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May 31, 2005
CSS week 1.5
the summer online course went live--kind of--last monday. it was entirely re-located and officially enlivened--depending on who you acknowledge as "official" this time--last tuesday. i think as of a day or two ago the last of my students contacted me to say something, although i'm not sure yet that all of them have actually gotten into the site and made the technology go.
the rant about the technological collides (a little reminescent of tectonic plate movement, at least as it was happening) is behind me; anyway it's not like i didn't expect a snafu or sixteen or so. i hope we're almost done, but i'm not holding my breath about that. in the meantime, a few discussion forums have been going on at the site, which is good; people have e-mailed me questions and concerns, which is also good; one girl even found me online, like i assured them they were all welcome to do, which is even better; and they turned (most of them) their first actually-gradeable assignment in last night.
now i just have to figure out how to grade it.
i mean, i know how to grade it. i wrote the assignment, i know what i'm looking for, i've told them what i was looking for; now i just have to read each piece, see whether or not they've done what i asked, and determine how much of a consequence small infractions warrant. easy. but. i also have to comment. i have to talk to them. end-notes, margin-notes, whatever. and therein lies the stalling-point that's had me looking at these all day, updating site content, sending e-mails about fifteen other things, and continuing to avoid starting to grade/respond to anything.
writing is a sensitive business. writers' words are... vulnerable. they've taken risks, to commit them to the page. and while that's true of all writers, it feels different when the page is all i have. i don't know the cadences of their voices to help me fill in what a phrase is probably intended to convey, when it doesn't quite. far more troubling--because i read things by writers i don't know all the time--is that they don't know mine.
i'm sarcastic by nature. cryptic, at times, in commentary, although i try not to be. succinct. i had to quit teaching middle school because my little darlings (no sub-i) didn't understand sarcasm and i'd accidentally make them cry. i don't worry much about that when i'm commenting to people who know me in real life, who've seen me "smile when i say that," who've heard that my voice is warm, who hear me drawl & call them "sugar" after i've just told them you can't do that with a comma in this language. and i'm pretty good at it. they don't cry often. i'm usually pretty-well liked, and at least pretty-well understood. me-in-person & me-on-paper complement each other rather well, i think. and here, i've got no avenue through which to show that other side. no real way to balance out the pieces. smiley-faces in mass e-mails get overdone really easily. perhaps i should forward comic strips around. i certainly don't want to encourage them not to take me--what i assign, what i say, how i critique, instruct, and analyze--seriously. but i also really don't want to make them cry.
Posted by ttobryan at May 31, 2005 06:56 PM