JC's End-Of-The-Semester Reflections: A Mini-Series (1st Episode)

It would seem I am cursed to constantly relearn what it’s like to walk out of the classroom on the last day of class as an instructor rather than a student. As a student, the work is over—you’ve just completed the things that have not-so-politely been chewing about your head and shoulders. The monster of the final paper is dead—long live the end of a semester. I am, however, not remotely done; there are over sixty-five papers waiting to be graded on my desk, and a myriad of digital projects waiting to be downloaded and graded in my e-mail. So, like any sane person participating in academe as a student or otherwise, I’m stalling. And I know that stalling is a piss-poor idea because I know that another fifty or so paper ‘re-writes’ will be arriving before Friday this week. I’ve always had a policy that students could rewrite or recreate any project they feel could be better, and by that they take me to mean, any project they want a better grade on. Normally, a terribly small amount of folks take me up on that proposal. You remember being a student, it’s physically painful to reopen a project you’ve already turned in. But these Miami University kids are wild, yo! Well over half of them rewrite everything they don’t get an A on—bloody everything. It’s turned into a weird game that I don’t think they’ve figured out they’re playing. I write my comments, then get ready to record the grade (something I already despise doing), when I have to stop and have a little conversation with my pen:

“If you write the letter B, they’re only going to do it again. Why not just give them the A now and end it?” I ask.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” says pen. “No one’s looking and they never believe a word I say anyway.”

The subtle guilt trip always works, and I let the pen give the paper a B. It’ll be back.

But that’s not at all what I was interested in asking some of you. It’s true that I find myself simultaneously overwhelmed and lazy at the end of the semester, but it’s the holidays. Who doesn’t feel the pull of those two creative forces this time of year.

In an effort to feel like I’m not completely ignoring the stacks of student work all over my life, I’ve been doing some reflecting about a few issues I chose to ignore during the semester. One particular issue is bothering me because of a great project I found through Alex Reid’s blog (digital diggs) called the social media classroom. It rocks. Harold Rheingold, it’s creator, explains “that [the project] provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools.” There’s little students can’t do. Nearly every form of media that students may or may not use is interconnected and easily accessible to exploit as they explore what it means to compose their own texts, and more importantly create a voice, even an identity for what gets called ‘New Media.’ (I’ve found too many definitions of that to know what it might actually refer to). “New Media” has its problems of course. It’s no secret that the web and digital communication, “Web 2.0” stuff, is generally employed by market capitalism. I think students are more aware of this than ‘we’ often give them credit for. And I agree, to some extent, that digital communication may not be fulfilling its promise to bring us closer together and give more voices power. I think what troubles me presently with projects like this one, and classes like mine that are built around what can be accomplished with New Media is what they might do to students perceptions of things like blogs, wikis, digital video sharing, and the like. It seems to me, regardless of how interestingly professors and instructors employ New Media in the classroom (and some people are doing wildly cool things), it’s still the classroom. That is, what happens to blogs, even social networking sites, when English (or otherwise) teachers get a hold of them? As it stands, the web is a space slightly free of the institution the classroom belongs to, which puts students (and teachers) in a place without prescription. No one is sure of the rules in these spaces, and that generates a lack of assumed expectations or discomfort, which can lead to sincere learning (sometimes). But what happens to these spaces as they get rolled into academe? What happens to a student’s perception of digital media when a ‘clever’ assignment requires that student to create a Facebook page and write about the rhetorical choices they made in a effort to generate an online identity? I’m concerned.

I’m not only concerned about the digital projects I’ve got in mind for next semester’s class, I’m concerned about the two graphic novels we’re reading. My hope is to use them as examples of fragmentation and the affect of New Media on the ‘old.’ But I also love graphic novels and the last thing I want to do is turn them into “those books we read in that class.” I believe in bringing every piece of popular culture I can get my hands on into the classroom. It makes what we do relevant and real; it helps my students look past what I want. But I’m under no allusion that we (my students and I) can escape the fact that most everything we bring into the classroom will be a little tainted by to ooze of academe.