Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archives: "For instance, Ong was quite adimate about the fact that not only does primary orality not exist anymore, we, as literate people, are unable to accurately comprehend a primary orality consciousness. This doesn't mean that primary orality is primitive, it's just different. It's like anything else. Once you've had a cognitive shift, once you've obtained a new perspective, or learned a new bit of information, you can't unshift or return to the pre-changed understanding of an issue. For instance, at some point when studying Ezra Pound, one will learn that he had become an anti-Semite and a supporter of Mussolini. Upon learning this, one can choose to reject Pound as a subject of study, one can use this information to better understand Pound's work, or one can ignore it. What one can't do is unlearn this information or return to a time when they didn't know this about Pound. Because literacy permeates our society, literacy permeates our consciousness and we can't unlearn this cognitive shift. What Ong isn't addressing here is individual literacy."

Sometime between now and Friday, go to page 37 and complete the "believing/doubting" assignment. Post the results to your weblog. You should spend 15 minutes writing for and against the statement of your choosing. If you don't like the ones provided, come up with your own. Contact me or post a comment if you have questions about this. And remember, I am in 126g--swing by and say hi, or to ask for help, etc.

For class on Wednesday: Be sure and read the first two chapters of Allyn and Bacon's Guide to Writing. We'll be doing some in-class activities, and life will get boring in a hurry if you haven't done the reading.



Also, please paste the address of your weblog into the comments at the end of this post. If you just arrived today, then go to blogger.com (links all over this page) and create a weblog. Then come back here and tell me the address. Yes, I know you wrote down your addresses in class, but it's easier for me to steal the code from the comments in order to put them here on the web page.

Yahoo! Groups : uvscwrite



The above link connects to our class email list. Please subscribe if you have not done so.

Alliance for Computers and Writing (ACW): "Alliance for Computers and Writing (ACW) "

Please try downloading and installing this piece of software on your respective machines:



Firefox.





After you've downloaded it to the desktop, double-click to install. Really, it's a good thing.

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books: "One of the most mysterious of writing�s immaterial properties is what people call �voice.� Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as �the voice on the page.� Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid clich�, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the �voice.� There are probably all kinds of literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice, but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one. Grammatical correctness doesn�t insure it. Calculated incorrectness doesn�t, either. Ingenuity, wit, sarcasm, euphony, frequent outbreaks of the first-person singular�any of these can enliven prose without giving it a voice. You can set the stage as elaborately as you like, but either the phantom appears or it doesn�t."

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books

Danny O'Brien explores the latest, cheapest, flash drive combo units.

Oblomovka: I'm still in the middle of deciding. But I've learnt three lessons: one, the folk who make the sensible engineering choices are probably the smarter and cheaper manufacturers too. Two: you always do your best consumer research in the two hours after you bought the goods. Three: no matter how long you stay out of the gadget rat race, there's always one more object of desire."

The Chronicle: 6/6/2003: Scholars Who Blog: "To a remarkable degree, blogs also appear to bring full professors, adjuncts, and students onto a level field. With no evident condescension, senior faculty bloggers routinely link to the political-affairs blog maintained by Matthew Yglesias, a senior at Harvard University. 'Nobody knew my name when we started this,' says Josh Chafetz, a current Rhodes scholar whose OxBlog, written with two fellow Americans at Oxford, has made him a well-known figure among academic bloggers. 'In many ways it really is almost a pure marketplace of ideas. You can build up a readership. You just have to write things that people like.'

'You do see some of the barriers of rank and hierarchy break down,' says the woman who blogs pseudonymously as the Invisible Adjunct. (She granted an interview on the condition that her identity not be revealed.) 'An undergraduate and an adjunct can speak to someone with tenure on a more or less equal footing.'"

: "Actor-network theory (ANT) is concerned with the processes by which scientific disputes become closed, ideas accepted, tools and methods adopted - that is, with how decisions are made about what is known. These decisions are often - usually - temporary, but closing the black box, in Latour's terms, of disputes allows people to take the work of others as a resource and move on, rather than continually reproducing and questioning it. According to their model, the work of science consists of the enrollment and juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements - rats, test tubes, colleagues, journal articles, funders, grants, papers at scientific conferences, and so on - which need continual management. They conclude that scientists' work is 'the simultaneous reconstruction of social contexts of which they form a part - labs simultaneously rebuild and link the social and natural contexts upon which they act.'
from Ole Hanseth
ANT was born out of ongoing efforts within the field called social studies of science and technology. The field of social studies of technology in general and ANT in particular are evolving rapidly. When going about doing your business -- driving your car or writing a document using a word-processor -- there are a lot of things that influence how you do it. For instance, when driving a car, you are influenced by traffic regulations, prior driving experience and the car's manoeuvring abilities, the use of a word-processor is influenced by earlier experience using it, the functionality of the word-processor and so forth. All of these factors are related or connected to how you act. You do not go about doing your business in a total vacuum but rather under the influence of a wide range of surrounding factors. The act you are carrying out and all of these influencing factors should be considered together. This is exactly what th"

Gmail - [techrhet] world's largest wi-fi zone


Polywogs and blogs: we should all in the end be astonished at the vast changes wrought by the gimmicks themselves. What will work will work, but it's the pace of change that I would like to hasten, and I've learned that the biggest problem there is not functionality but the psychology of our administrators. Good programs and good teachers will continue to be ploughed under because their cool technology was not rhetorically situated. Jeff may criticize "conformity," but there are advantages to framing what we do in terms that powerful people understand.

Southpinellas: SPC tech professor gives his textbooks for free: "Basham views the price of learning Cisco as a manifestation of class and status. Information shouldn't be accessible only to the well-off, he said.

The folks at lulu.com understand.

'It's the open source philosophy,' said Stephen Fraser, spokesperson for lulu.com. 'Open source is sort of a computer geek thing, but a lot of academics share this conviction that hoarding knowledge does nobody any good. The best way to leverage knowledge is to share it.'

"

Things I am going to do differently next term:



1. give more credit in class for peer feedback--make it a bigger part of the course



2. spend more time on sentence construction and organization



3. continue readings/discussions through the end of course



4. require 1-page blog entries every single darn day



5. get my responses returned more quickly



6. start an email list for the class



7. quit using webct, perhaps.

Jack Feeny reviews: Deep Purple: "Given the length of time Deep Purple have been together it has become common practice to divide the band into three different, distinct entities. The three ages of Deep Purple, if you will. There was Deep Purple mk I, a somewhat unsuccessful sixties hippy band; Deep Purple mk II, an innovative and influential hard rock band; and Deep Purple mk III, a derivative and wholly uninteresting hard rock band. I'll give you four guesses to work out which era I've concentrated on. Yep, Deep Purple mk II, but then you knew that anyway, didn't you?"

Jack Feeny reviews: Deep Purple: "Given the length of time Deep Purple have been together it has become common practice to divide the band into three different, distinct entities. The three ages of Deep Purple, if you will. There was Deep Purple mk I, a somewhat unsuccessful sixties hippy band; Deep Purple mk II, an innovative and influential hard rock band; and Deep Purple mk III, a derivative and wholly uninteresting hard rock band. I'll give you four guesses to work out which era I've concentrated on. Yep, Deep Purple mk II, but then you knew that anyway, didn't you?"

Getfitnow.com Fitness and Health Forums: Is it really safe to do shoulders on days 2&5?:





"I'm doing the 14-day workout 2. When doing chest, triceps, biceps etc. on days 1&4 there is always going to be an amount of load on the shoulders, eg. when doing the bench press. I'm afraid my shoulders aren't getting any rest, as there is shoulder involvement 4 days a week. I know it's possible to partly isolate the chest muscle when doing the bench press, but I believe there is still some involvement of the shoulders"

The weird thing I saw in the past week:



In Hawaii, they have these little scooter cars with one rear wheel and two front wheels. They're red, and egg shaped, and have a little black rollbar. As I was waiting for the airport shuttle outside my hotel I saw one of these come whining up the street with two really big, sunburned American tourists hanging out of it. I wept because I didn't get a picture.



