Mike Jackman, Words & Music

Tag: teaching creative writing

  • How to Succeed in an Online Course

    How to Succeed in an Online Course

    Dear Students and Teachers:

    With many of us transitioning to teaching and taking courses online, we are learning that we need new ways to approach these courses. This tip sheet is one I present my students at the beginning of the semester, based on issues that come up in my courses. Though some tips specifically refer to Canvas, which is the course management system used currently at IU Southeast, they are easily adaptable to your own online course management system. I hope you find them useful. Please share in the comments section any tips you have for surviving online courses!

    An online course has the culture of a class but experiences it and delivers it through a Web browser. It superficially resembles, but it is not, the culture of social media. 

    Tip 1: Web Browsers and their Pesky Issues

    • If you have an ad blocker installed in your browser or have disabled pop-ups, turn off ad blocker for Canvas Web pages and re-enable pop-up windows to make sure you have all the functions of Canvas working correctly.
    • If you find something you need still doesn’t work, try logging in on another browser. What works in Chrome may not work in Firefox or Safari, etc. etc. etc. 

    Tip 2: Finding Out When Assignments Are Due

    • There are several ways to find out what is due in your Canvas course. You can click on the Calendar, you can view the Course Stream, you can click on the Syllabus and see a list of assignments on the right and by scrolling to the end of the syllabus, and you can click on “Assignments.” I recommend simply looking at our schedule which will be displayed on the home page and which I organized for you. 

    Tip 3: OMG, I lost all my work when the internet went down.

    • Why, oh why, do we never remember this happens? I hate doing work over again. I’m entirely too trusting of the Internet, and then when the internet goes belly up, I’m sunk! So here’s what I’ve learned to do:
      • Choice A: Write your discussion forum reflections and responses and your peer reviews using another program. NOT in your Web browser. Save your work, then copy and paste it into the appropriate box. This way, you’ll never lose your work. NOTE: If your battery runs out or if you lose electric power in a storm – this tip will not help!
      • Choice B: Be foolhardy and trust the Internet will have 100% up time. Type right in your browser. But every minute or so, click “select all” (ctl-A) and copy your work to the computer clipboard. That way it will be saved and when online goes offline you won’t lose everything. 
      • Choice C: Do none of this. We will hear you scream from the adjacent county. 

    Tip 4: If You’re Already Impatient With These Tips, This Tip Is Especially for You

    • During the last couple of years I’ve noticed that many students are too impatient when they are online, and that many students do not read the complete directions. Therefore, they fail assignments due to incompleteness or doing the wrong thing. Partly, this is due to skimming rather than paying attention to the words and to the screen. This is what you need to do:
      • Turn off distractions while doing coursework. A good way to avoid applying social media and Internet habits inappropriately and self-destructively to an online class is to Close all other screens during your class time. Study and write some place where it is quiet and you are not tempted to divide your attention between college-time screens and social-time screens. Research shows that there is no such thing as multitasking. Divided attention, research has discovered, also divides intelligence and accomplishment.
      • Take time to revise and proof-read before you submit. 
      • Read instructions as well as your work aloud to catch errors and other problems (and to simply hear how your English sounds and flows). If you are in a public place you can whisper.
      • Make sure you scroll down to read all the instructions. Sometimes only part of the instructions will be visible on the screen and it may not look like there is more. Always scroll down. Don’t assume you’ve read it all.
      • Do not skim instructions. Force yourself to pay attention to what the assignment is asking you to do. For example, if the assignment states that using new terms correctly is an important part of the assignment, and you skim over this instruction, you will fail the assignment. If the assignment requires that you cite specific examples, then details that give evidence for your points, and not vague, generic references or summaries, are needed in order to pass. 
      • Recognize that you need to read and study course materials more than once. Especially in an online setting, you will not retain what you have only read or skimmed once from a screen.
      • If you have enough screen “real estate,” open study guides and other material in another window to use as a reference while completing assignments. You can print your study materials and keep them in a notebook to refer to. Remember, it’s required that you make connections between the lessons and your other assignments and writing.

    Tip: you can right click your mouse over a link to open that link or menu item or document in another tab or another window of your browser. That way you can open something you need for the course without having to close the page you are on.

    • Don’t confuse online cultures.  An online course has the culture of a class but experiences it and delivers it through a Web browser. It superficially resembles, but it is not, the culture of social media. In that culture, text messages are short, people post short status updates, and usually are satisfied by saying the first thing that comes to their minds, often without revision. Accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation are often unimportant. Our culture is not that culture even though it looks like it on the screen.  Our culture is online academia. Don’t make the mistake of confusing an online class with social media.

    If you have tips about how to survive and succeed in an online course, please share with the class.

    For several decades I have conducted writing workshops of all kinds, and for 14 years I have taught writing on the faculty of Indiana University Southeast. Now I have decided to give back for these opportunities by making my lessons available online. I hope you enjoy this lesson, and the other lessons here on my writing Web site, michael-jackman.com. You may download and use any lesson here free of charge, provided you give credit as: © Copyright Michael Jackman. All Rights Reserved.

