[day in the life]

wrapping up

So at the end of last week, I completed a draft of my dissertation.  It didn't really hit me until after I'd finished writing the last section what a huge freakin' task that was.  I mean, of course, I knew (it's a dissertation, after all), but in order to get through the daily tedium of writing, I couldn't allow myself to think more than one day at a time.  Wow, though.  I'm editing and putting together the refs now, and will turn it in to my committee at the beginning of next week.  In the end, it'll weigh in somewhere around 280 pages.  And after all that, parts of it aren't too bad.  :)  Let's hope the committee thinks so, too - final judgment (i.e. oral defense) is set for June 6.

map of online communities

via XKCD, a fun visual:

people use Facebook for fun

Mmm. Duh.  Here's the chart, check it out for yourself.  Education is right up there with dating though, not bad, huh?  ;)  (via Wired Campus)

springtime in the city

Although I'm ready to move on to less insane pastures, New York City certainly has its charms, and they are none more apparent than in the spring.  The fall is probably my favorite season overall, but the city sure is lovely with all the flowering trees in bloom, temperature just right - warm sun, cool breeze - mmm.  And people are starting to emerge, as well - in fact, on my way to work this morning, I passed two elderly women on the street in time to hear one of them say to a passing gentleman, in a slow, deep voice: "Niiiice day.  Would you like to hear about Armageddon?" 

a challenge to blogging?

A post on the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog caught my eye the other day: "Blogs May Be Rendered Obsolete by New Technology."  Quite a statement!  Seems the author feels that RSS aggregators (not nearly new, actually) and "micro-blogging" applications like Twitter might be stealing some blog thunder.  The author's point is that these technologies - all of which provide a vehicle for discussion of content, whether it's content from a blog that was pulled via RSS, or fresh content created by a Twitter author - might portend the death of blogging.  Yeah... guess I don't really agree.  While in the early days of blogging, blogs were easily confused with discussion boards (still are, by some newbies), blogging as a practice really revolves around the post, tied to the blogger's identity, authorial voice, etc. etc.  We're lucky if our posts get one comment, and even luckier if they spark a discussion.  :)  I suppose that the technology itself is only half the story, anyway - blogging as a practice is fairly different than Twittering as a practice, and while there are places of overlap and opportunities for convergence, I think changes in blogging would have to be rooted in changes to the practice of blogging - which, at the moment, seems fairly stable.

rememberance

Remembering the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting, one year ago today, and all victims of campus violence. 

help fund good teaching with technology!

A friend of mine from high school, Matt Anthes-Washburn, has been nominated for a prestigious physics teaching award from the NSF for his excellence in teaching high school physics.  You can see him in action in this Neighborhood Network News report video (opens in Windows Media Player).  Congrats, Matt!

He's also currently trying to get a classroom technology project funded through DonorsChoose.org.  An excerpted description: " My students are English Language Learners and recent immigrants from various countries. Together, we learn physics through inquiry, while learning English language in context. ...In this project, we will integrate physical supports such as graphic organizers and structured notebook pages with state-of-the art digital technology. ...My students need a wireless Wacom Graphire Bluetooth tablet, a VGA adapter, and 30 reams of copy paper. The cost of this proposal is $544."  Contribute here to help his kids!

oy

Whoo baby.  I'm listening to the Brian Lehrer Show right now, as per my usual morning routine, and it's a discussion between a couple of guys debating whether or not the Internet is evil.  Ok, well, you get the picture though.  Anyway, one of the guests is Lee Siegel, author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.  After reading what the blurb on Amazon had to say - "Siegel explores how the Internet affects culture and social life, particularly the psychological, emotional and social cost of high-tech solitude. Arguing that the Internet's widespread anonymity eliminates boundaries, Siegel discusses the half-fantasy, half-realism of online personas." - I'll admit to kind of tuning out, because come on people, do a little research, huh?  There's quite a bit of published research and good thinking from the past few years that have (successfully, in my opinion) challenged these views.

I tuned back in, though, when I heard the following from Mr. Siegel (I'm paraphrasing here): "...we need to move away from the wisdom of crowds idea... everything bad is good for you - if the Nazis had won, those would be on their best seller lists"  Whoa!  Apparently, Mr. Siegel coined the term blogofascism a couple of years ago - there's something of a description of the origins of the debate here (albeit from a blogger on the other side of the debate).  Unfortunately the links to the relevant columns written by Mr. Siegel in The New Republic redirect to TNR's current home page.

Aaaaanyway.  I was just kind of shocked by the very strong sentiment behind the Nazi remark.  I absolutely believe in questioning popular wisdom; there should be critical stances vis a vis the role of the Internet in shaping culture.  I see that in my data, as well - there's a tension between college students' uptake of popular technologies, and a certain amount of pushing back against a dominant discourse that says you must keep up and be always connected.   But, man - Nazis?

time(s) and space(s)

Been thinking a bit about different concepts of time/space arising out of the technological affordances of mobile/synchronous/nearly synchronous technologies (like mobile phones, IM, etc) and the ways in which those affordances are taken up by college students (constant contact, being always connected).  In the past, the space of the classroom wasn't necessarily available to students to conduct social interaction with friends outside of the classroom.  But it's no longer clear, when you're texting while the professor is lecturing, whether you're doing class, or doing social interaction, or both... or maybe the idea of doing class has now changed to include social interaction with friends outside of the class.  Does that mean that the person on the other end of the text is now part of the class?  It does need to be said that the boundaries between in and out of class have never been clear, as illustrated by Jan Nespor and others - but I think there's something different about this type of visceral connection as opposed to less tangible flows of ideas.

When doing my masters degree, I had a flirtation with Lefebvre's third space theory, but I don't think that's a totally appropriate lens here.  Much closer is the idea of new "technosocial spaces" (Ito & Okabe), and I'm also intrigued by the notion of "nested spaces" which I came across this morning on Guy's blog.  If anyone's been thinking about this for a while, would love to hear your top-three readings/resources!

texting in class

If You Text in Class, This Prof Will Leave from Inside Higher Ed a couple of days ago is a microcosm of issues salient to professors, students, and researchers in higher ed.  It's hard for me to formulate a response, because there's clearly a lot going on there - discussions of race, professor authority, student behavior, students as consumers, and the ways in which the changes in the social and technological landscapes manifest themselves in the classroom especially in terms of evolving social and cultural norms - and it's difficult to disentangle them.  Which, I suppose, serves as an excellent illustration of the fact that what looks on its face to be a simple issue of technology in the classroom actually has a lot going on under the surface.