Getting Involved

10. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

So I jumped in and volunteered to make phone calls for the Obama Campaign. For three hours last night, I called people in order to get volunteers. I didn’t do too badly. I put my former telemarketing skills to work and signed up 8 volunteers. Considering I only actually talked to 22 people, that’s not too bad. I’m also doing some voter registration drives this weekend and at a big town event in a few weeks. I’ll probably make more phone calls next week.

What’s funny is that the key to doing this kind of stuff is to not take it too personally. I had a couple of people hang up on me and quite a few more pretend to be someone else and tell me they weren’t home. To those who are mean to volunteers when they call, they don’t care. You’re only making your own blood pressure rise. Even when my income depended on connecting with people and making the sale (I did business to business sales), I didn’t really care too much if someone gave me an earful and hung up. It just meant I could move on to the next possibility that much faster.

I’ve done some canvassing for our local Congressman when he was running in 2006, but this is my first real involvement in a political campaign. The other volunteers have been with Obama since the beginning. I’m a latecomer, having supported Edwards and then Clinton. But since last night’s calls were to Obama supporters, I easily got more fired up. I had a hilarious conversation with one woman about how awful Sarah Palin is. And she wanted me to make sure Obama put Hilary on the cabinet, preferably as Secretary of State. She said she could never volunteer making phone calls because she’d just get mad at McCain supporters and take em down a notch. I may be at that point when we start calling the undecideds. I did get one of those last night and she was actually quite nice about it, asked for more information, and said she really wanted to take the time to look over everything and think about it. I believed her.

I’m glad I didn’t talk myself out of doing this and yes, it’s exhausting and yes, it takes time out of an already busy life, but I think it really does take more people getting involved to make change happen. I just couldn’t stand on the sidelines doing commentary anymore.

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Support for teaching digital natives

08. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Thomas Benton once again writes about issues in teaching the digital natives. I’m going to leave aside the argument about whether we’re getting more stupid. I’m not entirely sure we are.

I want to comment on two things. One, he mentions the problem of college students not being exposed to different generations (more true for K-12). Most of college students’ socializing and work happens among people their own age. I would argue that students who have active online lives have greater potential to be conversing with people of a variety of ages. Someone who has a blog (outside of Live Journal) or who plays online games is likely to interact with some older and some younger people. In my own online experience, I know this variety of generations is both a challenge and a delight.

The second, and more important, issue for me, comes in the last section of the essay:

If digital technologies are a cause of “stupidity,” it is because we have spent freely on computers — among other things — without also giving comparable support to college teachers. The students have been left to negotiate a cultural paradigm shift, comparable to the print and industrial revolutions, with inadequate support from the institutions created to help them.

And that strikes me as unambiguously stupid.

This is a pet peeve of mine. There are two directions this increased support can go. One is to provide faculty with the time and financial resources to learn and develop new teaching strategies that take advantage of technology. This might mean course releases, internal grants, or extended workshops in the summer. The main thrust of this kind of support is giving faculty new knowledge and skills that they can apply to their teaching.

The second direction, one that seems to be more popular, is to offload that work, to have a model I call “digital Kinkos.” In this model, the faculty member might bring their course materials to a team of technologists, who, after an hour-long meeting with the faculty member, produce a digital version of the course, complete with multimedia lectures. I have not seen this happen quite so wholesale, but I have seen it in small one-off situations. When a faculty member asks for video clips or for configuration of a Blackboard course or digitization of images for a lecture, that’s a form of digital Kinkos in my book.

I’m not saying we can get rid of digital Kinkos entirely. Digitization is often a tedious and time-consuming process and a knowledgeable technician is often better at it than a faculty member. But simpler things, such as using the features of a course management system or a blog, should be taken on by the faculty member. As I try to tell my faculty, there is no right or wrong when it comes to using the tools available. It depends on your teaching goals and you know those better than I do.

I would advocate, then, a hybrid model. There will be a need to provide digitization services, but more importantly, faculty should be allowed the time and encouraged to take the time to discover the possibilities of new technologies for teaching. A summertime workshop of a couple of weeks strikes me as a good place to start. A course release in a semester in which a technological overhaul of a course is taking place makes sense too. Financial support in the form of internal grants for hiring staff or students to aid in digitization or for travel to technology-related workshops. And, of course, appropriate credit for technological innovation when it comes time for tenure review. Without these latter rewards and support structures in place, digital Kinkos means nothing. It means you have faculty using materials they didn’t create and know little about. It’s akin to teaching from a book you haven’t read or just skimmed.

What I wonder about is the role of the Instructional Technologist in all of this. It’s clear what the role is for the digital Kinkos model. They make the video clips and the PowerPoint presentations and build the Blackboard courses. In the second model, they can be the person to run the workshops, provide advice during the semester, and do some (but less than in the first model) of the digitization work. But I think the ideal scenario is not to have an IT person per se. The ideal scenario is to have a tech-savvy faculty member providing the workshops and the advice. Perhaps they get a course release for this administrative work. Perhaps they have a team of students to do the digitization. In this scenario, the faculty member who, by virtue of their being “one of them,” immediately garners more respect than an IT person. To me, this makes a lot of sense. Of course, I just wrote myself out of a job.

