Wool & Words

First You Make a Swatch...

Yeah, I'm still knitting.

Darilee and I are teaching a sweater design class at the moment--we have 4 fantastic students--and we both decided to work on sweaters with the class as well. Darilee, wise woman that she is, decided to work with Noro Silk Garden Chunky. She's already swatched and is about halfway up the back of her sweater. One week after the class started, I finally got a swatch together.

I've been eyeing this particular shade of Galway Highland Heathers (color 746) for a long time. It's a gorgeous deep heathered red; it has hints of charcoal and silver, and it just makes me happy to look at it. I bought a bag of it in December for this sweater and started to think about the sweater I would make.

And I thought, and I thought, and I thought.

I considered making something really casual--a simple garter or stockinette cardigan that I could wear with jeans, or a cozy pullover, or a hoodie. Those would have been wise choices; easy stitch patterning, fairly quick knitting, simple finishing.

But hey, why go easy when you can go hard, eh? I picked up my needles and started swatching. I picked a stitch pattern that would make the kind of fabric I wanted, and proceeded to increase my needle sizes until I was using US 11 needles to get that worsted to 5 st/inch. While I did that work, I worked out a few other things as well.

So I'm working toward a linen stitch jacket, with set-in sleeves, a round neck, a slight bit of waist shaping, i-cord edging (in charcoal or the same red--I haven't decided yet), and some unobtrusive, but effective, closure.

Amazing what making a swatch can inspire you to do.

Food for Thought

I just finished reading Charles Murray's three-part discussion of education in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion section. You can find the columns here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Murray wrote a book several years ago called The Bell Curve. Many people were offended by it. I always thought he had some interesting things to say. These columns made me think a little more, as did some of the comments from readers.

I don't know whether I agree with Murray or not, but I do know that the conversation he's trying to start is one that we need to have, in some fashion, if we're ever going to make headway.

I Really Don't Want to Whine

One more day and then another and a day to sleep. Then I get to do it all again. But we've got MLK day coming, which makes me feel a touch more calm.

 The first week of classes is always tough. The whole drop/add cycle exhausts me. I like to start right away, get right into the material. Otherwise, you just waste a week of perfectly good class time. I also like to set the tone and pace early. Ususally there's a bit of turnover as folks "fine tune" their schedules, but I plan things so that we're warming up, really, before we get to the brass tacks. Tomorrow is the first full class day and I'm curious about what I'll get.

I'm teaching two classes, back to back. One starts at 9, the other at 10. At this point, I've got about 1/2 the original enrollment in the 9 a.m. class, but almost 100% of the original enrollment in the 10. Is there something magical that happens between 9 and 10 that makes a 10 a.m. class more attractive? Who knows? I'll just be glad when the roster stops fluctuating.

Four more inches of grey stockinette before I can start on the highly anticipated "V". 

Come the Revolution

So one of my little desires in life is to see our educational system understand the importance of teaching a new form of writing--programming--extensively and considering programming literacy to be as important as the regular kind. The introduction of Negroponte's $100 laptop at a recent UN gathering makes this all the more important. Negroponte speaks in the language of the coming revolution in an interview in Wired:

WN: Why the emphasis on open source? Why not use a donated version of Windows or OS X?

Negroponte: Because you want the kids to develop software.... It's hard to propose a $100 laptop for a world community of kids and then not say in the same breath that you're going to depend on the community to make software for it. So the open source and the $100 laptop are sort of flip sides of the same coin, and you want the kids to contribute to it....

WN: So you're shipping this with development tools installed?

Negroponte: Yes. Absolutely.

WN: We're talking about C compilers and Make and the whole programming environment?

Negroponte: Yup.

WN: One could argue that it's better to give them something that has more mainstream commercial appeal.

Negroponte: Now be careful there. Fifty percent of the servers on this planet are using either Linux or some kind of Unix derivative.... So 20 percent of the world's servers are already using what I would call perfectly mainstream software. And there are open-source approaches to it that are working just fine. It's not mainstream on the desktop, I'll admit, but we'll make it mainstream on the desktop. We'll push that over the edge.

WN: Is the goal literally to make computers available to every child that wants one in the world?

Negroponte: It's every child in the world whether they want one or not. They may not know they want one.

WN: Do you have any thoughts on what the long-term impact of giving all these kids a programming environment and an open-source ethic might be?

Negroponte: Those are two different questions. Giving the kids a programming environment of any sort, whether it's a tool like Squeak or Scratch or Logo to write programs in a childish way -- and I mean that in the most generous sense of the word, that is, playing with and building things -- is one of the best ways to learn. Particularly to learn about thinking and algorithms and problem solving and so forth.

