DWRL Lesson Plans - Beck Wise

Fostering a Feminist Classroom Climate

Wise — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 18:35:40 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Beck Wise.

Brief Assignment Overview:

In this icebreaking activity, students think-pair-share on the question "What makes a class a success?" This gives them the opportunity to meet a new classmate and contribute to setting the classroom tone for the semester ahead.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The primary goal of this assignment is to open the class, both literally -- it's a Day One icebreaker -- and figuratively, by disrupting the traditional power structures of the classroom, inviting student voices in developing a class structure and code of behaviour, and privileging multiple perspectives.

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Required Materials:

For students:

Pen
Paper (or instructor can provide index cards)

For instructors:

Watch / stopwatch / phone / kitchen timer / perfect internal clock or ability to count at a steady pace (some way of policing time)
For optional extension of activity, instructors will need to display text to the class on a white- or blackboard, document camera, projector or similar.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

First Day/Week

Full Assignment Description:

This activity adapts Cathy Davidson's think-pair-share classroom flipping exercise into an icebreaker that introduces students to certain principles of feminist pedagogy and helps to set the tone for a feminist classroom. Students are asked to think individually about a question -- here, "What makes a class a success?", write their answers, then review them with a peer to identify the "best" listed answer. Optionally, the exercise can be extended to a classwide discussion of all the "best" answers provided by pairs.

The activity serves as an effective icebreaker simply because it gives some structure and relevance to the usual first-day let's-all-go-around-and-introduce-ourselves-maybe-with-a-weird-fact exercise.

As enacted in this lesson plan, it also introduces students to the idea that there are multiple values of "success" (and for that matter, "best") and that multiple perspectives are both legitimate and valuable. It encourages students to actively participate in setting the tone and style of the class, and decentres the teacher as a figure of authority -- all core principles of feminist pedagogy.

This activity can also be adapted for use at any point in the semester, for a variety of pedagogical goals -- the think-pair-share process is often useful for kickstarting discussion of texts, for example, simply by asking a different question.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Very little preparation is required on the instructor's end for this activity. I prefer to come to class with index cards to distribute to each student -- they're handy, and saves students rummaging for paper. The largest time commitment would be considering what question you want to ask your students, if you are not following the lesson plan precisely as written here.

When you are ready to begin the assignment, distribute cards and ask students to get out a pen (and paper, if you're not providing cards). Write your question on the board if it's not short and snappy.

Instructions For Students:

Instructor will set a timer for 90 seconds.

Students use those 90 seconds to write down three answers to the question "What makes a class a success?"

The instructor will then reset the timer, and students will have a further 90 seconds to work with a partner to identify the "best" of the six answers written on their two cards (where "best" may mean most important, most compelling, clearest, etc).

This activity may be extended by having each of the pairs share their "best" answer with the whole group (in this scenario, the instructor should write the answers on the board); instructors can then guide students through a discussion of what similarities and differences exist between the answers, or attempt to identify a "best of the best" answer.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Activity is not evaluated.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This is an activity that's proved effective in a lot of contexts in a lot of courses for me, but this was the first time I'd used it to open a class and push on questions of classroom tone, student goals, the commitment of and between instructors and students, and so forth. It was definitely successful here -- students thought deeply about their answers and debated the best of the best hotly. In our classroom, we ultimately identified two answers which seemed to encompass most of the others: one process-driven ("willingness to engage and participate") and one outcome-driven ("changed perspectives or broader horizons").

I then asked students to reflect on these two answers as homework and close their introductory blog posts with a discussion of what we can do to make our class a success by these two measures; our discussion in the next class about those responses led to a commitment to producing the classroom as a safe space for discussion and to particular practices of engagement and reception within the classroom.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

This activity was designed for use in "Reading Literature in Context: Feminist Speculative Fictions", an intermediate literature course.

Tags:

Critical pedagogy

Ice breaker

Transforming Video with Popcorn Maker

Wise — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:40:10 +0000

Author:

Beck Wise

Image Credit:

Image: Joakim Wahlander

Brief Assignment Overview:

Like many things, visual rhetoric is often best learnt by doing. This lesson plan introduces students to video editing using Popcorn Maker, a web-based tool for mashing up online texts.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Organization

Style

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Hardware

Computer access for all students (laboratory or bring-your-own-device; small groups often work better than individuals for this)

Web access

Software

Access to modern, Flash-capable browsers (Safari in particular often does not play nice with this tool)

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

In this class period, students are asked first to analyse a piece of visual rhetoric and then to create their own using Popcorn Maker, a web-based tool for mashing up online texts including videos, images, audio and text.

