[Rebecca Villano, who last semester was in my American Lit class, sent me the following e-mail while I was on vacation. She was hip to the "ilovebees.com" game before this article appeared.

Dr. Jerz! I totally thought of you today! Since you had us read "Pattern Recognition" I thought that I would mention a little "Pattern Recognition" of my own.

I don't know if you know, but Halo 2 has been causing such chaos due to the extreme mystery of it all. The creators refuse to show anything for the one player mode, and they are very secretive. That said:

My fiance stumbled upon a trailer for Halo 2. In this trailer, it flashes a website for a couple seconds: www.Ilovebees.com

If one would go to this website, one would begin to read and hear sound files of bees. From what is said on this site, once you break down the pictures of this lady and her bees, you'd see a text file encripted within the pictures. These text files are supposingly the story between Halo 1 and Halo 2. Also, if you were to listen to the bees, you'd hear sounds very much like Halo.

This seems very similar to Pattern Recognition where the one film piece had a hidden map inside it. Apparently, with the creators of Halo, their favorite number is 7. Seven times seven times seven, or something like that, is 343 which is also the title of the main map in which, in one player mode, in Halo 1, one descovers that the main computer system is an AI and controls everything.

Also on this women's website is a counter for 25 days. It is believed that this is the count down until Halo 2 releases a demo for one player. All through out this woman's website is Halo information, and on one spot in this site, is an anagram for when the demo will be released. However, the anagram also spells out "I love bees" or something like that.

Also, if you would e-mail ladybee777@hotmail.com it auto respons with gibberish that's almost english but not.

Personally, I could care less, but I thought of you and Pattern Recognition and laughed. So, here you go!

--DGJ]

[I'm often an Albanian woman born in 1900. I have a yahoo e-mail address that's already overwhelmed spam, because I only use it when I'm not sure what will happen to the address.

Amazon.com knows a lot about the real me, in part because of the book-rating feature that Amazon uses to recommend related books. I gain something from that service, so I don't mind giving up some personal info for it. Registering for news sites is, on the other hand, just a bother. --DGJ]

[I teach at a Catholic university that was until recently a women's college, and will be starting a football team this fall. I'm not exactly a sports fan, but this story is blogworthy because it calls to mind the fact that the vast majority of people who enjoy sports do not behave like the spoiled brats who make the headlines.

When the Vatican Videogame Department opens, sign me up. --DGJ]

[I don't have a mobile phone. I did purchase a pair of walkie talkies (if memory serves, Bobby, didn't I buy them from you at the Sears in Eau Claire?) that I take on day trips to the museum and so forth, so that my wife and I can split up temporarily. Charlie Lowe's phone was an important part of coordinating social outings with bloggers and wikiers at the CCCC conference in San Antonio. But in general, I'm not part of a social circle of people with mobile phones.

The university is full of professionals whose relatively unstructured work days mean that it's usually possible to find someone with whom to enjoy a chatty lunch for an hour (or two, or three). And at work, I'm never far from a networked computer, and at home our social outings are visits to nearby family members or play dates.

I wonder if the mobile phone culture, which permits my students to get together without asking them to plan ahead, and permits them to back out of a social engagement at the last minute (since it is possible to let the other parties know, and therefore not make them wait around or worry needlessly) has any correlation to the difficulty some of my students have getting to my office door to sign up for an oral presentation date or to schedule an office visit, or to follow through on those plans once they are made.

When a student doesn't show up for an appointment, I rarely mind, since I just spend that time blogging or marking a paper. The problem comes when that student asks for a make-up appointment during crunch time... I can extend my office hours, shorten everyone's appointment times, or say "no". As the instructor, my job is to look at the student's overall progress, while on any given class period, a significant percentage of students are mostly focused on surviving the week.

This isn't a "kids today!" rant... I'm just pondering how a "just in time teaching" strategy might be able to tap into the flexibility that defines the social structure of today's youths. I can beg and plead students to make appointments with me or the writing center, and I can jump around and wave my hands warning them not to fall into the procrastination trap.

In the past, in my desire to help students avoid common traps, I've inundated them with too-lengthy descriptions of assignments. Some students reported feeling overwhelmed, and didn't know where to begin... thus, when I asked if anyone had any questions, some may have felt so unsure that they just said "no" in order to escape the uncomfortable feeling that they were already falling behind and they didn't want me to know.

I'll have to resist the temptation to believe that, if students aren't lining up to meet with me, then everything must be fine. I suppose the key lies in Ito's observation that, as the two parties start to approach each other, their communication becomes more frequent and more precise. --DGJ]

[A handful of entries from the "C" section of this classic work.

