The OC (Week 16)

This post is part of an ongoing series.

Final Exam

Two weeks ago, I wrapped up my Technical Writing class with a final exam. It was a little experimental (Courtney said more than once, "I've certainly never had a final like that!"), but it went perfectly.

In case I didn't mention it before, Courtney joined us for the final exam period. I asked the class if they were cool with that back in Week 15, and they insisted they had no problem. She wanted to come out of idle curiosity, mainly as a result of reading this blog, and I had no objections.

So she showed up Thursday afternoon, a couple minutes before one o'clock, and the vast majority of my students were already there and in their seats. I was at the front of the class, by the computer station, getting things ready for the class session, and she came timidly into the classroom, crossed in front of the blackboard, and asked me where she should sit that would be unobtrusive and out of the way.

I'm mean sometimes. I sent her to the chair at the teacher's desk, front and center.

Cookie Platter

I wasn't trying to be mean. It was really the only place I had for her. The students were arrayed on the outside of their inverted-U of tables, and though there was a table tucked in the middle of the room (where I'd sat while observing the presentations), I had big plans for the middle of the room, so I couldn't really send her there.

I was also standing at the computer station and not starting class for a very particular reason. I was buying time, waiting for all of my students to arrive, and also deliberately standing so as to conceal a cookie platter T-- had made for my students. I didn't want to spoil the reveal by having someone walk in late and spot a half-hidden cookie platter, y'know?

Anyway, once the classroom was full, I turned on the overhead projector with just the empty desktop of my school-issued laptop showing, and that got everyone's attention. All eyes snapped to the screen, and then I stepped back, brought forth the cookie platter, and headed to the table in the middle of the room to set it down.

I was halfway there when someone said, "Are those cookies?"

I explained that T-- had wanted to send cookies for my students all semester, but I'd kept objecting because I thought it would be too distracting. Then I finally relented on the one day when their participation counted for 10% of their grade. Hardly fair. Nobody complained, though.

I was in the grip of la grippe, so I left the cookies wrapped in their plastic and stepped back to the front of the room. "I need somebody else to unwrap them," I said, and about two heartbeats later Sean -- seated in the middle of the back row, and as far from the cookies as possible -- leaped over the tables to take care of business. He got them unwrapped, then passed the tray around, which was quite calm and orderly.

Chaos and Disorder

The next step was the one that denied Courtney a seat in the middle of the room. I told them I had their graded semester projects ready to return, and I'd call out their names. After they came to retrieve their grade sheets, they were to remain standing in the center of the room instead of returning to their seats. (That was an important step that turned out to be totally useless.)

Once everyone was standing in the middle of the room (and they were sort of packed in like livestock), I explained that we were going to divide up for the day's activity. Unlike previous activities where each group worked on its own version of the assignment, today's activity would require three different groups, working on different aspects of one product. So I explained that the table on the right would be for the Documentation Group, the table on the back would be for the Software Group, and the table on the left would be for the Publishing Group. I told them to take their best guesses which group would most suit them, and go sit down.

Everyone sat down pretty much exactly where they'd been before.

The Assignment

Next, I explained to them the assignment. Just as I've said here before, my goal was to have the students create a wiki to demonstrate their ability to learn a new document type without my guiding hand. So I pointed to the screen at the front of the room, that showed my blank desktop, and told them my goal was for them to have a full-featured wiki including the contents of all of their weekly tutorials up on that monitor by the end of the class period. By that point, it was a little over an hour and a half.

Then...I sat down at the front of the room. And I looked at them. I may have given a little bit of an indication what each group should do, but it certainly wasn't anything that could be described as "directions." I did ask a couple of my students on the back row if they'd completed wikis of their projects for extra credit (Sean and Will, both of whom had asked for permission to do that, and both answered that they had), and that was meant to give them a nudge toward helping the rest of the class figure it out. It worked.

Not right away, though. The next ten minutes were brutal. I had about two minutes of deer-in-the-headlights from the whole classroom, and then my two with experience (both in the Software Group) leaned their heads together and started talking, and got a couple others from the Software Group chiming in before too long. I listened to their chatter for a little while, to get an idea where they were headed, and then gave them a nudge in the right direction, and listened for a little while more.

