Places Where Students May Fail in my Syllabus

        I know it sounds strange, but I think one place where my students may slip up will be with the weekly quizzes that I will be doing every week. They will be taking these at the beginning of every class. While the quizzes may not be very difficult, I plan to make sure that every one of them is only easily answered if they are read by the students. If the students have not read then they are likely to struggle with these quizzes and I will know which students are really where we need them to be for the class. This also helps to create a set of papers that I can keep with me for participation points as well. This way, I will have proof of whether or not a student was in class and this can be input in to raider writer for the students to see when they are done.
       The second aspect that I hope to include within the quiz will be grammar sections that I think will be useful to hopefully teach students the common mistakes that we all make in our writing. I plan to pull these straight out of the work that the students are submitting to raider writer. That being said, I will not take it straight from a student's work, though, that would be embarrassing for the student and I don't want to do that to them. I will though, find a common grammar mistake among many of them and make my own sentence that contains the same error. Hopefully, the students will take the grammar questions to heart and it will improve their writing over the long run.
      The reason I think most kids won't be able to handle the weekly quizzes is because they won't be ready to read the required work for each class. Many of these students probably won't want to put the work in necessary to read every week for class. If I try everything I can, work towards successful andragogy and can get many of my students to want to learn every week, there may still be some students who won't care and will not read. These students will then likely fail my quizzes and that would cost them most of the participation points in my eyes. Now, many of the students I will be teaching are also young, likely freshman, and so they may not yet know how hard they will be expected to work in college. Hopefully, I will find a balance for these young students that will make them want to be engaged and learning in my classes.
     But, I will also be foolish if I believe that every student can come in to my classroom and find a reason to enjoy school and become engaged. For some of these students, I will never be able to get across to them but that doesn't mean I should stop trying. For these students, I will continue to work and hope that these quizzes can help encourage the students to do the readings, which are necessary to improve as a writer and are required to be able to do most, if not all, of the BAs and drafts.

Keywords

The works we have been reading have  been surrounded with words that understanding only helps to make the readings better. Without knowledge of these words, we will be at a disadvantage when looking at the work. Leah was kind enough to set up the keywords list on google docs and Dr. Rice has connected it to the blog. Some of my choices have a definition that I think needs to be expanded on but the others are lacking definition. Here are some words I would like some help with:

Freshman Textbooks-
There is a definition but it could use some serious work.

Marginalization

Paradigm Shift

Self/ Subject

Writing Center-
Are we saying Purdue has the best writing center? Or are we saying that Purdue has a good example of one? I think we can figure out a good example of what a writing center should be.

Writing on Triangulation

      Triangulation was not talked about much in our Friday class but it is vitally important, in my opinion, when it comes to writing and speaking our society. Triangulation is the idea of writing or dialogue between two people but when these two people talk between each other their experiences involving the world must also come in to context. For instance, when two people are discussing gun control laws, they are not only speaking to each other, but also the belief that they are correct.
      Within a class lesson there are a number of ways to teach this idea. The first, and most melodramatic, would be to show the students a clip from Judge Judy. Both the plaintiff and the defendant believe they are correct but society, and the crowd, will only agree with one of them. Students can watch the clip and make a decision based on who they believe to be correct. I would then discuss what makes them feel this way. This would bring in the idea that the world or society influences the way they believe what is and is not correct. We would then finish off the episode and discuss what could potentially be there for more discussion.
      The next step would be to look at the last major debate between Obama and Romney, or when I'm teaching class it would be whoever is currently debating for the 2016 debate. These presidential debates could be the quintessential example of rhetoric as dialogue. The two must be able to make their side appear correct while also disproving their opponent. We can then discuss some of the ideas that are presented and discuss which candidate is not only correct, but also which does a better job of presenting their point. In the moment, most viewers of the debate would not be likely to know whether or not what the politicians are saying is correct but that only plays deeper into the idea of rhetoric as dialogue. But, within the ideas present, the viewers, the students in this case, bring their own ideas to the debate that we could see the candidates trying to use for their own gain. We can discuss these ideas with the students and see if they agree or disagree.
        One final step to wrap up class would be to show Youtube clips of children's tv shows that, when viewed through the eyes of an adult, would come across as very dirty or inappropriate. Things like this Kids Say the Darnedest Things, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofbe158uk7k , are great forms of rhetoric. Skip to the 2:00 mark for when they begin to be reinterpreted by the adults in the audience. The kids often say things that are not supposed to be inappropriate but it is easy for adults to interpret what they are saying as inappropriate. Students can take all of this in to account to see how easily what they say can be reinterpreted by the world after they say it. The antics are timeless but the lesson is quite clear. Hopefully students will learn that there are other ways to view ideas presented but also that their own experiences affect the way they think about the world.

