Inclement Weather

If you didn't do a Campus Safari this week because of the crazy snowstorm (or any other reason), that's okay. I will make two Campus Safaris due for next Saturday instead since I know that a bunch of events got snowed out today.

"Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success" -- Author Unknown

Group Project Assignment:

Each group will be responsible for:

1) Assigning a few interesting and college-appropriate readings for the class

2) Introducing the material (no more than 5 minutes)

3) Coming up with 3-5 thought-provoking discussion questions (on a handout or written on the board)

4) Starting the discussion of the topic/readings

5) Facilitating a short introductory activity like a quiz or game (optional)

The entire presentation/discussion of each group's topic and readings will be approximately 30 minutes only, so think about how to use those 30 minutes to achieve the three main objectives: provide information, get the class interested/engaged, and have a productive discussion of the material.

Also, since this is a group effort, think about how your group is going to split up the work evenly. This will count as 2 homework/in-class work grades. Each individual member of the group should also submit a short (maybe 1 page) write-up explaining what each member contributed to the whole project, from brainstorming to speaking in class. This piece of writing will count as an additional homework grade.

"Choices are the hinges of destiny" --Pythagoras

Next week's blogs are perhaps the easiest or the hardest type of blogging assignment, depending on your perspective. Essentially, you have the freedom to create a blog of your choice, on just about nay topic, but you have to decide on a topic and make it work, instead of simply writing what I tell you to write or fulfilling the assignment. I have limited the parameters of the posts a little bit; see below:

1. Write about anything that interests you and might interest your readers/classmates.

2. Write about anything that interests you but is somehow connected to SCSU.

You can choose to complete them in any order. Remember that even though the choice of topic is open, but it still needs to be a 300 word post with a beginning, middle, and end and all the other standard conventions of strong blog posts. We will be looking more at writing blogs with Mike next Thursday so these posts will be good practice in thinking about what makes a blog post interesting, strong, coherent, etc.

Looking Past Midterms to the Rest of the Semester

College is a time to reinvent yourself, even from semester to semester if you want or need to. In this vein, here are next week's blogging assignments:


1) Do something that is outside your comfort zone (not dangerous obviously, just new and different) and blog about it. Tell us what you did and why and how it turned out.

2) Reflect on your midterm grades (as a whole, not just for INQ). Are you where you want to be/expected to be? If so, why and what has been working? If not, why not and what can you do to change it? Finally, set some specific goals for yourself for the remainder of the semester.

Reminder!!

Advising meetings this week are in my office: EN D244. If you're not sure when your meeting with me is scheduled, email me and find out. Remember to fill out the papers in your advising folder and print out your degree evaluation and bring all of that with you when you meet with me. Come a few minutes early to make sure you're on time. A few people have already missed their appointments today. Remember that it counts for attendance for this week.

A great resource on Creative Thinking and Creative Problem Solving

http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook1.htm

Next Week's Blogging Assignments

I know that you all will be hard at work on your video projects next week, so I've decided to make your blog posts somewhat related to your project. Here are your assignments:

1. A post about troubleshooting. Discuss a problem you encountered in making your video (adding sound, adjusting the volume, finding your interviewee's office, uploading your draft to youtube, posting it to your blog, etc.) and talk about the way you fixed it, the steps you tried, what finally worked, and what you learned from this experience in general.

2. A post about time management for a big project like this. Chart how many hours you spent a) brainstorming, b) interviewing, c) gathering other materials like articles, quotes, facts, photos, music, etc., d) transferring all of your materials to your computer, e) learning to use the video software, f) making the video, troubleshooting, g) editing, h) other time. Chart the time used so far and how much more you expect to put in before the due date the following week. Also reflect on your time management skills. Have you used your time wisely? What could you have done differently for a better result?

Critical Thinking, Innovation, and Play

I've heard a few students lately talking about critical thinking and creative thinking, wondering if they are the same thing or opposite things or different with some overlap. This insightful article from NPR.org about the life (and successes) of Steve Jobs speaks exactly to this issue; it suggests that part of Jobs' genius in crafting a successful career was his willingness to engage in creativity, fun, and play. At the same time, he is lauded as being one of the most innovative critical thinkers of this era. What does that suggest about the relationship between creative and critical thinking?

Interesting Speaker Coming to Campus

**copied from SCSU's page

Author Jonathan Kozol on "THE SHAME OF THE NATION: Race, Poverty, and the Public Schools"

Mon., Oct 10, 6pm in the Adanti Student Center Ballroom, free admission


Author Jonathan Kozol is the founder of Education Action, a non-profit dedicated to grassroots organizing of teachers across the country who wish to help create a single, excellent, unified system of American public schools.

Kozol draws a clear line between the empty dialogue applied to the issue by pundits, and the real, harrowing issues faced by teachers and students on the ground, helping an audience understand the lifestyles that come to pass in The Other Wes Moore, SCSU's 2011 Campus Read.

A tireless and influential advocate for America's public education system, Jonathan Kozol has played a major role in placing schools on our national political compass. In a campus talk on Monday, Oct. 10 at 6 p.m., Kozol will discuss his observations of race and isolation in inner city schools.

