Jansen Book Club 2012 Upcoming Books
March: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See
April: Sundays at Tiffany’s, by James Patterson
May: In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir, by Neil White
June: The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
July: Even Silence has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle, by Ingrid Batancourt
August: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
September: Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
October: Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner
November: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
December: The Paris Wife: A Novel, by Paula McLain
Students - another way to earn extra credit. Read these books that my book group is going to read. Then write up a “Book Talk” in which you try to encourage others to read the book without giving away too much. :)
Question:
I was wondering if my grade for the write up for the 2nd assignment part ever recorded, it never said it was but I wanted to make sure I did it correctly when I posted/replied/etc.
Asked by briawna-speaks
Answer:
Do you mean for the reading responses? I don’t know if I’ve seen those. I’ll check again!
Tips for Online Success
Tips for Online Success
As the facilitator of an online course, it is important that you clearly communicate your expectations to your students. In your online course, you may want to include reference links to resources and tips for your students to use to help them be more successful online learners. Here are some tips for success that you should share with your students:
- Take full advantage of online conferencing.
Whatever you can do to avoid feeling isolated is extremely important, and participating in online conferences will give you access to other students who are taking the same course as you at the same time. - Participate!
Whether you are working alone, or in a group, contribute your ideas, perspective and comments on the subject you are studying, and read about those of your classmates. Your instructor is not the only source of information in your course—you can gain great insight from your peers and they can learn from you as well. - Take the program and yourself seriously.
Elicit the support of your colleagues, family and friends before you start out on your online adventure. This built-in support system will help you tremendously since there will be times when you will have to sit at your computer for hours at a stretch in the evenings and on weekends. When most people are through with work and want to relax is most likely when you will be bearing down on your course work. It helps to surround yourself with people who understand and respect what you are trying to do. - Make sure you have a private space where you can study.
This will help lend importance to what you are doing as well. Your own space where you can shut the door, leave papers everywhere, and work in peace is necessary. If you try to share study space with the dining room or bedroom, food or sleep will take priority over studying. - Become a true advocate of distance learning.
Discuss the merits of the process with whoever will listen. In order to be successful in this new educational environment, you must truly believe in its potential to provide quality education which is equal to, if not better than the traditional face-to-face environment. In discussing the value of online learning, you will reinforce its merits for yourself. - Log on to your course every single day.
….or a minimum of 5-6 days a week. Once you get into the online conferencing system, you will be eager to see who has commented on your postings and read the feedback of your instructor and peers. You will also be curious to see who has posted something new that you can comment on. If you let too many days go by without logging on to your course discussion group, you will get behind and find it very difficult to catch up. - Take advantage of your anonymity.
One of the biggest advantages of the online format is that you can pursue your studies without the judgments typical in a traditional classroom. Unless you are using video conferencing, no one can see you – there are no stereotypes, and you don’t have to be affected by raised eyebrows, rolled eyeballs, other students stealing your thunder, or people making other non-verbal reactions to your contributions. You don’t have to feel intimidated or upstaged by students who can speak faster than you because you can take all of the time you need to think your ideas through and compose a response before posting your comments to your class. - Be polite and respectful.
Just because you are anonymous, doesn’t mean you should let yourself go. Remember, you are dealing with real people on the other end of your modem. Being polite and respectful is not only common sense, it is absolutely obligatory for a productive and supportive online environment. In a positive online environment, you will feel valued by your instructor, valued by your classmates and your own work will have greater value as well. - Speak up if you are having problems.
Remember that your professor cannot see you, so you must be absolutely explicit with your comments and requests. If you are having technical difficulties, or problems understanding something about the course, you MUST speak up otherwise there is no way that anyone will know that something is wrong. Also, if you don’t understand something, chances are several people have the same question. If another student is able to help you, he/she probably will, and if you are able to explain something to your classmates in need, you will not only help them out, you will reinforce your own knowledge about the subject. - Apply what you learn. Apply everything you learn as you learn it and you will remember it more readily. If it is possible, take the things you learn in your online course today and use them in your workplace tomorrow. Also, try to make connections between what you are learning and what you do or will do in your job. Contributing advice or ideas about the real-world as it applies to the subject matter you are studying helps you to internalize what you are learning, and gives valuable insight to your classmates who will benefit from your experience.
- From Illinois Online Network
The Grey
Feb. 4, 2012 – Saw the movie The Grey today. I wish I had not. I don’t know wht the writer/director wanted to convey by this movie. I don’t know what the theme was. Here are a couple of ideas, but… the ending was so bad. Maybe someone thought that was the only “realistic” ending. There were several things that were unrealistic about the film, so I don’t know why they would have insisted on a “realistic” ending. Some possible themes: God will not assist godless men; Fight to the end; It is okay to show fear; If you lay down in the snow, you might die.
