Archive for the 'Process' Category

A Memorial: Saul Bruckner

Published
by
Hillary
on May 27, 2010
in Administration, Asides, New York, Pedagogy, Process, Style and To Ponder
. 6 Comments

When I heard that my high school principal Saul Bruckner had died in his Mill Basin home on May 1, I was shocked, but in an aimless sort of way. It felt huge, impossible—a massive loss and somehow a very personal one. And yet while I had a vast sense that Mr. Bruckner had influenced me deeply, I had no luck when I tried to articulate that influence to the people around me. “My high school principal died,” I told my roommate. “He was really incredible.” And then I’d trail off.

So, like legions of other Murrow alums, I’ve been spending time thinking about just what it is exactly that makes me feel like I want a bust of Mr. Bruckner in my living room. Many of us appreciate the important teacher figures from our pasts, but what of the folks who didn’t necessarily teach us long division or what the Rococo period was about? What of the learning that comes from that dispersed thing known as educational leadership?– from administrators, of all people?

The first thing to mention about Mr. Bruckner is just how old school he was, in a new school kind of way. He was a truly progressive educator who didn’t need to appropriate slang or wear a whistle in order to “connect” with young people. He rose up the ranks in the New York City school system (back when it was still a Board of Education, and not a Department) as a social studies teacher, became assistant principal at Dewey High School, and eventually opened Murrow in 1974.

Edward R. Murrow High School is known for the many progressive aspects of its structure and approach, but Mr. Bruckner himself came across as a pretty subdued, non-controversial guy. You’d imagine that a principal who allowed students freedom of choice in their academic pursuits, outlawed bells and hall sweeps and detention and sports teams, gave students the benefit of the doubt when it came to unstructured time, and fiercely defended music and arts programs might be more of a hippie crusader in moccasins than a buttoned-up older gentleman in neat tweed suit jackets. Not so.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Still, those are the facts. When the Times published a short article about his memorial service, I started honing in on what I found so unique about Mr. Bruckner.  The photo that accompanied the article did it; Mr. Bruckner, with his arms folded, his red name tag jutting out from his jacket, listening intently to three students surrounding him, all of whom look like they’ve got more than one bone to pick with the guy. That was his usual posture—arms crossed, ears open, completely committed– and it wasn’t rare for Mr. Bruckner to be outnumbered. I stood in front of him this way many times, standing with my friends and shooting off at the mouth about something or other, while Mr. Bruckner stood stock-still and listened—sometimes with a bemused smile, sometimes with a look of mild judgment. Perhaps the man closed the door to his oblong office (where he also taught his 7:30am AP American History course) and privately screamed into a rattan pillow—if he did, we never caught on.

The man was consistency itself, and I’d guess that he realized just how important that was to us, to see him standing by the main entrance every morning as we entered clutching our bagels. He was an eloquent man of few words, but clear actions. Students at Murrow were allowed to lounge in the hallways during “free” periods (which weren’t called “periods” at all), but if we were obliviously sitting next to a clump of trash, Bruckner would suddenly swing around a corner to pitch it in the garbage, reminding us at once that he was boss, it was our building, and no task was too insignificant for him– or us.

Mr. Bruckner’s death crystallized for me even further when I read an article penned by one of my former English teachers at Murrow, Katherine Schulten. Ms. Schulten is now editor of The Learning Network, and she identifies five poignant lessons for educators that she took from working with Mr. Bruckner.  The final one, “Kids come first,” coupled with her description of Mr. Bruckner—kindness, intelligence, commitment and vision—packaged up exactly what I’d wanted to say all along. How remarkable to observe someone with so little (discernable) ego, a fellow who never went out of his way to strut his feathers and yet implemented such a strong vision at the same time. To be an educator who skips the bloviating and lingers on the students while constructing a school culture that follows his thoughtful concepts– and then he hangs out long enough to really see it flourish and sustain? A term that Mr. Bruckner himself taught me is the only one I can think to use: rara avis.

