There were 6 cases of sexual violence reported on our Georgia Southern University 2014 Annual Fire Safety and Security Report. RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) research tells us 68% of sexual assaults go unreported. As we all know, there are likely many more than 6 victims of sexual assault on our campus. These victims have either chosen not to report or feel like they can’t report. Whether the assaults show up in our report or not, we don’t want this for our community. The faculty, staff, and students of Georgia Southern deserve a safe space to live, work, teach, and grow. In September of last year, the White House launched the It’s On Us campaign. The mission of this multimedia campaign is to point out that we all share the burden of preventing sexual assault on college campuses. Partnering with cable networks, social action groups, sports teams, social networking sites, major corporations, and more, It’s On Us boasts a massive network of concerned groups and individuals that agree sexual assault affects all of us and should be handled by all of us. One of the biggest ways It’s On Us hopes to change the climate on college campuses is through bystander intervention. The initial It’s On Us launch press release cites CDC research showing “wide-ranging, population-based strategies like bystander intervention - which address individual, community, campus, and societal-level factors - have the greatest potential to effect positive and meaningful change.” By taking an active role in speaking up when we see something or suspect something, we can protect others in our community from sexual assault. The It’s On Us videos, posters, tshirts, and advertisements are meant to make this point and encourage us to take their pledge. I will be blogging about the It’s On Us campaign for the next few months, because I believe this is an important issue that cannot get too much attention. College campuses have long been known as danger zones for sexual assault. Though Georgia Southern has not made the news like some other campuses with high profile cases, it would be foolish for any of us to wait for that to happen to get involved. I've been challenged by Caroline Heldman's piece, "A Call for More Faculty Involvement in the Campus Rape Crisis." I too feel like it’s important for faculty to speak up on the issue of sexual assault. I know in the past, I’ve been lucky to not been the victim of sexual assault. I realize this is no consequence of my actions, dress, or anything else; that's why I call it lucky. My lack of experience with sexual violence is no excuse for me to stay quiet. I want to raise this issue and share this campaign on my blog, so that there are fewer people on our campus who think sexual violence is acceptable. I’m far from the only person on our campus to make this a priority. For years, our First Year Experience office has put on the Sex Signals event. Each semester, hundreds of first year students attend a session. This semester’s sessions took place just last week. If you haven’t been to a session, you can watch this promotional video by Catharsis Productions, the group that performs Sex Signals around the country. Be aware that, like the Sex Signals program, the video does contain frank discussions of rape and sexual assault. Since a good number of our students attended Sex Signals last week, I think this is a great time to share the It’s On Us campaign. My hope is that those of you who attended and appreciated Sex Signals will take the next step and pledge with It’s On Us. We (faculty, staff, and students) can use the It’s On Us pledge to continue the momentum of the Sex Signals event to get our community acting rather than just talking. The more people who see the prevention of sexual assault as their responsibility, the fewer Eagles will be victimized. I encourage you to visit the It's On Us website, read the pledge, and consider taking action yourself. There are a number of ways to get involved, from sharing the site yourself, taking the pledge on social media, or simply talking about it with a friend. Just this week, a new video has come out from the campaign, that answers the question, "What's the one thing you can't have sex without?" Maybe watching and sharing this video would be a good way to start.
0 Comments
In “Message to My Freshman Students,” Keith M. Parsons outlines how he’ll address the incoming first year students in his Introduction to Philosophy class. Having taught first year students “for the first time in many years” in spring 2015, Parsons found many of his students to be woefully unprepared for his course and the academic experience as a whole. Parsons sees the big deficiencies as result of high school teachers who were forced to focus on test prep and coddling students, rather than teaching students to think critically. Instead of catering to current students through flipped classrooms and the like, Parsons argues students need to learn to listen and learn from lectures, his preferred method of instruction. Parsons concludes his article by pointing what he feels is the biggest difference between professors and their students: their mindsets. According to Parsons, first year students see college as a way to earn a degree, while professors see college as a way to broaden minds and make the “world richer.” Though Parsons is right about the fact that students arrive on many college campuses unprepared for the academic rigor of their next four years, I take issue with his characterization of students and faculty in this piece. Parsons depicts first year students, “freshman” as he calls them throughout his piece, as a monolith. A group that is a product of their unsuccessful schooling and uninventive, uncaring teachers. A group that passively accepted the test prep of their youth and will now have attentions spans “measured in nanoseconds.” According to Parsons, they come to college for credentials and want nothing more. His understanding of first year students is as uninformed as his use of “freshman” is dated.
