Mountebank Blog

I accepted this assignment (“volunteered”) from the dean to work with a partner on a “Mentoring Handbook” for the college. We’re working on it pretty well (trying out a wiki–my first experience actually using it for collaborative writing, and it seems like a good technique) although it’s taking longer than I expected.

But when sitting in the full-day retreat where the ideas for the Handbook grew, I remembered somehow that Captain Marvel (remember? “SHAZAM!”) had a kind of guide and teacher named “Mentor.” I have a picture in my head of him somehow floating in the sky, or maybe in a thought-bubble, and advising young Billy about the proper use of his superpowers.

It seemed like a fun way to have a logo and even a kind of unifying metaphor for the Handbook–even one to push against.

But I can’t seem to find a picture or good description of the character. Is my imagination faulty? Just about every reference to that character I can find is from some 70’s live-action TV version (traveling around in an RV, indeed!)–which I don’t think I ever saw! Or maybe I did–but the picture in my head is certainly not this old guy! I know I owned the comic books, but of course, as is the way of things, my mother long ago destroyed that collection. So…where is MENTOR? Shazam!

Our first summer session started on Friday, and as usual, I’m teaching an online course. But this semester is different, because the university decided to take a system that was finally working right most of the time, and thoroughly mess it up.

We were using Blackboard 5.5 and paying Blackboard to host the server in DC–this was expensive, but it meant that it was pretty much never down, always rather zippy and responsive, and we had someone to call when things went wrong.

Well, this year, CUNY decreed that there would be a new system–all Blackboard, for all the 17 campuses, would be hosted by CUNY, at their main CUNY server, and all students, faculty, everyone, would login through the CUNY Portal–and only CUNY would be able to control and modify registrations, users, etc.

They promised this would be a big improvement. We would be able to use Blackboard 6.1, with all its wonderful functionality, we’d save a lot of money, and we’d have a robust, accountable, central server.

Hah! Again, HAH!

Not only did the switch to Bboard 6.1 mess up some of the tricky work I’d done to make my course work better (javascript rollover buttons leading directly to the Discussion Board, etc.)–which I could have dealt with, but starting on Thursday night (the summer session began on Friday morning!), the CUNY Portal, and the “robust” Bboard server were intermittently sluggish–and more often, completely inaccessible!

So my students missed the entire first weekend of a six-week course, and now, on Monday, it’s still not working right.

Thanks for the improvements! 🙁

I’ve just finished (third semester in a row) getting all my students’ Digital Poetry Projects burned onto CD’s for them. More and more I’m convinced that this is a project worth doing, and more and more I’m convinced that it’s a project worth improving. The project (broadly outlined) asks students to choose a poem, try to understand it as completely as they can–and to react to it as honestly and deeply as they can–and then communicate that understanding and reaction in the form of a multimedia presentation. I have them use Microsoft PowerPoint–because it’s easy to use, and already installed throughout the college and on many of their home computers. But some of the MMP majors or others who are more techno-minded (three, this term) go beyond that and do some more sophisticated work with Macromedia Director, etc.

In any case, their task is to figure out how to divide up the text of the poem, to choose images (with some web-searching training to help them find the right images) for each segment (stanza, line, group of lines, space in between lines–lots of possibilities), to choose fonts, colors, animations, transitions, and then to choose a piece of music (or more than one, or voice narration or annotation) to fit with the whole presentation. The last step is to include “notes” (for which PowerPoint conveniently provides a little “click here” box) to explain their choices–and provide some meta-analysis.

The project has some strengths:

• I’ve never seen students concentrate so hard, and for so long, on making choices about what a poem means.
• They learn about using the web to find very precise results, not taking the first choice.
• They learn about looking for deeper interpretations, rather than just literal illustrations (“The poem says ‘little cat feet’ so I’ll find a picture of a cat'”)
• They have products at the end which are “public” and about which they feel a great deal of justifiable pride.
• They discuss, with a great deal of seriousness, amongst themselves, and even argue vehemently, their interpretations of poems.
• Even students who don’t have very strong English skills can create extremely effective presentations–the same goes for students who have different learning styles (visual, verbal, etc.)
• They learn how to use PowerPoint with confidence and success, which may seem like a trivial skill, but many of them are going to need exactly this skill after graduation. What’s even better, they learn to use PowerPoint with some flair and creativity, as impossible as that may seem.

The project has some weaknesses, too, and I’m working on those…

• Not all students are able to move beyond the “picture of a cat” phase.
• Because I let them choose their own poems, and because I leave so much of the reaction and choice of presentation up to them, I get a lot of poems which barely rise above the Hallmark card level–and sometimes fall far below it. It’s the old “scaffolding vs. dictating” dilemma.
• Burning the damn CD’s (making sure all the presentations work right, first, and getting the music to play) takes an awful long time, especially when, like this semester, I have so many students in the class.

But overall, I’m glad I’ve done it–and it’s going to be very interesting to analyze the evidence and write up the results for my VKP Poster and for conference presentations and articles.

Students love doing these projects, and I’d like to see if I can get more people to do them, in more (and different kinds of) classes.

I’ve just heard that my proposal has been by the League for Innovation in the Community College for their 2004 Conference on Information Technology.

It’s in Tampa in November, so that’s good, and it’s a big, informative, well-designed and well-organized conference:

The League for Innovation’s annual Conference on Information Technology (CIT) is the premier showcase of the use of information technology to improve teaching and learning, student services, and institutional management. Celebrating 18 years of excellence, CIT features a technologically sophisticated and topically diverse program that enables educators to explore and expand their use of technology.

CIT is technologically sophisticated and topically diverse. Each year the conference attracts participants eager to share in an exhibition of how technology continues to change the art and business of education. The League for Innovation’s annual CIT serves as: A technology showcase for state-of-the-art information technology applications;

• A place to foster globalization in national and international communications among community college educators;
• An incubator and emporium of ideas for enhancing the teaching and learning process;
• A path to support the human side of technology and help break down barriers and fears about technology;
• A venue to create awareness of community college initiatives; and
• An engaging, exciting, and fun time.

So that’s good.
But here’s the bad part…the keynote speaker is…Jeb Bush! 🙁 What kind of ridiculous choice is that? An enemy of public education and the intellectual life for his whole career. It casts a shadow over the whole conference. I mean, if the conference board is going to be this careless in accepting a keynote speaker (or worse, if they actually admire him), just how well-conceived can the conference really be?

I’ll still go to the conference, I suppose (I really want to show people the Digital Poetry Projects–to be discussed in another post), but I do believe I’ll spend the keynote by the pool. My general policy is to skip keynotes, anyway–I’ve never heard a useful or interesting one yet.