Via boing-boing, The Alot is Better Than You at Everything, from a very funny blog called hyperbole and a half.
iPad “killer apps” for Academics (maybe)
Okay, one more iPad post, and then on with my regular (not necessarily relevant) postings.
Being an iPad expert (as I have owned one for an entire week now), I’m still pretty darn happy and impressed with it. So far, it’s mostly for me what it has been billed as: a great “experience” for reading/consuming text, audio, and video. It is not (for the zillionth time) a computer, though for me, it is something like a netbook. I realize that this wouldn’t be true for everyone, especially non-Apple computer people, but since the rest of my computers are Apples, the iPad syncs and “just works,” which wouldn’t be the case if I was working with some kind of Windoze netbook.
Typing is an issue, but that’s the case with netbooks too, right? For me, I can touch-type well enough on the iPad when it’s landscape mode, but if I’m going to type anything longer than a couple paragraphs or an email response (or this blog post), then I’m going to use a real computer. I might break down and eventually buy a keyboard for the iPad, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the lean simplicity of the iPad.
And it doesn’t strike me as particularly “magical” either, though given the fondness for fantasy and science fiction in my household, perhaps my standards and definitions of “magical” are different than Steve Jobs. All the things the iPad does best– stuff like IMDB, Yahoo Entertainment, Netflix, various weather and newspaper apps, photos, music, videos, etc.– are all great, but not really beneficial for my job as a writing professor. Safari is okay (very quick, but, as the entire world knows, no Flash) and email is great, but neither are reasons to get an iPad.
I have played around with Keynote and Pages a bit, and while there’s some potential, I have to say I’ve been a little disappointed. On the plus-side (as I wrote about with this post earlier), both Keynote and Pages demonstrate that the iPad is indeed a device with which a user can make content. But the problem with both apps is that they don’t quite synch with my desktop versions of the software– different fonts, not all the effects and builds work, etc. Plus there are the previously mentioned keyboarding issues. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means, but it does mean that if I take only my iPad to a conference or something instead of a laptop, I’ll have to make some adjustments. Again, not a reason to get an iPad, at least not yet.
All that said, I do think there are so far two (or three, depending on how you look at it) potential “killer apps” for the iPad: PDF annotation and books, both iBooks/Kindles, and “books” that are really applications on their own. Too long of a ramble/review after the jump.
On the MFA, 20 years later
While on my every other day “run” the other day and while listening on my iPhone to Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs— and let me say now as an aside that 20 years ago, I most certainly would not have been doing any of those things– I listened to his essay “Cosmodemonic,” which is about his time in the Master of Fine Arts writing workshop at the University of California, Irvine “twenty-odd years and nine books” later. I like Chabon as a writer– really really liked The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay— and I did not realize until reading this collection of essays about growing up, culture, reading, women, children, etc., that he is, more or less, my age. We’ve had very different lives and careers, obviously, but in terms of being of a certain age and with certain interests, I can relate. For example, like Chabon, I too was one of the (if not the) youngest person in my MFA cohort. Unlike Chabon though, I did not a) “score” much with the women in my program, b) smoke big bags of weed, and/or c) go on to have an outstanding career as a novelist.
Six years ago, I wrote on my blog (one that is about 3 versions removed) answers to some of the questions that Chabon considers in the opening pages of his essay here: “Should I get an MFA in Creative Writing?” I pretty much agree with everything I said then and it’s still available via the wayback machine web archives. But this is all on my mind this morning because of the 20 year thing. When I was at the CCCCs last week, I got a ride to the Bedford/St. Martin’s party with Cheryl Ball, who was also in Virginia Commonwealth’s MFA program, but exactly 10 years after me, and I told her how I was reminded that I graduated from the program 20 years ago this year. Her jaw dropped. I know. Maybe it’s something about the sound of “twenty” that sounds more serious than, say, “nineteen.”
I don’t know what this all means, other than I’m getting old (and tomorrow is my birthday). Annette and I were discussing mid-life crises a bit ago and she was wondering if I was going to have one. I don’t think so for all kinds of reasons, though I do wish that I had managed in the last 20 years to actually write and publish a novel. This is not a regret, really. Putting aside talent/abilities for a moment (I would rather not face the question of whether or not I had/have “what it takes”), I decided a long time ago that I enjoy steady and reasonably paying work far too much to live the kind of life it takes to get a first novel off the ground. And I also of course like the idea of teaching and doing more academic sorts of work, obviously. I still write lots, and, as I mention in my older post about getting an MFA, I think my experiences in a creative writing program helped me a lot with the academic writing I’ve been doing since the MFA.
