Steven D. Krause

The news this morning is about the death of Christopher Reeve, but my web browsing over coffee has lead me to an article about Jacques Derrida’s death at the age of 74 over the weekend. Apparently, he has had cancer of the pancreas since 2003. The “Yahoo News” web site tries to sum up Derrida’s work in two paragraphs:

Derrida’s prolific writings, criticised by some as obscure and nihilist, argue that in literature — but also in fields such as art, music, architecture — there are multiple meanings not necessarily intended or even understood by the creator of the work.

“To ‘deconstruct’ is to take an idea, institution or value and understand its mechanisms by removing the cement that makes it up,” one critic has said.

Ah, yeah, okay. If it were just that simple….

Anyway, rest in peace, Jackie.

about -12 pounds or so

For the last week and a half or so, I’ve been practicing what I guess I would describe as either a “half-assed” version of the South Beach diet, and/or I’ve been taking a break from it. Basically, that means I haven’t been as careful about what I have been eating or not eating, though that hasn’t meant I’ve completely “pigged out.” For example, I’m still not eating much in the way of pasta, potatoes, bread, rice, etc., and I haven’t really missed those things. My weaknesses carb-wise tend to be sweets, especially cookies. They just go so well with coffee for an afternoon snack….

Anyway, this last weekend, Annette and I had a couple of social events that involved plenty of food and drink and fun, and we’re both feeling pretty bloated. There’s nothing on the calendar for this coming weekend, so I think we can go 10 or so days of “phase 1” and try to “shock” our systems back into weight loss.

This “restart” strategy is something I’ve been thinking about for a while because at least one friend of ours told Annette and I that she stopped the South Beach diet for a couple weeks, “restarted” the diet, and lost another 10 pounds. So we’ll see what happens.

I was listening to NPR’s “Fresh Air” the other day, and they had on a roundtable discussion with Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan “crazy sources” Rather. Frankly, it was a pretty self-serving kind of discussion, one where they “expressed concern” about the accuracy of other news outlets like cable and the Internet that are eating away at their ratings. One thing that struck me then as it did last night though was the talk of presidential debates during this discussion. All of them were for more of them, and Rather said that these debates ought to be more like “academic” debates, where there was judging, scoring, etc.

Well, long long ago, I was quite involved in academic debate. I was on my high school debate team, I was on the University of Iowa debate team for about a year and a half, I coached and judged high school debate when I was in college, and I even judged at a few college tournaments when I was in grad school (well, in my MFA program). I haven’t had much to do with debate for 12 or so years, but unless things have changed dramatically, the last thing this country needs is an “academic debate.”

Debate of the sort I participated in involved some fairly strict and complicated rules about a pre-determined topic, it required a lot of evidence and reading of evidence, it frequently involved some pretty crazy claims (such-and-such school lunch program will lead us to a nuclear war), and (oddly) it often involved people talking fast. Really REALLY fast, I mean like an auctioneer fast, because the more “stuff” your team could get out there, the better the chance you had at winning. In short, academic debate wasn’t (and I presume still isn’t) a simple discussion between smart people; it was more like a game wherein one team beat another not necessarily because they had the “best” ideas, but they had the best strategy.

As a side note: I can say that without question, academic debate taught me more about academic writing, reading, and critical thinking than any class I ever took in high school or college. I was going to say ever, but there were a few grad classes that pushed me a bit more….

Anyway, one thing I would like to see more of in these so-called debates between Kerry and Bush is what we used to call “clash” on the issues. I suppose this is part of the “game” that is politics, but I thought there were several exchanges during last night’s “town hall” whatever you want to call it (but not debate, really) where neither candidate addressed the issue or each other’s claim. They returned to their own “talking points” rather than “clash.”

If you were judging an academic debate with “no clash,” you would end up giving some low marks in one way or another. Maybe these presidential debates need some kind of judging system– maybe the moderator would be the judge, or a panel of experts or something. Maybe the judge(s) could score the proceedings and truly pronounce a winner at the end, or maybe they could interrupt the candidates and say something like “You didn’t answer the question. Try again.”

Of course, given the strict rules for these debates that seem designed to make sure nothing unexpected happens, I somehow think my judging panel idea ain’t gonna fly anytime soon.

