Global Feed for Committed Technofile

My New Tech Toy: Oakley O Rokr Pro

2009-06-25T01:47:00Z

I’ve been busy this past year with getting the textbook published and finishing the dissertation. Busy enough that I barely blogged (obviously I’m trying to change that). And although many people assumed that I would see downtime after graduation, I’ve really been going mach 10 since mid-May. Last night, however, I finally had the time, energy, and money (yes, summer school does pay!) to reward myself for a year well done (did I say I finally finished my dissertation?). I got myself a pair of Oakley O Rokr Pros. They are Oakley glasses with built in blue tooth audio capabilities. I charged the glasses last night and synced them with both my Blackberry Storm and Mac Book Pro today. It was a BLAST chatting with @Befitt on Skype through the mac and sunglasses.

Once of my “projects” this summer is to do some reading and research on mobile devices. I’ve been wanting a new headset for recording stuff on the computer and I’m excited that I now have that AND another pair of Oakleys (yeah, you didn’t realize I already had 7ish pairs of the babies?). But I’m also excited that getting these has got me thinking about how “mobile” devices is more than our phones but also can include audio recording pens and flip cameras.

Guest Blogger: Stacey Cochran on Digital Touring

2009-06-20T15:07:01Z

Kicking of my own return to regular blogging, I’ve got a guest “traveler” and fellow technophile.

Amazon Kindle link: http://www.amazon.com/CLAWS-ebook/dp/B0024NL6QS/

Thanks so much, Shelley, for hosting me today as a guest blogger. As you know, I am currently on a 45-Day blog tour to help promote the release of my new novel CLAWS. Truth is I’m coming down to my last couple of weeks of the tour, and so I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect a bit on what I’ve learned. Specifically, I’d like to talk about how technology has affected me as an author on this tour.

First the good news; over the past 4-5 weeks, I’ve sold around 2,300 copies of my books. 97% of these sales have been coming on Amazon Kindle; the other 3% in trade paperback. This is the first time I’ve ever released novels on Amazon Kindle, and this has been the biggest breakthrough of my fiction-writing career.

The blog tour has certainly helped to concentrate my efforts and energy, and the momentum has been great. As I’m writing this guest blog post late Friday evening, I’ve done three interviews today alone.

The way these interviews were done is worth examining. My first interview today was a text interview that I did with an author by sending her questions about her book in a Word file. Once she wrote her answers, she sent the Word file back to me as an e-mail attachment. I posted the answers and questions on my new website onlinebookreview.org

The second interview was a Skype video call interview that I recorded using Call Recorder on a MacBook Pro. I spoke with an author via video call who lives in another part of the country, and I saved it as an .mov file and uploaded it to YouTube. From YouTube anyone in the world can watch this video interview; it’s really amazing!

The third interview I did this evening was on Blog Talk Radio and it involved my calling in via telephone to a buddy’s talk show for one hour. The conversation was recorded digitally via Blog Talk Radio and streamed Live via the internet. Additionally, the conversation was saved and is available permanently for listeners via Blog Talk Radio.

Three very different kinds of interviews and three very different kinds of technology driving them.

The point of all this, I suppose, is that today’s author can do a “book tour” without ever leaving his/her home. Technology is in place in 2009 to enable “habitation” of virtual space. It makes me think of N. Katherine Hayles come to think of it.

So how do I feel after doing these interviews all in one day?

I’m tired. My back aches. My brain feels like it’s worked through 45 crossword puzzles. Not unlike how an author feels when having to drive from strange city to strange city to find bookstores while on tour.

And while I’ve been writing up this guest blog… I’ve sold four more copies of my books according to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform.

Truly, our Brave New World has arrived.

Thanks so much, Shelley, for hosting me today. You were one of the earliest readers of CLAWS way back in 2004 when it was in its rough draft state, and it wouldn’t be half the novel it is today had your wisdom, grace, and good humor not informed its pages.

Thanks so much! And thanks everyone for reading!

Drop.io’s Present.io is Cool

2009-06-01T04:35:01Z

I’m finally playing catch up with my RSS feeds and I’m excited to say I’ve started flipping though the LONG lists of “new techs” be talked about in various blogs. Currently I’m reading through Free Technology for Teachers. Now I had already used Drop.io this past semester for my HUM/WST209: Women and Film course. But I was excited to read about that Drop.io had a presentation mode. I’ve played around with it a bit and basically it allows you to emphasize different posts, or drops, within the drop.io page. So it would work great to go over documents, etc. Drop.io also gives a conference call number for folks to be on a group call. This is not Elluminate or Adobe Connect (esp. no screen sharing capabilities); but it could work for stuff. Even if it just worked to demo how a group would continue to use Drop.io for a collaborative project.

mtech09: Lunch Presentation w/Sarah Robbins @intellagirl

2009-05-19T18:37:00Z

mtech09: Lunch Presentation w/Sarah Robbins @intellagirl

I’m back, coming at you Live from MTech09: Keynote

2009-05-19T17:09:01Z

MTech Keynote: Howard Rheingold

Guest Lecture for NAU’s CC688 on Teaching & Technology

2008-11-19T18:43:00Z

Tonight I’ll be guest lecturing about teaching with technology for a Fall 2008 section of CC688: College Teaching. I’m trying to input a bunch of material in one spot.

