Teaching Tips

I am sitting in the lobby of my hotel in San Antonio, waiting for the shuttle to take me back to the airport. For the first time since I arrived here, I am sitting at a full keyboard to write instead of frantically thumbing words into my iPhone keyboard. Here in the lobby, I have free wifi access, something that just wasn’t an option for me at the NCTE Convention.

I enjoyed very much having the opportunity to share work that we’ve been able to do with students in my district, as well as talking about the possibilities and logistics of tools like uStream, Mogulus, Twitter, Plurk and many others. The value of these particular tools, of course, is in modeling and demonstrating possibilities. We have so many options available to us, in theory, and we need to know what the barriers are to access so that we can begin to, or continue to, knock those down.

The Tech-On-The-Go kiosks, brainchildren of Kylene Beers and the product of a great deal of hard work by Sara Kajder and others, were a window for the conference attendees into the world of the shift that Karl and Anne and others talked so eloquently about in sessions all over the conference. Well done, y’all.

These kiosks, too, were windows into the conference for friends and colleagues and network connections of mine via our uStream and Chatterous sessions, opportunities to mix the friends that were here with the friends who were not, at least physically.

But it was just a taste, a frustratingly flighty, teeny tiny taste, of what it should have been. It should have been that we were able to make those connections in sessions and hallways, bringing in colleagues to share and think with as we learned together in conference presentations and conversations. (And, for $13 a day, I could have done so, although paying extra for what should be a piece of the puzzle for everyone rubs me the wrong way.)

I think NCTE is in a wonderfully frustrating place at the moment, looking at its almost 100 years of work and thinking very seriously and strategically about what is next, and how teaching and learning is changing and has always been changing. They are embracing the shift, as Karl has said, and it’s time for them to continue the push that they made this week.

Many of us within the organization (and plenty of folks who aren’t yet members) are willing, interested, and able to help with some of the geeky bits, as the legions of volunteers in the tech kiosks and several of the presenters in the sessions demonstrated. But it’ll take some support from the organization to make that happen.

One thing I hope next year’s organizers are already thinking about is how to provide meaningful wifi access to conference attendees so that we can not just see the possibilities in sessions and at kiosks, but can begin to practice with them in sessions and hallways. My computer, my favorite learning tool these days, sat unused in my bag as I relied upon my telephone and its connections to the outside world to bridge the gulf between myself and my learning networks who, although not all physically present, were here with me, and continue to provide me with questions and support and kind words and pushback. Through that connection and my networks, my NCTE conference, while physically situated in downtown San Antonio, reached literally around the world and all across the country.

More and more, I rely on those networks and those connections to help me do my learning and work. As I argue that we need to provide this connectivity in our schools and classrooms, I would also argue that we need that connectivity here, when teachers gather to learn and to work together to improve the learning we facilitate with our students. Shift happens, but we can and should be helping it along.

Kathleen Blake Yancey, president of NCTE, gave perhaps my favorite presentation of the conference, a stunning mix of image and speech, of thinking about teaching and thinking about technology, specifically the technologies of composition. (I hope that it is soon in video form so that I can share it with you. She has said she has interest in producing such a video, and you need to see what she did and what she said about composition here in the early days of the 21st Century. I’ll share if it makes it online.) Just before she closed, she reminded us all that, “If you are writing for the screen, you are writing for the network.” NCTE gets the shift, has defined it, and is beginning to talk about it in a thoughtful way. I am eager to see how the organization can take the talk of shifts and begin to model through actions, what it says is the case.

Won’t that be an impressive thing?

I have enjoyed my time at the convention, connecting with colleagues old and new, and helping them to connect with the wider world of possibilities. I have faith in language and in language arts teachers, in the power of the written and spoken word and all the other ways we have to create, compose and share, and I know good things are coming. I also know, though, that time is short. Let us all be renewed and restored and get back to work. There’s plenty for all of us to do.

Good morning from the 2008 NCTE Annual Convention.  I arrived yesterday and got the lay of the land while visiting with old friends, many of them at the NWP Annual Meeting, which occurs concurrently. (Too much good stuff crammed together, if you ask me.) Today, I’ll be doing a couple of sessions and hoping to attend several more.  In my continuing quest to find the better, real time collaborative tools for convention or conference chatter, I’ve decided to try using Chatterous for this one.  

