Category: Technology

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Adeona: free and open source laptop security program

This looks pretty cool: Adeona, which is a free and open source security software for tracking a laptop. Follow the link for the full explanation of the software, but besides the fact that the price is very right, this is my favorite feature: “The Mac OS X version also has an option to capture pictures of the laptop user or thief using the built-in iSight camera and the freeware tool isightcapture.” So you can take a picture of the thief. That is almost cool enough for me to see if I can get a laptop stolen and then track the bad guy.

Almost.

Like I said, I haven’t tried this yet and it does look like it might be a half-step beyond the abilities of some basic users, but it looks very promising.

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“Laptop use tied to higher test scores”

From the NCTE Inbox comes this Richmond Times-Dispatch article, “Study: Laptop use tied to higher student scores: About 14,550 Henrico County high schoolers are utilizing computers.” Yet another example of an article that I might include in English 516, though it seems you can throw a brick out a window and hit an article that comes up with whatever conclusion you want about the successes or failures of laptops in the schools programs.

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It turns out texting might not be the end of language and/or the world

There’s a good piece on the guardian.co.uk web site, “2b or not 2b?” about how texting is not destroying language as we know it. Just the opposite. I’m just skimming this morning, but here’s my favorite paragraphs so far:

People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

and…

Research has made it clear that the early media hysteria about the novelty (and thus the dangers) of text messaging was misplaced. In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind – about three per message. And in a Norwegian study, the proportion was even lower, with just 6% using abbreviations. In my own text collection, the figure is about 10%.

People seem to have swallowed whole the stories that youngsters use nothing else but abbreviations when they text, such as the reports in 2003 that a teenager had written an essay so full of textspeak that her teacher was unable to understand it. An extract was posted online, and quoted incessantly, but as no one was ever able to track down the entire essay, it was probably a hoax.

Okay, that last one was two paragraphs, but still.

This is something I might have students read in English 516. I haven’t done a unit in the past about texting– personally, it just isn’t that interesting to me and it is something I rarely do myself– but maybe I should. Or maybe I should begin the term with a whole bunch of readings for a week I could call “It Turns Out that the Internets and Other Technologies Are Not Ruining the Kids,” and include readings about the myths of pedophiles and online chat, about the dangers of Facebook/MySpace, about texting, etc., etc. Maybe I could track down some articles to include about the dangers of the phone, of television, of rock-n-roll music, the waltz, and so forth.

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GSU, fair use, and eReserves

I’ve always wondered when some publisher was going to sue over copyright and eReserve systems. It turns out that’s underway right now: “Georgia State University Strongly Answers Publishers’ E-Reserve Lawsuit,” which I found via Digital Koans. An interesting story/case that might make its way into a revised version of English 516, depending on how it all turns out. Not to mention the fact that it might change the way I distribute readings to students.

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Internet sketches

I’m always suggesting to students making web sites– even simple web sites– that they draw them out first on a piece of paper.  Via Johndan, comes this link, where there are examples from famous web 2.0 sites where they did exactly that.

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“University presses start to sell via Kindle”

Speaking of things I want to link to that might come in handy for teaching English 516 next year: “University Presses Start to Sell Via Kindle,” in Inside Higher Ed. There’s been some discussion about this on the WPA-L mailing list, and my post there was basically that this just makes sense as the next logical trend for both the device and university publishing.

My friend Troy has one of these things and loves it; from what I’ve been able to tell (having not actually seen one in the wild), I don’t think these things are quite ready for prime-time. Still, if they come out with one of these things that can handle color, that can do a better job handing note-taking and such, and that is a little more affordable ($359 is a little steep for me), then I could see this being an important tool for both academic publishing and textbook publishing/reading.

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U of Minnesota study on benefits of social bookmarking sites and the lack of digital divide

Via NCTE Inbox comes this article/news release from the University of Minnesota, “First-of-its-kind study at the University of Minnesota uncovers the educational benefits of social networking sites; Study also finds that low-income students, contrary to recent studies, are in many ways just as technologically savvy as their counterparts.” Not a very succinct title, but it kind of says what it’s all about. This press release also includes links to some video of the researcher talking about her study; at some point, I’ll want to actually look this study up.

In terms of the graduate class I teach about computers, writing, and pedagogy (ENGL 516), this stuff– access and social networking– was “the line” last semester. I pointed out at the beginning of the class in winter 2008 that I wasn’t going to accept any seminar papers/research projects about a lack of access, because I believed that a) access has been proven to be not a problem, and b) that argument was really an excuse for “I don’t want to do/learn this computer stuff.” This new study will probably add to that argument. But while I haven’t had a lot of students do research/writing on social networking yet, this still seems to be a line that many of my grad students will not cross, particularly those students who are practicing teachers and closer to my age. I ask my students to set up a facebook account for the class, and there are a few who believe that this will end their careers and/or destroy their private life.

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Awesome Highlighter

For fall 2008, I’m going to be making 3 big changes to the way I teach the class all the time, English 328:  Writing, Style, and Technology.  First, I think I’m going to abandon/retire the web site assignment.  Second, I think I’m going to add/replace that assignment with a movie-making assignment (though I really haven’t figured out yet what I’m going to do with that).

Third, I’m going to incorporate/add/integrate contemporary and Web 2.0 technologies into the class assignments– google docs, reader, flickr, the blog assignment I have given for a while, perhaps some kind of wiki assignment, etc.  Toward that end, here’s a kind of cool little tool: the Awesome Highlighter, which allows you to highlight and leave notes on web sites.  It’s a simple and intuitive little tool.

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Misc. posts while watching million dollar password and the movie “Resolved”

As the title suggest, I’m posting these things while watching TV, including Resolved, which is running on HBO right now. I thought I’d sort through my Google Reader feed with some links.

  • The Hyperlinked Society looks like an interesting read, certainly something to think about for ENGL 516 or ENGL 444. Via a thaumaturgical compendium.
  • The Reanimation Library, which looks like a kind of interesting installation art version on a library. Some cool pictures here. Via Earth Wide Moth.
  • Five Free Online Video Editing tools. In the fall, I’m going to experiment with a simple video assignment, and one of these tools might be useful/worth playing around with.
  • Obama as a Secret Vulcan, from culture critic extraordinaire Henry Jenkins. Pretty interesting analysis, and it’s better than saying he’s a secret Muslim– not that there’s anything wrong with Muslims, of course.
  • Alex Reid has an interesting post about this article in the CHE about an online and non-university associated (kind of) first year writing course/program called StraighterLine, which is being run by SmartThinking, which runs a lot of online tutoring programs at universities. Besides the critique that Alex offers– which I completely agree with, that there is generally speaking a disconnect between the best scholarship in the field of composition and rhetoric and the course that generically tends be called composition and rhetoric– it just doesn’t seem like an idea that’s very workable. I think that one of the big textbook publishers tried to do this a while back, tried to offer a course with college credit not associated with a traditional institution. As I understand, that program folded up. So I guess I’m just not sure what the plan/business model is here.
  • This also looks like a good book, one to think of for 516: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum. Here’s a review at Grand Text Auto.

There’s probably other stuff I should put here too, but enough for now.  Oh, and go check out that movie, Resolved.