Saturday, June 26, 2010

Checking out

Well, I don't have a camera, hence no Flickr account, so I think it's a sign that it's time to check out. This has been an interesting experience, and thanks to Lisa and all for the opportunity. I guess I'll be buying my own coffee for the foreseeable future; fortunately Brewed Awakenings is very affordable. Have a nice summer, everybody!

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A comment on comments

I use comments in my Moodle assignments to keep students accountable for what they write in their posts. Also, the conversations that result can sometimes lead to new discoveries, depending on the motivations of the students. The main thing, though, is the insight I gained from Bob Marrs (I think) years ago: students don't mind appearing dumb in front of a professor (learned role playing), but they don't want to look dumb in front of their fellow students. The potential that someone will read what they post helps keep quality up.

I think the same thing can apply to blogs such as this one. Comments can help us clarify what we're trying to say, and keep the more curmudgeonly among us from ranting because we have to think about how what we write will be read by different people... most of whom work with us.

Having said that, I haven't had the nerve to read the one comment this blog has generated so far.

A different, less healthy, dynamic seems to obtain for the politics and sports sites I often visit. The comments are made pseudonymously--sorry, Blogger, but that is a word, and it's spelled correctly--and are frequently vulgar and insulting. Today, someone calling themselves "CubsWillWinWS" offers this bit of wisdom on the Cubs' site:

This is like BP doesn't do something about oil spillage and cleanup. Why don't we borrow "Chicago boy" Obama for few minutes and let him talk horse sh it cra p about how horrible the team is?

For a story on the Chicago Tribune site on the White Sox season to date, two of the three "comments" were actually commercials.

Who cares!!! My boyfriend thinks the same with me. He- is eight years older than me, lol. We met online at an age gap dating site[ S E E K C O U G A R (C 0 /M)_]---a nice and free place for Younger- Women and Older Men, or Older Women and Younger Men, to interact with each other. Maybe you wanna check out or- tell your friends

Sometimes I think the story of the Internet is people forming some sort of e-community on the tech frontier (remember e-mail at first?) until commerce catches up with them and they have to move on to some new e-space.

Friday, June 11, 2010

On brown eggs and wikis

When I was in graduate school, my church group did some volunteering at a home for troubled kids. One week we colored Easter eggs with them. There were a bunch of kids and a bunch of eggs, so there was no individual ownership. While some kids in my group did some interesting things with eggs that were temporarily theirs, there was one boy who kept grabbing eggs and putting them in all the different dyes. So all our eggs ended up brown.

I have not used wikis in my classes, which tend to stress individual written and group oral work. Moodle has the advantage of having conversations between individuals, with people clearly responsible for their personal contributions. Maybe I will use wikis in the future. I didn't think I would ever use Blackboard (predecessor to Moodle), but along came a pedagogical problem and Blackboard was the answer. So maybe that will happen with wikis, too.

Note: Despite all the editors, Sara's class blog still has a sentence that reads "England controlled England," or something like that. I tried to edit it with my newfound wiki skills but it wouldn't let me.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Google Docs!

The video on Google Docs reminded me of a lot of Christian evangelism I've received: they spend a lot more time explaining the problem they have the solution to than they do explaining the solution. (If it was a real problem, wouldn't you already know you had it?) I guess most marketing uses the same approach, i.e. create the psychological need for which your product has the solution. My response is similar, too: if Google Docs works for you, great! I've used Google Docs with one collaborator, and Dropbox with another, and I'm not sure that the learning curve doesn't negate whatever advantage they have over e-mail attachments.

If you don't use Google Docs, you will fry in hell.

Web 2.0: a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there

My self-image is something of a Luddite, but I seem to be finding my way all over the new media. I've been on Facebook since 2007, my office music comes from radio stations in Ohio and Scotland, I keep in touch with friends regularly using e-mail, I use Internet sites frequently in my classes when the equipment's not balky, I encourage my students to send me rough drafts by e-mail, I have a Dropbox account to share files with my co-author, I use e-books to save me hunting resources down from other libraries. So I guess I take regular advantage of what new media have to offer.

I've lived long enough to see the world change, yet long enough to be skeptical when I hear predictions that Things Are Fundamentally Changing. Fifteen years ago, business commentators regularly proclaimed that the business model of the past had been changed by the Internet. Since then we've had two recessions, brought on by greedy people who thought they had all the answers. Certain things are eternal--virtue, the ingredients of a good argument, and maybe the old-fashioned business model.

Having viewed the two videos Lisa posted, and all the factoids they breathlessly presented, I'm thinking technology offers a lot of possibilities but there's a lot of hype as well. I hope we can take advantage of the opportunities while keeping our feet firmly on the ground. At the end of the day, having surfed, pointed, clicked, and hyper-linked, can we still get off the merry-go-round? Are we able to enjoy the deeper interactions brought by contact with human beings in real time, by walks in nature, by reading actual books, by writing letters and journals? Can we still concentrate?

I'm 51 years old. Thirty years ago, I was 21, and the world couldn't move fast enough to suit me. Thirty years from now, I'll be 81, and will probably feel more strongly what I already am starting to feel now: that people are moving too damn quickly for their own good, but for all their frantic oscillations not getting themselves any happier, smarter, or more humane. Web 2.0 is fun, not to mention full of potential, but I could live without it far more easily than I could live without conversations, hikes, and deep thoughts.

Why 13 things?

It's possible this exercise will make me a a better, more interesting, more empathetic person. It's even possible it will make me 6'2" and unbelievably popular. If so, those will be fringe benefits. I'm doing it for the gift card.

I love Brewed Awakenings.

I love everything about Brewed Awakenings. I like that it's across the street from Coe, I like the smell of the coffee they brew, I like the friendly folks behind the counter, I like how goofy they get when they've been standing too long without a break. I like it that they do music there, I wish they did more, and I like it that they're not so cultured and hip that they don't let me play once in awhile. I meet my wife for lunch there, I meet Political Science Club there, I go there to read the paper on a Friday morning and see three colleagues and six friends I didn't expect to see. I love the unexpected wonderfulness of Brewed Awakenings, as well as the dependable wonderfulness of it.


So I'm doing this for the card. The good news is I really want that card, and I am one motivated blogger.

Bruce N.