I’ve created a group in Chatterous called “NCTE 2008″ that I’ll be using to share information on the ground from the conference.  I’d love to chat with you there, either if you’re attending or if you have an interest in what’s shaking here.  If you are attending, you might consider trying to connect with friends via the chat room, too.  (It’s okay to type lots there, is all I’m saying.  I’m sure you’ll think of several good things to say or do in the space that I’ve not considered.)  I like Chatterous because it plays nicely with mobile devices, which is a must for this event.  If you’re interested in seeing my notes, or chatting with others, I’d encourage you to join the room.  If you haven’t an account, you’ll need to create one.  

Selfishly, I’m hoping some folks will share session notes from events and presentations that I cannot attend. 

I hope this is useful.  If not, there’s always the mobile version of Cover It Live to try at the next conference.  Or, for that matter, tomorrow.  I’m here all weekend.

I’ve stewed and pondered and argued, for quite some time now about the “rules” or guidelines for what folks should do in regards to online networks.  Specifically, I bristle whenever someone writes about how others should act or behave or post or not post or whatever.  I don’t know that there’s one code of behavior that specifically works across contexts and cultures and all the other separations and connections between you and me.  It’s complicated, at best.  Dave, in a recent post, describes it this way:

If you are in a community you are, in some way, responsible to that community, in a network you are responsible to yourself and the rules that govern you are those set forth by our society as laws.

I think Dave makes a useful distinction in that I am responsible to a community, but in a network relationship or environment, I am responsible to myself.  I find that people tend to feel “guilt” or “worry” or concern when they choose to act in a way that is useful to them but does not reflect the rules or culture of someone else.  While I understand those feelings and sometimes have them myself, I’ve come to think that most of them are wasted energy, often, but not always, devolving into distraction.

In my network relationships or environments, it’s not useful for me to act as others would prefer I act; it’s preferable to act in a way that maximizes the value I receive from those networks.  I find that there’s great value, both to me and to others, when I act in such a way.

Now, that doesn’t mean that there’s value in me being a jerk, or in treating others poorly (which is, I guess, also being a jerk), but it does mean that my concern for the feelings of others should probably end right around the time I figure out what I need to either do or understand.  The value to others in a network relationship, at least as I’ve experienced it, comes from the ability to follow my process or to improve upon it to meet a slightly different set of needs.  (Or, perhaps, there’s an aesthetic value to some of this, too, that I’m not getting at here.)

Over time, I’ve come to call this basic guideline that governs my behavior “selfish selflessness.”  Or “selfless selfishness.”  I get stuck on which word should come first there, but, basically, it seems that whenever I act in a way that focuses on my needs first, it ends ultimately more useful to others than it would’ve if I was thinking first of others and then myself.  That’s a bit quite contradictory, but the older I get, the more I notice that the truly interesting bits of the world and of myself are the contradictory ones.

I enjoy and gain value from following folks who are doing interested things, and who find beauty and passion and anger and whatever from the world in which they regularly engage.  I’m quite content to follow along behind someone blazing a trail of their own understanding.  I think others are, too.  There’s certainly a place for considering one’s audience, but when it comes to network behavior, I find value in considering myself first, audience second.  (There’s another conversation lurking in this paragraph about the difference between writing for self and writing for others, but I’ll save that for later.)

Dave has launched a much more formal exploration of community responsibility.  I’m looking forward to his continued exploration, as well as the continuation of my own limited explorations.  I think his dichotomy of responsibility for communities and networks is worthy of much more thinking.  I guess, if anything, I’d call this idea of selfish selflessness (certainly, there’s a better term), my own network responsibility guideline.

But that’s just me.

I’m pleased to share that my presentation for this year’s K12Online Conference is now available.  In addition, there is also a supplemental blog and podcast for the presentation.  You might want to subscribe to that podcast - plenty of great conversations coming to that feed.  I might re-broadcast them here - but then again, I might not.

Below is a VoiceThread that contains some of the questions that I think are worth talking about from the presentation.  Feel free to join in the conversation - I welcome your feedback and other thoughts.

Hanging with the Big Kids

Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher

Tonight, as I picked up a mostly sleeping little girl from a car seat and hefted her into the crook of my right arm, balancing the bag of toys and clothes in my other hand, I realized that Teagan just isn’t a baby anymore.