One of my grad students alterted me to this article, “Some professors won’t give up chalk for technology’s sake.” Two interesting passages:

“Chalkboards were a simple, brilliant invention,” (U of Minnesota professor Tom) Walsh said. “Whiteboards are not an advance.”

Not so, argues Steve Fitzgerald, director of classroom management at the university’s Twin Cities campus. Electronic equipment in classes with blackboards have to be cleaned twice as often, and rooms with chalk dust cost more to clean.

and…

And, the blackboard-whiteboard squabble might soon be overtaken by technologies that will eclipse both, said Diana Oblinger, vice president of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving technology in classrooms.

The competition: computer-generated slide presentations, which already have a foothold in classrooms, to advanced three-dimensional imaging with interactive features that are years away.

I don’t think blackboards/chalkboards or whiteboards are going to go away anytime soon as the result of the new technologies, much in the same way that books aren’t disappearing because of computers. That’s obvious, and other folks in this article say as much.

I do have kind of mixed feelings about whiteboards, though. We have a whiteboard in the computer lab that I teach in all the time, and I have two problems with it. First, it’s quite old, and there’s some kind of finish or coating on the board that has worn off over time. The effect is it’s hard to get the thing even remotely clean. Second, we rarely have whiteboard markers that aren’t all dried out, and what’s worse is no one throws away the old markers. So sometimes, I end up trying two or three different markers before I find one that actually writes clearly. (Of course, I too am one of the offenders who doesn’t dispose of the dried up markers).

Of course, chalkboards are a problem too since chalk is quite frequently in short supply.

See this entry from the blog “Something Awful.” My favorite passage from this entry:

When told not to mention John Kerry’s name in his response, Edwards mentioned it twice. Legend has it that if you say John Kerry’s name three times, he will appear and kill you with his hook hand. Gwen scolded Edwards for trying to invoke evil spirits.

NCTE’s “Inbox” had a link to this Washington Post article, “A Caution on Kids, Technology,” which is really a short piece about this, a press release from the group Alliance for Children about their report, Tech Tonic (this link is to a PDF file). To quote from the press release:

The report strongly criticizes the extensive financial and political connections between education officials and school technology vendors. It urges citizens to wake up to the increasing influence of corporations in policymaking for public education.

“The lack of evidence or an expert consensus that computers will improve student achievement—despite years of efforts by high-tech companies and government agencies to demonstrate otherwise—is itself compelling evidence of the need for change,� Tech Tonic states. “It’s time to scrap…national, state, and local policies that require all students and all teachers to use computers in every grade, and that eliminate even the possibility of alternatives.�

At the same time, the Alliance suggests, high-tech childhood is making children sick—promoting a sedentary life at a time when childhood obesity is at epidemic levels.

I haven’t read the report, and I probably won’t anytime soon since it’s about 125 pages long and I’m looking at a stack of papers, a stack of readings, and a stack of scholarly projects right now, but I do have a couple of thoughts about all this:

* How come none of these folks who are critical of technology in the classrooms– these people, Todd Oppenheimer, etc.– seem to completely ignore the scholarship from folks in fields like mine? I mean, Cindy Selfe’s keynote address/article/book on “the importance of paying attention” has become something of a mantra to people in the computers and writing community, and rightly so. We have “woken up,” so to speak. It’s clear to me that the current “conventional” wisdom in the field is that we have to make thoughtful connections between pedagogy and technology and we can’t just dump a bunch of computers into a classroom and expect them to work. Why aren’t groups like this one aware of this scholarship? Or why is it that they just seem to ignore it?

* Part of what I think the Alliance for Childhood is advocating is a romantic return to a more pure and “technology free” past. Besides the fact that technology of one sort or another has been in classrooms for a long time, it’s also impossible to deny that children and the rest of us in this country live in a high tech and heavily mediated culture. To just ignore this stuff in classrooms isn’t going to make it go away in the rest of childrens’ lives. I would prefer that we account for the technological realities of children’s lives and talk about technologies like computers and such.

