10.12.2006

"...with the Modesty of a Learner, not the Forwardness of a Teacher. You'll pardon me for it, but I once, to try her only, desired her Opinion...

...on a Point which was controverted between Mr. Thwackum and Mr. Square, To which she answered with much Sweetness, 'You will pardon me, good Mr. Allworthy, I am sure you cannot in Earnest think me capable of deciding any Point in which two such Gentlemen disagree.'"

facebook.com is now a networking site like friendster.com and myspace.com; until very recently, the community was limited to people with .edu addresses-- high school and college students, staff, and faculty. The last couple of semesters, I've read my students' facebook profiles so that I can ask them impertinent questions during the class meeting we use for introductions: "On your facebook profile, you write, 'You know how at parties.. there are the "drunk drunk" people, and the "sober sober" people... well I was one of the "drunk-sober" people.' What does it mean that you're a 'drunk-sober' person?" I swear there's a pedagogical function to this, but I'll sidestep that digression. Another bonus of facebook.com and its popularity is that I can easily capture pictures of almost all my students and use the images to learn their names very quickly. When I printed out their pics in September, I promised Bradford I would post the image so that my friends and readers could take a gander at my students and get a sense of who I'm teaching. That was before I had a sense of what a super group I have this semester. You'll have to click on the image to really see them.



Here they are identified by their research topics. They're still in the earliest stages of the project, so don't balk if some topics sound dangerously broad. I can't wait to see their work: I mean, a paper about the cowboy hat!? about fingernails!? What could be better? Seriously!

2 comments:

MC said...

The gender breakdown of your class is the exact opposite of the course I taught last fall. 3 brave boys faced the textile challenge of a quarter in Surface Design with Cepress. How DO you do it?

And what is Wii?

Erk said...

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.






jk. The gender breakdown of this class would have terrified me a couple of years ago. Luckily, for the class's sake, the women are all really smart and well-spoken, and two of them are very confident and strong-willed. Luckily, for me, I've ended up becoming friends with a number of politically moderate straight male former students. Who knew that I could speak to politically moderate straight men!? I don't question it; I just roll with it.