This is a rather absurd observation, in the sense that she will turn 17 months tomorrow, and she has not technically been a “baby” for a while now. She walks. Mutters a bit. Follows instructions (sometimes). Laughs. Chews her food. Plays tricks. Dances. Has a unique personality. She is a little person, and has been for some time.

But today, I could just feel the difference. Not sure why, or why today, but it was, and is, the case. She’s bigger, and a wee bit more difficult to carry. She’s not a baby.

And every day, she’ll get just a little bit harder to carry. I’ve experienced this with my older daughter, but not with Teagan. It’s both wonderful and dreadful. And not at all easier than the first time this happened to me. I can’t begin to fathom what it’ll be like when I won’t be able to twirl either of them around, listening and watching for giggles and laughter.

While I wouldn’t trade it for anything, parenting definitely brings with it some bittersweet moments.

Being a daddy is one long process of letting go.

I’m working with some high school students this week on a research assignment for their Wired 9 course, a class on digital literacy and responsibility.  As a part of that work, I’m helping them to generate some good research questions that they can explore and dig in to.  Since I thought the topics might be of interest to folks who aren’t in the class, and since I also know that you have plenty of excellent questions, I thought I’d seek a little help while also create a resource for others doing similar work.  I wonder if you might be willing to contribute a resource or a question or two.  I’m certain that the 9th graders that I will be working with will thank you in advance.

I thank you, too.

(If you’re not comfortable using VoiceThread, feel free to leave a comment, question or link to a resource in the comments of this post, and I’ll be happy to transfer it to the VoiceThread, which I’ll be sharing with the students.)

The Lie of Community - K12Online Teaser - Upload a Document to Scribd

A little while back, Terry Freedman wrote an excellent analysis of the NotK12Online situation. I agree with him on many of his points and concerns, and have had similar discussions with other members of our committee as well as other colleagues. Better yet, he models quite nicely the kind of constructive critique that I wish I saw more of online.

I get the sense that folks have made their minds up about what we hope to do with NotK12Online, which is pretty frustrating, because the little bit of information that’s out there doesn’t really match up with, or support, people’s assumptions.

But you know what they say about assumptions, don’t you?

In an attempt to set the “record” straight, as well as to push our thinking and open ourselves up to some feedback and constructive criticism, I thought I’d share some unofficial thinking about some of my and my committee’s plans and hopes for what NotK12Online might look like.

To begin with, NotK12Online is, ahem, not a conference for rejects. I regret that it was even mentioned in the letters that went out to K12 proposal submitters, and I understand the feelings of folks who took that mention to be a statement of intent or purpose. That said, if you believe your ideas to be worth sharing, I hope you’ll share them, whether or not you do so via NotK12Online.

NotK12 isn’t a separate conference, either. It’s an attempt to host an unconference-ish extension to the main event that continues, extends, and further problematizes the entire metaphor of an online conference. In addition, I hope it will serve as a scaffold for folks who need one to help them begin to share their learning online. For those who don’t need such a scaffold, I hope it will provide a needed push to publish good work that would otherwise not get shared, as well as a channel or two of compelling content.  For still others, it’ll be a distraction.  That’s okay.  Feel free to exercise your filter.

I don’t need to tell many of the readers of this blog that such a scaffold or structure is completely unnecessary and contradictory.  What I feel I do need to say, though, is that in my work with other teachers, some folks would find value in such a structure; they may well need a stepping stone into online reading, writing and thinking.

So what will NotK12Online look like? Well, it’s pretty much an aggregator populated by user submissions. If you have a piece of content that you think matches our guidelines, then you’ll publish it elsewhere, perhaps via your own blog, perhaps somewhere else, depending on the kind of content you’ve produced, and come to the NotK12Online site and tell us about it. If it fits our criteria, published on the site, it gets shared. Folks who want to respond to the content will be directed back to the original site of publication. Content shared via our site will be available via RSS. That’s pretty much it. (For now.  But we’re always interested in suggestions and ideas about making it more useful.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.)

We’re supporting two types of content at NotK12 so far this year, presentations and critiques. Any material that fits into the categories of the conference is fair game for the presentation channel. The critique channel is the one, though, that I am most excited, and worried, about.

