Science is EVERYWHERE

I'll post my thoughts about the article, but I wanted to discuss a tangentially related point--science (and science claims) are all around you.  I'm interested in science and scientific arguments, so I'm always listening and paying attention, and you should try to tune your mind and eye and ear to pay attention as well.

One example: this morning as I was listening to NPR, a story came on about learning styles.  I grew up with this idea that I learn in a particular way--am I better at auditory or visual tasks? for example.  It turns out that the science this idea is based on is problematic.  I liked the quotation from one of the scientists interviewed, that anytime someone proposes the idea that there are fundamental differences to the brain, that is problematic.  (We'll discuss this idea later in the semester).

The general idea is that we have particular strengths, but that good instruction will ask students to learn in different kinds of ways and switch up the teaching style to keep everyone engaged and interested.  At the end of the day, what allows kids to learn better is simply keeping their attention on a topic or task.

Now I feel a lot better about never being able to understand what my learning style is--it turns out, I use them all, and hopefully I can use them all as we learn together.

What Do I Want?

You'd think as an instructor for a course, I'd be defining the goals for my students, but you'd be wrong--well, partially.  Sure, I have objectives that I hope are met by the end of the semester, but I also have some personal goals for the course.  They are as simple as wanting to grow as an instructor and gain valuable pedagogical experience to making the class interesting.  Here, in no particular order, are the things I'd like to accomplish by the end of the semester (with regards to Comp II):

• Linking content:  I'd like to keep exploring the best ways to link content (science, in this case) to writing, and I hope to see how well this helps students in their writing and when they leave my class.
• Technology:  I hope to keep playing with technology in the classroom and see how it can enhance my teaching and help make the material more engaging.
• Research:  I may extend the work I'm doing in this course for my own dissertation--kinda scary, but I have to start thinking about what I want to research and write extensively about!
• Evaluation:  I want to explore better ways to evaluate writing that actually helps students learn to write better.  I commented heavily on papers last semester, and while I think that my comments helped some of the students, I worried that it overwhelmed others.  So, this semester, I'm going to try a bit more hands-off approach to commenting; my goal is to provide helpful comments, but not to completely mark all over students' papers in an attempt to make them write how I think they should write.  I think I'm going to try evaluating papers electronically, providing comments using Track Changes in MS Word.

That's just a brief handful of my goals for the course.  I hope that you all (my student-readers) enjoy the course and material as much as I have and use your blogs to play around with ideas and practicing writing.

Welcome to Comp II: Science Writing

Hi there!  Welcome to my blog for ENGL 1023, Comp II.  You've signed up for a special section, in which we'll explore the intricate workings of writing for the scientific disciplines.  I'll be asking you to do some writing on your own blogs, and I'll be also posting information and blogging about science writing as well, so be sure to follow me in your Google Reader account (along with your classmates).  Here's to a great semester!