T-Day/Multimodal Literacies

I’m getting ready to get out the door for the holidaze, but before I go, I have to make a link to the NCTE Multi-Modal Literacies site, something I stumbled across via John Walter’s blog. This is a potentially interesting site to me for at least two reasons. First, it’s right up the alley of something I ought to mention in a version of English 516, and one of my (oh too many) goals for the Thanksgiving “break” will be to start getting a version of that class ready for online consumption.

Second, it speaks to the sort of weird way that NCTE speaks about these things. “Multi-Modal” strikes me as an odd phrase, as does the language that is NCATE/NCTE-related, the phrase “non-print texts.” This is the term used again and again in one of the documents about accrediting secondary teachers in English, a document my department has been paying a lot of attention to lately because we have several hundred majors in this area. I understand what NCATE and NCTE are trying to achieve with these phrases, but both muli-modal and non-print strike me as, well, odd phrases.

But maybe that’s just me.

Where’s Steve been, you ask?

Well, it’s been busy around here, to be honest. Work has been super-duper busy for all kinds of different reasons, including a somewhat odd visit to my office by the president of the university. Plus there is that pesky teaching thing, plus I did quite a bit of work on what I suspect will be a long-shot sabbatical request, plus various meetings/getting ready for Winter 2007 teaching, etc., etc., etc.

And quite frankly, I haven’t had much time to do much of anything else. A little yard work. We’re having an “Indian Food Fest” tonight, an annual dinner party we have (it’s going to be a dozen this year). Next week, we go to Iowa for Thanksgiving.

So just the typical busy stuff.

Sorry I don’t have much else to offer; in the meantime, why not enjoy this video of naked mannequins on skateboards I found via boing-boing?

"Video Game Programs Look for New Ways to Use Games"

I heard this story, “Video Game Programs Look for New Ways to Use Games,” on NPR yesterday afternoon, a piece I will probably include in a unit for 516, a new one I need to develop on gaming, technology, and writing. Quite frankly, computer/video games are not my cup of tea (with the possible exception of a once or twice a year dip into games like “The Sims” or Civilization or something like that), but there’s a lot of interesting things out there right now about games and literacy, obviously.

The funny thing I remember about this NPR radio story: the reporter is talking to a student who is in the new major/program at U of Southern California (I think) on video game development about this game the student is developing. It’s impossible to figure out what one “does” in this game, but the student keep referencing philosophers like Foucault and he describes himself as “obviously a poststructualist.” The reporter asks “um, do you imagine this being a popular game?” “Absolutely not,” the student responded.

The role of technology in Law education

This is a little bit off the “beaten path” for this blog, but I thought it was an interesting piece: from “HLS News: An op-ed by Clinical Professor John Palfrey: What is technology’s role?” For the most part, you can substitute the words “law” or “law schools” with “composition and rhetoric” or “literature” or whatever and pretty much get sensible questions and concerns about technology and teaching.

Another good link, another thing to think about for English 516…

Jeff had a good point/link on his blog yesterday about YouTube. I’m not completely sure I agree with him entirely (mostly though), but I haven’t read the IHE article about YouTube he mentions yet.

Oddly, the think that most immediately comes to my mind is not YouTube, the article in Inside Higher Ed, or Jeff’s take on it. Rather, the first thing I thought was “jeez, that’s something else I need to figure out for English 516!”

I’m teaching that course online in the winter term and I have an embarrassing amount of stuff to do to get ready to do that. Don’t get me wrong; I have a pretty good sense about what I’ll be doing this coming term, mainly because I’m in the third year of this particular cycle of the course. (What I mean by that is I have found that I have to pretty much throw out everything but the most foundational texts– things like Ong on writing as a technology, Selfe’s “Paying Attention” essay, a few other things– about every three years because they simply become too dated).

But as I have learned before, the tricky thing is figuring out how to make this stuff translate to the online experience. For example, one of the things I’ve done in this class in recent years that I think has been reasonably successful is student presentations on books from a selected reading list on “cutting edge” issues in computers in writing. A lot of it is stuff that I’d like to read but I haven’t gotten around to it.

