Delicious December 12.9.09 - 12.15.09

The Many Users of Twitter
"Used both as a business tool and a way of keeping up with the latest tabloid gossip, Twitter has overcome all the critics who thought that a 140-character blogging service had no future."

UMWeb 2.0 | UMW webifies its world
"UMW Blogs represents a notable example of the power of collaborative effort among faculty, learning technology specialists, and institutional IT support in responding to the challenges of teaching, learning, and scholarship in the digital age."

"We have been harassed in your stores, rejected in your communities online, and treated with disrespect on your online services and your advertising. We have seen commercials and art that some of us find offensive."

Open Access Encyclopedias
"a number of academic institutions are quietly trying to do what Britannica and others say can’t be done: build online encyclopedias that are rigorous, scholarly, and free to access."

"While some look at it as a learning-style model, it is intended as a problem-solving wheel that represents phases of learning--from reading and exploration, to reflective writing, to visualization of the content learned, to attempts to try it out."

Sexualization in Video Games
"There's a reason our games are filled with snarling, emotionless (aside from their totally straight love for their buddies) bros and women being crushed under the weight of their hypersexualized characterization."

"The distribution of concerns illustrates another crisis, a cultural crisis: the tendency to focus on short-term parochial gains, a core element of our socioeconomic institutions and their ideological support system."

"When used as a tool for ubiquitous learning, text messaging and tweeting wouldn't be tools of distraction, but a means of engagement for this generation of gadget-obsessed teens."

"It’s not that load times are unacceptable; it’s that there needs to be some kind of organization behind them so that the player isn’t going to spend most of the game irritated by them."

"The paradox in every part and sentence of the post-apocalyptic narrative- - evoking even as it denies - is repeated as if fractally by The Road as a whole."

au fait

As I wait for the approval of university lawyers before uploading anonymous feedback gathered from ENG 252, 298 and 513 students to Scribd, my current focus is on the design and development of materials for ENG 111 College Rhetoric and both sections of ENG 345 Technical Writing (one is mixed mode, the other face-to-face). Despite the differences in focus for 111 and 345, students will be required to perform similar coursework. Because of this and dwindling time before next semester starts, I want course materials to be as universal as possible.

Already uploaded to Scribd are blogging guidelines and a grading contract for all courses. The latter document, though, gave me some pause. I was unsure about how/where to include expectations for blogging, just how it should factor into a "B" grade. I paused on this because, as Ethan Watrall stated on Twitter, I want blogging in particular to be a "first tier" assignment. Instead of just facilitating in-class discussion or working as a form of drafting (as it did last semester), I want blogging to be just as valued and viable as the larger/longer assignment sequences. But how to do that?

As I perused the grading contract in its current form once more, I realized that I need not change anything. Perhaps this reveals some pedagogical naivete, but all I see that I need to do now is make sure students understand what is meant by "assignment." There are different kinds of assignments, of course; some will be completed in four weeks, but others won't. Rather than a writing project to be completed in the span of four weeks before moving on to another writing project, blogging will be a semester-long endeavor, the production of a substantive record of critical thinking and engagement. Blogging doesn't need a special set of requirements in the grading contract. What's already in that document covers it plain and simple.

Delicious Every Other Day 12.8.09

The Myth of Wikipedia Democracy
'The Wikipedia elites may be partly to blame for the site's diminishing participation. In a survey conducted this year, nearly a quarter of respondents who declined to contribute to Wikipedia said they were "afraid of making a mistake and getting 'in trouble' for it," among other reasons.'

Facebook now has 350m users - and there's no point in advertising to them
"Facebook is the most glaring example of an unsolved puzzle: how to convert social networking into a sustainable business."

How our brains build social worlds
"During any kind of social interaction people unconsciously imitate each other, or else show the appropriate complementary action and reaction. When this happens, the parts of the brain that unconsciously respond to the actions of others create a form of resonance."

Philip K. Dick's Defense of Video Games
"Philip K. Dick’s fiction is a defense of the validity of video games because despite the fact that they are not real, his stories argue that there is still something valid in the artificial."

Will e-books spell the end of great writing?
"How much have our perceptions of reading and writing changed now that you can craft a novel on a laptop and scroll through it on a Nintendo games console? This Christmas could be the moment when our idea of curling up with a fat novel are transformed for ever."

Appropriate

All genre categories presume ideal readers, people who know the conventions and secret codes, people who read them in the "right way." Many of us – female fans of male action shows, adult fans of children's books, male fans of soap operas – read and enjoy things we aren't supposed to and we read them for our own reasons, not those proposed by marketers. We don't like people snatching books from our hands and telling us we aren't supposed to be reading them.

Delicious Every Other Day 12.3.09

Learning to Play: The Potential of Gaming in the Classroom
"After learning what videogames could do for a classroom full of students, I soon found myself responsible for both designing and teaching a college composition course over the next three semesters. I knew then what I had to do."

YouTube: the People's University of the Internet
"Education has been slower than other sectors to respond to the digital revolution but through YouTube it is catching up."

Facebook profiles capture true personality
"Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin."

