Duveronymous Yawp

Some of the markup and other tools in iAnnotate

Last fall semester, I experimented with using an iPad (courtesy of TLT @ CofC) to read and mark up some of my students’ writing in a graduate course in a late 19th century American literature and some of the literary texts that I was teaching in a lower-division course covering the same territory.

In the Faculty Technology Institute put on by TLT last May, we tried one or two free PDF readers/annotators for iPad, but I decided to shell out $9.99 for a more fully functional annotation app. A couple of friends and colleagues recommended iAnnotate, and I recommend it as well.  There are a number of different markup and navigation tools, it syncs to my Dropbox account, which is very handy, and you can quickly export any marked up PDFs to email or a variety of other applications on your iPad. Continue reading →

Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

—, “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”

Constance Fenimore Woolson, “Solomon”

—, “The Lady of Little Fishing”

Mark Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi

Hamlin Garland, “Up the Cooly”

Charles Egbert Craddock, “The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove”

—, “Over on T’Other Mounting”

Continue reading →

Meander Map of a Section of the Lower Mississippi River

I am taking time out from my research for a bit to plan my first year seminar on Mark Twain for this fall.  I am excited about the course–about the opportunity to learn more about Twain myself and the opportunity that my students will have to study his writing.

I have made a few decisions, but many more remain.

Decided

Students will read a few short pieces, the serial “Old TImes on the Mississippi,” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson.

In addition, they will view the Ken Burns PBS Documentary on Twain and read some biographical and critical pieces.

Students will complete assignments on critical reading, write reading responses in and out of class, discuss Twain’s writing in class, write a short paper, write a longer paper using research to support their analysis and conclusions, and present their research and ideas on the final exam day, likely in pecha kucha style.

Not Yet Decided

Continue reading →

via The Benefits of Making It Harder to Learn – Do Your Job Better – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A suggestive article by James M. Lang on the positive effects of a little difficulty.  Barriers between a learner and material to be learned, even if it’s just an unfamiliar font, can improve learning.  Here’s the idea in a nutshell.

To put this as oversimply as possible, learning material in fluent conditions—easy-to-read fonts, clear causal connections—is like driving to the grocery store on cognitive automatic pilot. You get from Point A to Point B, but you are not really paying close attention, and, hence, are unlikely to remember your trip in any detail later.

Learning material in disfluent conditions would be like driving to a grocery store in England if you are an American, having to navigate an unfamiliar route from the other side of the road. Getting the job done in such challenging conditions compels you to slow down and think more carefully, and so you are much more likely to remember details of the experience.

Of course, one can make the barrier too much of an impediment, the result of which may be students turning off or giving up entirely. There needs to be a balance. Continue reading →

The Neuroscience of Your Brain On Fiction – NYTimes.com.

A nice, compact, tantalizing run-down of contemporary thinking about what neuroscience has discovered about what goes on in our brains when we read fiction.  Worth the read.