I begin the class by introducing students to visual rhetoric, asking them to analyse the various levels of a visual text progressively -- first by silently reading a transcript of a video narration, then by listening to the audio, and finally by playing the full video. Unpacking the text in layers like this helps students engage with the possibilities and effects of medium, as well as or instead of content (for a lesson plan which lays this out in detail, see Laura Thain's 'Shifting Focus from Content to Medium', which uses records of the Hindenberg disaster in this way; I often use Anonymous' 'Message to Scientology' as my text for this activity, since it fits with themes of my 'Rhetoric of Hacking' course and conveniently provides a transcript, saving me the effort of creating one).

I then introduce students briefly to Mozilla's Popcorn Maker, demonstrating the very basics and offering them links to a couple of tutorials. The tool lets students quickly and easily create web videos -- and because it's designed to incorporate and transform other online texts, the barrier to entry is lower than with other video editors; in my experience, students are more comfortable transforming existing tests and can feel paralysed when asked to create from scratch.

Working in small groups or individually, they are asked to 'play with the tool', using it to create videos which make 'some kind of point', whether or not it relates to the course theme or content -- I keep my language fun and the instructions unspecific, since the goal is to gain fluency with a tool they might want to use for later projects, and to come up with something quick-and-dirty in a single class period. As a result, I've seen a lot of in-class videos featuring Miley Cyrus! Towards the end of the class period, I ask anyone who has a video work-in-progress they're comfortable sharing to email me the link and we review some of the products on the overheard projector. As well as illustrating the various possibilities of Popcorn Maker, it tends to serve as a good icebreaker, as students discover shared interests.

Depending on your class' interest in making and viewing videos, you can extend this into a second day or ask students to share their videos on a course website.

One thing to be aware of: when replaying videos, expect long buffering times. My students this semester have also reported the tool becomes unstable when producing complex texts with many included elements; I'd steer students towards offline video editing software if they want to compose extended video and multimedia projects. Popcorn Maker is great for quick-and-dirty projects using existing web content, and is particularly good for introducing students to video editing (its interface mirrors a lot of popular offline editors), but it definitely has its limits!

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Before class, you'll want to prepare to share your chosen text in written, auditory and video form. You might provide the text as printouts or display it on a projector; for the audio version, you could play the video with the projector screen blanked or use a YouTube-to-MP3 converter to obtain an audio track to play.

You'll also want to spend some time with Popcorn Maker -- follow the tutorials linked above (I recommend Miriam Posner's tutorial over the official Mozilla one!) to become familiar with the tool. I suggest making a video of your own to show your students ... I throw something terrible together real fast to encourage them to be OK with imperfect results (remember -- this is just play), and make it clear that something can be achieved inside a class period. Don't believe me it's kind of rubbish? Here you go. This is about 15 minutes of work and is designed to subvert the messages in the video I use in the analysis section of the class. You can play the video right through and then hit the 'Remix' button to get a look at the actual construction, which makes the example doubly valuable as it allows students to reverse-engineer the project if they want.

Instructions For Students:

My instructions to students for this activity are extremely informal; I tell them ahead of time we'll be talking about visual rhetoric and assign a brief reading outlining what that means. On the day, I guide them through the various levels of analysis of the assigned video (to which they have not previously been exposed) and demonstrate the tool we'll be using to make our own videos, then essentially cut them loose to play and create. I provide links to the tutorials above for their reference, but most students prefer to figure things out on their own (and typically succeed in doing so).

Evaluation Suggestions:

My suggestion for evaluation: don't! This is a plan for play, designed to give students tools (and in my experience, they WILL use them later).

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

This activity was designed for 'Rhetoric of Hacking', an intermediate writing course conducted in Fall 2013 and Spring 2014. The course engages with public discourse around hacking, the notion of hacking as rhetoric, and ways to hack rhetoric (in this instance, by transforming and repurposing existing texts).

Tags:

Web video

Remix

Play

Inventing Audience: Lessons from the Marketing Department

Wise — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 21:57:24 +0000

Author:

Beck Wise

Image Credit:

Image by marc f c, CC BY 2.0 (source).

