Nathan Hale

Nathan Hale (1776)

The breezes went steadily thro' the tall pines,
A saying " oh ! hu-ush !" a saying "oh ! hu-ush !"
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse,
For Hale in the bush, for Hale in the bush.

"Keep still !" said the thrush as she nestled her young,
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road.
"For the tyrants are near, and with them appear,
What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good."

The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home,
In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the brook
With mother and sister and memories dear,
He so gaily forsook; he so gaily forsook.

Cooling shades of the night were coming apace,
The tattoo had beat; the tattoo had beat.
The noble one sprang from his dark lurking place,
To make his retreat; to make his retreat.

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves,
As he pass'd thro' the wood; as he pass'd thro' the wood;
And silently gain'd his rude launch on the shore,
As she play'd with the flood; as she play'd with the flood.

The guards of the camp, on that dark, dreary night,
Had a murderous will; had a murderous will.
They took him and bore him afar from the shore,
To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill.

No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer,
In that little stone cell; in that little stone cell.
But he trusted in love, from his father above.
In his heart, all was well; in his heart, all was well

An ominous owl with his solemn base voice,
Sat moaning hard by; sat moaning hard by.
The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice,
"For he must soon die; for he must soon die."

The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrain'd,
The cruel gen'ral; the cruel gen'ral.
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gain'd,
And said that was all; and said that was all.

They took him and bound him and bore him away,
Down the hill's grassy side; down the hill's grassy side.
'Twas there the base hirelings, in royal array,
His cause did deride; his cause did deride.

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more,
For him to repent; for him to repent;
He pray'd for his mother, he ask'd not another,
To Heaven he went; to Heaven he went.

The faith of a martyr, the tragedy shew'd,
As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage.
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood,
As his words do presage, as his words do presage.

"Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe,
Go frighten the slave, go frighten the slave;
Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe.
No fears for the brave; no fears for the brave."

http://www.americanrevolution.org/war%20songs/warsongs34.html

Erin Hochman "Ein Volk, Ein Reich: The Anschluss Movement in Germany and Austria, 1918-­‐1933"

Dr. Erin Hochman, assistant professor of history at Southern Methodist University, is giving a talk on the Anschluss movement in Germany and Austria between the world wars on Thursday at 4pm in Gorgas 205.  Light refreshments will be served.

The Irishman's Epistle - 1775

The Epistle to the Troops in Boston

By my faith, but I think ye're all makers of bulls,
With your brains in your breeches, your --- in your skulls,
Get home with your muskets, and put up your swords,
And look in your books for the meaning of words.
You see now, my honies, how much your mistaken,
For Concord by discord can never be beaten.

How brave ye went out with your muskets all bright,
And thought to be-frighten the folks with the sight;
But when you got there how they powder'd your pums, And all the way home how they pepper'd your - ,
And is it not, honeys, a comical crack,
To be proud in the face, and be shot in the back.

How come ye to think, now, they did not know how,
To be after their firelocks as smartly as you?
Why, you see now, my honies, 'tis nothing at all,
But to pull at the trigger, and pop goes the ball.

And what have you got now with all your designing,
But a town without victuals to sit down and dine in;
And to look on the ground like a parcel of noodles,
And sing, how the Yankees have beaten the Doodles. I'm sure if you're wise you'll make peace for a dinner, For fighting and fasting will soon make ye thinner.

http://www.americanrevolution.org/war%20songs/warsongs22.html

Rays Opening Day and Poetry Month

Analysis of Baseball - May Swenson

It's about
the ball,
the bat,
and the mitt.
Ball hits
bat, or it
hits mitt.
Bat doesn't
hit ball, bat
meets it.
Ball bounces
off bat, flies
air, or thuds
ground (dud)
or it
fits mitt.

Bat waits
for ball
to mate.
Ball hates
to take bat's
bait. Ball
flirts, bat's
late, don't
keep the date.
Ball goes in
(thwack) to mitt,
and goes out
(thwack) back
to mitt.