I think this is probably true for the vast majority of folks I knew back in those MFA days. Through the blessing and curse that is Facebook, I’ve managed to connect and reconnect with a lot of the people I knew back then, and, as far as I can tell, most of them have morphed into real jobs of one sort or another. In that sense, I think the MFA has turned out to be a lot like a lot (most?) college degrees: you start in a place with a set of lofty goals and dreams, and then, after one thing leads to another, you end up in a different place.
The fall term that was
Alex Reid’s post (along with just the end of things) prompted me to post this end of the term summary of things:
Overall, I was pleased with the way my graduate class, Rhetoric of Science and Technology, turned out this term. It was the first time I taught it online, and we posted a staggering 1,738 comments on 91 posts during the course of the semester. If you average that out to about 200 words a post (many were less, many were more), I’d say that the class wrote about a novel and a half (in draft form, of course) worth of text. Besides quantity, the quality of interaction was quite excellent– lots of give and take, lots of smart comments that indicate to me a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. And as a bonus, we even had a couple of the people whose work we read weigh in on the class, not the sort of thing that can happen with the course is behind a firewall. Anyway, the next time someone suggests you can’t teach an advanced seminar class online, I’m going to point them to this site.
But I will say there are two things I’ll definitely be changing the next time I teach this class. First, the wiki writing experience didn’t work. The idea was to use a wiki for students to work collaboratively on reading notes for the texts we were reading since a lot of what we read during the class is dense and complicated stuff. That didn’t work well for two reasons. First, with all of the activity going on at the class web site/blog, the wiki was too often repetitive and/or forgotten. We tried talking about the last thing I assigned (a couple chapters from Collin Brooke’s book) on the wiki exclusively, but that didn’t work that well either.
Second, I think I’m going to change up the writing assignments for next year. Instead of having one “seminar paper” at the end, I’m going to have a shorter project in the middle of the term where students will write based on the first group of readings (probably “the old stuff” and related essays); another shorter project for the second part of the term based on those readings (many of which I will probably get students to research and find); and a more comprehensive and “worth more” final. We’ll see; this was only the second time I taught this course, so I’m still trying to figure it out.
My section of English 328: Writing, Style, and Technology was a little more, well, odd this term. In contrast to English 505, 328 is a class I’ve taught literally 50 or more times, and I kind of feel like I’ve “got it down” pat. Perhaps that’s part of the problem, which is why I’m looking forward to changing some of it up in the winter term, a lot of those based on the stuff Derek has been messing around with this term. It’s been fun for both me and our colleague Cheryl Cassidy (Cheryl is the other person here who has taught the bulk of these 328 classes over the years) to watch Derek begin to find his way in that class. Anyway, this term was weird in several ways I probably shouldn’t go into in any detail; let’s just say that a majority of the students who signed up the class originally didn’t finish it, which is a first for me.
And then there was my section of English 121, Researching the Public Experience (aka first year comp/rhet). This was the first time in years and years (maybe ever?) since I’ve been at EMU where I taught a “real” section of this class– that is, one that was offered during a normal term and one that was actually made up of mostly first year students and one where we got to participate in the “Celebration of Student Writing.” (I teach this often enough in the spring or summer terms, but those classes are 7.5 weeks long and usually mostly juniors and seniors who transferred in, who took it and failed it before, and/or who just forgot to take it until the end of their degree programs. This is different population of students to say the least.) I’d say it both went pretty well and it was kind of depressing, too.
It went reasonably well mechanically/logistically. I used a wiki powered by MediaWiki, and that had advantages and disadvantages. All of my students posted all of their work to different pages within the wiki and they used the wiki to comment on each others’ various drafts and exercises. Students liked being able to see what others in the class were doing in one centralized place like this, and I liked it for those reasons along with various “classroom management” issues. I didn’t collect any paper from them this year, I knew exactly when they did (or didn’t) do things because it was all time-stamped on the wiki, and viewing the “history” of one of the major portfolio assignments gave a very clear picture of the revisions and changes that they made. But the problem of the wiki was it was still a little more technical/complicated for students to negotiate than I would have preferred. Maybe I’ll use it again the next time I teach this; maybe I’ll try using something like PBWorks or whatever else has come along in a couple years.
But it was also kind of depressing because of what I guess I’d call an “achievement gap.” This has been on my mind/in the news around EMU as of late because the board of regents and other forces around campus are growing more concerned about the institution’s retention rate, which is something like 39%— that is, around that percentage of students actually graduates from EMU within six years. Compare that to U of Michigan, where the number is more like 90%. I saw this statistic played out in my section of freshman comp. Of the 25 students on my role, 9 of them either withdrew from the class or failed it– and pretty much the only way to completely fail the class is to just not show up and/or do the work. Of the 16 who did finish, three were juniors or seniors who were taking 121 too late and who were already well on their way to graduation. Of the 13 “real” first or second year students left, I would guess that five or six of them won’t be at EMU in a year or two from now– some for good reasons (I know at least one student in this class who was planning on transferring because of a change of heart about a major), but most because of “life distractions” (e.g., working too much) or because of their abilities.