The other weird but cool thing was seeing 60+ surfers with long, graying hair, heading down to the beach, walking through the waves of tourists, carrying their boards.

How Websites Learn | Acts of Volition: "A look at how Stuart Brand’s classic work of social and architectural criticism, How Buildings Learn, applies to web design and development."

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog



An interesting thread on grammar vs. editing. You may find it useful.

Clay Spinuzzi's Reading List: "What really struck me about the book, though, was that the author seems so preoccupied with authenticity. He talks in great detail about how artificial scents and smells are formulated, about how kids in Colorado Springs no longer wear cowboy hats as the 'real' Coloradans did, about how chains actually got started compared to what is said in their literature. Maybe it's because I'm GenX, but I really don't have the preoccupation with authenticity that Schlosser does. Of course these restaurants are selling a brand, a mood, an experience. So do universities and churches, often with the same level of conscious cultivation. "

jrice: "Why does this need to be online? Is there a difference between the assignment (blog a reaction, follow these questions for guidance as you shape your reaction) and what you would find in a print-textbook? No, of course not. Here is a very good example of what I always draw attention to regarding blogging. This assignment really has nothing to with using the weblog for pedagogical purposes. Take away the blog, have students do the work on paper, and the result is the same."

Stupid Undergrounds

Collin vs. Blog

Network(ed) Rhetorics: visualizing conversation

gladwell dot com / The Coolhunt: "One day last month, Baysie took me on a coolhunt to the Bronx and Harlem, lugging a big black canvas bag with twenty-four different shoes that Reebok is about to bring out, and as we drove down Fordham Road, she had her head out the window like a little kid, checking out what everyone on the street was wearing. We went to Dr. Jay's, which is the cool place to buy sneakers in the Bronx, and Baysie crouched down on the floor and started pulling the shoes out of her bag one by one, soliciting opinions from customers who gathered around and asking one question after another, in rapid sequence. One guy she listened closely to was maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a diamond stud in his ear and a thin beard. He was wearing a Polo baseball cap, a brown leather jacket, and the big, oversized leather boots that are everywhere uptown right now. Baysie would hand him a shoe and he would hold it, look at the top, and move it up and down and flip it over. The first one he didn't like: 'Oh-kay.' The second one he hated: he made a growling sound in his throat even before Baysie could give it to him, as if to say, 'Put it back in the bag-now!' But when she handed him a new DMX RXT-a low-cut run/walk shoe in white and blue and mesh with a translucent 'ice' sole, which retails for a hundred and ten dollars-he looked at it long and hard and shook his head in pure admiration and just said two words, dragging each of them out: 'No doubt.'"

gladwell dot com / The Coolhunt: "One day last month, Baysie took me on a coolhunt to the Bronx and Harlem, lugging a big black canvas bag with twenty-four different shoes that Reebok is about to bring out, and as we drove down Fordham Road, she had her head out the window like a little kid, checking out what everyone on the street was wearing. We went to Dr. Jay's, which is the cool place to buy sneakers in the Bronx, and Baysie crouched down on the floor and started pulling the shoes out of her bag one by one, soliciting opinions from customers who gathered around and asking one question after another, in rapid sequence. One guy she listened closely to was maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a diamond stud in his ear and a thin beard. He was wearing a Polo baseball cap, a brown leather jacket, and the big, oversized leather boots that are everywhere uptown right now. Baysie would hand him a shoe and he would hold it, look at the top, and move it up and down and flip it over. The first one he didn't like: 'Oh-kay.' The second one he hated: he made a growling sound in his throat even before Baysie could give it to him, as if to say, 'Put it back in the bag-now!' But when she handed him a new DMX RXT-a low-cut run/walk shoe in white and blue and mesh with a translucent 'ice' sole, which retails for a hundred and ten dollars-he looked at it long and hard and shook his head in pure admiration and just said two words, dragging each of them out: 'No doubt.'"

If you'd like a little extra credit, read the above article and write a few paragraphs in response on your website.

How Websites Learn | Acts of Volition

this is a bold sentence



Italics have nothing to do with Italy. Or do they



titles should be underlined or italicized



tag + body + closing tag

UVSC Online Writing Lab Resources: "The following handouts were created by the UVSC Writing Center and are available for all educational purposes (classroom instruction, tutoring, web links, etc.), as long as source information is given.

"



A link to APA style guides and other good handouts.

Hello class,



I hope that your weekends were productive and fun. No, really.



Currently your final draft of the current assignment is due this coming Friday. Some of you haven't posted your outlines and rough drafts to your weblogs, so be sure to do that as soon as possible. Also, I haven't seen much evidence of responses to each other's drafts, in part because not all of the drafts have been posted to your respective weblogs.

Please take advantage of this time to get as much writing done as possible

The Open Source Portfolio Initiative - The Open Source Portfolio Initiative is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software available.: "he Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software available."

Preface of Small Pieces - David Weinberger

Face to Face with Alan Kay

Squeakland interviews Alan Kay.

Free Culture

Awlcheck explained

Moulthrop - Computers And Writing 2004

EMMA's XML Potential

Face to Face with Alan Kay: "Q: You often say that the computer revolution hasn't happened yet. What do you mean by that?
A: If you look with a squinty eye at most of personal computing today, you'll see we're basically just automating paper—using digital versions of documents and mail. But as was the case with the invention of the printing press, the interesting thing about the computer is that it allows you to have new ways of representing things, new ways to argue about things, and new kinds of fluencies.


Most schools define computer literacy as being able to operate Microsoft Office and maybe do a little web design. They're missing the point. That's like saying, 'If you know which end of a book to hold up, and you know how to turn to Chapter Three, then you're literate.'


Literature is first and foremost about having ideas important enough to discuss and write down in some form. So you have to ask, 'What is the literature that is best written down on a computer?' One answer is to make a dynamic simulation of some idea that you think is important, a simulation that you can play with and that you can learn from.
"

Electronic Portfolios Resources

AAHE's resources, as suggested by Mday.

Electronic Portfolio Learning at Northern Illinois University

Young scholars,



I'm about four time zones away and so I'm a little late with posting instructions for today. Essentially, I need you to do two things today:



1. post the roughest of drafts of your current assignment to your weblog. Please try to get at least four pages up there. Please have those submitted by 5pm. You can try to build on the outlines and informal writing you've already put on your "blog" (short for "weblog")





2. Sometime before Monday, please respond to at least two papers, through using the weblog links on this page. Try to respond to someone you haven't read before. You might consider asking and answering the following questions:



a. What is the strongest, most interesting part of this draft, and why?

b. Sometimes rough drafts contain portions that look really interesting, but need more description and examples. For example, someone might write, "Ever since I was released from prison, my opinion of school metal detectors has changed." A sentence like this begs for examples of the author's new attitude, and for more background info on their prison time. Ok, lame example. Tell your author what you would like to hear more of.



3. What portions of this draft do you find less-than-clear or difficult to follow?



Thanks, and please post comments or email me: craniac@gmail.com with your questions.

Learning Record Online Guided Tour for Teachers : page 4

Notes from the Learning Record Online session.

As I mentioned last class period, I am away at an academic conference. In order to receive credit for coming to class today, you need to complete the following before 5pm Wednesday evening.



1. Freewrite for 10 minutes or 500 words on your blog, about possible paper topics.



2. Read each other's blogs and comment on their possible paper topics, telling them what you thing looks the most interesting.



3. Read chapter eight, "the exploratory essay" including the essays. Tell me what you think of the included essays in the comments link below this post. Be expansive, don't just write, "it was ok."



4. Post a rough outline of your next paper to your weblog



5. Extra credit: figure out how to put an image in a weblog entry. Then do so. And tell the class how you did it.

An update from The Straight Dope to an earlier decapitation story. Creep city.



