If it were not bad enough to combat essays purchased from Course Hero, GradeSaver, or one of the other paper mills that purchase student essays, now one has to worry about papers generated by large language models such as ChatGPT, Scribe, Google Gemini, CoPilot or others.  Generative AI tools are being developed for specific topics or domains, and the assumption is, at least from a student’s perspective, that the product will be well written and accurate, or at least well written and accurate enough to merit a passing grade.  As an instructor who develops, teaches, and grades courses ..read more

When Rochelle Owens’s play, Chucky’s Hunch, was first performed Off-Broadway in 1981, critics lauded what they expressed as a tour-de-force performance by the actor playing Chucky, and they took the plot at face value.  The play, which is a long dramatic monologue by an aging man triggered by the news that the second of his three ex-wives has won the lottery, takes the audience into a fascinating psychological odyssey.  On the face of it, the play is simply about the embittered rantings of a failed Abstract Expressionist artist whose grandiose plans took him nowhere except into penur ..read more

 The two poems that I have chosen deal with the basic question, does our technological progress represent true human progress. Susan Smith Nash’s poem, “The Nature of Poetics,” (https://marshhawkpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Marsh-Hawk-Review-fall-2021.pdf) explores the subjects of modern work aided by technology, traditional work aided by tools, and our possible disconnection as a society as the nature of work becomes more ephemeral. Nash uses Aristotelian analysis to search for her answers. This is a much different approach than the second poem. Carlos Hiraldo, in his work, “The ..read more

It’s hard to believe it has been almost 30 years since the long poem, “Black Chalk,” was published as a chapbook by Texture Press in Norman, Oklahoma. A companion video was filmed and produced in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, to be debuted at the Fred Jones Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Oklahoma.   Video: https://youtu.be/EdTdsfaessY?si=6aUtiW3-ptsXfsiD  The text: https://rochelleowens.net/poetrybooks.php?book=black_chalk  The poem consists of three interwoven threads. The first consists of the arrival of the Spaniards in North America and the brutality and m ..read more

The short film, Oklahoma Too, written and directed by Rochelle Owens in 1987, is filled with wry humor and social commentary. In addition, it is an exploration of the capacity of language to classify, represent truth, human desire and behavior, and ultimately to contain the seeds of its own disruption of meaning(s).  In the gift store, Voila, in Oklahoma Too Video: https://youtu.be/1wVC8Oh6SPU?si=RXgZPNMcR6OyCEEH   How Much Paint Does the Painting Need  https://rochelleowens.net/poetrybooks.php?book=how_much_paint  BACKGROUND AND CONTEXTS Filmed in Norman ..read more

In the winter of 1831, the Choctaw Indians were forced out at gunpoint to walk barefoot and in thin clothing from their homelands, 11 million acres in what is now Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, to the Indian Territory in what is now southeast Oklahoma.  There are historical accounts of the privation, suffering, and extreme cruelty, but I did not realize that individuals wrote poems.   The Gilcrease Museum (located in Tulsa, Oklahoma), actually has a document written by an unnamed author about the removal. It appears on the Choctaw Nation website: https://www.cho ..read more

 Audio Recording of interview with Rochelle Owens over Patterns of Animus: http://www.zenzebra.net/audio/rochelle-2022-12-07.mp3  Rochelle Owens:  Patterns of Animus Speaking to Rochelle Owens is always a pleasure because she sheds insight on her work and philosophical underpinnings. She also explores the ideas that inform her poetry as well as her plays. Welcome to an interview with Owens, where she reads from her new long poem, “Patterns of Animus,” and chats with Susan Nash about her work and interests now and in the past. “Patterns of Animus” appears in her collecti ..read more

Moodle allows you to bring together assessment, content, collaboration all in one place. In the video below, I discuss the kinds of popular assessments and assessment strategies in this brief video. This includes multiple choice quizzes to use with your smartphones, tablets, laptops; self-grading assessments, short answers, essays, and collaborative workshops. All are available with Moodle mobile.  Check out the video  The key is following good instructional design so that you are aligning the assessments with the content and learning objectives. Moodle assessments are perfe ..read more

 Welcome to an interview with Claudia Ruiz-Graham, founder of Imaged Reality (https://www.imagedreality.com/). Imaged Reality develops immersive technologies with applications to Earth Sciences in Energy, Mining, Engineering and Academia. With their technology, customers can create digital reservoir atlases and virtual core stores in immersive and collaborative environments, integrating data across different scales. This leads to improved interpretations and a better integration between multi-disciplinary teams, resulting in better decision-making, risk reduction and increased capital ret ..read more

 Virtual learning environments take advantage of all modalities of online instruction, ranging from listening to recorded lectures to interacting in real-time in a 3D immersive environment.  Perhaps the most flexible virtual learning environment now is Moodle, particularly with Moodle 4.0's new capabilities. Please check out Moodle 4.0 E-Learning Course Development.  https://youtu.be/ft8003rMjag There are a number of ways in which virtual learning environments are the most effective path forward for training, primarily when there are health, safety, logistics, and cost issues ..read more