Contact Zones

The discussion of the idea of contact zones, "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other" (Pratt's definition from 1992), to me is something that definitely needs to be worked in to every class that we teach. I like to believe that they can help to incorporate the ideas we are teaching to the real world which will hopefully encourage our students to get interested in what we are doing. I think if we can find some ways to bring these contact zones into the classroom, we will find our students more engaged in the work.
One of the contact zones I think we are not discussing would be the way you portray yourself in social media. Many people everyday post, repost, or respond to each other and wind up suffering consequences they could never imagine. In many ways, we forget that the internet is permanent and everything we do can affect us. Most freshman students would admit to using salary as a motivating factor in their decision for their majors. Showing them differing tweets or Facebook posts from random people across the internet and opening a discussion of whether or not you would hire someone who posts like this if you were in charge. Hopefully, this will make them more likely to be self aware when they begin posting things on social media.
Another one that should be discussed in class would be the political debates going on, though the Republican debates have been largely circus jokes on social media. But, these are supposed to be the best politicians in the country and the students should be able to understand what the politicians stand for and what they hope to accomplish.These students will be voting in their first presidential election next fall but the primaries are in March. I would be willing to bet that many of them know only a couple of the candidates and probably will vote for them purely from that knowledge. Showing clips or adding readings that show off the candidates stances at the beginning of class or as part of the class and discussing them for writing styles would go a long way toward helping them. Not only would they learn about candidates who they may not otherwise learn about, but hopefully these discussions will lead them to think about word choice and styles of writing that work.
One aspect of society that actually could be very interesting to discuss with students would be to look at popular CGI movies coming out from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks.  While aimed at students, many of the newest movies actually tend to work in very deep discussions about family, love and embracing your who you are. The way they are introduced would actually get many of the students interested in the class and could lead to some great discussions about the way we write in film. While probably not as deep as social media or politics, it would provide a good change of pace to talk about a movie maybe once a month. I think students would certainly get behind talking about them every once in a while.

Comments on Bailey Cundiff's Paper on Google Docs

Before reading this paper, I knew of Google docs but I had no idea what Google Docs was. I wasn't sure what made it different from Word or a blog. I knew that it could be a place where multiple people could access the document for use.

I like the idea of real-time grading. I think this is definitely something all teachers can get in to. Even if we just create a recording software that has the microphone on as well as you can see the teachers mouse move and the words he/she is typing. This could go a long way towards helping the students that need to be helped. 

I do see a few flaws to this idea, particularly with the microphone. Some teachers and graders, myself most especially included, tend to watch TV or do other things while s/he grades. It might be very awkward for students to try to listen to their teacher when they can hear the things going on in the background. Another problem would be when we do get sidetracked by other things, we may see quite a bit of dead time on the recording where the teacher does something other than the work shown. This may, though, put the focus squarely on the teacher to get the grading done in a more efficient and timely manner.

I do like the idea of this being used in the peer review system as I think it will make things better for those who are struggling. It will also require the students to actually read the paper and answer the questions the student who wrote the paper may have. With them going over it verbally and visually I really do believe a student will have a better feel for what needs to be done making a paper better.

I disagree with the belief you raise that students with a quieter voice can be on an equal playing field with the louder, more vocal students. I think the students who tend to answer quicker will also be more likely to edit faster and notice things that are mistakes faster. According to what you have written google docs doesn't allow for multiple different editing ideas to be posted by students at the same time. This creates a quick draw scenario where it will force students to want to edit quickly when editing in a group instead of for the most effective revision possible.

Your section "Knowledge Formation in Collaboration" on page four brings up an interesting idea. I wonder if, in future versions, you may see computers translating quickly the writing being discussed. This would allow bilingual students to write comments in their own languages so they can comment quickly. The software would then translate it into the language of the paper in pseudo real-time allowing for the other students to understand what the comment says and react to it.

I definitely agree that the teacher has to guide students through this work to make it a more useful tool. Just like with any tool in the teacher tool belt, showing your students how to use the system and telling them why they should invest in using the system are crucial to a class's effectiveness in teaching its students.

Overall, thank you so much for doing this paper as I had no real knowledge of this subject. I think this software will be a very useful tool for students in the future and every teacher should be aware of it. I will definitely try to find a way to use this in many of the classes I plan to teach. Sorry if it seems I'm playing devil's advocate but I think pointing out the negatives is something that should be known so that we can continue to make the service better.