The Straight Dope: Does the head remain briefly conscious after decapitation?: "In one early series of experiments, an anatomist claimed that decapitated heads reacted to stimuli, with one victim turning his eyes toward a speaker 15 minutes after having been beheaded. (Today we know brain death would have occurred long before.) In 1836 the murderer Lacenaire agreed to wink after execution. He didn't. Attempts to elicit a reaction from the head of the murderer Prunier in 1879 were also fruitless. The following year a doctor pumped blood from a living dog into the head of the murderer and rapist Menesclou three hours after execution. The lips trembled, the eyelids twitched, and the head seemed about to speak, although no words emerged. In 1905 another doctor claimed that when he called the name of the murderer Languille just after decapitation, the head opened its eyes and focused on him."

Assignment #4: Four ways of looking at a mandatory composition essay



To recap what we discussed in class--this is sort of the equivalent of those "choose your own adventure" books. Work through the following steps, one at a time:



1. choose one of four possible essay topics



a. A fun activity that I enjoy doing

b. Writing about a place or event

c. Writing about a song

d. Describe your life ten years from now. Use research to describe current trends and how they might evolve in the future.



2. After you have chosen one of the above categories, choose a more specific topic (for example, if you chose "fun activity" then you should narrow it down to "soccer" or "wakeboarding" or something specific).



3. Once you have your topic narrowed down, your essay will be composed of three sections.



Section I: You will write about your subject from a personal perspective



Section II: You will look at your subject from a research perspective, providing background information, a historical perspective, the role of your subject in culture at large, etc.



Section III: Final analysis: in this section, you will try to make connections between your personal experiences and the research/historical perspective. How does your perspective differ from the historical/research perspective? How is it the same? What other insights have you learned from your experience and research regarding this subject?





The entire paper should be at *least* six pages, hopefully more.



The first rough draft is due by 5pm June 11th, submitted to Webct.



The Final draft is due 5pm June 18th, submitted to Webct.



Your final draft should include 2-4 sources, in APA style. More on this later



Your final draft should be intentionally designed, with appropriate font and layout decisions, and at least two photographs or illustrations.





Please draw upon our in-class discussion as well for ideas on how to complete this assignment.

Interview with Chuck D & Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy: "How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop



An interview with Public Enemy's Chuck D and Hank Shocklee"

My over conservative VIEWS: "It weaves a dark thread

And it knows its way

Its narrow figure hides its deep vine

But dammit it's a pencil

Heh. That's it. A Pencil."

English 1010 Class: "The watch

1. I looking at the time to see

when I get out of here. With the second

hand moving aroud the watch.



2. The stainless steel shines from

the class rooms lights above

the watch.



3. Throughout the day he is my best friend

and my worrest enemy."

1010 Journal: "The computer sits on the desk.

I type on the computer.

It takes up time.



I am talking with Jon.

The computer sits quietly.

I don't know what I am doing.



The teacher comes in.

He sits at his desk.

The shadow of the computer.

Rests on his shirt.



You walk in the classroom.

The computer sits with its friends.

They outline the wall.

Oh, what a day! "

Me: "Flying through the air,

Smashing into the ground and bouncing,

like a volleyball.

The volleyball floats up out of my hands gracefully,

then a hand converges on it and slaps it,

so is my dating life.

Being knocked around without control,

feeling like I have no where to go,

is the life of a volleyball.

Bump, set, spike is how we do things,

in volleyball. "

A hiker is alone.

A hiker with a gps unit

is a mobile node in a satellite network

made of muscle, blood and oxygen



Sailors once died

for lack of longitude

now we pay thousands

for the gift of being lost

My attempt





The sun shone brightly

as we drove our minivan

over the deeply-rutted clay road

led by my Etrex

we found echoes of someone's life

and a metal ammo box full of hot wheel cars

Today in class:



1. Read and respond to Wallace Stevens poem on weblog

2. Talk about deadlines and online participation

3. Discuss portfolios and the joys of revision

4. Brainstorm about next paper. Some constraints. It must:

• be somewhat fun
  
  
• 6+ pages
  
  
• Incorporate using at least two sources
  
  
• be personally interesting
  
  
• be academic, loosely defined
  
  
• incorporate a little design and visual elements
  
  

A poem by Wallace Stevens:



Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird



                     1

           Among twenty snowy mountains,

           The only moving thing

           Was the eye of the blackbird.



                     2

           I was of three minds,

           Like a tree

           In which there are three blackbirds.



                     3

           The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

           It was a small part of the pantomime.



                     4

           A man and a woman

           Are one.

           A man and a woman and a blackbird

           Are one.



                     5

           I do not know which to prefer,

           The beauty of inflections

           Or the beauty of innuendoes,

           The blackbird whistling

           Or just after.



                     6

           Icicles filled the long window

           With barbaric glass.

           The shadow of the blackbird

           Crossed it to and fro.

           The mood

           Traced in the shadow

           An indecipherable cause.



                     7

           O thin men of Haddam,

           Why do you imagine golden birds?

           Do you not see how the blackbird

           Walks around the feet

           Of the women about you?



                     8

           I know noble accents

           And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

           But I know, too,

           That the blackbird is involved

           In what I know.



                     9

           When the blackbird flew out of sight,

           It marked the edge

           Of one of many circles.



                     10

           At the sight of blackbirds

           Flying in a green light,

           Even the bawds of euphony

           Would cry out sharply.



                     11

           He rode over Connecticut

           In a glass coach.

           Once, a fear pierced him,

           In that he mistook

           The shadow of his equipage

           For blackbirds.



                     12

           The river is moving.

           The blackbird must be flying.



                     13

           It was evening all afternoon.

           It was snowing

           And it was going to snow.

           The blackbird sat

           In the cedar-limbs.

Ok, I got several of your number three papers responded to late, but they should all be up. If you are one of those who got your paper late and would like a little more time for your portfolio, please let me know.

If you managed to get your third paper uploaded to webct, then I've responded to it.



Third paper responses



If your third paper is stuck on your blog still, then it will take me a little while longer to respond. I will post my comments directly on the blog, so keep changing. Right now I'm hiding out, responding to these, but my wife will be awake soon (she is feeding our new daughter all night and is exhausted) so I need to get home and try and find the time to respond later today during the kids naptime.



[currently listening to: The Ghost of Tom Joad]

My responses to your second paper, doubting/believing.



click here.



For the most part I left comments as footnotes within the body of your paper. Please let me know if you have any trouble reading them.

Momaday, Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain.



A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The hardest weather in the world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in the summer the prairie is an anvil's edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath you feet....At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems to writhe in fire. Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time.

Michael B?rub? Online



"Interestingly, when I went to graduate school and, toward the end of my first year at Virginia, started playing with Michael Dean and Todd Wilson in a band called Baby Opaque, I never felt a moment's anxiety about performing; I was so consumed with graduate-school anxiety that I didn't have any anxiety left over for music. I would show up for gigs, set up, sound check, play, pack up, and go home, all as if I were fixing sinks or something. Then when Nick was born, when I was 24, I was so consumed with new-parent-anxiety that I didn't have any anxiety left over for my dissertation, and . . . you get the idea. By the same logic, surely one of the reasons that I didn't have too many assistant-professor tenure-track anxieties in the early 1990s was that I was far more worried about how to take care of a newborn with Down syndrome.



Blog anxiety . . . what a silly thing. Maybe I'll go play some music instead."

A recap of today's class:

For next class period please closely read pages 518-530 and bring all of your work to class for revision.

today in class:



1. donuts and juice

2. review second essay

3. discuss use of detail

4. discuss transitions

5. work on second essay revisions in class

6. move all deadlines back

7. make presentation assignments for rest of semester.

DrWeil.com Question: Had It With a Hacking Cough?: "If you have a productive (non-dry) bronchial cough but bacterial infection is not present (the sputum culture will confirm that), I do not recommend taking antibiotics. The best treatments are the usual rest and fluids plus frequent herbal (sage and/or eucalyptus) steam inhalation. Warm steam soothes the irritated lining of the bronchial tubes, loosens secretions and promotes healing, and the aromatic herbs discourage secondary bacterial growth. An expectorant cough syrup might be of help."

5/19/04, Commencement Address by Bono - Almanac Between Issues: "Sing the melody line you hear in your own head, remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe your parents any explanations, you don't owe your professors any explanations. You know I used to think the future was solid or fixed, something you inherited like an old building that you move into when the previous generation moves out or gets chased out.



