start off with the answer?

I was just skimming this post of mine from last year about the pedagogical and cognitive limitations of PowerPoint presentations. The research suggested that
the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digest in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.
I concluded with this note:
Professor Sweller [...]

[journal entry] on Richard Fulkerson’s “Four Philosophies of Composition”

Since I want to use my blog as a file cabinet as well as a workshop, here’s the first of many journal entires I’ll be writing in my classes.
September 26, 2007
In this article, Richard Fulkerson is mainly trying to help writing teachers avoid giving their students what I would call “the ol’ bait and switch” [...]

Elbow and Bartholomae and Emerson (note to self: get a copy of this)

This looks interesting, especially the Emersonian angle.
Wiley, Mark. “Writing in the American Grain: Peter Elbow’s and David Bartholomae’s Emersonian Pedagogies of Empowerment.” Writing Instructor, v9 n1-2 p57-66 Fall-Win 1990.
ABSTRACT: Argues that, although Peter Elbow’s and David Bartholomae’s pedagogies attempt in different ways to authorize students to write, both rely on the experience and resistance to [...]

a couple of writing classroom teaching tips

Here are a couple of notes I made sometime in the last few years (I’m going through my files).
Sandy Schroeder (for English 75) has students write something first day of class, then groups them into peer groups according to their different abilities, so that each group has at least one person, say, who is good [...]

Montaigne-esque essays, movies of the mind

I was explaining to Josetta this morning what Jill Widner was looking for in an essay (and Jill meant a Montaigne-esque essay, a “movie of the mind” kind of essay).  The first three papers Jill has had them do have been collages.  This is the first essay, so Josetta wasn’t sure how to do it.
 
Anyway, I used [...]

Einstein’s brain and thinking outside the box

I was just listening to an NPR interview (on Fresh Air) of Walter Isaacson talking about his new biography of Einstein: Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Shuster, 2007), and I was caught by something Isaacson said right at the end of the interview. Dave Davies had asked him, “Einstein is a metaphor for [...]

PowerPoint presentations: too much at once?

Just came across some research which says that “the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digest in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.”  (Research points the finger at PowerPoint by Anna Patty, The Sydney Morning Herald)
The UNSW (Australia) research shows that the brain’s short-term [...]