The Syllabus is a Lie: Spring Semester Shake-down
When I was a college student in Iowa I traveled around a fair amount moving between home and campus. The roads in Iowa wind and twist through the natural rise and fall of the landscape. If you have only ever seen Iowa from I-80 you’re really missing some of the most beautiful scenery in the [...]
Diversifying Form: Rethinking how mainstream institutions approach arts education
I’ve been working with a really great group of students in acting class. It’s the kind of class where you see growth and dedication that leads to a really exciting classroom to be a part of. You know the kind, the kind where education is happening. Mine and theirs. I’ve had a couple of down [...]
Creating Life-Long Learners
I’ve been reading a lot about teaching and learning lately. In-depth stuff and big picture stuff. It seems to me that education and how we think about education is beginning to shift in a big way across a lot of planes. A colleague and I were talking about our own teaching experiences earlier this week. [...]
Week Zero: Why you should engage students before classes start.
You arrive at the mall with a long list of things to do. You’ve got 6 or 7 places you need to visit and a lot to get in each one. You may have been to this mall before but you’ve never been to any of the stores that you need to visit today. Each [...]
10 Things to think about before adding Google Plus in the classroom
1. Age Limit Currently Google+ has set the age limit at 18+. Though they state that this is a temporary situation and that the eventual age will be lowered to 13+. Whether that will happen when the site goes public or after has not been truly clarified. This causes a lot of potential problems. For [...]
Everything you know is wrong
What if someone told you that everything you knew was wrong? That they had the capability to test and assess you in all areas your knowledge base and it was found to be incomplete, underdeveloped, and in some instances, inaccurate. They don’t tell you this in a rude or condescending way. Heck, maybe they just [...]
The Art of Subjectivity
I put a lot of stock in seeing things with my own eyes. We are our own most reliable resource. At least we think we are. Even though I am an artist, I’m a pretty literal thinker. I like facts and systems. Outcomes. Because of this I can empathize with my students when they go [...]
What would it take?
I understand resistance to change. Embracing new ways of doing things can sometimes suggest a lot of collateral meaning, the most complicated of which might be the implication that if the change you are looking at is a good change, then they way you have been doing things wasn’t the best way. That’s a lot [...]
E-ducation: Mandatory Computer Literacy
It has come to my attention that there is some school of thought that forcing students to have web-interactions as part of traditional coursework might not be a 100% good idea. That it might be discriminatory toward students who are not yet computer literate. (yet!) That they will be at a tremendous disadvantage and institutions [...]
Be Thankful
It’s almost graduation time. I love this time of year. The weeks before graduation are a little like tech week. It’s a scramble. A lot is going on all over the college. During tech week I usually stop and have a talk with everyone about being nice to your techies. Being in a show is [...]
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