About Techsophist

Every Picture Tells a Story

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:41:36 -0600

Clearly, I have been spending too much time paying attention to that stack of paper and not Sophie. I will continue to do so until every last final exam and portfolio is graded, sometime around December 20th.

Found on my Google Reader This Morning

Sat, 5 Dec 2009 08:51:25 -0600

I encourage all of my classes, especially the ones with a blogging requirement, to use an RSS reader. It is still the best way to organize online reading, although these days I get some of my most interesting links through the smart people I follow on Twitter. My Google Reader page now has nineteen folders full of blogs, eight of which are from courses I teach/have taught. This adds up to several hundred blogs, not all of which are active, thus the appeal of the reader. I don’t have to check blogs; it serves up the new posts automatically. For most of the people who visit Techsophist, this is pretty obvious, However, since my course materials link off this blog, some of my students visit here from time to time, even if the only reason is that they were distracted by all the recent Catpaint posts. This post is for those who haven’t tried an RSS reader or have only used it to track class members in a course. Here is a sampling of what my reader had to offer this morning.

From the New York TImes, the return of the alaia to surfing. A bit of ancient history--I spent my middle school and high school years in Palos Verdes Estates, California and my home beach was Rat beach. It was common for guys to surf before school and stow their wetsuits in their lockers. I remember two brothers who spent a lot of time making their own boards, starting with balsa wood, shaving it down to the right shape, and sealing it, I know not how. Anyway, it was a serious surf town and probably still is. What I like about this article is the DIY aspect of it and the return to an older, almost spiritual approach to the sport. I glance at the New York Times almost every day, and spotted this by chance. I then went to my RSS reader, used the search box, and was able to reread Laird Hamilton’s post to Gizmodo on four new ways to surf.

In today’s offerings from TV Squad, a power match in the making. On Sunday, Rush Limbaugh visits William Shatner’s edgy interview show, Raw Nerve. I don’t want to miss this conversation; it may be one for the books in the rhetoric world. I’m setting my DVR and hoping for YouTube to follow through and give clips I can use for Modern Rhetorical Theory next semester.

Next up, from io9, the science fiction blog, a novel-writing experiment called livewriting. Read all about it and see if you want to collaborate in this novel-writing experience. In it, you participate by answering plot questions with Twitter hash-tagged responses, or, for non-tweeters, to the io9 linked console.

This next post is a strange one, especially since just last week I mentioned my son’s longtime use of old computers to donate bandwidth to the SETI@home project. Slashdot posts about a school technology supervisor who got fired over using school computers for the project, one that seems to be created FOR education and a way to make science approachable and even interesting. The Slashdot post gives a link to the SETI project director’s response to the district administrator’s stance that “an educational institution ... cannot support the search for E.T.” Slashdot’s post about the original controversy, which now has 617 comments, is here.

Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning announces the report, Meeting of the Minds (PDF), sponsored by Global Kids, Harvard’s GoodPlay Project and Common Sense Media. Matching the experience of many who work with digital media in education, the report finds that “young people need guidance from adults in navigating ethical issues of online behavior,” an idea akin to the main point discussed Thursday night in my Comp/Rhet for HS and CC Teachers class. The primary reason why multimodal assignments are so necessary in composition classes may be that students need to learn the rhetoric behind new media just as much as the rhetorical strategies used with print media. Why? Because the communicative world they must negotiate is not flat and on paper, at least not exclusively. I need to read this and see if I want to add it to future 520/629 readings.

Blogeur Fatigue

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:08:10 -0600

There is an interesting thread on Techrhet about blogging that began with the eternal question, where have all the bloggers gone? An interesting question, and this time, after almost ten years of hearing variations on this theme, it may be time to actually ask it. Once, blogging was the main deal, the only game in town for social software. It was more interactive, more flexible than the home page or the webring. Starting one was so easy--no HTML needed. People who wanted to make it more complicated could, and heaven knows I did with my own Drupal install, but for most people, getting started was as easy as registering, picking a design theme, filling out a text box, and clicking the “post” button.

