Summary of Learning

I embarked on this course with a little trepidation. It is my first education class on this campus (I took a qualitative research course in the Education Department at the Univ of TN, but it was much more about research methods than pedagogy) and it is focused on using technology, which I have improved in greatly over the last few years but still don't consider an area of strength for me. I have been pleasantly surprised, however.

For one, I've found that much of what we have discussed is immediately useful to me in my composition courses. I completely changed my major project for this semester in order to let my students play with some of the cool tools we reviewed, while enabling to think about who needs to know the information they discovered in their research and how they could most effectively present that information to their chosen audience. They (mostly) had fun while engaging in the higher order thinking I was hoping they would do.

In addition, it's been very eye-opening for me to see just how many really great resources are readily available online if I build up a personal learning network that will help direct me to them. Life as an adjunct professor can be a very isolating experience. I have a person assigned as my officemate whom I have never seen and am beginning to doubt exists. I was depressed all spring by the continued sight of several candy canes that the office staff had placed as gifts into all instructor mailboxes at the end of last semester that were never picked up by those who presumably never had time to come into the department. I work really hard to build relationships with my colleagues during my more extensive time on campus in my office doing conferences, on social media, and by participating in a faculty learning community this year. These efforts have led to sharing some good assignments and classroom management strategies, but those benefits pale in comparison to the volume of practical materials that I have come across this semester. I plan on using the NGLC composition course lessons to help me manage teaching five sections on two campuses in the Fall.

For some reason, I've had a very lone wolf, solitary genius mentality about my lesson plans, feeling like I had to invent everything anew for myself, but I've seen such high-quality lesson plans and resources through this class, and even in the structure of the class itself, that I feel empowered to treat teaching as a community affair that I don't have to manage alone.

At the same time, I have felt encouraged to embrace the sharing economy in education. I am undertaking the creation of some discussion guides, class activities, and assignment ideas built around satirical or entertaining videos that also aim to inform the public, such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, with my colleague across the hall from me. I have used John Oliver clips fairly extensively in my classes because he creates such beautiful yet entertaining arguments and have assigned a group project where students were to create their own mini-episode of Last Week Tonight. I've shared those lessons on a very small scale, but now I'm going to attempt to go big. Because if I don't have to plan every little detail of my class myself, I can afford to spend more time making the lessons I'm passionate about really great and worth sharing.

I didn't expect to learn so much about community in a class where I expected to (and to a certain extent did) feel like an outsider. But technology enables us to create community with those beyond our immediate physical access.

Bubbl artifact

I used Bubbl.us to create an artifact illustrating what I learned this semester. It's an intuitive and free application, two features I generally love.

How to How-to #7: What's Left to Learn?

When I started this project, I wanted to learn how to use my phone to film me braiding, how to use software on my phone and laptop to edit that film and add audio, and how to upload those videos to YouTube to share with others. My underlying goal was to then be able to turn around and share that technical knowledge with my students when I ask them to create videos in their multi-modal projects.

I believe I have made progress towards all of those goals, though I would still like to improve in all of them. For instance, while I managed to use a selfie stick to hold my phone with MacGyver-like improvisations, I am positive I could be finding better angles to film from and a more permanent system for holding my phone if I continue making these videos. Additionally, when it comes to software and apps, while I like using iMovie and Splice, they are both Apple products that not all of my students will be able to access. That means I need to learn the basics of some other programs if I'm going to be able to help everyone in my classes.

Just in general, I think continued practice will lead me to discover so much more that I don't even know that I don't know right now. The good news is, I've gotten over my initial fear of trying a new skill, and I now know that it's possible to figure it out. Plus, there are still so many hairstyles to demonstrate! I'm also very tempted to try some satire in the form of videos about everything that goes wrong or what it actually takes to train a child to sit still long enough to do a fancy braid.

How to How-to #6 - Zig-Zag Braid video!

The zig-zag braid is in many ways the braid that started it all, so it seems appropriate to finish with it. I had done fancy hairstyles in Ambriel's hair prior to it and posted pictures of them on Facebook, but it was the zig-zag braid that earned me the reputation of being a braiding expert. It's the one I do in the hair of other people's kids when they beg me to do their hair like my daughter's. I have more pictures of it than any other. The funny thing is, I started doing it because I found a single, straight-down-the-middle, French braid difficult to do and kind of ugly, but I didn't want to always have to do pig-tail French braids, so I tried this. If I had been better at regular French braids, I might never have branched out into more complex ones!

