the dump

A place to keep track of info, links, and my thoughts on composition and rhetoric, teaching and learning, and life in general, while I work on my PhD at the University of South Florida.

Home for the Holidays

I'm back home playing with dial up and itching to blog,  but at home I'm frequently on the computer less and dial up is a pain to multitask with.  So this is my way of letting everyone know.  This blog will not be updated frequently until January, when I return to school.  But I will periodically drop a line or two. Happy Holidays one and all.

posted by: akjon78 at 10:50 | link | comments (2) |

And Done

I finished my grading today (except for two students who are refusing to turn in their final project).  I'm feeling really good, but since I'm leaving Friday these two students are driving me mildly insane. Oh well.

 

posted by: akjon78 at 14:35 | link | comments (1) |

Literacy Revisted

Yesterday in class we talked a little about the reticence of academic fields to adopt new technology.  Doc Mox had some cool quotes from teaching conferences in earlier centuries where people were afraid of the kinds of skills students were losing by using slates in the classroom or paper, etc.  Then today I got the TechRhet digest and the whole discussion was basically a continuation of our classroom discussion.  I knew I had to save these posts so I've posted them to my wiki.  Here's some quotes to whet interest:

"But, there is a true art to proper academic scholarship that is slowly being lost and replaced by computers. I truly do think that programming languages are an utter art form onto themselves, the things one can do with them are amazing."

"I believe that for one to have a strong grasp of digital culture, one needs to have a good understanding of oral, chiographic/manuscript, and print culture as well, if not also an understanding of other communication technologies such as the telegraph, cinema, radio, etc."

It was a very good discussion.

posted by: akjon78 at 12:42 | link | comments |

Professional Blogs

I've decided to start kind of looking at and for bloggers using blogs for professional development (Check out this article). I've noticed that prof blogs tend to come in two varieties, blogs for professional development and professionals ranting about profession. I know that sometimes I slip into both varities depending, on day, week, month. For academics (like me ) blogging for professional development makes sense. I mean I can ponder on the articles and books I read for my classes, for my research, and I can discuss interesting and mostly relevant items on the web. I can also create a less stuffy persona, because of the loose nature a blog can have. Also I can create a writing space that is uniquely my own in a way that no bound journal or spiral notebook has ever been really mine. Here I can tweak the template code and use images to set my tone and voice. I've noticed that others have started to use the blog for their own professional development. I was looking at My Life in Comics today and seeing someone else in an entirely different area creating a professional critique of their industry. Very cool. I'm thinking someday after collecting enough I might have interesting article to write.

posted by: akjon78 at 18:29 | link | comments (1) |

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