Update, 04 Aug: Liliputian Lillith has sampled the "D"s. Anyone want to try another letter? --DGJ]

[My English-major brain is reeling with puns on "perspective" and "story problems." While I've only read the press release, and not the full academic article, I wonder whether there will be anything in it to shed light on the narratology vs. ludology debate in computer games studies. --DGJ]

[I can't say I ever had a love affair with music. I recognize music is a huge part of the psyches of many of the young people whom I teach, but I generally prefer to spend my time and energy in other ways.

I am 35, by the way. --DGJ]

[It's amazing to see what people will do when they act upon what they believe are the facts. --DGJ]

[I regularly teach Huck Finn when I teach American Lit, and so far I haven't been aware of students expressing a difficulty about the racist language. Although the central character is about 13 or 14 years old, the book wasn't written to be read by people who are that young. In fact, Huck often doesn't "get" the jokes that Clemens makes -- as when Huck expresses horror at witnessing a man being shot on the street, and then lets the reader know that he found a good spot near the window when he watches the man die.

I let the students know that if they feel uncomfortable saying the n-word when reading a quotation in class, they can just skip it. Of course, that doesn't address the full complexity of the language issue, but it's a start.

I will probably ask the students to write a short in-class essay on how they would feel about using and/or hearing the n-word in class discussion. I don't think today's college students are sensitive flowers that need to be protected from language that their elders find offensive. Words like "queer" and even ones with less emotional baggage like "bad" and "wicked" mean one thing to one generation, and something else to another. Consider also the literal connotations of "lousy" and "sucks".

A few years ago, a student clamped her hand over her mouth when telling me "Shut up!!" in a context that clearly meant, "I can't believe what I'm hearing," and while the class tittered, I wasn't at all offended. (I saw that exchange on TV in ads for the DVD of "The Princess Diaries" while watching cable TV during my week-long exile from the Internet.) --DGJ]

[I feel exactly like I felt as an undergrad, when I learned -- or more accurately, noted -- that if you take time out of a flexible schedule to relax, goof off, or just veg, you will pay for it later. --DGJ]

[Given to a six-year-old boy to destroy? This is another one of those "I wish I'd thought of that" genius news features. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

I took about 200 digital photos while on vacation in the last week (to Long Island, NY for a family wedding, and then a short stop in Philadelphia to see the Please Touch museum and the historic downtown), and I doubt I'll ever print more than a few dozen. --DGJ]

[I don't usually cover politics except to comment on something related to journalism or rhetoric.

I've noticed that some of the coverage of this story identifies journalist Colin McNickle simply as a reporter, when in fact he is the editorial page editor at the Trib-Review. He's covering the convention as a columnist, not a news reporter. While a columnist isn't expected to fair to all sides of an issue, one does expect all journalists to get their facts straight. In the video, McNickle seems to be calmly reading from his notes, which would suggest he is double-checking before running with the story.

Some reports don't have McNickle asking Heinz Kerry about what she meant by "un-American activities" -- his question is quoted or paraphrased without the word "activities" included. But it's aparently his use of the word "activities" -- and its association with McCarthyism -- that sets Heinz Kerry off. But she also denies having said "un-American," which the tape clearly shows she said.

Still on my vacation blog pause, but I managed to get a few minutes online. --DGJ]

[I'll be on a little family vacation until August 1. My access to the Internet will be sporadic at best.

Feel free to chat among yourselves while I am away. And enjoy the postings from "buup114" and the other spam that will doubtless collect in my absence. --DGJ]

[One often hears that computers and other online instruction methods are only tools, and that they should complement, rather than replace, traditional methods of instruction. But aren't traditional instructional approaches also tools?

I just finished a week of teaching a Vacation Bible School, and I absolutely love sitting on the floor with first-graders who are raising their hands and almost red in the face, pleading to be called on. It's hard to imagine what can beat that traditional interaction!

Still, today's young people -- who use e-mails, instant messages, and phone text messages to maintain, instigate, and sometimes curtail personal relationships -- may not think of e-mail as the cold impersonal thing that it appears to be when it's something you only use for work. --DGJ]

[I was a little surprised to find "gifted students" on the list of subjects to discuss in an accessibility and inclusion workshop.

On the one hand, gifted students are a joy. They do the readings. They participate in class. They ask thoughtful questions.

On the other hand, gifted students can be a burden. They can monopolize class discussions. They might expect that simply being bright ought to be enough to earn them an A. They might send you multiple e-mails arguing over the half point they missed on a quiz. They demand that you justify the A- they got on a reflection paper, and insist that you list all the things they did "wrong". They never had to work this hard in high school, so you're obviously out to get them. Heaven help you if you should have to give them a B!