And providing the tools for some people -- it's going to be a very limited subset (who will use them) -- to develop software that will be redistributed and versioned and so forth out into the world is also important. It's part of the whole open-source movement.

WN: You're going to be unleashing a whole new generation of open-source programmers, who otherwise would never, possibly, have gotten their hands on a computer.

Negroponte: I hope so. I hope we unleash half a billion of them.

I hear it loud and clear.

I Am Oz

So I've been monitoring the student evaluation process for the 1st year students and I realized something--I am a presence in the classroom.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know that as a teacher I'm supposed to command presence, to be "the sage on the stage"--or at the very least, I should be distinguishable from the students. But today I was struck by the total change I can bring about in a mood. Students filed into the labs chatting, laughing, giggling. They left quiet, subdued, pensive.

Perhaps it was the evaluation process. But I couldn't help but think that my tone in giving them their instructions, coupled with my RELENTLESS talking over their noise until they shut up set the whole process in motion.

I don't think that I've damaged them or anything. It just struck me today what presence can do.

Surfacing

In case you were wondering how to categorize me:

You are Merino Wool.
You are very easygoing and sweet. People like to
keep you close because you are so softhearted.
You love to be comfortable and warm from your
head to your toes.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks Bethany for this fun quiz experience!

Where Have I Been?
I'd like to say that I've been sunning myself and lazily picking up stitches on a soft, jewel-toned fair isle cardi as hot Latin men bring me cool slushy drinks on a tropical isle. I'd like to say that I've been going pleasantly loopy working a delicate silk lace shawl while nestled in warm blankies in front of a roaring fire, waiting for my Nordic prince to bring me his most decadent hot chocolate. I'd like to say that I've been knitting.

But I can't say any of those things.

I've been at a conference in this dreary wintery rainy weather. The 6th Annual Student Success in First Year Composition, hosted by Georiga Southern University, was a good, day-long visit to the world of writing pedagogy. The conference was small and mainly regional, which made for a nice, relaxing environment.

I was part of a panel discussion/workshop put together by UGA's First Year Comp Program and the EMMA Working Group. EMMA is an XML editing environment that tries to capitalize on XML's extremely friendly and open markup capabilities to improve student writing and their interaction with their writing. I've been using EMMA for 3 semesters now, and the program has really challenged me to think about how students compose and the impact of the interface on their composition methods.

My part of the presentation was to show off the poetry explication project I'm currently doing with my students, as well as to discuss how I use EMMA in the 1101/1102 classroom. All of that in 5 minutes. It was pretty brutal, but rewarding in that I really had to think about how I was using it and to what pedagogical ends.

The rest of the conference was thought-provoking. I attended three other lectures/panels. The first was on the transition from high school to college writing courses; the presenters had done a survey of incoming students at several schools and the panel was a discussion of their findings. The second was the keynote address, the highlight of the day, by Cynthia Selfe. Her talk explored the changes in how we define literacy that are brought on by the advent of computing and Internet availability. She challenged us as teachers to really start reconsidering what we considered literacy and demonstrated the ways in which gaming and visual/textual writing had a place in the study of writing. The final talk was on web portfolios, and it got me thinking about the ways in which I might introduce portfolio grading in my classrooms. Thankfully, EMMA has a portfolio function/feature, so I wouldn't have to lug around 44 binders full of student work.

On the whole, an academically productive day. My companions on the journey were also delightful, and while we had to leave at 5 a.m., it was certainly worth the trip.

Teaching Cool Texts

As you may know, I teach Freshman Composition at UGA. I love living in Athens, and I love working here. As much as I gripe about them (and I'm sure this semester will find many gripes on this page), I do so love teaching and I enjoy the time I have getting to know the various students who land in my classes.

I always feel a bit sorry for the 8:00 a.m. students. Most, if not all, of them get stuck here through the difficulties of scheduling, and since I struggle to get up to be here in time to teach the class, I'm sure they have trouble getting up in time to attend. While the start of class is usually lackluster, though, about 1/4 of the way through things always get cranking, and that's the good stuff, as far as I'm concerned. Today we were discussing a lovely short story by Katherine Mansfield titled "Miss Brill." I love teaching with this story; like all good literary pieces, it allows for discussion along so many avenues and really "opens up" nicely when you begin to apply pressure to it in various areas. It's short enough to be read quickly, memorable enough to be referred to at various points in the semester, and rich enough to satisfy the most voracious of literary appetites. My 8:00 a.m. class really did a good job discussing it, and I hope that my 11:00 class continues that trend.

And yes, knitters, there is a knitting woman in the story. Perhaps I'll have to start a list of tales with knitters...