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On not watching McCain

05. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I had every intention of watching McCain’s speech. I watched all the lead-up speeches, beginning around 8:30. Geeky Boy was watching with me. His first comment was, “Oh I see what this is all about: 9/11.” And that was when that Senator from Oklahoma was talking about the OK City bombing–something done to us by religious fanatics in our own country. After her and Tom Ridge and Cindy McCain, I just couldn’t take it any more.

I will say that the mood of the convention seemed very negative and not all that excited–a little like a DNC convention 4 years ago. Compared to the general party atmosphere that seemed to permeate the DNC last week, the RNC just didn’t seem to have the energy to do much. Maybe it was past their bedtime.

It’s been interesting to watch the “woman” issue circulate during these conventions. The Democrats had the first viable woman candidate for president, a woman who, no matter what else we may think of her, is smart and capable. Now, the Republicans, who have selected a woman of questionable qualifications as a VP candidate, are claiming all the credit for having broken the glass ceiling. On the one hand, I’ve been disgusted by hearing conservatives claim that the liberals’ statements about Palin’s inability to lead are sexist. On the other, hearing them finally say that having a woman on the ticket is necessary makes me think that we may have a chance to really break the political glass ceiling. I don’t trust any of these people, but maybe some of it is sinking in to the heartland of America.

I’ll have to catch up on McCain’s speech sometime today, but from what I’ve seen of blogger comments, it looks like it was stiff and more of the same.

Please consider donating to my efforts in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure

RBOC: First Day of School Edition

03. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:
  • Email was definitely on the rise, but not dramatically so.
  • Why, why do people wait until the very. last. minute. to ask for something. I’m here all summer.
  • Why don’t people talk to each other. So many problems caused by lack of communication.
  • Many fewer basic questions this year. They’re either getting stopped at the help desk or people are just figuring things out.
  • That said, I’m still amazed how I have to repeat the same information to the same people every year. Remember last year, nay, last semester, when you asked the same thing? Yeah? The answer’s the same.
  • Let’s see what the rest of the week brings.
Please consider donating to my efforts in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure

Making a better presentation

02. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

I’m hoping to find time this week to work on a presentation I’m giving next month. I’ve been working on my presentation skilz since I first gave one to apply for my job. That was perhaps the worst experience of my life. I had been used to reading papers at conferences. I had no idea how to put slides together, much less speak from them. When I did a run-through of my job talk for my husband, he, as gently as possible, let me know it sucked. I burst into tears. (Hey, I’d been up for days, it seemed, and it just seemed an insurmountable problem.) I finally put together a good presentation, with images and more.

My presentations aren’t perfect and I’m always trying to live up to the performances of many people I’ve seen give presentations–Michael Wesch, Lawrence Lessig, and a guy from Pomona. The presentation is only partly about the slides; it’s also about what you do with them once you’re in front of an audience. I’ve had situations where my slides were fabulous, but then I relied on their fabulousness a little too much.

Anyway, I spent yesterday at IKEA, buying furniture for our dining room and then putting some of it together. Garr, over at Presentation Zen, has a great post about using IKEA billboards as inspiration for slides. IKEA billboards are bold and colorful, make only one point, and have very little text on them. I’m hoping that my recent trip has provided some fodder for my own presentation needs. I also think that many of the presentations I’ve seen, aka PowerPoint-based lectures, could use some serious inspiration from places like IKEA. Most have too many points per slide, almost no pictures, and lack any color whatsoever. I know not every lecture is going to be an A+ performance, but think about taking just one of those bullet-laden slides and redoing it. It’s a new year, after all.

Please consider donating to my efforts in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure

Labor Day, Eve of New School Year

01. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

This is the first year that classes at my institution haven’t begun (or been held when we start earlier) on Labor Day. I say it’s about time. It’s always frustrated me that a school whose founding was all about helping the underrepresented (women) would ignore a holiday that benefits mostly the underrepresented. It was actually the students who lobbied for this. First, they got MLK Day (second semester classes began on MLK Day). Then, it made sense to have Labor Day. It amazes me how highly intelligent people don’t see the symbolism of making your laborers work on holidays. Sigh.

Often I make resolutions for the school year, but I’m not going to this year. I’m purposely taking things one day at a time. Today, I know I need to get my kids a few last-minute supplies and I need some clothes. I might putter around the garden (it’s beautiful outside) or just sit outside and read. I might help the kids organize their rooms. I might watch a movie this evening. I’m definitely doing laundry (already have a load in the wash). I might work on a presentation. I’m going with the flow.

I’ve noticed that the beginning of this year has not been terribly stressful. Yes, I was busy last week and no, I did not get everything done, but you know, it just doesn’t matter that much. The world has never ended simply because a few tasks didn’t get completed. I don’t work for NASA or the DoD. It’s just not that important.

Please consider donating to my efforts in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure
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