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.
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Open-Source Syllabi
Over at vitia.org there is talk of creating open-source syllabi, which is what I think Dr. Moxley has been trying to encourage here at USF since he took on the position of interim director of 1st yr comp. The idea is that syllabi could be created by many people like open-source programs are created. Perhaps that's how we should look at revises the comp program in general, as one giant open-source program to figured out.
Discussion Forums
I've created spaces to discuss blogging and its implications, plus I have a place to discuss etds. Feel free to stop by and chat in my discussion boards.
Examination of Faculty E-portfolios
Little pissed off I had just written about four critiques, but the student computer lab computer crashed on me. Anyways, I'm sitting in Scholarly Pub and we've been asked to look at some faculty e-portfolios in rhetoric and comp. So here goes my little tour of the e-portfolio scene. (By the way I'm thinking of changing mine around a bit.)
First stop is Chris Anson's. I like that Anson uses a page like a title page. But the style isn't that interesting or unique. His navigation is easy to follow, always a plus. I think he might want to start hosting his portfolio somewhere where his name is more central to the address.
Then to our left we have Donna Reiss's. Notice that Donna's name appears in the little tab telling you that she owns her space, but the address is www.wordsworth2.com. She probably she put her name in the address as well and I wonder if there is a wordsworth1 or the original. The crumpled page background gives it a more literary, writerly look, but what does that say visually about her. Is she a perfectionist that constantly revises? It makes one wonder. I like its simplicity though.
To the right is Rich Rice's. I like this portfolios camera and that the blog is so central to the page. The navigation is easy, but is a little buried in the page. I like that there is no scrolling down the page.
Next stop is Cynthia Selfe's homepage. It's not exactly what I expected from someone who is so important to field of computers and comp. It seems to be hosted at her university's site, which probably explains the look of the portfolio. Yet she subverts the traditional look of these faculty sites by using a childhood photograph and unusually colored buttons. Navigation is simple and the priority is given to contact info.
Just ahead is the more experimental Anne Fraces Wysocki's portfolio. Her's is also hosted with her university. She does not include the traditional academic photo. Her portfolio uses a sort of fluid navigation. I like the general style and look of it and wouldn't mind creating something similar. I gues macromedia and a web design class or two is next on my plate.
Phd Weblogs
I just submitted the dump to phdweblogs.net. This is a site for phd students to place their research blogs in order to reach a larger readership as well as meet and read other researchers from around the world in the same or similar fields. I think it's something we might consider doing in Scholarly Pub class.
The New Look
I've been thinking of changing the look around here for awhile. Tell me what you think.
Hoy
This week has been absolutely miserable for daily writing. I'm trying to make myself do it, but I'm hating it and giving into writing constipation. I need to focus around one thing instead of constantly splintering off into every direction possible. I think I should probably work on getting the book idea off the ground and that article on blogging and visual positioning. I've done some work on that, but mostly mapping.
Happy Birthday
Today is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's, Jerome Kern's, and Lewis Carroll's birthday.
And here's a few words from the gentlemen:
"There you stand like a duck in a thunderstorm again - aren't you ever going to understand?" - W.A. Mozart
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll
And well Jerome Kern may not have been quoted a lot but he was the composer for Showboat, one of the most important musicals written.
Blog Research
So I have been trying to find articles and all for all my many blogging projects, and I have discovered that as soon as I find one thing, I'm led on to somewhere else. Plus I'm trying to make sure I read more research/academic blogs to get a sense of their style and all. Today I started at Thinking With My Fingers and wound up finding a guy trying to make a blogumentary, which led to the discovery that PBS has already put one together, Media Matters: Welcome to the Blogosphere. It's weird how connected I feel to everyone in the blogosphere, but I don't really know most of these people. Blogging might create a false sense of togetherness.
Blogging Statistics Paper at Perseus
Just a quick link to the blogging iceberg, a recent paper on blogging statistic.
Students' blogs
I was going through my students' blogs today and think some of them are turning out pretty good. A couple need to work on actually writing every week, one hasn't even started, but on the whole they're doing pretty well. I'm thinking of dissertating on the pedagogical purposes (implications?) of blogging. I think it could be an interesting topic to examine and maybe I'll do it as an ethnography. I think that'd be pretty cool.
