Introducing: Jessica

Hello all. I am Jessica. My apologies for being so delayed in my posting; I hope you can forgive me, and allow me to introduce myself:

I am twenty-two years old. I was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan, moving to East Lansing in the fall of 2007 to begin my freshman year at Michigan State. After changing my major just a few times, I graduated in May 2011 with a B.A. in Spanish. Although the thought of being done with college was thrilling, somewhere in my senior year I began to worry that a Bachelor’s in Spanish was not exactly going to set me apart from the thousands of college graduates out there. I began exploring my options, looking for a way to further my education and strengthen my credentials. Thus, I found Michigan State’s Master’s program for Applied Spanish Linguistics.

And here we are. I have just completed the first of two years in my quest for higher education. Along with being accepted into the program, I was offered a teaching assistantship to teach two sections of 100-200 level Spanish courses; this past fall I taught Spanish 102, and Spanish 101 in the spring.

As for my teaching style, well in the Romance and Classical Studies department they just sort of throw you right in. When I began teaching in the fall I was handed a textbook and a syllabus. From there it was up to me to plan the daily lessons and to teach the students everything they needed to know for the exams (The homework is predetermined and the exams are made for us, since there are multiple teaching assistants all teaching the same course). Needless to say, my first year involved a lot of trial and error, improvisation, and last minute lesson planning. I am still very much a teaching rookie. I have a lot to learn and hope to take a lot away from this course. I know that I have been fairly low-key so far and I promise, it is just because I am sitting here like a sponge taking in as much as I can.

On a more personal note: in ten days I will be leaving for Cordoba, Argentina on a three-week study abroad. It is a graduate program through Ohio State University, meant for Spanish teachers. The goal of the program is to learn how to get away from textbook learning and how to bring the real world into the classroom so as to use the language in a more natural context. I am very interested to see how the materials from our current course will overlap with this program, and to take advantage of both programs to improve upon my teaching.  

Introduction

An Introduction:

Hey everybody, my name is doug and I'm a learnaholic. When I'm not doing academic work I spend my time playing drums with local musicians and practicing traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu. However, I don't see any of these activities as separate. That's just how I operate. Here, I'll show you a little bit.

My Teaching:

Teaching for me is an everyday activity. I'm a fan of moving through the world as a series of learnable and teachable experiences. But right now I'm spending a lot of energy working to understand the connections between the way I learn in Wing Chun Kung Fu and the way I teach. Kung Fu asks me to think about the act of fighting as a conversation: one in which I am sensing and sometimes manipulating the energy of another person. When I think about teaching in this way I understand my role as working with students to demonstrate strong/weak and effective/ineffective approaches to the work they're engaged in when they work through their ideas with me. It's all in the interaction with pushing, pulling, and asking and receiving questions. When the situation calls for it, I'll interject.

To see what I mean, check out this video featuring my Sifu's Sifu, Ip Ching, son of Ip Man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qnHlLiYmVXA

My Technology:

Technology takes on a very functionalist application in the way I do things. Think of me as the old curmudgeon who assails "modern" technologies but enjoys using learning how they work and can be applied. What can I say? I'm weird. But I have a pretty strong ability to make tools work for me in the ways I desire. I work across three main computing devices: my desktop computer, my laptop, and as of last month, my iPad. All of these take on different roles for different tasks.

When home I work on my main thinking station. I like this space because I can multitask easily with two screens, which makes reading, researching, communicating, and taking notes much easier. Needless to say I spend too much time there (I'll post pictures of all my workstations in my next post).

Synchronized with my desktop is my laptop. Big surprise, it's a mobile workstation. Nothing special there, but now I only have to take it out of the house on days where heavy composition is on the docket. This is because...

I just bought an iPad. Last year I began getting excited about the slew of reading devices jumping out of the woodwork. After a ton of investigation and a deep assessment of my technological desires, I landed on the iPad for the interface and design commonalities to my computers. With the backup/syncing services I use, this device now enables me to go to a conference or spend a full workday outside of the home with something that doesn't weigh five pounds. I also love reading on it. That's new for me.

My Professional Profile:

I am a scholar of rhetoric, and my area of specialization is in cultural rhetorics. As of May 5 I officially slew my first year as a doctoral student. That is, unless this summer still counts as part of my first year (that whole AY thing sometimes tricks me). What I am interested in as a scholar is pedagogy in the big picture, by which I mean the curricular and the systemic. I understand the practice of education to be a deeply rhetorical practice; the way we imagine students—and the way we imagine systems to shape those students—reflects back on the intentions, values, and experiences of the architects/practitioners. The work I want to do is the assembling of educational environments and the teaching of teachers.