The Software Group and the Publication Group ended up both being composed primarily of technical people, so by that point the Publication Group was pretty involved in the conversation, too. The Documentation Group (my English Majors) were sitting off on the right still waiting to find out what they were supposed to do.

So I finally addressed that. I explained to them briefly what a wiki was -- a type of simplified markup language -- and that they would need to take the highly-formatted, styled Word documents I'd used for their weekly tutorials, and convert them into flat text files with some simple markup. I suggested they get to work downloading the tutorials from the class website, figure out how they were going to distribute the workload, and then start making guesses as to how they would do the conversion. They wouldn't know for sure until the Software Group settled on a wiki platform, but they could do some prep work while they waited.

In Production

Then I headed back over to the Software Group, and I said, "What you'll probably want to do, first, is choose which wiki platform you're going to use--"

And Will cut me off to say, "We just did that."

I went on, "And then this group is probably going to divide up, half of you going to support the Documentation Group as they convert the existing documents into the right format, and half of you going to support the Publication Group as they figure out how to get those documents up for us to see, within the next hour."

They nodded, then immediately got to their feet. Will went one way, Sean went the other, and they became Management. It was kind of awesome.

After that, I was done. It was their final exam, after all. I sat at the front of the room and chatted with Courtney, eavesdropping on their discussions, but most of the corrections I would have made ended up getting caught by Will or Sean before I had the chance.

It was only a few minutes into that (maybe ten or fifteen), when I asked Will what address they were using, and Courtney was able to pull it up on her laptop. From that point on, while we were discussing writing or Wil Wheaton, or whatever, we were also scrolling through the wiki as it was under construction. I was impressed with the draft version. I was really impressed with the changes they had in place by the half-hour mark. And at the end of the period, while they were still scrambling to get a couple of the more complicated chapters put together, I asked Will to step up to my laptop and present the finished product to me.

He shook his head. "It's not ready yet!"

I said, "That's okay. Show me what you've got." I didn't say it in a menacing way, either. I was prepared to grade them based on what they'd finished, not the page or two that were still undone.

He wasn't satisfied with that, though. He said, "Give us a few more minutes. It's almost done."

As he said that, from one end of the Publication Group table I heard, "Five's done!" and down at the other end, "Seven should be up now." And Will scurried off to oversee the finishing touches.

In the end they all stayed a little bit late, just to present a polished product. It was phenomenal. It was so much better than I'd hoped for, especially given the short time limit.

(If you're curious, you may be able to see a copy of it here. I have no idea how long that site will be live, but it's there for now.)

I'd had some closing words prepped, to finish off the semester, and after seeing their work I wanted to go into detail with praise, but there was no time. All I could tell them is, "Well done! You've earned a one hundred. Thank you guys for being awesome!" And then I sent them on their way.

Retrospective

Knowing what I know now, I could have made the final session go a little more smoothly. I don't think I could have possibly gotten any better results, but I could have left the students a little more comfortable with their role. Then again, that's pretty much true for the whole semester.

And I'm not beating myself up for that. This was my first time teaching. Wow.

Anyway, one thing I experimented with there in the final -- dividing them into purpose-based groups -- is something I think I'd like to do from the start if I ever teach the class again. On day one, I'd divide them into those groups -- with those titles -- and let them rearrange through the course of the semester if they wanted, and sometimes divide them up in support roles and sometimes combine them, based on the project, but give them a chance overall to develop some sort of consistent group identity, apart from "we're sitting within arm's reach."

I do wish I'd had another assignment or two in there, and I wish I'd had in-class activities for nearly every class I didn't have one for. I put that down to limited prep time from being a first-timer, though. Same goes for the uncertainty of their schedule (flip-flopping on due dates), but I think I could be a lot more confident about that on a second go-round.

Apart from that...I'm awesome. I know the class was satisfactory to the powers-that-be, I think the class was useful to the student, and I'm amazed how much I gained from the experience. My students were all amazing people, and I'm glad I got to meet them. And, y'know, I discovered I could do something I never would have thought possible. It was bigger and better than NaNoWriMo. I'd never have guessed.

