thestoryofjory.com

Much to the chagrin of one Tanner Burson, I find fake mustaches hilarious.  I bought a pack of them at Hastings, and from time to time, I like to wear one to surprise people.  You can tell me how strange that is in the comments.

My Monday-Wednesday 2:30 class seems to think pestering me is hilarious.  So, last Wednesday, when they were pestering me for bonus points (bonus points for no good reason, I might add), I told them I would give them some bonus points if they would wear a fake mustache to class.

I then promptly forgot this interaction. Eight of them, however, did not.

The moral of the story is that Sophomores will do anything for bonus points.

Last week, I introduced my classes to Photoshop.  This isn’t a design class, but many of my students will be expected to advance their Photoshop skills as they get into upper-division advertising and public relations courses.  About a week ago, I overheard a professor going over extremely basic Photoshop stuff with a senior-level PR class.  It’s simply unacceptable to be a senior and not know anything about Photoshop. Some of the students already had some experience, which was a relief to me because we all know I’m an absolute Photoshop hack. Luckily, it doesn’t take a pro to teach people about the different tools, when they might be used, and how to use them.

We’re talking about visual storytelling now, so the students are having to take pictures for their assignments and I want them to have some knowledge of photo-editing.  For the purposes of my class, Electronic Communication, I wanted them to at least be able to crop, rotate, and correct color problems using auto color. I used the sample materials from the Adobe Classroom In A Book series and took them through using all the different tools.  I can tell it was one of their favorite classes so far – they all seemed to have fun, particularly when accidental Photoshop disasters were created.

So, for their blog assignments this week, the students did a before-and-after Photoshop photo.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Sabrina Swanger
• John Garrison
• Jennifer Gilliland

And, just for fun, here’s a pattern of my sister’s head Photoshop’ed into a drawing of Oklahoma:

I like making my own Photoshop Disasters. I call this one: Jackie Oklahoma!

Last week I realized two important things: first, that teaching is much more stressful than being on the other side of the lecture; and second, that it is impossible for most students to go longer than 30 minutes without checking Facebook or their cell phones.

I’m also struggling to come to terms with the fact that, while I may care immensely about the material and technology, I cannot will my students to care about it through sheer enthusiasm.  Even if I were the most enthusiastic person in the world about blogging, the students would still stare at me like I was a giant, talking Cockatiel. Enthusiasm alone is not going to cut it.

My first tactic to increase students’ level of caring was to appeal to their desire to get a job after graduation.  The students seemed to be more-or-less with me for the lecture about writing blogs and why they’re relevant.  I think the majority of students also liked learning about RSS and Google Reader, although I seriously doubt they’ll continue using it after this semester.  And that’s a shame, too, because I find RSS readers to be one of the most helpful listening tools in the communication trade – but I digress.

Many students did care about using their online identities to find a job after graduation. But a sizable number still seem to have the attitude that they can learn it later – it’s not important now. Enter ‘Get-the-Kids-Interested-in-the-Material’ tactic number two: If you know enough about technology, you can use it to creep on people way more effectively than Facebook.

I stumbled on that tactic by mistake.  I spent the whole lecture of my first class trying to apply Google Alerts and search tips to real-life job scenarios to no avail. The students were completely bored until I got to the very end of the lecture/exercise and started talking about finding information in databases.  I instructed them to go to OSCN.net so they could see how the database of information in the Oklahoma State Court Network worked. BINGO! The students got really excited when they realized they could find information on people they knew.  In hindsight, it makes perfect sense – these kids spend a lot of time snooping on people through Facebook – why not show them how to get the real dirt?

The next three classes went much more better engagement-wise, because I put more emphasis on finding information about people rather than issues.  I just hope I haven’t created an army of cyber-stalkers, and that they’ll use their information-finding powers for good purposes.

On the agenda for next week: Design for non-designers and an intro to visual story-telling. If anyone has any ideas for how to make that interesting to 19 year-olds, I’m all ears.