CAT salutes this year’s recipients of the Norman C. Francis Faculty Excellence Awards. The university has produced a short video tribute to each faculty member.
...continue reading "2015 NCF Honorees"
Author: Bart Everson
Creative Generalist in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana
Using Slides
by Bart Everson
I just got back from Meaningful Living and Learning in a Digital World, and I'll be sharing a number of ideas from that conference over the course of the summer.
Always on the lookout for alternatives to Microsoft (shudder) PowerPoint, I was quite intrigued to see the keynote presenter (Tonya V. Thomas) using Slides.
If you haven't heard of it, Slides is a web tool for creating and sharing presentations. Because it uses HTML 5, all you need is a web browser. There's nothing to download or install. It doesn't use Flash. Everything is stored in the cloud, so as long as you have internet access, you'll have access to all your presentations.
Other features of note:
- Works well with tablets and phones
- Can be embedded in web pages
- Exports to PDF
- Supports mathTeX (for displaying complex equations)
Most interesting to me, you can add slides in both horizontal and vertical directions. Traditional slideshow presentations are one-dimensional (linear) but Slides can be two-dimensional, which opens up some intriguing possibilities.
The free version is pretty good. You can try Slides yourself at Slides.com. In my own tinkering, I've found it very easy to get started. If you'd like CAT to offer a workshop on this topic, leave a comment.
Photo credit: Khedara ආරියරත්න 蒋龙.
For other PowerPoint alternatives, see The Whiteboard Blog.
Conversation #30: Ecology
Download Conversation #30
A conversation with John Clark on teaching, learning and ecology.
What is it that could possibly change people to the point that they would not only vaguely care, but make central to their lives, for instance, the survival of southeast Louisiana, or the survival of the human species, or the protection of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that are going extinct every year? What could create this change? And most of what we call education can't do it and doesn't do it.
John Clark is a native of the Island of New Orleans, where his family has lived for twelve generations, and where he and all of his children and grandchildren continue to reside. He works with Common Knowledge: The New Orleans Cooperative Education Exchange and the Institute for the Radical Imagination. He was formerly Gregory F. Curtin Distinguished Professor of Humane Letters and the Professions, Professor of Philosophy, and a member of the Environment Program faculty at Loyola University. He continues to teach in the Loyola Summer Program in Dharamsala, India. His books include Max Stirner’s Egoism, The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin, The Anarchist Moment, Anarchy, Geography, Modernity, The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism, and The Tragedy of Common Sense (forthcoming). He edited Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology and Elisée Reclus’ Voyage to New Orleans, and co-edited Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology and Les Français des Etats-Unis. Works under his pseudonym, Max Cafard, include The Surregionalist Manifesto and Other Writings, FLOOD BOOK, Surregional Explorations, and Lightning Storm Mind (forthcoming). He is at work on a second volume of The Anarchist Moment, Between Earth and Empire, a comprehensive reformulation of the philosophy of social ecology, The Nuclear Thing, an analysis of the radioactive object of the social imagination, The Trail of the Screaming Forehead, a critique of egoism and nihilism, and Bitter Heritage, a historico-philosophical reflection on culture and crisis in nineteenth-century New Orleans, based in part on his translation of four hundred pages of family correspondence from the mid-nineteenth century. He writes a column, "Imagined Ecologies," for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism, and edits the cyberjournal Psychic Swamp: The Surregional Review. His interests include dialectical thought, ecological philosophy, environmental ethics, anarchist and libertarian thought, the social imaginary, cultural critique, Buddhist and Daoist philosophy, and the crisis of the Earth. He has long been active in the radical ecology and communitarian anarchist movements. He works on ecological restoration and eco-communitarianism, which he is striving to put into practice on an 87-acre land project on Bayou LaTerre, in the forest of coastal Mississippi. He is a member of the Education Workers’ Union of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Links for this episode:
- An archive of over two hundred and fifty of Dr. Clark's texts can be found at Academia.edu.
- Information on his work can also be found at johnpclark.info, maxcafard.info and psychicswamp.info.