Anyway, in a face-to-face setting, this is pretty easy to facilitate: students talk about their book project for about 10 minutes or so and they hand in a brief essay. I could of course just ask student presenters to write something that the rest of the class can simply read. But that doesn’t really capture the “presentation” experience. On the other hand, I could ask students to make a presentation and post it– an audio file, a video, etc. But that makes technical demands at a level that I’m not sure I can expect from online students.

So we’ll see. It makes me nervous to say this, but there is going to be a “making it up as we go along” element to this class in the winter….

Just when I was used to Web 2.0….

The New York Times has a front page story today with the headline “Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided By Common Sense” that is about– are you ready?– Web 3.0. A newer and even more improved version of Web 2.0, no doubt.

Here’s a passage that tries to explain the difference between 2 and 3:

The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up� — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.

In contrast, the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.�

Under today’s system, such a query can lead to hours of sifting — through lists of flights, hotel, car rentals — and the options are often at odds with one another. Under Web 3.0, the same search would ideally call up a complete vacation package that was planned as meticulously as if it had been assembled by a human travel agent.

Somehow, I have my doubts….

The state of the "blogosphere"/sabbaticalizing

Via jill/txt comes a link to “Sifry’s Alerts” on the “State of the Blogosphere,” which is based on technorati statistics, which is where David Sifry works. Some potentially interesting stuff for both my teaching in the winter term (and beyond), and also my scholarly endeavors.

Speaking of which: A big public thanks to the folks who gave me some valuable input and support on my recent “last minute” sabbatical proposal– my wife, Linda AK, Steve B, Bill HD… I think that’s all of ’em. I feel pretty good about the proposal I put together, though the creative writer part of me that believes it is both bad luck and tacky to talk about work not yet done is a little reluctant to start posting about it here in too much detail. All I will say for now is that, if nothing else, it was a good feeling to start thinking again in terms of scholarly work, I have a pretty good idea for at least one essay and one conference presentation, and, if I actually follow through on all this (and I think I will), I do think I might have a good book idea.

As for the sabbatical: well, it’s a long-shot, I think. One of the great ironies of things like sabbaticals nowadays at EMU (and I think this is true just about everywhere, frankly) is, because the competition for fewer and fewer sabbaticals is keen, you basically need to have a book contract in hand to win the award. And, obviously, if you already managed to put together a project that merited a book contract without release time before, then you probably really don’t need it now. In effect, sabbaticals are not about granting release to do promising and future research and scholarship; rather, they are a “reward” for a job (already) well done.

But like I said, it has been self-motivating if nothing else, and that’s a good thing. And who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky.

I want one of these…

… but I don’t think my comparatively modest golf fund will allow for it. I speak of the Segway x2 Golf. From that web site:

The Segway® Personal Transporter (PT) x2 Golf is fun, easy to maneuver, and much smaller than a standard golf car. Special low-pressure tires barely disturb the turf and provide a smooth ride over a variety of terrain. Based upon the Segway x2, it features new LeanSteer technology, a wireless InfoKey controller, long-lasting Saphion® lithium-ion batteries….

RIP, Ed Bradley/Conversation with Will about this…

I was sad to hear that Ed Bradley died. I have been watching 60 Minutes forever– probably since I was at least Will’s age because it was a show that my father in particular always watched. I’ve always liked Ed, the “younger, more hip” of a crowd of reporters who in reality haven’t been young or hip in quite some time. I mean, even Bradley was 65. Anyway, I appreciated his reporting, enjoyed his NPR radio shows on jazz music, etc.

So, we were talking about this in the car on the way home last night after a fairly quiet family evening out to celebrate Annette’s birthday.

Me: I heard Ed Bradley died.

Will: Was he the old and crazy guy?

Me: They’re all kind of old, Will.

Will: The old and crazy guy who says stuff at the end.

Annette: Andy Rooney?

Will: Yeah, Andy Rooney! I like that guy.

Annette: Why?

Will: Because always says all this crazy stuff at the end of the show, it’s crazy stuff but actually is kind of true. It’s weird.

Electronic Literature Collection, Vol 1

I had seen this about a week ago, but I got another email reminding me about it today:

The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1.

I’ve had a unit (off and on) in English 516 where we talk about sites like this, and as I start thinking more about planning the online version of 516 I’m going to teach in the winter, this site makes me think it’d be a cool thing to include. If nothing else, the layout is neato.