    Although the lessons are free of charge, please help support all my work in writing and maintaining this site through a small contribution using the PayPal link on the top right of this post. Thank you for your support! – Michael

  • Resources for Creative Writers

    My list of essential creative writing resources, from my local territory of Indiucky to beyond, periodically updated.

    Regional Opportunities (Indiucky and nearby)

    Our region is fortunate to offer many opportunities for writers. They include open mic readings, readings by guest authors, book signings, writers workshops, and programs of study. Many opportunities are free or low cost. 

    A little further out are these fine opportunities:

    Internet Opportunities

    • Here are sources for publication, conferences, workshops, residencies, jobs, and other opportunities:
      • Creative Writers Opportunities is back! I published a number of pieces thanks to this glorious, comprehensive list of calls for publication, prizes, conferences, and more. But when Yahoo recently got rid of its groups feature, I thought it was gone. Now curator Alison Joseph, poet and faculty at Carbondale’s MFA Program, has brought it back as a blog. Hurrah!
      • Submittable is a portal that many publications use for the submission process. It also contains a list of opportunities through its “Discover” link. Account required, but signing up is free. 
      • Cathy’s Comps and Calls
      • Poets and Writers is a print and digital magazine highly valuable for writers. I recommend subscribing. It also maintains a searchable list of opportunities. 
      • The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), is probably the most important organization for writers. It features a MASSIVE writing conference every year in a different city, offers services for members, and also publishes as list of opportunities. 
      • Creative Writing Indiucky is a Facebook page I maintain with creative writing news and events of local and regional interest. 
      • Winningwriters.com is a lovely Web site I recently discovered that’s full of advice and opportunities.

    (updated 25 January 2020)

  • Generative Exercise: “Sasha’s Flight”

    LOL – this is not a poem I’m ever going to send out, I don’t think – so I’m sharing it with you. I promised to do a generative exercise along with my poetry students based on an assignment called “Twenty Little Poetry Projects” by Jim Simmerman in The Practice of Poetry. The exercise has 20 random instructions for constructing a poem, such as “9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic” and “14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.” You never know how weirdly letting-go the results will be. So…enjoy the strange! – mj

    Sasha’s Flight
    By Michael Jackman

    Our garden is a hamster stuffing
    weeds in his cheeks. The tomatoes
    dare the chickens in the run,
    frightening them by spitting
    seeds and tomato juice. Fat chickens
    shriek and huddle in the coop.
    Sasha, a Barred Rock hen, wishes
    she lived in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

    The tomatoes didn’t dare the hens,
    they were flirting, but dinosaurs
    have never understood this gesture.
    The huddled chickens lick each other’s
    tart feathers.

    When will the highway grow quiet?
    When will the neighbors silence
    their polluting porch lights?
    At night the light coats the collard greens
    like an endotoxin. The highway’s tritones
    curdle the corn and they try to cover their ears.
    The sound bites their sensitive silk and chews
    through a number of kernels.

    Breaking dawn makes politicians chew onions,
    grinding the teary skins all over God’s green acres,
    as onion skins are the diaphanous shawls 
    of rhetoric. Politicians mend fences with wire cutters.

    Sasha, the Barred Rock, discovers
    flight one day and beats her beak against
    the netted ceiling until she breaks free
    to join a flock of wild turkeys running uphill.
    Jackman never sees her again, though he will search
    the knobs of Floyd County, finding only splats
    of her particular green guano, and he will call,
    “Sasha! Sasha!” to the scolding of crows and coos
    of mourning doves. The situation will be derelectly
    novel, as he knows willows are the arbiters of hen
    grievances, and the forests call, “Sasha, cherie,
    fais comme chez toi    !” On cold winter nights,
    even the chert will light her fires, with one spark.
    The tomatoes spit, corn wails, lights ooze down
    the sides of collards.

  • Four Points of Good Workshopping

    Over decades of running and participating in writing workshops, I’ve found that the best workshops happen when they include simple but effective guidelines for responding.

    This Four Points of Good Workshopping handout has served me well for creating a community of writers. It helps authors take in critiques and it helps participants guide their responses. It uses well-known interpersonal communication principles in order to achieve these goals.

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  • Poetry as Music: The Fundamental that Poets overlook

    Music is so important to poetry, that not developing it is equivalent to being tone deaf and trying to create a song. Remember, Sonnet means “Little Song” in Italian, and lyric poetry is so named for its musical qualities. Yet so many poets omit taking the time to train the ear.

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  • Finding the Words 2: The “Eight Words” Poetry Generative Exercise

    In FINDING THE WORDS 1: BLACKOUT/ERASURE POETRY I presented a lesson on how to get out of your word rut and discover new vocabulary through that form. In this lesson, you’ll discover new words by playing the “Eight Words Game.” The game also works as a poetry generative exercise.

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  • Finding the Words 1: Blackout/Erasure Poetry Generative Exercises

    Overview

    Writers default. That is, without quite realizing it, we write using preferred words, preferred sentence styles, preferred voices. This means a universe of possibilities is not occurring to us during composition. So we need ways to break out of our habits, to find new words. Here is the first of two poetry generative exercises for finding new words. 

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Mike Jackman, Words & Music

Mike Jackman, Singer-Songwriter, Multi-instrumentalist, Writer