A blog of classroom activities and discussions. A place where rhetoric rocks!!
Day Trippin'
Sunday, August 08, 2004
On my way out to Cincy to go to Jungle Jim's. My partner and I are a couple of foodies so trips like this are a real treat! I dreamed of mile long aisles of hot sauce last night. Ok, not really, but it sounded good, right?
For those of us who grew up listening to the likes of James and Teena Marie this is a sad day. Rick James has passed away. He is Rick James! He recently performed the megahit "Fire and Desire" at the BET music awards with Teena Marie, it brought memories of times past with cut off shorts and tube tops *sigh* The New York Times > AP > Arts > Music > Singer Rick James Dies at 56
Sitting here buzzing from too much coffee...again. No epiphanies yet, but I did see something in the paper that disturbed me. Not sure of what was most disturbing, the questionable ethics at work here or the thought that all of my hard work might only be worth $150 O.B.O. *sigh*
Dan Gillmor's new book, We the Media, on democratic journalism is available for download under the CC license. It looks like an interesting read and includes work on blogs :-) It might be an interesting text to consider using for class. oreilly.com -- Online Catalog:
Testing Meme Propagation in Blogspace: Add Your Blog!
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).
The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet – results and commentary will appear there in the future.
Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.
The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)
INSTRUCTIONS
To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).
REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)
* (1) I found this experiment at URL: http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/000319.html * (2) I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message": Newsreader Software * (3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.sla.purdue.edu/blackmon/blog * (4) I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03 August 2004 * (5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 11:40:00 (UTC-5) * (6) My posting location is (city, state, country): West Lafayette, IN, USA
OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
* (7) My blog is hosted by: myself (Blogger on university server) * (8) My age is: 35 * (9) My gender is: Female * (10) My occupation is: university professor, writer * (11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Bloglines * (12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Blogger and Blogbuddy * (13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 14 August 2001 (wow! 3 years!!) * (14) My web browser is: Firefox * (15) My operating system is: Mac OS X (10.3.4) & Win XP
I am contemplating buying this t-shirt. Lately I've been drawn to t-shirts that will make people look twice. Far too often we overlook the sexist, misogynistic t-shirts that teenaged boys wear or laugh and say "Boys will be boys". Well, I've taken to buying them and wearing them for the heck of it. I want to challenge socially constructed gender roles and notions of acceptable behavior. I want to get people think about what society thinks is okay for men, but not for women.
The last one I bought was a retro Beaver Cleaver looking boy's face on a t-shirt that says "Chick Magnet". Even in Chicago mothers grabbed their children close :-) I can't wait to see the response the first time I wear it in corn town. Other head turners: FBI (Female Body Investigator) & Got Vagina? (Vagina Monologues). This one doesn't strictly fit the guidelines, but it makes me giggle.
*Sigh* So my summer is over. This summer I took a writing retreat. I retreated from my teacherly duties (courses, committee work, dissertations, directed readings) and focused solely on my scholarly work. I didn't recognize until this morning how much I actually enjoyed that! Don't get me wrong, I love teaching. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you it's true, but being able to focus solely on my scholarly work for the first time sense writing the dissertation was an unparalleled experience. And today that experience ends. I have dissertation chapters piled to the ceiling in my office and directed reading students awaiting my direction (not to mention courses to concretize). Oh well, there are three weeks before classes actually start, right?
Feeling a bit under the weather today so I am doing my New York Times and coffee at home this morning. My confession for the day is this, grits make me feel better. Yep, the hot breakfast cereal that tons of people seem to hate. I'm a country girl at heart and grits always make me feel better. Not the instant or quick stuff that northerners seem to be so fond of, but the cook for at least 30 minutes kind of hearty breakfast cereal that should always be served with butter and salt and NEVER sugar. Pair them up with some cheesy scrambled eggs and it's the black folks answer to Jewish chicken soup. More later :-)
I wrote a news tip for the university media service a couple of weeks ago. In a nutshell it said, don't worry about grammar and mechanics if your kids are blogging IMing and emailing, these genres can help kids develop critical thinking skills and a love of writing. Hell, it's a lot easier to deal with things like grammar and mechanics in the classroom if critical thinking skills and a love of writing is already in place. I thought it made sense and then today a crackpot sent me an email, I really hope he wasn't trying to piss me off because it just made me laugh. Here's the text.
madam i had read ur article and i fully appricaite ur article the teen could better communicate with one another with pcs madam i also had a prob madam i write english properly andhear too but cant do it verbally , madam could u pls hellp i will be wating for ur reply. mdam pls help
Gotta love a crackpot, they make you giggle, if anyone wants to help this guy with his communicashun skills his email address is devinder54@yahoo.com. Let me know in the comments if you do.
Most of my tech skills are self taught, with the exception of some basic (and BASIC) programming skills that I learned in classes through the years. For this reason when time and interest allows I take computer mini courses on campus to see what I missed out on in the self teaching process. This afternoon I am going to do an Intermediate EndNote workshop. EndNote has been handy for me thus far. I wish I had played with it before I started writing the dissertation. There are other open source/open code applications that do the same things, but since the university has entered into a distribution agreement of some kind with ISI ResearchSoft and the EndNote/Reference Manager/ProCite software is going to be available on campus machines and (currently) available for purchase for $10 it might be a good tool for students, especially grad students.
I have to agree with Larry Lessig on this one, Barack Obama gave one of the best speech of the campaign tonight. I had heard buzz surrounding him for the last couple of days. Talk that he could very well be the presidential candidate in 2012, so I did my homework. And then I watched him on CNN this morning, and C-Span tonight. This man is phenomenal. His oratorical skills are unmatched (or have been for a long time). With all of the reading and thinking I have been doing about language and orality this week I thought I was becoming a bit jaded, but this man made me believe. He is a master rhetorician, if he can make a cynic like me melt...even for a moment he must be damn good. Now, if only tengrrl sends me the Obama 2004 lawn sign...