With three years of teaching experience I am only starting to feel like I got my pedagogical sea legs. There are things that I do well, like working one on one with students and building macro level activities in the classroom. But in between those pieces I am still shaky with scaffolding assignment sequences. Teaching this summer online is already helping me develop new strategies as I adapt to the new environment.

More on that business as we move through this course together. Until next time.

Introduction: Neal Klomp

Hi, I am Neal Klomp.
While my area of research emphasis is early modern literature, I have - as I mentioned in chat last week - dabbled in programing beginning in the early days when Atari made desktop computers. I have coded in old 80s BASIC, Pascal and Cobol (circa 1986), and in the 90s I learned a bit of C++, and more recently picked up some HTML and Java Script. As an amateur computer-nerd I've played around with various Linux distros, but have yet to get around to taking up Python. All of that might be impressive except that about half of that knowledge is ad hoc and now quite atrophied from disuse - however much the remnants might percolate up from my sub-conscious from time to time.

Within my research I am interested in early modern political culture, practices of governance, and theories of service within the literature of the period. As someone with a fascination for technology, I am keenly interested in how tech, say the distributed network of the internet, can be deployed as a metaphor for new ways of conceiving of something like early modern social structure. Or, how early modern grain riots are like and unlike hacker groups.

Pedagogically, my interest in technology obviously promotes a curiosity for the possibilities of online teaching and a desire to explore those possibilities in practice. In face to face teaching over the past 5 years I've taught freshman composition, IAH, and literature courses here and at Illinois State University where I earned my MA in 2009.  However, like some others in this class, academia isn't my first career. For me teaching begins with the nearly two decades I spent managing restaurants in upscale/fine dinning. It is in the restaurant world that I honed my teaching style -- it is not as big a stretch as one might expect. As a manager I taught my employees and mentored my assistants in much the same way that I teach my students today.

My first year in graduate school I read a great deal of articles on pedagogy, absorbing immediately practices that I felt would match my style, filing away others that I might make my own, and discarding anything that I knew wouldn't work for me. One of the more empowering things I read that first year was from someone who would later become a mentor of mine, Ron Strickland. The article was titled "Confrontational Pedagogy and Traditional Literary Studies." It was the very idea of confrontation as productive and useful pedagogically that captured me. I have ever since sought to produce in my classroom an atmosphere of "confrontation with it all" including each other and ourselves.

Recent technology reads: Jermey Rifkin's pop. press Third Industrial Revolution and Alexander Galloway's Protocol. I am fascinated by emerging tech in things like quantum processors, organic hard drives, driverless cars, 3d printing, computer chips connected to the brain, and the efforts to stave off old age (a new area of interest that I thank my 40th birthday for).

Ruth's Background and Answers to Questions

My Teaching-
I have a very eclectic background.  My teaching philosophy has been forged through lots of trial and error, after reading lots of books and attending classes on what was definitely the “best” way to teach, then experiencing that what was in the textbooks didn’t always translate well to the students.  Finally, I found that the way that worked for me was to listen to the students and adapt to their method of learning.  I use a lot of questions in working with students and encourage us to go on a “journey” of learning  and discovery together, I’m not afraid to be directive at first so the students have a clear idea of expectations, but then I quickly try to “vanish” my direction and let them be self-guided as soon as possible.

My Credentials-
In teaching, the proof is the results of what we do.  I always like to point to my students as the proof that something, despite all my mistakes and weaknesses, worked. I was originally trained as a music teacher (I love the arts) and then through a series of events, I ended up home-schooling my four children (a girl and three boys) up to college (over 18 years of teaching).  They became- an ER nurse (BSN, CCRN, RN, EMT, FEMA emergency specialist), an attorney (who was a world class classical guitarist, winning the MTNA national competitions in college as a classical guitar major), a supply chain manager (who at the age of 20 was running all of Unilever’s exports to Puerto Rico and is now a fairly high level manager at Crane Engineering (an aero-space firm) at the age of 26), and a 3D graphic designer/programmer (who worked for a few start-up firms as a 3D graphic designer before getting a steady job with Jackson National Life as a programmer).  They are all married and I have three grandchildren (2 girls and a boy). 

