the month of June

The central idea of Jay David Bolter’s keynote address, “Open Spaces: Inscription and Technology,” was that we need to rethink what we count as inscription, and for his recent work this includes spaces that are hybrid in terms of including physical location(s). He began by providing a useful “old story” about origins of hypertexts and cyberspace. He admitted that he was retelling an old story but expressed the concern that it is now “so old” that many in attendance here might not know the story. The advent of computer games and Games Studies began to alter the “old story” through the constitution of a procedural rhetoric, use of persuasion, and explanation of how things work. He used Fatworld as an example, and one I hadn’t heard of, September 12th. September 12th gives a simple argument about the ways in which fighting terrorism with violence is an inadequate and problematic approach to dealing with “terrorism.” What is interesting about it, noted Bolter, is that it is an argument embodied in a game. It is rhetoric activated. The problem is that much of traditional literary study/theory does not accept this as part of its tradition(s) of writing.

Bolter moved from games to another “old story” about cyberspace, discussing how it was an abstraction, considered an escape from the “real world” and a release from cultural determinations and the body as marker. Cyberspace and virtual reality were the image of The Matrix. The vision of cyberspace, as represented by John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”, was that we would would actually live this virtual reality. The problem, Bolter argued, was that the experiencing of virtual reality came with a certain disembodiment. The headsets used to experience this “reality” cut users off from the world. A paradigm shift can be seen in the works of Mark Weiser (his idea of ubiquitous computing is interested in the intersection of the human and the virtual/digital/computer) and Howard Rheingold. This paradigm shift is what has informed some of Bolter’s latest work. He’s currently interested in augmented reality. Augmented reality involves this intersection between the human and the computer and involves the physical manipulation of one’s environment based on computer information. Bolter gave the example of an early version of the interactive game, Facade, that has now been reworked as an AR game. In the AR version of Facade, rather than entering into an immersive, seamless, online environment where you are in the apartment of fighting couple, Grace and Trip, the user now uses a headset while navigating around a physical apartment and interacting with Grace and Trip. The possibilities for AR games run the gamut from entertainment to education and allow for new forms of collaboration.

Bolter made the argument that even virtual worlds such as Second Life aren’t really pure cyberspace, as seen by the connections to the physical world via the money made by some Second Life users and by the hacks some students at Georgia Tech have worked on that allow Second Life avatars to walk around their campus.

All of this is to say that there is a clear movement away from the verbal/written and we need ways to take these new forms into account.

I’m sitting in the Greenville-Spartanburg airport on my way home from the Computers and Writing Conference. I have a number of in-progress posts covering the keynote and plenary speakers, as well as some of the sessions I attended. This was my first time at this conference, and overall, I really enjoyed myself and found it to be a more valuable than other conferences I’ve attended. Janice Walker had assured me that we’d be well fed, and she wasn’t kidding. I spent very little money on food — with the exception of a delicious pecan-encrusted blue trout that I had last night at The Last Resort.

I’m also thrilled with the fact that I ended up flying into Greenville SC. First it was just an option to save around $800. But with flights stopped out of Athens and with Atlanta torn up by construction, it just seems like a hassle to have flown into either of those places. I made the drive in less than two hours, and this airport is calm and relaxing AND has real food. I feel as though I’m not in an airport at all.

A few other things I noted about my travel: Being a Northerner who knows little of the South I wasn’t expecting nor accustomed to the billboards on the ride between Greenville and Athens, which included a lot of fireworks, topless/adult entertainment (including the Risque Cafe — where couples are welcome and truck parking is available), and fattening foods. The radio was also interesting. I spent most of the two hours listening to the radio on scan. For some stretches of road there was nothing but country and Christian music. Today, Sunday, there was actually coverage of what was happening at area churches. However, I did get to hear some Rage Against the Machine, which took me waaaay back, and then some Guns N’ Roses, which took me even further back.

It’s looking like it will be time to board soon. I will follow-up with some conference posts soon.

How do you decide which books you will purchase as opposed to loaning, interlibrary loaning, or borrowing from friend or colleague? I’m mostly referring here to academic texts — texts you might be using for your latest project, class, or research in whatever form that might take — but you could also include reading for pleasure or other kinds of books. I feel like there is not much rhyme or reason to my own (sometimes) impulsive book buying. Like today when I hurriedly ordered this, while at the same time feeling like it might not say anything more than what folks like Jenkins, Shirky, and Bolter and Grusin have already been saying. I guess I tend to do it when the book isn’t available at the local library and interlibrary loaning it feels like it will take too long (even when, after picking up the book and paying for it, it can end up sitting there unread for a week or longer). Anyways, I’m just curious about the book attaining habits of folks out there who read and/or skim A LOT of books.