It’s not the only game in town anymore. Former bloggers who tended to only post links have moved in droves to Twitter. Ones who used to obsessively read friends’ blogs and pass along memes are doing quizzes and playing Farmville on Facebook. You’ll find me in both of those places too (Well, not Farmville), but for me, nothing replaces blogging. It’s both my cigar box full of found objects and the place where I can collect and stream out long thoughts that take time and space to develop.

On Techrhet, Nick Carbone shares an image from Mark Twain of rooms set aside for travelers to journal in, and how at first the desks are full, but one by one, all but a few hardy souls fall away. When it comes right down to it, writing for the long haul is hard. Not everyone can do it, or as Rilke points out in Letters to a Young Poet, the question should not be whether or not a person has what it takes to be a poet. The question should be, can you live and do anything else? If you can, then being a poet, being a writer, is not the life for you. Blogging is like that. For the ones who stick with it, they do it because they can’t imagine not doing it.

One More NaBloPoMo Post

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:42:02 -0600

I mistyped “post” as “pest” at first, and I hope the daily posting in November hasn’t made me a pest. Blogging thirty days in a row tests the depth of my blog-commitment; doing it in November, the make-or-break month in the fall semester, is an even greater test. I can’t say it’s been easy this time. Much of what I’m busy with job-wise can’t be blogged about. On the personal side, I can’t help thinking that what I’m willing to blog about isn’t that interesting, i.e., something on a par with talking on the phone with someone while shopping. Fun for you, but not so much for the one on the other end who’s not shopping.

Here’s an attempt at a November tally. Successful Moon City Press event at Borders--yea. New MCP site and Facebook fan page--yea. Behind on grading--boo. Discussion beginning in online week for 520/629--yea. Finished unpacking my files in my new office--yea. Not sleeping well and have that feeling of much left undone--boo. Ah well. One way or another, everything will get done by the end of finals week.

American Gothic

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:13:33 -0600

I really don’t know what to say about this except that my sense of humor has clearly passed on to the next generation. My son’s original concept was to use the painting, American Gothic, but he ended up using a wedding photo instead. The cats’ heads are their own cats and the computer a symbol for the four-plus that they have. Yes, my son’s place is where old computers get reborn and lend bandwidth to SETI research through SETI@Home.

Commentpress 3.1

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:07:53 -0600

if:book, a project of The Institute for the Future of the Book recently announced the release of Commentpress 3.1. As an example of what it can do, they present Rhet/Comp scholar Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy.

I continue to be interested in what books are now and how the definition expands to not-paper. This is a elegant interface, one that is worth a closer look, perhaps in a topics class on intellectual property and the web. Fitzgerald’s book itself fits the topic, and one of the reasons I’m blogging about this is to retain the link for later.

Just Another Friday

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:59:01 -0600

I won’t be shopping tomorrow. I’m a year and a half into my zero-sum approach to possessions and as time goes on, new habits are settling in. I don’t feel deprived. Sure, I’m still unnaturally drawn to new electronic devices--the Kindle and the Roku topping my list this year--but I’m waiting it out. I have questions about the sustainability of both, questions that will be answered by waiting. Somehow, I think the U.S. economy, in the long run at least, depends more on individual fiscal responsibility than spending money like a drunken sailor. Spending without purpose simply because retailers “need” sales is a poor way to restart the economy. I know they need sales, but I don’t need to buy. At any price. There needs to be a new balance based on actual consumer needs instead of constructed wants. Disposable consumerism needs to end.

Those who have known me for years may be surprised by this; after all, I am a professional-grade bargain hunter and will still be hitting the stores December 26. In that case though, I’m shopping with my daughter to beef up her professional wardrobe before she begins an internship in January. So-called Black Friday is different. I hate feeling like a manipulated lemming, pushed into a crowd of other ferret-like critters who are all looking for something to buy, but know not what until they see it. Worse than lemmings really, because they are driven by their natures and we actually learned this behavior. So, even if I run out of bread, I’ll wait until at least Monday to get groceries, so that the frenzy has time to die down a bit.

I may put up a wreath on my door, though. I already have that. And put up the surrealistic, swirling fiber-optic Christmas tree. Let the Christmas paper-grading season commence.

