traveling

Today I am going to get started on my passport application materials. I've been increasingly hassled by friends about my passport less state. In my defense, I have never really needed one. No study abroad, no relatives in France/Thailand/Mexico, etc... (although I have been and lived throughout southern LA) = a passport not being a necessity. However my recent marriage has resulted in my husband and I talking about all the fun trips we want to take in the future, hence me now needing a passport.

In my browsing online today, I was nudged again when looking at this most fabulous academic travel opportunity. Now, I do have quite a lot of time before I could even think of applying to this academic month in Rome (one of the requirements for writers is a sample of a published book), but it's fun to anticipate, even so far in advance.

More realistically the passport will be used for a quick vacation. Panama anyone?

I was looking over the last few months worth of blog posts, and the paucity struck me as rendering my blog somewhat ineffectual, which is kind of silly since I didn't have a direct effect in mind when creating Mind Splotch. However, one's presence on the web is measured in posts/responses/im's, so I will attempt to briefly explain my seemingly sporadic postings.

1. I was married to a wonderful man just over one week ago. Even with a very small wedding, there's a lot of planning that goes into such an event. I'm mainly glad I ordered enough food.

2. A few weeks before said wedding, I quit my job. Now, I hate typing this, because I feel very slackerish in my unemployed state (although planning a wedding did preclude normal job searching). The main reason I write this is because I should not have waited so long to end what had turned into a horrible interpersonal situation between my boss and I. I love what I do for a living (teaching in and for various formats, styles), but in the end I was dreading going into work not because of my students but because of the other nasty politics flying around.
A weight was verily lifted off of my shoulders once I had made the decision to leave. So don't be like me! If you are in a job that is suffocating your soul and destroying the love you once had for your work, the inspiration for all that you do, then leave.

Life is now good. I have a new husband and a much better mindset for a summer job search.

As of this afternoon,

Nathan and I are going to be married!

tech in the classroom

The article on this page describes what happens when students run amok in an experimental online classroom/chat room. The theory is that by involving technologies that are viewed in conjunction with "leisure" activities, effective learning is castrated. The authors of this study do have some pertinent points, but it does seem as though some gray area has been blacked out rather heavily.

Essentially, after the students logged on, the male students in the classroom started cracking homophobic jokes, jokes that the females largely ignored. According to the authors,

The early interventions by two male students set the framework and modality for the majority of their fellow online contributors. The usual power dynamics of a seminar setting, facilitated by the lecturer, were immediately transgressed and became impossible to re-establish.

How did it become impossible to re-establish boundaries? Another thing that is troubling about the article is that the reader is not given a sense of what boundaries were set into place before the students entered the online classroom. Did the teachers, perhaps with the notion that students obsessed with Facebook would immediately grasp the idea of an online classroom, give minimal instruction and expect the students to just "get it"?

Another section of the paper that is troubling reads as follows

The greatest gift that a
life of the mind provides is awareness that we are
responsible for our own failures, inadequacies and laziness. The greatest gift that chat rooms, blogs and Facebook provide is the construction of endless cycles of displacement where others – writers, teachers, politicians, boyfriends, girlfriends, (ex)best friends and mothers – can block the knowledge that we are accountable for the decisions we make in our lives. Homophobia is not a legitimate strategy or method for creating an empowered identity.

Where does the jump happen that allows the implicit comparison of homophobia with using online technologies? Instead of using the experience and searching out other possibilities with students using technology, the authors seem to have given up, tarring online discussion with the brush of homophobia and laziness forever. It did seem as though a chat room was too closely related to "leisure-based platforms" to be useful for ongoing class discussion, but it would be interesting to see the class layout reworked to see if a chat room can be a viable tool. What if the students didn't know each other and were given completely anonymous, gender neutral pseudonyms? Would that remove some of the gender based insults, or would that merely leave everyone open for flaming? What if the students were actually in seperate locations instead of packed together in a classroom where they could still talk to one another face to face?