But, why won’t God help a man who cries out to him for help? One of the fallacies of this movie. God will help those who turn to him. I just don’t get it. Maybe the theme: Mother Nature is all powerful; Wolves are evil; Nature is more powerful than man… I need some help here.
I liked some parts of the movie. And yes, Liam Neeson is an awesome actor, but… come on. Give me a good ending to a good movie!
February 2
Feb. 2 – Since I didn’t write yesterday, I guess I need to write for 20 minutes today?!? I got pretty tired yesterday of being on the computer. I was trying to update my Quicken files yesterday evening so I could get ready to do taxes. Almost ready!
I just watched a kind of disturbing YouTube video about how people can track your location from the pictures you post. It’s too bad that our society has so misguided individuals who choose to participate in illegal and immoral activities that we have to worry about something like that. It seems like there is usually a bad side to some good new technologies. For example, texting is a great way to keep in touch with friends and families, but students don’t realize that there are different formalities in writing. So they carry over the test message informality into their more formal classroom or work writing projects. And, not being a digital native, it really rubs me the wrong way, especially the lower case of that pesky personal pronoun “I” which of course is the most common pronoun people use in a text message (or maybe in any writing environment?). And so, digital natives, will they care about correct capitalization when they are writing letters to prospective employers, or on SAT writing tests, or in letters to the editor of a newspaper? Will anyone care, eventually? It seems like we get used to new things in our language, like slang terms, and then, suddenly, those terms aren’t slang anymore, put part of our everyday lexicon. An example of that is profanity. Twenty years ago, it was rarely used on television. Today, a person hears profanity on almost any television program… And it seems like the average person doesn’t mind hearing it.
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Just finished Live Office, and two students came this week, Erin and Olivia. Live Office is so fun! I really like being able to talk to my students from all across the state. They get to see me, too, and hear me. It does take a little work, and I feel like I am “on stage” for an hour (just like a face-to-face classroom), but it is very informal. Maybe it’s so fun because the technology is new and different for me. Well, I’ve been doing Live Office sessions for about three years now (not really sure how long we’ve been doing them with IDLA). But it still seems new and fun. Online teaching is fun because the teacher doesn’t have to be a prison guard, or a baby sitter. Most of the students are in online classes because they want to be, as an alternative, or just something different to try. Yes, some students take online classes for credit recovery, and then it is not so voluntary, but you don’t get the peer pressure causing disruptions in the class. Anyway, there are a lot of great things about online education. That’s just one of them.
So, I have to come up with a story or essay that I want to write so I have something to write each day. I don’t want this journal to just be a “diary.” I want it to be productive. Maybe some times I will be able to combine my photo of the day with my journal for that day.
Today I posted a picture of my Norfolk Inland Pine houseplant that is dying. And I asked for advice on how to keep it alive. My son, Josh, was quick to post back that I need to be careful not to overwater it, and to fertilize it every time I water. Thanks, Josh! I am not a plant person, and my whole adult life I have struggled with keeping plants alive. The only plants I can keep alive for very long are philodendrons, and the only reason they stay alive is because they are almost impossible to kill. Sometimes I like the fact that I can make the decision to let the plant die; that it won’t ruin my life if I let that one task slide. There are so many responsibilities that each person has in life; I find it a relief to let one of the lesser important ones go. I’m sure green-thumb enthusiasts would cower at that comment… Let them give me some advice on keeping plants alive!
Bird by Bird:
Some Instructions on Writing and Life,
by Anne Lamott
Some Reasons for Writing from Anne Lamott
Bird by bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott
Some key points from the Introduction.
“Every morning, no matter how late he (my father, the writer) had been up, my father rose at 5:30AM, went to his study, wrote for a couple of hours, made us all breakfast, read the paper with my mother, and then went back to work for the rest of the morning.”
“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.”
“I understood immediately the thrill of seeing oneself in print. It provides some sort of primal verification: you are in print; therefore, you exist.”
“I suspect that he (my father) was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grownups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.”
“Do it every day for a while,” my father kept saying. “Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.”
“The months before a book comes out of the chute are, for most writers, right up there with the worst life has to offer… totally decompensating.”
“December is traditionally a bad month for writing. It is a month of Mondays. I simply recommend to people that they never start a large writing project on any Monday in December.”
“When my (writer) friends are working (on their writing), they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time.”
“But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part… The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”