Read the text of the speech here, but it must be seen for the full effect.
Update: As John pointed out in his comment, Obama also has a blog and while like most of the political blogs he doesn't author the posts there is a picture of him reading the 100s of comments that get posted by blog readers here.
There's a story in the Washington Post about girls and video games. I am always surprised at how long it takes for mainstream media to pick up on some things. This piece looks at the fact that *gasp* game developers gear their games towards boys. The writer interviews a 14 year old girl gamer who loves her games but isn't really hardcore. Maybe this guy should go to QuakeCon and interview some of the kick ass grrl gamers there. That would really give him something interesting to write about. As it stands, this piece is a move in the right direction, but it does still very much feel like it's saying that girls are just beginning to play games.
It's been kinda quiet here for the last couple of days. After Friday's massive epiphany I have been spending a lot of time thinking and talking about language and its social implications. Believe it or not a reporter from the Indy Star contacted me about slang usage just today. Maybe he read my blog, maybe he didn't, but either way I think he got more than he bargained for :-) I musta rattled on about language, power, inclusion, and exclusion for an hour. *Sigh* and all he wanted was a sound byte. Poor guy.
Not sure if it was the 3 grande coffees I had at Starbucks today or just a moment of clarity (but the buzzing in my head suggests it was the coffee), but I had a break through while re-reading Smitherman today. I freewrote in my Moleskine journal for a good couple of minutes and came up with some connections that if they remain clear will totally finish a chapter revision for me. (After I expound on the ideas, of course). Please be advised of two things: 1) When I read, I try to get into the head of and the character of the author and for some reason this is easy for me to do with Smitherman in the 70's, so don't jump all over me saying that I think that all white folks are a part of a conspiracy (just most of ya'll, just kidding) and 2) the following came straight from my speed written notes and does not include my verbal comments to myself as I was hastily writing trying not to lose what was coming out of my brain faster than it was coming out of my fingers. I did not correct grammatical errors (and they are present) or spelling, it's RAW and PURE. Beware and ENJOY!!!
Here goes my ultra-caffienated spewing:
When I was an undergraduate the "voice" was necessary in "the community", but the written word was privileged in the classroom. In the same way that the beginning of gangsta rap were only acceptable/available on the underground, this rap/my rap must also be limited to the community. As time has passed this more violent, signifyin' rap is available to the mainstream and embraced by blacks and rebellious white youth (ala bell hooks) alike, of course, "The Man" still hates it, is threatened by it (like the radical social movements of the 70s that were attacked militarily because white folks had no understanding of what it was to signify or play the dozens. As time progresses "liberal" theorists are attempting to use (this) rap (both rap and all that it signifies) to assimilate students into the mainstream. Elbow and Jones-Royster both want to use the language of the folk (BD) to bridge the gap between what has traditionally been seen as preliteracy and literacy, but as Margaret Mead suggest, this does nothing except make the preliterate illiterate. Literacy is more than grammar and mechanics, it is both having the ability to understand and disseminate knowledge fully in the way that it is understood by the speaker/writer, which can never be done if one is unable to use their cultural expertise that is grounded in their cultural experience in order to FULLY convey their message. This issue/problem gets exacerbated by the likes of Geof Sirc who insists on using the music of the people and their experience (rap) as text in their classes, but refuses to look at/devalues/ignores the importance of the rap of cultural critique and as text that is _of_ the Black Experience, that is inseperable from said experience. This is another form of prejudice that seeks to erase/de-race the struggle/oppression of a people that has gone on in this country for 400 years!
Lastminute.com, an online travel agency has an advergame that gives you the opportunity to win a free vacation by getting the high score in a game called bikini bounce. This game asks you (a minature avatar) to bounce on a woman's breasts in order to catch little beach related icons. You get extra points for hitting the nipples and you lose a life for hitting cleavage, because goodness knows you wouldn't want to touch anything on a woman's chest that wasn't fatty tissue, right? (via Water Cooler Games)
Since Tore's blog doesn't seem to want me to comment. I'll post it here and of course it will make no sense unless you read his post too.
I just got Sheri Graner Ray's book through interlibrary loan yesterday. I skimmed it and it looks promising.
As for Espen Aarseth's claim, in First Person, that he looks through the bodily makeup of Lara Croft when he plays Tomb Raider...I wonder if one can actually look through these representations of race and gender in video games. In my last gamer interview I had a teenager that believed he didn't think anything about the way that African Americans were portrayed in video games....until he started to talk about and then he had LOTS to say. Perhaps this is the case with lots of folks.
The mystery creature isn't such a mystery. Joi Ito and I are on the same page. I took one look at it and said, "Duh, It's a hyena!". Now, if I'm wrong...I'll watch Ito eat his virtual words :-)
As we begin to rely more and more on portable technologies, Duke and Apple seem to be trying hard to multi-purpose these technologies. I can see why Apple would do it, because in addition to the academic stuff they can also count on some added business for iTMS, but as for Duke, I'm not quite sure of why they chose the iPod over other mp3 players or PDAs.
Wondering if Christmas will come early...I want games!
Monday, July 19, 2004
I have to admit that I was addicted to EA Games' Majestic for a while, but I was irritated by the monthly fee. Now The Adventure company has released a self contained ARG called Missing: Since January that looks promising...at least to me.
America's politicians seem to be taking lessons in how to be as inappropriate as humanly possible. Cheney tells his colleague to fuck off and now Schwarzenegger calls his "girlie men".
Got up early as usual, had breakfast, and met M for coffee at Starbucks. Made a final decision about ENGL 304 for the summer. I had considered dumping the civic action theme and going with something less work intensive as I spend the next couple of month's doing final revisions of the race and writing book, but my teacherly self kicked in and said "Screw it, go for the better course and rest later!". Now I can spend the next week putting together a course pack and building a site for the course whose main text will be national newspapers. I think that this will definitely be the way to go in an election year. Oh well, there goes any chance of downtime this semester.
