I stumbled across the popular blog “Dooce” this morning, both as an activity in finding blogs to do research about and as an activity in avoiding other activity (e.g., “work”). I will have to return to the Dooce sooner than later because of the fine finds there. Here are three for now:
“I Has Sweet Potato.” As the owner/caretaker/master of a dog that has been known for her “dietary indiscretions,” I found this hilarious.
“New and Improved Stereotypes,” complete with illustrations. My two favorite this morning were ” Germans can get pregnant from the sound of David Hasslehoff’s voice” and ” Aborigines Believe Photographs Steal Your Wallet.”
This isn’t really my “cup of tea,” as the saying goes, but I stumbled across it on YouTube and I learned that it was filmed in Ames, Iowa. So what the heck.
Here’s a 6:18 video of my trip to New York City and the National Council for Teachers of English conference:
This little video is an unusual project for me because it’s very much a mixture of my “official” and my “unofficial” lives. Of course, conferences tend to be spaces where there is inevitably a blending of serious/scholarly things (giving papers, attending sessions, etc.) and not-so-serious/friendly things (cocktails with colleagues in the field, dinners, travel, touring, etc.). Anyway, since our session was about film/video making and writing, I thought I’d give it a shot.
I had a very mixed experience at the conference, frankly. On the one hand, I thought our panel was fantastic– great people, everyone was super-duper prepared, everyone had really interesting projects, everyone was really really smart and cool and all the rest, etc., etc. As I said in my NCTE prelude post, I went into this panel kind of as an accident and as a result of the CSW movie I made. I mean, I didn’t have that much specific interest in making movies, certainly not as a writing teacher. But I came out of this session really jazzed about the possibilities I saw from my fellow presenters, about diving into FinalCut Pro (or Express) and trying my hand at Garage Band, etc.
And I also had excellent “not-so-serious/friendly” activities at the conference. I got to hang out with my former colleague and still fantastic friend Annette S. a bit, I met a new bunch of people, I had a great dinner and great conversation with folks from the computer and writing world, Doug Eyman, Mike Palmquist, and Nick Carbone. Not to mention tourism in New York.
But on the whole, I’ve got to say that NCTE is not really my conference.
First off, we only had about 10 or so people in the audience. Now, normally, that wouldn’t be that big of a deal to me– I mean, let’s face it, that’s kind of par for the course at most conference presentations. But we were a “Featured Presentation,” we had an ideal time slot, and we had a hot topic– or so we thought. The only guess I have as to why the crowd was so small was because NCTE really is mostly about K-12, and those folks just aren’t interested in things like making movies in writing classes.
Second, the facility where this was being held was a problem. The amenities were, um, incomplete. We did a lot of planning via email before this session, and one of the concerns many in the group had was what sort of sound system we would have– or not have. Pete Vandenberg saved us on that score by bringing along a great system. We had assumed all along that we were covered with a projector to show the movies, but it turned out the projector the NCTE folks were prepared to provide was of the overhead variety. Fortunately, we did not have perform our movies; I brought a projector along from school as a plan B. I could go on, though I think this is whiny enough. All I’m saying is that if conferences like the NCTE (or the CCCCs, for that matter) actually want to give opportunities to presenters to talk about technology, they need to provide some basic technology.
But enough complaining. I had fun, I made it home, I’m ready for this coming week. Sort of.
I’m doing a little web surfing this morning before getting ready for the NCTE– perhaps the last time I’ll be online on this trip since I don’t expect to be back here until later tonight, and since I’d have to pay another $10 for internet access for that time, I think I’ll probably wait to post any thoughts about the conference until Saturday night from home.
In any event, while surfing, I came across this article from the Chicago Tribune, “At the heart of the writers strike, a tangled Web.” It’s interesting stuff to me as a writer and a “technology guy,” and I can imagine that this strike will be something worthy of study in the future. Here’s a quote:
As the screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson (“Field of Dreams”) says in an explanatory video at United Hollywood (unitedhollywood.blogspot.com), a quasi-official strike blog, “This is our generation’s moment.”
