Build a routine where what you presented in lecture-style form will be deepened in an upcoming activity. It’s a good way to prune your lecture ahead of time, too: how will this feed into students doing something with what you’re lecturing on? 2/
When you then orient them to breakout room discussion, make the discussion questions more outcome-oriented than you would in a face-to-face class. What are they meant to practice? Where can this analysis lead them? What productive thing can be done with this material? 3/
Make it even more hands-on by asking breakout groups to produce something. My preference is always notes because practicing note-taking is an essential part of #writingstudies teaching. I have a Google doc that I use as a white board for breakout groups. 4/
It’s always the same doc—routine is key, students being able to come back to the one place and find what they’re looking for is crucial for online teaching. I leave it be until just before the next class—some students go in after the synchronous session to fix their own notes. 5/
Like a whiteboard, I clean it before the next synchronous class and put new instructions in for that day’s activity. But before I clean it, I save it and post it as notes on the LMS. It’s a useful record. The notes get more elaborate when students know what use they can be. 6/
Another #writingstudies go-to: when you ask students a question during the full class, ask it so they can write a sentence as a response. Tell them to take 2min to write that sentence and then paste it in the chat when you ask them to. 7/
Polls have so far not made much sense to me. I teach smaller classes, the polls are a lot of work to set up for just a short moment of engagement, and my courses don’t work much with quantitative material. 8/
More so than in face-to-face classes I’ve paid attention to how every element of the course is integrating and working together with other elements. We can’t count on the pleasure of being in each other’s physical company to help tie disparate elements together. 9/
I don’t want students to roll their eyes about “do this!,” “do that next!,” “now do this other thing!” Everything should string together in a meaningful way. I should be able to explain the overarching meaning. I can’t with polls. Or, not in most courses I teach right now. 10/
It might change. My bigger point: you are still a disciplinary teacher. You are not a puppeteer who for unsaid reasons must use all the marionette’s strings all the time. Venture into new tools and new ways of using them, but do so in a way that integrates with your teaching. 11/
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I've been fascinated by yet another pronoun discussion that's been happening in various subthreads. It all took off from this tweet. Let me share some interesting observations that have emerged—about the powerful aura of gendered pronouns! 1/
Pronouns are a very functional class of words. I love them, linguistically, because of the intra-situational relations they create and rely upon. Very basically, a pronoun is a word, chosen from a limited set, that is used to stand in for other words, phrases, and concepts. 2/
When analyzing how pronouns are pragmatically used, the first thing you ask yourself is: what is this pronoun's antecedent? What is the word, phrase, or concept which came before (in a text or utterance) or which is part of this situation and which is replaced by this pronoun? 3/
@AmberGloryHole @mashakleiner @skyscaping @AHousefather @marcomendicino @UBC In her own video, several protestors at the encampment speak to Masha. But she keeps claiming—falsely—that they won’t speak to anyone.
@AmberGloryHole @mashakleiner @skyscaping @AHousefather @marcomendicino @UBC In her own video, Masha reads aloud the camp community rule of “solidarity with Gaza & the Palestinian people.” But she keeps claiming—falsely & insistently—that this means, “You have to agree that Israel must be annihilated to go in. This is genocidal.”
@AmberGloryHole @mashakleiner @skyscaping @AHousefather @marcomendicino @UBC Once again, this happens. I engage in dialogue with one of the insistent critics of the UBC encampment, a critic who repeatedly professes to want dialogue and who complains that protestors don’t talk to them as often as they want them to.
Someone tweeted a Riley Gaines clip at me today thinking it unassailably showed we should not teach about trans identities and experiences in schools. The question attached to it was, „Are you okay with enabling this kind of abuse?“
In the clip, Gaines talks about feeling mistreated in a photo op with Lia Thomas. They both won 5th place. Thomas was the tiniest fraction ahead, not enough to effect placement. But enough to say Thomas should hold the single available 5th-place trophy. Gaines got hers mailed.
Gaines gets tearful about the emotional effect it had on her that Thomas was holding the trophy which she had also won.
#NathanCofnas has written a response to recent journalistic articles critical of his appointment as Leverhulme fellow in philosophy at Cambridge. I was tempted to line up the terms he is using to give the impression that his work can't have been debunked.
So, let's do that. 1/
A: terms he uses to describe his own work
B: terms for the work of his critics
A: He works in "philosophy of biology and ethics" and his paper in a "highly respected philosophy and psychology journal" calls for "free inquiry into all possible causes of race difference" in IQ.
B: In response to that story, a "small group of philosophers" had "a meltdown" which is "its own funny story."
I'll leave out the description of his encounters with the journalists at the two news outlets; it's not as relevant to the characterization of his & others' research.
1. Do your white supremacists things. Write blog posts, tweets, articles in which you take white supremacist positions. Attend white supremacist rallies. Take photos with Nazi symbols. Whatever it is you like to do.
2. Do it repeatedly, perhaps more openly in public & more veiled in professional life. Do it enough until your students and colleagues are alert to it and your university administration notices.
3. When an investigation is launched, immediately contact FIRE. Let them in on the public parts.
4. Provide FIRE with receipts that show you engaging in public political expression. Indicate how people have noticed you doing so & have sent career-threatening emails to your uni.
Pit of a puzzle to me how one can say faculty *must* work to make their institutions more equal and inclusive, and then dismiss a request to sketch out how faculty do this work they *must* do as "purity tests" that open some mysterious yet unsavoury doors.