Global Feed for Committed Technofile

MCC-Welcome Back

2008-08-18T16:34:00Z

Mapping my Trip to England

2008-07-23T21:24:00Z

Many people ask me how I learn all the new technologies I fiddle around with. Basically I give myself “projects” to do with them. This summer I’m really getting to play around with Google Maps. I’m having a good time playing around with mapping our Pub-A-Day activities as well as points Donella or the textbook points to while talking about various British authors and their works. It really does get me thinking about various ideas of using Google Maps for multi-modal projects in classes.

I6. The Instability of New Media Performed in One-Minue Provocations

2008-05-25T15:59:00Z

F2: In Pursuit of the Stolen (Content) Vehicle

2008-05-24T18:44:00Z

E5: Wikked: Evaluating Collaboration, Learning, and Rhetoric

2008-05-24T14:58:00Z

D7: Our Software and Ourselves

2008-05-24T12:34:00Z

Attending Computers and Writing (Part 1)

2008-05-24T03:51:00Z

I’ve finished the second day of the 2008 Computers and Writing Conference in Athens, GA. Yesterday I had a good time at the “Get your Twitter out of my Ajax” Web 2.0 & Writing workshop. We developed a wiki to share material, and hope that we all will continue to add to it. I had a blast talking with my colleagues about blogs, micro-blogs, and social bookmarking (actually we got side-tracked into talking about tagging, taxonomies, and folksonomies). I then went to the second half of the Graduate Research Network (GRN) Forum and chatted it up with some graduate students about teaching at community colleges and other teaching focused institutions. We then concluded with an opening reception at Tasty World hosted by Bedford/St. Martins. Today I live blogged the opening Town Hall and three panels throughout the day. I got caught up with some colleagues and then went to the awards reception.
While I’ve been having a great time live blogging, uttering, bookmarking, and tweeting, I’ve had evening more fun talking about these “new” technologies (ie, new to me in the last year or so and sharing them with my colleagues). I’ve realized that although I am now looking elsewhere to learn about “new” technologies (Lifehacker, Webware, NMC, sxsw interactive, and my CyberSalon peeps); I still very much want and need the dialogue and scholarship of the computers and writing community. All of the panels today where either heavy theoretical pieces, or made sure to theorize the work they are doing.
Yes, I admit it, working at the community college sometimes buries me in the practice, or I like to hope praxis, of the day-to-day. Being at Computers and Writing has reminded me why I love being in rhetoric and composition, the scholarly emphasis on both:
process and product,
teaching and scholarship, and
theory and practice.
So yeah, at the end of the day I’m realizing I need to get myself reading some more, writing some more, and theorize a bit more as well. Maybe I’ll try to theorize a bit about the hybrid active conference participation I’ve been doing here at C&W (and like some of my other friends do at other conferences...thus a part 2!).

C1: Fair Use and Fair Play

2008-05-23T20:24:00Z

B7: New Media Schoalrship Stakeholders

2008-05-23T18:49:00Z

Keynote w/Jay David Bolter

2008-05-23T16:12:00Z

Town Hall: File Format Wars: Do They Matter?

2008-05-23T13:31:00Z

C&W08-Live Blog for Web 2.0 Workshop

2008-05-22T13:44:00Z

Living the Philosophy

2008-05-19T14:55:00Z

Now that I’m a little less busy (only a little… I really wish these folks who know nothing about education would so get over the idea that we “vacation” for 3 months of the year, yeah, right!), I’m starting to try to get back into the groove of posting to my Twitter, my blog, etc. I’ll admit, being friends for @soul4real can be a little intimidating. According to a tweet by either @cogdog or @nooccar she is in the top five tweeters in the Phoenix metro area. And let me tell you, this woman is productive, both personally and professionally. Although I feel like I’m pretty dang productive, I feel shamed in comparison.
... what seems like a random transition ...
So as I’m getting ready to go off to the 2008 Computers & Writing conference, I’m asking for bios from the panelists of a session I’m moderating. One of the panelists is talking about Open Source as a philosophy that we have to model within our lives. Thinking about this panel, along with the emphasis on “transparency” we’ve had at Mesa CC this past year, it’s made me realize the how and why I’m not “super-tweeter” like @soul4real ... FEAR!
This past year in discussions with various faculty members I’ve stressed the point that if we were open and transparent about our teaching, it would mean we would have to always acknowledge it as a process, and as such there are good and bad days, revisions, etc. Obviously we know this is the same with life; however, with tools like Twitter (and in this instance I’m referring to it as a micro-blogging tool, I know others disagree) there is the possibility of being open and transparent about everything we do! But do I want to share all of my fears, frustrations, and breakdowns as well as the victories and excitements? Or, can we strike a balance?
As I write this I begin to realize that like any other blog, Twitter can function as a focused output tool. Heck, @befitt used Twitter in one of her classes with very specific goals and purposes. Maybe the balance is deciding on a focus for when I’ll specifically make sure to be tweeting? Ultimately, I do believe we do need to live our philosophy, or walk the talk; however, I also do think we have some rights to privacy (or just plain having a bad day).

PMOG Motivates Me

2008-05-17T22:39:00Z

I’m excited to be more actively exploring new technologies again. The other night when I couldn’t sleep one of the people I always look to for finding out about new technologies was my good friend and constant twitterer CogDog was playing around with PMOG. Yippy...I’m so excited about this tool! I’ve been wanting to, and will now that I’ve got the super motivator, write curriculum for an intro to gaming class. Yeah, yeah...your snarky laughs are the same ones people gave a couple decades ago when faculty started introducing intro to film classes. And which of my classes make enrollment with no problem…
Anyhow...back to The Passively Mutliplayer Online Game (PMOG), it’s a game (you earn points, etc.); however, it also allows you to build “missions” that other “players” can take as well. Although I’m still having difficulties getting the Maricopa Tech mission I’ve been trying to build to work; I’m excited about the possibilities of this technology. It will give the intro to gaming class a tool that everyone can “play” and with the building mission feature I can have students “build” mini-games on their own. How exciting! Keep an eye out for when I start developing the curriculum, I’m going to try to make more use of my sites wiki and discussion board features this summer...so you all will be able to help me build.

Survived and Can Never Go Back

2008-05-16T05:01:00Z

I’m still not quite sure how I did it, but I survived the 2007-8 academic year as Mesa Community College’s instructional technologist. First, this actually needing to be somewhere specific for 30 hours a week...nearly killed me. Yeah, I’m so spoiled being regular faculty. But more interesting to me is the “politics” I played this year. Not that I haven’t known politics existed, or that I haven’t played them before, but this year I got them front and center. And the problem is that once you start playing politics somewhere, even if you no longer are in that position, you really can’t go back to the naive existence. Ahh well...at least I bonded with some good peeps along the way.
One thing that was difficult was “giving up” (ie, not having the time) to do some “important” work like blogging and following various blogs to learn about new technologies. I was watching some of my close friends geek out and I was worried I would lose my geeky edge. But one of the IT guys gave me the ultimate compliment, he mentioned that he was impressed with the skin job on the Maricopa Tech twittercamp instance we had running at the Maricopa Community College District Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference this past Tuesday. I said I did it; he said he had figured it was one of the other tech guys who is good with graphic design. I felt all warm and fuzzy!