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students work in groups to invent a person with a complete backstory, to whom they'll address an argument. This assists them to think about identifying a clear and specific ideal audience, as well as how they might tailor an argument to best address their reader.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Invention

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Pre-Writing

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Presentations

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Some way for students to write collaboratively and display their work to the class; I usually use big sheets of papers and markers, but you might also have students compose digitally and display their work using a projector at the front of the classroom.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Students are asked to work in small groups to invent a single person to represent their ideal audience for some argument they wish to put forward. Their person should have a name and comprehensive backstory, and students should be able to identify which of their person's attributes make them a potentially receptive audience for their argument. They'll invent their person in groups of 3 to 5, then nominate one person to present to the class.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Identify an issue about which you want students to make (well, plan) their argument; this might be related to the course topic or a current local issue. I select and bring to class one or two short informational articles about the issue to ensure everyone is on the same page.

You should prepare one or two example 'people' in advance to offer students a model; I generally go with one fairly straightforward example and one that's a bit more off-beat.

Last semester, I did this exercise the week Google Fiber announced plans to expand into Austin, so I adopted that as my theme for the exercise. I invented two people who might be interested in Google Fiber and prepared dot-point summaries of their lives, which I presented to the class as informal narratives:

Stefan, aged 36, is a father of two and has recently returned to work after primarily working in the home for a couple of years while his kids were tiny; now that they're old enough to be in the less-expensive toddlers room at daycare, he's trying to get back into his old field as a web developer, but finding it a bit tough after only booking a couple of freelance gigs in the last five years. In the meantime, he's taken a 30-hour-a-week retail gig to bring in some extra cash and is taking online courses (maybe a MOOC, maybe through the local community college) to refresh his design skills. His partner is a high-powered lawyer, working full-time with a long commute -- and she got accustomed to having Stefan at home the last two years, so tends to bring work home or slack off completely when she gets home. Stefan still carries the main burden of household labour and child-rearing, so dude is BUSY! He tries to keep up on current affairs in tech -- since that's related to his job -- and reads Wired, but generally only catches the in-brief sections in between kid demands, so I'd target my argument there. He'd be interested in Google Fiber to make his online course-taking easier, as well as for the opportunity it offers to park the kids in front of streaming cartoons while he does homework or housework -- it'd also allow him to cut his cable bill in favour of streaming options, saving the household money that could go towards childcare (immediate need) or the kids' college educations (long-term) ... or maybe a much-needed holiday!

Instructions For Students:

Your task, as a group, is to invent a person to whom you might address an argument about our class topic -- which of course means first deciding what argument you want to make. Give your person a name and a backstory, sketching out aspects of their life that give an idea of what kind of person they are and what might make them receptive to your argument.

Write your person's story on the big sheets of paper provided and nominate one group member to introduce your audience member to the class.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This is a zero-stakes in-class exercise in my classroom and stands in isolation; some students carry out this same exercise to invent an audience for later assignments, but I don't require students to make the argument they sketch out in class, nor address the same person.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This lesson plan is adapted from an exercise I employed frequently as the editor of a popular lifestyle magazine and as a marketing consultant for sports organisations I've participated in. As an editor, I used this exercise in new writer orientations and creative/editorial meetings, identifying our core consumer in order to better target our content (and our marketing department did the same thing in order to pitch advertisers); as a marketing consultant, I used it to identify potential new audiences and brainstorm techniques to reach them. I've found that sharing these proven real-world applications increases buy-in substantially.

This also offers a useful lead-in to talking about media kits -- publicly available documents publications produce for potential advertisers which lay out the 'average reader'. These kits are based on both these kinds of exercises and demographic data obtained through consumer surveys, and offer a very clear, very specific idea of the ideal and actual audiences (publications attempt to minimise the gap between the two as much as possible) for a specific publication.

I encourage students to be as creative as they like in both inventing their person and in presenting them; as long as they can justify the inventive choices they've made, they're good to go. For example, in the Google Fiber version of this exercise given above, students invented people ranging from not-so-tech-savvy grannies wanting to Skype family members abroad to West Campus residents sick of their 'net access being slowed down by four roommates all watching Netflix separately, to DJ SparkleBootz, a community college student and strip club DJ who needed superfast internet to keep up with the latest musical trends and to download samples. (This last was presented to the class with a soundtrack selected from someone's smartphone and ended with the revelation that there IS a DJ Sparkleboots living and working in Chicago.)

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

This lesson plan was carried out in RHE306, Rhetoric and Writing -- an introductory course in writing and argumentation.

Tags:

Audience

Marketing