From my last post you can see that I am working on an article of video games and literacy. The piece that I have proposed looks specifically at teenaged gamers that learn differently. In his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee extols the virtues of video games because they allow for multiple routes of progress and differing learning styles. My goal in this project is to ascertain whether or not this concept of multiple routes of progress and differing learning styles can be extended to critical thought about the game environment itself or if it is just limited to actual game play.
Gee's book is interesting, but I think that I've said it here before...it has a gaping hole for me because he sees problems with racialized character creation, but dismisses it with the belief that ?wider choices will, I am sure, be available as time goes on?. My question is why will wider choices to available at any point if we don't point out the issue? What is happening to the children who are playing the games in the meantime? What beliefs, prejudices, and stereotypes are they forming while waiting for "time to go on'?
There is a lot to think about and I have to say that my research and interviews so far have been absolutely fascinating!!! Gamers that don't think they have anything at all to say about the subject are actually saying volumes once they start talking.
Today I am playing video games with and interviewing a subject for a study. Listening to what other people have to say about playing games and watch how they make their way through the same games that I play (often quite differently) is always fascinating!
Not feeling much like blogging today, but came across this and was interested. I did my MA Essay on the depiction of African American women in 19th c. slave narrative and Jacobs was absolutely fascinating to me. I respect Yellin's work and I am looking forward to reading this biography.
Something strange is going on in these parts. First it started with Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. Okay, it was only in one theater but it's been here going on 2 weeks. And now the same theater is showing Supersize Me. Next thing you know they won't be showing the latest teen girl flick in 5 theaters 6 times a day!!
I'll get to the Oprah bit in a minute, but let me start by saying that the results of this NEA survey were released yesterday and were based upon the 2002 census. The survey shows an almost 20% drop in the number of 18-24 year olds that read novels, short stories, plays, or poetry. The numbers are, of course, lower when the sample is broken down by race showing that Hispanics read less than African Americans who in turn read less than Caucasians. This article goes on to suggest that there is a direct correlation between reading and community activism, I'm definitely not too sure about that, but the issue of reading is an important one.
Now back to Oprah, Oprah Winfrey has had the greatest single effect on reading since the invention of the printing press. The little golden Oprah book club sticker on the front of a book insures that it will hit the New York Times best sellers list. Or in the case of Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) the absence of that sticker and the controversy surrounding it can have the same effect. Oprah has made reading stylish again, her viewers read the books that she suggests and are actively discussing them. Oprah has made the book group popular again.
So, if this is the case why is it that reading in America is on the decline? Well, the study does say that reading is on the decline for 18-24 year olds and this is something that we in the university have known for a while. I have students tell me all of the time that they haven't read a book since they were in middle school. They make it through high school English classes on the backs (or spines) of Cliff's Notes. That is part of the method to my madness of choosing newly released popular books for my courses. New books mean no Cliff's Notes and no film version (usually). If I do choose one of the classics I make sure that the film adaptation is significantly different. This isn't to say that there aren't kids that love to read. There are. We still have adolescents walking around who are voracious readers. And hell, I'm not picky to me reading is reading. Read novels, read the newspaper, read graphic novels, read the back of a friggin' cereal box! Just read! Reading is good for you.
Reading is important because it makes you think. It stimulates the mind and the imagination. It informs. It entertains. Read with your kids (or someone else's), read in groups, read alone, read where wherever you can.
A Brief History of Home Video Games: Doomed to Repeat Itself?
Thursday, July 08, 2004
This article written by Sam Hart of Geekcomix addresses the brief history of video games and looks at gender and racial inequity in games. He attributes gender and racial inequality to consumer marketing in Japan and not necessarily to middle class, white programmers. Hart makes the claim that the racism and sexism in games stems from issues in Japanese culture and not that of Western and European culture. According to him, Japanese programmers were only giving their customers what they wanted. The article also cites a Japanese commercial that equates feminism to being free to apply makeup and wash dishes without worrying about gas leaks from the stove.
Now this is an interesting and valid take on things, but I think that it was a bit dated. This article has an original copyright date of 1996 and I would say that things were changing even back then. Now it seems that most games are made in the US and are influenced by Western values rather than Japanese ones. This is not to say that this is always the case, but I think that it is predominantly the case with some of the most popular games.
Hart's piece focuses on physical manifestations of race in video games (i.e. the fact that most human characters have white skin), but what I think is most disturbing are the cultural representations of race that we see in video games. This brings to mind race in Rockstar Games' GTA:VC because I have been playing it a lot lately. VC depicts Jews as frightened, effeminate, posers, who are afraid of their own shadows (and their ethnicity is obvious linguistically, physically, and by their surnames) and African Americans are hyper masculine, flashy, jive talking, and violent). This is not to say that the same is not true when it comes to the stereotypes of the Italian characters in the game, but interestingly enough they (the Italians) are the leaders to their minority followers.
I am anxious for the release of GTA: San Andreas where the main characters are not Italian mob but African American street gangs in California. The initial screenshots are disturbing. It smacks terribly of the blaxploitation films of the 1980's that I thought were far behind us. GTA:SA takes place in the 1990's has our main character Carl Johnson (aka CJ) orphaned by an "incident" that took his father and a brutal murder that took his mother.
How much more stereotypical can you get? How about blond haired, tattoo breasted, lip licking African American women posed seductively?
Let's see how serious Michael Moore was, his new film Fahrenheit 9/11 is available for download at archive.org (for now) . That didn't last long (link). Program Details for Fahrenheit 9/11 (via Boing Boing)
Bloglines has given its users a present for its first birthday. Backwards, right? Yes, but the sleek new interface, blog clippings, and personal blog is something to be thankful for. If you don't have a current news aggregator or even if you do and you want to take a look at something else check out bloglines. Its nice and it follows you wherever you go :-)
It's summer and that means that us academic type folks are spending all of our time working on 50 gazillion things that we don't get to work on during the regular school year. This is the time that the general public thinks that we are off vacationing in summer cottages or touring European countries using our outrageously extravagant salaries.
