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Come on up for the Rising

Published
by
KateR
on November 6, 2008
in Music, Politics and Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

A lot of people are talking about how President Elect Obama and his team ran a virtually flawless campaign from start to finish. I’d like to briefly reflect on one aspect of the campaign – music. Music has always been a powerful form of communication. The right song can define a movement, a generation, and even a campaign. Howard Wolfson (Communications Director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign) noted in a NY Times Opinion piece published on Monday November 3:

“Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Don’t Stop’ set the modern standard for campaign songs when Bill Clinton adopted it as his own in 1992. Its admonition, ‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,’ dovetailed perfectly with the premise of Mr. Clinton’s run. Sixteen years later, Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent a considerable amount of time deciding on its song.”

Hillary’s team eventually selected Celine Dion’s “You and I,” which Wolfson admitted he “jokingly predicted would signal the end of the campaign.” Well … the Obama team obviously fared better, and they used a variety of songs.

First there was Ben Harper’s “Better Way,” a song with a positive message of change that likely appealed to younger voters. The campaign also used Stevie Wonder’s fun and upbeat Motown hit “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” which is more well-known and likely appealed to voters of all ages. This was played before Obama took the stage late on Tuesday night, but it’s the song they played immediately after he gave his speech that I found most intriguing – Bruce Springsteen’s, “The Rising.” “The Rising” was originally released in July 2002, the title track on Springsteen’s album that he wrote in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The lyrics of the song allude to the struggles of the firefighters who responded on that morning, climbing higher and higher into the Towers in attempt to rescue people. 343 of these men never returned home.

Can’t see nothin in front of me
Can’t see nothin coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can’t feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I’ve gone
How far I’ve gone, how high I’ve climbed
On my backs a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line
Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin’ the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin’ down here

Luke commented in his last post about how “somber” Obama looked when he took the stage, and I agree. He struck a tone that was less celebratory and more reflective of the struggles this country has to face in the years ahead. That’s why “The Rising” proved to be the perfect song to play after his speech to communicate this message. With one choice of song, he offered a subtle and respectful homage to the victims of 9/11, showed that he recognizes we’re in a dark period right now (Can’t see nothin in front of me, Can’t see nothin coming up behind), but if we stick together there is hope for redemption:

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Communication, the MTA and You!

Published
by
Erin
on October 21, 2008
in Assessment, Media, New York and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Has anyone else noticed the new signs on the subway? For the second time in two years, the MTA is conducting a survey of its riders. I don’t remember seeing the signs when they were doing the survey the first time around, but it was apparently some time in 2007, and they wanted to know what suggestions we had for making the subway system better. You can go to to their website and see the results — what they call the “Rider Report Card.”

Now the MTA wants to know exactly how and why we New Yorkers get around the city. When I first saw the advertisement for the survey I was skeptical. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were actually going to take our feedback seriously or if this was just a public relations move to get us all to feel a little more hopeful that better commuting days are ahead. When I got home, I went online to learn more about the survey. As it turns out, the MTA has contracted an outside firm, Nustats, to gather this information for them. Somehow, the fact that they are investing money to do this made me feel a little more confident that the MTA is actually making an attempt at genuine communication with its customers.  However, I found two things rather peculiar: The MTA does not actually mention this current survey on their web page; I actually had to google “MTA Survey” to find it. Also, the survey is not being made available to the public via the internet. In order to participate you need to either download a paper form from a PDF file or call a toll free number and take the survey over the phone. I’m curious about those choices. I’m also curious about the $500 prize they are giving out weekly to one survey participant who is to be chosen at random from a drawing. If you’re interested, go to:

http://www.nustats.com/mta/

As the presidential election approaches I find myself thinking a lot about communication between institutions and individuals and wondering how much weight does the individual voice carry. But also, how important is it that individuals feel their voices are being heard? Will the chance for $500 entice subway riders to actually pick up the phone or download the file and participate in this survey? How sincerely does the MTA actually want us to?

And Now to Lighten Things Up

Published
by
KateR
on October 20, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

The annual Alfred E. Smith dinner took place on Thursday night at the Waldorf in NYC. This is a big fund raising dinner for Catholic Charities, named after 4-term NY Governor Al Smith (and one-time presidential nominee). It’s a tradition for presidential candidates to attend the event and roast each other, and Senators McCain and Obama did not disappoint. This made for some great sound bites for the media. If you didn’t get a chance to hear each candidate’s entire speech, take some time to view them.

While I don’t advise voting on the basis of these clips, I must admit I enjoyed watching them a lot more than the last debate. It’s a great example of how humor can really bring people together and be a very effective communication tool (if you have good writers!)

