8th Annual Nutrition and Health Conference

A number of topics are fresh on my mind after recently attending the 8th Annual Nutrition and Health conference in San Francisco - sponsored by the University of Arizona College of Medicine, presented by the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine. Prominent speakers and researchers in the field of nutrition dominated the conference - such as Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Michael Pollan.

Dr. Weil opened the conference with a presentation on the macronutrients and the anti-inflammatory way of eating. The macronutrients are those which our bodies need in large quantities - that is, carbohydrate, fat, and protein. We need all these nutrients. Some forms of carbohydrate are better than others. The same goes for fat and protein. Avoiding foods that are "refined, processed, or manufactured" is a good rule of thumb when deciding which foods are better than others. Specifically, concentrating on whole grains (not in pulverized forms such as flour - even whole wheat flour) in their whole grain form is the way to go. Fish and seafood (especially wild Alaskan salmon and sardines) are excellent sources of both protein and 'good fat.' Eating an abundance of vegetables and aiming for variety are other key features of a healthy diet.

Dr. Weil discussed evidence supporting the concept that "diseases of aging" in large part stem from inflammatory processes in the body. These diseases include cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neuro-degenerative diseases. He believes we can use dietary change as one way to prevent and change the impact of these diseases. The object is to reduce the pro-inflammatory elements of our diet and increase the anti-inflammatory ones. An example of a pro-inflammatory substance is omega 6 oil in excess. Granted, omega 6 is a key nutrient. But our food supply tends to be flooded with this oil in its cheapest and least valuable form - processed oils found in chips and other manufactured foods. On the other hand, an example of an anti-inflammatory food is an omega 3 food source such as wild sockeye salmon. Other key nutrients (soy, mushrooms, nuts/seeds to name a few) are illustrated in Dr. Weil's food pyramid. (Refer to his website: www.drweil.com.)

Many other speakers caught my attention and interest. Dr. Marion Neste, PhD, MPH from New York University was one. She discussed the "toxic environment" created by food industry's advertising. I tried to come away from the lectures with one-liners. From hers, I came away with, "Eat food, not products." From Dr. Dean Ornish's lecture, I came away with .. "Eat mostly a plant-based diet - eat food in its natural form... What's good for you is good for the planet." Dr. Ornish is the founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA, and an author of a number of books. His most recent, The Spectrum, is one I am interested in reading. His premise is that changes in lifestyle and diet can be difficult, but when approached from the perspective of how and what someone wants to change, the result is positive - rather than an approach from the perspective of do-nots and should-nots.

The second morning of the conference focused on cancer prevention. The area of nutrigenomics and a personalized diet is unfolding rapidly. This is an area of much research right now and deals with how a "person's genetic makeup" can "tailor strategies for the detection, treatment, or prevention of disease." In general, however, one could benefit greatly by following the American Cancer Society's and the World Cancer Research Fund's Guidelines such as these: Maintain a healthy weight/be as lean as possible without becoming overweight ... Avoid sugary drinks and processed foods high in added sugar, low in fiber, or high in fat .. Limit consumption of processed and red meats .. Consume a healthy diet, with an emphasis on plant sources/chose whole grains in preference to refined grains.

I cannot help but also mention the dynamic presentation by Dr. Michael Holick, Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Biophysics, Boston University of Medicine. Dr. Holick is devoted to the study of Vitamin D (the 'sunshine vitamin') and its relation not only to bone health (Vitamin D is needed for the absorption of calcium), but also, its deficiency relation to many other disease processes - such as MS, cancer, and heart disease. Refer to this website for more about this very important vitamin, our current deficiencies and its implications for health: www.vitamindhealth.org.