Join the Team
Since 2010, CAT has actively promoted contemplative pedagogy through presentations, workshops, travel grants, meditation sessions, and other diverse means. The formation of a Contemplative Inquiry Team, supported by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, is the latest iteration of these ongoing efforts.
We invite you to join the Contemplative Inquiry Team. We will meet regularly over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year and provide support for each member’s personal practice, contemplative pedagogy, and related research. The team will be participant-driven, meaning that the specific agenda and activities of the group will be determined by the team members, with guidance from CAT staff.
Download the call for participation and apply today.
Trending: #iwishmyteacherknew
by Bart Everson
So a third-grade teacher out in Colorado asked her students to write things they wish she knew about them. She posted some of the responses to Twitter with the hashtag #iwishmyteacherknew. Now people all over the world are talking about making deeper connections between teachers and students. It's become a news story, a media phenomenon in its own right.
(Read some international coverage.)
It is clear that many of Kyle Schwartz's third-graders are dealing with some heavy stuff, some big emotional issues.
Is this any less true for our undergraduate students? I don't think so. In fact, I'd imagine that some of our students are dealing with burdens just as heavy, if not more so.
That third-grader who wrote "I wish my teacher knew that I want to go to college" — that student is enrolled here now, figuratively speaking.
How much do you know about what is going on in the lives of your students, outside the classroom? With so much content to cover, with such a full academic schedule, how can we maintain the capacity for empathic dialog?
If you asked your students what they wish you knew — what might they tell you?
RTX RFP
Quick, what does RTX RFP stand for? That's right, it's the Rising Tide 10 Request for Proposals.
CONTACT: Rising Tide Programming Committee [email]
WHO: Rising Tide NOLA
WHAT: Rising Tide X: Conference on Civic Activism & New Media
WHEN: 10 Years Post Deluge |Saturday, August 29, 2015
WHERE: University Center | Xavier University of Louisiana
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. presents RISING TIDE X, the 10th annual civic activism & new media conference centered on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We invite you to be a part of it.
It has been ten years since Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of the Levees. In that decade, we have endured other hurricanes & evacuations, the worst oil spill in US History, and a disappearing coast. There's been an ongoing reorganization of public schools, Department of Justice consent decrees with police forces and prisons while violent crime continues to be a problem, a former governor running for Congress, a current governor running for President, one former mayor reporting to prison. There's been rapid gentrification and unequal recovery, massive investment in tourism, selective enforcement of rules governing live music, and new hospitals we may not have the money to operate. At the same time, people interact with their communities, government, and news in dramatic new ways. From a daily paper to personal blogs to online newsfeeds to snappy Twitter commentary, we occupy a very different space from a decade ago in both physical and informational senses. Each of those years, Rising Tide has hosted a conference to explore that space from outside the official narrative of What's Going On, to give voice to those left behind in the wake of the New Orleans Miracles, to remind folks that you can't advertise oil off the beach with a PR campaign, and to point out any number of places We Are (Still) Not OK.
At Rising Tide, we want to put that off-script, unofficial, read-between-the-lines story front and center. We invite you to be a part of it. We do so with this request for proposals for programming, panels, and presentations.
PROPOSAL FORMAT
Proposals should include the following:
- a brief description of the topic you wish to address
- a list of participants/presenters describing their relationship to or expertise on the topic
- how the programming will be presented to the audience
- how the audience will be involved in the presentation through questions, participation, discussion, etc.
Please email brief (2 page max) proposals in plain text, word documents, or PDF attachments to programming@risingtidenola.com.
PROPOSALS WILL BE ACCEPTED THROUGH May 1, 2015.
PROGRAMMING SUGGESTIONS
Rising Tide encourages:
- Focus on civic activism - making changes in the community
- Collaboration between organizations to add multiple and diverse perspectives
- Using social, alternative, or new media to share information, empower communities, and/or organize activism
Programming at Rising Tide is subject to broadcast via webcasts or social media tools.
While programming is free to address political topics, Rising Tide maintains a strict non-partisan forum, current elected officials and campaigning candidates for political offices are discouraged from participating in programming.
