Category Archives: Blog

Rhet/Comp, Durkheim, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Me

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In the last 7 or so weeks as a SIF, I have learned more than I ever imagined I would.

A few weeks ago, I decided to write an article featuring the SIF program. In a stroke of benevolence, Brennan gave me permission to spend some of my hours developing the article. So I set to work – basing the article on a footnote I harvested from Emile Durkheim’s sociologically ground breaking book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life written in 1912:

“A tool is material accumulated capital.”

When I read that note, I knew I was going to use it for something – but I wasn’t sure what – until I began to read Writing Teachers Writing Software by rhetoric and composition scholar Paul LeBlanc.

The article I wrote went live this morning at 3am on Hybrid Pedagogy. Here is the link:

Addressing the Elephant: The Importance of Infrastructure

Designing for Tools

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This morning the Tools Wiki team had a meeting with Brennan Collins to discuss our design research for the project. I must say, we came up with some pretty great stuff. Mostly, I’m impressed with the amazing ideas my team has – Go Team!

Ultimately, we decided to use edublogs because of the features the different themes afford us. We each chose a different theme and 3 tools to feature and we set to work playing with the sites. Below are links to the 3 pages we built – all experimenting with things that edublogs can do:

Roxanne: http://sites.gsu.edu/rgreesontools/

Wasfi: http://sites.gsu.edu/wmomentools/

Me: https://sites.gsu.edu/vrobin1/

As you can see, each has a distinct look and feel and even the menus act differently, which is our biggest struggle. We have decided to go with Roxanne’s theme, which is called ‘fifteen’ and she is going to play with the menu functionality to see what she can get the theme to do.

Please check back for updates on the tools wiki progress.

Getting Started

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Yesterday I met Monique McGee, my now co-editor of the main SIF (Student Innovation Fellowship) blog. We sat down to talk about the direction our blogs, and the main blog, would take over the course of this SIF induction. In case I haven’t yet mentioned, we are the first SIFs ever. Not Monique and I alone – there are about 18 (guestimation on my part) of us. And we’ll all be getting started, bumping around in the night, together.

A few things I learned from our very first meeting, which also included our new colleague Ramsundar Sundarkumar, called simply Ram (I’ll link his blog as soon as I can), include the following:

1. It’s going to be fun to be a SIF. There is a sense of humor in the office that is subtle, dry, and referential to a lot of the pop culture I already love.

2. Anything could happen this year. ANYthing – could happen this year.

We are all on this journey to explore innovation – we all have different skills – we all want to learn as much as possible.

If I had a seat-belt here in my kitchen where I am currently standing and writing, I would strap myself in.