teaching: September 2005 Archives

I usually don't give final exams because I've always been a bit skeptical of the way they purport to measure "knowledge."

At the same time, society seems to still reward those who can package their knowledge into the standardized box. Am I doing my students a favor by generating other forms of assessment or should I be providing them more opportunities to learn how to fit in?

Currently, the final exam for Public Speaking is scheduled for Friday, December 16 at 10:30 am in Macher W-26.

The final exam for Introduction to Mass Communication is scheduled for Tuesday, December 13th (the last day of class).

Imagine! Turns out the rumors of criminal activity were mostly that - rumors. So says todays New York Times. I wonder how many of those rumors they helped to perpetuate by reporting them? Of course - they reported what they heard, and probably did qualify most of these 'reports' as stories, fears, concerns....what an interesting media analysis this would be! How were those rumors categorized and couched? And then there's Bush, trying to shift attention from his lack of care to "criminals who had no mercy." I heard a language-based critique of his speech on VPR Tuesday morning, the link is posted with the speeches for written analysis for the Public Speaking class.

Here's an early woman actor who wasn't mentioned by Elayne Rapping in her review of "Hollywood's Mid-1980s Feminist Heroines".

A tribute.

Thank you Ms. Stephenson. ;-)

Martin and Gentry use only Festinger's Social Comparison theory to describe the influence of marketing in the media, but I'd wager that Schutz' Interpersonal Needs theory also has relevance.

but I'm still optimistic the students in intro to mass comm are gonna be jazzed as we continue. It's hard work devising a strategy for learning when "the lesson" isn't laid out on a platter; but we're gonna pull it off. Flashes of brilliance abound, from all quarters. :-)

For COM 260, Section 4:

Teresa will critique Wade Boggs Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Speech

MIckaela and Sean will both critique Jim Valvano's Induction Speech.

Here's a critique of Bush's speech after Hurricane Katrina that I heard on Vermont Public Radio by Philip Baruth.

The "Checkers" speech by soon-to-be-impeached Richard Nixon might be interesting.

for critique and archives. These are listed in Jarice's co-edited text (with Alison Alexander), Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Mass Media and Society, 8th Edition, 2005.

The Center for Media Education has changed to the Media Education Foundation (I think).

General Communication Resources from the University of Iowa

The Kaiser Family Foundation

Writer's Guild of America

Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Natal-Durban in South Africa

The Freedom Forum

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Vanderbilt University's Television News Archives

Advertising Age

I suppose there's lots of video material online now, but here's a source from Alternet, which is a reputable online news source. Same video, different source. And then there's the print media:

Because i can never find this kind of info when I need it: Managing class email lists.

The students in public speaking pulled a fast one on my yesterday. I wondered what they were up to when more than half of them were huddled together on the steps of Machmer right before class. Elaine apparently wondered whether I even noticed the masking tape nametags they were all wearing in order to ace the test on each other's names. It was hard to miss Luke with his nametag on his headfore!

I was quite pleased to see it, as I had been worrying class hadn't been "fun enough" - dealing with the logistics of setting up a collaborative curriculum (not to mention the swampy heat of our mid-afternoon class session). It was a good move to try and get back at me for bluffing them on that 20-30 page paper... :-)

Herein lies the distinction between deliberative, ceremonial, and forensic speeches, succinctly labeled by Stephen as being about the future, the present, and the past, respectively.

According to Stephen, referring back to Aristotle, there are three types of speeches, and these revolve around "...a question of the speaker's relationship to judgments about the past (forensic), present (epideictic), and future (deliberative)." This site,"On Rhetoric" distinguishes clearly among these three types.

A ton of resources:

http://www.classism.org/

My colleagues rise to the occasion (as always) and suggest:

- the COM dept's own video library
- list of campus offerings (can be seen live; some of which may also be videotaped)
- CSPAN and/or CNN
- several videos are available from the publisher" of the assigned text (scroll down)
- not to mention (!) the CDRom which comes with the text - it includes several speeches (noted in the text

I'm teaching two classes at two different universities - public speaking at one and intro to mass comm at the other. PS meets 2x/week, masscom once/week plus an online discussion board (which is quite full, awaiting reading today, yeah!). On the surface there is no parallel: different topic, different structure. But both classes are concerned with effect - with the production of a desired response (and, arguably, with the fallout of unintended or unforeseen effects as well).

There are many different kinds of effects:

I've actually been mulling the syllabi and approach to teaching my two new courses for weeks, but now it's time for the rubber to meet the road.

UNH has given me an open slate to teach as experimentally as I wish, which is a rare and beautiful gift. I'm psyched as I consider the possibilities. Hopefully the students will live up to their rep and embrace a more organic, less definitive model.