Teaching Carnival 4.3

[November's Teaching Carnival is from Meagan Rodgers, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. She blogs at Intent / Effect.  You can email her at meaganrodgers@gmail.com.]

As you might remember, ProfHacker has become the permanent home of the Teaching Carnival, so each month you can return for a snapshot of the most recent thoughts on teaching in college and university classrooms. You can find previous carnivals on Teaching Carnival’s home site.

Teaching Carnival 4.3 continues with a new list of interesting links and reads about pedagogy in higher education.  Here are many of them:

On education theory and policy

• At Digital Bibliography, Ryan Trauman links to the RSA’s viral whiteboard illustration of Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From.”
• Dean Dad ponders final exam policies and mandatory laptops.

Classroom practices and reflections

• Derek Mueller engages in Public Displays of Attendance by marking attendance on an LED-projected Google Doc.
• Kelli Marshall shares a film studies writing assignment in Entering a Conversation, Teaching the Academic Essay.
• At Teaching College Math, Maria Anderson offers video and Prezi on Playing to Learn Math and discusses grading issues in Shifting Assessment in a World with WolframAlpha.
• College Ready Writing reflects on the practice of teaching in Teaching as Coaching and Practicing What I Preach.
• Techsophist ruminates On Precision and revision in the teaching of writing and looks forward to the Computers and Writing 2011 conference.
• Bill DeGenaro thinks about the differences between his students in Lebanon and the United States.

On syllabi, present and future

• Shannon Mattern talks about student involvement in syllabus creation in Plug-In Syllabus.
• Brian McNely shares course descriptions and Scribd syllabi for his Spring 2011 courses
• Christopher Andrews is also thinking ahead by planning next semester’s syllabus.
• Cathy Davidson plans a one-book syllabus for next term’s class on 21^st century literacies.

Mid-semester finds many hard at work on grading

• In a post “brought to you from somewhere under a pile of essays,” Dr. B discusses the five stages of grading.
• Steven Krause has A few thoughts on grading (including some links, reflections, and personal practices).
• Jeff Rice also weighs in on the grading discussion in two posts: the first on staging feedback and the second on reimagining grading methodology.
• College Ready Writing reflects on grading papers by a class of developmental writers.
• At History Compass Exchanges, Jean Smith considers Using grading rubrics on a department-wide basis.
• Dennis Jerz illustrates “showing” vs. “telling” while grading student work.
• Alex Reid considers Teaching Invention and offers Five Digital Composition Assignments.

Teaching with technology and social media

• Brian Croxall delivers Five Reasons to Use Social Media in the Classroom.
• Derek Bruff shares slides and resources for Agile Teaching with Technology.
• Aimee Knight shares a classroom exercise on visualizing the Social Object in social networks.
• For those interested in audio compositions, the Digital Writing Collaborative @ Miami University discusses composing Public Service Announcements.  The Collaborative also shares a list of Video Composing Resources.
• Cathy Davidson asks:  “Are there tools we can use that can help to change the chemistry in a class gone bad?”

Letters of recommendation

• Gone viral this month: “So You Want to get a PhD in the Humanities?” created at xtranormal.
• Nate Kreuter offers thorough advice on Writing Badass Letters of Recommendation.

There is joy in teaching

• Christina at Et Al. savors a Moment of Teaching Joy.
• In “Don’t hate me because I love my job,” Deana Mascle celebrates the many facets of academic work.

How about you? Do you have any last minute links you’d like to add to this month’s carnival? Did we miss your work?  If we don’t know about you, we can’t link to you.  So, let us know what you are up to in the classroom.  You can easily have one of your blog posts about teaching in higher education included in an issue of the teaching carnival by doing any or all of the following:

1. Email the next host directly with the address to the permalink of your blog post, and/or
2. Tag your post in Delicious with teaching-carnival

David Morgen, Assistant Director of the Writing Center at Emory University will host the next Teaching Carnival (4.4) on December 1. Please send him your links or information you’d like to have included, @Scrivenings on Twitter, through email: dmorgen@gmail.com, or in the comments section below. Lastly, if you are interested in hosting a future Teaching Carnival, please contact Billie Hara for information.

[Image by Flickr user Sister72 and used under the Creative Commons license.]