My Professional Profile-
What was originally a promise to my father, while I was taking caring for him as he was dying of cancer, to write his biography, became a journey I never thought would happen. After I went back to school to sharpen my writing skills I found that I loved writing and working in the digital environment.  It allowed me to communicate beyond words-- incorporating color, design, interactivity, art, and even sometimes music-- to communicate to people.  I started working at the Writing Center at Lansing Community College (LCC) to help pay for my tuition and found that I loved working with the adult student as much as I have always loved working with children.  So after completing associate’s degrees in Web Site Design and Creative Writing at LCC, my bachelor’s with a double major in Computer Information Management and Management at Northwood University. Now I am in the Master’s program in the Telecommunications, Information Studies and Media department working in Computer Information Management with a cognate in Internet, Society, and Policy. 

I have an assistantship at the MSU Writing Center, work part time for the LCC Writing Center, tutor writing for students at Siena Heights University, tutor a student in Taiwan, have my own Web-Site design firm (Beachcomber Design, LLC), and currently am consulting on a Web-based software project for the Michigan Hospital Association (along with being a full-time grad student).  For fun I love to travel, hang out at the beach or by the pool over in Muskegon and Grand Haven, play guitar with a contemporary music band for our church, cook, and most of all play with my grandkids.

Places I Love to Go-
In the Online environment I have learned to really appreciate some tools that I previously dismissed- Twitter can be a great way to keep up on areas that are of interest to me and quickly see if I want to learn more-
My Twitter feeds-
@Ruth@MSU
@2012MWCA (for the Michigan Writing Center Conference I am coordinating in the fall)
@NetworkedTogether (to link with my blog)
My Blog-
NetworkedTogether.com
My Professional Site-

BeachcomberDesign.com

Flipboard- amazing app for iPads and iPhones, their design articles and technology feeds are very good
Wired.com- everything digital, organic, amazing scary stuff (check out Danger Room and try to read it without the music for Terminator or the Matrix going in your head)
WritingCenters.org- great articles

Real Places I love to go to get inspired digitally-

British Library and the British Museum

Salisbury

Musee du Louvre

Apple Stores (this one is in Paris)

Overview of an Article that Reflects my teaching Philosophy-

http://www.education.com/reference/article/mastery-learning/

I truly believe in “Mastery Learning,” breaking skills that need to be acquired into connected units that are easier for the students to remember.  I love giving fairly rapid and encouraging response to help lower frustration levels at the early stages of the learning process, and to build confidence.  After a short while the teacher/facilitator can step back and allow the student to learn more and more on their own.  In my experience, builds students who not only have a love for learning, but also will continue to grow and discover as they have positive early memories about the learning process.  If students encounter frustration and discouragement in the early stages of any class or new skill attainment, they will often push through, complaining all the way and then just do the minimum to get by.  Through Mastery Learning the student can gain true confidence from seeing early progress and getting a taste of success.

Build my own app-
I actually would eventually like to build my own app with the help of my son.  However, to give it away here would ruin the marketability. 

The second thing I would like to do is to be a part of a team to help build a better delivery system for educational material.  It would be nice to have a portal like Angel/Blackboard/Desire2Learn that could be a one stop place for the educator as well as the student. 
My dream site would have-

• F2F interactivity, like Adobe Connect or Skype
• Responsive chatting
• Content management
• Testing design with various levels of feedback and random question programability
• Visually appealing layout, like Blogger
• Simple interface, like Facebook
• Feeds that update to a mobile device, like Twitter
• Interface with the User in mind, like Apple

-all in one place, at a reasonable cost

--if we could design this, we would be rich

Jennifer's Introduction

Good Morning All,
My name is Jennifer and I'm a first year PhD student at MSU.

Where to begin?  I write, I teach and I play with tech :)  Such tiny little words to explain the path that I have taken to end up here.

For this journey I started out with a degree in African American Studies and instead of teaching like I planned, I accepted a job with the government in non-profit work about education technology programs.  It was great while it lasted but the great chop of 2004 left me trying to figure out what I was going to do.

So I decided to get an MPA so I would stop hearing about how my experiences made me too expensive to hire without an advanced degree.  As I was getting my MPA I started research African American women in pursuit of the doctoral degree because I really did intend to go back to the non-profit world.  Then my adviser told me I should get either a JD or PhD.

