Canned Goods

My first reaction was, “It’s just like the Ms. Pacman machine I played at the bar!” While I can see how the technology would be useful in a hotel (guests looking for directions) and a novelty in your local club/bar (what happens when you drink starts to sweat?), it seems that this is also a home product.

Can’t see getting one useful I have disposable income (maybe Surface will be cheaper by the time I pay off those student loans). I didn’t see any demos of watching movies — why would you want a huge screen that you can’t watch movies or tv on? If it does play video (I’m assuming it does), how long are you going to want to watch it in this horizontal format? And who gets to decide which way is up? Come over here, honey, and watch the table with me. BTW, does it tilt?

I can see this technology taking the place of the chalk/dry erase board, and you’ll never need to lower/set up a screen to show videos or overheads. But Surface is too small for the classroom–at this point; maybe that’s why I couldn’t find a education promo for it.

Here’s the parody of Microsoft’s Surface video from The Sarcastic Gamer. SNAP!

[edit: pics added 5/24]

As are most folks, I’m in recovery from the conference.
I spent yesterday in Frankenmuth, MI with K., taking as many snapshots of us posing with a variety of tourist-trap sculptures (if only I can find a cable so I can transfer the images from the camera–bad packing list): a fiberglass giraffe; the giant mouse head on slice-o-cheese; 9 ft tall angels (at the world’s largest Christmas store). Not sure why we get pleasure from this sort of activity.

Anyway, I met a lot fun and brilliant folks this week (and was able to put faces with many for whom I only through blogs). I greatly appreciated the mentoring and support in our community (all the encouragement/info from Bradley; I’ll start some home brewing as some as, well, I’m done with grad school). I’d especially like to thank Scot for putting up with up to 2 hrs of driving a day introducing me to his peeps.
As a ped-head, hearing so much theory floating around reinforced how valuable it is to what I’m working on, even if I can’t escape the pull of the pedagogical imperative.

As far as the conference itself, it was the best I have attended. My only major complaint is Why have Sunday panels? And this goes for all the big cons. Not only are people leaving for home, but there are organizational meeting running concurrently. Low attendance sucks. No attendance is worse. Why not start a day earlier or reduce the number of panels to avoid this? If it weren’t for a couple friends/colleagues (Scot and Annette) and Jody Shipka (thanks for coming!), I was about to thank the first two panelists for their presentations and walk out. I’ve done the present to just the other panelists before. Why bother?

All in all, great trip, good beer (loved the DBC IPA), and I wish I had had more time to walk around and see everything Detroit has to offer.

Just a link to a video on using WiscCal for those wanting to reserve AV equipment — created by our department tech guru, Kelly Osborn:

WiscWiki 2007

This past Friday I participated in the first WiscWiki Conference which included 20 faculty and IT staff from around the entire UW-System (more were not able come to campus but are involved on the site). Some of the disciplines represented: Communication, English (Comp-Rhet & Lit), LIS, and ESL.

There was a range of experience with wikis represented, but only a few had extensive experience, and surprisingly, I seemed to be one of the more experienced—if not in actual wiki usage, then in knowledge about about wikis. My Wikipedia project will soon be up in the wiki, but basically my students will choose terms we’ve encountered during the semester and write Wikipedia entries for them. There are a few benefits for students (in my mind):

—learn the basics of wiki-markup syntax
—consider the strengths and weaknesses of writing in collaborative spaces
—consider the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia, specifically, as a source of information
—consider “objectivity” in encyclopedic writing (see debate 1 and 2 surrounding Wikipedia and creation of Conservapedia & Citizendium)

I’m sure there are more goals I missing, but that’s the point of attending the conference and contributing to WiscWiki—take advantage of collective intelligence.

We began the conference with 5 min intros by those who’ve used wikis. My story was about how there seems to be a fiction regarding ow tech savvy our students are. For example, when I started talking to my students about wikis and using Wikipedia as a resource, I showed them how easy it is to edit many of Wikipedia’s entries. I chose the Web 2.0 entry and changed the first sentence to read that I had coined the term rather than O’Reilly media.

The general reaction is difficult to describe, but shock wouldn’t be far from what I saw. Even students who had heard about Wikipedia being editable, they hadn’t really thought about what that meant—how easy it is to do. So, in my attempts to give students the knowledge and skills to navigate the new media landscape, it seems appropriate and important to give students opportunities to compose in these spaces—to see how it works from the position of producers rather than consumers.

More about the conference:
Wiki hosting: basically, in the UW-System, establishing wikis is a grassroots effort. Those with the tech proficiencies can create, maintain, and host wikis. I was lucky enough to make contact with people supporting the use of Moodle for course management (it uses erfurtwiki) and take the time to help a noob set it up. One example is Matt Livesey’s advisement wiki at UW-Stout; he set it up and maintains it, but it isn’t a part of the University (fear, lack of control are factors). Also, once a university or system decides to support a wiki platform, there needs to be a service model & service team ($$$$)

Risks of free collaboration wikis:
–student work getting changed
–student privacy concerns (FERPA)
–vandalism
–spambots
–protecting the university’s rep

Some steps to take:
–Using MediaWiki may be the best platform option in that that is what Wikipedia uses, and they frequently update the software.
–demonstrate to administration how wikis solve problems that cannot be solved any other way

There was more that happened that I think is best left to be developed on WiscWiki (for the sake of space here and efficiency [my time—prelims, con paper/proposals are calling]).

I’ll end with touching on the session I moderated: authorship models. Here are some of the questions we discussed:

—In terms of authorship, do wikis do something new, different than the ways in which knowledge is constructed elsewhere? Or do wikis simply model what’s already happening but in a more public space?
—What authorship models work the best in particular situations? (Inside and outside the classroom // wiki-based and non-wiki-based)
—Why do they work, in each locale or situation?
—What are the similarities and differences between outside-of-school (workplace or community) authorship models and in-school models?
—Is any text ever single-authored? How can we talk about similarities and differences in authorship models with our students?
—How do collaboration models in f2f or e-spaces allow different personality types to participate? (we talked about “shy” students and diminishing effects of being judged [I’m not sure how judgment by others changes in e-spaces])
—What makes a collaborative group well?

One of my reservations when talking about any school assignment is Where does motivation/fun fit in? I don’t have a complete handle on this, but it seems that fun is what’s missing from the discussion of authorship models. It also bugged me in the community building session: why would anyone want to be a member of a community in a classroom, especially a gen ed required composition course? How is it possible to make community happen in the classroom, if FUN is the essential component? If fun is essential . . .

Well, it finally had to happen–my Alienware is on life support (it seems to like running next to an opens window’s cool draft): the blue screen of death pops up frequently (restarting the machine), resulting in frustrating losses of data. And, if there needed to be more problems, the plastic casing for the monitor cracked at one of the hinges, so I can’t move it anymore without causing another crash.

The good news? I had to buy a new laptop, a 13-inch MacBook. I still not done setting it up, but it’s it a lot more fun than a standard Windows machine:

from the iSight camera