But back in the real world, we are working just as hard, if not harder than we ever do. Or maybe it's just us lowly tenure track folks. What I really need to get off of my plate as soon as possible:
1. Article on Summer Reading drafted 2. Interview for gaming piece 3. Book Review done 4. Finish the gaming book that's lingered in my bag for far too long 5. Find the gaming book that has gone AWOL on me. Check the stack of books that my mom relocated during her last visit. found and mom was innocent on this one.
My task is set. Now I just need to make coffee and breakfast so that I can work without passing out from low blood sugar.
In the NY Times a couple of days ago there was a piece on political video games. See, I guess this is what happens when you are disconnected for a few days. This is an interesting post that comes just as John Kerry announces that John Edwards will be his running mate. The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > In These Games, the Points Are All Political
Not sure if I blogged this before, but I'm blogging it again because I'm too lazy to check. :-P Into the Blogosphere is out and waiting for your perusal. It's the first online collection of scholarly essays about blogging and it's licensed under Creative Commons. Read it closely and often, there are some great essays in this collection.
Back from 4 days of no access with the exception of the few minutes at the Apple store on Friday. Started Jonesing a bit late nights but other than that all is well. Did a speedboat ride and watched the fireworks from the boat in the middle of the lake. Did lots of walking, shopping (mostly of the window variety), and came back through an Amish community where we did more shopping and ordered some furniture from a little shop filled with beautiful handmade furniture and devoid of electricity. Standing there watching children oblivious to the lack of electricity and enjoying their wonderful wooden toys I felt a bit selfish/silly/jealous for wanting to be re-connected during my 4 day hiatus. Time to check some email and disconnect again until tomorrow.
Blogging from the Apple Store in Chicago. Eyeing iPods and games. Trying to make it out alive!! There are iTunes and iPod demos ging on just behind me. HELP!!!!
Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) 2005: Feminism and Video Games?
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Fall in Houghton, MI?? Who can resist? Seriously! That place is absolutely beautiful. Next year's theme is "Affirming Diversity" and I am thinking of doing a piece on gender and/or sexual orientation in video games. I have some ideas in the works. Think The Longest Journey, I know the game is old, but TLJ 2 (aka Dreamfall: The Longest Journey) is coming soon (hopefully)!!!
We saw Michael Moore's movie this afternoon, but I'm not quite ready to post about it yet. As a person who studies rhetoric I am aware of the fact that the film was biased. Hell, isn't everything. Moore doesn't like George W. Bush (or his allegedly shady business dealings, or his family, or his friends) and that can account for the extended periods of time that were focused on the looks of confusion that he has become so famous for in some circles as well as the wording in some of his (Moore's) statements. I have seen some blog posts that accuse Moore of dishonesty, but I wonder if he was so much being dishonest or just putting his own rhetorical slant on things. He would say things like "X is essentially Y" which to the savvy moviegoer means that X is not exactly Y, but Moore is equating it to that for his own purposes.
At the same time that Moore is biased in his views (aren't we all) the fact remain the facts. The facts are not something that I want to argue here because whether or not I believe in the existence of ethereal weapons of mass destruction is not the real issue. I have to say that Moore did what he set out to do. He set out to upset the American public. I know that he did it in order to elicit some kind of political action from a population that has become more and more inactive, but I also wonder if he went too far.
*****SPOILERS********
Moore doesn't show us the crashing into and burning of the WTC, but rather blacks out the screen and gives us audio of the crashes, the screams, and the chaos that followed. It was heart wrenching. At the same time that he "spares" us from these horrors he does subject us to images of burned, mutilated, and murdered Middle Eastern children and women. Are these people less deserving of the respect that Moor showed to the victims of the WTC? What about the graphic injuries and deaths of American soldiers? I sit here and think about my friends and colleagues who have children serving overseas and I am OVERWHELMED with sadness. I pray to all that is good and/or holy that they NEVER decide to go and see this film while their children are still deployed or maybe even after. I start to tear up again in the way that I did in the movie theater. I am not afraid to admit that I cried like a child, not because I was so much sad, but because I was angry. Angry at whoever bombed the WTC, angry at whatever they felt was a just cause for doing it, angry at any factors that contributed to the deaths of these people, angry at any politician over the last several decades who trained, supported, supplied weapons to those who may have come back to attack us, angry at those who sat idly by and did nothing, angry at those who did too much in the name of safety, angry at those who convince, trick, persuade babies (the poor and colored ones of course) to go and die on foreign soil while their children languish in expensive schools, offices, and apartments that those dying for them can never even hope to see the inside of, angry at the current powers that be and all of the previous ones who dropped the ball, angry at Moore for making me this fucking angry all over again, and angry at myself for opening up this emotional can of worms all over again.
I guess I was ready to talk about this after all and I guess that this will really ramp up the number of hits that my blog was getting from the mysterious IP address that could be traced back to the Department of Homeland Security. Hi guys, and don't work this angry black woman doesn't pose a threat beyond that of the dangerous pen and ballot.
Now I can make all of the computers in my house talk to each other without having to deal with the Windows home networking software from hell that won't allow me to link the Win 2K machine with the rest of the machines on the network!! I just wish that they had done this earlier so that the Windoze machine users at C&W; coulda joined in the fun that us Mac users were having :-)
Yesterday I was sad. Apple didn't stream Steve Jobs' keynote at WWDC 2004, but today there's a stream. It's late, but I'll take what I can get at this point!!!
There's been a conversation on TechRhet about Open Access scholarship of late and this morning Cory Doctorow posted a link to a paper that addresses some folks' questions of how are publishers supposed to make money if they "give away" their content. I have issue with the notion that they are giving away their content. Technically, if I contribute to CCC and they go Open Access aren't they giving away my scholarship? I don't know what everyone else gets, but the stipends that I have gotten for articles have been tokens and do not in any way reflect the blood, sweat, and tears that I put into my work...and that's okay. I don't do it for the stipend. If not getting a stipend meant publishers could or would go Open Access I'd sacrifice and I'm sure many other folks would too!