I thought about his advice for a while and while I was thinking I was getting my MA in Composition and Rhetoric because that whole writing thing never left me. Before you go back and scan to figure out where I talked about writing- I didn't :)  However I joined my first  creative writers group in the early 90's and have been one ever since.  I write fantasy - the title is shifting to speculative fiction - and have been honing my craft with a great group of people.  Some of my best writing habits I learned from these writing groups: research, daily writing, breaking up writing blocks, teaching and editing.

I started teaching English Composition and Creative Writing at Mott Community College (we can discuss the best interview ever later) and trained to teach online/hybrid courses because they sounded neat- I didn't anticipate the work load!! But I was hooked with this notion of using technology to enhance what I did.

So with a ton of missing details and really exciting stories - here I am working towards my PhD looking at the Digital Environment & Cultural Voices.

My boys - the reason I will usually post at night :)

I look forward to working with you all and learning from you all!

Hello World (of AL 881)

Chad O'Neil here (the cute one is my son, Orin). 

I began my obsession with technology at that other 'Michigan' school as an Engineering student.  Not long after finishing my introduction to Aerospace Engineering class I decided I'd much rather major in English.  I haven't turned back.  I completed my B.A. in English at The University of Michigan in 2002, worked briefly for Apple, and then heard about the start of the amazing Masters program in Digital Rhetoric & Professional Writing at MSU.  I completed my M.A. at MSU in 2005 during my first semester as a doctoral student at NC State in Raleigh, NC.  Though I learned a great deal about myself and discovered my love for teaching during my four years at NC State, my comprehensive exams turned out to be the end of my journey there.


So here I am again, as a Lifelong student 'testing the waters.'


I was privileged to spend much of my time at Michigan and MSU working with great people at each institutes' Writing Centers.  Much of the work I did as a consultant / tutor focused on learning, using, and teaching others about technology in the context of academic writing (composition).


I gained my first classroom teaching experience at NC State teaching first year composition.  I have built on this teaching experience as Part Time Faculty at Parkland College here in Champaign, IL over the past three years.  I have recently begun working with Continuing Education at Eastern Illinois University piloting Writing Center hours for their continuing education students that take classes here at Parkland.

Whether it was using text only email to work with students on their papers over email at U of M or piloting tablet computers as a part of my teaching here at Parkland, technology use has always been a part of my teaching.  Recently I was given the opportunity to teach an online English course this coming fall.  I am taking this opportunity to reevaluate my teaching.  How might technology be leveraged differently in both the traditional and online courses I teach? Are there way to approach the curriculum guidelines for the courses I teach while considering the broader digital texts students use and produce?


These are just a couple of questions I'm looking forward to considering during the coming weeks.  I can't wait to learn more about the rest of you, what you hope to gain from the course, and one another.

Teaching with Technology - Let's Think & Write & Talk About It!

You've made your way to the blog for a graduate course at Michigan State University called Teaching with Technology. The course is offered by the College of Arts & Letters at MSU, though it is appropriate for a wide range of scholars, teachers, and others who want to learn more about how technology, teaching, and learning intersect.

Members of the class will post and comment here; if you are visiting, please feel free to comment as well. If you are robot, we do not wish to hear about the virtues of various types of berries or other natural products for weight loss. Please move along.

Feel free to look at the 100+ posts from last year - you may find them helpful! Class project descriptions are available via the "projects" tab near the top of the page. The course syllabus is here. You will need an MSUnet ID to access it.


A Little About Me

My "Bookcase" Faculty Shot

I'm Bill Hart-Davidson, an Associate Professor in Rhetoric & Writing at MSU in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures. I co-direct the Writing in Digital Environments research center at MSU along with Jeff Grabill. I also direct the Rhetoric & Writing graduate program.

I've made the theory, practice, and design of resources for teaching with technology an important part of my career for a long time. My dissertation focused on this topic, in fact, and I was able to show that writing technologies like software, hardware, and even network protocols enact pedagogies that reflect not only the views of an instructor, but of students and the designers of those technologies as well. This can make a networked classroom, for instance, a complex place to teach and learn as competing ideas about how this is best accomplished abound. Engagement with the challenges of teaching with technology, then, is an essential part of developing effective pedagogy.

One way instructors can most effectively engage technology in the pursuit of effective teaching is to develop their own resources, including software & systems meant to fulfill unmet needs of fellow teachers or students. Recently my colleagues Jeff Grabill, Mike McLeod, and I with the assistance of partners at Red Cedar Solutions Group in Okemos, MI have done just that. We've created Eli, a web-based service for coordinating and evaluating peer and other types of writing review in educational settings. Eli is the first of what we hope will be many solutions that address the complexity of teaching and learning in digital environments.