Ms. Schulten’s article got me thinking: as someone who routinely stands in front of clusters of young people and some days finds the crown of educator a very difficult one to wear, ignoring Mr. Bruckner’s legacy outside of its most general terms shouldn’t be an option. Sure, the life of an adjunct lecturer and Communication Fellow is very different from that of a high school principal, but that’s no excuse to disregard the challenge that his example puts forth. I heard the news about Mr. Bruckner’s passing during the crowded and frustrating end-of-semester crush, when students were filling my  inbox with frantic emails arguing about grades, contesting plagiarism charges, pleading for forgiveness. Some days it’s incredibly difficult to maintain empathy, priorities, and focus—the kind of focus, I realize, Mr. Bruckner persisted with, day in, and day out, for so many years.

Numerous Facebook groups have already popped up paying tribute to Mr. Bruckner, and an accompanying campaign to have the street outside of the school renamed in his honor would be a fitting memorial to a life’s work that thrived at the humble intersection of Avenue L and 17th Street. An equally moving tribute is represented by the many students who, like me, have been newly considering just what was in this special sauce and where  we might apply it ourselves. I’d suspect that it won’t just be about picking up that lone piece of trash in the hallways, but also about that particular blend of action and patience. Still, it’s an educational riddle worth committing time to: how did he do it? And how can we?

PowerPoint: Official Weapon of Mass Persuasion

Published
by
James
on April 28, 2010
in Powerpoint and Presentations and Process
. 4 Comments

Image from the blog post Watercooler Confidential, "Death by PowerPoint." Click image for original post.

Government malfeasance and bureaucratic incompetence step aside: there’s now a new reason for the US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s a product made by Microsoft. According to this widely circulated article in the New York Times, the over-use of PowerPoint, Microsoft’s sleep inducing presentation software, is the new menace threatening the success of the US military adventures in the Middle East. The article cites a growing number of high-ranking military officials who are increasingly critical of the communication platform. The greatest threat to clarity for many of these officials, the paper reports, is not the muddled mess of circles and arrows pictured above, but the emphasis on hierarchical thinking, which, according to several military officers, even those who frequently use PowerPoint, tends to dumb down and generalize the information being conveyed.

“Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable,” said Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, adding “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control.”

This complaint is, of course nothing new. Edward Tufte makes the near identical argument in his 2003 essay: “The Cognitive Style of Power Point: Pitching Out Corrupts within.” That essay includes a remarkable discussion of how NASA’s over-reliance on PowerPoint may have inadvertently been responsible for the failure of the Space Shuttle Columbia upon re-entry February1, 2003, claiming that reliance upon bulleted information led to a kind of sales pitch mentality, which obfuscated the real threat posed by the debris impact shortly after launch. “The language, spirit, and presentation tool of the pitch culture had penetrated throughout the NASA organization, even into the most serious technical analysis, the survival of the shuttle,” said Tufte.

Could this very well be what happened in May of that same year, when military and administration officials decided to invade Iraq in search of WMDs? Indeed, the actual decision to invade was obviously a cynical fait accompli, manufactured by The White House and Downing Street, but one can only imagine the great number of PowerPoint pitches that made that decision possible, not to mention the number that followed the invasion which helped to justify the continued presence of US troops in the absence of any chemical or nuclear weapons.

Each semester I teach a workshop on presentation basics to several groups of Business Department students here at Baruch, and, despite the continued uncritical reliance upon PowerPoint, or perhaps because of it, it seems like students are beginning to figure out that the templates Microsoft provides are maybe not the best place to begin their presentations. When I tell students “PowerPoint is for your audience, not for you;” when I try to explain the importance of presenting information visually in a clear and objective form; and when I make the suggestion that maybe they avoid using PowerPoint entirely, I don’t receive nearly as many looks of angry consternation as I used to. Perhaps, just like the generals interviewed for the Times piece, these students have been the victims of one too many redundant, unimaginative, and narrow-minded PowerPoint presentation (often from their instructors) and maybe, just maybe, they’re ready to move beyond the tyranny of the bullet-point.

