Comments on: Contemporaneity

By: mike

mike — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:56:56 +0000

Joanna, I’ve taken your suggestion, in a way: I’ve used the mid-semester evals to put together the Essay 4 assignment. The “wild card” thing would have been unmanageable in terms of evaluative criteria, but I think I’ve managed to combine 80% of my students’ course eval suggestions into something that looks like a workable essay assignment. But, yes, they’re a little apprehensive.

And that negative filter suggestion is brilliant. That’s gonna be something that gets them started when they don’t know how to revise.

I’d love to hear any feedback you might offer on the remix assignment.

By: joanna

joanna — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:57:19 +0000

If they are as brilliant as you say they are, why not ask then to tailor their own writing assignments based what most interests each one of them? You could either ask them to develop their own assignment, or you could develop the assignment as a wild card, with whatever parameters you deem fit.

Or ask them to write an essay that is the complete opposite of what you’ve been teaching them. Or write badly on purpose. Or ask them to interview seniors who had you as a prof and ask them what were the most useful, valuable things that you taught them as freshmen.

Regarding remixing contemporaneity–have the students take digital photos of themselves and then put a negative filter on them and investigate, in essay form, what has been left out of the picture regarding their examination of themselves in pop culture. Put the photo in sepia filter and ask them to speculate about what part of the contemporary will remain with them in the years to come. Us the idea of filtering as a metaphor.
Or not.

By: mike

mike — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:11:14 +0000

Argh. I shoulda known that. Somewhere, my Latin teacher is scowling at me. But I do know that the ‘e’ — as in ‘vitae’ — is genitive singular rather than nominative plural, to indicate “course of life.” Which I think is why people drop the e when they drop the curriculum and refer to “my vita“: they’re talking about a life, not an of-life.

OK, so does anybody want to help me with a writing assignment?

By: michelle

michelle — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:42:01 +0000

That’s what I was going to say! The “e” after vita for plural, I thought. (Just what you wanted after that thoughtful lengthy post, right? An answer to the plurality of a CV question. ;))

By: Dorothea Salo

Dorothea Salo — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:45:57 +0000

It’s just the one life, so “curricula vitae” should do.