But it's not. The future is not fixed, it's fluid. You can build your own building, or hut or condo, whatever; this is the metaphor part of the speech by the way.



But my point is that the world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape. Now if I were a folksinger I'd immediately launch into 'If I Had a Hammer' right now get you all singing and swaying. But as I say I come from punk rock, so I'd rather have the bloody hammer right here in my fist.



That's what this degree of yours is, a blunt instrument. So go forth and build something with it. Remember what John Adams said about Ben Franklin, 'He does not hesitate at our boldest Measures but rather seems to think us too irresolute.'"



Inspiring words from Bono! (he's a rock star, you know.)

class:



I"m sicker today than I was Wednesday, and don't want to share the fun with all of you. Frankly, I've been too worn out from this to finish responding to your papers. In the meantime, revise what you can, and I'll extend all the necessary deadlines to compensate for this.



I will be checking email and the comments section of this page if you have any questions. I'm sorry about this, but my lungs are just chock full of . . . you know.



I am on campus, briefly, and will be going home to recuperate about 10 am. Thanks.



Please read chapter eight for next week. And don't forget to post a summary of chapter 7 to your weblog, so show me you've actually read it.

Theories of Psychological Treatment | Theoretical Approaches: Psychoanalysis, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy



"Prayer, although not much understood in the field of psychology, is an extraordinary—and I mean that literally: extra-ordinary, beyond the ordinary—form of cognitive-behavioral treatment. It can free you from all neurotic anxiety if you pray out of pure love, with all your mind and all your heart and all your strength as a renunciation of your social-psychological identity and pride."

It looks like most of you still haven't submitted the third paper to webct, so I'll work off of your weblog posting of the paper. Look there for comments--

Miller showing his age: "AUBURN HILLS -- A 38-year-old man playing a young man's sport looked every bit his age Wednesday night. Though foolhardy to declare Reggie Miller null and void in any playoff series, since few players have produced postseason dramatics with his career-long consistency, the scrutiny exists."



Oh great. I turn 38 in August.

TheFeature :: An Architect in the City of Bits: "What have you learned from the research so far?



Mitchell: The implications of location-awareness are far from obvious. The technology enables you to reconsider things as fundamental as, say, signage in a city. For example, we traditionally think of a stop sign as part of the fixed infrastructure of the city. But if you have a location-aware automobile, you can shift the stop sign to the dashboard so it pops up when you approach an intersection. If you have whole networks of location aware vehicles, the system becomes more elaborate. Perhaps the stop sign only pops up when there's another car coming from the opposite direction. You could even have elaborate intersection priority schemes. "

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > For Some, the Blogging Never Stops: "Sometimes, too, the realization that no one is reading sets in. A few blogs have thousands of readers, but never have so many people written so much to be read by so few. By Jupiter Research's estimate, only 4 percent of online users read blogs.



Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves."

Dear writing students,



I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is I forgot to create a place to submit your third assignment until about 10 minutes ago. The good news is you have until noon on Thursday to submit it, and with all that extra time I'm confident that every single paper I get is going to be amazing.



We had grilled chicken for dinner tonight, and it was ok, but I have to tell you--marinating works so much better than just brushing on the lemon and garlic. That is all.

Links to images of class members, so I can place names with faces:



class pics

Dear class:

I am sick today, and my throat feels like I have been gargling Drano (tm). Please forgive my absence. (update: I managed to heroically make it to class) But wait! There are still some things you can do until we meet again on Friday. And here they are:

1. Post your latest draft of our third assignment to your weblog.

2. Go to the class webpage, and respond to the paper of the person whose name is linked with yours below. If there is no paper posted at that site, then go to the next person in line. I've put you in pairs below. You should respond in the comments section of the weblog.

Mandy Melissa	Brigham Aimee	Afton Isaiah	Shaun Lauren
Johnathan John S.	Jon Hunt Ben H.	Michael F. Annie P.	Kirsten O. Jennifer C.	Diego P. Adam B.	Chris T. J. Martin

3. How should you respond to each other's papers? Good question. I would like you to answer the following questions, in mind-numbing detail:

I. Your author has been asked to describe the same scene from both positive and negative angles of vision. Of the two descriptions, which one seems most accurate to you, and why? Include examples from the original text



II. What was the best part of this paper? What part didn't work? Include examples of each, with a justification for your choice.



III. What are the most useful points made in the conclusion? What else could be said in the conclusion that was overlooked?

For Wednesday: Read chapter 7, and be ready for a quiz!



also, bring in your current draft of assignment #3.

English 1010 Class: "I didn't go to sleep last night till 3 in the morning because I went Off Roading with a couple of my friends and we did that till 2 in the morning then when I got home we continued to stay up a watch Zoolander the movie"

1010 Journal: "There is a three year old boy running around my table, his father calls him over. The kid decides he isn't going to listen to his father and he takes off running. The dad takes off to chase him down. The kid needs ridilin. Girl fixes her shirt as she is walking buy, takes a glance in my direction. An overweight couple storm out of the store, there cart seems to be full of junk food. They probably wonder why they are over weight. "

My over conservative VIEWS: "Relating to older kids, there are bullies, but this is the only time I will intervene: A eleven year old tires to throw his weight around and begins to call a younger girl a number of nasty (I don't need to elaborate upon it)names, I tell him if he continues this crap, then I will show him the fastest way to the principals office, or even to the police office. He didn't listen, so a stronger show of force was required. More or less to say, being much larger and older has its values"

first two chapters: "The parking lot is no respector of persons or their rides. There are the tall the short the thin the fat the okd the young the white the black and everthing inbetween.



Some have ridden their bikes to this place. Others have walked. Some come in gym shorts with a powerful walk as though this was their training center.



Most women have their children whith them. Some of the elderly have bbruoght their husbands. Still ather women are in groups of two or thhree. Very few come alone."

English 1010: " When the car stopped the odometer read 112 miles, that is a long time to be on a dirt road going 30 mph"

English 1010: "-cartboy brings a load of carts in from teh parking lot and leaves the carts with out a word to the greeter and turns and leaves, scratching his butt"

English 1010: "-a future Relief Society president enters the building and with the fakest smile i've ever seen

-she laughs after everything she says to the greeter and prances into the store as if on a cloud, no one is that happy"

english1010:

"The two mexicans are still talking but at a new location, the kid with the tractor looks really bored for now he's just sitting there impatiantly looking at the two mexicans. A guy appears to be talking to someone on the level below, but he looks funny with all his hand gestures for I only see him and no one he's talking to."

:: Xinhuanet - English ::: "The Foreign Ministry and Chinese Embassy in France are trying their best to handle properly the affairs of the Chinese victims, make arrangements for Chinese survivors, and conduct negotiations with the French side on compensation issues, said sources with the Foreign Ministry here Monday"

Mobile Phones Move Beyond Voice: "Currently a cultural phenomenon in the UK, text messaging is catching on with U.S. mobile phone users. More than one-third, or roughly 38 million, of U.S. wireless phone owners use SMS [define], and increased usage will likely spur further adoption. "

USB webcam driver for Mac OS X: "Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can you include support in your driver?

A: Generally, no - not because we don't want to, but usually we don't have such a camera for testing available and we don't have the necessary developer documentation. If you can provide me with both, contact us. "

quote to get us moving: "Sooner or later in life comes a time when it is performance that counts - not promises, no possibilities, not potentialities - but performance...the law of improvement is the law...of participation, of performance.

- Richard L. Evans

so we have to finish our theses... "

For your third assignment: Angle of Vision



It's based on chapter five, so re-read that chapter in Allyn and Bacon's Guide to Writing if you need a refresher. Specifically, your assignment is to



(1) locate a research site with people in it: work, school, library, car wash, meeting, club, church, health club, and



(2) observe that site for at least a solid hour. You can break that down into several visits of 20 minutes each, or one single visit of 60+ minutes. You need to then



(3) take detailed, descriptive notes of everything you see. It's not uncommon to get 3-5 pages of notes from a single observation. Next, you should



(4) Expand those notes with even more descriptive detail, then



(5) write an essay in which you describe the scenario you witnessed, first with a negative angle of vision, then with a positive angle of vision. Again, refer to chapter five for numerous examples of this. Each description should be at least 250 words long. Finally,



(6) write a conclusion of 400 words or so, describing what you learned from writing from these two perspectives.



