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Use(r)ful Perusings

Portfolios are selected collections of work, and they can be especially effective post-process teaching tools for adult learners, who are trying to adapt course materials in various contexts. Kathleen Blake Yancey's mantra for building portfolios is "collect, select, and reflect." As a hueristic for portfolio pedagogy, this works very well, but being selective when it comes to Favorites or Bookmarks of useful links for students in the Classical Rhetoric course is not as easy as it seems. Peggy O'Neill (2002), for instance, talks about how the collection stage for job search materials and teacher portfolios is relatively easy (p.36). But because of the girth of material on classical rhetoric online, this is not the case. The selection process must be combined with the collection process.

Similarly, a teacher's close selection of content, as well as flexibility to add material the students bring in to course requirements, leaves a mental residue or ghosting effect on students' engagement with the material. That is, syllabus use(r)ful perusings were my selections for the course and specific student interests. They are entry points for each student into related material from which I knew each student would learn. In nearly every case, one of these perusings, or one that sophists began to share with one another through their blogs, which I reposted here, led each down a path of deep reflection and meaningful application.

Use(r)ful Perusings (from Dr. Rice) Basic concepts and principles The forest of rhetoric Rhetoric and composition eServer An outline of classical rhetoric Classical rhetoric wikipedia Canons of rhetoric Modernizing classical rhetoric Selected bibliographies Rhetoric: The art of persuasion Rhetorical terms Electrifying classical rhetoric Rhetoric from a classical perspective Useful course guide Canon overview A brief summary of classical rhetoric Rhetoric and relevance eResearch and classical rhetoric Invention in classical rhetoric The common topics Composition is not rhetoric Reinventing rhetoric in the computer age From Greek to geek

(MORE) Use(r)ful Perusings (from Sophists) Peitho's Web (Lennie) Perseus Digital Library (Lennie) Ethics and Moral Philosophy (Rich) Commonplace and MOO (Rich) Ancient Greek Rulers (Gillian) Formal Ontology (Rich) eServer Classical Rhetoric (Rich) Rhetorica Network (Cynthia) Rhetorical Resources (Cynthia) Classics Glossary (Cynthia) Stanford Enclyclopedia (Gillian) Stanford Enclopedia on Ari (Lennie) Aristotle's Poetics (Rich) Rhetorica ad Herennium terms (Alec) Technology and Politics (Alec)

Carefully selecting each link for specific reasons helped me create an assignment set that would both challenge my students and follow the three principles that Crowley and Hawhee (2004) use to frame their book. I wanted each of my students to find engaging ideas to study and to find treasures, like DVD Easter Eggs, that would support personally meaningful individual directions they might explore. The assignments needed to enable students to reference the subcultures in which they live, to provide room for disagreement, and to affect change in their own teaching, research, and service. Thinking through the links that students created helped me to think through the assignment set. Rather than ask my students to submit portfolios, which can be time-consuming for teachesr and students in a course with a heightened pace such as this one, I required a reflective component with each step in the course, often in the guise of a blog prompt.