Sometimes blogging is all about saving things to consider more carefully later. That’s one of the things I like best about Steven D. Krause’s blog, stevendkrause.com. He meticulously saves up links for future classes so that when it is time to do the course prep, he has a stockpile of material to choose from. With that in mind, I’m saving Lifehacker’s post on How to Manage a Group Project in Google Wave. Note for those without a Google Wave invitation: the post contains a link to the site’s invitation donation thread.
Another thing I’m saving for future use is Gizmodo’s post on the iPhone app,CatPaint. Their sample photos could be used to deal with visual rhetoric and teaching it by using a image manipulation project. Specifically, sometimes, less often than in the past, but still more often than expected, sometimes students take up a “that computer stuff is way too complicated for me” stance that can block projects that mean learning new-to-them software. Involving them in a multimodal writing project means finding ways to get them over the “I can’t do this” hump. The way iPhone apps simplify the process for what in the past have been very complex tasks could help. The outrageous appeal of the resulting photos from CatPaint wouldn’t hurt either; I’ve noticed that if a new concept or project has that fun factor, otherwise insurmountable difficulties seem to melt away.
Lanette Cadle 