Your Life Is Online
"People are committing all kinds of personal data to online repositories, through the likes of social networks, online commercial activities and behavioural tracking systems. These collations of data can say a lot about who we are - at the time of record - or (possibly) the image we wish to project of ourselves."

The Over-Prompting of Young Writers
"The obstacle is that one prompt doesn't fit all because kids need to make personal connections to their writing topics."

Skip the Sub and Teach with Twitter
"I thought to myself, 'How can I still be a presence in my classroom when I can't be there?' I could create movies of my own teaching, of course. But that wouldn't be interactive. And it would require my sub to run the technology of the room, and that is its own challenge. So I decided that I would try an experiment -- Twittering with each class period."

My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement
"we all know that major labels are supposed to be venal masters of hiding money from artists, but they’re also supposed to be good at it, right? This figure wasn’t insulting because it was so small, it was insulting because it was so stupid."

Delicious Every Other Day 12.1.09

The New Writing Pedagogy
"Grammar and spelling are not emphasized, because the focus is on communicating with peers in fast microposts, but Allison says he works with students to self-assess and then eventually grades the bigger discussion pieces that include quotes from many different online resources and multimedia."

Anatomy of a Search

"
When I teach research methods in the classroom, I often concentrate on doing real-time, live searches based on suggested topics from the class while narrating some of the ideas and choices I’m thinking about as I go from one resource to the next."

The Rise and Fall of Media
"
The most popular books of the holiday season have become cat toys in a price war between online and offline retailers. Newspapers still hang onto a portion of seasonal ads, but the retail chains that place them have consolidated into a much smaller cohort, and much of their spending is bifurcated between old and new media marketing. Magazines intended to help the reader primp for Christmas parties are, in many cases, half as big as they were just a few short years ago."

UC Irvine takes video games to the next level
"
Once ridiculed within university halls as merely a nerdy pastime, computer games are being promoted to a full-fledged academic program at the Irvine campus, a medium as ripe for study as the formats before it: film, radio and television."

How many virtual war crimes have you committed?
"
Perhaps games could take into account the legal ramifications of a player's actions in their epilogues. If he or she goes around torturing people and laying waste to civilian areas, the game’s ending might change from the soldier flying off into the sunset a hero to a court room scene in which a judge lists off his criminal indiscretions, lecturing how the ends don't justify the means before passing sentence."

Psychology of Cyberspace - The Online Disinhibition Effect
"As you move around the internet, most of the people you encounter can't easily tell who you are. System operators and some technologically savvy, motivated users may be able to detect your e-mail or internet address, but for the most part people only know what you tell them about yourself. If you wish, you can keep your identity hidden. As the word "anonymous" indicates, you can have no name - at least not your real name. That anonymity works wonders for the disinhibition effect."

Week 11/12 Reflections

With pecha kucha presentations complete in 252 and 298, it is time to reflect on how they all went down. For the most part, I was impressed with what students put together. As expected, there were some technical difficulties, but nothing that was too damaging to any one presentation. Many utilized images and phrases to their advantage, capturing not only the spirit of pecha kucha but also providing better explanation of their ideas. I was also better able to see how these creative and critical topics of interest mattered to students. Whether working from a script, notes or memory, the importance of their projects was often quite clear. "This means something to me," said many of the presentations, "and here's why." Of course, there were a few that showed a lack of practice, preparation and/or respect for pecha kucha, but even these showed deeper concern and interest in particular topics. I have even greater anticipation now for the drafts of their projects due Week 13.


Despite the hiccups encountered, the most recent 513 session represented a return to form. Thanks in large part to the last two student facilitations, both of which were presentation-heavy but otherwise handled well, there was again some real engagement with issues concerning online identity and the technologies utilized to foster it. Cynicism and skepticism were present in the comments of certain students, but not without foundation. The Internet can be an overwhelming, if not scary, place, and it has the potential to become even more so as it and the surrounding user-cultures/societies continue to change. This is not to imply a doom-and-gloom future, though, as I think just as much potential exists for creative, positive utilization, which is something I hope students know and understand as a result of taking this course. Perhaps their pecha kucha presentations in two weeks will reveal this...

Delicious (Almost) Every Other Day 11.24.09

Finding more in 'most': Scientific study of an everyday word
"...the exact meaning of plain language isn't always easy to find. Even simple words like 'most' and 'least' can vary greatly in definition and interpretation, and are difficult to put into precise numbers."

Local Bookstores, Social Hubs and Mutualization
"Like record stores and video rental places, physical bookstores simply can’t compete for breadth of offering and, also like the social changes around music and moving images, the internet is strengthening rather than weakening the ability of niches and sub-cultures to see themselves reflected in long-form writing."

The Videogame Debate: Bad for Behaviour, Good for Learning?
"...research suggests that appropriate use of recreational and educational video games can facilitate learning and the development of important skills. "

Half man, half machine: The cyborgs are coming
"Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed ultra slim and flexible electronic circuits on silk that dissolve once implanted inside the body leaving the electronics behind to do their thing."

The I's Don't Have it
"The Internet makes everybody a linguist, the same way it turns us all into medical diagnosticians and tracers of lost persons. Counting words has become a favorite way to track a trend, uncover a hidden meaning or cut a long text down to size."