Why?? Because I haven't seen it yet. I am dying to see it!!! But, I promised my partner that I would wait for her elusive day off. That means that I have to hold out until at least Wednesday. Who says sick people gotta eat? Can't she skip work and come to the movies with me??? Just kidding, I know how important her job is, I'd be pissed off if I was in the hospital and couldn't eat. So, it's an exaggeration, so what? It's Sunday and I'm blogging and being forced to go see Harry Potter. Now I just need to find a kid to take with me so I don't look too odd :-)
Time magazine votes bloglines.com one of the 50 news and information websites. Actually, it is first on the list. See? People are starting to realize the importance of blogs in the world of news and information.
5:30 a.m. Wake Up 6:30 a.m. Drop Partner Off at Work 6:45 a.m. Hit the Farmer's Market 7:15 a.m. Hit Starbucks for coffee and the New York Times 7:20 a.m. Giggle Wildly that Elsevier is being slammed in the Times for their outrageous pricing scheme and that the article actually talks about open access scholarship ONLINE. 7:25 a.m. Hoping beyond Hope that university administrators across the country are also enjoying the Times with their morning cuppa joe.
If anyone is interested: I found wonderful zucchini flowers, zucchini, summer squash, corn, tomatoes, roses, and cucumbers at the farmer's market this morning and that might be the cause of my already good mood by starbucks time.
As many of you remember we had a fire in December and a flood in June (Charlie Lowe thinks a tornado is next since the elements are clearly out to get us), but the latest was spiders. After the water we had spiders (okay, 3 spiders but that was more than enough!!) So now I am sitting in the back yard with a cup of coffee and the trusty PB while I wait for the house to air out after I set off twice the recommended number of bug bombs in the house. *shhhhhhh* Nobody tell the insurance guy because it's supposed to be a fire hazard, but damn I hate spiders!
While I was waiting the mandatory "kill all spiders" 4 hours I made a trip to EB Games and picked up some research material :-). As soon as the sickening sweet smell dissipates I plan to get down to some serious research!
I am going to be spending some time learning the DrupalEd distro of Drupal which is the brainchild of Charlie Lowe (DrupalEd, not Drupal proper). Charlie, the tech god that he is, was kind enough to spend some time with me on a recent visit to the greater Lafayette area (and more time remotely) as we toyed around with server upgrades and he did the DrupalEd install. The new test site is up and kicking and nothing has exploded yet. For me, the configuration is pretty self intuitive, but I would hear to see what a less tech savvy person would think. While I am spending some serious time playing around with it I am also thinking about how this could and would work in the classroom.
DrupalEd is a CMS, but Charlie has also down a stripped down version of DrupalBlog for those who don't want all of the other traditional CMS bells and whistles. (C.'s Blog Post)
Thoughts on ease, interface, and blogging (posted to techrhet
Monday, June 21, 2004
Something that I rattled off on Techrhet....
I agree with Nick that ease is a huge thing (even though it may be a small part of it) I think that in terms of the interface/set up/design/capabilities we have to consider the fact that bloggers can easily post from email, web interfaces, blogger applications, cell phones, etc. They can blog whenever and whatever they please and they can do it all without having to know one stitch of html.
For me, blogs offer more in terms of public discourse than static/stagnant web pages because they allow dialogue between bloggers in a community blog, via linking (which can be done more difficulty with static pages), and through the commenting function which allows conversations to go on between bloggers and anyone else who happens by. Comments are more interesting to me than guest books and email because they are public and because they are attached directly to the post.
Email doesn't allow me to see everything on one page, I have to click through a series of emails while blog posts are all in one spot. With my bloggers I see that they actually write more and rethink things and write again as they engage in discussion with other bloggers and with those who happen by. File swapping is just too closed for my taste. Things like WebCT, Blackboard, et al feel too much like knowledge being created and maintained in a vacuum. I like the idea of being able to put ideas out for all to see. I think it really gives students the chance to see rhetoric in action. They are called to task for their words, they learn from it, grow from, and (I think) become better writers because of it.
I think that touches upon ease and interface for me :-)
Jenny Edbauer over at Stupid Undergrounds has picked up on the Techrhet thread (archives) on the notion of blogs creating community. She admits right off the bat that she isn't on the techrhet listserv and that her information comes 2nd hand, but she does wisely say go slow with new technologies. That is good advice.
Now, for me blogs aren't a new technology. I have been using blogs in the classroom and talking to and with people about it for 2 years. I have blogged about it, written about it, presented on it, and lost sleep over it in some cases. I find it interesting (to say the least) that people are automatically assuming that those of us who use blogs in the classroom are rushing headlong into it. Two years ago this may have been truer in my case, but even then I thought long and hard about it and used the classroom blog not necessary as a community blog, but as an example in a graduate seminar where we theorized the possibilities and used it as a test site for expanding our notions of CMI. It was after much deliberation that I decided that (for me) blogs were ready for prime time.
NY Times reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, dismisses Bill Clinton's memoir, My Life, as being dull, long winded, and self servingly confessional. That being said, I still want to read it! This is extremely strange because I very rarely actually want to read contemporary political autobiography. I have promised myself that I will go to the local bookshop, buy a cup of coffee, and sit with the book for an hour or so before I make my final decision and plop down my hard earned 35 bucks!
Here are the pictures from C&W; that I promised! I'll also put a link to them over in the left column for now. Bradley Bleck has pictures here.