As for the video, I am generally very pleased with this one. I did try to have a "Please Subscribe!" slide at the end of it, but Splice insisted on putting their logo over top of it, and I didn't notice in time to correct it. I could probably have cut a little more just to keep the video shorter, too, but overall I like this one a lot.

Enjoy!

How to How-to #5 - The Cutting Edge

I mentioned in my last post that I was planning to edit my next two videos by cutting one and speeding up the other. I actually ended up doing both for both. I had a "Eureka!" moment when I figured out that it was much easier to split my video on either side of the part I wanted to cut on iMovie and then delete the entire clip in the middle that doing so created than it was to try to use the sliding controls on Splice to select the entire piece I wanted to delete. Suddenly, I was the master of my destiny, slicing and dicing my film to eliminate all of the little infelicities of me struggling to get a piece smooth or stopping to use a brush mid-braid. 

What I found, however, was that the clip was still way too long after I had eliminated those moments, so I went ahead and speeded up the film. My goal was to learn how to help students cut their videos, and I feel confident doing that now, so I might as well have the look I want. 

You'll notice that I also added more still photos and a bit of text in this video. Sadly, it wasn't until just after I uploaded this one that I noticed that the orientation of this video is portrait. I fixed it in the next one so that the picture is bigger and there isn't a frame around it. 

It's a little crazy to me how much I feel like I am improving with each video. When my little neighbor was acting as film crew, she asked if she could see the videos I had already made. I was somewhat embarrassed to show her the first one because I would do it so differently now (though she was still impressed just to know I made something that anyone could see online). I'll talk more in my next post about what I still need to learn, but for now I just wanted to say it's nice to feel like I am getting the hang of this.

Forgive us our procrastination...

I like to joke with my students that I am just like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, but I think we all know better. My biggest struggle/character flaw/lovable imperfection as a student, instructor, and scholar is a tendency to procrastinate. It's often productive procrastination (my house gets so clean when I'm avoiding a looming deadline!), and I know how to manage it much better now than I did as an undergraduate, but it still trips me up sometimes.

I know some people thrive on to-do lists, of varying levels of tech-enhancement, getting great pleasure out of checking items off the list, but I tend to feel overwhelmed by them and shut down. My motto is "one flaming hoop at a time!" I don't look 15 steps ahead of where I am but instead stay focused on the task at hand, maybe the one immediately following. It's how I've survived two rounds of grad school while remaining the most well-adjusted, least-medicated grad student I know, but it has its drawbacks (Not having any publications when I graduated is one of the most impactful results of my focus. Still, sanity is so nice!).

I loved the above comic so much I started making
a cross-stitch sampler of it to hang in my office.
Naturally, it's not finished yet. I keep needing to do
other things first...

I tell you all of this to say that what I'm looking for in the way of productivity tools for teaching are those that will help me do things quickly (in case I've waited until the last minute), will keep me on task when I'm rushing to get things done (see last parenthesis), and will help me to get a whole lot of planning and prep done all at once during my highly motivated, peak activity periods (like the two weeks before a semester begins and the first few weeks of the semester before my students turn in their first major assignment, when grading takes over my life).

So far, what I have implemented along those lines are the use of doodle to schedule grade conferences (I can easily update my schedule, students can check when they are supposed to meet me without needing to ask me, and I can't procrastinate grading when I have an appointment to sit and do it with the student present), the use of LMS to plan out due dates and share assignments, and the use of Google docs and forms for some work with students. After learning about so many other tools this semester, however, I think I will endeavor to expand my use of my current favorites and try to add some new ones.

I wish that I had access to Google Classroom, as it seems like the perfect one stop shop for everything I want, but I will make due with a combination of Google Drive and whatever LMS I do have access to next semester. And as I said in my last blog post, I'm going to try to pace myself, only adding a couple of new elements each semester rather than trying for a total hostile takeover.

I'm not yet ready to try one of the apps like Rescue Time, suggested by Mary Ellen Ellis, however, to limit my access to websites like Facebook while I am working. There have to be some rewards to maintain sanity! But I did delete Candy Crush and AlphaBetty off of my phone over a year ago and have felt so much more productive ever since.