PLEASE BRING YOUR OBSERVATION NOTES TO CLASS ON FRIDAY

1. get poster software on laptop

2. write a. about labs

3. record streaming radio (radio paradise) and look for mp3 slicing software.

4. audio hijack

5. two clips for crosman

6. optical sight question.

7. put assignments online, as well as Torino's response

8. download and respond to draft 2.

9. respond to bronwyn's note

10. use google for tasks and addresses, perhaps.

11. grab more dvds for trip. Connections.

12. Mark out good passages for presentation.

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "As the previous owner of used VWs - a Golf, a Jetta, and a Passat, I can answer that question with a hearty 'YES'. Go get a new car. Once a VW starts to go, it just sucks up money like a high-dollar stripper."

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "I'd walk away - I loved my 85 GTI, (and my family has owned an original Beetle, 5 Rabbit/Golfs and 2 Passats) but once it crossed 150K, it was just to expensive to continue the affair. The problem with a car that age (as scarabic has pointed out), even with a relatively young engine, is all the other stuff that doesn't even fail, per se, but just reaches the end of its useful life. Brake discs and rotors, shocks and struts, shift linkage, CV joints, instrument lights (you don't even want to guess the labor charge to pull apart a dashboard and replace a 50-cent bulb, not that it's a critical repair) and on and on.



If I had $6K and a car older than say, 7 or 8 years, I'd rent a Sawz-All, chop the roof off the existing car, drive my new convertible into the ground (we did this with a '79 Rabbit) and put my remaining $5950 down on a new car or something used coming off lease with a manufacturer's warranty. If the payment is still too high, I'd look for something else. $6K will buy you a mid to late '90s Honda Civic, for example."

CarFilter: Pimp out my 88 VW Golf, or put $5k into a newer, more reliable car? [more inside]



I've got an inherited 1988 VW Golf. It seems like every three months I'm dropping $3-500 bucks on a repair--wheel bearings, front end work, o2 sensor dead, etc.



the average repair cost per month for this car is about $85, not counting mileage, tires, oil changes and other consumables. It gets 27 mpg on my 40 minute (one way) commute.



My practical need is to get something that won't require as much maintenance and get my to work reliably and reasonably quietly. I'd like to keep my loan payments to around $100-$150, so maybe a low-mileage Saturn or something will do the trick.



However, I'm 37, we own a minivan, first mortgage, etc. and I'd really like to get something a little more fun to drive, that corners well. Despite its age-related creaks and rattles, and the fact that the steering is getting mushier, I like the feel of the VW steering. Oh, and the VW has about 60k on a transplanted Scirocco engine (8 valve).



So, do I:



1. get the boring commuter car, and satisfy my midlife crisis needs with a good stereo,



2. Get a Geo Metro or Suzuki Swift, something with great mileage, and then tweak it into a snappy little autocross car/commuter



3. Put $5k into the VW, turning it into a reliable, funner car to drive.



4. See a therapist about trying to find fulfillment through consumerism.

I've responded to your first essay and uploaded the responses to webct, with the exception of those who were locked out of webct and had to upload late. Please bring an electronic version of your draft to class Monday.

Here is the next spyware scrubbing utility we'll be using: spybot seek and destroy.



Gotta love those macho titles.

Australian IT - Man fined for downloading music (, MAY 14, 2004): " US federal judge has ordered a Bristol man to pay more than $US4,000 ($5,817) for downloading five songs from the internet.



US District Judge Janet C Hall Wednesday directed William Martinez to pay the minimum statutory damages of $US750 per song for infringing a copyright as well as $US289 for the costs of bringing the lawsuit.

The judge ruled because Martinez failed to answer a civil complaint brought against him or appear in court for the hearing.

Martinez was the second Connecticut resident caught up in the lawsuits filed by the recording industry ordered to pay for illegally downloading music.

Jennifer Brothers of Andover was recently found in default when she also failed to answer the complaint or appear in court. Brothers has been ordered to pay $US6,000. "

The Corner on National Review Online



Loads o' controversy in here.

Kinja, the weblog guide



Here is a great source of links to good topics for the doubting/believing game.

topic: what do you think about the Iraqi prisoner abuses? Who can we blame for this?

topic: are we justified in damaging Iraqi holy sites during the war?

The Australian: Rumsfeld rolls with the punches [May 15, 2004]:



"FRESH from his flying visit to Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld looks more secure at the Pentagon than he has been in the two weeks since the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal first broke.



The 71-year-old US Defence Secretary apparently has no plans to heed the advice of critics and quit. 'I've stopped reading newspapers - you've got to keep your sanity somehow,' Rumsfeld told the troops. 'I am a survivor.' "

Ad-aware



Please open this link and install AdAware, then run the program. Our technician hasn't been able to get to the labs for the past week.

Hey!



Please make a blog entry today. Your choice of topic.

Today in class we are going to:



1. fine tune blogger

2. sign up for presentation groups

3. discuss chapters three and four

4. do some informal writing

5. read each other's stuff

6. discuss assignment #2: believing and doubting

7. go home



Assignment #2: The Believing and Doubting Game



Your assignment is to choose an interesting engaging, problematic statement, preferably taken from an actual newspaper or editorial, and hopefully connected with a local issue or concern, and play "the believing and doubting game" described in our text in chapter two. In essence, you will write approximately a page stating why you believe the claim and provide supporting evidence. Then you will spend approximately a page (250 words per page) writing as if you don't believe the statement, and arguing against it using clear examples. For the remaining half to full page you will explore the issue at greater length without passing judgement either for or against it. I should not be able to tell what your real opinion is by reading the paper, at least not until I get to the last section. In the last section you can describe if your opinions changed, remained the same, were called into question, etc. You may also wish to answer the question, "How is this issue connected to my identity? How is my identity connected to what I believe?"



This is somewhere between "open" and "closed" writing. Have fun with it. Include pictures if you'd like. Double space the entire thing. Use a legible font.



First draft due: 5/17/04 (Wednesday) by 5pm. Bring an electronic version to class.

If you have any comments about the course, please use the anonymous feedback link on the right------->



There are also comments available after each blog entry. If I can get them working.

Soprano Ukulele - Geared Machines - Mahogany: "A New Ukulele superbly built from the finest woods. Clean workmanship and excellent fret dressing are the first things you'll probably notice. The necks are expertly shaped and finished in a satin lacquer for a professional easy playing feel. The tone is very close to those selling for those 6 times the price.



Satin Matte Mahogany Finish



Inlaid Position Markers



Carrying case included - a $13.95 value



Uke Parts



Compare up to $69.95 retail



But it Now for $18"

The recent revelations about mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by inexperienced guards, anxious to please authority figures (such as interrogators, CIA, etc.) reminds me of the famous prison simulation conducted at Stanford in 1965, by Philip Zombardo and Stanley Milgram. Stanley Milgram strikes me as the Andy Kaufman of Sociology. He's the same guy who got people to electrocute strangers.



(the BBC reenacted the experiment a few years ago.)

In some cultures, freewriting is used as a form of psychological torture. The North Koreans, for example, fully integrated writing as part of their brainwashing process. Right now I'm practicing freewriting along with my class, and frankly, I'm afraid of what horrible crap is going to gurgle out of my subconscious for all to see on this weblog. Driving to work today I listened to Marsha Sinetar's True Wealth. It's somewhat new-age-ish and cheesey, but it made a few great points about money. One of them was that if you feel uncomfortable or guilty about having money, you'll never get any, and that our attitudes about money come from our parents. My parents have the most screwed up relationship to money I can think of. Initially, I thought it was just that we were poor-ish, but upon reflection, everything they say and do about money is completely screwed up. Happy Mother's day, mom!



The computers in our room are completely hosed today, despite having been "deep freezed" and rebooted. This sucks, and gives people even more reason to hate technology, this class, and, of course, me.