One of my biggest complaints about conferences and online conversation in general is that most of the dialogue is usually cheerleaderish in nature or completely inflammatory. It’s too easy to just ignore or write off ideas and people with which or whom we disagree. My hope for the critique channel of NotK12Online is that we can help promote the idea that we can and should all attempt to be, at least from time to time, critical friends for someone. (Terry, by the way, modeled this quite nicely in his post.  So, too, has Sharon Peters - with Terry - in a recent podcast conversation about NotK12Online. )  Critics of events like K12Online have valuable points. K12Online presenters are not the be-all end-all experts on the content of their presentations.  Can we mix it up a little and productively extend the conversations of and about the conference in a way that’s useful?

I believe we can.  And maybe NotK12Online can be a piece of that progression.  Then again, maybe it won’t be.  But it’s worth it to try.

I want to put you into the middle of a conversation that I’ve been having with myself and the media for almost four years now by putting you in the middle of a conversation that’s been running on Mark Glaser’s PBS blog, MediaShift. In an entry posted today (that I learned about from Tim), Mark continues the story of Alana, a student in a journalism course at NYU who has been blogging her class. Mark brings us into the story:

After New York University journalism student Alana Taylor wrote her first embed report for MediaShift on September 5, it didn’t take long for her scathing criticism of NYU to spread around the web and stir conversations. Taylor thought that her professor, Mary Quigley, was not up to speed on social media and podcasting — even though the class she was teaching was called “Reporting Gen Y.” And Taylor felt that NYU was not offering her enough classes about new media; she cited the requirement that students bring print editions of the New York Times to class as one example of their outdated mindset.

Not surprisingly, Quigley was not happy with the story and was upset that Taylor had not sought permission to write her first-person report about the class, and told Taylor it was an invasion of privacy to other students in the class. By Taylor’s account, Quigley had a one-on-one meeting with Taylor to discuss the article, and Quigley made it clear that Taylor was not to blog, Twitter or write about the class again. That was upsetting to Taylor, who had been planning a follow-up report for MediaShift that would include Quigley’s viewpoint and interviews with faculty.

What follows in Glaser’s post is a very thorough examination of the issue and the specifics of policy at NYU and the opinions of several of the journalists and teachers involved in the events, as well as some other thoughtful commentary, especially the commentary from Floyd Abrams, whom Glasner labels as “a veteran media lawyer who has argued First Amendment cases before the Supreme Court.”  Abrams, asked if he felt blogging a university class would violate the privacy of other students in the class, answered:

My own view is that while student commentary that is critical of ongoing classes can lead to a level of tension in class at the same time it makes extremely difficult a teacher-student relationship…it does not violate the ‘privacy’ of the classroom and should not be banned or punished. Would it be illegal to do so? It certainly wouldn’t be unconstitutional since NYU isn’t a state school and thus subject to First Amendment limitations. Whether it violates NYU rules I have no idea. I would be very surprised, however, if NYU permitted a student to be punished for writing such a critique. Surprised and disappointed.

The comments to the post are getting quite interesting, too, as journalists and teachers hash out the place of social media like Twitter and blogs in the university classroom, specifically as tools for teaching and practicing journalism.

I’d strongly encourage you to read Glasner’s post, the original piece by Alana Taylor, and the comments showing up in both places, as well as on other sites.  They’re continuing to complicate for me the nature of a classroom, whether it is a public space, a private space, or some funky hybrid that exists in between.

While university classrooms, where the students are adults, are different from K-12 classrooms, I continue to think about the nature of classroom spaces and discourse, and the stance that public educators should be taking in regards to the environment that we’re finding ourselves in these days, where students are plugged in and networked via devices that we have no control over.  More and more, students are literally bringing their own networks and publishing platforms with them to school.  And that means the nature of classroom spaces will continue to become more public, whether or not we want them to.

This isn’t a new issue, but I find the fact that journalists and media folk are stuck in the middle of the same mess as the rest of us both reassuring and frustrating.

So here’re a few of my (continuing) questions:

• In a world where the tools and the access are no longer (and probably never really were) within the control of “us,” the educators, what limits do we set on their use at school that actually begin to balance students’ rights to communicate and reflect and process with the  legitimate educational and institutional need to control some of what is and isn’t “public” information?
• How do we balance minors’ needs with the fact that we work for public institutions and should be open to public oversight?
• How does transparency mesh with some of the more delicate issues in the classroom?
• Where do students’ rights to talk about their experiences begin to conflict with other students’ right to privacy?
• Are public school classrooms fundamentally public spaces or private ones?  (Or that funky hybrid in-between?)