I'm looking forward to a great Summer Session! Let's talk about Teaching with Technology!

Hi All,

My name is Esther. I'm a second year M.A student in Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy in the Rhetoric and Writing program. I earned my B.A degree in Literature and Sociology and my M.A in African Literature from the Univerisity of Nairobi many many years ago. Before joining MSU, I had worked for four years as probation officer in Kenya!! While I was really really nervous making the transition from workplace to the academia, I have been surprised how much I borrow from my past work experience. This has been helpful in helping me bridge workplace literacies with academic literacies, particulary at the writing center where I have been working as a tutor for the last one and half years. This has been a very exciting experience.

My research interest revolve around global hiphop cultures/ literacies. My current research is on Kenyan Hip-hop, particulary its unique, hybrid language called Sheng. I'm taking this course because I think I'm always behind when it comes to technology and I need a little catching up to do. More importantly, because I see myself going into teaching in the near future, I want to be able to apply the latest technologies in my classroom teaching. I'm sure the technologies will also come in handy as continue doing my research. I look forward to participating in this class and learning from each one of you.

Thanks,
Esther

Introduction

Hi there all!

My name is Shari Wolke, and I am a Master's student in the Writing and Rhetoric program here. My bachelor's degree is from Michigan State as well; I graduated with an English Education degree with a minor in Biology. I became interested in R & W after taking Julie Lindquist's ENG 302. Since then, I have discovered that my true passion is language. That is, yes, I do like English literature, no, I am not interested in teaching it as a career or as interested in it as I am issues of language and linguistic rights. Along with that, one of my research interests is Jamaican Patois, partly because it is the first language of my partner, Abijah, who is from Jamaica. I am interested in discovering how using a language like Patois in the first-year writing classroom and explicitly teaching for language justice can benefit all students.

In terms of my teaching experience, I have taught two semesters in R&W here at MSU- in the fall I taught WRA 150 and in the spring WRA 140. Teaching is most certainly my passion; I can't imagine myself doing anything else in my future. Thus I am applying for the PhD this fall- wish me luck! What I hope to learn from this course, then, is how other folks use technology in their writing classrooms, since I am fairly new to the game.

In terms of my interests outside this class, as you might see from my facebook if you friend me, my other passion is riding my horse Kenny and competing at shows in a sport called dressage (if you don't know what this is, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQgTiqhPbw). I will be competing my horse throughout the summer as well.

I am looking forward to learning new ways of integrating technology into my classroom and looking forward to learning with and from you all!

Hi Guys!

My name is Paul Jaques and I am working on my Masters in Public Relations. I have to be honest that I did not know much about this class before I enrolled but I am excited to be taking it and love it the more I hear about what we will be learning and working with.

I received my Bachelors Degree from Grand Valley State University (1999) in Advertising/PR. I had no clue what I wanted to do but knew that I wanted to work with people so I took a position right out of school as the marketing Director for a Lansing magazine called The View.

After a year in the magazine I was hired into a position as a recruiter for another Lansing firm called OnLine Employment where I dealt mainly with manufacturing positions.
I stayed there for about a year and then was hired as a recruiter for a business in East Lansing called Career Quest where I was a professional recruiter/headhunter and stayed there for 7 years.

I then was hired into Michigan State University in Jan. of 2008 as The Internship Developer for the University. In my position I reach out to Alums and businesses around the world and attempt to connect them with MSU students and I love my position here at State.

I use technology every day of my life and would be lost without it. I have found that Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin are very helpful in research and teach students how to use these programs. I was very fortunate last semester to be able to co-teach the "social Media for Business" class at MSU and it opened up my eyes to what undergrads are into and not into.

I look forward to meeting and working with all of you and hope everyone has a great summer!

With Great Anticipation

Hello everyone,

My name is Shenika Hankerson and this is my first graduate seminar at Michigan State University. I am enrolled as a Lifelong Education student.

My educational background revolves around composition, rhetoric, pedagogy and technology. I received a Master of Arts degree from Eastern Michigan University in 2002. My master’s program was very beneficial, as I received an immense amount of training in the above realm. In particular, I learned how to:

• Develop engaging writing assignments (composition and rhetoric)
• Develop effective instructional methods (pedagogy)
• Develop course-related content for electronic transmittal (technology)

I love teaching! I have been teaching college level courses for ten years. I instruct developmental, basic and introductory English courses (theme-based). I also instruct literature courses (novels). My classroom practices reflect what I learned at EMU. However, I try to integrate current practices as well. Thus I often experiment with innovative practices learned from current academic articles, conferences, research, etc.