Unlike Parsons, I teach primarily first year students... Last week, my ENGL 1101 class started doing rhetorical analysis. Since my current blogging focus is on #CLMOOC, I brought it an artifact from the CLMOOC Make Bank to analyze. You might have seen the result on Twitter... We marked it up with all sorts of things, pulling the argument apart into its pieces, dissecting it from multiple viewpoints, and getting used to our new found language for evaluating persuasion. As I evaluated my artifact on the board, the students evaluated their own artifacts. By the end of our 1 hour and 40 minute class, we all had pages of notes on the rhetorical strategies at work in these seemingly innocuous artifacts.
What follows is my rhetorical analysis of this CLMOOC make comic. Those of you who read my last post will already be familiar with the idea of #CLMOOC, but I hope you'll indulge me a little bit today as I talk about it again. I guess I just can't stop writing about it! This is kinda the point though, isn't it? :) #CLMOOC stands for Connected Learning Massive Open Online Collaborative. To put that in laymen's terms, it's an online forum (and a few of them) for educators to have fun with the ways we create meaning in all sorts of different mediums, both virtual and material. The #CLMOOC technically lasts for 6 weeks. Each week, participants are given a prompt on Monday that encourages us to make... something. We all get to work creating something inspired by the prompt. We play with apps, use our favorite tools, pull out our cameras and take a walk, recruit family members to play along, or do whatever we feel inspired to try. Throughout the week we share our processes and products with other CLMOOCers on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and through our respective blogs (look for the tag #CLMOOC in all those places). We also have the opportunity to tap into scheduled sharings, like Make with Me webinars, Twitter chats, Find5Fridays, and end-of-the-week reflections. The whole thing is designed to inspire educators from around the world to take some time out to make, share, reflect and get ready to inspire our students to do the same. For the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about #CLMOOC for a couple reasons. First, #CLMOOC helps me be a better teacher, and I want to take full advantage of that. This seems a little obvious... that consciously writing, making, and reflecting would make me a better teacher of making, writing, and reflecting. But it goes beyond that. Being part of a network of so many different makers shows me not just new tools and fun ways of engaging with them, but also new perspectives, questions, and challenges. Just last week Susan raised some excellent questions of tech equity and access in her blogpost, Don't Sit on My Fire Hydrant. This is something I've been thinking about lately, being conscious of the variety in my students' experiences with and through technology. Though I've not been sure how to put into words my concern, I found the words right there in front of my in Susan's post. The dialogue that followed in the blog comments and throughout #CLMOOC was and will continue to be critical to the success of technology saturated classrooms. How do we level the playing field in the classroom? How do we make sure not to privilege certain groups, experiences as we work to bring our students the newest and shiniest from the world of tech? These are questions I have not answered, but I appreciate #CLMOOC for giving me a platform to slow down and really investigate them. The second reason I'll be blogging more about #CLMOOC is that it's fun. F. U. N. It just is! This week is an excellent example of that, so let me give you just a quick glimpse into it. I'm teaching summer courses right now, so I wasn't able to read this week's prompt until I finished a batch of grading yesterday afternoon (shout out to my 1101 bloggers!). As soon as I read the prompt, asking us to reMEDIAte something we'd created earlier, I started brainstorming ways I could jump in. I packed up my things in the office, walked to my car, and by the time I pulled out of my parking spot, I knew what it I wanted to do. It had been a few weeks since I'd been able to paint, so I decided to take my Week 1 untro wordles and reMEDIAte them on canvas. As soon as I got home, I put on my painting clothes, marched up to my studio/guest bedroom and stayed there until the World Cup match demanded my attention. Here's what I've come up with so far. See? FUN.