And that's it. Hope you've enjoyed the updates. Let me know if you have any questions. I'll let you know if they ask me back for more.

The OC (Week 15)

This post is part of an ongoing series.

Season Finale

We have officially left the regular season. Post-season takes place tomorrow. Or something like that. Whatever.

Week 15 marked the last week of regular classes for the semester, and we finished it by finishing up our presentations. Tuesday saw some technical difficulties, and Thursday saw some more, but the brightest minds in OC's IT department are in my class, so we got it all worked out.

A Polite Reminder

We finished up on Tuesday with fifteen minutes to spare, and I just let them out early. As I headed toward the podium to pack up my laptop I said offhand, over my shoulder, "See you Thursday."

Then I stopped, turned to glare them all in the eye (that's right, thirty-two eyes all at once, it's a professor thing), and I said with a dread pronunciation, "See you Thursday."

A chuckle went around the class, but I got numerous affirmations from those who'd missed the previous Thursday, and then they fled the room.

It worked. Thursday we had a full class, and I was able to give some last-minute clarification concerning the Final with the confidence of knowing everyone was there. That was nice.

Semester Projects

Thursday was also the due date for Semester Projects. They'd haggled a midnight deadline earlier in the semester, so that held and they had until the very last seconds of Thursday to get the document turned in for full credit. Someone else (I'll let you guess who) had worn me out with his arguments and convinced me to accept late work, too, but I instituted a 5% per day penalty for it.

There was some discussion whether that should be pro-rated, or lump sum, and the arguments on both sides of the debate were pretty compelling. I ended up pro-rating, because I like my students.

Anyway, I got all the projects over the weekend, and they're now all graded. They turned out awesome. I remember that being one of the things the class was most famous for when I took it, and at the beginning of the semester when I asked my students what they knew about the class they were signed up for, the project was the only bit any of them had any clear ideas on.

I had some concerns that the reputation of the semester project might fade with a new professor at the helm, but for now I think it's safe. They did some really cool stuff, and nearly all of the finished projects are going to be terribly useful. Several of them will even be useful to me.

Homework

I made that all sound like a lot of fun, but those four words up there -- "they're now all graded" -- actually represent a pretty miserable experience. Who knew semester projects could be such work for professors? Both of my parents are teachers, so I've heard grumbling and complaining about having stuff to grade all my life, but I didn't really get it, until I found myself with a mountain of stuff to grade.

It's no fun at all. Just horrible. I really don't recommend it. If you're teaching a class, go all California-hippie on them and don't do grades. Or quantum physicist and assign grades completely at random. That would have to be better than actual analytical numeration. Blech.

(I've also been coming down with a cold in the same days that I've been going through that process, so it could be having an impact on my attitude. Time will tell, I suppose.)

Anyway, it's done. It's done and it's done and it's done. I've got Finals on Thursday, and I'm confident everyone will show up, and the minute that's over, I should be able to turn in final grades and be done with the class. How cool is that?

More next week (or, conceivably, tomorrow).

The OC (Week 14)

This post is part of an ongoing series.

Presentations
I mentioned it in the last post, but we're done with lectures and mostly done with the tutorials (more on that in a minute). That just leaves presentations, and the final.

We started the presentations this week, with four presentations a class period over four periods (in two weeks). Two of my four presenters on Tuesday had skipped the assignment that had them sign up for a presentation spot (on Google Docs), so they found out about it for the first time when I sent out a reminder email on Sunday.

To their credit, they both did surprisingly well.

Honestly, I haven't seen a presentation yet as bad as mine would have been (and, in fact, was, back when I took the class). They're farther along with their semester projects than I really expected, too, which is encouraging. I'm looking forward to seeing their finished products, so I'm glad to see it's not all going to be last-minute stuff.

Empty Seats
Thursday's lectures were a little better, really -- which is to be expected, given that they had more time to prepare, and got to learn from the presentations that went before. Unfortunately for the presenters, though, there weren't nearly as many people around to be impressed. We had right at half of our class show up.