* I don’t have time to read this report, but I’d be curious about the definition of “children” here. If by “child,” they mean elementary school aged children, I think they have a bit of a point. I volunteered last year in his first grade classroom, and one of the things I did was work with the kids on the six computers in the room. We did little things– going to some sites where kids read little stories and clicked on things, typing their names or sentences in a word processor. Mostly, it was kind of a “fun time” activity for the kids, and while it did give them some useful “literacy” skills, I frankly thought the kids’ time was better spent doing more traditional reading, writing, and ‘ritmatic sorts of activities.

At the same time, I think there are benefits for kids at this age engaging with computer and media technologies. My son– who, believe me, is quite physically active– has been playing around with computers and video games since he was 3, and I really think he’s actually learned a lot from this kind of electronic “play.” Ultimately, I think it will benefit him as he gets older because the technology won’t be foreign or frightening to him.

For a change of pace, I decided to try this new coffee shop in downtown Ypsilanti called Bombadill’s– right on Michigan, next to the Ypsi public library and kinda kitty-corner from the EMU college of business. Annette and some friends of ours have been raving about the place because it’s nice, very clean, has very friendly owners, and it’s a hell of a lot closer to here than it is to downtown Ann Arbor.

I agree with Annette, and I’ve discovered another bonus: Bombadill’s has free wireless internet access, allowing me to procrastinate from grading by writing this post right now. Totally sweet.

Frankly, downtown Ann Arbor has a lot more to offer me in terms of entertainment, people watching, and creature comforts. But this place is close– close to my house, close to my work– the parking is cheaper and easier, and the coffee (also cheaper than downtown) is good.

Okay, now I really do need to work…

Jenny “Stupid Undergrounds” Edbauer recently posted about how she’s turned off the comments feature on her blog because of the volumes of blog spam she was receiving.

I know exactly how she feels. Even with running the fine software MT-Blacklist, I was spending fifteen minutes to an hour a day getting rid of blog spam when I was supporting my blogs with MovableType. With Blogger and Haloscan? 0. Not a single piece of spam on this site in three + months. And just to compare, go look through the archives at my previous official blog– sorry in advance with what you’ll find.

I’m not completely pleased with Blogger because I still have some of the problems I had with it way back in July, but I think this is more a function of the way I have some browsers configured and installed on my computer than it is with blogger, actually. Haloscan cuts off comments too quickly, and I don’t like the “feel” of the Blogger interface as much as MT.

But I do like the lack of spam, and while I do have some cool blog design envy and I keep contemplating a move to WordPress, I think I’ll probably stick to Blogger, at least until I have the time it would take for me to mess with the WordPress install code.

See this study, “Miracle or Menace: Teaching and Learning with Laptop Computers in the Classroom” which is in Educause Quarterly (Vol. 27, No. 3, 2004). Basically, they gave a bunch of students at West Point laptops and found a “statistically significant” increase in learning as the result of the laptops, as measured by tests and surveys of the students. Definitely worth a read; a few thoughts on my run though the piece:

* West Point is of course a highly selective school, the students all live on campus, and I’m going to guess that theft isn’t that big of a deal on campus. On the other hand, EMU is a school full of non-traditional, returning, and/or commuting students, and EMU is a campus where one always needs to keep an eye on their backpacks. Having said that…

*… I wish some administrator at EMU would suggest at least discussion of a laptop program. Sure, there are a ton of problems, but as this article points out in interesting detail, there are a ton of advantages, too. I was in a meeting just the other day where we were talking about the pressing technological needs on campus. It seems to me that if EMU supported some kind of laptop program, then it could spend less time and money on desktop labs and more on wi-fi networking and such.

* One thing they point out in this study is there a direct relationship between a faculty member’s willingness (or lack thereof) for incorporating the laptops into their teaching and the faculty member’s own use or ownership of a laptop. In other words, teachers who had laptops themselves want to teach with laptops. As someone who has had a laptop for his main (and at times only) computer for around 10 years now, this makes perfect sense to me.

* What I like about this study is that it “triangulates” some research methodologies effectively. Some of it is quantitative, some of it is qualitiative, and together, it tells a good story.

… and she’s four. Her name is Marla Olmstead; this painting is called “Bottomfeeder.”

See this New York Times article, and/or her web site.