I tried doing some mapping today to help me with my Scholarly Publication class (as we were requested to try) and had some luck. I came up with some chapter titles and need to talk to Daisy, but I'm feeling very strongly that whatever is written needs to be written accessibly. Why? Blogging is an accessible form of writing, we can't write about an accessible form and then muck up the accessibility in the book with funky jargon. Yes, it is academic, but blogging should be about shaking things up. After all you're putting your ideas out there into the public, that's risk taking. However our book turns out it must take some risks and try to shake things up a little. I'll blame my strong feelings on The Dissertation and the Discipline book we're reading.
Quote for the Day
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Eliot
For the Book
So had some more thoughts on the book and blogs and then thought of the blob. The Blob could be like some kind of metaphor for blogging, both just keep growing and growing and allow for an amorphous sort of spreading kind of writing. Then I thought we should title the chapters of the book with b-horror movie type titles. Yes it would be fun, but also academic discourse needs to be playfuly to trully to discuss the often more playful writing found in blogs. I think the ability to be playful is too some extent what pulls us into blogging in the first place. We can keep as straight a face as we want, but still pull a wry smile when needed.
See what I mean. This is part of what attracts me to the blog. I can let the hair down, but still work on deep thoughts.
Blog Clusters
Just found a link to australian research blogs. I also have found a large, loose cluster of Scandinavian blogs. Check out not only jill/txt and thinking with my fingers, but also Surftrail and Klastrup's Cataclysms. I also found one of the most unusual blog set ups with FlickWerk. Check them out.
Another cool research find
"Introduction: Inquiry & participation in search of a world worthy of human aspiration" (from the Handbook to Action Research) I'll talk about this later; I'm in the midst of the other article I mentioned earlier.
Finding Research
I've been working hard at finding research and found this article published in Norway on Blogging. I've noticed the name Jill Walker cropping up a lot on blog research. I also found the other author, Torill Mortenson's, blog, which looks like it'd could provide some interesting research. I just found this blog, misbehaving.net, focused around...well let me just quote its purpose "misbehaving.net is a weblog about women and technology. It's a celebration of women's contributions to computing; a place to spotlight women's contributions as well point out new opportunities and challenges for women in the computing field." I think this site will provide excellent book fodder. I'm getting really revved up about both the article and the book ideas.
Book Idea
Daisy and I worked out an idea for a book. We're thinking about doing something with blog communities and connections. So I'm changing my article idea a little bit to consider also the way blogs visually identify themselves in a community. We want to look at blogs in pop-culture, academia, and (damn it can't think of the last one...Oh yeah) corporate. Anyways we want to focus around the idea of community and blog clustering. Daisy had this title we decided to sort of focus around, but I think it changed a bit last night. So how this changes my article idea is that depending on the intent of the blog the visual rhetoric changes to attract a certain kind of reader. I also started working on this metaphor of the web and spider and blogs are spinning webs to attract readers. Daisy and I are thinking we'll work articles into potential chapters. It just that there are not a lot of books on blogging that are not how to books. We want to examine the phenomenom of clustering and the creation of blogs for a purpose. It should be a pretty cool book idea and I'm excited about working on the article. I've started the intro before I get too bogged down in research telling me I'm wrong. I think this will be a very cool book and contribute to scholarship in the field.
British Weblog Awards
I'm looking for sources for a potential article on visual positioning of reader in blogs and found this article about the Guardian Unlimited Awards for best brit weblogs. Basically it's a short article that lists the best in British blogging for 2003. Awards were presented for best design, best use of photos, best under 18 blogger, best specialist, best written. The blogs that won look like they'll be useful for further study. I'm abstracting it in refworks now. I'm looking at the visual design for this one blog calledThe Big Smoker. The design is really interesting.
Process Writing
Required Freewrite
All right I'm writing a freewrite in class for Scholarly Publication. What to write? What to write? I've got to figure out who else I need to read in order to get a good handle on visual rhetoric.
So what can I do to be more creative in my writing? Well, I think taking this creative non-ficition course will help me interject some creativity into that dusty academic style. Also I think continuing to blog will keep me writing and searching and thinking. I think to improve my writing I need to work outside of the blog more frequently and roll out of bed and write. I also need to go the LIBRARY!