That, too, shouldn't be much of a surprise. After all, it was the first time all semester that we'd met in class on a Thursday. To be fair, I warned them about that on the first day of class, and before Thanksgiving break, and then I sent out an email last Sunday (as I mentioned) reminding them about presentations this week.

I had a brief bout of guilt, worrying that my own attitude about the last couple weeks (being so much easier on me, since I'm just listening to presentations) had been conveyed to my students somehow, and they were slacking off because I was. Then I remembered the Thursday thing, though (and got emails from a couple of my students citing exactly that), and I let myself off the hook.

Textbook Execution
One thing I had been slacking off on was their final tutorial. All of the rest had to be done by specific dates, to match up with their assignments. There was one last one that I'd promised them, though, that didn't really map directly to any work they were doing. Way back in week 9, I did a big presentation showing them how to build an automated Table of Contents and generally take advantage of all the extra work we've been doing to build a powerful, long-form document. I flew through the process in class, though, and gave them no exercises or anything to reinforce it. Instead, I said, "This'll probably end up as a tutorial at some point."

I'd meant to get that to them the week before Thanksgiving, but it was the week before Thanksgiving, so I didn't. I kept thinking about doing it during Thanksgiving break, but I was on break, so I didn't. Whenever I started feeling guilty about that, I reminded myself that my students didn't really care.

Then Monday morning I got an email from one of them asking me how to make a Table of Contents, because she needed it for her semester project, and I immediately felt like a super jerk. I sent her a quick answer, and then got to work writing my tutorial.

It was a complicated one, though, because I had to walk through some of the more advanced tools in Word. Not only that, I had to handle some pretty nit-picky exceptions to make it come out perfect, but I was trying to express how simple the whole process really was, even while explaining why those exceptions were doing what they were doing. Then I needed screenshots to illustrate it, and I needed to put together all the resources they would need to follow along with the tutorial, and make those available on the website.

It was a real task, is what I'm getting at, but I finished it last night. The title for the tutorial was "How to Build a Book," and it took all the tutorials I've made all semester and bound them together in a single textbook. It ends up looking pretty nifty, and it tops 100 pages even without the lecture information and assignment descriptions (that I would definitely include in it, if I were making it a standalone book).

Anyway, I have no idea if that will actually be useful to any of my students (since the one who asked me about it presented her document yesterday, and she'd clearly figured the ToC out using just my quick email), but I'm glad to have it done.

Final Thoughts
The only other issue I've been dealing with this week is their Final Exam. I've been told I need to have a Final Exam period, but that a test isn't really necessary. I told them early in the semester that they would have an option of building a wiki instead of taking the Final Exam, just because a big ugly test doesn't really mesh at all with the way I've been teaching the class.

As I really started thinking through the logistics of it, though, the wiki alternative seemed unrealistically complicated, and any test I would have (for those who didn't want to take the alternative) would be just a huge waste of time. There has been no memorization in this class at all (it doesn't make sense in tech writing), so I would have just made them show up in class to read a bunch of questions, flip through their textbook for answers, write those answers down, and then go home. I wrote their textbook, and it's way too straightforward for any of that to be a useful experience.

So I finally decided to nix the original plan, and instead I told them all to show up for the Final Exam period, and we're going to build a single wiki as a group project. That should be a lot less stressful for those who would have built individual wikis, it should be a lot more useful for those who would have taken the test, and I think it could actually be a fun experience. We'll see.

Between now and then, though, I've got eight more presentations to grade, and about a bajillion pages of papers to grade.

More next week.

National Novel Writing Month 2009 Post Mortem

I can't believe it's over.

I did finish NaNoWriMo. I'm a winner. I could post a JPEG proving it, but it doesn't really, so I won't.

I took a strange path to 50,000 words this year, cobbling together scenes from three different novels in two genres, an open-ended collaborative writing project, and a short story. In the past, I've done 50,000 consecutive words (or many, many more), and I've done them in a novel that I wrote start-to-finish during the month of November. Obviously that's more impressive, but with everything else I had going on, I'm glad to have produced anything at all this year.

Anything at all. Hah! I wrote the end of two different novels, one of them a long-languishing partial that needed closure. I've still got a lot of rewriting work to do, but I now have the foundation on which to do it.