And now I’m playing catchup and editing this post…

We talked about:

What is Technology?

Issues related to Teaching with Technology

Some “new” technologies people are using in their teaching

To demo a technology, I had them do a PollEverywhere poll asking: When you think “technology” what are two or three words that come to mind? The answers I got:

difficult

computers email

It won’t work

money, efficiency, innovative

fun, innovative (Mike is my hero!)

fun, new, needed

hello

innovative, fast, new

I had them take a “Quick Start Survey” in Google Forms and asked them to select (from a long list) the current technologies they use in their teaching or work. The results are:
Quick Start Survey Results

Support Videos

2008-11-10T04:39:00Z

I’ve decided I’ve got to embrace my “good enough” vs. “polished” distinction for multi-modal teaching in yet another way. I’m increasingly making videos for people when they email me with the quick request “I don’t understand how to....” These are videos for both my students and my colleagues. I’m also developing an increasingly longer list of “I need to make a video showing how to do .... with ....” So I guess I’m starting up and repurposing an older blog, ”Keeping up with the Jetsons.” I’m going to either embed or link out to the videos I’ve made this far, and try to use my “blog-o-day” to play a little catch-up on the videos I’ve wanted to make. And although I would love to take the time to do more polished videos, as I made more polished videos for the textbook, I’m realizing I don’t have enough time in my day to do so. And to further rationalize my “laziness,” most of these technologies are changing fast enough that my videos will be outdated within a year or so anyhow. And why am I not doing this on my professional blog...I just want to keep the tags more or less within one blog.

In Praise of Twitter

2008-11-05T05:42:00Z

Getting purple tipped hair in SL to match purple streaked hair in RL $300ishL,
Getting purple boots to match purple tipped hair $300ishL,
Shopping in SL with good friends in RL who live on different sides of the US...priceless!

pic of Kix and I (Puppytoes) bald in Second Life

After today, my Follow Cost in Twitter is definitely going to go up! As of today, my follow cost is 2.27 per day with 13.55 per day with the last 100 updates. So those of you following me...watch out!

But what does this have to do with me being bald in Second Life (SL). Well, tomorrow I present at nmc‘s Rock the Academy fall virtual symposium. And we are presenting in Second Life. Well, I’ve played; however, I’ve been too lazy to really change up my avatar. And although I’ve been trying to get the time to “pimp out” my avatar, of course, I’m down to the wire and trying to do it at the last minute. When I should be grading papers for my Women & Film class tonight, I’m instead trying to run around in SL figuring out how to buy clothes, get dressed, not embarrass myself and flash the world...you know, basic newbie things.

After wandering around by myself for a while, I wailed on Twitter with a “crud, crud, crud.” And Twitter came to the rescue! Before I knew it, I had more people than I could interact with trying to help me “get dressed” in SL. So this blog is a big “thank you” to @whitetshirts (aka Something), @greenteach3 (aka Faythe), and @befitt (aka Kix) for helping me out today. This is also a general thank you to the microblog-o-sphere as well. And this is finally a reflective moment about the extreme usefulness of Twitter as a professional tool for those who work and play in our contemporary techno-culture. Not only is Twitter worthwhile to study in 21st century scholarship, it is a scholarly tool for the 21st century as well!

pic of Kix and I hanging out at the nmc virtual reception. I won $1000L for the scavenger hunt!

now if I could just figure out how to get my cool purple boots to look right on my funky SL feet…