This weekend I shaved my head. Why? Because I thought it would feel interesting. It feels almost the exact same as having a crewcut. I feel ripped off, and now I have to walk around looking like a chemo patient.

CourseInfo @ UVSC



This is webct

Please email a copy of your paper to yourself before class on Monday.

sample paper

Today in class:



1. respond, as a class, to a student draft

2. respond to each other's drafts in small groups

3. work on revisions to drafts

4. submit drafts electronically to webct for additional feedback.

I don't know if any of you will read this, but please bring an electronic version of your draft to class on Friday. You can email it to yourself, save it to a floppy, burn it to a cd or stick it on one of those usb-thumb drives. Or post it on the web.

Class weblogs:

Mandy

Melissa

Brigham

Aimee

Afton

Isaiah

Shaun

Lauren

Johnathan

John F.

Jon Hunt

Ben H.

Michael F.

Annie P.

Kirsten O.

Jennifer C.

Diego P.

Adam B.

Chris T.

J. Martin

English 1010

Assignment #1: Literacy Autobiography

Length: 750 words (three pages)

Due: Friday, May 7, in-class.





The purpose of this assignment is for you to reflect upon and analyze your own literacy narrative, the story of your encounters with writing and language up to this point. It is also an opportunity to compare and contrast your experiences with the information found in chapters 1 and 2 of our text, the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. You may wish to answer some of the following questions, using specific examples from the text, and the text of your life.

• You may invent one event or example, but it must be plausible, convincing and you must tell us in a footnote at the end of the paper which anecdote you invented.
  
  
  
  
• You should use specific examples of “literacy events,” moments of writing, reading and learning that have somehow affected your literacy practices
  
  
  
  
• You can answer questions such as:
  
  
  
  o What is your relationship with writing?
  
  o What are your earliest memories of the written word
  
  o What are your favorite/least favorite types of writing. Of reading?
  
  o What classes, if any, have influenced your writing methods? How?
  
  o What kinds of informal writing do you employ on a regular basis?
  
  o What are ways in which you avoid writing?
  
  o Who is your ideal reader, and why?
  
  
  
  
• What counts as literacy? What doesn’t? Who decides?
  
  
• Does your experience as a writer correspond with the descriptions of writing in our textbook?
  
  
• You may write in either a closed or open format.
  
  

Discuss the assignment here.

English 1010 Syllabus



Literacy Autobiography Assignment

Stay tuned, your assignment sheet will be up shortly.

datacloud: Why I Hate Blackboard

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "Realizing that every writer is idiosyncratic, I'll tell you what I do while acknowledging that it may, in no way, offer assistance to you.



Like a shark, I keep moving. Two hours at the library. An hour at a coffee shop. An hour in my apartment. Two hours at night, sitting in a cushy chair at Barnes & Noble. And so on and so forth. It's rare that I work six hours straight, or in one single location all day. But at the end of the day, I'll have put 4 to 6 hours into my work. I try not to pressure myself into writing more than a page or two at any of my 'locations'. Stil, 3 to 4 daily pages add up. I find that, by constantly repositioning myself, I'm never anywhere long enough to get bored, distracted, or tempted to reward myself with a '15-minute break' that stretches on and on. Granted, I'm a sitcom writer, so I suppose it helps to approach any project with a bit of ADD, as the perpetuation of ADD is sort of the unintended result of the work upon the viewer, anyway.



Finally, remember to never beat yourself up. There's nothing you write that can't be rewritten tomorrow, so quit agonizing over the perfect phrase or finding just the right sentence. I fall into the camp that a first draft of anything is like a wrinkled shirt, nothing that can't be fixed (and ready to be shown) so long as you're willing to do enough ironing."

I moved this blog to another location for a little while, but now I crave the approbation of google, so it is back.

The Tetex installation has stalled:

rm -f /sw/src/root-tetex-texmf-2.0.2-1/sw/info/dir /sw/src/root-tetex-texmf-2.0.2-1/sw/info/dir.old /sw/src/root-tetex-texmf-2.0.2-1/sw/share/info/dir /sw/src/root-tetex-texmf-2.0.2-1/sw/share/info/dir.old

rm -rf tetex-texmf-2.0.2-1

Writing control file...

Finding prebound objects...

Clunk.

Dang, I haven't posted here for a while. I'm revising two diss chapters and it's taking about four times longer than I thought and my good friend self-loathing is stopping by for an extended stay.



I'm also installing "Tetex" as a precursor for installing a structured postscript document processor called Lyx which is supposed to be an open source replacement for the quickly fading Framemaker.

Crooked Timber: The un(?)intended consequences of courseware : "The un(?)intended consequences of courseware

Posted by Eszter"

Tata Computer-based Functional Literacy Programme: "Making this possible is a remarkable initiative from the Tata Group that has changed the lives of thousands of adults in different parts of India. The 'computer-based functional literacy' (CBFL) programme is a new-age solution to an age-old problem, and one that has the potential to lift our country's literacy rate in record time. Born of the Tata Group's ever-enduring commitment to community causes and bred by its expertise in information technology, this is a project as novel in methodology as it is ambitious in scope"

Computers and Writing 2004: "Conference Theme
Our focus on the currents, waves, and tides of globalization has also been inspired by the advice offered to virtually every newcomer to Hawai'i: never turn your back on the ocean. The waters of the Pacific can be a source of pleasure and excitement, but they can also pose serious dangers. In the tide of globalization, how can we negotiate the currents and ride the waves in ways that are productive for us, our students, and our communities?
"

Kairosnews | A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy: "The company also reported that more than 1,100 of the roughly 6,300 colleges and universities in the United States were using one or more of Blackboard's applications."

Wired News: U.S. Users Give It Up for the Net: "Seeking to confirm the notion that the Internet is a mostly democratic tool, a just-released study says that nearly half of American Internet users have contributed online content in one form or another.


Yet while the report highlights such impressive numbers, it also points out that most people who post content online are highly educated and highly paid, and post infrequently."

My daughter, who is 2 1/2, refuses to sleep in her bed because she says she will turn into a monkey.

I think I will use this space to solve all of the world's problems. Because nobody else has the guts to do it!



1. Problem: SUVS are stinky, loud, and dangerous. Solution: remove tax credit. Begin massive meme infusion showing smart sexy people in smaller hybrids making fun of people in SUVs. Somehow equate truck driving with erectile dysfunction.



2. Problem: many of the people I work with lack basic social skills, and are frighteningly ambitious. Solution: send them spoofed email from assorted academic vice presidents that reads, "I'm watching you, and your social skills really, really suck."



3. Problem: Americans (including myself) are fat and lazy. Solution: hybrid automobiles that allow you to stand up and run in place to make them move. If you want to pass someone, you have to start running. Otherwise they cruise at 49 mph, or whatever the safest minimum speed limit is. Perhaps a good winter bicycle would fulfill this function.



4. Problem: a coworker overheard me saying something obnoxious and thinks I was talking about them (I wasn't). Solution: fill this person's office with polyurethane foam. From floor to ceiling.



5. Problem: cars pollute too much. Solution: massive tax credits for hybrids and hydrogen vehicles. Increased fuel taxes for single passenger/non-commercial vehicles. Take the pentagon budget and use it to build a massive network of light rail. Screw going to mars--let's make the Earth habitable. Note: I commute 25 miles to work each way, so I basically suck. Hybrids get their own lane. Always. And EMP guns that will destroy the electronics of any vehicle that gets in their way.

followup on the icicle incident: I met the guy and he conveniently reshaped the story to make himself look less psycho, something he probably has a lot of experience with.

Player, Attack Thyself - Why Japanese gamers love avenging Pearl Harbor. By Clive Thompson: "This leads to a surprising facet of game psychology: Really hard-core gamers often look past the cultural 'content' of a game. They're mostly worried about a more prosaic concern, which is whether the game is fun. The geopolitics of a game melt away as players, like philosophers musing on their favorite platonic solid, ponder gameplay in the abstract.

