Teaching Exchange: Introduction and Welcome
Nick Carbone, Teaching Exchange Editor
Home Page: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~ncarbone/
Email: ncarbone@lamar.colostate.edu
With this section, I don't feel like an editor so much as I feel like an explorer who gets a first peek at some of the ways teachers make their classrooms come alive. The pleasure of teaching is the pleasure of experiment, discovery, reflection, and appreciation. Our syllabi and ideas, often informed by equal parts theory and prior practice, begin as propositions in learning, experiments we want to pursue with our students. Along the way, as the course proceeds, we discover with our students' help what works, what we must amend, and what we must suspend. When we reflect on the experiment (or experience, if you prefer), we grant ourselves the gift of perspective. Reflection is a chance to both savor and revise, to regret and rejoice, to rest and plan anew. But the best part of reflection, it seems to me, are those moments that allow us to appreciate how lucky we are to be teaching, to have students with whom we can share ideas and from whom we can learn.
This section seeks to celebrate what we appreciate by letting us share with one another those things that worked well and to talk about as well those things that didn't go as planned. In this exchange, we'll make room for lesson plans, assignment ideas, classroom narratives, teachers' stories, and other types of artifacts and lore.
Our inauguration begins with three lesson plans that teachers use to celebrate the learning in their courses, a Web site that helps students learn by playing, and a smart observation about the value of synchronous discussions for online learning.
- Christopher Reisch shares two related assignments, a Math Autobiography and Course Reflection.
- Marlene M. Preston offers a final exam assignment where students celebrate the semester's learning.
- Skip Downing also ends the semester with a celebration by students that includes writing, speaking, and eating.
- John Barber shares a Web site that explains how using problem solving computer games helps ESL students become better writers and thinkers in English.
- Joel Haefner opines on the value of using synchronous communication in online learning to make the experience more interactive and vital for students.
Publication Information: Carbone, Nick. (2000). Teaching Exchange: Introduction and Welcome. Academic.Writing. https://doi.org/10.37514/AWR-J.2000.1.8.32
Publication Date: March 26, 2000
DOI: 10.37514/AWR-J.2000.1.8.32
Copyright © 2000 Academic.Writing.