And already, after sharing it to G+ last night, other CLMOOCers have left comments and asked questions that are helping me reflect and adjust my approach. I am itching to get back to the canvas tonight and keep going. My hope in sharing #CLMOOC here is that some of you will be inspired to check it out for yourselves. I've linked things throughout this post, but here's the direct link to the #CLMOOC sign-up. Signing up will get the prompt sent to your inbox for the next four Mondays so you can make along with me. So let me ask this before I go. What's the last thing you made? I'd love for you to tell me about it in the comments. And we're off! #CLMOOC 2015 has begun! Technically we were off last week with the CLMOOC webinar on Thursday, but the first prompt came out today. Now it feels real. To me, CLMOOC means summer. The encouragement from other teachers, administrators, makers, and thinkers helps me both relax and revive at the same time. This, to me, is the fun stuff. So of course I jumped into making almost as soon as I had a minute to read the prompt. Our prompt is to Unmake an Introduction. You can read the prompt here at on the CLMOOC website... while you're there, sign up for the CLMOOC newsletter, so you too can get the prompts emailed to you for the next five glorious Mondays. :) Anyway, I've been thinking about my introductions a lot lately, since summer term is just beginning. I'm meeting dozens of first year students each day, and each one of them gets a little bit of an introduction from me. In addition, my wife is in law school at Mercer Law... so I bet you can imagine how many times I get to introduce myself to her classmates, colleagues, professors, and so on. Spoiler alert: I get to introduce myself a lot. Finally, I just finished a semester-long job application and interview process for a job I really, really wanted. The materials I submitted totaled up to 63 pages of... you guessed it... really detailed introduction. I think I can say that going into this make, I had a lot of words to work with. My first stab at an unmade introduction took word cloud form. I pulled from those application materials I mentioned, and I think they turned out pretty neat! I made these word clouds in Tagul, my current favorite word cloud generator. It lets me pick shapes, colors, and even upload my own silhouettes. These are all the Tagul shapes, but I did play with coloring. That hand in the top row is my attempt at GSU school colors.
What I like about these word clouds is that they have all the words I'd use in an introduction of myself, but they are out of my control. The words, colors, shapes, and even your approach to reading all of them changes things. I like that. As I told a class of students today, I'm a bit of a control freak. Having that control yanked out of my hands, even for just a simple introduction, is pretty awesome. Great first prompt, Lacy Manship and Stephanie West-Puckett! I'm looking forward to making, remixing, and reflecting on this prompt this week. Can't wait to see what others dream up for fracturing their introductions. And you, yes YOU! Have you signed up for #CLMOOC? You should! There's no deadline, and lurkers and makers alike are welcome and appreciated. See you around the makerspaces! This past weekend, while in Washington, D.C. for the National Writing Project Spring Meeting, I learned the NWP works with the National Park Service to get more people into the parks and writing about it. How cool is that?? I love the outdoors and the National Park Service, so I've been thinking about this new bit of information a lot this week. How fun would it be to visit and write about parks with a group of people who love to do the same? And then I remembered... I've done that before. Way back when I first participated in the Georgia Southern Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute in 2010, I wrote a little piece about kayaking. I read it there and then more or less forgot about it. Until today... Enjoy, friends! And, if you've got park stories to share, I'd love to hear/read them. :) Kayaking the Coast2008 Sitting on a warm riverbank in Orono, Maine, one hand behind me in the grass, I catch sight of something small and red floating towards me from under the bridge. As the breeze tosses hair into my face, the little bit of red turns to a slash of crimson with a spot of reflective yellow on top. In another moment, I see the yellow spot has sprouted a head and two smoothly working arms. Mesmerized by the steady rhythm, I watch as the kayaker propels herself skillfully through the gently encouraging river stream. When she gets close enough to see me, I shoot my eyes back into my book so as not to be caught watching. Reluctantly returning my attention to my required reading, I tell myself that I won’t always be the bookish one stuck on the bank. One day I’ll be that person on the water. Athletic, smooth, and clearly together. 2010
A guttural “Hghh!” shoots out of my mouth as my arms are pulled the wrong way behind me, my wet hands struggling to grip the paddle attempting to yank me backwards. As I awkwardly pull the paddle back over my head and return to an upright position, I can hear my friends’ laughter bouncing off the flooded cypress trees and coming back for me. Twitter is a beautiful place. I created an account 6 years ago this month, so I've been thinking about all the wonderful ways Twitter has changed my life since February 2009. Personally and professionally, Twitter allows me to connect with people and communities I couldn't otherwise. I actually wrote a This I Believe essay about Twitter last year for a HS poetry club project. I just love it that much. Professionally, I've learned all kinds of cool things by following and chatting with teachers on Twitter. They encouraged me to try Google Slides and now I don't want to live without it. They told me Malinda Lo was giving away books to teachers and now Ash is on my bookshelf. They told me about Digital Learning Day (March 15) and got me excited about trying something