In the end, that's what NaNoWriMo is about -- struggling to accomplish more than you should be able to given all the other demands in your life, and getting a rough draft down on paper, so you have something to work with in the rewrites. I did both of those things, and in a big way.

To keep myself honest (and to make things easier), I wrote all those eclectic scenes in a single Google Doc, copying and pasting them out to their appropriate parents periodically. That workspace, though, was a document that ended up with the title Ghost Kings: Sleeping Targets: Golden Restraint Age Shelter (and a short story). Here's how that came about:

• I started off early doing my prewriting in October so I could work on a major rewrite of Royal Holiday in November, then scrapped that plan at some late hour.
• I did another set of prewriting, this time on a major rewrite (and completion) of a Sleeping Kings sort-of-prequel called Golden Age. As part of the prewriting, I wrote a new first chapter (which doesn't count toward my November word count).
• I showed up at our kickoff meeting all prepared to finally get Golden Age done, found myself blocked, and instead I wrote the next scene in my newest Ghost Targets novel, Restraint.
• From there, I just went ahead and finished Restraint (book 3 in that series).
• Then I started on its sequel, Ghost Targets: Shelter.
• Then I started a new, and totally unplanned collaborative writing project with Courtney on Google Wave by writing the opening scene of a novel about wizards in Oklahoma City. It starts with a magical battle in a 7-11. Awesome.
• Then I wrote a totally unplanned short story set in the fantasy universe D-- and I had been talking about years ago. It turned out surprisingly good (in my opinion, anyway).
• Then I found myself totally blocked, unable to proceed past the middle of chapter 1 of Shelter, and instead started work on an unfinished scene in Golden Age.
• Then I realized I'd written three consecutive chapters of Golden Age, without really realizing it, and I was about 6,000 words from the end of the book.
• Then I finished the book. And NaNoWriMo. All with about an hour to spare.

I dunno. If you want to call that cheating, you're welcome to. I could say that I finished National Strange Hash of Various Fictional Prose Writing Month, but I don't have the time or energy for that sort of acronym. "Nooshvoofpwym," I would pronounce it. "During nooshvoofpwyn," I would say, "I wrote 50,000 words in gookstuhgraws (and a short story)."

Whatever.

In December, I'm going to do nothing. Hah! No, not really. In December I'm going to put the finishing touches on my new Tech Writing textbook, I'm going to lay the groundwork to launch a new commercial blog in January, and unless I'm prepared to face some real wrath from some surprisingly real fans, I'm going to do at least a quick touch-up on Restraint and share it out to some trusted reviewers.

I started 2009 with a pretty ambitious plan for my writing, and ended it in an entirely different place, but almost as impressive of one. I didn't rewrite Royal Holiday and I didn't start an entirely new sci-fi property premised on what turns out to be a total physical impossibility (in a bad way), but I did become a university professor and write a textbook. That's pretty cool. I got my old creative writing text dusted off, too, and it's ready to go.

So that's my plan for 2010. Not as much ambition for the new, but lots of rewrites. I do want to finish Ghost Targets: Shelter before the end of September, so I can devote October to prewriting and November to Ghost Targets: Faith (my first season finale). Two novels in a year is actually pretty tame for me.

Then I want to get Expectation cleaned up (I never did redo the ending), and I want to get Restraint totally rewritten, and expanded by at least 9,000 words. Same for SK: Golden Age, and once that's done I'll need to write a new first chapter for SK: The Wolf, and my first NaNoWriMo project, SK: The Shepherd, still needs its first real rewrite, too.

That's my order of priority. I've got more. King Jason's War still needs the first section reworked, and a polish everywhere else, and I've been talking for years about splitting Taming Fire in two, and it could use some touch-up while I'm at it. More and more I find myself thinking back on The Poet Alexander, too, wondering if there's some rough gem somewhere in the rambling, inarticulate beast that would be worth paring out. Who knows? I'd have to work miracles to ever get far enough down my list to find out, though.

Stay tuned. Maybe I actually will. I've spent three years now consistently accomplishing more than I ever thought I possibly could. And, in the end, that's what NaNoWriMo is all about.

Journal Entry: November 2009

I survived.