On another note...I took 4 paperbacks to Hawai'i and read 1 1/2 of them. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown was a disappointment. It was predictable and the entire story took place in a day and a half. It was predictable and the use of computer lingo was gratuitous. I imagine that it would be difficult for non-techies to understand some parts of the story. Started Philip Roth's The Human Stain on the flight home, but didn't get much of it read. I am sure it was jet lag that had me dozing off and not the book.
the conference ran late....really. Actually, I am wrapping things up and getting ready to head back to water logged central Indiana. I have notes galore from later sessions that I will blog as soon as I get home. The PB got a little heavy on that healthy hike from the Pac Beach to the conference every day so I kinda ditched it. I opted for the camera instead and I have a ton of pics from the banquet, keynotes, Diamond Head, the Rain Forest, and a surfing trip (no, I didn't surf) that I plan to post as soon as I get to a LAN that can handle that kind of weight. Right now I'm going to finish my coffee in front of the Hyatt's waterfall, read some blogs, and enjoy my last day in paradise!
I am sitting in a classroom at Kapiolani CC waiting for my first session of the conference to begin. I don't feel bad about sitting here because I was up at 6 walking next to the beach as a fine, cool mist fell looking for....you guessed it....STARBUCKS!! It was fantastic. We walked from the hotel to campus this morning. It was a mile and a half uphill but it was worth it for the view alone.
UPDATE: I am sitting in a session (B.1) listening to a presenter advocate the MINE MINE MINE theory of pedagogy and education. His general stance under the guise of criticizing Mark C. Taylor is that we should create our own knowledge and keep it all to our selves so that no one "steals" our stuff. A very insightful woman (whose name tag I can't see from my vantage point down here on the floor) just brought up the point that there needs to be a real sense of collaboration between the academy and the Open Source community and that he is speaking very much from a corporate notion of intellectual property and ownership. In discussing (yes I am passing notes during his talk) with BS (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) we have come to the conclusion that the basis for arguments like the one that we are currently hearing is very much based in fear. So my question to myself is this, Can we blame scholars who come at us from this angle if their experiences in the academy have been so terrible that they feel the need to take this stance in order to protect themselves and their bids for tenure??
Before Coming to this session I went to A.5: Infusing Technology at the Turn of the Tide. Now, this session was also on WebCT, but it was a bit more palatable. Probably because I have known 2 of the presenters for a very long time and I know that they are looking at it as a means to an end for fixing what was a bad situation. I also know that they are willing to at least listen to some discussion of how they can move forward from this point leaving WebCT behind.
They went to WebCT looking for a way of building a sense of community among the faculty members that teach writing at their institution. It seems like in its initial stages WebCT has been successful in doing that. Now they are thinking about the other things that they would like to be able to do professionally and pedagogically and how they can go about doing these things.
NOW! I could go with the MINE MINE MINE mentality and giggle like a school girl and keep ALL of my knowledge to myself or I could (and will) share the wealth and talk to them about Open Source alternatives (Yes, I am saying this as I still use Blogger, but not for long dammit!) and the wonders of building a sense of community (a community of scholars) for both their faculty members and their students by stepping outside of the confines of the gated community that is WebCT.
New Session Sitting in Session C.3: The Many Faces of Drupal: A Content Management System for Education and I have to say that so far I am pleasantly surprised. So far Charlie Lowe has unveiled both DrupalEd (a specialized CMS for us educator types) and DrupalBlog (a stripped down version of just the blogging element of Drupal). This is looking good. I think that I would really like to go ahead, bite the bullet, and give it a try! If I can get it up and running this summer then I can for sure user test it before I make a final decision of whether or not I should make the permanent switch.
Now we are looking at Jim Kamblach's use of Drupal in the classroom. No better way of converting the heathens than to show them how it works (and doesn't), right? Moving on to looking at the way that Bradley Bleck is using Drupal in the Community College. Now we are moving on to Jeff White's Drupal install. WoW!!! He's got Drupal working with Flash Communication Server MX. Will wonders never cease???? This is really a geekgrrl's PARADISE!!!!
Ok, so now I have to stop blogging so that I can get ready to give my own paper!
On my way out of the door to the Aloha State. Most of my colleagues left yesterday, but I had to finish up my Maymester course (which I enjoyed immensely, the course not the ending part). Now it's time to get to the business of conferencing.
Yep, it's quiet while I do wrap up for summer classes and prepare for C&W.; I'm looking forward to this. There are several people coming that I went to grad school with. It will be nice to catch up. Now I just have to remember that I'm not in grad school any more (read not as young as I used to be) :-)
On the technology front, there have been rumors about a new slew of patents coming from the Microsoft way to insure that open source office suites can't duplicate M$ Office functions and today M$ makes it harder to create an open source errand list by patenting the task list (patent document) This trend has Open Source advocates like me (and Charlie Lowe) worried.
Ok, well I will in about 3 days. I am going to quit for a whole week! I am going to quit reading and writing about scholarly things. I am going to listen to a lot of smart people talk to me about a lot of smart things (and read a paper that I hope may be equally smart), but for the most part I am going to relax! I am going to sip tropical drinks out of pineapples, drink real kona coffee, and read books that I have been dying to read all year but just haven't had the time. My suitcase is going to contain shorts, t-shirts, sandals, and paperback books! So far I have Digital Fortress, Life of Pi, The Human Stain, Bloody Mary, and Everything but the Burden stacked on my desk and ready to go. It sounds like a lot but I am wondering if I will have enough since the plane ride alone is about 12 hours each way :-( Oh well, if I run out of books I can always buy more or take up meditation.
This is a big step for me because I find it hard NOT to work. I always feel the need to be reading, writing, or evaluating something. Maybe it is the bane of the pre-tenured.
In all of my quitting I do still plan to blog. I may or may not blog the sessions that I go to on a daily basis. I could say I'll do it when I get back but I don't want to commit to anything of that magnitude just yet. I may still be in the quitting state of mind. Oh well, before I quit I guess I should finish my paper for the conference, Computers and Writing 2004. :-P
Interesting tidbit: 16 of the last 20 web searches that led people to this blog used key words like "Vivien Thomas" and "Something the Lord Made". Says something about either the way that search engines rank things or something about how much data mining people are really willing to do when using search engines to do web research.