I'd also like to try Screenr and Fotobabble, as mentioned by Sandra Miller, to create how-tos or answers to FAQs for my students to post on LMS (then I'll need a t-shirt that says "It's on Springboard!" as well as one that says "It's on the Syllabus!"). It's just exciting to know that there are so many tools out there and that they are becoming more user friendly all the time. It's going to be fun trying new things on my little guinea pigs!

Photo by Dakiny

How to How-to #4: A film crew at last!

As the end of the semester barrels down on us, I realized I better hurry up and film some more braids so I can work on editing them. Semi-conveniently, my kids are on spring break this week, which means I had access to my daughter's hair in the middle of the day and also had her friend available to act as my film crew. It also meant that my husband had the day off from substitute teaching and that my preschooler was home. You win some, you lose some.

I paid her in apple pie. That's legit, right?

You see, when I was at my mom's house filming, she actively tried to keep things quiet and offer whatever assistance she could. My husband, bless his heart, kept walking back and forth in my light, singing, and asking me questions while I was trying to concentrate/braid and hold a comb in my mouth (I forgot to have a safe place to put it off camera).

The good news is, I did manage to film two braids without my phone giving up because it can't even with all the memory used. Now I know just how many things I need to delete first and I know how to quickly upload a video to my computer, delete it from my phone, and move on to the next project.

I haven't had a chance to edit either video yet, but I will. I'm going to edit one by cutting and the other by speeding it up. I prefer watching the speeded-up versions, but I know the cutting skills would be handy for more filming situations. Therefore I must master them.

I also spent some time this week watching other people's YouTube hair tutorials, and I was reassured to see that some seriously viral videos had no better filming/lighting than mine. Like this one, for instance.

What they do have is additional still photos and text at the beginning and end of their videos (as well as a drive to promote their channel and websites - not sure I possess that), so I'm going to work on incorporating some of that into my next two videos.

Here are some sneak-peeks of the braids I filmed: an Elsa-inspired one and a zig-zag.

Blended, Not Stirred: Transforming Instruction with Technology

What struck me the most in Stacy Hawthorne's presentation, and the iNACOL Blended Learning Teacher Competency Framework that she references, is the idea that blended learning isn't just "old teaching practices" + technology. Truly blended learning requires a transformation of how and why we do what we do in the classroom.

I'm reflecting on my own adoption of technology at the front of my classroom and wondering how well I've used it to transform what I do rather than just replace a former technology. For the first few years that I taught, I didn't even own a laptop, so I relied on the chalkboard/whiteboard and paper handouts for visual information. Now I hook my MacBook up to the overhead projector just about every class, sometimes to show a Keynote presentation, sometimes to show an online resource, and sometimes to type into a blank document instead of writing on the board.

Public domain pic! Gotta love searching on Creative Commons ;-) 

On the one hand, this use of my laptop has drastically changed the experience in my classroom because I post all presentations, links to online resources, and in-class-created-documents to our LMS, thus giving students far more access to class materials on their own time and pace. My goal hasn't been to create content that could replace being in class in person, however. One of my fears is that putting everything I do in class online, say in the form of recorded lectures and/or discussions, would lead to students missing more classes because they figure they can just watch the video later. This fear assumes that being in the classroom with me at the appointed time is the best possible way for students to learn, though, and blended learning asks me to consider carefully whether that is always the case or if some lessons might be taught just as well, if not better, through a carefully constructed, well-thought-out online module.

Which brings us to my second major fear: that the prep and planning for a truly blended classroom would lead to me either failing utterly to maintain any semblance of work/life balance (cue the "Cat's in the Cradle" music) or to me sticking with a course plan that isn't working the way I wanted it to just because I don't want to scrap all of the time and effort I put into creating it. One thing I've discovered in this course, however, is that there are so many great lesson plans, activities, videos, assignments, etc. available for free online if I maintain the right kind of Personal Learning Network that I really don't need to reinvent the wheel to fill my course with quality materials.