CONFERENCE BACKGROUND
Rising Tide attendance has averaged more than 100 attendees, media, and volunteer staff annually. Conference content live streamed on the web averages over 1000 unique viewers during each event, with archives on our website.
Last year's conference featured a keynote address from education activist Andre Perry, and hosted programming on Lost New Orleans History, the Young Leadership Council (YLC), civic engagement to fix the Treme Center, and religion in Post-Katrina New Orleans . Past speakers have included Lt. General Russel Honore, U.S. Army (ret.), acclaimed local writer Lolis Eric Elie, professor of history Lawrence Powell, Treme and The Wire creator David Simon, geographer Richard Campanella, journalist Mac McClelland, entertainer Harry Shearer, and authors David Zirin, John Barry, Christopher Cooper, and Robert Block. Previous panelists and a description of programming history can be viewed on the Rising Tide website.
More information is available at the Rising Tide website: www.risingtidenola.com; at the Rising Tide blog: www.risingtideblog.blogspot.com; on the Rising Tide Facebook page; and the organization can be followed on Twitter @RisingTide.
Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed by New Orleans bloggers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federally built levees. After the disaster, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, and friends of the city and the Gulf Coast region. A number of new blogs were created, and combined with those that were already online, an online community with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, to mark the anniversary of the flood, the bloggers of New Orleans organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the arts, the internet and social media and turning advocacy in the city into action.
Photo credit: Personal Viewpoints Panel by Maitri, on Flickr
PowerPoint Power
by Bart Everson
Everyone know that I am a hug(e) advocate of keyboard shortcuts. They are easy to learn and will give your productivity a boost. If you really enjoy sitting in front of your computer, and want to spend more time doing that every day while getting less done, then by all means ignore them — but the rest of us will want to memorize our keyboard shortcuts.
Everyone also knows that I do not use PowerPoint, have never used it, and generally avoid Microsoft products as if I was afflicted with a life-threatening allergy.
So that's why you've never heard me talk about keyboard shortcuts for PowerPoint.
Fortunately Scott Schwertly, famed presentation expert, has compiled a list for you. These are keyboard shortcuts you can use when actually presenting with PowerPoint. Extremely handy, if you ever do that. Check it out.
ICYMI: Social Media, Social Justice
Last week CAT's own Bart Everson gave an invited talk at Xavier's long-running series on Across the Curriculum Thinking.
Contemplative Engagement with a Text
Two years ago, we hosted a session on lectio divina which married two prominent themes in CAT programming: our campus-wide initiative, "Read Today Lead Tomorrow," and contemplative practice. The session was well-received but only hinted at the rich possibilities of contemplative reading, and some participants expressed a desire for more information.
Therefore we are pleased to report that noted scholar Robert-Louis Abrahamson has published a guide on "contemplative engagement with a text." This is not a technique per se; it's more of an attitude. Nevertheless, Abrahamson does prescribe six steps in a clear pattern, with plenty of substantive advice for teachers.
Pedagogy for Self and Planet
Here's a workshop/retreat for which combines two current CAT themes: contemplative pedagogy and the quest for sustainability.
Contemplative Environmental Studies: Pedagogy for Self and Planet
July 26 - August 1, 2015 Location: Lama Foundation, San Cristobal, New Mexico
How can higher education best address global environmental challenges? How can we most meaningfully teach and research about environmental issues? How can we cultivate our inner lives through active engagement with environmental challenges?
This workshop explores the contribution of contemplative practices to scholarly inquiry and teaching in environmental studies. Through discussions with distinguished scholars, focused conversations among colleagues, artistic exercises, and regular contemplative practice (meditation, yoga, journaling, and nature walks), participants will investigate ways to deepen their teaching, research, and lives at this historic moment of environmental intensification.
Part workshop and part retreat, this 6-day summer institute provides an opportunity to step back from the frenetic pace of our lives, and cultivate our inner resources and nurture the resiliency we need as teachers committed to education on a fragile and wild planet.
(Photo by Chase Clow)