Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

Recently, I have come to the decision that I need to blog more about what I am reading during the week. As I have discussed before, Twitter, and now Tumblr, have added a great immediacy to linking and reading, but I think noting more long standing reads is important as well.

Previous readers will remember how this works: Once a week, I will link to five of the articles, posts, podcasts, etc I have read recently. I will offer some explanation of why I think they are worth checking out as well.

• I agree with Amanda Watson’s assessment of the Code Year project. I have tried numerous programs like this in the past and never had even remotely decent results. For me, experimentation and trial and error teaches me code a lot more than routine lessons.
• Over at The Guardian, Margaret Atwood reflects on the legacy of The Handmaid’s Tale.
• Book Forum gets it so right about what is wrong with the writing of Caitlin Flanagan. What a horrible writer.
• Jessica Dickinson Goodman on Mad Men and Downtown Abbey. I am in the middle of rewatching Mad Men right now while waiting for the new season to begin. The process of rewatching has given me a new perspective on the show as I notice a lot of things I did not pick up on the first time. Downtown Abbey is a show I have not checked out yet, but I will soon (next?).
• John C. Dvorak on the coming National Internet.

If you are interested in following me on a day to day basis, there is always Twitter, but I now have a Tumblr blog as well. I write about a variety of things on there including what I am reading, what I am listening to, and some political commentary.

I have a new post up at Blogging Woolf. Again, I am writing about Mrs. Dalloway; this time, I am focused on looking at how Woolf reveals Clarissa’s day chronologically. I use an Anna Benjamin article to break down the day.

I will be teaching Mrs. Dalloway this semester, so expect a lot more from me over at Blogging Woolf as the semester goes on.

I have a book review in the College English Association’s new journal issue. I review the new anthology Teaching Literature and Language Online. Big thanks go to my editor Janine Utell for putting up with my delays during the summer.

I also strongly suggest checking out the other reviewer, Lee Skallerup’s, work both in the journal and for Inside Higher Ed.

Long time readers will remember Signifying Nothing, my one time webzine and final resting place for the print fanzines I did during the nineties. On and off over the past year, I have been updating it with new podcasts and reviews. In 2012, I am going to try and keep this running each week. Stay tuned.

I am quite disappointed with the Kindle Fire I recently purchased. I have shopped for a tablet for about a year, but haven’t been impressed by what I saw on the market. The $200 price tag intrigued me, so I picked one up during the preorder period. The Kindle Fire is, at best, a starter tablet, and, at worst, more or less just a portal to Amazon’s infrastructure with some, and I mean *some*, apps allowed in. I will hold onto it, but I see myself upgrading to something else eventually. Here are some other observations:

• Recently, I have looked for a new Twitter client to replace TweetDeck. After trying out Tweetcaster on the Fire, I have settled on Hootsuite as my client of choice not only on my Fire, but on my phone as well.
• The biggest problem with the Fire is how annotations are stored. On earlier Kindles, there was a simple .txt file called “clippings” that stored any portions of a text that were highlighted or annotated. This was simple and JUST WORKED. Every so often, I could plug my Kindle into a laptop and export the clippings.txt file. On the Fire, there is no .txt file and annotations are kept on Amazon’s server. I DO NOT want my clippings in the cloud, especially a third-party who has been known to delete things in the past. I just want it to simply work and the Fire is very pretty, but makes this extremely more complex than it needs to be.
• The best part was that Amazon’s customer service didn’t even know about the change. Wow.
• An Android tablet that can’t open any open source documents like an .odt is a pretty terrible use for Android. I was going to use the Fire to edit and grade student work, but that doesn’t seem to be happening now.
• No wall charger. Yeah, I know that most people charge via USB these days, but I would still like the ability to charge via a wall outlet from time to time. Having to pay extra for that is pretty ridiculous.
• I ended up ordering a Kindle Touch as well for book reading. This Kindle works just like my earlier Kindle. The touch screen interface is fantastic. I am quickly getting used to touch screens in general.
• I haven’t used the Touch in class much yet, but the other day I used it to follow along with a student led lecture. I will post more in the new year about classroom uses for the Kindle Touch.

This will be my last post for 2011. Grading and end of semester activities will take up the rest of the month. Afterwards, I will be taking some time off around the holidays. Normal posting will return early in 2012. See you then.

After my initial panel proposal was accepted, I ran this panel on working with students who have low technology skills as the opening panel for ThatCamp Philadelphia. I wanted to run this panel because this is an issue I deal with on a day to day basis and I am always trying to find new ways to initiate learning for my students. Technology skills are extremely important in this job market, so I really stress them in my classes.

Janine Utell took notes for this panel as well.

• Digital citizenship is important. Not just for student work, but also for the job force (applications, etc)
• Many participants noted that their students had a hard time interpreting what they found online. An example given a lot was clicking on “sponsored links” on a Google search.
• Some schools offer a one credit technology course (that can be tested out of by students)
• Library sessions are helpful, but more time needs to be spent on evaluating sources
• This whole “digital natives” thing is nonsense. Many students don’t even know how to use ctrl-f!
• Solutions to this need to come from the curriculum side, not just the classroom
• An issue brought up, and I have heard this from students, is going from high tech classes back to really analog ones
• A list needs to be made, on a school by school basis, of what students need to know for composition level technology skills
• A big requirement that should be built into school handbooks is mandating that they check their email
• There should be “technology across the curriculum” ala writing across the curriculum
• An idea Sherri Block and I have talked about here at BCC is doing workshops for students on a monthly basis.
• There was a large concern in the room to not just outsource all of this to the library
• I require my students to send me an email from their BCC email to prove they can open it and that it works. I use this for their first quiz grade
• Another great idea that happens in my classes anyway is to have high tech students team up with low tech students
• Walmart has computer only applications now. If you can’t figure it out, you can’t apply
• New Jersey does have a K-12 information literary requirement according to Deb Gussman
• There needs to be outreach to local principals/superintendents
• Have students do a tech survey on their way into college
• Gussman gives her online students a list of what they need to know before taking the class
• I’ve introduced Zotero to my sophomores in the past
• An idea I had was to have to students put programs like Zotero, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc on a flash drive using Portable Apps
• Students absolutely need to learn how to cite before being allowed to use Easybib, Zotero, Moodle, etc
• As Deb Gussman points out, Easybib, Zotero, Evernote and others output errors sometimes
• An idea Utell had was to do coffee sessions with faculty who could be allies