The writers union gave in to producers and took a pay cut when royalty rates for home-video sales were being negotiated in the 1980s, he says, and it was a huge mistake to compromise merely because it was an unproven business. Now, the issue is another fledgling business, the Internet, threatening to again change the means by which people get their entertainment.
“I don’t want, 30 years from now, writers looking back at us, saying, ‘What were these clowns thinking about? How could they not know that the digital revolution was everything?’ ” Robinson says.
But now I gotta get ready for the teacher-type gig.
… half of the English classes in Southeast Michigan (K thru college) would have to be canceled. I sat next to two women who I think are elementary education folks and who were drunkenly giddy through much of the trip. I remained quiet, semi-surly, and finished a book.
Well, not quite. But I suspect on average around here, yeah, it is.
NaBloPoMo, aka National Blog Posting Month, more or less asks people to post a blog entry a day through November. It’s an obvious spin-off of National Novel Writing Month and probably an easier accomplishment for most. But I think they ought to pick a different month, personally….
I was in the office doing various quasi-administrator kinds of things all day on Monday, and when I left, I had the satisfying feeling of leaving a note that said I will not be returning until November 26. This warning/promise was somewhat short-lived since I’ve been to my office twice since putting up that sign, but that was/is the plan. I’d like to say I am doing this so I can hole-up and work on the BAWS project, but the main reason is travel of both the conference and family variety.
Tomorrow, I’m off to New York City (I hope the salsa is as good as they suggest in those Pace commercials…) for NCTE, where I am part of a double session/featured session called “Writing, Reading, Composing: The Movie(s).” Here’s a link to my web site for the project, though there isn’t much there other than links to the movies I’ll be chatting about.
It’s been an unusual deal for me. I made the “Celebration of Student Writing” last fall basically because I was the interim writing program administrator and because I could– that is, we had this cool equipment and a desire to use it. I posted a link on the WPA-L mailing list, my EMU friend and colleague Linda Adler-Kassner pulled together a presentation, and I was in. I was debating about going because NCTE isn’t usually my conference and because New York City is way too freakin’ expensive and I knew my wife wasn’t going to be able to go with me. But somewhere along in the process, we became a “featured session” that is going to run all afternoon on Friday.
We’ll see how it turns out. Given the topic and the time, I think we’ll have a big crowd. We have had some interesting discussions about some of the technicalities and, as a “plan b,” one person presenting is bringing a sound system and I’m bringing a mini projector from school. I’m also planning on making a sort of “movie of the movie session” with my Flip video camera, along with a little “traveling with Steve” video log. Stay tuned….
Oh, and next week I’m not going to school because it’s Thanksgiving. Duh.
My friend Rachel sent around this video, a lego set-up of Eddie Izzard’s riff on the Death Star Canteen (fwiw, lots of the “f” word here, and I don’t mean food):
Well, it turns out this is a bit of a mini-genre on YouTube on Thorn2200’s channel. Funny stuff. Just to round out the selections here and keeping with the food theme, let me also pass along “cake or death:”
I just kind of realized today that I haven’t posted to my unofficial blog for quite a while. There’s been no particular reason for this lack of postings here, and I actually have been posting frequently enough on my official blog and on EMUTalk.org. I guess there just hasn’t been a lot of unofficial news. Let’s see….
We had a much smaller version of our annual fall Indian food fest.
Annette had her birthday last weekend, which included a much needed new computer and a lovely dinner and night out with a sitter and everything.
And I’m going to be getting geared up for some midterm travel. I’m going to New York City on Thursday for a conference (more on that on the official blog I am sure, and then we’re all going down to South Carolina next week for a Wannamaker Thanksgiving.
Via this boing boing entry comes this link to DVzine.org’s The Dvorak zine, which is a great comic making an impassioned plea to use the more efficient and logical typing keyboard design developed by a guy named Dvorak. Besides tapping into my geeky love of all sorts of different writing technologies and my enjoyment of comics, it strikes me as the kind of thing that could be good to incorporate into some teaching.
The comments on the boing boing post are kind of interesting, too. Basically, the folks posting here who converted to Dvorak liked it and found it more comfortable, but they didn’t typically type any faster. It’s good to learn that just about any computer can be converted to Dvorak for practice though.
