Essential Music For Reading this Blog Post In the 1990s the Odyssey was rebranded for the silver screen and titled Terminator 2: Judgement. Odysseus was named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), and her long journey home is now aided by her tough guy teenaged son and a previously evil cybernetic organism from the future (played by Arnold Read More…
Category: Accessibility
The Great Garby
In my undergraduate and more nerdy days, a piece of advice my professor gave me has been turning over in my mind ever since, “For the last time. No! You cannot pick your groups, and if you ask me again, I will fail you Garby.” These were hard times, especially since Garby wasn’t my name. Read More…
Bridging Gaps in Group Work
Group work and collaboration are buzz words for almost every job on the market right now, but not all industries center writing and communication in the same way that we do as technical communicators. So, how do we expose students in the sciences (for example) to the multifaceted topic of collaboration? In chapter 9 of Read More…
Talking Head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8 (Talking Heads- Once in a Lifetime) For my 3rd consecutive semester, my teaching fellowship has centered upon conveying the professional identity within the Technical Communication classroom. Unlike previous semesters, the classroom polices outlined in the syllabus are explained in severe detail from the first day of class. I project the syllabus on a big Read More…
To Put It Plainly: Plain Language Is Advocacy
~ In her chapter “Engaging Plain Language in the Technical Communication Classroom,” Kira Dreher argues for a framework for teaching technical communication that asks students to use and evaluate plain language and PL strategies. Dreher points out the PL is so important to several industries that we have gone so far as to develop conventions Read More…
Did Anyone else Understand What she Just Said? Plain Language in the Classroom
Students will often glare at me in confusion as I stand before them and attempt to communicate essential rhetorical concepts, and in those moments I am transplanted. I am no longer the teacher of a very tired and very perplexed class, I am the student that sat in ENL 101 and struggled to understand what Read More…
Advocacy in Action
Ethics and Professional Communication As communicators and teachers, it is required of us to create pedagogical practices that are both functional and ethical. And how do we do this? How do we create material that is socio-culturally situated as well as practical? Sarah Warren-Riley describes methodologies that educators can utilize to execute classwork and discourse Read More…
The Accidental Endorsement
The Accidental Endorsement If you’re reading this, then you’re a digital citizen, too. Nice to meet you. Social media is ubiquitous. It’s arguably harder to avoid social media and online communities than it is to grow a following online. Honestly, it goes to show that even when our society occupies the same space– the same Read More…
Reshape your classroom for inclusion
Dr. April Baker-Bell’s Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy uses a methodical and brilliant rhetorical analysis to address the inequalities within the classroom. Dr. Baker-Bell’s chapters “Black language is good on any MLK Boulevard” & “What’s Anti-Blackness Got to Do Wit It?” center around the themes of “white mainstream English” deprives students of Read More…
Don’t Forget the Student’s Mother Tongue
All people from all walks of life, cultural backgrounds, and beliefs should have access to good education. Universities and colleges often claim to celebrate differences and invite everyone in. But what do instructors do when the very thing that universities claim to celebrate, is the very thing keeping students from fully engaging in the Read More…