I try to ensure that my students remain engaged in my courses (and in education as a whole) by using current electronic components. I currently use Facebook, Twitter and PbWorks in the classroom. I have also experimented with Second Life and Diipo.

Technology has offered numerous personal and professional capabilities. Thus I believe it’s an important part of learning. I am interested in technology and literacy. My specialized interest lies in digitizing literacy themed courses for educational purposes. I would like to develop a multi-technological course that helps students learn via diverse electronic components. My hope is to build a strong reading, writing, learning and technological proficiency foundation.

The title (With Great Anticipation) reflects my current disposition. I am eagerly anticipating learning innovative content and implementing it into my courses.

Hello All!

I'm Cait Ryan and I'm excited to learn with and from each of you over the next several months. I'm enrolled in this course as a lifelong education student with plans to apply to the DRPW graduate program this fall.

My Background
I completed my undergraduate work in Spring 2010 with a double major in English: Practical Writing and Musical Theatre Performance. My initial belief entering undergrad was that my passion was in performing and I could potentially use the English degree to find side-work other than waiting tables.

I have to admit, I was surprised to find throughout my studies that the exact opposite was true. While I still enjoyed theatre and performing as a hobby, my work in the practical writing program enabled me to acknowledge a developing passion for writing and teaching in digital environments. I was fortunate enough to work with two teachers in the practical writing program whose use of multiple technologies throughout their courses completely revolutionized how I viewed what it means to be a "writer." Through their example, I slowly developed the goal of becoming a teacher of writing, with a focus on using various technologies to enhance students' abilities as writers in a digital age.

Current Technologies
I currently work for a Thomson Reuters company in Allegan, MI, primarily developing and maintaining courses in our online training program, bcpLearning. My favorite part of the job is taking a rough draft from one of our authors and editing, revising, and reworking it into a course that will effectively train students in our digital learning environment. Though my work does not include teaching directly, it allows me to employ the various technologies involved in bcpLearning to create effective learning environments for our students.

Taking This Course
I chose this course because its core focus reflects the goal that drew me to the program at MSU: to follow in my teachers' footsteps by utilizing new technologies to become an effective and influential teacher of writing.

My current plan is to research the development and implementation of technologies that will enable non-English Majors to view themselves as writers and equate developing effective writing skills with success in their chosen field of study. I hope that by contributing to and learning from this course, I can build on my understanding of digital pedagogy and develop a specific focus for the research I plan on conducting at MSU.

Greetings!

Hey, everyone --

I'm Mike Tardiff, a first year master's student at State in the Writing and Rhetoric department. I'm a recent transplant from Bangor, Maine and am excited about teaching, especially with technology. That's me and my girlfriend, Laura, on the coast of Maine circa 2008.

My professional/educational background is really rooted in creative non-fiction. I originally thought myself to be an aspiring journalist but fell out of love when I realized writing sports recaps and stories wouldn't impart the sort of change and impact I was hoping to achieve with my life. I always thought, in the back of my mind, I'd like to teach but never knew where to start...

When my mother lost her factory job and went back to school at community college, I watched her undergo a transformation. She was becoming newly literate in so many ways.

My hope, one day, is to help people like mom get a grip on what can be a scary world by teaching writing at the community college level. Technology can be particularly frightening and I hope by taking this class I can learn new ways to leverage technology for pedagogical purposes.

Because I want to help non-traditional, adult learners, I know my own literacy with technology will prove to be an important skill-set. My hope is to explore and examine the scholarship regarding technology and think about effective ways to teach digitally. This last semester a classmate and I used inDesign as a platform for teaching visual rhetoric. Our work made me start thinking about how malleable the digital world and software really can be, if we allow it.

I have no doubt this course will challenge me since I'm fairly new to the world of pedagogy, but I look forward to investigating the tensions of digital teaching environments and studying the current trends in digitized pedagogy. Talking about digital environments and technology is pretty new territory for me, but I know it'll be healthy and worthwhile to build a new knowledge base.

When I'm not doing academic stuff, I like sports, animals, short fiction, photography and food.

I look forward to working with all of you.