Gifted students aren't necessarily more mature than their peers. Sometimes high-achieving students hold scholarships that require them to keep extremely high GPAs, so it's not fair to dismiss hyper-awareness of grades as if it were motivated by pride and pettiness. It's very likely that they really do have a lot of additional pressure, beyond a desire for perfectionism or a competitive streak, to maintain the high grades they see as a sign of success.

One of the first classes I took in my Ph.D program was on the history of the English language. I knew I was learning a lot, so I was shocked when I found myself getting grades like 83 and 85. I made an appointment with the professor, and while I hope I didn't come off as belligerent or rude, I was eager to know what I was doing wrong. Little did I know that in the marking scheme at the University of Toronto, a grade from 80-89 is considered an "A", and 90-100 is an A+.

I sure felt like a grade-grubbing dweeb.

In school, I know I hated being put into groups with deadbeats who didn't carry their weight. Gifted students need additional challenges, but I think they rightly object to doing additional work simply because they are gifted. In a composition or literature class, I don't think I need to provide extra assignments to challenge gifted students. Writing is never finished the way a mathematical equation is solved or a list of anatomical terms is memorized.

While grade compression has diluted the meaning of an "A" from "top-notch, outstanding work" to "You didn't make any significant mistakes", for short assignments and exercise, I will single out the exceptional work of gifted students, to let them know I am paying attention. I grade most exercises on a four-point scale, and tell students that a 4 counts as an A, but I return their grades on slips of paper that include numbers from zero to five. It is possible to get a grade higher than a 4, but I give out 4.5s and 4s only very rarely. A few students will end up with quiz averages higher than a 4.0, but if they do, they've worked for it, and their other work is probably top-notch, too.

In the spring semester I changed the way I enforced late penalties for papers. If a student hands me a completed, properly-formatted and stapled paper at the beginning of the class period, I add a "decorum bonus" of 1/3 of a letter grade. If the paper is crumpled, unstapled, or unpaginated; if the student bursts into class 10 minutes late, with the pages still warm from the printer; if I find the paper slipped under my door a few hours after class, then the student loses the 1/3 decorum bonus.

It's kind of like doubling the price of your wall-to-wall carpet one week so that you can advertise a 50% price cut the next week, but this method permits me to grade a little more realistically. A student who is used to a 4.0 average might make some mistakes in an otherwise good paper. I can give it an A-, knowing that the true perfectionist will have turned it on time and in the proper format, and thus the grade will be bumped to an A. I don't appear to be an overly harsh grader, and the student who feels the world owes him or her a 4.0 doesn't burst into tears, yet the A- reinforces the message that the student could be doing better work.

After I've marked the first few freshman composition papers, it's usually pretty clear who the gifted writers are. Last year, when my Seminar in Thinking and Writing class had settled into a pattern that involved the five or six most active students doing all the talking while the rest listened, I told the core group of active participants that they had already distinguished themselves as active students who would probably get great class participation grades, and pointed out that if they keep raising their hands or talking among themselves, the whole class will stagnate.

I tell students who have already distinguished themselves as active participants that I will henceforth evaluate them on their ability to get the other students in the class to participate. That strategy has worked to a point, but whenever the gifted student gets excited about something, the old pattern returns. When my dean visited my classroom last term, she approvingly noted the teacher-student dynamic, but indicated that she would like to see more peer-to-peer interaction. My colleague Terry Brino-Dean asks students to fill out a self-assessment form every few weeks, which gets the students to focus on their efforts to foster classroom discussion.

My "Writing for the Internet" course has to accommodate students who are experienced bloggers and HTML authors, as well as students who can barely e-mail. While a student who is experienced with HTML is not necessarily gifted, and while a student who is not comfortable with technology may still be gifted, the diversity of opinion makes me realize I'll have to add more self-paced modules.

My last batch of student evaluations included complaints from students who thought the course moved too fast, as well as students who thought the course moved too slowly. I've asked a student who has already taken the course to serve as a mentor, which should help me give more specialized attention during labs.

In addition, I can ask the students who already know the material to help me teach it to those who don't. They'll have to cultivate a significant sense of ownership over the material if they are responsible for their peers's learning. (Of course, I'll help the student prepare, and I'll be ready to step in if the student stumbles.) --DGJ]

[When I was a grad student teaching a freshman writing class, a student wearing a leather jacket and miniskirt put her fishnet-stocking-clad leg up on the table and blew spit bubbles through her front teeth, popping them with her finger while talking to me about her assignment.