Dr. Moxley just gave me an idea for an article on forcing people to blog in a certain spot. He's been pushing me to blog at writingblog.org. I know that I actually do the same thing, since I only explain how to blog here at motime to my students instead of letting them blog anywhere. I also what to do something with NDLTD and etds.
Creating a Career Research Plan
I have started working on my career research plan. I am putting dates into Outlook over the next two years in the hopes of having some publications done before I graduate. Plus this should help me figure out the best route that leads towards a graduation date. I working on a chart where I can link the ideas I brainstorm here with potential places to hopefully publish those ideas. I think it will help me become a better academic and professor.
Visual Narrative: Understanding Visual Organization by Luke Wroblewski
I just read this article about visual design for your audience. It's fairly basic and very easy to understand. Useful if you're looking for a source to show students. Wroblewski does have one interesting quote though that got me thinking. He says "Once your audience understands the significance of your page elements, they can apply that knowledge to the rest of the site." Page elements are more like the sorts of elements found in websites to navigate the site, but I think the term could be useful in the discussion of blogging pages. Blogging pages aren't meant to be multipaged sites, but a single constantly updated page. This means that some of the page elements are necessary for navigation. For instance "link" and "comment" provide some navigation for the reader who wishes to respond or link to the words on the page, and there are the archives, but then the other forms of navigation take the reader away from the blog. The page elements sometimes include navigation to communicate with the author or a way to navigate to the author's own site, biography, etc. But there other page elements found in blogs. Sometimes there are places to leave comments quickly (ie tag-board or some equivalent). These quick comment elements invite the reader to a more immediate form of communication. Also it gives the reader the perceived ability to leave a comment on the entire blog or a feature of the blog that has nothing to do with the posts. The other visual design elements have more to do with the placement of graphics, the weight given the title, and any other individual touch that clues the reader into the genre of blog they have found. Two examples of blogs that offer a lot of good page elements are Calgals' and this one by Jennifer, which I recently stumbled on in the comments of one of my students' blogs.
Feel free to read respond and suggest. I'm not sure it's gelling together.
Complete Rough Draft on Fingers
I've always liked my fingers - small, sawed into with a hacksaw, sliced by deli machines, calloused by steel wound strings. Although my life has been the moderately dull story of prolonged schooling, my fingers...my fingers have lived. They've felt fierce pain and sublime joy all with a touch.
About 240 nerve fibers per a square centimeter criss-cross at the tip of each finger, capable of feeling the most minute details. Don't believe me; try slicing one open. (Meat Slicers make nice clean cuts. Handsaws tend to make a mess of things, and it's difficult to hand saw a good deep cut, unless of course your good at being so caught up in what you’re doing that you don’t even notice.) At first slice there is no pain, but then the feeling begins blossoming into a throb, and the split capillaries begin to well blood. Slowing you can feel the pump pumping of the red juice flowing through your veins, your arteries, those tiny capillaries - the pulse of life beating crimson, dripping drops out of the split flesh of one small, fingertip.
Fingers touch the body’s rhythm. Place two fingers on the inside of the opposite wrist or where the back of the jaw meets the neck and feel the muted thumping of the internal metronome. My fingers itch to play/practice when I think of it. Their calluses long to drum, to bang, to pluck, to stab rhythmically, to touch each note. Trained for the viola they miss the electricity from the fingering of music. My fingers have taught me that music is not simply aural; it is the touching, grasping, plying, and groping for the intangible. Each little sausage works through being poked, prodded, and pulled till it learns the notes and positions by rote. Each digit learns its place.
Look around at any musical concert and watch children imitate the expressive fingers of the conductor, the beating of the percussionists, the fingerings of the rock guitarists. (Watch the adults as well, and notice their fingers twitching like dying fish, trying to find the pulse.) Children know that those musicians strain the muscles of each finger to fleetingly press sounds. Musicians connect their digits to the awesome, briefly communing with an unseen, aural world that caresses (and depending on the sound sometimes gouges) the mind with the fingers of sound. It is probably because of this that while many in the world would fears the accidental loss of any limb; musicians often fear the loss of a single finger. I remember hearing a variation of an urban legend about a violinist losing her legs, while saving her violin from the crush of the oncoming subway. At the end of the tale all the listeners would breathe a sigh of relief that at least she could still play. Her hands, and most importantly her precious fingers were safe to continue touching sounds.