Jiminy Cricket, It's Lemony Snicket; Or Close Your Eyes Children, It's Entertainment
Saturday, June 05, 2004
While I was not a huge fan of the Lemony Snicket books, I found them too dark for the age group that they were geared toward. I am interested in seeing the film. The trailer makes it sound as if there may be some hope(fulness). It also stars Jim Carey and I can't resist that.
All of that aside, this new trend toward darkness and desolation in children's literature (not YA lit) is interesting to me and I wonder what it means. This will require some serious thought on my part. At least Disney attempts to hide its darkness and desolation with a coat of whitewash and celebrity laden soundtracks! via Boing Boing: Lemony Snicket trailer online
Jeff over at this Public Address 3.0 blogged about issues of naming in the moving Something the Lord Made. He wrote:
Can we dispense with names to promote a generalizable good? I think human nature suggests otherwise. Watching Something the Lord Made last night it dawned on me that the movie ultimately revolves around the justice of naming. While the humility of Vivien Thomas is part of what makes heart surgery possible, we just do not feel that Â?historyÂ? has been written correctly until he is given his honorary doctorate, and acknowledged by name as a contributor on the project. It is easy for those in a position of privilege who have always been granted the courtesy of a proper name to claim that such names are unimportant. It is harder for those who have been denied this "justice" to see that the surrender of their name serves any greater good. I believe, particularly from a political standpoint, that the surrender of names is dangerous. Anonymous war dead do not have the same impact as an endless roll of names, spoken solemnly, in remembrance of the loss of their individual potentialities.
And the only thing I could think of was WOW this is the same issue that has arisen in my class with talking about issues of labeling in Boy Meets Boy and Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter so I posted a lengthy response on Jeff's blog and then decided to replicate it here...
The idea of naming is an interesting one. My summer class is currently working through a YA book that delas with sexual orientation and reading Judith Butler. In _Bodies That Matter_ Butler talks about the fact that "calling" one into membership of a discourse community is a privilege of a policing agency. This is an interesting idea and one that makes sense in many different ways, and I'm thinking about how that is working with Vivian Vivien being called into the realm of academia. Is it (still) that the academy is a policing agency on its own that serves as gatekepper and continues to keep waiting in line with numbered ticket in hand waiting to be called?
I watched the film the other night and the very sad part about it is that I don't necessarily see how things have improved since then. Doesn't the university (as policing agency) continue to exploit poor folks, people of color, adjuncts, etc. Aren't we all in some way still waiting to be called? My partner always makes the joke that professors (female I assume) are like nuns in waiting. We are standing around waiting to be called up for some higher purpose by some unnamed agency so that we can prove our worth to the world and to ourselves.
Just some ramblings. :-)
And now, in hindsight I am beginning to think about what it all means if as Butler, Lacan, Zizek, and a whole shitload of other folks claim that language is useless as long as it can't signify the same thing for everyone then why the hell are we all sitting around waiting to be "called"? Even if it's all open to discursive rearticulation isn't the very discourse guided by, mandated, by, directed toward the very policing agencies that do the "calling" in the first place? More Rambling!
I admitted to a student last week that I still get butterflies when I begin the semester. I think butterflies are a good thing, they imply that you care enough to be nervous. Well this morning I had butterflies again and not with a new class. Two and a half weeks into Maymester I got butterflies. We were preparing to discuss David Levithan's young adult novel, Boy Meets Boy and I was nervous. Whenever sexual orientation gets discussed in the classroom (or any controversial topic) there is the potential for some ugly business. Class came, there was disagreement, there was passion, there was respect. Still I was worried. I was hoping like crazy that everyone felt respected. I went and played racquetball to relieve some tension.
I came home and fired up the class blog to read what had been posted before class and there were already a boatload of posts from the hour after class. People were saying that they were glad we had the discussion. They were respectful of the fact that sometimes we have to agree to disagree. I was happy, I was proud. All felt right, for now :-)
So there's another use for blogs to add to my reasoning earlier in the week.
John Lovas brought this up on the blog SIG listserv and it made me think long and hard about how responsible we are when we students get busted for speaking their minds. Anyone who knows me, knows that there is no buffer between my brain and my mouth and I pretty much say what I feel. I usually encourage students to do the same thing.
While my professional and personal life is my own responsibility am I wrong to encourage students to do what they feel is right despite the consequences? Are we supposed to teach students to do what is "just right" rather than "just and right" for the sake of safety?
People always ask the question of why I use blogs in the classroom. So here's a quick and dirty answer (much like the 2 minute description of the dissertation that you construct in graduate school).
There are many reasons for blogs in the classroom. The one that stands out for me most as I use a blog in my summer gender and literature class is that students get the opportunity to write about the texts that we read and to see and respond to what others in the class are writing. They seem to find affirmation that they are puzzled by, frustrated with, amused by, or totally hating the same things about the texts.
The thing that has been most fun for me thus far is the immediacy of the responses. At 5 p.m. on day one Sandy Student says she hates the text because the characters are so disconnected and then at 8 a.m. the next day Sandy says something clicked for her and it now makes sense for her and she realizes why the author has developed the characters in the way that she did. I get to watch the interpretation and analysis process for the student. Another interesting thing so far has been that as students get to think "out loud" and hear responses to their thoughts it becomes another part of the writing process. It's more akin to the peer review process at the invention stage. The response papers that I receive from classes that use the blog seem to reflect this additional preparation.
There's an active blog going on for my ENGL 360K course now.
Tore over at vesterblog.dk blogged about the re-release of Intel's IT manager game. About a month ago Intel pulled the game from it's website after folks began to notice that you could not play as or hire WOMEN as a part of its game. Well, now the game is back and WOMEN are present. Hats off to Intel for fixing a SERIOUS boo-boo on their part.
I've asked it before and I'll ask it again. Will the popularity of blogs in the classroom die out as it becomes more mainstream?
First it was internet addiction, now it's blog addiction? We've had Everquest widows, will we now have Blog(ger) widows? What's wrong with blogging while on vacation? Isn't it the same as calling friends or taking (textual) snapshots??