Either way, there is at least one place where the use of PowerPoint may be expected to lose some of its attraction. I just found out that Edward Tufte has been hired by the Obama Administration as a member of the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, to help investigate and clearly explain the impact of the $787 Billion economic stimulus package passed last year. If only we could now get him to explain credit default swaps to Congress.

Flowery Writing

Published
by
Olga
on March 16, 2010
in Process and Revision
. 0 Comments

I had big writing plans for the weekend, including my cac.ophony post. After spending the whole Sunday drafting a conference abstract and having no topic in mind for my blog post, I ventured out into the rain… Around 11 pm I found myself buying flowers at a local grocery store. I always confuse florists when I randomly pick up individual stems rather than completed bouquets. And then I usually say no to the easy filler of Baby’s breath. No such fluffy nonsense in my Ikebana!

Photo credit Ikebana Arts Studio

Ikebana is a form of Japanese floral art whose major premises are minimalism, symmetry, and organic composition. The stems must be positioned at designated angles, and they must be visible, not hidden in a vase. For this purpose, Ikebana arrangements are made in a kenzan, a flower holder consisting of many closely positioned spikes upon and between which the stems and twigs are placed. If kenzan is not a part of a larger container, it can be placed in one that is best suited for the given arrangement.

Ikebana has a very rich history and philosophy that I have never had a chance to study; for instance, in the most basic composition three stems are slanted in certain ways to symbolize the relationship between heaven, earth, and human being. When I work on my flower arrangements, I don’t usually think about these higher meanings. But I do enjoy every step of the process from selecting flowers to finding the right surface and background in my apartment for the finished arrangements. I wish I could say the same about writing.

And yet last night Ikebana taught me something really valuable about writing: concentration and discipline cannot fully preempt chaos. There was a moment when my major stems were in place, but the arrangement wasn’t appealing. It didn’t express what I intended it to express. Usually by the end of process, I’m pleasantly surprised that the final composition is more exact and beautiful than I imagined it to be. This was not the case yesterday!

I was upset, but then reminded myself that I wasn’t fully done, that there were several small flowers and leaves I could add to reshape the arrangement. Not really having faith in my actions, I cut my remaining thin stems and began sticking them into the kenzan. Magically, my imbalanced composition was transformed into a (not exactly minimalist) cascade of yellow daisies!

Now I have to go back to my conference abstract, and I so hope it will be transformed in the same way.

Palm-of-the-Hand Speeches

Published
by
Hillary
on January 28, 2010
in Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Oral Communication, Pedagogy, Process, Style, To Ponder and literature
. 2 Comments

Throughout his long career, Japanese Writer Yasunari Kawabata wrote a series of short short stories, which he referred to as his “Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.” Kawabata produced 146 of these stories, becoming a true “palmist,” even if his notoriety in the West is focused on his novels.  As described by the editors of the published collection, Kawabata believed that these little stories expressed the “essence of his art.”

I first read these stories in an experimental prose writing course a bunch of years ago, and the concept of these one-to-three page gems intrigued me. I was reminded of these stories this past semester, when, through my work supporting Advanced Accounting, a Communication Intensive Course, I found myself confronting palm-of-the-hand speeches. When I first learned that students had only two-to-three minutes to present their assigned material, I was skeptical. Two minutes to discuss a contemporary concept in accountancy?

As the semester progressed, and I struggled to help students condense the finer points of recording intangible assets on balance sheets, I necessarily focused on the benefits of these l’il speeches. Just as Kawabata’s stories are deeply complex while also being succinct, shorter speeches have the same potential. Translator J. Martin Holman could be talking about ACC 4100 speeches when he writes of the relationship between Kawabata’s small stories and his longer works:

“The palm-of-the-hand story appears to have been Kawabata’s basic unit of composition from which his longer works were built, after the manner of linked-verse poetry, in which discrete verses are joined to form a longer poem, the linkage between each dependent on subtle shifts as the poem continues.”

