Archives for August 2007

Reading, Writing, and Kimchi

August 27, 2007 by gdoty

Elizabeth Richardson ("Libby") is teaching English in The Republic of Korea this year. She has just begun her duties at Avalon Education in Suwon City, where she is Head Foreign Teacher. The title basically means that Libby is the go between for the foreign teachers (there are 8 right now including her) and the Korean administrators. Any information for or complaints from the foreign teachers get filtered through her first.
libbys bldng.jpg

Photograph by Elizabeth Richardson: the building where she works.

Libby is also responsible for editing any English documents, training new teachers, and substituting if another foreign teacher is ill. She also administers the oral placement exams, grades the essay placement exams, and delegates other work to the other foreign teachers. She also teaches speaking, reading, and writing classes for various levels. — teaching the highest level middle school students writing, the mid-level middle school students reading, and the lower level middle school students speaking.
In addition, Libby teaches one elementary class. This class is mainly a mixture of speaking, reading, and writing.
Libby says, "So I’m pretty busy so far and classes just started today! I’ve been here just over two weeks and I’ve really enjoyed myself so far. All of the Korean teachers here are super nice and very helpful. All of the foreign teachers get along and have pretty diverse backgrounds. The amount of importance the culture places on education is just amazing, especially considering that we’re in session from 4 p.m. – 10:40 p.m. after regular school has let out."

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Students

Between Wildfire and Hailstorm

August 23, 2007 by gdoty

The Department of English and Technical Communication welcomes David Wright as a new Assistant Professor. Dr. Wright completed his PhD. last May at Oklahoma State University.
Dr. Wright shares this story of an unusual event:

Once, in South Dakota, I was caught between an wildfire and a massive thunderstorm. On the road ahead, we could see flames and massive amounts of smoke reaching the sky. Behind us was a wall cloud that looked like it covered the world. Since we couldn’t drive into the smoke and fire, we had to pull over and wait for the hail and rain that was creeping in behind to overtake us and extinguish the wildfire. Believe me, it was quite a wild ride. While there, we watched a mountain lion stalk an antelope across the valley below the road.

He adds, "Sounds like a tall tale, doesn’t it?" Whether tall or not, it’s a good tale.
Dr. Wright grew up in Oklahoma, where he learned to enjoy trout fishing, golfing, playing and recording music, and college athletics of all kinds. He has worked for NASA, the State of Oklahoma, in the software industry, and at one time was a member of a band that traveled a great deal and played lots of "really fine establishments." As part of his dissertation research into technology diffusion and as part of his work in the software industry, Dr. Wright visited livestock auctions from Texas to North Dakota (and everywhere in between) to research the cattle industry’s technological readiness for animal identification processes, both hardware and software.
I’m going to guess that many of those livestock auctions weren’t all that far from the "fine establishments" where his band played at an earlier stage of his life. The department is glad to have Dr. Wright join us; we hope you’ll meet him, perhaps in one of his classes or through reading his research.

Filed Under: Faculty

Student & Faculty Research

August 19, 2007 by gdoty

We at UMR — faculty and students alike — enjoy several research opportunities.
Dr. Ed Malone (Assistant Professor of English and technical communication and Director of technical communication) and Tara Gosnell (graduate student in technical communication) have recently received a grant for a project titled "The Role of Historical Studies in Technical Communication Curricula." The grant comes from the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, of which both Prof. Malone and Ms. Gosnell are members.
A research project such as this allows the student to hone research skills and participate as an investigator in the faculty member’s professional research. (The history of technical communication is a main emphasis of Dr. Malone’s research.)
Prof. Malone and Ms. Gosnell have been meeting once a week this summer to write, design, and
test an online survey of technical communication program administrators and faculty. They plan to administer the survey in early September. They plan to present the results of the survey in an article.
In an article that will soon appear in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Prof. Malone notes that at least 200 historical studies have been published in the top five technical communication journals since 1990. These publications indicate an interest in and recognition of the value of historical research in technical communication. The research project will explore how academic programs in technical communication make use of the historical research.
Here are some examples of questions from the survey:

In your opinion, should a technical communication program offer, on a
regular basis, a course devoted entirely to the history of technical
communication?
Are students in your program expected to apply their knowledge of the
history of technical communication?
If so, how are they expected to apply their knowledge?
What is the value of historical studies to students of technical communication?
In your opinion, what benefits (if any) does a technical communication
student derive from studying the history of technical communication?