A truly amazing evening event kicked off with a photographic journey presented by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio - authors of Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Both this and their most recent book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, are visually impactful photographic depictions of diet and culture. [see www.menzelphoto.com.] I continued to be engrossed during the next part of the evening during a public forum hosting Dr. Andrew Weil, Michael Pollan (author and journalist), and Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics University of California. One of the questions posed to the participants: Is a calorie a calorie? The answer was a resounding "NO!" - in that consumption of sugary beverages , consumption of high fructose corn syrup (a "marker of a low quality food" [Dr. Weil]), results in deleterious effects to our health ... leading to a variety of consequences such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver... The take-home message: The farther we move away from the natural food, the farther away from the food as nature provides it, the worse it is for our health. This message (almost a mantra!) was delivered often during the conference.

Much can be summed up by the Michael Pollan quote: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Read more about this conference at: www.nutritionandhealthconf.org.

eLCC 2011

Notes from eLCC 2011 in Colorado Springs:

I went to a presentation on a redesign of a geography course presented by Karen Kaemmerling and Sean Renner of CCCOnline.  This was a course that started with a very traditional set of assessments -- essay, a research paper, and some multiple choice exams.  They had changed the assessments to include:

1. Discussions:  students chose a term from a bank of terms, find a current event that reflects that their chosen term, then submit the term and the event to the discussion board.  Students also have to respond to at least two peer submissions.
2. Discussions part 2:  Student generated discussions.  Part of the student introduction requirement is that students browse the text and the course and submit 5 topics for future discussions.  The instructor will generate discussion questions based on those topics as everyone moves through the course.
3. Video reflection assignment:  This is a journaling assignment rather than a formal writing assignment.  Students watch at least one of the videos that come with the text and write a journal response to that video.  (Two reasons for this assignment -- first, it does force students to watch the videos; and two, it uses the extra multi-media material that students are paying for.)
4. Annotated Google map:  This is a more creative assignment that ask students to develop an annotated Google map.
5. Course Project:  A scaffolded assignment that leads to a course presentation
1. Thesis
2. Bibliography
3. Presentation proposal (similar to a conference proposal) and proposed visual aid
4. Student generated rubric for grading
5. Presentation:  can be recorded Powerpoint, some other presentation software with audio, video.  The final presentation is submitted to the discussion board.  Students have to comment on at least two other presentations.

The negative comments I heard were around the required amount of writing and the level of written work.  This is a GT transfer course, so is required to include written work.  I think that could be addressed through the first discussion assignment - if the current events pieces are required to be formal essays that means the course would have a significant essay assignment for each unit.  You could also require that a written version of the presentation be turned in.  That includes a bibliography and some formal research. (Here's a link to the general competencies for the GT Transfer courses:  http://highered.colorado.gov/Academics/Transfers/gtPathways/Criteria/content.html.  They are interesting to read through again.)

I went to a second session on Google Maps delivered by Scott Houck and two others from Metro State College.  That session was focused more on digital story-telling with Google maps, but didn't offer many specific examples.  I like the idea of using annotated maps, pictures, and video in many classes.  I tried to design an assessment for the international trade unit of my economics course around it, but have so far failed.  It's easier for geography, literature, history, humanities courses (takes less imagination on my part).  If you've looked at some of what Michael Wesch does (youtube), some of his presentations use annotated maps in an exciting way.

Google maps might be very good at helping to add the community piece to a class -- and that helps a lot with student success and completion rates.  So many classes are designed with a series of somewhat boring essays and a couple of multiple choice exams (mine included).  It was nice to brainstorm with some creative, out-of-the-box thinkers.

 

I went to a great presentation by Liz Kleinfeld on organizing your digital life.  Like Liz I had decided that Facebook is for friends and Twitter is professional.  Also like Liz I find it hard to really keep those two parts of my digital life separate.  I do try to keep the post-types separate though....  most of my Facebook is family and they don't really care about course development issues.  Then of course I keep a completely separate blog on the horse piece since almost no one other than me wants to read my training diary. :^) (Over at Speed-trap.blogspot.com for those of you who do want to read about my difficulties with half-pass.)  Then there is Linked-in, which I haven't really figured out yet.  So far it's really just a directory for me, but I have used it to locate people I wanted to talk to, but had lost track of.  Liz had some very good points about how to fill in the profile information for all of those locations and why -- it is better to give people a better first glimpse of yourself than just whatever comes up first when they google you.  (I just googled myself - first Twitter, then Educause, then Blogger.)