Anyone else remember doing cat's cradle? photo by stevendepolo

So as I look to preparing for the fall semester, I very much want to create a blended classroom. I want to let go of my insistence on attendance in favor of accommodating my students' circumstances and competing responsibilities so that they can learn the material even when they aren't physically present. I want to embrace the grit and adaptability required to create, curate, and implement new instructional materials with open hands that can release them and find a new path in response to my students' needs. I want to become as tech savvy as I can so that I can model the technologies my students will need to master. And I want to avoid adding apps and gizmos to the syllabus just to say I'm using technology. Going back to the idea of TPACK that we discussed earlier in the semester, I want to be sure that my content and pedagogical knowledge is informing my decision to include a particular form of technology in my lesson plans and assignments.

And having set myself such lofty goals, I'll just go back to this blog post about why blending learning fails and remember that I shouldn't try to go too fast. I should make the changes I can make and move towards a more blended learning environment over time.

Assessing Assessment

This week's topic of formative versus summative assessment has me thinking once again how great it is to talk with people in other disciplines across the university. In my own field of composition, assessment is a topic near and dear to our hearts. Traditionally, we've tended to accept the essay as the form of our assessments (though that is changing as we move towards more multi-modal projects that still demonstrate the critical thinking and rhetorical decision making that we are looking for in terms of learning outcomes beyond correct grammar and thesis statements). There has been a great deal of discussion about how we should respond to those essays, however, and much of it is relevant to the discussion of formative and summative assessment.

Should we mark grammar mistakes and make comments in the margins or should we provide a paragraph of commentary at the end of an otherwise unmarked essay?

Should we put a grade on rough drafts or only suggestions for improvement?

Should we comment on everything that needs work or focus on three items at a time?

Do our comments on one essay lead to improvements on the next assignment or are they only effective towards a revision of the same essay?

As I mentioned in a previous post, my answer to these questions has been that spending 20-30 minutes talking face-to-face with students about their work is far more effective than any written feed-back that I can give. I do give letter grades on their essays in these conferences, but I always describe them as a jumping off point. (Alfie Kohn's work on the topic of eliminating grades is certainly relevant to this discussion. I wait to give a letter until the very end of a conference and have often been disappointed by the way students' excitement about how to improve their project turns to relief that they don't have to do any of that work when they realize they already have the letter they were hoping for.)

Another cross-over concept for me is the idea of recursiveness. As Rick Wormeli notes, the line between formative and summative assessment can be fluid as teachers use assessment to determine what students have mastered and what they still need to work on. What was intended as summative may become formative if half the students don't pass or all struggle with the same area, indicating that more learning events need to occur. In writing, the assumption is that a once and done approach will not produce good results. Grown-up writers go through a process of prewriting, writing, and revision that frequently circles back on itself until the desired result is achieved (or the latest deadline hits).  I want my students to learn this process approach, so I use formative assessments along the way to force them into it. I link attendance/participation points to bringing drafts, outlines, research, annotations, etc. to class before a project is due and we look at them together in small group and whole class workshops. I make them turn projects in in stages so that they get feedback along the way, guiding them toward a more successful end product. And once they have turned in a draft, I allow students to keep revising (so long as they turn in a revision within two weeks of meeting with me) until they are happy with their grade or the semester ends.

In this case, the essays are formative as long as students keep revising them but become summative as soon as they lose ambition or decide that the grade they have is good enough. On the one hand, this is a very student-centered approach to assessment. If they are willing and able to put in the time and effort, there is no reason why they cannot improve their writing and their grade. But there are those who are so conditioned by the grading system that they will not do a revision unless it is "required" and won't do a bit of work beyond what it takes for them to get the letter they have decided is right for them.

One method I attempted to get around this difficulty was grade contracts. Students helped to negotiate what one would have to do to earn an A, B, or C in the class, signed a contract for one of the three, and then in grade conferences we would talk about revision plans and whether or not the assignment met the terms of their contract without assigning any letters to them. I eventually gave it up, however, because it was a lot of extra work for essentially the same outcome.

Until Kohn's no-grade revolution takes off, however, I will just continue trying to make assessment in my classes about learning where my students are, figuring out how to get them where they need to be, and learning how I can change/improve my instruction to make their path there as smooth and direct as possible. I don't see much need for the use of instant quiz technology in my classroom right now since my classes are small and discussion-based (though it might be nice for keeping students engaged on the few days a semester when I have to lecture in order to introduce essential vocabulary or the details of major projects), but I do appreciate the commitment to being aware of student progress long before the mid-term or end-of-semester assessments hit that the use of such technology encourages. At the end of the day, after all, formative assessments are going to enable us to be much better facilitators of our students' learning, and that should be our goal as educators, regardless of our discipline.