Ball fits
mitt, but
not all
the time.
Sometimes
ball gets hit
(pow) when bat
meets it,
and sails
to a place
where mitt
has to quit
in disgrace.
That's about
the bases
loaded,
about 40,000
fans exploded.

It's about
the ball,
the bat,
the mitt,
the bases
and the fans.
It's done
on a diamond,
and for fun.
It's about
home, and it's
about run. 

Stand in the Schoolhouse Door

A one-day conference commemorating the
50th Anniversary of the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.”

April 5, 2013
Alabama Institute for Manufacturing Excellence Building, Room 110.

Panel 1

Alabama Institute for Manufacturing Excellence Building, Room 110, 9:30-11:30 am: Alabama and the Civil Rights Movement, 50 Years On.

• BJ Hollars, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
• Hasan Jeffries, Ohio State University
• Jason Sokol, University of New Hampshire
• Joseph Crespino, Emory University, comments
• Trudier Harris, University of Alabama, Chair

Panel 2

Alabama Institute for Manufacturing Excellence Building, Room 110, 1:30-3:30 pm: Integration in the United States, Broadly Considered.

• Joyce Baugh, Central Michigan University
• Dennis Deslippe, Franklin and Marshall College
• Charles Martin, University of Texas-El Paso
• Françoise Hamlin, Brown University, comments
• R. Volney Riser, University of West Alabama, Chair

Keynote Address

Malone-Hood Plaza at Foster Auditorium (rain location Farrah Hall 120), 5:15 pm.

“All the Kings’ Children: Growing up under The Guvnor and The Bear”

Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

Introduction by Peggy Wallace Kennedy

Downloadable event poster available here.

David Lacks Speaking at University of Alabama

I received this email from Dr. Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, who teaches great courses on the history of Asia, in Tuscaloosa last week:

Mr. David Lacks, the son of Henrietta Lacks, will be giving a talk on Tuesday night at 6pm in 205 Gorgas. For all of you who have been teaching Rebecca Skloots' book 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks', and for all of you who are interested in medicine, race, American history, gender, medical ethics, and the many other themes of the book, please attend if you have time, and let your students know. This is the penultimate event of our Honors Book Club series this year, and should be a fascinating evening.

The attached flyer provides the full information.  This is one of those times it would be really nice to be able to pop in to town for the afternoon.

Students and Preparedness for Online Learning

Online learning is a hot topic these days, especially with the push for MOOCs and the (frequently problematic) courses pushed by Khan Academy.  As the tempest surrounding these new fangled ways to separate taxpayers and students from their money swells, we're also getting a slew of new research on student success rates in online education.  For someone who makes a living teaching online, the outlook is grim.

On one side we have snake oil salesmen like Khan, or the folks who think that a great rubric is all you need to teach students to grade each other's papers in a MOOC, and on the other folks like Florida Governor Rick Scott who not only want to sideline the humanities in favor of STEM education, but reduce the cost of education down to a mythical $10,000 Bachelor's degree.  You'd think that more online classes would be good for a guy like me, but it won't be if it gets dominated by "super-professors" who "teach" hundreds of thousands of students free of charge by creating never-changing video lectures and having the students grade their peers' work.  As if that could possibly be effective for any but the most self-disciplined, motivated, and diligent students. Oh, and they have to be properly prepared to read, write, and have a solid understanding of grammar before they start, which means that kids subjected to the ill-effects of NCLB will get left behind, as usual.

Despite the political and corporate push for online education, especially of the MOOC model, which aims to dispose of most of faculty at universities already facing rates of hiring too low to properly serve their students (there is a whole body of research discussing how adjuncts are not as effective as regular faculty due to the conditions they labor under), the evidence shows that for many students, online courses are a hindrance to academic success.  One huge problem with online courses is attrition, which is always high, but for large courses can reach 90%.  Even small online courses (like mine), which have only 25 students, have high drop rates.  I've seen attrition from 25-50% in the classes I've taught since 2005.