Because I seem to be back to waking up at 4 a.m.! When I first saw the commercials for the television show, The Swan, I was appalled. Women who are voted the most "needy" are chosen by the show to receive massive amounts of plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures and then made to compete against each other for the title of ultimate swan. These women are not even allowed to see themselves until the "transformation" is complete.
I don't know, there is something deeply disturbing about allowing media to dictate what beautiful is and it gets even worse when not only is the media deciding, but also taking total control over making "ugly" ducklings into "beautiful" swans. Is this what we as a society have allowed to happen to girls? This is definitely an action worthy item in my book. About Face. org lists the names of the doctors, "coaches", and cosmetic companies that participate in this fiasco and gives you the opportunity to speak out.
Didn't Blog Friday because it was too damned hot. There was work that I had to do from the office because I need certain office equipment. There was (supposedly) a lightening strike at the university power plant so we had no air, weirdness with the water, and NO WIRELESS!!! This ruined my mood and made me refuse to blog!! Heat makes me cranky. Today I was feeling better so I got up really early and went to the Farmer's Market (avoiding the newspaper reporter who always mis-quotes me) and bought tons of basil, asparagus, and hostas (which were later supplemented with day lilies from the nursery). I spent the day filling in holes in the landscaping and preparing to rebuild a retaining wall and re-stain a bench. The rain drove me indoors for a while, but I may work a bit more tonight or just put it off until tomorrow morning when it is once again cool and dry.
I thought that this was interesting considering Johndan's recent question about whether or not he should shed the cell phone as part of his exercise in disconnection.
Eric Paulos, a research scientist at Intel’s Research Laboratory in Berkeley, California, launched the Urban Atmospheres and Urban Probes projects not just to explore social uses of emerging technologies, but also to test new ways of pursuing socio-technological research. Call me a skeptic, but I can't help wondering if the research is simply being done to improve marketing. The Feature article sounds more optimistic than I am. Who knows what good lurks in the hearts of Intel?
Johndan Johnson-Eilola has asked me to be one of several guest bloggers on his blog, datacloud, while he is doing a one month experiment in disconnection. One month! No access, no email, no web, no blog, no online gaming. I don't wanna, I can't, I won't, and I'll scream bloody murder if you try to make me.
In the spirit of the blogosphere I am more than happy to participate in Johndan's experiment in his absence.
After a weekend in sports nut heaven I am back in the saddle. My Gender and Literature course begins today and I am excited. We are going to be looking at gender and consumption (no, not the phlegm hacking consumption). I could tell you more but that would spoil the fun, so you'll just have to read the class blog regularly to see where our discussions are leading us! Gotta run and do last minute prep!
I am going on a weekend hiatus because I got NBA PLAYOFF TICKETS as a birthday present!!! Going to Indy to see the Pacers whoop up on the Heat!! See you all on Monday!!
With the help of Rich Rice, who let us truly ride on his coat tails, Janet Alsup and I are doing a Reading Marathon here at Purdue to raise money for our local community literacy organization the Lafayette Adult Resource Academy (LARA). The event is going to take place September 10-11, 2004 and run for 24 consecutive hours. There's a web site with more information, including information about signing up to read, and a blog for marathon updates for those who might be interested in how things are going.
From Reuters.com: "The 'Chicken Little' games will be out along-side the movies in summer 2005, Disney said. Later in 2005, the company said, it will publish games based on 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' the first in the series of C.S. Lewis books on the mythical world of Narnia that Disney is turning into movies. Both series will be published under Buena Vista Games' Disney Interactive label."
With all of this talk of ludology and the importance of video games, has someone figured out alternative uses for video games (w/ entertainment being the "original" use)? Is Disney still just trying to make a buck and market its new film or will the game fall in line with the purpose of C.S. Lewis's books? Something to make you go, hmmmmmmmm...
From Joi Ito's Web: Developer of Japanese P2P system arrested: "Today, an associate professor at the most prestigious university in Japan, Tokyo University was arrested today for developing a tool that enables piracy. The program is a P2P system cally Winny. Previously two of the users had been arrested. "
I would very much like to hear more about this as it unravels. Was this man coding specifically for the purposes of piracy or was it an incidental by-product of software that was created for another use? Will it matter? If Japan's Internet policing policies are as sketchy as Ito says, probably not.
In response to Mark's comment from yesterday I am going to do a hit and run post and promise to come back and do a more detailed discussion on my interest in ludology in the very near future. The interesting thing is that I do not take sides in the ludology vs. narratology debate. As a person who is first and foremost an English Studies/Rhetoric scholar I can see how both terms can work with video games both separately and simultaneously (yes, call me a fence straddler). For me narratology comes into play with thoughts of game choices, story line, character creation, etc. (narrative choices that affect the overall experience of the game), but/and/while ludology comes into play with thoughts of game choices, story line, character creation, etc. (rhetorical choices that affect the overall experience of the game). Six of one, half dozen of the other.
As a person who came to technology as a child through gaming, initially IF (Interactive Fiction). I have always believed that games have a lot to teach us and are a rich area for critique. I am interested in how games (specifically the narrative/rhetorical choices one makes within a game and the need for puzzle solving within adventure games and RPGs) capitalize upon and/or build certain cognitive skills, as well as the rhetorical aspects of character creation on both the part of the gamer who creates her own character as well as the game developer who makes only certain choices available or creates stock characters.
I'll come back to this later as I start to work/talk through a piece that I am thinking of proposing for a ludology/narratology collection, I promise, but I welcome more discussion on the topic now as it will force me to think through it early and often!
Today ended the semester and I took a great part of the day redesigning my blog template. Not sure how I like it yet so I saved the old one. For some reason I still can't get Blogger's permalinks to work, but the archives are still accessible from the left frame. I thought a bit of revamping was in order because the 2nd column of the old 2 column design was just getting too cluttered. I was used to the old one, so it may take me a while to get used to the new one.
