Friday, January 13, 2006

1238

Class is over. Has been over for over an hour.

I took dancingqueen (my laptop) to class today, hoping to teach them the joys of BlackBoard 6. I set it up early, to make sure that it would connect to the internet. It did and in my crazed dance of victory, I turned on some music.

The class stopped talking and stared.

"What kind of music do you listen to?" one of the young men asked.

"Um, indie, classic rock, whatever," I answered, reaching over to forward the CD to something a little more conventional. Or I thought it was conventional. It was Postal Service. More blank stares.

"Okay," I said (a bit confrontationally, I'm afraid). "Come up to the board and write what you'd rather be listening to." Blank stares, blank stares, and oh, blank stares. "I'm serious. Get up here. There's three pieces of chalk."

Finally a few started moving to the front of the room. "This is your rushwrite for the day. If you want credit for being in class, come write on the board." Finally I had all 21 music preferences up on the board. I used them to put together the brochure groups. Clever? Maybe not. But definitely (or defiantly) entertaining.

5 comments:

B.G. Christensen said...

Do your students do the defiantly thing too or are you referring to mine?

B.G. Christensen said...

This post is marked as 12:38 AM, by the way. In small caps, I believe, but AM nonetheless.

FoxyJ said...

Yeah, last year I tried to teach a song to a Spanish class. It was from a duo from Spain that consists of two girls who play guitars and sing. As soon as it started and the first chords came on, half the class recoiled and asked "is this country?" I just gave them a strange look and patiently explained (again) that it was contemporary pop/rock from Spain. Weird. I don't know what kind of music they listen to, but apparently anything with a guitar is country.

B.G. Christensen said...

Oh, sure, change the time and make me look stupid. Thanks a lot.

Anonymous said...

I need you to come and run my class! And you DO you run bboard6?

 

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