So I've been neglecting the Bookstore Cafe because of another, unrelated manic episode -- I started a project in mid-December with our high school. Knowing that the new version of Anna Karenina (the movie) was coming to the Little Art Theatre around New Year's, I challenged the high school students to read the novel over the holiday break. My goal was to help them through it by writing a series of blog posts and to celebrate their achievement on Russian New Year's on January 14 (well, actually on the 13th, since I wanted to do it on a Sunday).
I'm not sure it was the most well-organized experiment. I had 13 takers, including an eighth-grader, and hustled all over Dayton and Columbus looking for enough books. (It had seemed to me that I would pick them up used at the end of the semester, but even though two courses at Ohio State read the novel this past fall, the bookstores had already sent the books back to their warehouses or wherever they go...) I had to buy some new, and I even had to give out one of my teaching copies! The 8th grader didn't even get her book; her older sister intercepted it. A flaw in my delivery system, I guess.
I myself took my favorite teaching copy on holiday break with me and began to blog. It was fun to try and work through the early parts of the novel, thinking about lectures I usually give and imagining the students reading away.
My blog stats seemed to mirror when I wrote new posts, and I had between 9 and 16 readers, so I figured it was my students, their teacher, and a few relatives. To give them a little more time, and because their teacher said she'd come down with the flu, we postponed the holiday feast until Saturday the 19th ... but in the end only a few kids came to help cook the Russian feast and talk about the novel. Come to find out not only did they not all realize that they were invited to lunch, many of them didn't even know about the blog!! (The food was great, and the students were great too -- really good readers, engaged with history and the world.)
So who were my readers? I may never know. The students have asked me to leave the blog up in case they have time to get to the posts they missed, and a few of my friends plan to read the novel with their daughters this summer, so I guess I may get more readers yet. I plan to think about how I might use the site, or others like it, in future.
One of my goals was to see how one can use a blog for a reading project. And in that sense the site was a failure -- I never got a single comment, and I had a hard time sustaining a one-sided conversation about progress through the novel when I didn't know whether that progress was happening or whether anyone was with me. I asked the kids whether this was a format that works for them -- I've had similar problems sustaining discussion boards with students who are enrolled in my classes -- and they were equivocal.
Basically it seems to me that if you're reading a novel, you don't want to read a lecture in blog form too. The combination of in-person discussion and at-home reading seems still to work best.
I wonder who did read the blog?
Feel free to check it out, especially if you want access to my favorite Russian (and Georgian) recipes: ReadingAnnaKareninaChallenge.weebly.com.
I'm not sure it was the most well-organized experiment. I had 13 takers, including an eighth-grader, and hustled all over Dayton and Columbus looking for enough books. (It had seemed to me that I would pick them up used at the end of the semester, but even though two courses at Ohio State read the novel this past fall, the bookstores had already sent the books back to their warehouses or wherever they go...) I had to buy some new, and I even had to give out one of my teaching copies! The 8th grader didn't even get her book; her older sister intercepted it. A flaw in my delivery system, I guess.
I myself took my favorite teaching copy on holiday break with me and began to blog. It was fun to try and work through the early parts of the novel, thinking about lectures I usually give and imagining the students reading away.
My blog stats seemed to mirror when I wrote new posts, and I had between 9 and 16 readers, so I figured it was my students, their teacher, and a few relatives. To give them a little more time, and because their teacher said she'd come down with the flu, we postponed the holiday feast until Saturday the 19th ... but in the end only a few kids came to help cook the Russian feast and talk about the novel. Come to find out not only did they not all realize that they were invited to lunch, many of them didn't even know about the blog!! (The food was great, and the students were great too -- really good readers, engaged with history and the world.)
So who were my readers? I may never know. The students have asked me to leave the blog up in case they have time to get to the posts they missed, and a few of my friends plan to read the novel with their daughters this summer, so I guess I may get more readers yet. I plan to think about how I might use the site, or others like it, in future.
One of my goals was to see how one can use a blog for a reading project. And in that sense the site was a failure -- I never got a single comment, and I had a hard time sustaining a one-sided conversation about progress through the novel when I didn't know whether that progress was happening or whether anyone was with me. I asked the kids whether this was a format that works for them -- I've had similar problems sustaining discussion boards with students who are enrolled in my classes -- and they were equivocal.
Basically it seems to me that if you're reading a novel, you don't want to read a lecture in blog form too. The combination of in-person discussion and at-home reading seems still to work best.
I wonder who did read the blog?
Feel free to check it out, especially if you want access to my favorite Russian (and Georgian) recipes: ReadingAnnaKareninaChallenge.weebly.com.
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