The fingers of a musician, my fingers, know intimately the sublime joy heard in Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” They have touched the ephemeral in Vaughn Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.” These fingers have had their prints changed by stitches, scarred by carelessness, but they continue to long to grasp the sounds of the eternal. What’s a little blood loss if you can physically touch joy?
Friggin' Fingers
I'm so sick of the word fingers, so I googled it to see if I could find any interesting info. Found a great quote about the little digits: "writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers." ~ Isaac Asimov. Also found bands with the word finger or fingers, Stiff Little Fingers and Blistered Fingers and I found a CD called Crooked Fingers. Interesting to see the connection between music and fingers. Glad to know I'm not way out in left field.
From Hands to Fingers
All right so this project started about my hands, but as I drafted I realized that my fingers do the work so my focus has redefined itself. I have mangaged to come up with a couple of titles, but I'm unsure which to use.
Potential titles:
So far this is how it's going:
I've always liked my fingers - small, sawed into with a hacksaw, sliced by deli machines, calloused by steel wound strings. Although my life has been the moderately dull story of a prolonged schooling, my fingers...my fingers have lived. They've felt fierce pain and sublime joy, destroyed and created, all with a touch.
About 240 nerve fibers per square cm criss-cross at the tip of each finger, capable of feeling the most minute details. Don't believe me; try slicing one open. (Meat Slicers make nice clean cuts. Handsaws tend to make a mess of things, and it's difficult to get a good deep cut with.) At first slice there is no pain, but then the feeling begins blossoming into a throb, and the split capillaries begin to well blood. Slowing you can feel the pump pumping of the red juice flowing through your veins, your arteries, those tiny capillaries - the pulse of life beating crimson, dripping drops out of the split flesh of one small, fingertip.
Fingers touch the body’s rhythm. Place two fingers on the inside of the opposite wrist or where the back of the jaw meets the neck and feel the muted pulsing of the internal metronome. My fingers itch to play when I think of it. Their calluses long to drum, to bang, to pluck, or stab rhythmically.
Hands
I've got to work on my descriptive essay for Creative Non-fiction on a body part. I know its been done, but I think I'm going to focus on hands. Now I've got to work out how and why.
Hands. They're really the only part of the body we can competely see without a mirror or by twisting into some complex yoga position. I've always liked my hands - small, scarred from the deli slicers, burned from working to frequently in food service, caloused from years of playing the viola. My fingers are short and small, and my fingernails are cut close from years of music instructors drilling into my head that long nails get in the way, prevent me from playing well. Hands are for doing...touching, feeling. They caress, cradle, create. They grasp what the mind cannot.
Well that's a start then I guess I'll bring it back into music. I want to focus around hands ability to cradle, feel music.
Visual Rhetoric
I've mentioned this and said this all before, but I'm trying to figure out what it is I want to write an article on for Scholarly publication. I think an article about the visual rhetoric of the blog and design influence. I was looking at Anne F. Wysocki's website. She's one of the big names in visual design. I had read this article by her at Kairos called "Monitoring Order". It was a really interesting article where she basically makes the case that if other cultures with different visual forms of presenting information had created the web, the mainstream web would look entirely different. I totally agree, which brings me back to looking at blogs. Here's the thing: is the template design different for a blogging spot hosted in Japan as opposed to one hosted by Western Europeans? The standard look of blogs tends to be very easy for most Westerners to use, of course I need to figure out how to look around for blog hosting places in languages that I don't speak. I wonder if anyone hanging around motime perhaps might keep a blog written in another language which comes from a different visual arrangement for writing, i.e. not left to right.