How to How-to #3 - Hallelujah, another video!

My goal this week(ish) was to learn how to cut a video in multiple places to shrink it to my desired length. Alas, I did not quite manage that. What I did learn was that speeding a video up to 4x normal speed turns it into a manageable size without deleting everything off of my phone. (It also makes the original soundtrack sound like angry mice, which is a nice element of levity in an otherwise stressful process.) I changed the speed using iMovie on my laptop and then emailed the shortened video to myself, saved it on my phone, and made audio revisions on Splice before uploading it to YouTube. 

I actually think I understand the theory behind making multiple cuts now, but implementing that theory is a more laborious process than I had time for before I had to pick up my children. I'm curious what you all think about the trade offs between a cut versus a speeded up video. I think both could potentially undermine the ability of the video to actually demonstrate the details of what to do, but I also realize that what I'm demonstrating isn't exactly Braiding 101. The viewer would already need to have mastered some basic skills before attempting this and might, therefore, not need as detailed of instruction.

Also, I think the speeded-up version is kinda mesmerizing to watch.

I think I will attempt a cut video of a zig-zag braid for my next stage, and then I can compare the two styles and decide which I like better.

Zig-Zag Braid

Space to Learn

It is always an adventure finding out just how well (or not) my classrooms each semester will physically meet the needs of my course. In my ten years of teaching composition on two different campuses, I don't believe I've ever taught in the same classroom for more than one semester. Flexibility, therefore, is something I've had to get pretty good at. I could spend my time reminiscing about that one semester at the University of Tennessee Knoxville when I got to teach in the magical (except for the weird shades of orange and green - seriously, who passed off on the "science" of those being colors that are conducive for learning) revamped classroom in HSS that looked rather like this, but that doesn't help me to meet the needs of my students now in the classroom I have access to.

If I'm lucky, I'm in a classroom big enough to accommodate everyone with enough desks/tables/chairs to keep the beginning of class from feeling like a game of musical chairs. If I'm really lucky, the furniture is also not bolted to the floor or so heavy that moving it is out of the question. I don't surrender and just start lecturing for 50 minutes straight during those semesters when I am proven unlucky, but making group work and eye contact happen takes up way more of my energy and creativity than I would like in those classrooms.

The bigger struggle I am finding in terms of learning space right now, however, has to do with my practice of grade conferencing. Basically, I don't take stacks of student essays home with me to ignore for several weeks before grading late at night in a self-loathing induced panic. I schedule 15-25 twenty-minute-long conferences each week of the semester after my students turn in their first major assignment and I grade their work with them sitting in my office next to me, listening to me read it aloud. In general, both my students and I love this. I can't procrastinate or have my weekend ruined, and they get to ask questions, explain what they were trying to accomplish, and help to create a plan for revision that they are actually on board with. The problem is that not all students find it easy to physically make it to my office for these meetings because of scheduling conflicts, transportation difficulties, or other responsibilities.

I've been trying to figure out a way to give the same quality of assessment interaction through technology so that our physical space wouldn't be so limiting. I think using Google Docs could be an important part of the solution because if we were both in the document at the same time, the student would be able to see where I was in the document when I ask a particular question. I still want the freedom of being able to talk, though, so it might be Google Docs plus a cell phone for the most basic  conference. Of course, Skype offers screen sharing options that could allow for talk, video, and the ability to point to specific places in the text, but students may not be as comfortable with it (especially with video - who wants their professor to see their dorm room?!).

One of my biggest limitations is that I'm committed to avoiding asynchronous formats (meaning we're not both present at the same time) because no matter how many bells and whistles the technology I use for that might have (say doing a screencast of myself reading the essay and making comments that are linked to the text), it still prevents the student and I from having a dialogue, a dynamic interaction, regarding their thinking and writing and the work they can do to improve both. I might as well just pull out a red pen and scribble indecipherable comments on their paper essay that won't get revised if I'm not going to give them a voice in the process.

So yeah, I'm open to suggestions for finding a new and better digital space for meaningful interactions with students who may have limited access to quality technology off campus. No pressure.