Yesterday, I worked through the results of my faculty surveys — crunching numbers, comparing percentages, calculating averages — all of that statistical stuff that I’ve been avoiding because it freaks me out. In doing this I learned what I already thought I knew: the majority of faculty use proprietary forms of course management systems/software because it is what is either “handed” to them by their institution or because they are (or feel they are) required to use it. Ninety percent of respondents to this survey answered that they chose the CMS they use because a) “This is the standard at my institution” or b) “My institution requires I use this program.” I don’t think that any of the three schools that I surveyed actually do require that faculty use the CMS that the school licenses; however, it is interesting that more than ten percent of faculty who responded perceive it to be that way.

Sixty percent of respondents use either Blackboard or WebCT (not for long, of course).

During a recent discussion of my research materials with one of my committee members, she advised me (as her advisor had done for her) to be juggling at least three things at once. Well, I guess I really took that advice to heart today because I’ve been juggling about four projects simultaneously today — and I mean literally thinking about, writing for, working toward four projects at the same exact time. One minute I’ll be thinking the material that I’m reading and/or listening to makes a great opening for my individual proposal for the Cs, but at the same time I’m thinking I want to incorporate it into my presentation at Computers and Writing in a couple of weeks. Two seconds later I’m checking e-mail and responding to my colleagues on draft after draft of our 4Cs workshop proposal. I toggle from from that to my excel spreadsheet (except don’t tell anyone involved with the C&W conference that I’m using excel!) containing the data from my survey responses, look them over, and begin writing a narrative of the results for my dissertation — a narrative that I hope to work into my C&W paper — and then at the same time I realize some of my results really justify the need for the type of workshop we’re proposing for Cs. I guess all of this is supposed to mean that I’m “working smarter, not harder”, in that my projects are overlapping and intersecting in various ways; however, it is really making my head spin.

Most likely it will be moving, though I have not started the new year, new blog yet. First I wanted to experiment with the “new” customizable templates, because I never really played around with the “new” version of blogger in nor out of beta. But ultimately, all of my other blogging is done via wordpress, and I am finding that I prefer it. I especially like edublogs and am considering starting this personal/academic blog there. I thought to stay here for reasons of readership, but since my sitemeter reports that I don’t really have much of a readership (not that there has been anything here to read), I figure it won’t hurt too much to start over somewhere new (and improved!).

I took an entire semester off from this blog. During that time I began a meditation blog, administered a blog for the ENG105 faculty at CSR, and of course maintained my course blogs.

Currently there has been an interesting (and motivating) discussion taking place in the WPA listserv regarding “time toward PhD completion.” Within that discussion has come the reminder that habit in writing is super important and that daily writing is crucial. As a writing teacher this is obvious to me, yet as with doctors who tell us to eat right and exercise and then are themselves complete couch potatoes, I have been one of those dissertation writers who has not been taking my own writing advice to heart. I feel the pressure when I make time to write that it has be a large amount of time and that it has to produce something momentous (or close to it). But, that isn’t always going to happen, and it is better to write a bit each day than to have a few sporadic pressure-filled marathon writing sessions. Daily writing is actually where blogging was supposed to come in — public accountability always helps too.

A few folk on the listserv have suggested this site — PhinisheD — so I plan to spend some time checking that out and commiserating with other ABDs.

So I guess this has kind of turned into a new year’s resolution post: to return — more diligently — to writing and completing my dissertation and to return to this blog (or this blog at a new location) as part of that more diligent dissertation writing process/habit.

Finally, I have also given some thought to what I want this blog to be. It started out a little over three years ago (!!!) as my attempt to move my work and my voice outside the “ivory tower” and reach a larger audience than my dissertation committee. The blog was to be an account of the research and teaching and teaching as research that my experience as a PhD student was/is comprised of. For the most part I believe that is what this blog has been — along with the occasional (or more than that?) asides. I realize that some readers prefer to read academic blogs that are strictly that, and I have considered making my own blogging fit more into that strictly academic “genre.” However, I’ve come to the realization that that blogs I most enjoy reading are “mixed bag” blogs — the ones that move between pedagogical practice, writing theory, most recent movie viewing, and dinner menus. I’m sure it is the voyeur in me, as I believe it is for many of us working, writing, living, interacting in these online spaces who are also reality TV junkies and fans of memoir and the personal essay, etc. Anyhow, I’m feeling fairly certain that this blog will remain a blend of the personal and the academic. A post I read today is of this opinion:

The mix of professionalism, critique, personal obsession. This is the juxtaposition that drives the best kinds of writing.