While longer speaking opportunities are still crucial for our students, these palm-of-the-hand speeches can give students a better familiarity with the basic units of composition required for larger speeches. I used to think of two minute speeches as a good exercise in summarizing, editing and brevity, but they do have their structural benefits, as well.  According to Holman, Kawabata mastered this form using certain elements (the same ones that would make any Palmist speech exiting); “juxtaposition of images,” “unique perception,” and “intriguing and memorable” plots– not reductions, but distillations of larger worlds.

There are clear positives and negatives to assigning such a short presentation, but on certain days, the luxury of having a lot of time to concentrate on just two minutes of material did seem like a very Palmist exercise. Students themselves, however, don’t always see the merits of this, and, rather than viewing it as the essence of their art, are more apt to view the assignment as the gnat buzzing around their schoolwork.  How might it be possible to elevate and enliven these palm-of-the-hand speeches to the place that Kawabata realized they deserve?

Workshop on how to deal with source material

Published
by
Hyewon
on September 17, 2009
in Process and Writing Instruction
. 4 Comments

Last Friday, the Writing Fellows had our first CUNY-wide meeting of this academic year. After attending the orientation in the morning, I went to one of four concurrent afternoon workshops, titled as “Source Use and Writing with Authority” led by Professor Sean O’Toole of Baruch College.

The workshop was designed to inform us about how to teach students to engage with secondary sources in many different ways other than just to support or back up an argument. For example, sources can be used “as a primary focus of analysis, to establish a problem or question worth addressing, to supply context, background, or information, to provide key terms or concepts, and to grapple with another opinion or interpretation.”

We had two brief exercises: first, we read an article (Stanley Cohen’s “Folk Devil and Moral Panics”) to identify the ways in which the author uses his sources; second, we drew a diagram illustrating our strategies to handle the secondary materials that we use in our own writing project, the technique introduced by Mark Gaipa. Gaipa’s article (Pedagogy 4.3, 2004) suggests a variety of strategies that are illustrated with cartoons: picking a fight, ass kissing, piggybacking, leapfrogging, playing peacemaker, acting paranoid, dropping out, and crossbreeding.  I found that the drawing exercise indeed helped me relieve my anxiety dealing with sources, so I am thinking of using it as an office-hour exercise for my students. It might also be helpful for those of us who are writing a dissertation and having a hard time handling source materials, oftentimes feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. I knew drawing was often used in therapy, but I’d never realized its power before I had the exercise in the workshop.

Writing Spaces

Published
by
Olga
on May 15, 2009
in Audience, Feedback and Process
. 6 Comments

From where I sit
Creative Commons License photo credit: Olivander

Aside from its main mission to establish a relationship between academic and business discourses, this year’s Symposium has, in my view, peripherally addressed another notorious bifurcation of academic and creative writing. Perhaps Peter Elbow’s proposition to ignore audience for some time can be hard to grasp in the context of business letter writing. It does, however, resonate fully with our experience with more expressive writing forms, those that convey a personal voice and in turn strike personal notes in the audience.

Listening to Elbow, I recalled a Q&A session with Orhan Pamuk. To my question whom he imagines as his audience when drafting his autobiography, he quickly responded “myself.” He explained that thinking about potentially disapproving readers would hamper his authenticity and creative effort. Another writer, whose personal journals have been a subject of my scrupulous analysis these days, connected his inability to write truthfully about his life to his typewriter, seeing it as his immediate audience.

But a self-invitation into a room of one’s own, as Virginia Woolf has famously called it, is something we seek also when working on projects less posh than a poetic autobiography (though a psychologist can easily make a case that a dissertation is a piece of autobiography); I’m referring to such prosaic items of academic life as seminar papers, articles, and dissertations. For me, an important take-away from Elbow’s speech was that the process of composition happens in very similar ways for writers engaged in creative and academic projects. Whether one is working on a novel or dissertation, the vocabulary to describe the writing process would be the same ranging from such romantic concepts as exploration to such terrifying buzz words as writer’s block.

In both cases, receiving effective feedback from, alas, audience, at later stages of the composition process becomes essential as well!