So, if my section of 121 was a little micro-version of the institution, that 39% figure seems about right. Actually, it might even be kind of high.
Anyway, I don’t worry that much about the sorts of issues that Alex was worrying about in his post, about the problems of teaching writing as a series of discreet moves rather a more authentic writing/writerly experience. Institutionalized education is by definition artificial and a form of imitation of “the real,” which also has an element of “realness” in and of itself. Alex uses the youth soccer coaching analogy, and I think that works well here too: writing classes are more like practice, where the players run through a series of drills and do some scrimmaging to prepare for the “real game” that comes later. I’m okay with that.
But what I do worry about is that ever-eternal problem at “opportunity granting” institutions like EMU: what is the line between giving a kid who did not do great in high school a second chance with college versus just taking money from someone who is so poorly prepared for college that they just don’t have a chance of succeeding? That’s the kinda depressing part.
Anyway, the term is a wrap, and for the first time in many a holiday season, I’m not taking any work with me on my various travels– some things to read (mostly for fun), a notebook and a pen (no laptop), and an iPhone. See ya next year.
Where have all the blogs gone?
This is something I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now and that has come up in a couple of different places recently: is blogging, well, “over?”
No, but I do think it’s different than it was.
Hello, China!
In the “build it and they will come” (sorta) department: I received a lovely email today from Sally Stephenson about using my freely available and online textbook, The Process of Research Writing. Stephenson is teaching in China and wrote to thank me for making TPRW available free and online:
I am currently on sabbatical from Frostburg State University in Maryland, now teaching Ph.D. students in China at Hunan Normal University, and so much of what we take for granted academically in the States is totally alien here. I am grateful for your permission to use your material and will make good use of it, and credit you accordingly. I especially appreciate all the trouble you took to put the APA and MLA examples up in Chapter 12. I’ve been drilling them on paraphrasing and quoting–something foreign to Chinese culture, which is based on the “one-for-all and all-for-one” philosophy–and am about to tackle the monster of citations and references.
In my search for your well-hidden email address, I also enjoyed browing your blog. Most blogs are blocked here in China, so you might be interested to know yours made it through the “Great Firewall” as it is not-so-fondly called.
So, not only do I have a fan in Asia; I’m escaping Chinese censorship. Go figure!
“Downloading Optimism” (and btw, what’s new with electronic books?)
I know that the image there is going to be too small to read, but go ahead and click on it to read it. This comes from Lucy Knisley who seems to be a bit of a Renaissance woman of sorts with comics, journal writings, illustrations, crafts, etc., etc.
Really REALLY smart stuff about a group of old school comics folks lamenting the falling of print, which was written and drawn by a comic artist who is obviously enthusiastic about digital books. As she points out, there was a point in the past where these codex book things were weird (where’s the scroll?), and of course there was a time where print itself was weird, too (why are all the letters so neat and orderly?), not to mention stuff like page numbers, etc. And, as she writes here, “I’d just rather not expend all my energy worrying over how my words are delivered, and instead concentrate on the quality and content of the words.” Exactly, and the problem with journalism and traditional publishers is that they keep thinking that they are in the bottle business instead of the wine business.
Anyway, this also jarred in me the question again about “e-readers” or electronic books or whatever you want to call them. Knisley talks in this comic about reading stuff on her iPod/iPhone, but I don’t know if I could/would be willing to do that. I don’t mind reading blogs or email or similarly “short” sort of things on my iPod, but I don’t know if I’d want to read a book-length work on my phone. Too little of a window for me.
The Kindle is still problematic for my own reading tastes, as far as I can tell. I don’t really like the way that the device is locked down/locked into amazon.com only content (remember that infamous 1984 issue?), it apparently doesn’t handle PDF files well, and it doesn’t allow for easy annotations. I’ve heard good things about Barnes and Noble’s Nook, but I’d certainly want to play around with it. For me, the ability to handle the PDFs from academic journals and the things I assign students to read in various classes. I don’t need one of these things to “just read” novels or magazines or whatever, which perhaps makes me a reader who is not in the marking plan for companies like amazon.com or B&N.
Anyway, must reading for 516 and/or 444, probably for 328 too.
The hyperbolic coffee chamber
The other day, I was in Ann Arbor and at Comet Coffee in Nickels Arcade– it’s next to the place where I get my hair cut, and they do make a really good cup of coffee. Anyway, they had the syringe-like AeroPress for sale. I think I had read about it someplace– boing-boing maybe?– and I was sucked in by the hyperbole on the side of the box.