Death at an Early Age, his first non-fiction book, is a description of his first year as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools. It was published in 1967 and received the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. It has sold more than two million copies in the United States and Europe.

Among the other books by Kozol are Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book award for 1989 and the Conscience-in-Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, which won the New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.

His 1995 book, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, described his visits to the South Bronx of New York, the poorest congressional district in the United States. It received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1996, an honor previously granted to the works of Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, Jr.



The lecture will be followed by Q & A and a book signing.

Sample Midterm Videos from last year's INQ classes

This is a video made with iMovie from last midterm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHRUzsntBWM&feature=player_embedded

And here is another, also using iMovie, but quite different in style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPIgKBE4ggM

Follow-up to Library Visit and Next Week's Blog Posts

Today, we had a hand-on library session that introduced us to some resources that the library offers. The assignment culminates in an essay about critical thinking using the articles and books that you found today. The essay (with sources cited) is your blog post assignment for next Monday.

Wendy, our awesome librarian, wants to remind everyone that you can contact her for further library assistance (or to get an assignment if you missed today's session). Her contact info is: hardenbergw1@southernct.edu.

Wednesday's blog post is a discussion of how it's going on your draft of your video and if you have a partial video done, please post that as well.

Project Questions

Nina asked some questions via email that I'm sure some of you are wondering about.

She said, "Are we supposed to pick one question to focus on like we did for the blog post where we had to interview students and interview people on it? Or do we need to address all of the questions you wrote on the assignment paper? Also is a "rough draft" of the video due next Thursday or just our research?"

Here is my reply: The one major question for the project is "what is critical thinking?" but I tried to break that question down for you so you would consider its smaller components. You do not have to answer all of the brainstorming questions I posed for you to begin thinking about the project. In fact, you should narrow down the project in any way that makes sense to you and ask interview question(s) that help you do that. You have a lot of freedom in that respect. You want to ask enough questions so you get interesting material to work with but not too many that you are overburdened with too much. Maybe have a set of questions ready in case you need to get more in-depth with the people you interview? Next Thursday a rough draft of the video is due. Try to have some of the video done. The more you have done, the more feedback we can give and the more we can help troubleshoot.

Ask other questions in the comments section if you want or via email as always or in office hours or in class.

Workshops on Campus

Passing these on from the SCSU FYE facebook page:

1. Mid-Term Exam Study Workshop tomorrow at 1pm and 5:30pm in Adanti 306! Let the OSSE help you help yourself!

2. Life Management workshop in Farnham Hall Program Room at 7:00 tonight! Stop by and get yourself organized.

3. Student Government Expo tonight at 8:30, also in Farnham. Find out how to organize your class government.

Critical Thinking about Critical Thinking

Midterm Video Project: “What is Critical Thinking??”


For this project, I want you to tackle the complex question of “What is Critical Thinking?”

What does the term mean, how is it defined in various academic disciplines, how is it used in educational and other circles? Generate specific examples. Why is Critical Thinking important? How can it be used in college and beyond? Generate specific examples of this too. Where do we find Critical Thinking at work on a college campus? In what ways do we, as a community, engage in it and to what purposes? Where might we need to inject a bit more Critical Thinking skills, practices, or principles? Try to be as innovative and distinctive as possible in your exploration of answers to these questions. Everyone starts with the same basic question, and the challenge is to go beyond the obvious or simple truths to craft unique answers.

We have begun to answer these questions in our INQ class, and other (sometimes similar, sometimes different) answers have been explored in your Critical Thinking class. Use all of this data as a starting point in addition to the readings, videos, discussions, etc. you have been exposed to in this class and others. In exploring your question and possible answers, start first with the ideas you’ve gathered from the reading and also find and use one book or article from the library (you will need to cite any sources you use so be sure to note where you’re getting your information from). Then add your own voice and ideas to the discussion.

Next, you will need to go out onto the campus and do some on-the-ground research. You will need to interview at least 2 faculty or staff members, at least 3 undergraduate students, and at least 1 older student/role model (a CC, a team captain, student leader of a club or organization, an OA or peer mentor, etc.). Ask all of the people you interview a short series of questions and take notes or video footage or both for use in the final video project.

The final step involves interpreting the findings and crafting them into an informative and interesting video project. The project should have a clear beginning, middle, and end that moves through the following elements:

1) framing the question and providing some context for the project,

2) exploring answers to your question from multiple perspectives,

3) providing some closure from your perspective, some “so what?” or “what have we learned?” to leave the viewer with at the end of the video.

This project requires you to create a short video, not a set of PowerPoint slides. It is not a presentation project; your video needs to stand alone and run on its own. It is possible to create such a digital project using PowerPoint, but it is much easier and more professional if done in iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or other video creation software. The final video should be about 8 minutes long.

The first draft of this project is due Oct 13, but you will have much opportunity for revision and fine-tuning. The final version of this project is due Oct 25. It should be uploaded to YouTube and linked to on your blog. I would also like a hard copy burned onto a CD (and tested to make sure it works).