To be, or not to be…

Published
by
Jennifer
on April 7, 2009
in Media, Process, To Ponder and Wikis
. 2 Comments
From: http://layoder.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/nicholas-hughes-natural-selection/

From Pauvre Plume (originally from Fairbanks Daily News-Miner)

Let’s face it, I was stalling; instead of prepping for my looming dissertation defense, I was skimming news bites on the Internet. I stumbled upon the obituary for Nicholas Hughes – the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes – who had recently committed suicide. The online obituary held little information about Hughes himself, but made much of his famous parents and manner of death. Struck by the lack of biographical detail, I turned to Wikipedia for a quick gloss on who he was and what he’d done. The Wikipedia entry had little more to offer: a few details about his work, a quote from his sister regarding his love of nature and his struggles with depression, a mention of his dual British/American citizenship.

Most striking of all, the Hughes entry was flagged for possible deletion on the grounds of “general notability”. The Wikipedia community was invited to discuss whether Hughes was important enough to warrant an entry of his own, or whether the entry should be deleted completely. The discussion was brief but vigorous, reflecting a vocal range from lofty academic to colloquial chat. There were those who suggested that his only claim to notability was as the son of two (in)famous literary icons; he was at best a footnote to their Wikipedia entries. Others felt Hughes’ research and scholarship had been completely misrepresented, not to mention mislabeled; he was not a marine biologist, but rather a fisheries biologist with a broad range of applied research behind him. A couple of discussants huffily questioned whether the sensationalism surrounding his death (he committed suicide as did his mother and stepmother) was enough to warrant his presence on Wikipedia. Some found the timing of the whole deletion discussion tacky. After all, the man had just died; couldn’t we spare him a moment’s attention before confining him to oblivion?

I found myself completely sucked into the discussion, as the participants negotiated Hughes’ virtual right to life. Who do you have to be, in order to be? What does it take to become visible — and stay visible — in a socially constructed world? Especially a world that precludes physical embodiment? As we explore virtual community in all its shapes, forms and permutations, how do we co-construct presence and absence? And what does it mean when we do so?

Postscript: Are you wondering what happened to the Nicholas Hughes entry? After a roughly a day’s debate, the decision was made to keep him as an independent entry. A general call went out for more information, and as of this writing, the sketchy “stub” that initially drew my attention has tripled in size. Hughes is now more “present” on Wikipedia than before the threat to his virtual existence. Present, but perhaps not completely visible there…There still is no picture of Hughes posted to his profile.

Consultants and Therapists at Schwartz

Published
by
Szidonia
on March 20, 2009
in Interpersonal Communication and Process
. 2 Comments

Well, this is not exactly a post, rather a question I would like to circulate.

After our last general staff meeting, I went to the BPL workshop organized by Dusana. It was a most useful discussion we had, in the course of which, among other things, we talked about rehearsals in danger of  turning  into group therapy sessions with students. People had  brilliant ideas about balancing things out and setting aside a given amount of time in the course of each rehearsal to help students wind down. (Our own Zohra has a special technique, which we all found excellent, but, since she has the copyrights, further inquiries should be addressed to her. )

On this note, I would be curious if anybody else has a take on this. I personally find that I can relatively quickly gauge the inner dynamics of a group and vibe with them. It is the pedagogue in me who is watching the students, and  I act in the way I feel would be most productive to them. At times, I assume authority, but mostly I act like a peer who is very approachable and understanding about their issues and concerns (and, at times, they have a lot of those, related to their course, their professor, assignments, etc.). What always works is showing a great deal of respect to them. Once you grant them this respect, they will act up to it. However, besides being humane, I do not have any other more specific way of creating the atmosphere, so to say. Some people play a game, I thought about getting a bunch of fresh flowers in the rehearsal room, just to liven things up. (In my rush, I keep forgetting it, of course.)  Any other ideas? I know that professionalism is key here, but I do not think we jeopardize it by patting our students’ souls a little bit, do we? :)

Here’s Lookin At You, Kid…or Not.