Blanket bans of personal technology or of writing about certain situations or classes don’t and won’t address these needs in a meaningful and educational relevant way.  We need to be thoughtful now about how we teach students to share as the ability to do so becomes even more pervasive in society than it already is.  If I’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that there are no easy answers here.  And for the most part, we’re dodging the questions at school.

I’ll share some of my thoughts about how we might proceed in a future post.

Here in my neck of the woods, it’s the weekend before the start of classes. At my house, life got frantic this week as my wife, a high school language arts teacher, returned to work.

It’s about to get really busy if you are at all involved in education. As you gear up in whatever way that you do, I selfishly wanted to jot down a few reminders that I’d be telling myself if I were about to get started.

First. I hope you take lots of risks for the sake of learning this year. Not just for your students, but also for you. Make it a goal to try to learn something in a sustained and meaningful way that has little to do with your classroom life. I’ve been trying to learn photography this year, and while I’m nowhere close to proficient, it has been helpful to be in the mindset of a learner who’s struggling. That’s how many of our students feel everyday.

It doesn’t have to be a big risk that you always take - take little ones, too. Ask the question that you’re hesitant to ask. Share the writing you’re doing with your students. Volunteer to do the silly dance at the assembly. Just challenge yourself a little bit every now and then. We rise to the challenge when we’re pushed. But it’s easy to forget to reach.

Try very hard not to work all the time. I suck at this, at turning off my work brain and focusing on being a dad or a husband or “just a dude reading the paper at the corner coffee shop,” but I recognize the value of being at rest and at play, of knowing that it’s better to let small work things go in the name of preserving long term relationships. You CAN be that hero teacher that everyone loves and is in awe of, but only for a little while. Then, you burn out and fade away and don’t do anyone any good at all.

You need no one’s permission to postpone a due date or modify an assignment for the benefit of a student, or to delay some grading for the benefit of yourself or your family. All will be right with the world if you’re a day late, so long as you had a reason.

Be an expert when you need to be. Be a learner always. You are probably the most experienced learner in your classroom. But don’t assume you’re the most knowledgable person or object. If you’ve a computer handy, then you’re not. Embrace that. Relationships and mentoring cannot be outsourced or Googled. They take time and genuine concern.

Model always what you want your students to do. You and your behaviors and habits, no matter how much you might wish otherwise, are a curriculum of sorts, perhaps THE curriculum.

Be humble, but fight like crazy for your students.

Have at all times, as Geoff Powell says, “a healthy respect for young people.”

Work on your crap detector. Teach your students to develop theirs. Read and write lots. Let your students make meaningful choices in their learning. Hold them accountable for the choices they make, good or bad.

And share the good stuff. Your stories are all human ones, and they are all special, just as each one of you, and each of your students, is special. There is always someone curious about what you’re up to.

You’ll have nervous days and scared days and failure days. But you’ll also have “yes” days. Write about, reflect upon, and learn from all of them, but build a special place to keep a record of the “yes” ones. Return to it when you need a boost on some of the not-so-good days.

I wish you well. I ask you to be brave and humble and kind and tenacious and wise and caring and gentle and fierce. We so need you to do well. And there are lots of folks out there who want to help. Do good stuff.

In this podcast, recorded Friday, I talk a little bit about NotK12Online, the fine folks who will be helping me to put it together, some of my/our initial ideas, and the juicy paradox of the whole endeavour.  I’ve got a great committee of folks assembled to do the beginning planning - but we’ll need plenty of help.  Below are links to the NotK12Online planning committee.  We’re all eager for your ideas, input and suggestions regarding NotK12Online.  It’s new.  It’s different.  It’s a walking contradictory paradox.  I love it.  Please contact us via the various communication links below:

Jackie Ballarini

Twitter - jackieb

e-mail - jackie.ballarini AT gmail.com

Bill Bass

Twitter - wbass3

e-mail - bbass3 AT gmail.com

Marcie T. Hull

Twitter - ecram3

e-mail - ecram3 AT gmail.com

Bud Hunt

Twitter - budtheteacher

e-mail - budtheteacher AT gmail.com

In my classes, some kinds of errors are more serious than others.  Errors that impede meaning (such as sentence fragments) are for more detrimental than the occasional missing apostrophe.  To help your students understand different degrees of error have them work collaboratively to create a “Err-O-Meter” that measures the seriousness of different kinds of errors.  If you have them create these scales in small groups you can also have a discussion about why groups chose different errors as more or less serious.  Use this exercise to then create a guide to the most serious errors, having students include tips for checking for the error and listing the section of the handbook that addresses it.