On the vendor side I went to a presentation by Soft Chalk.  Didn't learn a lot of new things there, but I do really like the product for quick and easy content development with straight-forward navigation built right in.  I also went to a presentation by Terry Rowenhorst on NROC's new math course.  The material is very good -- a focus on the multimedia presentation of course, but the back end pedagogy is very well thought out.  The problems a student receives are based on whether or not they gave the correct answer on previous problems and the feedback sends them directly to the applicable portion of the "textbook".  There are also numerous applications built in as well as puzzles and other activities.  www.NROCmath.org. 

 

Great keynotes by Ellen Wagner of WCET and Sage Road Solutions and Barry Dahl of Excellence in e-Education. 

 

Last, I enjoyed a session on Data Analytics led by Jon Sherrill of CCCOnline.  I want to go look at a tool called Snap and analyze my discussions with it.  He commented that we need to remember to use all the proposed analytics for the benefit of the students.  That may be obvious, but I agree that it can be forgotten in the rush to data.  It is very important that we begin to collect and analyze student data though -- it may help us to be more efficient, but almost more importantly it gives us a way to respond to Washington when they are planning regulations that may not help 2-year schools.

Here comes April, "like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers"

A big welcome to springtime, April, and Poetry Month.

SPRING
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

O what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.


Feeling poetic?
Want to share your writing and be a techie too?








Visit the new QR poetry blog created by Alice Bedard-Voorhees.
There you can see how to turn your poem into a QR Code and post your words as well.
Find out more at:
http://qrpoetry.blogspot.com/



Need some inspiration?



Download a poetry app on your smart phone.
For example, try The Poetry Foundations's iPhone app.
You can slide the 2 panels on the screen separately to choose a mood and topic, and the app will present you with poems that fit that combination.
Create your own combos, like Pessimism and Love or Contentment and Family, and see what poems appear.
Or just shake your iPhone and watch the 2 reels spin, and a combo of moods and the related poems will be chosen for you.


Read poems online
Visit The Poetry Foundation online:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/


Read and lucubrate* with an actual book
http://coloradomtn.edu/library

*From the past participle of Latin lucubrare ‘to work by candle light’.

Kathy Kiser-Miller Honored as E-Learning Educator of the Year by eLCC

Congratulations to CMC's Steamboat Humanities/Speech Faculty Member Kathy Kiser-Miller!
Kathy was named e-Learning Educator of the Year today at the eLCC (e-Learning Consortium of Colorado) conference at Colorado Springs. Kathy was unable to attend, but Louis Beatty, Computer Faculty for CMC's Virtual Campus, accepted the award for her.



For more information on eLCC, visit elearningcolorado.org

Sound Practices: Performing College Reading and Writing

Joyce Mosher, Associate Professor English Communications at Summit, has published an article in the e-journal for the National Resource Center for the First Year Experience, the premier Student Success organization in the country. Joyce’s article, Sound Practices: Performing College Reading and Writing, presents ways for student voices to sound in the classroom, and research that supports live aural and oral learning activities.

Students learn from talking to each other. As Biggs (1999) notes, “People learn ten percent of what they read, and seventy percent of what they talk over with others” (p. 96). Face-to-face learning that recognizes aurality and orality as important literacies helps students establish habits of careful reading and effective writing—skills fundamental to college success (National Council of Teachers of English, 2008a, 2008b; Yancey, 2009).

Writing student verbalizes her idea for a conclusion to a research paper.