We're accustomed to thinking that a piece of entertainment is nothing but its cultural content. A movie or TV show is just what you see on the screen. But a game is also about play, and play is invisible. That's why outsiders are often puzzled by the success of games that would appear to be nothing but screamingly offensive content. They can't see the play. Sure, you've got raw guts flying around�but for the player, part of the joy is in messing with physics (even if that happens to be bullets and shoulder-launched grenades) or with strategy (even if that's figuring out how to starve a village)."

Computers & Writing 2001: "First, that 'except special technical commuications support' thing is a HUGE except, and really, it's the only thing I've *ever* really used computer labs for. I would agree, the need to have 25 or so students meet three times a week in a computer lab so they can MOO each other is kinda over, and in my experience, classes that are assigned in computer labs for every meeting (even my own classes) rarely make use of the computers every day. But I also think that a few labs (including laptop labs) can go a long, long way in terms of training students certain skills (my teaching folks to make web pages, plus it's a hell of a lot easier to teach fy comp students how to critically evaluate their web research or how to work the library's computer set-up in a lab than it is over something like WebCT), to collaborate, to do peer review, to provide some higher-end functions (things like PageMaker or hardware things like CD Burners), and so forth. Anyone who says we don't need labs to do these things has never had the discomfort of having no access to a lab.

But I would agree with Fred that the solution of putting in more labs to 'get them on the Internet' is not much of a solution either. I think we still need campus supported labs, but I think we need them for different functions than we did even five years ago. I doubt computer services people do this, but it would be interesting to survey students at a place like EMU or wherever and try to figure out how students use the big university supported labs we have. I'll bet 5 years ago, 50% of the students in there were doing word processing. Now I'll bet that number is like 25% or less, with the rest of the students doing things like browsing the web, checking their email (the campus labs still have a lot quicker connection than home), *printing* papers, etc."

lewin: "Additionally, Lewin strongly emphasised the complementarity of basic and applied research.

Famous for the saying:

'There is Nothing So Practical as a Good Theory'

'If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.'


The power of Lewin's theorizing lay not in a formal propositional kind of theory but in his ability to build 'models' of processes that drew attention to the right kinds of variables that needed to be conceptualized"

Lewin, Kurt (1951): " Such a goal also guides my future as a communication scholar. It is too bad Kurt Lewin died so unexpectedly (of a reported heart attack in 1947), he could have taken the communication discipline even further. His famous quote, 'There is nothing so practical as a good theory,' remains my credo."

Rebecca Howard on Grammar

Chapter 3: Critical Ethnography: Method and Methodology: "This challenged me to ensure that any research methodology and method that I adopted would potentially raise the political consciousness of the participants, including myself. As well as this I hoped that it would also offer the YCW the possibility of developing emancipatory social action. It was also clear that I had to be honest with the YCW about my intentions and to show that my research methodology was consistent with the role of collaborator and the philosophy of the YCW. It was necessary to show the YCW that my research methodology was grounded in the belief that my reflection did 'not begin with a search for answers but with a search for questions' (Freire, 1972, cited in Street 1992:15). The YCW agreed to my research as it offered them the possibility of drawing on the critical report that would result from the project."

Visual Rhetoric Projects: "John Wittman--'Ethnography Project'


What I want to do for this project is look at the details of ethnographic use in composition and education. My specific intentions, however, keep slipping between two points. Initially I wanted to focus primarily on the role objects and the relationships between objects play a part in the construction of ethnographies. The more I read the more I am inclined to focus my attentions on the difficulties of interpretation, i.e. discuss the difficulties of looking at unfamiliar cultural settings rhetorically. At this point I think I will have to include both to some extent. I want to begin with issues of postcolonialism since ethnography's primary purpose in Europe was to learn about cultural groups in order to colonize their land, enslave them, and/or subjugate them in some way. I'm not quite sure what I am looking for here, but I think I need to explore some foundational problems with ethnography's origins. From here I think I need to make some generalizations about how ethnography has developed and been employed over the last few decades. The bulk of the essay will analyze problems with vision. Two things come to mind here. (1) Covino's claim that no vision can see everything and nothing can alter that, and (2) Barry's claims that our vision is premapped for us by our social/cultural environment and even our genetics. Since ethnography is dealing with the unfamiliar, I need to address issues that discuss how our interpretation of cultures different from our own are always 'colored' by our own pasts. How I plan to resolve these issues, ultimately, is using Geertz's idea of thick description, which I am going to try to relate to Barry's point of gestalt theory, and to propose consciousness on the writers part about how they are coloring texts. I hope to extend current theories of triangulation in vision. The goal is to promote ethnography by working through its shortcomings. Despite its shortcomings, it's one of the only ways we have to understand cultural dynamics to the extent that we can incorporate those into real classroom settings. This is of fundamental importance in post open-admission education.

"

The Harbinger. Web-Based Education: Barreling Down the Tracks on the Online Gravy Express.

University Business: Viewpoint

Digital Culture - Paul LeBlanc: "I have watched too many companies with specialists -- good graphics people, good technical people, high-quality content providers -- unable to effectively develop an Internet strategy because there was no one person who knew enough about all those areas and what it means to have such a strategy. We're training those people.

Your program for educators stresses the development of 'pedagogically sound' applications of the Internet and other new media technologies. Given the radical re-evaluation that the new tools demand, how do you know valid pedagogy when you see it?

Good question. It depends a lot on whom you ask. Accrediting agencies say 'Have more and better outcome assessment.' Some school boards rely on tradition: 'Do more of what you used to do when I was a kid!' The testing industry says, 'Use our tests.' My own feeling is that schools need to develop a set of philosophical guidelines that make sense for their context and community. There is no one definition of good learning or good teaching for every school. We too often ignore the road children travel in our incessant worry about where they end up.
"

Digital Culture - Paul LeBlanc: "Let me begin with the similarities of the two worlds: business and K-12. Small- and medium-sized businesses and schools are still early on in their integration of Internet technologies. Only 25 percent of medium-sized businesses (100 to 1000 employees) and 8 percent of small businesses (fewer than 100 employees) have access to the Net. About 65 percent of schools have a connection, but only about 15 percent of classrooms do. In both cases the task of strategizing, implementing, and more often, evangelizing, is left up to individuals. We want to train those individuals, to position them, really, to effectively and successfully lead the efforts of their organizations. More fundamentally, both programs are predicated on the notion that getting connected can dramatically change how and what one does within an organization, whether it's selling, marketing, and customer support in a business environment or curriculum, assessment, and research in a learning environment. Both programs begin with the question: 'What happens when I get connected?' "

My son, who is seven, and has lived most of his life in Kentucky, took an icicle to the bus stop because it was cool. A neighbor told him to drop it or he would "break it over his head." Then he yelled at my wife over the phone for letting our son bring a "weapon to school, and told her she had better take him seriously or he would "take it to the next level."



Sigh.



It's people like this that make tranquilizer guns filled with liquid prozac seem like a really good idea.

datacloud

In class Friday we'll be working on your project #2 redesign assignment. Please come prepared.

In their presentation, "Researching Digital Literacies: The
Methodological Challenges of Life History, Collaboration,
and Autobiography," Hawisher and Selfe will focus upon the
collaborative methodology they have developed and the
ethical issues they have faced during the past six years
spent researching technological literacy in America from
1978-2003.


In her presentation "Qualitative Research on the Internet:
Considerations for the Ethnographic Surfer," Mountford will
focus on the practical and theoretical issues that arise
when conducting qualitative research through the Internet.
She will examine two kinds of special problems:
safeguarding the privacy of participants whom one studies,
and determining when data posted on the Internet is public
or private.


The rest of the workshop will be organized as a research
roundtable in which researchers will present work-in-
progress for feedback. Veteran researchers will be on hand
to facilitate roundtable discussions. The goal of this
annual workshop is to offer mentoring and support to
qualitative researchers at all levels of experience.


Presenters may focus on specific concerns and/or broader
issues related to qualitative research and we encourage
submissions from those at any stage of the research
process. Each presenter will have twenty minutes for both
presentation and feedback, which will necessitate
presenters to have on hand concise and accessible summaries
of their studies.

