One assignment that I would like to use in my syllabus assignment would be a mixture of both technology and old school letter writing. Since I value collaboration and interaction between native students and international students, I would like to have at least one assignment that fosters interaction among them.
For my syllabus, I intend to have my students make a video or presentation about their native places, and write a letter, sorry, handwrite a letter, to a classmate explaining the video and convincing each other to spend their summer there. The video could have images supported by music and titles, but I would want them to use words and detailed explanation only in the handwritten letter. No matter how modern our teaching methods become, I like to believe that we will always be connected to at least some traditional way of teaching. Through this assignment, I intend to make it easier for my international students to make a transition to a new educational system that values technology more than their countries’ educational systems do. Similarly, it will be a new experience for American students to indulge in something that they might not have done before.
Apart from fostering a sense of camaraderie among my students, I think that dividing the assignment into two parts would give them a chance to practice two different media at the same time. While making a video or presentation would give them hands on experience regarding technology, writing about the video would help them learn how to express themselves, or may even use rhetoric to some extent. I would also have the students reply to those letters, telling their friends what they liked about the video and if they needed more information. In all this I would exhort my students to maintain civility. I do abhor the grading system, but I might have to use it to attain my goals here!
Moreover, I think this assignment would be a fun way to start the semester!
Nidhi,
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that your first assignment would use both video technology and a handwritten letter. The juxtaposition of these two mediums gets me thinking about the purposes, strengths, and limitations of different technologies. Is this part of your purpose for including this assignment? The students would be using rhetoric in both the video presentation and the letter, but the way they present that rhetoric will be (or at least should be) different for each medium. Would you follow up this assignment with an in-class discussion about the different choices they made based on the technology used?
Have you had a chance to review others' syllabi yet? I'm going to make them available through our class site soon. I wonder if reviewing what your peers have to say about syllabi might be useful for your own thinking, too.
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