Local and Regional Conferences

2008-11-04T04:47:00Z

I’m increasingly finding myself attending local and regional conferences and other “events.” I think there are a variety of reasons for attending these events, including:
1. Supporting local/regional organizations and people—they put on this event because they think it is important enough to do so, and most of the time I agree with them. And although sometimes it’s tiring to attend (you know, after a full week of work)…these folks have been working hard for multiple weeks to put this show together.
2. Cheap professional engagement—by attending local/regional events I’m not having to fly and usually I’m able to sleep at home; cheap, cheap, cheap (however, this does then make for a major drawback, see below).
3. Networking, networking, networking—don’t get me wrong, as a scholar trying to stay active in a disciplinary community as well as stay marketable while working at a community college, I need to network with folks outside of my reason; however, for getting stuff down on the home front requires that I network close to home as well. I’m really beginning to enjoy attending local/regional stuff that is not necessarily education focused and making connections with folks outside of the education field. Who knows when I might want to ask one of these folks to guest lecture in a class, present on campus, etc.
However, I’m finding there are a few major problems with attending local conferences as well:
1. I’m not necessarily giving up the national conferences I’m attending; therefore, I’m trying to cram more stuff into a “lazy Rachel” that is already spinning out of control. (My partner in scholarly crime is named Susan and hate’s the fact her name is associated with those devices…so we’ve renamed them.)
2. By staying home I’m more distracted by all the other “work” I have to get done (you know: grading, writing, laundry, house cleaning, clip the dog’s nails, spend time with the partner, etc.). It’s much easier to disconnect from both home and work responsibilities when you actually leave the general vicinity of home and work.
Although I think the benefits outweigh the costs, I miss my partner and he misses me!
Me at the recent PodcampAZ unconference

“Shell[e]y listens” (cc) image posted by sheiladeeisme @ Flickr

Podcamp AZ 2008

2008-11-03T03:44:00Z

Although I was wiped since I was at the Arizona English Teachers Association 2008 annual conference last weekend, Educause‘s 2008 annual conference this past week, and then PodcampAZ this weekend…I’m really glad I went to PodcampAZ. I greatly appreciated making some connections with folks in the local community. I loved having the opportunity to present my “Resident Feminist” presentation. It was very gratifying to do a “feminist reading” of web 2.0 technologies in a way that validated some individuals’ web activities. I also enjoyed talking with a variety of people with different connections to education, but who are committed to teachers teaching with, and students learning with, technology. I look forward to trying to be more helpful in the production of PodcampAZ next year (this is purely a volunteer endeavor and they do not charge a conference registration fee).

Blog a Day for a Month

2008-11-03T03:35:00Z

Ok Coop and Devon and Biray…I’ll bite. I definitely need to get blogging regularly again! Not that I don’t have enough to do; but, this might be a way to keep me honest. This was supposed to start yesterday (obviously I wasn’t reading my tweets…I was sleeping off back, to back, to back conferences; what was I thinking?).
So, blog a day for a month. I was hoping I would just do my blog, but realized that I had a few out there I’m supposed to be posting to relatively regularly. So I’ll take this month as the opportunity to just get on a roll.

The blogs I’ll be posting to:
http://www.committedtechnofile.com/
This is my professional blog. For the past six months or so the only blog entries this blog has seen is live blogging from conferences. I’m looking forward to sharing the projects I’m working on, the random thoughts I’m having, and the attempt to be happy, happy with my professional life.

http://shelleyrodrigo.com/
This is my personal blog. I started it before going to England this summer for a month. Tom, my partner, and I blogged about our experiences in England. I’ll be posting this blog entry to both sites. I figure I’ll also post daily here, even if it is the link to what other blog I actually posted at.

http://tycawest.org/
This is the TYCA West website, which just happens to be a Wordpress blog. TYCA West is a regional organization of the two-year college association of English teachers. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is the umbrella organization. I’ve been wanting to organize folks to post regularly. I’m hoping I’ll start the trend.

http://tyca-blog.blogspot.com/
I also was asked to post regularly to the National TYCA blog. The National TYCA is also under the NCTE umbrella.

http://ctl.mc.maricopa.edu/blogcast/
This past year I was our campus’ instructional technologist. We hired someone; however, I took over as the faculty professional development coordinator (please, help me figure out a shorter title). The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the “home” for each of these positions, has a blog.

This summer I was trying to prepare some blogging series for these different blogs. Maybe a few of these will get started; otherwise, I’ll just get blogging. I look forward to everyone giving some feedback along the way.

Educause08: Teaching with Images Workshop

2008-10-28T13:28:00Z

Kicking off Educause08 with a strong start at the “Teaching with Images: Tools and Resources” half-day workshop. I’m excited that Beth Harris, our fearless leader, has me already signed up for three new webware accounts and I don’t even have my live blog set up yet!

AETA-08: Facing the Dead Line

2008-10-25T18:12:00Z

I’m very excited to be attending a presentation by my new colleague Jeanne Dugan, “Facing the Dead Line: Teaching Drugs and Alcohol to Middle School, High School, and College Students.”

AETA-08: Keynote

2008-10-25T17:07:00Z

Beverly Ann Chin, Director of English Teaching Program of University of Montana, Missoula and former chair of NCTE presents “Strategies that invite students into the world of multicultural literature.”

TYCA-West 08: Google Apps

2008-10-10T21:37:00Z

Devon is sharing the types of stuff that we like to play around.