Cool Tools Review #5 - Loupe Collage

I have to admit, I had a lot of fun with this tool. Loupe Collage is a super user friendly photo collage website that allows users to upload pics from their device, social media accounts, or the web to then format into cool shapes. Users can choose from a fairly large number of preprogramed shapes, including many animal, holiday, and special event-themed ones, or they can draw their own shape. Additionally, they can do as I did and choose the text option, which will place their pics into the shape of whatever letters they type in the available box.

I typed HAIR and used all pics of hairstyles I've done on my daughter. If you hover over the images, you can see larger versions of them.

The site is free to use and easy to sign into using Google or Facebook (or a couple of other options). It's possible to create something without signing in, but I had to sign in if I wanted to use more than 25 images, and I did. There is also an option for creating cards and a game called Waldo where users have to click on one particular image within a collage within a certain amount of time before moving on.

I could see this being a useful tool for a project where students are asked to document their progress  with images or where they would like to add a fun element to a presentation. I was able to pick it up almost immediately without even using the tutorials because it was so intuitive, and I would imagine most older students would be able to do the same. It could be tricky to use in class for several reasons, however. First, it doesn't offer a range of stock or creative commons images that students can choose from, so they will have to be cautious about using copyrighted material unlawfully. Second, all collages are public, so if students use their own images to avoid copyright infringement, they still need to be good digital citizens when they decide what is safe to include. And third, the game is silly but addictive, so students could be easily sidetracked by it. I don't think any of those reasons are deal breakers, of course, but it is best to know what one is likely to be up against in order to be prepared.

Now go make something cool!

How to how-to #2

I had hoped to have another video up and running by now, but filming and editing a spiral braid how-to has proven more challenging than I expected.

At first, things seemed promising. I decided to film at my parents' house so that I would have my mom to help/run interference with my younger kiddos.

This is what she resorted to in order to keep them out of my shot.

I used one of her stools with an incredibly high-tech bonding method for my selfie stick to get a higher vantage point for this braid, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

I think the bow was a nice touch.

The problem with such a high camera, however, was that I couldn't actually see the screen while I was braiding. Initially, I was just concerned that I might not be keeping her centered in the frame, but when I finished the first spiral braid, I realized the bigger issue was that I didn't notice when my phone ran out of storage space after seven minutes and stopped recording, mid-braid. *head desk*

So. I deleted all the things from my phone that I could, pulled out the braid, started from the hair already parted, and tried again. I asked my mom to stand where she could see the phone to make sure it didn't stop recording, and I braided like the wind!

The finished product!

I ended up with a ten minute video and knew I would need to edit it down. A few days later, I started trying to do so in Splice. Unfortunately, I think ten minutes is beyond the scope of what Splice can do with the memory that I have on my phone. As I was starting to get the hang of how to trim and cut my video with its controls, it suddenly froze and gave up on me. *head desk*

My plan at this point is to upload the video onto my laptop, edit it using iMovie, then transfer the shorter video back to my phone to use the audio features of Splice, which I really like. Since I won't get to do that for another day at least, though, I wanted to give an update on where things are right now.

Cool Tool Review #4 - Mind42

My favorite thing about Mind42 as a tool is that it doesn't require Adobe Flash Player, which I'm pretty sure we can all agree is delivered via a direct portal from either Hades or the fires of Mount Doom. Mind42 is a handy, free, easy to use, online mind-mapping tool. It is limited in a number of ways (it formats nodes automatically meaning the user can't move them around, images can only be added via url, there are only three sizes of text and no alternate fonts, etc.), but its simplicity makes it really easy to pick up.

Additionally, it has collaboration capabilities and to-do functions that would make it handy for managing large and/or group projects with students. Teachers could use nodes to break down an assignment into incremental steps, each with its own "to-do" for students to mark off as they complete each task. I could see that being useful both for helping students understand all that they need to do (and in what order) as well as for holding students (somewhat) accountable for what they are doing. Similarly, students working in a group could apportion tasks and keep tabs on one another with the nodes.

In a more student-driven, it could also be used as a visual for students to create a research plan that the teacher could then view and make suggestions on.

I just recapped my Spring Break to-do list. You know, a to-done list.

Basically, if I were into mind-mapping rather than free-writing and listing activities, I could dig this, but I might not use it in my composition classes because I have precious little time for teaching any software, and most of that time is devoted to showing students how to insert page numbers and page breaks into their word-processing software of choice.