This question of attrition is a troubling one for educators and students alike.  The instructors at my institution recently received a reminder from an administrator that our drop rates remained too high, along with renewed guidance on maintaining "presence" in our courses in an effort to reduce attrition.  The idea is that the more we stay in contact with our students, the less likely it is that they will become detached from the course, that they will believe that we value them as individuals, and will stick with it.  To be honest, the activities requested of us are pretty low effort, so much so that I wonder if they really have an effect:

• Make sure our names and contact information are prominently displayed.
• Individualized responses to student introuctions.
• Respond to introductions within 24 hours
• Post in Discussions on three different days of the week
• Acknowledge student learning or understanding of the material
• Interact with the whole class
• Ask questions that re-engage with the topic
• Respond to student posts within 48 hours
• Provide a discussion summary

That's really easy stuff.  We also have a requirement to return graded materials within 5 days of the due date.  When you have four classes going, that can be a challenge, especially in the 10-week sessions when we basically have an assignment due every single week for the core of the term.  In addition to all of this stuff, we're also piloting a system called Course Signals, which I've mentioned before, to help provide students a regular update on how they are doing in the class.  Course Signals is an application that integrates with our course management system to check student grades and cross-reference it with their activity in the course.  That provides a combination of grades and effort that places students into graduated categories of risk.  When I send out a signal (at least three times per semester by design), it provides a visual cue on the student login page (red, yellow, and green) and sends them an email (to catch those who don't bother to login).  The idea is to help keep students on track with the course - the email portion of the reminder is designed to get their attention.  By reminding them that they need to be active, the hope is that student success rates will improve.

That brings up another important issue related to students and online courses.  They don't work as well for those students who don't already have great language skills, self-discipline, or are generally less-prepared for college.  The research shows that community college students that take lots of online courses are less likely to finish school or transfer to a four-year institution.  They are also more likely to drop classes or to fail them.  Those students that just scrape by in a traditional class seem to disappear completely when they try online education.  Can you imagine what happens to the students who need remedial coursework before getting into the credit-earning classes?  Should schools allow them into online courses before they show that they can succeed in the traditional model?  An interesting side not to all of this research is that students in hybrid classes that combine a few course meetings with a majority of online work seem to perform as well as those in the traditional classes.  That really calls into question the whole concept of MOOC courses, doesn't it?

Ok, so now I seem like a bit of a hypocrite for teaching online courses, don't I?  Maybe. But, the fact is that I believe that online courses can work for many students.  Indeed, they have worked for me since my degrees at SHSU and FSU featured large online components.  The difference, of course, was that I was highly motivated and had good language and computer skills when I started.  I think that the model of courses where students login at the time of day that works for them, and only interacts with other students or the faculty in written discussions may not be the best for many of our students.  The model we used at FSU in the College of Information may work better - we signed into the course at a set time every week for symmetric discussions and lectures.  The lectures were sometimes text-only chats, sometimes used Second Life, or used interactive classrooms that featured audio, video, and desktop sharing technology.  That model certainly wasn't as flexible as the more "traditional" text-only style of online course, but I'm pretty sure it would be more successful for the students. My experience at FSU isn't directly related since it was a professional program, but my experiments in using Elluminate with my students a few times each semester so they could ask questions and provide feedback seems to help keep them engaged since they can hear my voice and feel like they get to know me.

Most of this is already floating around in the media and the blogosphere, but my experiences this semester really have me thinking about it.  I'm not sure why, but the past few semesters, it increasingly seems like my students are less and less prepared to function in class.  This isn't just limited to language skills or dedication, but even in their technology skills.  Many of these "born digital" students don't know what a file type is, or how to use basic word processor functions.  They seem increasingly unable to identify good sources of information (to the point that we now have dedicated assignments on using online library tools and finding sources).  This semester, I've had six of seven students not able (or willing) to read the course content to identify the textbook, course schedule, or find the assignment instructions.  I had to walk one student through the process on the phone - she was able to find my phone number, but not click the link below it to find the textbook, or two more below that to see the course schedule.  I'm not sure why, but this crop of students seems to need or want more handholding and instant gratification on grading than those only a year or two ago, and I'm wondering if we're increasingly pushing those borderline students into the wrong types of classes in order to handle more students with fewer resources.