What Is BioGlish?

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Are you inspired to save a life?

RBC's chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the national honor society for two-year colleges, will hold a fundraiser softball game on campus. Money raised will benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation that fights breast cancer in a variety of ways. More information on the game and how to register will come soon. In the meantime, check out the donation page here.

This is what I do on Spring Break ...

... I look for cool websites and other things that I can use as intelligence-boosting resources (for me and/or students). I'm a huge fan of Pawn Stars on The History Channel (it's a good thing because they play it ALL THE TIME). The pawn shop dudes often consult a book expert, named Rebecca Romney (I don't know if she's related to Mitt and I don't think I care). Anyway, she has a Facebook "public figure" page where she posts cool things about books and authors. Here's an example of a nerdy and awesome thing she has posted recently:

How about some Whitman, today? Whitman was likely only able to get his Leaves of Grass manuscript first published because he had friends in Brooklyn who owned a press.

Whitman spent a lot of time at the press. He had experience with printing himself and wanted to be in on the project to ensure it reached his high standards. He even set about ten pages of the type himself. Only 795 copies were printed.

She also has a blog.

 

A Great Resource

I just found a great resource for me, a blog-loving professor. http://remixingcollegeenglish.wordpress.com/

Just discovered it and can't stop reading. I'll share more thoughts later.

Taking a Class I Teach

I enrolled in a MOOC (massive open online course) via Coursera. It's English Composition I, which is a class I usually teach. I plan to do all the work, but the reason I signed up is to get a better idea of how a composition class could be taught online. Here's the Coursera link - https://www.coursera.org/#course/composition

Here's a video preview of the course - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppE4ntBbKHs (also embedded below). It seems I share some of the same views as the instructor.

I'm kind of excited.

Now for a little background: I had signed up for another Coursera course, called Fundamentals of Teaching Online, but I've since unenrolled because I found some bad reviews online that turned me off. The course also had a start date of "to be determined" so I moved on. Now, I'm ready to see what all this MOOC stuff is about.

NBA Skills Challenge and Peer Reviews ... a link

Some people reading this may know that I write for The Chronicle of Higher Education. I'm linking to something I wrote over there because it was inspired by some students this semester. Here's a chunk of the post:

"In peer-review sessions, the pressure is on the students. They have to judge and be judged, and too many of them put on the “too cool for school” air (many have the same attitude at other times, but I see it most during peer-review sessions). Like the point guards in the Skills Challenge, it’s the students who don’t care how they look who seem to get the most out of peer reviews, or out of class in general."

Read the whole thing here.