Maybe that was some sort of sorority initiation, but I still have nightmares about it. Another time, again while I was a grad student, on the final day of a class that I found very enjoyable, just when a small group of about four or five students were lining up to say good-bye to me, a student who had missed six of the last seven classes started screaming in my face because I wouldn't accept a paper that was four weeks late.

Student (holding hand knee-high): "I have a son!"

Jerz (cautiously): "Congratulations?"

Student: "It doesn't matter whether I have a son or not!")

Due to advances in medicine and a shift in attitudes towards institutionalization, more people with psychiatric disorders are attending college. I have had students walk out of the room when it was their turn to give an oral presentation and attack me verbally during class for my alleged slowness in solving the individual student's advising problem (something that had no relation to what the other 24 people in the room needed to hear).

Sometimes a student will gripe, or slam a fist on the desk, or stop out of the room. While it's never pleasant to be on the receiving end of such misbehavior, most students in the class can recognize when their peers step out of line. All I have to do is remind myself that this is crunch week, and I'm much less likely to take such crabbiness personally.

I don't mean to suggest that all students are psychotic and all instructors are helpless victims. Instructors do sometimes use their position of power in unethical or at least morally questionable ways. But in this post I'm reflecting on my own experience with students who seem mentally unbalanced.

I twice taught a student with a severe speech disfluency (the latest, or perhaps simply more accurate, term for what I would have otherwise called a "speech impediment), once in a lit class and once in an advanced tech writing class. The student was mostly fine speaking one-on-one, and often spoke up in class. I once asked her (in private) if she found herself stuck in a stutter, and I thought I knew what word she was trying to say, should I say it for her? She said no, just let her work her way through it. In the lit class, she was supposed to give a five-minute oral presentation. She asked whether she could use a computer to present something instead. I said yes. I imagined she would have handouts with activities for small groups, tied together with a slide show presenting the major themes, and then at the end of her oral presentation sum up what happened. Instead, she clicked through a small number of slides, then sat down.

It was really my fault. I completely misunderstood the nature of her speech disfluency.

Although she wasn't actually talking during her presentation, she was still nervous, and thus she couldn't manage a computer-based classroom activity, which is even more psychologically demanding than reading from a script. The next time she had to give an oral presentation, we spent more time planning an acceptable alternative.

When a student asks me to make an accommodation, I don't mind being a little flexible. I see nothing wrong with permitting an alternative format or giving extra assistance, as long as the student gives me reasonable lead time. But when it comes to excusing students from the consequences of late papers and bombed assignments, I have to be on guard. I don't want to reward a bright smooth-talker who has coasted on a talent for charming him or herself out of hard work. At the same time, I don't want to put up a barrier to block a student who finds it difficult to ask for help.

If the student claims to be in a crisis, I always respond as if I believe the student 100%, even if I secretly have doubts. I let the student know that whatever caused them to miss the deadline on that paper that was worth 20% of their final grade has got to be serious. Their first priority is to take care of that problem. Since I'm eager to accommodate students with legitimate excuses, the grade they get in my class should be the least of their worries.

A student who is really in a crisis will usually be relieved when I tell them that, once the current crisis is over, they can contact the dean or a university counselor, who can contact me so that the three of us can figure out what steps to take.

If the student continues to press me for specifics ("Can I reschedule the oral presentation I missed two weeks ago?"), then I'm generally less convinced the student is really in a crisis. A student who knows he or she has no good reason for requesting help will probably give up at this point. But a student with very low self-esteem, who blames him or herself unnecessarily, might also give up.

I do remind students that the university wants to keep taking their tuition money, so it's in our best interest to offer all sorts of services to keep students in school. If staying healthy means dropping a class or taking an incomplete, then so be it. If the student says he or she would rather not get anyone from the university involved, I point out that their problem (whatever it is) has already affected their grade in my class, and they're asking me to be involved by adjusting their workload somehow. When a problem starts affecting your education, that's a pretty good indicator that you're not handling it on your own.

When the student expresses reluctance to get the university involved, I point out that by missing work and coming to me to ask for an exception, they have already asked the university to become involved.

Since I'm not a trained therapist or counselor, and can't diagnose or treat their problems, I want assurance that the student is talking to somebody with the necessary knowledge.

It occurs to me that I don't want the dean to perceive me as passing the buck to her in order to avoid making a judgment call. Perhaps I should leave the dean out of it until I really need her input. I should ask the student to consult with an academic services counselor before approaching the dean. --DGJ]

[While Seton Hill does offer an Honors section of "Seminar in Thinking and Writing" (the two-semester freshman comp and "welcome to college life" course), its other students of various abilities are mainstreamed. Students take a test during orientation, and may be placed in a one-credit lab course or a three-credit developmental course, either of which they take along with the regular STW course.