new. They commiserated over stacks of grading and shared playlists to help me pace my own grading. They pull me into #EngChat conversations when I'm relaxing on the couch watching The Bachelor (guiltily!) or The Great British Baking Show (proudly!). Basically, these teachers I've yet to meet have already meaningfully affected and improved my practice in the classroom. And people say social media is rotting our brains... :) Today I want to share one tool I've learned about on Twitter and see if you can help me think it through a bit. (For those of you who don't know, #TIL stands for "today I learned." See... I used a hashtag in my title AND it actually makes sense. I'm cool now, right? RIGHT?) What is it?The app is called Tellagami and it is free to a point. I've only used the free aspects, so what you see below didn't cost me a thing. Here's the gist... like those XtraNormal videos that were really exciting for a minute, Tellagami quickly creates animations for you with very limited options for the speaker and background. In the free version, your recorded voice is what gets animated. Why am I excited about it?What's cool about Tellagami is that it's free and easy. Just a few minutes of playing on your phone and you've got a quick little video you can easily share through link, text, email, or post on various sites. As you're setting up your video, you can, for free, select a mood for your character. You also have a pretty good selection of basic backgrounds or you can upload your own image to serve as backdrop. In my sample, you'll see I used a picture I took of the GSU campus. It's not an especially beautiful pic, but students will recognize it as the walk to the library. I also like that Tellagami uses my voice instead of putting my words into the XtraNormal robot voice. Those voices make any video comedic, even if that's not the intent. And once the laugh is over... those XtraNormal videos get long quick. Be honest, how many of those have you watched through to the end? Let's see it!Here's my second attempt at a Tellagami. The first attempt involved some laughing and a couple of false starts, so I'm sparing you that one. Still, this second one was created seconds after the first. In all, I probably spent 10 minutes downloading, playing, creating, and saving this video.
Are there possible issues?While I appreciate the range of skin tones and hair colors Tellagami offers in the free version and I appreciate that the characters aren't overtly sexualized, I do find the character options to be pretty one note. This hair type and cut is the only free option for women. Men have a similarly stereotypical cut. Sadly, it probably goes without saying that there are only two gender options. Only some teachers and students would see themselves or people who like them reflected in these very limited free options. I can't tell how much would change if I started buying up accessories and options, but i also don't plan to start doing that either. This is where XtraNormal might have had a leg up; they had all kinds of character options, include animals and creatures that were pretty ambiguous -- not sure whether some of them were animals, aliens, fantastic beings or what -- and that was pretty neat. Accessibility is important to think about as well. Since this is video, a transcript or closed captioning would be necessary. Posting to YouTube could shortcut the CC process, but as we know, those automatic captions are hit or miss. The captioning for the video I shared above was surprisingly accurate. The only word it converted to word salad was Tellagami. It transcribed it as "Telly coming" though, which made the rest of the sentence hard to follow. Anyone know how to adjust those? *Makes note to look it up.* How could we use it?This is the part I'm hoping some of you can help me think about. I'm not quite sure how I could meaningfully use Tellagami in the classroom. I've heard of instructors creating avatars of themselves (through other apps and widgets) to post announcements through online throughout the semester. I've always thought my students would laugh me out of the room if I tried that though. I prefer to type out announcements for easy reference anyway.
I could see sharing this with students for their own use. We regularly do small, quick presentations (individual and group) over readings or class activities. Maybe Tellagami could help them create a little video to share with peers, to mix things up? I'm still thinking on it, but I'd love to hear your ideas. The app is fun and easy, but I don't want to add moving parts just for the sake of moving parts. So... sound off! Let me know! And, of course, follow me on Twitter: @ahedrickGSU This week, while grading Annotated Bibliographies, Pandora did that thing we all love so much where it assumes we live more active lives than we do. When I realized it had quit on me, I pulled up the tab, admitted that Yes, I'm still listening, and was graced with this ad... Though extremely flawed (how did he know to pick up particular books based on those super flimsy clues?? and what does "heating up" have to do with sitting in a library eating chocolates??), this library scavenger hunt was total nostalgia for me. When I was little, my younger siblings and I would set up these indoor scavenger hunts for each other a lot. I mean, a lot.
Sometimes we'd be stuck inside because it was raining or because my mom was doing her accounting work in the other room. Sometimes one of us would have -lost- a dear stuffed animal only to be taken on a ransom note-like scavenger hunt to find him. Sometimes my little sister and I would create one for our little brother, our favorite person in the world, and all the clues would be pictures so he could toddle along from clue to clue on his own. (That didn't keep us from bossily helping him at each step, but we just couldn't help ourselves.) |
Amanda J. HedrickStory collector, recipe enthusiast, educator, striving for a constant input and output of all things art and learning. Archives
September 2022
|