I spent the morning kicking around the web through a variety of websites, google searches, JSTOR articles, compfaq and CompPile searches, etc. in search of some specifics on online/virtual/electronic peer review (or writing workshops). I spent about an hour and a half. It was an exhausting search and didn’t yield the kind of results I was hoping for: suggestions for specific technology, logistics, results. From the tidbits I was able to find, I learned that research favors asynchronous over synchronous peer review. This is making me re-think my original idea, which was to use chatzy, in favor of using wikis. Still, I haven’t quite figured out exactly how I am going to do this: have students post a page that is their essay, and then use the discussion section to answer workshop directing questions? Should students be able (in true wiki) fashion to intervene in the original text? My impulse is to say yes, as the author can view the history of changes, but what are the drawbacks to this idea? I’d definitely like to do more reading about this. I’ve gone ahead and ordered myself the book Virtual Peer Review: Teaching and Learning about Writing in Online Environments, despite it being in hardcover and way to much money for me too be spending right now.

In my online travels I also came across some references to designing hybrid courses, so I’d like to look further into those as well.

Do NOT assume that just because you’ve been assigned a hybrid course of which one credit is digital that you’ll be assigned to a computer classroom that allows you to teach the technology necessary to making the digital aspect possible. Such assumptions will hurt you, when, a week before classes start you suddenly check the classroom space and see rows of tables as opposed to computers, and you nearly have a heart attack. These are things you need to ask for and agressively pursue. Please remember this in the future.

I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning toying around with ideas for how I want to integrate RSS into my classes this Fall. All three of the classes I’m teaching are hybrids — a new idea that CSR is working with that has one credit of a four-credit course as a digital credit. In some ways I’ll just be doing what I’ve been doing — having students blog, work with wikis, etc. — only I’ll be able to have that extra credit hour a week to work in these digital arenas as opposed to doing it on top of all the traditional f2f reading and writing that goes on in the classroom. I’m also hoping that students won’t be quite as shocked by and resistant to the online work now that it is “officially” a part of the class (though I’ve always included it in my course descriptions, students have always expressed surprise over the required blogging).

Over the past couple of semesters, I’ve experimented with different approaches to teaching students RSS. First semester we used flock. Second semester I had them use google reader. My concern is that students aren’t checking their readers regularly. This is most important in terms of the class blog, because that is the space with the greatest number of updates and the material pertains to class, assignments, etc. For reading the blogs of their peers, it’s okay to sit down when they’re ready to comment, login to google reader, and start flipping through posts (although my problem with this is that it isn’t the best way to really learn RSS and see the ways in which it can help manage all the web-based content out there).

So recently I’ve decided to take a bit more seriously the claim about email being for old people. Last week I was teaching a group of students between ninth and tenth grade as part of a program called Summerbridge (Philadelphia). We had a sesssion where we met with some admissions counselors, one of whom started talking to the kids about how they tend to communicate. I was actually surprised that all nineteen of the students present have a myspace/facebook account (they seemed so very young to me). Anyhow, the conversation led me to think about ways to integrate RSS with myspace/facebook as part of my upcoming hybrid classes — with the thought that since these are the spaces that students visit each day, then these are the spaces in which to incorporate any class announcements or updates. The question left ahead of me: How?

For myspace I chose the SpringWidgets RSS reader (widget). And for facebook I finally found the application, myRSS, for feed subscriptions. I think these will work well for staying abrest of the class blog updates (for those who have myspace/facebook accounts). The questions I’m left with: Are these widgets/applications the best way to utilize RSS? Probably not. Are they appropriate for keeping the subscriptions to all of their classmates’ blogs? Probably not. What about students who don’t have a myspace or facebook?

Ultimately, I think I will have them use google reader as a supplement to these additions on their social networking site of choice. I don’t want any of this to seem too cumbersome, because I really want students to see the ways in which RSS can help make their learning, researching, etc. processes more effective and efficient (and more interesting and diverse to some extent). For now I’ll continue to play around with various ideas, and on the first day of class, I’ll really need to get a sense of how many students have these accounts (and utilize them regularly) that will certainly affect and direct my thinking and practice in terms of RSS (and other digital practices) for this Fall semester.

Yesterday, I stayed in bed, drinking tea and watching Zizek. I called it work.

Last week we saw Once. I was truly taken with this movie. I think I’ve thought about it every day since I’ve seen it. The film is so completely driven by music that D and I could sing the songs upon exiting the theater (which we did). I believe that I keep thinking about it because of how much was kept from the viewer, how much was held back. But Daynah Burnett’s review for PopMatters explains it better than I can:

Still, and even though its ethos is decidedly bohemian, the film never lapses into romantic idealism. At no point do the leads make you swoon or root too hard for their union. Rather, they hold so much back from themselves and each other, it’s as though as you don’t know them, but only glimpsed them in passing.

This summer we’ve also seen Waitress, which is tough to watch without thinking about the murder of writer, director, acctress Adrienne Shelly. And Knocked Up — hil-arious.

We also watched Lovely and Amazing, which I had never seen. I liked it — better than Friends with Money (both from Nicole Holofcener).