Just some more blog reading/clean-up: Most popular top 10’s of 2008 on LifeHacker, which is my favorite part of the site anyway.
New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development
This is the sort of thing that might come in handy for English 516: “New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development,” from the MacArthur foundation. Of course we’re going to have some kind of unit on things like Facebook in 516– possibly we’ll set up some kind of thing like Ning just because we could, though setting up you own social network is a little like having a party and not inviting anyone.
Anyway, I might start working on putting together the winter 516 web site in some of the downtime in visiting the family in Iowa. It’s a lot more fun to work on an upcoming class than it is to do the work for things I’m teaching right now….
“Working through screens” site
Also on the possible 505 reading list for Fall 2009: via Johndan’s blog, I came across Working Through Screens, which is a site/book/set of flashcards put together by some kind of online design firm out west called Flashbulb Interaction. It might be cool, it might not be; it’s something that I’ll have to take a look at later. But right now, I need to read some of the readings for tonight on interaction and usability, a unit where this stuff would probably fit next year.
More English 516 stuff for Winter 2009
These aren’t exactly “new” news kind of articles, but still new things that might find their way to a syllabus for English 516 this coming winter (and this list of stuff all comes from the latest NCTE Inbox):
- “Can Technology Make Teens Better Writers?” an article on MSNEncarta
- “Teachers disciplined for Facebook postings” from the Charlotte Observer. The headline here should be “Charlotte teacher incredibly stupid in use of Facebook.” Among other things, she wrote in the “about me” section “I am teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte,” listed as one of her activities “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte,” and she skipped the option on Facebook where you info stays private to only you and only the people you friend. Who says that students are the only ones who are stupid about this kind of thing?
- “In Florida, virtual school could make classrooms history,” from the Orlando Sentinel web site. According to the article, a new Florida law will require every district to set up an online school for K-8.
- Maelstrom over metadata from Inside Higher Ed, which might fit in to a unit on library stuff if I decide to do that again this coming winter. This is a fairly geeky piece though
Two observations about English 516 for this coming winter, which I really ought to be working on developing sooner than later: first, this might be the first time in a long time that I don’t use any specific textbook for the class. There isn’t anything out there right now that strikes me as both current and “worth it;” instead, I think I might have a lot of eReserves readings and structure the course around what I guess I would describe as “important units” for issues having to do with computers and writing. I dunno; we’ll see.
Second, this is a good term to contemplate a revision of the course since it’s the first time in the last few years I will be teaching it in person and on campus. Interestingly enough, I think a number of our current students were actually looking forward to the online version of the class. I had a couple email exchanges with potential students who more or less said that they’d see me next year when the class was back online. And I ran into a student in the student center who didn’t realize the class was face to face and who had signed up for another class the same night. What strikes me about this is how quickly students have gone from being a little leery of the whole online thing to actually seeking it out.
One video leads to another
A grad student and friend of mine sent me this video, “The Matrix Runs on Windows:”
Funny stuff, which lead to another video, “Professor Wikipedia:”
That Wikipedia one is certainly going to find its way into a class sooner than later. Anyway, now it’s on to grading stuff.
Good bye old media, helllo new media
Via Will Richardson, I came across this NYTimes article/blog/whatever, “Mourning Old Media’s Decline.” It’s an interesting article about the ongoing implosion of old media/traditional newspapers. My wife and I were just talking the other day about canceling our paper subscription to the Ann Arbor News; what’s the point if I’m either going to not read it at all and/or read it online?
Anyway, this is an article that might work well for 444, where I usually have some discussion/unit/readings about “citizen journalism.” But I also post about this because I think that Will has it slightly wrong, when he writes:
The problem for us is that we’re still teaching like our kids are going to be reading those edited, linear, well-written newspapers when the reality is they’re not. And the bigger problem is that, by and large, we still don’t know enough about the “new” media world in our personal practice to push those conversations about change in any meaningful way.
We better figure it out pretty quickly, or we’ll be mourning much more than old media…
These are important warnings, but I have to say that I think that my colleagues in journalism (and I teach in a somewhat unusual English department in that journalism is housed here) are well-aware of this, and I think that there teaching has been moving in that direction. I’m not completely privy to the discussions that happen among that group, and I do know there is a tension between, um, “old school” and “new school” folks. That being said, there’s lots of technological awareness, abilities, and pedagogy in these kinds of classes.
And the thing is that while the medium itself is changing– as is the definition of what constitutes an “expert” or a “journalist”– the basic literacy and research skills of what we train in students in journalism is not. We still have lots and lots of students in our journalism program (not to mention PR and our writing majors), and, as far as I can tell, these students still end up getting jobs. It’s just that the paper pulp and the ink is gone.
See? Facebook is useful!
This is an article I might include for ENGL 516 in the winter: from Inside Higher Ed, “Taking Facebook Back to Campus.” This isn’t exactly an earth-shattering article, but a lot of my students last year in 516 still thought of Facebook and MySpace as a place where teenagers exchange pictures of themselves drinking and/or having sex, and where having a profile of your own is akin to going to an orgy. Not all of my students, of course– plenty of them (maybe a majority of them?) already had some kind of profile on one of these accounts of their own. But there was enough of a vocal and concerned minority of students with this view that anything I can share with the message “no really, Facebook is actually useful, at least potentially” is probably a good thing.
“Brave new Classroom 2.0”
I don’t know if Britannica is going to be able to sustain or understand a blog, and I don’t like the title here too much– why not throw in the word “digital” too? But the “Brave New Classroom 2.0 (New Blog Forum)” has some interesting stuff at it– well, except for Mark Bauerlein. A potential 516 site.
Digital Culture Books
I got to get out the door this morning to the gym and then I have a day of audio commenting and such for projects ahead of me for much of the rest of the day, but I wanted to post this which I came across this morning: digital culture books from the University of Michigan Press and and the University of Michigan Library. This is clearly good stuff for English 516 and beyond.
On keyboards
I came across this via Lifehacker: “The Best Keyboard You’ve Ever Typed On.” One of the winners is the aluminum keyboard that comes with the latest version of the iMac, but for my own tastes and preferences, that one seems a little too thin and quiet and not enough bounce for me. Actually, my problem with keyboards as of late as been a sort of stickiness, perhaps from crud getting caught in there. The keyboard on the computer in my office is particularly annoying, but I have also replaced the keyboard that came with my home machine (an iMac circa 2006, I think) with a generic $30 or so keyboard, and I have to say, I like the old-school clickity-clack.
Perhaps more information on my typing habits than you need, but there you have it.