Ask students to translate principles of grammar into the idioms of their favorite hobbies.  For example, a verb is like a quarterback, propelling meaning.

Visual argument (or, more generally, visual rhetoric) seems to be an increasingly important part of the composition classroom.  I’ve never taught a class devoted to visual argument, but I have given visual argument assignments and I often ask students to consider the role that the visual plays in culture.  There are of course whole textbooks on visual argument, but since the visual plays only a supporting role in my course, I tend to use a variety of websites instead.  For example: 1. PostSecret PostSecret is my favorite way to have students think about visual argument.  This public art project started when its founder, Frank Warren, invited people to design and submit postcards that revealed secrets their authors had never shared before.  Each Sunday, Warren posts a new set of secret-revealing postcards; in the process, he offers a wide-ranging display of visual argument, as each postcard design reflects the secret it contains.  I’ve found that students can analyze these visual texts readily, providing them good practice at reading, decoding, and then designing their own visual arguments. 2. Ikea You may be familiar with this home furnishings company from Sweden if you’re lucky enough to have an Ikea store near you (we’re getting ours here in South Florida this summer—yay!).  But even if you’re never heard of Ikea, the company’s website offers a great way to explore cultural assumptions about design.  That’s because it has separate sites for countries around the world.  Ask students to explore some of these different sites (such as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia), taking note of how language and culture influence visual argument and design.  Ask them then to view the site for the United States and look for the same sorts of cultural assumptions.  This assignment, of course, could be done with the main site of many global corporations.  I choose Ikea to help students see that globalization is not purely an American phenomenon. 3. The Ebay Conceptual Art Gallery Justin Jorgensen turns photographs of items auctioned on Ebay into a kind of found art.  Have students explore the site and consider questions of both visual design/arrangement and art.  Then have them explore Ebay itself.  What’s the relationship between design and sales?  What’s the economic impact of a good visual argument? 4. MySpace Chances are your students are already familiar with MySpace.  Many students have pages on this popular social networking site, using it to keep in touch with friends old and new.  Yet most the pages on MySpace are designed extremely poorly.  But in doing so, they also make important visual arguments about the person making the page.  Ask students to locate or bring in examples of overly designed or badly designed pages.  How does the design reflect and represent the author of the page?  How does effective visual argument diverge from effective visual design? 5. Comeeko Comeeko allows you to upload photos and add captions to create a web-based comic strip.  Students can use this tool to create compositions in the style of graphic novels.

As an exercise in getting students to evaluate Web sources with a critical eye, have them review the website for the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division.  This site details the dangers of this chemical, which include death from inhalation and severe burns from its gaseous form.  The punch line is that the chemical is water.  See if your students can decode this hoax and then prompt a discussion of the reliability of Web sources in research projects.

Sometimes the best way to see something is to look at it in a whole other way.  Have your students review the material in the handbook on sentence construction and then have them create mathematical formulae for sentences.  For example, subject + verb = simple sentence or subject – verb = fragment.  Ask them to provide a sample sentence for each formula from their current drafts or from the essay under discussion.

As they work on revising a draft, ask your students to turn on the track changes function in Microsoft Word (or any other similar feature in other programs).  Have them submit their revised drafts electronically so that you’ll be able to see the extent of the changes in the draft.

Bring in a pile of different-colored highlighters for peer review.  You can have students use these to visually identify elements of a draft.  For example, students might highlight summary in one color and analysis in another or they might highlight the quotations.  With this strategy students can see at a glance what they’re doing in their drafts.

There are a number of site on the Web with examples of bad cover letters.  Have your students review the material on cover letters in the handbook and read these examples of what not to do.  Use this to prompt a discussion about the important elements of a cover letter or ask your students to revise a bad cover letter to make it more effective.

For first-year students in particular, you might find it effective to have them review at least one peer’s paper at home.  Students still in transition from high school are used to thinking of class work as “busy work” and homework as “important work.” I combine these two by having them review one or two papers in class but also one at home, emailing comments to the paper’s author.