A pedagogy of aurality and orality ensures that voices other than the instructor’s frequently sound in the classroom. Oral pedagogy gives beginning college students practice in reading a range of texts aloud, from published works to their own writings, as well as practice in hearing literary material performed both recorded and live. These multiple voices create audible, reflective thought whereby students can pay attention to the text and to their own reactions and those of their peers. A pedagogy of orality encourages students to become actively involved, socially-integrated learners who know how to reflect on their own learning and how to transform their life experiences into learning experiences (Bleich, 2001; Gardner, 1999). For these reasons, oral communication deserves an elevated place as an educational strategy in higher education.

Oral pedagogy focuses on student voices—in whole-group discussion, small-group informal talk, recitation, and performance—as the central learning events in the classroom and as a means for students to practice high-level acts of attention to texts. Aural and oral learning methods make use of the fact that the ear captures and processes textual nuances that the eye misses. In this way, aural texts address a problem common to many readers in their early college years: lack of close reading skills to explore what a text really says. Training the ear through aural texts supports the kind of sharply focused interpretation that engenders high-level reading and writing capacities.

As a first-year student success strategy at Colorado Mountain College, oral pedagogy attracts and holds fledgling college students. Students encounter texts as live or recorded performance and then discuss and analyze the works together. For example, rather than silently read a Robert Frost poem, students listen to Frost reading his work “The Road Not Taken” at poets.org. The group listens to the poem three times. Following the first hearing, students discuss initial impressions of the poem’s plot, setting, characters, and figurative language. During the second hearing, students jot down key words and strong images that interest them and comment on their increasing understanding of the poem. After the third listening and discussion, students compose a written statement of the meaning or theme of the poem. As audience to a performance, students in turn “perform” as they aurally and orally process their own emerging understanding and build textual analyses from what they hear and talk over with others. Students move from initial, individual reactions to collaborative text analysis, and on to formal writing. This method can be effectively adapted to all genres of texts for literature and composition studies.

Three major learning outcomes arise from the practice of oral pedagogy: (a) multivocality (i.e., multiple literacies and voices in the classroom); (b) aesthetic awareness that fosters critical reading and thinking; and (c) analytic ability. An explanation of each learning outcome suggests how instructors can implement oral and aural learning methods.

Multivocality
Oral pedagogy offers multiple ways for students to master course content. Student responses, comments, and questions constitute elements of instruction, and learners also perform what they know as they acquire new skills and information. In this way, from the beginning of their college careers, students experience the text and their own critical reflections as interrelated acts.

Aesthetic Awareness


Writing students edit each other’s drafts of persuasive essays prior to final revision.

Guided practice in listening to and discussing a wide variety of texts helps students develop sensitivity toward the spoken and written ideas of others. In oral pedagogy, students individually and collectively perform the sequence of academic moves from gut reaction to written essays. Writing and revision, in turn, often require research. Oral pedagogy provides students the opportunity to practice each step and to extend, reflect upon, and evaluate their own learning.

Analytic Ability
Through embodied expression, students construct bridges from their lived experience to scholastic material and on to larger social realities. The sounding of multiple voices in the classroom closes the gap between individual students and between instructors and students. In addition, a major strength of oral pedagogy is that students are at the center of cultural and intellectual experiences and have daily opportunities to describe their reactions and share their responses with other members of the audience. They learn that their ideas matter.

Assessment Practices
Such amplified literacies oblige educators to align learning outcomes, classroom activities, and assessment practices with features of oral pedagogy. The first step is to develop an active, flexible communication style in the classroom, so that discussion, performance, and student talk can transform traditional lectures and other instructor-centered practices into engaging learner-centered processes. The second step is to build a repertoire of measures that assess students’ progressive mastery of new skills.

At Colorado Mountain College, faculty who place oral and aural materials and methods at the center of composition and literature studies have consistently received high student ratings, as reported each semester via Individual Development and Educational Assessments (IDEA). In addition, for the past three academic years (i.e., 2006-2009), the students of these instructors have achieved an 81.6 % success rate, defined as passing English Composition I with a grade of C+ or better. Moreover, students of instructors fully committed to oral pedagogy reached 92.6% retention between fall 2008 and fall 2009, compared to institutional and national retention rates of 70% or lower in classrooms where oral pedagogy is not practiced (Johnson, 2010; Maricopa Community College, 2008). These findings suggest the positive value of oral pedagogy for today’s student.

