Dream

I’m happy for Claire and John, my colleagues at UP Mindanao, who will soon be leaving for The New School in New York City. Claire will be in the MA in Media Studies program, while John will be doing his MFA in Creative Writing. Both got Ford Fellowships to pursue their dreams. Good luck, guys!

Happy holidays!

Yesterday marked the last day of work for the year. Today, I’m on mandatory leave until the second day of January 2008 (not that you’d find me in the office if it weren’t mandatory). Then it’ll be back to the classroom and the office by the third. But the third of January is still a long way off in my calendar. And I’m determined to make the most out of this holiday break.

Actually, I have been on holiday and celebratory mode the past few days but have not really been able to enjoy all the Christmas parties and gift-giving since there were still last-minute year-end reports to accomplish. But that was ok as my upbeat mood pepped me up to finish the reports and urgent proposals a day or two ahead of the last work day.

My handy communication tool

No, it’s not my mobile phone or my PDA. It’s Em Griffin’s A First Look at Communication Theory (6th ed.; Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006) that I use in my Comm. Arts 101/Introduction to Communication Theories class of first-year Comm. Arts students.

The search for what textbook to use as primary source for my students was almost a lost cause. Over the six years I’ve taught the course, my students would complain of how Stephen Littlejohn’s communication theory textbook was too dense and heavy going for them, or how Julia Wood’s textbook — while an easy read — would leave them hankering for more info. Of course, I would advise them to juggle the two so I’d get better responses during class discussions.

When I took the same course way back, we didn’t even have a Littlejohn or a Wood in our University Library. So we had to read the primary texts for every communication theory we took up in class. What sticks to mind is my plodding through Bertalanffy’s book on systems theory, because I had to do a report on it. (But I’m the better for it, I think.)

Now my students have it easy. At last count, they have four textbooks at the Library to choose from — Griffin, Littlejohn, West & Turner, and Wood. I ask them to read from either of the four, but since I primarily use Griffin for my lectures most of them choose to read Griffin.

I don’t blame them because Griffin can be an easy read like Wood, but just as in-depth as Littlejohn when it comes to individual theories. Moreover, Griffin provides narratives to illustrate the theory under discussion. He also devotes one chapter to a theory — a rather nifty packaging that students seem to like.

Now only if I had the time in a semester to tackle a theory per session.

Media arts, part 2

And here is something I’d like our students to be part of someday!

Except that fees for institutional membership is way too high for our department budget. Someday, though, we’ll be able to link up with the New Media Consortium.