Conference Humiliation: They're Tweeting Behind Your Back
"The microblogging service Twitter is changing a staple of academic life from a one-way presentation into a real-time conversation. Flub a talk badly enough and you now risk mobilizing a scrum of digital-spitball-slinging snark-masters."

Can Science Fight Media Disinformation?
"In the 24/7 Internet world, people make lots of claims. Science provides a guide for testing them."

Your Brain On Books
"...the human brain is a much more constrained organ than we think, and that it places strong limits on the range of possible cultural forms. Essentially, the brain did not evolve for culture, but culture evolved to be learnable by the brain."

Games 'permit' virtual war crimes
"Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts."

(Skilled) Self-Presentation
"Presenting knowledge or arguments effectively involves putting together a lot of different sub-skills on the fly."

Teaching With Twitter: Not For The Faint Of Heart
"...asking 250 students to post questions on Twitter during a class doesn't risk life or limb. But it can cause ego damage if the mob of students...gets disorderly online."

Week 10/11 Reflections

The near end-of-the-semester doldrums dissipated with the introduction of the final project in ENG 252 and ENG 298. Both courses appear to have some late life left in them as a result. Project requirements ask for students to focus on an issue of their interest within the focus of the course, writing studies and game studies respectively. Beyond posting initial proposals to their blogs for peer and instructor approval, the final project asks for pecha kucha presentations prior to a first project draft. There was some initial resistance to this aspect alone, with students expressing surprise at the strict requirements and others suggesting slight variations of the established rules. For perhaps the first time in the semester, I was immovable to any suggested changes, which some interpreted as anger or frustration. Class sessions focused on the discussion of final projects proved to be some of the most energetic and interesting of the semester, but not just because I kept saying no to possible variants of pecha kucha. The level of engagement missing from previous weeks made a triumphant return, I think, as students thought aloud and online about possibilities. Freed of blogging and reading about predetermined subjects, which I intended as preparation for final projects, many students showed great willingness to move forward in creative and critical ways.

For as glad as I am about students taking to their final projects with some degree of gusto, I'm concerned about the timing of such work. It is normal for most all college-level courses to conclude with some larger project, but the effect of this often means overwhelming students more than usual. While we might justify such work by saying that which does not kill us makes us stronger, I want to entertain the idea of having students complete final projects in future courses two weeks before the semester's end. In earlier posts, I observed how the constant grind of blogging and reading didn't sharpen students' resolve but dulled their senses. Perhaps an earlier introduction of the final project could work as a preemptive attack then. Having a calmer last two weeks, too, would also leave students more time to reflect on the course and their performance as well as to complete their final projects in other courses.

Such a change would be most welcome in 513, given reactions to my suggestion of taking a figurative, collective deep breath after the completion of midterm essays. While I think some viewed this as another step toward full dissolution, I'm hopeful that the next session will be more of a return to proper form. Right now, I think the course suffered and, to a certain degree, continues to suffer under the weight of great expectations, both mine and those of certain students, and also how some of those expectations remained unspoken for the majority of the semester. As observed in previous reflective posts, the level of prescription could, and perhaps should, have been higher from the beginning. The majority of the class still appears to be learning and getting something helpful out of the course. At this point, the lone apparent sensible thing for any of us to do is just ride out the avalanche.

Delicious Every Other Day 11.18.09

Twittering the Student Experience
"An experiment into the use of social media at the University of Leicester has shown that Twitter, an online blogging service, can act as an exceptional communication tool within academia."

Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live In The Matrix
"To recreate a brain/mind in silico, whether a cyborg body or a computer frame, is equally problematic. Large portions of the brain process and interpret signals from the body and the environment. Without a body, these functions will flail around and can result in the brain... well, losing its mind."

Educator Use Of Social Networking Lags Behind Interest
"The final results of an extensive nationwide survey on educator use of social networking were published last week, and it appears that more than six educators in ten are at least interested enough in the growing medium to register on one or more sites."

Choose Your Own Freshman Comp
"Freshmen are required to take this six-credit seminar, which is organized around a specific topic. Students spend three hours with a full-time faculty member focusing on the specific topic and then another three hours with a writing instructor -- typically a graduate English or writing student -- who uses content from the topic section to teach college composition."

How Not to Write Fiction: Style and Evidence in Qualitative Research Studies
"I had begun to read research studies, and I found that good research studies – the ones that were solidly grounded, well written, and intellectually curious – were more interesting than fiction to me."

Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay
"The law is just the latest nail in the coffin of Venezuelans' right of dissent and broader civil liberties. A pitiful attempt to blame video games and toys for the widespread lethal violence in our country, instead of a defective judicial structure, systemic corruption and governmental (purposeful?) ineptitude to deal with the problem."

The truth about videogame addiction
"Tabloid headlines gorge themselves on this kind of stuff. These tragic events are just a handful of instances among millions, perhaps billions, of gaming lives, but they're easily exploded out of all proportion by the hype-seeking missile of cheap journalism."

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell
"...considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start?"