wednesday or, if you're in section 8, Friday of this week.

Posted by calfano at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Drafting & peer reviewing presentations

I've been teaching presentations for many years -- even my old PWR3s (that's one of the courses that predates our current PWR 1-2 sequence) included presentations at the end. But one of the innovations of this new curriculum is the way we approach presentations -- that is, that we approach presentations the same way we do other researched arguments: as something that is drafted and revised. And that means drafting and "revising" not only the script, but the delivery as well.

I was hoping after the taped dress rehearsals and peer review sessions this week to have time in class to hear your reflections on this approach to oral arguments. Have you drafted and revised presentations to this extent before? What are your reactions to the process? How was it to draft your presentation, have it taped, and peer reviewed? How has it affected the way you intend to present next week? Has it affected the way in which you are approaching your revisions to your research paper?

I would love to for some of you to post your thoughts on this subject on the blog so that we can have at least a virtual discussion on this topic before it all fades into the background as the quarter speeds on.

Posted by calfano at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2006

PWR Workshop

Though it might be a little late, I did attend the workshop on PowerPoint on Thursday afternoon. While I know a lot about PowerPoint and its commands, actions, etc. I went in to this workshop hoping that I could learn more about this application. We went over some basic stuff I knew, such as slide transitions and sounds, animations for words and the timing of each setting, however I did learn a couple of things. I never knew that one could actually develop a master slide so that every slide was the same. Yes I knew that you could apply a template, but I did not know you could design your own, which will come in handy for later projects. I also learned how to place movies in my presentations and exactly when they'll run, however I do believe that they don't just have to run when you go to the slide. I think there is a way so that the program waits for you to click on it, but that question slipped my mind while I was paying attention... Anyway, it was a very informative class for those who have little experience with powerpoint, and even veteran users like myself can learn a thing or two!

Posted by Thaddeus at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 04, 2006

Midterm evaluations

So it's week 4, and as always, I went through the daunting ritual of midterm evaluations this week. It's not daunting in the sense that people have been scowling at me, or muttering angrily under their breath, or falling asleep during class ... more daunting in that the first time with a new class you ask for feedback, there's always that little fearful voice in your head asking, "Is it really going okay? What am I doing wrong that I don't know about?"

But, it seems, things are running relatively smoothly on the students end -- BIG sigh of relief. Though, of course, there were several suggestions.

The number one complaint (and yes, it was repeated at least 6 times out of 30, so that counts as a complaint) was the hurried pace of the beginning of the quarter, and, yes, I am trying to work on it. What it comes down to is just my re-conceiving how to structure assignments, I guess, because without diving headlong into the research project, I can't figure out how to get through three presentations (two of which are drafted and revised) and a drafted/revised research paper in 10 weeks.

Another critique, a very on-target one, was that we need to go more indepth with our discussions. I completely agree ... it's just so hard to keep so many balls in the air sometime and to do justice to the great topics we're discussing while still making sure that students don't get so lost in the theme that we neglect honing their practical skills with using rhetorical strategies in their own texts. [Sorry: very long babbling sentence]

And, as always, I had conflicting critiques -- one person saying that we spend too much time talking about eRhetoric and not enough time working on the individual research projects, and then another person from the same section saying that s/he's still waiting to start talking about eRhetoric in class, that we haven't talked about it at all yet. I'm not sure what to do with that ... hm...

Several people from the MWF section talked about how much they enjoyed the 3day a week, 75minute schedule (yay!) ... though one person suggested that because they meet 3 times a week, they have more little assignments than classes meeting 2 times a week. That one was a bit frustrating for me because I specifically tried this quarter NOT to assign extra work on Fridays to try to keep my sections (MW and MWF) even in terms of work load. Granted, there were two weeks where there were things due on Friday -- but the other section had them due on Friday too (even though they weren't meeting). I was expecting some complaints about THAT from the MW people, but they didn't bring it up. So I guess I'll just need to be more vigilant about this in terms of the perception of how much work the MWF people are doing.

Mostly, people seem happy, though. There was praise for the atmosphere of the class and the types of class sessions we've been having -- and we got bonus points for effective tech usage. So, I guess we're more or less where I want to be. My to-do list for the rest of the quarter includes: