Write acrostic this______

Willingness to get on the big scary ride at the carnival, no fear, no whining, all guts.

Righteous fists raised to convey the dazzling power we grab through learning.

It only makes sense that the commons we create, creates us back.

Teaching. It happens even when we don’t know it or understand it.

I‘m a teacher. I teach. I’m into teaching thinking and stretching and breathing.

Not making connections across academic boundaries–that sucks.

Good to know I’m not alone–I got my commons, and my commons has got my back.

 

Alone no more because I have no borders; I’m surrounded by no seas; I feel no disconnection; I am no island.

Commons-base peer production. I’m into it.

Reading across the curriculum is as important as writing across the curriculum. I mean it.

One. Singular sensation. Every little step she takes. One. Thrilling combination. Every move that she makes. One smile and suddenly nobody else will do. You know you’ll never be lonely with you know who. One moment in her presence, and you can forget the rest, for the girl is second best to none, son. Oooh. Sigh. Give her your attention. Do I really have to mention? She’s the one. Elizabeth Gilbert.

Students.

Students.

 

Taking our words and freely letting go of our hold of them so they may see their true potentials.

Helping bridge disciplinary gaps–oh yeah–that’s what we’re all about: dancing smoothly around in every discipline we can imagine–just to spread the word, and the word is an acronym: WAC.

Exhausted by working too much, too long, too hard trying to see how everything is connected; maybe, perhaps, occasionally, once in awhile, sometimes fission is better than fusion.

 

Communicating across the curriculum. That matters, too.

Uhriah Heep is the best worst villain ever. (Sorry, you know how I feel about Dickens.)

Reiterative processes happen a lot, in writing, in decision-making, in learning.

Right. I mean: write.

Inquiry across disciplines–what couldn’t be done weaving through disciplines?

Crossing borders, boundaries, disciplinary lines.

Under pressure always, but we can dream of being graceful despite that, right?

Like this. (Or is it wrong to like one’s own text?!)

Unusual growth happened to me this summer because I was part of this course on writing across the curriculum–8 weeks of insane growth–mind imploding, soul soaring, spirit stirring, attitude adjusting.

My gratitude knows no bounds–thank you, students and friends, all of you who made this one of the best eight weeks of teaching/learning I’ve ever had.

Going 90, I ain’t scar-ied…

Of course, Cool Hand Luke had to come into the conversation, just as did the Jackson Five and Star Wars. Always. I used to use Cool Hand Luke to teach close reading (it’s remarkably easy to do this for freshman–shoot, for anyone). And you know why I do this? Because my comp 2 teacher did the same thing for me, and it was the first time I EVER got textual analysis or close reading, of any kind, literary or rhetorical. In fact, Cool Hand Luke is the one film I can watch over and over again and think every time, “Yep, a Warner Bros. prison film helped me become an English major.”

Prior to the confluence of being a math major, history major, dance major and taking a comp 2 class, I was certain of several things: 1) I couldn’t write my way out of a wet paper sack with a bazooka; 2) I hated writing; 3) I had no idea what analysis was and wouldn’t have been caught dead doing such a thing. But then that thing happened to me: I made a bunch of connections between disciplines. I’m been traveling that path a long time now. Mashing up. I just never thought of my life as a mash-up before, but it is. I like that. I see a smashed and double fried plantain as a metaphor for my existence: essentially very nutritious but I needed some serious treatment before being palatable. Little sea salt and I’m fabulous.

Okay, so what does that have to do with now? I’ll get there eventually.

Paul Newman, the star of Cool Hand Luke, sings a song at one point with a banjo–not particularly well-played but heartfelt: “Plastic Jesus.” He sings because his mama just died. It’s a poignant moment in the film. And on some days, I weep with him, but no matter how I feel, I appreciate the grit he displays at the end of the song–a dogged determination that gives us a clue about his character’s end. He will not give into the system; he will not cave; he will not shift his pugilistic world view to align with the authority figures in his life that have failed to communicate (a key concept in the film). He will continue to go 90 and be unafraid. He’s heartbroken but he is undefeated. There’s a difference.

Lyrics:

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
‘Long as I got my Plastic Jesus
Sittin’ on the dashboard of my car.
Comes in colors, pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark ’cause it’s iridescent
Take it with you when you travel far.

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sittin’ on a
Pedestal of abalone shell.
Goin’ 90, I ain’t scar-ied [it sounds like “scary” when he sings it–but it’s written this way]
‘Cause I got the Virgin Mary
Assurin’ me that I won’t go to Hell.

There are multiple versions of the lyrics, but this is what Newman sings in the film.

[Spoiler Alert–skip the next few sentences and go directly to the video if you ever want to watch the film and not be disappointed by knowing the end.]

I love that Luke doesn’t give up or give in. Of course, he’s shot in the neck at the end and dies. A horrific metaphor for his “failure to communicate,” really for so many moments where communication fails. It’s a perfect film to use to teach writing, textual analysis, literary analysis, film analysis. I love it. But it’s a grim prison movie–not a pretty film.

And I love this song. Apparently, it was written as a goof, but it’s been recorded several times by a wide range of artists from the folksy to the punkish (in 2005 by Billy Idol–holy rock and roll–I about fell out of my chair when I learned that—BILLY IDOL). He does have great hair.

Billy Idol (in concert in 2006, photo by JohnBrennan06)

I think I’ve always liked the “Plastic Jesus” song because it’s part of the film that changed my academic life and it reminds me of an hour-long cab ride I took up the Mexican coast once. I didn’t want to get in the first cab in line… there was a bullet hole in the windshield… from the inside out. Looked like it might have come from the backseat, angled just over the shoulder of the driver. I swear. But one of my friends pointed out that a plastic Virgin Mary was perched on the dashboard, so we would probably be fine. So into the taxi I got, and it was a wild ride–think New York cabbie in a hurry on mountain roads with no guard rails and a cab with no seat belts. At some points, we were doing over 90 on straightaways. NASCAR had nothing on this dude. We slammed from side to side on the slick vinyl bench seat in the back (there were three of us) and looked out the windows onto canyons far, far below us. (Like seat belts would make a difference if we’d careened down a 1,000 foot cliff.) The driver honked every time he approached a blind curve because he would not slow down and the roads were really not wide enough for two cars, so it was a generous gesture on his part toward other drivers. Yep. That’s what it was.

How could I not always feel a fondness for plastic religious iconography? Well, I don’t mean icons, exactly, but you know what I mean–elaborate metaphors for a godly protectorate. And I mean no disrespect to any belief system based on Jesus or the Virgin Mary, but the facts remain that the song exists, Paul Newman sang it, the cab in Manzanilla had a plastic Virgin Mary on the dash. And the song reminds me of the film AND how hard it is to write, how afraid I was, how I avoided it for years, and that the most unexpected things bring us comfort.

You know this: you have to want to write. I can’t make students do it; you can’t make other people do it; if you teach, you can’t make your students do it. You can assign it, but students may or may not do it. Sure, they might do it, but they might not put their hearts into it. That’s the like the subtle difference between heartbreak and defeat. Folks have to want to do something in order to do it and do it well. Paul Newman’s character, Luke, cannot be made to do anything in the end. When he feels like working hard, he does. When he feels like placating The Man, he does. He’s beaten and abused and hurt, but he is not defeated. He fakes it for awhile, or so we want to believe that’s what a momentary breakage means, but he is a “hard case” as he describes himself–unable to be persuaded into action or inaction. And he cannot communicate with others, nor they with him.

We all have to do things we don’t want to do that are hard, but writing has gotten a whole lot easier over the years. Writing in public, too. I make mistakes all the time. When I was being officially observed by my boss I said the same wrong thing several times before a student corrected me with a gentle question about what exactly I meant. Good heavens. I could have died right then, but I just blew it off as something I couldn’t change and plowed on. Writing in a blog is less frightening than it used to be. It’s just a part of me–not all of me. I have to write so many memos. I dread it… every week. But there it is. I do cave in, and we all have to, in some degree, in order to work or collaborate–I think of it all as grand compromise for the betterment of all. The most important part of powering through a rough patch is that we become better communicators, right? When you can articulate something, anything, and someone gets it, that’s the reward for sometimes doing what we wish we could avoid. (I’m really really really tired and have another class I am starting to teach tomorrow–and I miss you all so much already.)

We get to do an end-around our own unhappy tasks because we do this writing for ourselves, for our own growth, and we side step failure to communicate in this class and through studying theories of WAC and what it means to be open to writing across/through/in the disciplines–what it means to be open and embrace open. We don’t have to fail at communication. It doesn’t really matter what good luck charm I tote around (I do have a few actually–even one in my purse–and wore a medal of St. Anthony of Padua for about 15 years–Roman Catholic patron saint of lost things), or what items any of us use as feel-good symbols, the act of writing, right now in our blogs for this class, prevents a failure to communicate.

As we go 90 (and we all are, aren’t we?), we don’t need to be “scar-ied” because our success at writing across the curriculum, in this very moment, saves us from that.

Interesting the way the writer of these lyrics chose to insert the hyphen just there between “scar” and “ied”… isn’t it?

Hmmm.

Writing, writing, writing: Writing machine

And so it all comes back to the Jackson Five. You knew I’d get there eventually. Please just substitute “writing” for “dancing,” and for the pronoun “she,” please substitute “they”–meaning, of course, us. (There will be some trouble when we get to “sexy lady,” but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.)

And you knew I’d eventually get back to boy bands: MJ and NSync. Not sure pop gets better than this.

My favorite might be the “Soul Train“* performance, but if you watch enough of the videos of “Dancing Machine” on Youtube, you could join in with the dancing, er, uh, I mean, writing, or do I mean singing?

*I watched a retrospective on “Soul Train” recently; if you are unfamiliar with this phenomenal show, you should change that. (I think it was on VH1.) So much I learned about dancing came from watching this show and its dancers when I was very very very young. I never went to a party in high school that didn’t have a line dance, not the Country/Western kind of line dance, though (not that there’s anything wrong with that–did a few in my day)–and by the by, all this line dancing is very Victorian and pre-Victorian–it probably comes from the ancient Egyptians or the Xia Dynasty. I had a mad crush on Don Cornelius (it was a lot like my crush on Frank Sinatra–I really needed to forget his personal life to keep loving what he did for a living). And, since I’m in the confession mode, I always thought Al Green was singing just to me. Still do (just look at him–he’s singing to you, too–he’s a master).

Is dancing text? Maybe. It’s meant to convey meaning and can often do that–emotion, argument, desire, worry, hope, sheer abandon.

Singing is certainly text because, well, it’s writing, but dancing? I think it could be, if we say communication is text or text is communication… if one is illiterate, do the cave paintings become text? Do cathedral windows become text? Do coins become text? If you can’t read words, and pictures are how you learn, maybe text is visual, maybe text is musical, maybe text is about how we connect, not what we use to connect. Hmmm.

Posts by a few of our bloggers have connected dancing to WAC and fascinated me, of course, because I’m a huge fan of dance and WAC and open and learning… and making connections. This one on moving across the curriculum, and this one referencing being wrong and dancing, and this one on connections and SYTYCD, and any one you choose about Sir Ken Robinson and Gillian Lynne.

Many of you have linked science and WAC, learning and WAC, and the connections are stunning. Wordsometimescapeme has mentioned in comments about how reading each blog and our postings on Bb is an incredible way to connect to each other and to learn. We’ve been making connections between blogs like crazy–and making intellectual connections like there’s no tomorrow (loved the one on cliches.)

We are part of a movement of people exploring WAC–and that makes us part of that movement altogether. It does. You might not have thought of it that way before, but we’re in it now.

Movement, of course, is a relevant word for us: we are studying a movement–more than one actually, and we are part of more than one movement. We are WAC. We are OER. We’re moving forward.

Move on, move over, move out, move up. And perhaps, mash up.

As writing machines, we do all those things.

Argue with me, I dare you

As usual, I’m deeply inspired by what my students are doing. Please visit their blogs (see blogroll to the right). They are watching Ted videos on nurturing creativity, innovation in education, reading essays from Writing Spaces–the open educational resource we love to love, and tripping off into the realms of their prior knowledge making connections to what they knew, thought they knew, what they’ve just learned, and how that matters.

I always had a hard time arguing because I was trained to be such a sweet and quiet child–be seen, not heard, don’t whine, don’t beg, don’t annoy, hush, chew with your mouth closed, be polite, no cussing, walk–don’t run, hurry up, sit still, quit fidgeting, pay attention, don’t talk, talk up–I can’t hear you when you mumble. And so on. NEVER argue with an adult–that was essentially the message. That meant never be sassy and do what I was told, always. (I’m not saying the training worked; I’m just saying it happened.)

What I didn’t know when I was younger was that arguments could be reasonably constructed conversations that acknowledge multiple perspectives that might actually lead both parties (or more) into a new land of discovery and enlightenment. I thought they were screaming matches that happened when one couldn’t repress emotions anymore and happened once or twice a year when parents planned family vacations.

I still don’t like to argue or even consciously construct arguments. I like thinking in patterns, not always in a linear manner, to get to a point, but I don’t always think of my writing as argument. But let’s face it: everything is an argument, including the gaudy Hawaiian shirt I put on this morning.

But frankly, I want to pontificate: “Here is this knowledge–yes, this is it–ta da!–please accept this awfully fab gift from me to you.” Because pronouncement is easy (blush and grin). It is. And I can do it pretty easily because that’s what I learned how to do as a teacher by watching most of my teachers work out on me. I had a lot of classes where I wasn’t allowed to ask questions–only allowed to take notes. And it’s easy to “just say,” did I say that? Just state what is and be done with it. (See instructions for how I was supposed to behave as a child.)

Now I sort of futz around with ideas in public, throw some out there, suggest readings in a certain order, comment here and there, make some connections, hope everyone else makes connections. With this blog, I am sort of replacing the traditional lecture form–but not really.  I’d never say all this in class–or I hope not! I really love that we have this form of communication. I’m still thinking and sharing with students, but it’s at their convenience, not mine, and questions can be asked anytime, any place: here, in email, through our CMS on campus (Blackboard), in the f2f portion of our class, and if I ever answered my phone in my office, there, too. And the best part is that I can learn as I go.

Even though, I find that talking on and on about one topic for a whole class period can even bore me, I occasionally still do it, I must confess… particularly in a class where I need to introduce a lot in a hurry, but I have to have visuals or charts or something; without some markers, even I can get lost. I need more road signs than spoken words, to lay out the path to possible arguments.

That’s where I’m at now: I see possible arguments and want to just show them to visitors. Sort of like giving a tour of argumentative methods at the Argument Zoo: “Here on your right, you’ll see the Toulmin method–don’t get too close, you might get the willies. Over on your left, and just down a bit, you’ll find Rogerian argument taking full advantage of its proximity to the Fallacy House. As we pass the cafe, you’ll notice on the right, the Socratic method–it’s a little scary–DO NOT throw peanuts. Sit down, please, and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.” In a content class, I feel the same way: “Check out the WAC over here and the WID just behind it. This is a rare moment, folks, you’ll want to have your cameras ready because these aren’t always in the same place and don’t always play well together.” Or: “Welcome to the Victorian Literature Tour. Today, we’ll be looking at _________. Please don’t touch the art, thank you. Notice ________. Check out ________.”

It’s about me pointing the way, and students going down the path, but then forging their own paths. Not so easy to do in a jungle without a machete. But in my world, writing is the big, nasty sword that cuts the path to understanding. Maybe I should make that part of the prerequisites for my classes: must have own metaphorical machete.

What I get now about argument, so nicely pointed out here in, “An Argument is Not a War,” and here, “Great Argument, Thanks!” is that argument is knowledge-making. And I’m all about that.

Here is my haiku for today:

Students make me think

of the possibilities

for a questing soul.

Thanks for all the great arguments you’ve been making in your blogs and on Bb. It’s all making me happy. Arguing with me and with others is the way you are creating new knowledge that we can all share. As Captain Pike says in the latest Star Trek movie (2009), while making an argument to James T. Kirk that Kirk should join the Federation, enlist in Starfleet, and go to the Academy: “You can settle for an ordinary life… I dare you to do better.” Every class you take, every writing task you undertake is a kind of dare you give yourself: “I can settle for average, but I dare myself to do better.”

Does a dare that is accepted at the end of an argument mean that it was an effective argument? Not sure I care. I just really love that part of the movie and, I’m 100% sure I don’t mind that the whole thing is all about the pathos… a little bit of ethos, but it’s not much. Pike pushes all the right emotional buttons, and Kirk goes on to the save the universe 100 times over. Well, a fictional universe, but you know what I mean.

Argument is not only creative, it can save the universe.

(Or is that just another pathetic argument?)

Why I eschew anguish

As a writer, I refuse to engage with anguish for very long periods at a time, and if I can pull it off, rarely. Never would be great, but I’m human. I had about six weeks this spring where I just didn’t want to write anything–see me stomping a foot on the ground with my bottom lip stuck out and whining, “I will not write.” But I wasn’t anguished over it. It felt great to be peevish and selfish and bratty. Honest. Yet, earlier in the year, I did feel some anguish. I felt like I might meet a deadline, and was almost ill over it. In 2006, when I thought I’d miss a deadline for writing, I cried. It’s painful sometimes to anguish over writing. I wish I had a reliable genius, but she’s flaky.

My disembodied genius sometimes shows up, and I find fabulous things to say, and sometimes, not so much. Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept of genius does, indeed, sync with my sense of human flourishing (eudaimonia) (Ken Robinson mentions human flourishing in his second talk), so I’m at peace with this concept of there being something greater than me that infuses my performance, sometimes. Only sometimes. I like to think I have something to do with it: stubborn, dogged, vicious, sometimes ugly persistence.

So my anguish over writing, well, it just doesn’t really happen to the point of stopping me from trying. Like Sir Ken Robinson says when talking about schools killing creativity, if we’re afraid of having a go–what happens to us? Nothing. That’s what happens.

Anguish and nothing, or eschew anguish and possibility?

Oh, the latter is so much better for me. And once in a great while, my genius brings it, and sometimes, my genius is lame. But why should I let suffering hamper my creative life if I want to be creative? I do want to live a creative life, so I’m not daunted, I’m not afraid, and I just keep showing up to do my job, to do my dance.

As a teacher, this is more important to me than any methods I’ve learned for teaching, any educational psychology I might have studied, anyTHING. I have to show up and do my dance, so that my students can learn how to do the dances they need to do.

Part of my dance is ensuring my students aren’t comfortable (sorry), that the class is wildly creative and oddly structured (sorry), that everyone writes a ton (sorry), and that no assignment is strictly controlled so that everyone has a chance to do their dance (not sorry for that). I sort of believe if I push and push and throw out crazy connections and engender “aha” moments, then students can do their jobs, which might make their geniuses show up more frequently. That’s a good theory–the more we show up to work, the more our geniuses feel like coming to party.

Don’t you think geniuses want love, too?

The part I play in the learning revolution is that I want thinking from my students, not just work. I want the brilliance of every student to be revealed through the writing they do, through the creative process, through the connections they make, through the thinking they do individually and collaboratively.

So, is this class innovative learning? Is this a hard class? You’ll be able to decide, not me. I always have fun and learn a lot–I’m not a good judge. What I do know is I sure think innovation is hard–and it’s scary for me and for you. It’s not normal, and it can be a hit or a miss–mostly that depends on what happens AFTER I do my dance.

Mostly, what you get from your education is about you–and you eschewing anguish. One of the reasons I like Sir Ken talking about linearity and how that doesn’t work so well for education is that he understands fast food education is not healthy if over done, but haute cuisine, the chef’s special, the meal made from the best ingredients from the field that day–that can change how your body works, how you feel, even how long you live. Of course, the body is a metaphor for our learning, our brains, but it’s a strong metaphor, more elaborately linked than many metaphors might be: mind, body, spirit kind of linkage.

In his talk, “Bring on the Learning Revolution,” Sir Ken quotes Abraham Lincoln and W.B. Yeats, too. I’m including the whole bit from Lincoln (a short intro, and the part Sir Ken quotes is in bold) and then the poem from Yeats, follows:

Washington, D.C., December 1, 1862

One month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln sent a long message to Congress which was largely routine, but also proposed controversial measures such as voluntary colonization of slaves and compensated emancipation.

Lincoln devoted so much attention to preparing the message that his friend David Davis said, “Mr. Lincoln’s whole soul is absorbed in his plan of remunerative emancipation.” The concluding paragraphs shown below demonstrate Lincoln’s passion for this plan and contain some of the most famous statements he ever wrote.

I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I, in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of respect yourselves, in any undue earnestness I may seem to display.

Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here–Congress and Executive–can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise–with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We–even we here–hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just–a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

At the end of the talk, Sir Ken quotes W.B. Yeats–a poem he wrote for Maud Gonne:

“Cloths of Heaven“

by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

It is perhaps the juxtaposition of these two texts that so moves me (and which I’ve taught together before), that so resonates with what I think I’m doing in the classroom–what I want to believe I’m doing–securing openings through which we all may pass to find what we need beyond one single moment. Both these quotes are worth remembering when we are frightened of the demands made upon us as humans, as teachers, as students. No fear.

May we always think anew, act anew, rise with the occasion, as we need to, and may we always tread softly on each others’ dreams, eschewing anguish all along the way.

May each of us flourish as humans–whatever it takes, whatever that means, for each of us.

Stop and smell the chlorine

It’s summer. We need to have some relaxing moments. And while I wish I had access to a salt water pool still, I will not dismiss the good of any water I can plunge into, even if it’s chlorinated. I need photosynthesis in the spring, summer, and fall to make it through the winter. Not sure how I managed when I lived on the 43rd parallel in Boise, Idaho. I didn’t last long there, though. I appreciate the lakes and rivers I could dip into and raft on, but the water was pretty cold until July and August, and then, still chilled a bit more than I’d prefer. I’m in love with the South and the warm waters of the South: fresh, salted, or chemically altered.

Periodic Table of Elements & Cl, Chlorine

You’ll see here that chlorine is a chemical on the Periodic Table of Elements (PTE)–upper right in yellow, second down from the top, “Cl” is just a bit more bold than the others. I love this stuff: charts, categories. I memorized the PTE when I was in high school chemistry. Why? Because I was one of those kids–I counted everything. In church on Sundays, I could tell you how many light bulbs were in the whole church, how many squares in the barrel-vaulted ceiling, how many railings at the alter, the number of pews. And when I couldn’t pay attention in school, I counted things and memorized them. Mrs. Frye sat me right next to the PT chart (which was smaller then, by the by), and so that’s what I did.

I love what the web has done for the PTE. There are dynamic PTEs (linked above) and entirely new ways of looking at this information that makes up the guts of our world. Data visualization makes me so happy. I love this sort of thing (visual learner). This is one of my favorite alternate models of the PTE:

Periodic Spiral of Elements: Wheeeee

In just a few minutes, I’m going to go out and smell the chlorine as I swim for a bit. It’s summer, we have to have some moments when we stop thinking, writing, working, dusting, cooking, managing, fretting. My moments include photosynthesis–hence, the photo that will be my theme this summer: a corner of a pool.

I would stop and smell the roses, but the chlorine sort of takes over. Sometimes, it’s best to just give into “better living through chemicals.” At least I can see to the bottom of the pool and don’t have to worry about creatures from the deep coming up to snatch at my legs. EEEK.

In the rush and fuss of working and school and family, it’s good to find a time to rejuvenate. Don’t forget why you’re doing what you’re doing and give yourself a break now and then.

Or find something fun to occupy your brain for awhile…

If you like data visualization, like I do, then you’ll want to visit this guy’s site: David McCandless’s Information is Beautiful. He’s got a Ted.com talk, too. If we do writing across the curriculum, then this guy does visualization across the curriculum.

Stop and smell the chlorine whenever you can. But not too much–it’s toxic to humans.

Read this and learn seven things (could be more)

If you’re reading this, then you will learn seven cool things that will help you pull together and contextualize the conglomeration of reading and viewing expected between today and Wed., June 15. Everything we’re doing in the next week is about connecting WAC and OER. This link to Educause also appears in the “Got OER?” page here, just after Open Michigan. Check this out: 7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbook Publishing.

Want to teach? Do a better job with OER. Do it with open textbooks. Do it with an open textbook YOU create.

Want to get into publishing? Know where this open and/or digital business is going–think beyond what you have grown up knowing. Think Star Trek.

Want to see the future? It’s here. And here. And here. And here. I mean here, in the Blogroll to the right. The future is you. Know everything you can about the power of your mind, your voice, your words. Then get yourself out there and share what you learn. The future–despite it being you–is going to be challenging, but you’ll know the right questions to ask and, perhaps, how to think about getting at the right answers because you were part of a group who learned to learn together.

Writing across the curriculum is a theory, a method of instruction; it’s got a history, a present, a future; it’s got real-life applications that we’ll study through looking at individual university programs; it’s got real-life applications for each one of us–and an impact on who we are–even if it’s just being part of the learning commons we are making here. WAC isn’t just about writing; it’s about freedom and possibility and contentment and thinking and peace and chaos and great conversation; it’s about everything because writing is about anything.

Writing is what I do. It’s what you do. It’s how we think and learn and share–no matter what we’re focused on: literature, biology, writing, education, science fiction, graphic design, golf, or massage therapy. It’s a commons we’re creating here, no doubt about it, a commons of thinkers about writing and what we are learning and how our knowledge production and that knowledge has rhetorical velocity. We’re a commons, and commoners have power and ancient rights.

We aren’t alone, by the way, in our quest for getting, making, and sharing knowledge. Being a commoner rocks–we’re in mighty fine company.

EVERYONE should be writing & making connections

I had to link these two ideas because I was inspired from our Blackboard discussion.

Here’s where my thinking went after dropping into Bb: when I took a directed study in 19th c. British Imperial History and Women (a lot of years ago), I was required to submit 8 pages of writing per week to my professor. I started calling these papers my “In which I make connections” papers. They were variously named:

• In which I make connections among war reporting, war art (illustration and painting), and women’s rights
• In which I make connections between Italian and British political policy in the 1850s
• In which I make connections between religion and science in the literature of war
• In which I make connections among the poets Byron, Shelley, Barrett Browning, and Tennyson–on war and liberty

And so on. My professor had a good laugh over my conceit and enjoyed the Victorian-ness of such titles. Mainly those papers were the kinds of musings I enjoy writing, like the writing in my blog–thinking based on a wide range of reading and a total lack of disciplinary boundaries to reign it in. Freedom. Always been appealing to me. (I think that’s why I am drawn to certain writers–Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens–they evoke, embody, the desire of freedom through their writing, and sometimes actually engender freedom in the world they lived in.)

I like making connections between vast bases of knowledge–between things one might not think connect at all. And yet, what is everything made of–molecules, atoms, quarks, strings, whatever–and do we not all connect with everything on some level then? Patterns matter and are everywhere: fractals. Can’t really get away from Mandelbrot, even if you want to.

So the making of connections is inherent in us, yes? Thinking across disciplines, around and within, and through the curriculum seems so wise and natural then to me–so why not make writing part of that? That’s a lot of what we’ll be reading about in this course in which we will be making connections. A whole passel of connections–that’s what we’ll be making.

And that’s the sort of synthesis several of you have mentioned is at or near the top of the list on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Synthesis is hard, man, it’s so hard. It takes the most effort, the most background knowledge, the most commitment, the most conversation, the most reading, the most willingness, the most most most. And the most writing. If we can come to our thinking through writing, and we most certainly can (sometimes), then we can synthesize and create new knowledges we can then share. What the university is all about–the creative process. Creation is a kind of synthesis. When we share that creation, we enable a better future.

“EVERYONE should be writing” is right. If everyone was writing, and in conversation with one another, what could be accomplished? Well, a revolution in computer code has already happened. So have online communities many of you have mentioned that help us do a lot of things: caring, questing, talking, learning, helping.

What is that all about: connections. Making connections between people possible without the rigors and time of travel. I am passionate about my friends in England as I am about my ones here–I just don’t physically hang out in the same location as my English friends too often.  But we talk on Facebook and through email all the time, and we read each other’s blogs. Shoot, sometimes I talk more to my friends in Montgomery via Facebook than I do in person–we have jobs and kids.

The way everyone is thinking in this class already has kept me wanting to dip into this blog constantly to write about anything and everything. I feel connected, and we’ll only get more connected as we go. EVERYONE should be writing and making connections, and we sure are–to each other, to our interests, to other classes, to the world.

Nice.