Conclusion
Aural and oral learning methods bring into play the heightening and brightening of consciousness produced by multiple voices sounding in the classroom. Instructors enlist performance as a teaching and learning technique that encourages students to master college-level reading and writing in a variety of ways. When student voices sound, classrooms become workshops where learners continually practice creating, critiquing, analyzing, and evaluating the social and academic contexts of their lives.

Sound Practices was the topic of Joyce’s presentation at the FYE Conference in Denver last February, attended by several CMC staff and faculty. Joyce welcomes questions, comments, and suggestions about the article, as she continues her research into effective pedagogy for CMC students.

Photos
Used with permission of the author.

Contact
Joyce Devlin Mosher
jmosher@coloradomtn.edu

References
Biggs, J. (1999). Teaching for quality learning at university. Buckingham, UK: OpenUP.

Bleich, D. (2001). The materiality of language and the pedagogy of exchange. Pedagogy, 1, 117-142.
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence re- framed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York, NY: Basic.

Johnson, B. (2010). English completer data (Colorado Mountain College Institutional Research data file). Breckenridge, CO: Colorado Mountain College.

Maricopa Community College. (2008).
Maricopa Community Colleges monitoring update: Indicators of institutional effectiveness (p. 61). Retrieved November 12, 2010, from Maricopa Community College website: http://www.maricopa. edu/gvbd/goals/Monitoring_ Report_2008.pdf

National Council of Teachers of English. (2008a). NCTE position statement: 21st century curriculum and assessment framework. Retrieved July 20, 2010, from NCTE website: http://www.ncte.org/positions/ statements/21stcentframework

National Council of Teachers of English (2008b). NCTE position statement: The NCTE definition of 21st century literacies. Retrieved July 20, 2010, from NCTE website: http://www.ncte.org/positions/ statements/21stcentdefinition

Yancey, K. B. (2009, February). Writing in the 21st century: A report from the National Council of Teachers of English. Retrieved from NCTE web- site: http://www.ncte.org/library/ NCTFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf

By Joyce Mosher

Accept mobile credit card payments anywhere with your iPhone | ITworld

Accept mobile credit card payments anywhere with your iPhone | ITworld

Western States Communication Association 82nd Annual Convention

In late February, CMC Professor Kathy Kiser-Miller, Assocate Professor David Chimovitz and I attended the Western States Communication Association (WSCA) 82nd Annual Convention.
The WSCA is a large and diverse organization with a stated purpose "to unite people in the Western States who have an academic . . . or professional interest in communication and who want to promote their mutual educational interests". Members in the WSCA come from over 37 states and several countries.

Program planners for the 2011 Convention included the Communication and Instructional Interest Group, Community Theory Interest Group, Environmental Communication Interest Group, Freedom of Speech Interest Group, and the Language and Social Interaction Group. As one would expect, this made for a very inspiring and informative convention. A wide variety of panels, workshops and presentations were offered each day. Topics varied from the practical, such as the Great Ideas for Teaching Speech (G.I.F.T.S) panel which shared valuable instructional tools and activities with attendees, to the purely academic round table discussion forum in which the top four papers in rhetoric and public address were presented. Other sessions focused on critical analyses, pedagogical issues, and the latest research in the field of communication. As part of the G.I.F.T.S. program Associate Professor Chimovitz presented a session on "Teaching Passion in the Speech Course" which was well attended and very well received.

Attending the WSCA 82nd Convention was a wonderful opportunity and each us came away from the Convention energized and eager to apply what we learned. Materials obtained at these sessions are full of great ideas that can be easily adapted for use in CMC classes. We plan to share the lesson plans and activities we gathered at the conference with Communication faculty at the next in service.