Published
by
Hillary
on March 9, 2009
in Audience, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Feedback, Interpersonal Communication, Oral Communication, Pedagogy, Powerpoint and Presentations, Process, Style and To Ponder
. 4 Comments

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRAcZ2rTGPg&feature=related[/youtube]

I love this quirky little how-to clip, mostly because the audio doesn’t match up to the video, making poor Leila look like she needs her own mandated visit to the house of corrections. But I can relate to Leila and her message, and I’m willing to admit that I stumbled upon this video in a moment of desperation, when I was brainstorming different approaches to this question of encouraging solid eye contact in oral communicating.

As most of us have probably discovered by now, when we’re providing feedback on speeches, merely repeating “you need to make more eye contact” doesn’t do the trick. (And really, why should it?) Most of the speakers we work with know full well that eye contact is something they should shoot for—they’ve seen this on speech evaluation forms and read about it dutifully in their Intro to Public Speaking class way back when. But if they commit this same “offense” in every presentation they make—staring at the PP screen, or at the floor, or at their hands, or note cards—when does the practice actually come in?

And, just as importantly, how do we invigorate our own approach to this thorny delivery snag? Some days, “make more eye contact” becomes the easy go-to, that dull phrase you know you’ll probably say before the student even begins. But isn’t commenting on eye contact just another way of saying that they didn’t make a connection with their audience? If we wanted to get all Eckhart Tolle on this post, we could extend it into the idea of being fully present (which has plenty of resonances in actor training). We all know how magical it can be when someone gives really great eye—that mixture of confidence, care, and connection– but how is it best learned?

I’ve tried a few new things in my recent quest to investigate the power of the Connecting Eyes. In the classroom, I’ve become more emboldened to push away the chairs and try out some of the better eye contact exercises that I know of, forcing people to get used to going eyeball-to-eyeball. Some of these exercises transform the room into a sort of communications gym class, which is a little hard to get used to, but not a bad thing at all. Does this have more successful outcomes in student performance? Hard to tell, exactly. But it certainly increases comfort and community among the students.

And during my BPL sessions with student groups, I’ve changed my approach. Instead of allowing the students to run through their entire presentations before I provide my feedback, I now occasionally stop them mid-stream, prompting them to re-do an entire section, this time focusing on, say, sustained eye contact. I know some of you out there have run your practice sessions like this for quite a while, but I’m just now catching on to its real benefits. I had been skeptical of the logic of isolating one element and potentially distracting the speaker with it, but I’m now thinking of these sessions as true rehearsals; if they can’t “run through” their work multiple times, what are the chances that a pattern of poor delivery will be broken?

reCAPTCHA: The Essence of a Distributed Knowledge Network

Published
by
Luke
on October 22, 2008
in Media, Process, Resources, Technology, Tools and Writing Instruction
. 11 Comments

We’ve all come across a CAPTCHA, a challenge response test that web sites give viewers who are trying to register for an account, leave a comment, or perform some other task that might be vulnerable to spammers or bots.  They are useful because they can differentiate human from machine (Completely Automated Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart… don’t ask me how “turing” became a “P” in that acronym).

They look something like this:

These things are a minor nuisance, the price we pay to protect the sites we need from bombardment by unwanted traffic or use as a launching pad for spam attacks.  According to researchers at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, “about 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day.”

What if the time spent solving CAPTCHAs could be harnessed for productive purposes?  Thanks to reCAPTCHA, it can.

Carnegie Mellon is currently working with two organizations (the Internet Archive and the New York Times) to employ humans to decipher scans of text that are unreadable by OCR software (Optical Character Recognition).  If your site uses reCAPTCHA, your users can contribute to a major digitization project.  For details on how the technology works, click here.

This is the latest innovative effort to maximize productivity in a focused way by taking advantage of the reach of the web to congeal a distributed knowledge network.  reCAPTCHA has tapped into existing knowledge and processes to build yet more knowledge through another process.  All of us together are smarter than we are added up.

Brilliant work.

(Nod to Mikhail for the heads up about this technology.)