And back to it. Anyways I think it'd be interesting to analyze a handful of stellar bloggers' blog pages (say that three times fast) and see how the author tries to orient the reader through the visual design of the page. Bloggers who have customized their space to really show who they are, but (and now it hits me) part of what is done visually orients the reader to a certain position. Perhaps thats what I should focus the article around. How the visual design of the blog moves the reader into certain position. Suddenly, I'm excited about trying to analyze this. Now how to set it up. I can't wait to discuss this on Thursday. I should probably pick out some different blogs and then find people to examine them and describe what they see, how they feel the author is positioning them based on the design of the site. I wonder if anyone has done something like this.
Online Textbook
I just found this Technical Writing Textbook online by David A. McMurrey. It looks like it'll provide some extra material for my tech writing course I'm teaching, which will be nice since the department ran out of copies of the book for new instructors. Of course this probably only happened to me, but it is making teaching the course difficult.
Another Moment of Idiocy
Brought to you by me. I've locked myself out of my office. Not so bad I'll just borrow the master key which doesn't work on a few of the offices on the second floor. Guess what, mine is one of the few. I'm trying to get in touch with an officemate to see if he'll come back on campus and let me in. I hate these moments and I had just done a ton of work getting my sushi wiki in shape to use as my home base for my CV, research plan, and writing log for Doc Mox's class. I thought a wiki would be an excellent place for a research plan since research plans need to be flexible and easily updatable. I think wiki's provide a good place for information that needs to be updated frequently. The good thing about the sushi wiki is I can lock people out of updating my CV or any other writing I want to maintain authority over. I like having an online CV though, because it can be linked to online projects I've worked on and such. (Oi! I hate that "and such") Words are failing me at the moment so I see if I can get in touch with my officemate and get back in.
Happy Birthday and a Quote
Happy Birthday to Jack London, writer of all those macho adventure books.
I always loved reading Jack London's novels as a kid, especially White Fang. I wonder if it says something about the kind of person you are if you like White Fang better than the Call of the Wild?
Example
This is an example post for my students in 1101.
For the regular readers
Interested in seeing my students' blogs check out blueprints.
Writing ideas
I'm still trying to figure out some way to examine illuminated manuscripts and the visual online. It'd have to be written in hyper media. I'm trying to figure out what other kinds of articles I'd like to consider writing. I know there'll be something on blogging and all that. Oh well. I think I may require my students to comment in each others blogs for homework this week and I'm trying to figure out which part of human anotmy to focus my descriptive essay on for Creative Non-fiction. It's a toss up right now between my toes or my hands. I'm thinking it'll probably focus on hands because of my hands connections to music and typing. Hands are for doing things. Not much of this probably makes sense to anyone but me, but like I said I'm just jotting down ideas.
Getting back to it
I've been having a little trouble getting back into the blog o' things. Taking a month off was refreshing and great, but now I've got to get back into the online world. This semester I'm taking two writing intensive courses, Creative non-fiction and Writing for Scholarly Publication. I imagine I'll use my blog for hammering out some of my ideas for those classes. I also am teaching Composition 1101 and Technical Writing 2210. If only students realized how uncomfortable and awkward their instructors often feel in front of their class. I'm rambling today.
I did look over at icedish's blog, frozendishes; it's so cool to think that blogging is happening on all continents. It really is a worldwide way to communicate. My students should be starting their own blogs for this semester. It'll be interesting to watch them take shape since blogging is going to be strongly emphasized. I think my fingers, which have been itching to blog, are finally feeling a little more scratched. I'm sure I'll have much more going on later to discuss. By the way if anyone saved a copy of The Onion on blogging from about a month ago, I'd love to get a copy.
Happy New Year!
And another semester begins. I got back in to Tampa a little after midnight and then had to teach this morning at 8 AM. This semester will have more of an emphasis on using technology in the classroom. I'm teaching 1101 again and a technical writing course tomorrow. The 1101 course went pretty well. I gave them an in class essay on How are technologies altering learning and writing processes. I received a couple of interesting quotes from two students. The first I liked was "technology makes processes better, not obsolete." I thought that was a pretty good insight into technology. The other one I digged was "...you can choose whether or not to use certain technologies, but someday it may be like trying to take a horse-drawn carriage onto the interstate." (feasible, but not advisable) That bits mine. I not exactly sure if I like the new book, but possibilites are in the air and that always excites me.
Anyways, just saying hello, hello, hello.
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