PeerCentered

I have posted a poll in the IWCA forums: IWCA Forum: Peer Tutor => What do we call ourselves: the poll! It is a part of an earlier discussion that kind of petered out about the titles used for writing center workers. Please take a moment and vote! If you don't have an account on the forum, you can register for one by clicking on the "Register" link (next to the rocket icon in the top-right of the page.) Don't forget to state your institutional affiliation when you request and account. (That's how the IWCA Forum keeps out spam accounts.)

Episode 1.4 is in the can! It is a recording made at NCPTW 2006 and is "A Defense of Minimalist Tutoring." Thanks to Harvey Kail, Shannon Dohar, Hannah Lauterback, Emily Morrissette, and Rosalie Sullivan for allowing me to record it. I have refrained for apologizing for the poor audio quality simply because there is not much I can do to make it better. Click on the podcast link on the right to go to the podcast page.

Todays' Oskosk (Wisconsin) Northwestern profiles a cool educational concept for students at Emmeline Elementary school:
"'In the writing center you can write a letter or make a story for your mom and dad,' said Destinee Stevens.

While Stevens was working with her peers in the writing center, other classmates were listening to books on tape, silently reading, working on math games or practicing piecing poetry together." (Oshkosh Northwestern - Emmeline Cook focuses on literacy)
Collaborative learning in such settings is encouraging and bodes well for the future of things such as peer tutoring in the future.

PeerCentered friend and IWCA Vice President Michele Eodice received the 2006 Ron Maxwell Award for Distinguised Leadership at last weekend's National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW). The award is given to
a professional in the organization who has contributed with distinction to undergraduate student development through promoting collaborative learning among peer tutors in writing.

Such leadership may be demonstrated in a variety of ways, including but not limited to: the individual's record in bringing peer tutors to present at the Conference service to the organization through hosting the Conference, serving as program chair, leading in the search for future sites, etc. aiding students in the assumption of increasing responsibility for their learning fostering leadership skills among peer tutors showing evidence of leadership in collaborative learning on one's home campus developing innov…

Nancy Grimm gave a provocative keynote address at the just-passed NCPTW in Ann Arbor. I recorded it and with her permission I have put it out in the PeerCentered podcast. This is the first in a series of podcasts based out of presentations from NCPTW.

I feel like I'm running a mile-a-minute getting ready for NCPTW this weekend. I've got a bunch of meetings this afternoon and important things to attend to in the Student Writing Center before I head out. I also need to get some stuff done for IWCA as well as preparing my equipment for recording interviews and hopefully sessions for the podcast at NCPTW. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway if you are going to Ann Arbor, see you there! If not, stay tuned to the podcast where I am going to present (I hope) a small conference experience.

If you have an RSS feed you probably have already seen the newest episode of the podcast pop up in your favorite podcast listening software. If not, take a gander at this page. This episode, I fear, is showing my dearth of material right now. Actually I am excited about heading out to Ann Arbor and attending NCPTW, and I wanted to give listeners a sense of what I will be doing at NCPTW in regards to the podcast (recording, interviewing, etc.)

Again I want to get more folks involved in the podcast project. If you are interested, let me know at the above email address.

Jane Smith, Director of Winthrop University's Writing Center, has been awarded with Winthrop's Margaret M. Bryant Professorship: Smith is a scholar in composition, rhetoric and poetry who has taught at Winthrop for 19 years and created the course that trains the Writing Center's tutors. She is the third recipient of the Bryant award.

Peer writing consultants Derek Davidson and Kanaka Sathasivan offer some sound advice to readers of The Daily Texan (Keeping it short - Opinion):
It's important to write reader-friendly prose. Tight, clear sentences get ideas across better than long, complicated ones. Readers are impatient and fussy. They don't want to dig through unnecessary words to get to your point. I've been noticing a few peer-authored articles popping up in various campus newspapers. Such articles seem like a fine way of sharing writing center work and getting people aware of the writing center. Such articles, written by peers, do not suffer the "stuffed shirt" or "I'm an expert do what I say!" syndrome.

As I am going to heavily advertise PeerCentered at the upcoming NCPTW conference in Ann Arbor the weekend after next, I figure it is time for a pruning of participants who aren't participating in PeerCentered any longer. If you are a member of the blog and don't want to be pruned, either comment here or drop me an email by Friday, 3 November 2006.