Now, I do like the AeroPress quite a bit. I wanted something to make just a cup or two of coffee at a time, and my French press is a bit of a pain to clean. What I like about the AeroPress is that it’s quick, easy, and even kind of fun to use, it makes a good single cup of coffee (well, sort of an Americano; one of these days, I might just try to “drink it straight” as if it were real espresso, or figure out a way to froth up some milk to make cappuccino), and it takes like 15 seconds to clean. Plus it’s very portable– comes with a travel bag no less!
But some of the hyperbolic claims made on the side of the box and on the AeroPress web site are down-right bizarre. For example:
“It makes the absolute best cup of coffee I’ve tasted in my entire life.” Lewis Singer – Cooks Junction
“I didn’t know the same coffee could taste so good.” Peter Whitely – Sunset Magazine
“A couple of years ago I bought a $1500 espresso machine. It works well – but it doesn’t turn out the consistent quality of the AeroPress. Now I use the AeroPress for ALL brewing and only use my expensive Italian machine for heating the AeroPress water and for foaming milk for my cappuccino.”
Tom Osborne – Stewarts Point , CA
Now, there are some people who do have some more coffee ethos who say good things about the AeroPress, but really? The best cup of coffee of your entire life? Better than a $1500 espresso machine? And who are these people? Should it mean something to me that it is the Lewis Singer of Cooks Junction? Are the people of Stewarts Point known for their tastes in coffee?
And yet, I was sucked in by the hyperbole. I saw the side of that box that a complete stranger with no ethos or credibility said “the best cup of coffee I’ve tasted in my entire life,” and I thought on some level “wow, let me give that thing a try.” In other words, even though the claims made by the product’s advertising were and are completely ridiculous and unreasonable, it worked on me.
So, maybe making really outrageous claims can work sometimes. And I could go for a cup of coffee, too….
A good example of why correctness and handwriting still matter
This is on the BBC news radio as I type this: “How does Brown’s handwriting compare with other PMs’?” talks about this a bit, but basically, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent a hand-written condolence letter to a mother who’s son was killed in Afghanistan, and it turns out the letter itself was filled with errors and exhibited terrible handwriting. To quote from the article:
The spelling mistakes in Gordon Brown’s solemn letter to Jacqui Janes were not the only shortcoming, according to the bereaved mother.
In expressing his condolences for the death of Jamie Janes, who died in Afghanistan on 5 October, Mr Brown appeared to correct the soldier’s first name, as well as rushing the communique.
“I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie’s name,” Ms Janes told the Sun newspaper. “The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished. It’s just disrespectful.”
I will say this: I at least give Brown credit for the effort of a hand-written note; I don’t think that happens in the U.S….
A few miscellany
For the first time in what seems like a month, I feel “caught up,” almost. I think ever since the “National Day O’ Writing” thing, I’ve been bailing water. Anyway, I haven’t thought through much in terms of anything too interesting to say, but thought I’d post a few links, a few updates:
- My English 505 class goes well, and it took a somewhat surprising turn the other day: Richard Vatz, the author of “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,” contacted me after coming across the class online. Which is just another one of those examples I suppose of the pros and cons of putting an online class truly online and “out there” for the world to see.
- Utah State UP will live another day with a different model, as a (mostly?) electronic press.
- “Are we naked in the cloud?” from the Atlantic. I think the answer is “well, yes,” which is why cloud computing will only go so far, at least until these sorts of ownership/privacy issues are sorted out.
- Just got on Google wave; we’ll see how it goes….
- Maybe I haven’t been writing enough lately because I haven’t been feeling grumpy.
- I tried to comment on this post about imagining an online composition platform at Alex Reid’s blog (and that didn’t work), so I’ll post something here:
For starters, I don’t think online versions of first year writing is a good idea– at least not entirely online, and at least not at EMU. We admit a fair number of first year students at EMU who are “at risk” in some fashion, and what I see in my current section of freshman comp is a real mix in levels of responsibility and maturity. Some students would be fine with a completely online class; many would not. Hybrid first year writing classes is another issue though.
Second, the online platform that I imagine is probably something like a wiki. I’ve been using media wiki for this term and I used a wetpaint wiki for my spring 2009 term class. Of course, this isn’t an online class, but I like the interface for publishing student work and class materials, and I think that students like it too. There is a level of “individuality” with this set-up because I have organized the site by having each student have a page, but at the same time, all the stuff is right there together. The down-sides of these sites are they don’t foster ongoing conversation that well (though I suppose that’s in part because we haven’t tried– it is a face to face class, after all), and there are different technical issues. Mediawiki is a little unwieldy for students; Wetpaint is super easy to use, but there isn’t much you can do to customize it.