Obama Roasts McCain

McCain Roasts Obama

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

Published
by
Lauren
on October 5, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

After an MSG-laden meal of Chinese food recently, I opened up my fortune cookie to find the following words: “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

Now, while this was not technically a fortune revealing my life’s destiny, the words on the little scrap of paper did offer guidance for future endeavors: to be succinct and precise in one’s use of language.  This is valuable advice for those struggling to improve their writing and oral communication skills (or their campaigns for electoral office).

This advice is also, apparently, quite old.  I’ve been reading A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle (author of the children’s book A Wrinkle in Time), which is kind of messy and rambly, but is mostly about her experiences as a writer, teacher, mother and wife.  On page 149 she cites an anonymous poem written several centuries ago:

The written word
Should be clean as bone,
Clear as light,
Firm as stone.
Two words are not
As good as one.

So there you have it: a centuries’ old anonymous poet and a modern-day anonymous fortune cookie manufacturer are in agreement.  Keep it short and sweet.

With Flamenco on my mind

Published
by
Szidonia
on October 3, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

Flamenco is on my mind a whole lot, actually, increasingly so. As with most things significant in my life, Flamenco was an accident, unforeseen and unplanned; I did not know much about the dance when I began learning it about five years ago. Since then, it has become my main way for taking trips outside the academic bubble.

Besides functioning as my escape-mechanism, however, Flamenco serves me as metaphor for pedagogical praxis as well. My students tend to get a kick out of the fact that their “professor” is dancing away in her time off. (Is it just me, or our students really seem to lack imagination when it comes to their instructors?) So, I talk to them about it, not just in order to lighten up our conversations from time to time, but, also, to point out the importance of communication as a holistic, if you want, mind-body experience.

One of my favorite tricks is to shock them into awareness by interrupting the class at a given moment and asking them to hold, either sitting or standing up, a “Flamenco posture”: chest up, chin high, shoulders pushed back and down. (Depending upon the degree of intimacy with a given group of students, I risk one of my favorite quotes from my Spanish dance instructor, delivered with inimitable flair and seriousness: “Ladies and gentlemen, nipples to the sky!”) It always works and makes even the most sour and “I’m so bored!” face in the room crack a smile. I then tell them to internalize what their body communicates at that moment and to hold on to that sense of confidence and determination their posture projects. To think and write with originality and daring is like holding, both figuratively and literally, a beautiful Flamenco posture. The point is to make it real, real and lasting: live your ideas, live your writing, and live the dance that ensues!

I emphasized the importance of a good Flamenco posture when I gave a workshop on oral communication in an Accounting class the other day as well. I am not sure the professor in charge of the course was particularly convinced of the effectiveness of my dance-metaphor: it might have come across as a touch too flippant given the serious business of things under discussion like probability and interest-rates. (I asked him too, to hold the posture, but I do not think he followed my directions.) What told me, however, that I was making sense was the thing I have come to appreciate more and more in the course of my own teaching career: the students’ reactions.

The best performances I have ever had as a teacher, since teaching is a major act of performance, were those when I managed to pull in the students and let them take over. I have learned to really listen to those human beings masquerading as my students for a semester; their faces are the barometers that make me feel at the instinctive level of a gut reaction whether I am an effective communicator as an instructor. The magic of the classroom, when it happens, is like the perfect execution of a Flamenco move, showing you that what you rarely achieve and you are endlessly looking for is worth the trouble. It is, after all, art.

Facebook In Reality

Published
by
Mikhail
on August 15, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

With all the talk on this blog about Facebook and other social networking sites (see here, here, and here), here’s something that humorously encapsulates some of what unnerves many people about Facebook — particularly how social networking of this sort can make us vulnerable to unsavory characters of various sorts and what some people are afraid can be done with the information we typically make available on Facebook.

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Technology: Miracle or Illusion?

Published
by
Ryan
on June 12, 2008
in Fun, Golf, Technology and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

Editor’s note: in advance of this weekend’s U.S. Open, this is the final in a series of posts exploring the metaphorical relationship between golf and writing.

Since golf began being widely played during the 19th century until sometime in the middle of the twentieth, clubs had shafts of wood, not metal, certainly not graphite. The heads of clubs were slivers of metal about the thickness of a frying pan, the size of a silver dollar and had only a rumor of a “sweet spot.” A comparison might be playing tennis with an old-style 80-square-inch wooden racket strung with cat gut. Golf balls were originally stuffed with feathers (called “featheries”).

Today, the technology that goes into golf clubs and balls is seriously NASA-like. But without going into any more detail about polymers and titanium, let me get straight to the point: from the wooden clubs of the past to today’s clubs that amount to swingable periodic tables, something rather interesting has failed to change, namely golfer’s scores. The average amateur score is stuck at about 100, which stinks. (Almost everyone who golfs stinks at golf, myself included.)