The results of the survey will enable program administrators and faculty to make better-informed decisions about the role that historical studies should play in their curricula. The findings may also benefit technical communication scholars who are researching the history of technical communication by giving them feedback about the value of their research.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Faculty, Research, Students

Gold & Green Balloons

August 12, 2007 by gdoty

This week temperatures are to be well over one hundred. Despite the heat, a number of new freshmen and family members were on the UMR campus this morning. Today (Saturday, August 11) is the last PRO day for the 2007/2008 academic year. PRO is an acronym for "Preview, Registration, and Orientation." Students who attend a PRO session experience a variety of activities, including placement testing and registration for fall courses.
I went to PRO this morning to help a new student in English Education register for her fall courses. The opening activity occurred in St Pat’s Ballroom A in the Havener Center. At a couple of tables in the hall, PRO staff and student leaders answered questions and directed students and their parents into the opening activity. There were outbursts of laughter from the ballroom, so the activity must’ve been amusing as well as informative.
PRO events are cheerful — the student PRO leaders wear green shirts with gold trim; gold and green balloons float from the tables and, out on the campus, from the directional signs placed to guide students and their families on their treks across campus. ("Treks" because even at 10:00 AM today, it was very hot, with an intense sun and no breeze.) The student and I put together a good schedule for her to start her college career.
Each department has an advisor designated to advise PRO students. I did this for a number of years and enjoyed it. The PRO advisor gets to be the student’s initial contact with the specifics of the department’s academic program. The advisor usually can chat with the student, getting to know him or her a little better. Sometimes, the PRO advisor meets the student’s parents. Even briefly meeting the parents gives the advisor a sense of the student’s origins. While a young person almost always leaves home to go to college, taking the first steps in becoming an independent adult, faculty members too often see students in isolation from their origins. Having met one or both parents gives the faculty member a sense of who supports and encourages the student’s entering college.
The campus still isn’t fully populated yet. Saturday’s freshmen (65-70) are the first trickle of the flood to come.

Filed Under: Department, Students

Frequency of Posts

August 11, 2007 by gdoty

If you’re keeping track, my commitment is now a minimum of one entry a week, posted over the weekend. Time-constraints, as well as the need to find topics, make more than one unlikely for many weeks. If you are reading this blog regularly, thank you.
I expect to post an entry later today or tomorrow.

Filed Under: Blog Talk

Harry Potter and the Sea of Stories

August 5, 2007 by gdoty

I’ve finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It’s a quick read, although I had to do it in numerous short sessions — 10 minutes, 15, maybe 20 wedged between other, more necessary things.
Summer school is finishing up; the fall semester doesn’t start for a little over two weeks; the halls are pretty empty. So I’m going to reflect a little on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HPDH). Thee’s a mild SPOILER, so you may want to stop here. PDH is the last of a series of seven novels. (A series of seven novels must be a septology.) Seven, as you know, is one of the main symbolic numbers. More devoted Potter scholars than I can figure out the significance of that.
Human stories make up a tree or a sea, depending on your preference in metaphors. I’ve modelled the title of this post on the title of Salman Rushdie‘s novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. J. K. Rowling has drawn heavily on the human heritage of story for these books. My response to the first book, like that of other readers, was that she hadn’t done much more than pull imagery and themes from a variety of stories, not all of them really compatible. Rowling’s skill with plot and appealing characters carried me past that response.
In book seven, Rowling goes deeper than the folk story motifs of giants and witches and enchanted objects, deeper than the "school story" genre into which HPDH fits. In some of the scenes, she reaches mythopoeic, archetypal depths — the depths at which our deepest fears, anxieties, and joys are rooted. The scene in which Harry and Ron retrieve the Sword of Gryffendor from a frozen pond, having been lead there by a phantasmal doe — that scene is worthy of stories as ancient as The Mahabharata, The Odyssey, or Gilgamesh. Spenser‘s Red Cross Knight could’ve made that recovery. (The link to the Knight opens a PDF file of Book III of The Faerie Queene.
HPDH doesn’t sustain that level of mythic intensity throughout, but there are enough instances to give the story strength and depth.

Filed Under: Observations, Reflections

"On Wikipedia Nobody Knows You’re an Idiot"

August 1, 2007 by gdoty

I’m still committed to posting two entries a week, at about noon on Wednesday and Sunday. (I may go to one a week when the fall semester starts.) Eating lunch, I realized I didn’t have an entry ready for today, and no topic sprang to mind easily; so, here’s a brief comment on a topic that lots of us think about.
How does the hardy web-surfer know which site is reliable and which is pure hokum? There’s problem a spectrum from completely reliable to utter hokum, but how does one know where a particular web page lies on the spectrum?
I’m not sure I can answer my own question, so if you have ideas about reliable web sites or techniques that can help rate them, please share them in a comment. I promise to post comments that address the issue without flaming or obnoxious language.
I used "Wikipedia" in the title for this post because that’s the site many first think of. I was visiting a freshman composition class that was discussing research. When the teacher asked where students would look for information, the first thing several said was "Wikipedia." I use Wikipedia myself; I’ve found it a useful source of information I want students to have. But when I use it that way, I know something about the topic and (hope) I would recognize hokum.
What if you don’t know anything about a topic you need to research? Consult several sources — even printed books and journals. Talk to someone who is knowledgeable. It takes some effort to learn something.
But suppose I hear a story on the news that piques my interest; I don’t want to do a lot of research to discover whether the assertion I heard is reliable or hokum. As the presidential campaign season begins, there are a number of questionable statements. How can I sort them out? Does anyone have an idea?

Filed Under: Blog Talk, Reflections, Students