What feels most important that the authors have failed to realize, or at least account for in their article, is that the online world has the same people that the real world does. The students that speak up in class are still going to speak up online. Unfortunately, if one is a slacker/homophobe in one's day to day interactions, those nasty traits do not disappear just because of a computer screen. The only difference is the words are in pixels instead of in sound waves. Such students need to learn to moderate their communication style in order to more fully deal with the learning issues at hand. And this needs to happen with some sort of online technology given how prolifically everyone uses it. Perhaps blogging instead of chatting, giving the students more time to process their thoughts while removing the ability to react as informally as in regular conversation?

blogging in academia

I wonder how much the buzz in this article will affect academia's view of blogging. "blogging and blugging" can work for graduate students who want a forum for their ideas without having to go through a major publisher; news feeds list prominent blogs in addition to the regular opinion writers, and many of those have switched their methodology to blogging. Yet this really great tool still seems to be on the outskirts when it comes to teaching.
The Ed Techie says:

At this stage, it is more about the social networking than establishing a profile around ideas. The relative importance of a blog may depend on who you are and where you are in your career.

He's saying that the people moving 'beyond' blogging are the ones already established within their field of expertise, perhaps why they feel more comfortable moving to a more plastic flow of information on Twitter or FriendFeed.

I agree with his view that blogs are not just archives . Technology hasn't moved quite that fast. The relative slowness of blog comments and feedback (compared to instant messaging or other networking sites) are part of what make blogs a really great space to think out ideas and interact with other minds. Face to face and real time mediated conversations are great, but there is a definite difference in dialogue when there isn't the immediate pressure to sound 'smart' in your response, when you can read the posted ideas and go away and process your thoughts and eventual response.

I know that when I was an undergraduate I enjoyed listservs and class forums, but there was a problem with members of the class not participating. Blogs however, are definitely more open to being injected with one's personality. There's room to add pictures, font choices, which blogging service you use, etc... With the removal of the university as supplier, one of the layers between the student and posting goes away. It feels like less of a chore set up by the institution (with the university's logo ever present) and more like an demonstration of one's personal intellect. This is not to say that new tools like Twitter wouldn't help with such an exercise, but there is too much unexplored potential in blogging at the undergraduate level to move forward quite yet.

truth

If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Across the Universe

Last year, when the trailer for Across the Universe came out, I was ecstatic. Acid tripping through Julie Taymor's reinvisioned 60s with a wicked Beatles soundtrack. And dancing!

Through one scheduling mess after another, I didn't actually get to watch the movie until last week. I am glad I did not pay full price.

Although I think this review sums it up nicely, there are a few other random bits that I wonder if anyone else noticed. I seriously think this movie was funded by various advertisers hoping their 'subliminal messages' would bring in more cash.

Seriously, does this scene not remind anyone of a Microsoft infomercial?
How about this one? Coca-cola anybody?
I'm torn on this one - I thought Gap when I first saw it, but after subsequent youtube views I'm thinking an Eternity commercial, or some other brand that relies on skinny, pretty, reclining people for its image. The main difference is that there are actually nonwhite people in this clip, as opposed to the commercials.

I know I Am Sam gets ripped on for the Pavlovian usage of the Beatles, but I'm still not entirely sure how that's different or worse than using amazing pieces of rock art as mere backdrops for random bits of visual imagery.

my favorite Irish curse

With St. Patrick's Day fast approaching...

"May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of damnation that the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope"

No offense meant to any reader, just some food for thought and some inspiration perhaps for creative naysaying instead of relying on four letter words.

This is probably one of the best posts on why Wikipedia and academia don't mix.
It does seem that Wiki goes beyond a typical encyclopedia in detail, especially on certain entries that have twenty different subheadings, yet I can definitely see the need to put limitations on how and where students should use Wiki tidbits.

I was finally accepted to the University of WA English graduate program. Now I just wait and see if I was also accepted as a Teaching Assistant.

*huge grin*

The author of this post seems to be the type of person now voting for Obama. It's interesting seeing how much he correctly projected in terms of the general debacle still currently playing out.

technology

Thanks to my internet being down for a couple of weeks, I was forced to become reaquainted with that seething mass of yellow paper and black ink otherwise known as the phone book. It's a funny instrument, highly useful when Google is off limits, and perhaps even when I do have internet access. The miracle of search engines is not to be belittled, but one does have to have a general idea of what one is looking for. Wheras with the phone book, one might be browsing through looking for, say, a dance clothing shop, whereupon that said person realizes those shops are sandwiched in between 12 dairy suppliers and 4 dart board makers. You can't really find that variety with just one search on Google. I suppose you could look up the Yellow pages online, but that would just be silly.