Is it easier to hit the ball farther and straighter with hi-tech clubs? Yes. But if you then practice less it cancels out. Thus universal mediocrity on the links.

Perhaps readers can sense where I’m going for the writing tie-in. What if all the tech-centered promises of usefulness and openness and rethinking of pedagogical frameworks that we all talk about so much have downsides that cancel out any real improvements for young people learning to communicate? In golf, you might just as well play with a crisply rolled umbrella in your hand instead of a $400, wind-tunnel-tested science experiment UNLESS YOU HAVE A GOOD, REPEATABLE SWING. In regard to writing and reading in the web-world (yes, including “web 2.whatever we’re up to now”) is any amount of access or connectivity or integrated learning or p2p or interactivity or blogging or Wiki-ing going to make a difference – or rather, is the difference worth it – if it comes at the cost of implicitly discrediting the fact that there is no substitute for sitting down and reading a whole book? Lots of whole books. Yes, hours of time with just you and the (paper) pages. It is empowering for students to direct their own learning, but how impotent is a mind left without at least some relatively deep reading? Blogs keep us connected to those who share our various interests, but how disconnected from the human spirit are we without having read great novels? How can one really appreciate good writing if the most challenging thing one reads is cac.ophony.org?

I’m trying to be a little provocatively anti-tech here, and I ask: Workers of the Post-Book Techmad Connectiverse Freedom World – are you united? Is it OK that people don’t read books and that we imply that anything that takes so long is old-fashioned, unconnected, Luddistic and lame?

Happy US Open viewing!

Extras: Best golf instruction book: Harvey Pennick’s Little Red Book. Best golf-based literature: P. G. Wodehouse, Heart of a Goof.

From literacy to digiracy: Will reading and writing remain important?

Published
by
James Drogan
on May 26, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

This article from the May 16, 2008 issue of The Economist is provocative in its challenge to us as business people, educators, and, to a lesser extent, students.

The content aligns well with what has been the major themes of the recent annual symposiums (at least the last two; maybe the last three).

Are we doing anything different?  I don’t mean little things, but big things — things that embody a significant change in communications quality.  Quite frankly, I don’t think I am, and I find this a somewhat humbling, troubling conclusion.  Am I too set in my ways?  Do I lack the capability and capacity?  Am I too worried about trends that are, in the long run, insignificant?

Finding New Contexts for the CPE Exam

Published
by
Olga
on February 15, 2008
in Faculty Development, Literacy, Resources, Uncategorized and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

Is there room for the CPE exam in humanities and social sciences classrooms? Should there be room?

Perhaps it is a common or at least recommended practice among professors to integrate CPE-like assignments into their courses if many of their students either have not yet taken or failed the exam.  Until recently I have not encountered in regular classes any assignments that came close to the CPE prompts.  I was in fact very surprised when the professor teaching the section of Great Works for ESL students shared with me her two-fold writing assignment that articulates the same goals and criteria as the CPE.  The subjects of this compare/contrast essay are of course literary texts.   I have not yet discussed the assignment with the students, but I am sure they’ll appreciate their professor’s effort to bridge the cold and scary CUNY testing world with the comfort of classroom learning.

Why bother when surely the tasks involved in the CPE exam require the level of critical thinking and writing abilities that develop gradually in different classes and through different activities in the course of their first few years in college?  But many students still dread the exam and postpone it for as long as possible.  Many do not always realize that attending a CPE workshop plays just one part, and probably not the largest one, in their exam preparation.  It is the work they do in their classes that truly prepares them for this test.  And perhaps reminding them about this through course materials that share the exam’s rhetoric would create a more positive and serious attitude not only toward the exam, but  toward college work in general. 

The Latest in New Rules

Published
by
James Drogan
on January 21, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

Your attention is called to “Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular” on page 1 of the New York Times for January 20, 2008.

This is the most extreme example I have encountered of the phenomena discussed in last year’s annual symposium.

It’s hard to deny the results of this approach to communications. That is, the needs of the parties in the communication are being satisfied. And, in the end, isn’t that the aim of communications?

That conventions are being changed is, I’m afraid, the inevitable result of the release of new methods amongst significant numbers of people who are unafraid and are motivated to explore Frost’s “road not taken.”

New rules are an irresistible force and we need to find a way, as those who have preceded us have had to do (e.g., consider the developments in communications over the centuries), to come to some accommodation with these new practices.

Transformation in communication will undoubtedly accelerate. This accelerated change and its “tipping points” will lead to miscommunication, the subject of this year’s symposium. Managing change and its attendant outcomes thus becomes critical as “new speak” (I think I picked this up from Orwell.) continually influences our lives.

At the risk of inflaming passions, let me advance the notion that we must be on guard against becoming the Luddites of language.