geeked up

No, this engineering student didn't eat all of those Snickers by himself, but he probably should have. Why? Well, if I had to sit through my lecture yesterday, I'd have been looking for just about anything legal that would keep me awake.

Is there an elegant way to move from a "dude, are you on crack" lecture about functional and technical specifications to a face-numbing "what the f**k are you talking about" discussion of prepositional phrases and helping verbs? If there is, I need to know about it.

Here's the problem: I'm teaching an advanced technical communication course in a room that is not conducive to writing instruction. So I'm struggling to find ways to get the students engaged with tech comm activities that don't require software, keyboards, cyborg interfaces, etc.

I had planned an individual writing/editing activity that I was all geeked-up about, but the photocopies sat cooling in my office while I was busily purchasing a few bags of sugary goodness before class. Knucklehead.

This year is going to be challenging, I knew it when they told me the section had 43 students. I need to keep them engaged, interested, and excited early so they don't fade out before project development begins in January.