I would use Delicious for an activity during my class
meetings on language and style in public speaking. Right now, I have two class meetings about this topic: one
where I discuss language strategies used in public speaking to achieve
qualities of rhythm, clarity, vividness, and one day when I talk about how
those strategies can translate to style and levels of styles that are
attributed to a given speech. This
activity would be best situated for the style class meeting since it builds
upon what we would learn and review in the class meeting on language
strategies.
I would split the class into six groups, so that two groups
would be assigned to each of the three levels of style—grand, middle, and
plain—that the book identifies.
The students in each group would have to work together to review
speeches on AmericanRhetoric.com to find a speech that matched the level of
style that they were assigned.
After locating an appropriate speech, the groups would complete a
handout regarding the strategies and style of the selected speech and bookmark
the link to the speech on Delicious.
In addition to presenting information on their speeches’ style in class,
the bookmarks would serve as additional resources for students to use as they
prepare their own speeches since I encourage my students to mirror other
speakers’ use of language strategies in their presentations. The bookmarks would make it easy for
the class to return to speeches discussed in class since the tag feature could
be used to identify style levels and strategies used in each speech.
There are two challenges that I can identify in this
activity: lack of familiarity with Delicious and difficulty locating a speech
that exemplifies their assigned style level. In order to resolve the first problem, unfamiliarity with
Delicious, I could offer a tutorial on how to use the site by posting the
speech that we use in class during our first day on this topic. Additionally, I could provide a handout
with step-by-step directions for bookmarking their speeches, like the ones we
received on Google sites. For the
second problem, I would have to approve the speeches first to ensure that the
speeches met the style requirements and that there weren’t duplicates on the
site.
That's a clever use for Delicious. The only issue I see is that by taking the time to approve speeches that they bookmark, you're going to burn up a lot of your own time, which is valuable. What about bookmarking one or two speeches for each types so the students can more aptly grasp each area and then let them bookmark themselves. If you taught the course again, you could just reuse your bookmarks, saving yourself tons of time.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Dave. Ashley, I think you would only have to do that the first time you use the activity, because the second time, students would be able to see the first class's bookmarks. You can also indicate that students must provide new examples. You probably want to provide the tags, such as the course name + style name such as SPCM1100Grand, SPCM1100Middle, and SPCM1100Plain.
ReplyDeleteIf you decide to give this a try, consider doing a SoTL study!