Second Class

Thoughts on Reading (Bean pp37-70): Right off the bat, I was faced with some vocabulary/terminology to look up. As I said, I am so new to pedagogical speak that I literally need a pocket translator. The topic heading that had me reaching for google was: 'The Heuristic Structure of Academic Prose'.

I had already looked up heuristic last week but I had never heard the term academic prose. Google quickly told me that I knew what it was, I had just never heard it named or described in text before. I suppose a lot of the technical writing I do is considered academic prose. It was good to actually see it described and defined, though. It explains where my students may be getting some of their tips and pointers. I always see some odd phrases in lab reports that seem rather out of place such as: hither to, unto, therefore. These are all fine words, but sometimes it looks as though my students have gone through a lab report and thrown these things in to stylize. Perhaps they are trying to make it sound 'academic'. I agree with most of tenants of academic prose--it is how we write in the sciences. But, on the other hand, I am also a fan of being lean and pithy where appropriate. Academic prose can get out of hand just like legalese and in the end you are left wondering what is actually being said! Anyway, if I am allegedly encouraging my students to write in this method, I should know something official about it so I was glad to read about it in Bean. I was also happy to read the 'interrogation' of it.

I really enjoyed the reading on nformal and exploratory writing (Bean Ch 6). I am starting to see the connection between personal writing and typical academic writing. At first glance, I could not really imagine or articulate a connection between the two. Now, after reading and reflecting a bit I see how important it might be to include many types of writing into a science course. I see a clear connection between encouraging personal, expressive writing in a journal (yes, even about science stuff!) and the finished, polished product of say a lab report. Why not? Spending time doing many different types of writing may be key to final organization, fleshing out ideas, and even to collaboration.

Again, we get to the part where as soon as I start talking/thinking about teaching, I suddenly realize how little I know about pedagogy! There is so much to do and so much to think about regarding giving assignments to students. Not to mention the part where you are actually trying to convey some content. This all makes me nervous!

On another note regarding exploratory/personal writing...I had this great idea in another course where my students would keep a lab journal blog. We have gone away from lab journal writing and all my students do is a formal lab report. I had proposed getting students to do a little 'not formal' writing in a blog where they could also post their data, comment on other data (hello collaboration!) and I could easily check in and be part of it. My idea got shot down in spades! First someone commented that blog writing and scientific writing are totally different and informal blog writing in lei of real lab book writing should not be encouraged! AND second that 'sharing data' was a bad idea as it would lead to cheating!

NOW, with my new skills and knowledge from Bean I realized I was going to use personal writing by assigning a blog and that this is beyond pedagogically sound! I may have been on to something with my blog lab journal idea and I think I may pursue it now that I am seeing the connection between doing all types of writing in a course even when the finished, polished product is a lab report.

New Vocabulary:

inchoate: being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent

This term was used in Bean when talking about how Britton noticed that in the earliest drafts of their work, expert writers showed evidence of doing expressive writing.