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.

Stuff For Your Brain at RBC

A few things are happening on the Richard Bland College campus that people may be interested in:

 
• It's summer. Not much is happenening on campus. I'll update when I can.

What is Mnemosyne (ma-az)?

Mnemosyne, commonly referred to as MA-AZ, is Richard Bland College's art and literary publication. I'm co-advisor, in charge of the wordy stuff (as opposed to the more visual stuff). We are an online publication, found at www.ma-az.org and we accept submissions year-round. The "Literature" page has submission guidlines, but we basically accept anything that has to do with words. Submissions are open to RBC students, faculty, and staff. If you're reading this and you want to submit, send a submission to RBCLitMag@gmail.com or isweeney@rbc.edu. Right now, we need submissions and volunteers.

Brainstorming!

I love brainstorming with others. When ideas bounce around the room, it's completely energizing. To top it off, judging from their blogs, students seem to like brainstorming as well as a learning tool. For fun, I took a photo of the board. It may be hard to see here, but here are some ideas from a "family" paper. Kudos to RBC's sociology classes (and others) for getting some killer ideas into the kids' heads.

A Good Day to Die Hard: a brief review

I have a long and personal history with the Die Hard films. I'm confident enough in my Die Hard knowledge to even call myself an expert. If you care about reading about how John McClane was like a father figure for me, search "Daddy Die Hard" on Amazon - it's free. For one reason or another (like my age), I never had the chance to see McClane on the big screen. So I have been looking forward to this movie for a long time and I saw the earliest showing I could find.

I read some early reviews of this film and it didn't look promising. Weak story, dull action, too loud...  these were some of the complaints. I don't know, maybe nostalgia works wonders on me, but I liked it. Sure, there were parts that could've been better. I'm not crazy about the scale of the movie; the greatness of the first one was because of the claustrophobic feel, among other things. I'm also less than impressed with the villains in "A Good Day..."; another piece of greatness from the original was its villain, Hans, who is one of the American Film Institute's top villains of all time. And sure, the newest sequel has some weak plot structure, especially the first 20 or so minutes, when McClane goes to Moscow and happens upon his son (and a bunch of stuff blowing up). Perhaps the biggest let down for me is McClane's loss of reluctance. He's always been sort of reluctant to kill people and do what had to be done, but in here, he's pretty gung-ho.

Then there's the good stuff. Some of the action sequences are a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah, they're not all perfect, but they're still fun. The helicopter is way cool (and brings up some memories from the first movie). Some moments even took a sentimental tone, and they worked well. And the one-liners, the McClane-isms, if you will, were funny and well-timed (much of this was missing from Live Free or Die Hard, the previous sequel). I especially liked the famous Yippee ki yay ... because it was preceded by "The things we do for our kids" and followed by a crazy action-movie/superhero-ish act.

In a nutshell, it's not Citizen Kane, or even the first Die Hard, but it's fun, humorous, and it'll probably induce some nostalgic feelings for fans of the previous films. Bruce has still got it.