: "It is the burden of comprehension---the responsibility we have to understand the contexts, values, and methods of those from whom we borrow--that I will address. The purpose of my discussion is four-fold. First, I want to come to some understanding of how technology has been approached--historically, methodologically, and ideologically--by scholars in disciplines that have for some time interrogated technological artifacts, systems, and the people who use them. Second, I bring this research to technical communication for the purpose of situating the arguments of other-disciplinary technology scholars into our own disciplinary framework. Third, I hope to experience some of the promise of interdisciplinary research that in the best of circumstances leads to what Klein calls 'an inductive openendedness' (93).' that interesting space in the world of research where we end up with more--and even more interesting--questions. Finally, I turn to some of these questions back toward the profession of technical communication for the purpose of rethinking our roles and responsibilities.
I will limit my discussion to the methodologies of several disciplines that have for some time been involved with the study of technology from historical, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. I have chosen disciplines that not only have some precedent in the field, but which also cover a fair stretch of methodological ground appropriate for technical communicators. For instance, I have chosen the history of technology because of its comparative longevity in technology studies; sociology because of its innovative techniques, specifically ethnography and case study, and its interest in feminist studies; philosophy due to its concerns with fundamental issues of human action, most importantly ethics and public decision-making. "

: "Bijker, Wiebe E., Trevor P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1987. "

: "COMPLICATING TECHNOLOGY: INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD, THE BURDEN OF COMPREHENSION, AND THE ETHICAL SPACE OF THE TECHNICAL COMMUNICATOR "

Currently missing:



Cell phone (again) --but no big deal, because I am letting the service lapse.

Two dissertation books: Cynthia Selfe's, and Literacy and Computers. I just can afford the $100 to replace these right now. Where did they go? Arrrgh.

Cynthia Selfe: "First, I think we need to continue to resist all projects and systems that serve to establish an overly-narrow, official version of literacy practices or skills. Such projects and systems simply serve to reward the literacy practices of dominant groups and punish the practices of others. They serve to reproduce a continuing and oppressive cycle of illiteracy, racism, and poverty in this country and in others.

This means that on every curriculum committee we serve, in every standards document that we contribute to, in every outcomes assessment that we participate in, on every syllabus that we construct-we have to lead the way in insisting on a diverse range of literacy practices and values, rather than one, narrow and official form of literacy. We have made a start at this effort in the standards document of the NCTE, but in the CCCCs we need to go much further in helping both future teachers and those already in classrooms understand why this work is so important and what implications their successes and failures may have."

Cynthia Selfe: "Nowhere are these struggles and debates rendered in more complex terms--and nowhere are they more influential on our own work--than they are in the direct linkage between literacy and computer technology that has been established in increasingly direct ways over the last decade in this country. This potent linkage is sustained and reproduced by a complexly related set of cultural influences: workplaces in which approximately 70% of jobs requiring a bachelors degree or an advanced college degree now require the use computers (Digest of Education Statistics, 1996, p.458); a corporate sector focused on exploiting the 89% of 'teachers and the public' who believe that the Internet adds value to teaching and learning specifically because it 'reduces the costs teachers spend on classroom activities' ('MCI Nationwide Poll,' 1998); schools in which 87% of high school students are now writing on computers by Grade 11 (Coley, Crandler, and Engle, 1997, p. 27); and homes in which 86% of parents are convinced that a computer is the one 'most beneficial and effective product that they can buy to expand their children's opportunities' for education, future success, and economic prosperity (Getting America's Student's Ready, 1996, p. x)."

Cynthia Selfe: "Technological literacy-meaning computer skills and the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity and performance-has become as fundamental to a person's ability to navigate through society as traditional skills like reading, writing and arithmetic."

The Computer Delusion by Todd Oppenheimer: "There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve teaching and learning, yet school districts are cutting programs%uFFFD-- music, art, physical education%uFFFD-- that enrich children's lives to make room for this dubious nostrum, and the Clinton Administration has embraced the goal of 'computers in every classroom' with credulous and costly enthusiasm
"

Google Toolbar Installed: "the world's best search"

Cynthia Selfe: "Technological literacy-meaning computer skills and the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity and performance-has become as fundamental to a person's ability to navigate through society as traditional skills like reading, writing and arithmetic."

Cynthia Selfe: "Technology and Literacy:
A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention"

The Journal of Electronic Publishing: "CONTENT MANAGEMENT"

moved to another space.

The Global Advisor Newsletter - Designing Technical Documentation for an International Audience.: "Introduction





You've just been assigned the task of producing a large technical manual for a new product, schedule for release in a few months. Oh, and by the way, this same document needs to be translated in five languages and all are scheduled for simultaneous release.



This scenario is being played out everywhere as US companies set their sights on global marketing."

I have a cold. It felt like such a small, wimpy little cold that I ignored my patented cold-busting regimen. Now I am hacking up golf balls of phlegm.

deseretnews.com | Tech toys: Learning curve is a challenge

Tasks that are occupying my buffer:



1. scheduling courses and instructors

2. Resolve complaint issue with Mr. X

3. Get mysql working. Please, oh please, why in the crap won't mysql ever work for me?

4. Check on status of labs. Install scanners.

5. Write review of blog paper

6. Contact CCCs.

7. Apply for travel funds

8. Build bench

9. Explore ramifications of New Year's goal which is: Increase energy levels

10. Find out why my left foot has been numb for months. Or at least the toes

11. Get Moodle working or buy Filemaker pro server.

12. Review lab budget

13. Return stupid Quark package

14. Write application for laptop (mid-semester)

15. Draw map of technical communications

16. Print out course calendar and add to syllabus.

17. Expand syllabus to include new, brutal attendance policy.

From ATTW-L



Related to Roy's query -- and interesting follow-ups -- I heard or read

once that a key difference between technical and business communication

can be seen along vertical or horizontal lines. For technical

communicators, the communication might be horizontal in that there's less

emphasis on hierarchy among readers (you can see where this scheme begins

to crack already -- bear with me for a moment): "users," subject-matter

experts, editors, clients, consumers, other technical communicators, &

etc.





On the other hand -- this is what I heard, not what I'm arguing, mind you

-- business communication is more hierarchical, and thus vertical in its

taxonomy -- committees, boards, executives, shareholders, competition,

corporate oversight ... & etc.





Whether or not these are interesting or helpful distinctions is debatable;

but has anyone else hear or read the vertical-horizontal distinction

somewhere? Can you point to where I might find it?





In Kynell's Writing in a Milieu of Utility, she shows how the disciplines

overlap and how they differ: business comm emerged from the needs of

commercial- and business-related enterprises, whereas technical

communication emerged from the needs of increasing uses of technologies.

In contemporary discipline formations, these boundaries seem to collapse

even more. More recently, Faber and Johnson-Eilola suggest that we're

'hybrid professionals' and that product knowledge, strategic design, and

business knowledge belong in the domain of technical communication, too.

(Their context is globalization, which is the impetus for my

vertical-horizontal distinction query.)





I'm looking at it in disciplinary terms -- rather than programmatic, which

is local -- and collapsed business communication with professional

communication.





Having sufficiently muddled it, then -- best wishes,





Michael

bitter pill: it's like no cheese I've ever tasted?: "'Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.' - Wolfgang von Goethe "

I am grading today. I hate grading. Every semester I tell myself, "This will be the semester that I put all grading online, and refuse to accept late assignments, and fail everyone who misses class more than five times." Sigh.

Date: today

Subject: Miss Chick-fil-A Pickle Picker



Dear Miss Chick-fil-A:



The last three times that I have ordered a Chick-fil-A sandwich without a pickle, you went to the back and removed the pickle from an existing sandwich. How do I know this? Because, upon biting into the sandwich I could discern the distinct taste of what I like to call "pickle urine."



It's people like you that create customers like me.

The Automobile Theft Prevention Authority

50 tips for preventing car theft. Most of them are behavioral.

The Automobile Theft Prevention Authority

WebCT Login Page: "This server has been locked for maintenance by the WebCT administrator.

The server will be available at 10:00 pm on 12/07/03. Thank you for your patience and understanding."



It is now 12/8, 11:45pm. This is not unusual.