Making Online Teaching More Personal

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:02:17 -0600

The clip included with this post (click read more) is the tail end of my first ever talking head video. I made it for this week’s English 520/629, which normally meets on Thursday nights, an inconvenient day when Thanksgiving comes around. In general, the main thing I don’t like about using video lectures is that it shows me and I’m talking, which takes my photo aversion to a whole new level. I felt like I needed more than text though, and I hope in the future I do better. In the clip, I review myself and am joined for a fleeting moment by my cat, Pierre, who is so shy that it is good to get documentation that he actually exists.

Twitter in the Classroom--or not

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:02:54 -0600

I love Twitter for many reasons. It is great for keeping up with what all the smart kids are doing. At times, it works better than my RSS reader for keeping up with what’s new and who’s posted to their blog. I use Facebook for that too, but it’s a bit different and has more fluff, not that there’s anything wrong with fluff. The fluff is part of its appeal. I know that some people use both as teaching tools, but I’ve chosen not to so far. Of the two though, I see more pedagogical potential for Twitter.

That’s why I found the latest anti-tech piece in the Chronicle, this time about Twitter in the classroom, so interesting. As far as I can tell, one way to tell if a social media has finally reached legitimacy is when the Chronicle publishes a disparaging article about it. This one is not so much anti-Twitter as a cautionary tale about the dangers of students talking, i.e., rather than class being a one-way non-exchange. I think this article would be a good discussion starter for 520 this week (English Ed students)and possibly for Modern Rhetorical Theory next semester.

Revision, Multimodal-Style

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:25:18 -0600

One day later, I felt ready to make some changes with the sample multimodal poem. Not the poem text so much, although that may come later, but the other elements. I felt the one minute length rushed things; it was hard to read that fast and see the photos at the same time. One of my feedbacks sources said that she ignored the poem completely so that she could concentrate on the photos. She also suggested adding voiceover to put more emphasis on the poem itself since the photos were so strong.

With that in mind, I went back to iMovie and pushed the time to at least ten seconds per photo, with longer times for some, especially the end and the credits. Then I tried a voiceover, thinking that it would be easy to delete if I didn’t like it. As it turned out, doing the voiceover was easy. The video played during recording, making it easy to synch. If I need to, I can go in and redo parts, but i think I’m happy now.

One thing I wasn’t expecting was for people not to be able to see it. The MobileMe Gallery uses Quicktime, and at least one fairly tech-savvy person sent me a tweet saying that she couldn’t see it--just hear it. I think it is because her computer defaulted to another media player, probably Windows Media Player. She has Quicktime though, so we’ll see. Both of my kids were able to view it--Paige on her Macbook and Ted with his Dell. Ted grumbled about downloading Quicktime, but seriously. It’s free. And you get to see flying cats if you have Quicktime. Argument won.

*Update* 11/24/09
I put it up on YouTube to make it more accessible. Visit my YouTube channel and watch If Cats Could Fly-- inflate my number of views!

Sample Multimodal Poem

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:14:05 -0600

As promised, I completed my sample multimodal poem for my Honors English 203 students. My first try was with Open Office Impress, but even on autoplay, it wasn’t quite what I wanted. I then tried iMovie. I hadn’t touch iMovie since 2003, and the version I used then was easy to use, but also tended to freeze. It’s even easier to use now, and no more freezing. All I had to do was assemble, caption, pick music from iTunes and then choose how I wanted to export it. I sent it to my MobileMe Gallery, and it’s available for viewing or download. Those who click through to the full version of this post can also view it here. There is more about the assignment itself on the class site.

Multimodal Poetry Time

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:25:28 -0600

I’m having my Honors Intro to Poetry class finish out the semester with a multimodal poem again. Thanks to the expanded facilities in our newly restored building, I was able to schedule computer classroom time for them. It really helped them jumpstart their poems and also gave me a chance to show them some interesting things to do. I promised a sample poem for them by classtime on Tuesday and I also said I would use CatPaint, with the poem centered on what the world would be like if cats could fly. I wonder what music would fit this idea? Aphex Twin? When my sample poem is done, I’ll post it.