I've taught technical writing to students who were very shaky in their knowledge of English, so I do have some experience recognizing ESL issues. That means I am able to help work with students on their higher-level thinking processes, even though the drafts they give me may have small word-level errors.

But a student with dyslexia in a freshman composition course faces a difficult challenge. We can provide the student with a peer note-taker, we can audiotape lectures and discussions, and the writing center can offer one-to-one tutoring. But plenty students whose education is affected by dyslexia don't identify themselves as dyslexic, and thus don't seek out help.

A few years ago, I had a pair of exchange students in a literature class. Both participated ardently in classroom discussions, but one crashed and burned with every writing assignment. She was in tears in my office, when I noted that I am not an expert at diagnosing LD, but that I noticed what looked like coping mechanisms -- a fluency at talking through her ideas, a reluctance to draft and revise, a reluctance to stick to an outline, a resistance to structure. She wanted to think of herself as a free spirit who thrives on adrenaline and inspiration, rather than someone who has serious difficulty concentrating and planning. Since she didn't identify herself as LD, I told her that my hands were pretty much tied -- I couldn't excuse her from the work or change the criteria I used to judge her.

A few months after the class ended, I got an e-mail saying that when she was back in her home country, she did in fact get tested, and was diagnosed with dyslexia. A counselor showed her a whole new bag of coping mechanisms that were making school much easier for her.

It was one of those e-mails that you save in your "Why I Became a Teacher" file, to consult whenever you feel your enthusiasm flagging.

On the other hand, one student who relied upon an in-class note-taker started skipping way too many classes. I got a note from his academic tutor, informing me that he was having difficulty following my verbal instructions, and asking me to type them all out. This was during a period in class when we were going over student writing samples that I hadn't seen before, so there was no script that I could write out in advance. I wrote back, asking the tutor whether the student had discussed his attendance record, and suggested that the reason he was having difficulty following my oral instructions was because more than half the time, he wasn't in class to hear them. Once the tutor heard my side of it, she backed me up.

Asking the student to come to a one-on-one conference, and then sending a tape of that conference to a developmental tutor would not only help the student, but would also be an opportunity for the developmental tutor to advise me.

In SHU's "Seminar in Thinking and Writing," in-class discussion, the time- and stress-management lessons that students learn the hard way, and the bonding that occurs in extracurricular activities mean that even a student who is not demonstrating good progress in writing assignments may be gaining something from the class, and may be contributing significantly to the class culture. While students may be surprised by the extent to which college writing differs from the high school writing that earned them As, SHU offers many resources to students who are struggling.

I don't consider myself a gate-keeper, whose job is to flunk those students who aren't worthy of a college education. Still, the high-functioning students with learning disabilities that did not seriously affect their success in high school need to be encouraged to take advantage of the full range of resources that the university makes available to them. --DGJ]

[I wonder if I'd do a better job varying my instructional techniques if every college classroom came equipped with a first-grader to act as an early-warning system, ready to flop over on the carpet and moan at the first sign of boredom.

I love writing workshop days because there's usually little prep to do. On the rare occasion when I prepare a formal lecture, I do tend to take up the whole period (and sometimes more). After spending a week teaching first-graders in a Vacation Bible School, I learned very quickly the value of varying one's instructional approach.

Instead of a day-long writing workshop on Monday and a day-long lecture on Wednesday, split each day in half. That would also accommodating students who can't type or sit for extended periods. --DGJ]

[Preface: Did I Miss Anything, a short poem by Tom Wayans.

Amusing: A FAQ page that I put up is the top Google hit for "missed class".

Students sometimes miss class for extended periods due to illness.

I once had a student who was a group leader in a technical writing class. She passed out assignments to her team members, then didn't show up for six weeks. This student was in regular contact with me, but her group members had little reason to believe that she would actually come back. I think I can understand why they wouldn't feel particularly motivated to work on their group project.

Whenever a student mentions a health problem, or a problem with a family member's health, even before I ask for documentation, I typically tell the student that their grade in my class should be the least of their worries. I don't mind making exceptions for students who miss class for reasons beyond their control.

Obviously, asking a dependable student to take notes, encouraging the student to keep up with the readings as much as possible, and inviting the student to participate in online activities as much as possible is a way to keep the student from dropping completely out of the classroom community. And since I design the in-class activities to reinforce the concepts that will become even more important in final projects and term papers, missing even a "fun" class can affect a student's grade later on. --DGJ]