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Welcome to my website. I am a college English (Humanities) professor and a mystery and childrens fiction writer.

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No more Assistant Professor! I am now Associate Professor of English and Director of Technical and Professional Communication at New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York. I have received tenure as well and this marks a major milestone in my career. I don't feel like much will change but there is a sense of exhale.

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Over the last year, I have worked hard trying to modify classes for online learning. I will spend the summer going over course design and finding ways to make online classes and asynchronous elements more engaging. A lot of it is trial and error but I've found involving students from the beginning effective. Polling them and seeing how a specific class is handling this new modality works wonders.

 

Since I started full-time at NYIT, I have published twelve articles, including several on developing video games for learning in the composition classroom. My project Perchance seeks to re-imagine ancillary literature learning tools like Cliff Notes to become a more usable (and more used) form of learning. Check out the development of Perchance: A 3D Hamlet Mystery here.

 

My teaching interests lie in first-year composition, in introducing students to college writing and finding creative ways to make such courses engaging, and technical writing, as I have discovered these courses attract students of all backgrounds. I didn't like boring classes when I went to school, so I attempt to prevent my students from suffering the same in my classroom.  Technology and its impact on our scoiety as well as the teaching of writing intrigues me, and I spend much of my research time devoted to exploring its uses. I have found, for instance, a direct correlation between the use of technological aids in the classroom and improved student writing, particularly for international students and second-language learners. I have written a paper on using virtual reality (VR) to help students experience and better understand sense of place in writing. It will be published in Computers and Composition later this year. You can see some of my other papers over at Academia.edu They range from using smartphones as writing devices to video games as literature and strategies to make writing more accessible to all students.

 

I find teaching writing helps students across their college careers and life. Formulating an argument or just finding a way to say what we want/think effectively improves all areas of our lives. A quick look around social media can easily illustrate how more of us could use some help here. Students know how to engage, and most merely need a better focus on how to do that more effectively.That's what I bring to the classroom: writing instruction with real-world implications that students can relate to. They work on the skills they will need in their careers while in my classroom. The days of using pen and paper are almost behind us, so I shift the emphasis to the media we all interface with daily. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of digital and social media are incorporated into my classes, and students respond positively to their use in writing instruction. Maybe I am helping improve the Twitter-verse one class at a time. That would be a good start.

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I write murder mysteries and childrens fantasy books and always look to incorporate my experiences writing in these and other genres into my pedagogy. I believe an intersection lies between creative writing and composition, and try to use this tool to make my classes more interactive. There still should be a strong distinction between the two, but I've found some overlapping really helps students put words on the page. With the addition of using mobile technology to have students writing anywhere and everywhere, I've seen a tremendous increase in student productivity. One habit I have is to show students my early drafts, so they can see that writing, even a big project like a novel, does not involve some magical process or comes from only natural talent. I let them see my imperfections so they can realize theirs differ little. They grasp the writing process a little better after I do this.

 

If you've come looking for my book series, you can head to this page, or click the book tab above that can give you a small sample of my writing.

 

Please feel free to have a look around. I'll be adding new things from time to time, and hope you enjoy your stay. You can always contact me at jmisak@nyit.edu

 

John Misak

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