I'm tempted to make those two words my whole journal entry, but so much happened in November that I don't want to forget. And so much happened in November that I'm going to forget it.

Even this post won't get it all, but I want to grab the highlights.

I started the month with a NaNoWriMo kickoff party at IHOP with my writing group, and that actually is documented already. I've also talked a little bit about my NaNoWriMo progress, and my class sessions. I'll do another post with a post mortem for NaNoWriMo, but here I wanted to talk about what else I did.

I finished a major manuscript for work on the 5th, and that freed up some of my attention and some of my creative energy, so I finally really got started writing on the 6th. I had a birthday lunch at P. F. Chang's on the 8th, and then a holiday (Veteran's Day) on the 11th that gave me a pretty easy work week, and a good opportunity to get caught up on my word count again. Then Saturday the 14th I had a great opportunity to get behind again.

Probably the big event of November (for me), T-- threw a big birthday party for my 30th, inviting my mom and dad, and all my friends. D--, of course, B-- and E--, K-- and N--, my little sister and her family, as well as Courtney and Ed (who were a real hit). T-- had everyone bring a bottle of wine, which was quite a treat, and she grilled up ribs for us as the main dish in a pretty extensive (and delicious) spread. We chatted and played Rock Band, and had a great time. Shawn and Liz showed up after most of the other guests had left, but stuck around to watch UHF with the Cantrells and me. That was fun. The whole night was incredible.

In WoW news, I got my Hunter to 80 (which marks the first time I've had a Hunter at the level cap). I also started a pair of Horde characters on Shawn's server, so I can chat with him from time to time. He's popped in on Dark Iron a time or two, too, and that's been fun.

I had a conversation with T--, and a conversation with my writing group, and a conversation with my dad over the phone on a drive home from work, and the end result of all that is that I'm finally going to try to get some treatment for my social anxiety. That's not really something I want to talk about in detail in this post, but it happened in November. So there you go.

Then last week was Thanksgiving week (which is always drama, and NaNoWriMo brings its own demons). T-- headed up to Wichita early, on Tuesday afternoon, and I had dinner with D-- at a new Mexican place downtown (Iguana Grill, and it's awesome), then went by Bruce's to borrow his ladder and ended up spending an hour and a half chatting with him, then went home and got started on Christmas preparations instead of going to bed.

I wanted to have the tree up (and ready for decoration) by the time T-- came home from Wichita. I decided to get all the decorations down from the attic, too, and somewhere in there I decided I should hang Christmas lights outside. Wal-Mart had LED lights at a reasonable price, so I picked up 8 strings and spent Wednesday afternoon crawling around on the roof of the house, getting everything set up. It proved to be more work than I anticipated, but the end result is stunning. (I'm sure T-- will have a photo up on her blog eventually.)

I'd barely gotten off the roof when D-- showed up to take me down to Chicasha to pick up his grandma, and then we all headed to Wichita. With that extra trip, a two-and-a-half-hour drive became something perilously close to five, but I spent most of it sleeping in the back seat, so who's complaining.

Then Thanksgiving was four straight days of Charboneaus. That's an amazing family, and they really know how to have a good time when they get together. T-- brought my XBox and Rock Band, and that was incredibly popular. The food was incredible. The Cowboys won convincingly, and then a disappointing Sooners team showed up on Saturday and totally shut out OSU in the Bedlam game, so that was pretty satisfying.

We got home Sunday afternoon, and as we turned the corner onto our street, AB called from the back seat, "Ooh, the house is ready for Christmas!" T--, of course, was thrilled. After watching her parents get all their Christmas decorations done Friday morning, she'd been left wondering when we could even get around to it, and here it was all ready for her.

AB couldn't wait to get started, and she and her mom got the tree all decorated before bedtime.

Then yesterday was the 30th, the end of my wonderful, grueling November, and I capped it with a write-in at Courtney's. We both made our official submissions to the NaNoWriMo website around 11:00, validated our winning word counts, and then stayed up far too late talking. All too often, in the midst of a conversation about this or that, one or the other of us would trail off, staring away into space, and then just say quietly, "I can't believe it's over."

It's over. And I survived.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.