C&W 2007: Serendipity
I had a shock last Wednesday (well...a couple weeks ago now) while boarding the plane to Detroit for the computers and writing conference--to my surprise my colleague and his wife (also a good friend) were sitting across the aisle from me. They were headed off to a conference about Arab American Writers. Look at the pamphlet in the lower right hand corner of the picture...it was for their conference, and another colleague and I found it at a local restaurant in Detroit. How weird! I guess we can all …
...Continued
| June 04 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
C&W 2007: Open Source Workshop
Let’s just start with WOW! The folks who organized this workshop did a great job of providing resources, providing quick introductions and leaving time for play. As those of you who occasionally swing by and read my blog know, both my dissertation research as well as other assessment data from workshops I have facilitated indicates, faculty committed to technology generally just need more scheduled play time to keep up with technology. I felt completely at home with my laptop open, working stuff from this workshop, other materials, and asking questions along …
...Continued | June 04 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
Wacky World of Bathrooms
About five years ago, a couple of my friends/colleagues and realized that we all liked to keep track of funky bathrooms. Since then, when we find a funky bathroom we generally try to bring it to one another’s attention. This past week when I was in Detroit at Computers & Writing I was with one of my “funky bathroom” friends. Without knowing that the Cass Cafe was one of the places highly suggested by a colleague who went to school in Detroit, we ended up there late …
...Continued | May 25 2007 | CommentsPosted in C&W
NewComers’ Welcome Booth
Joe and I “opened” the Newcomer’s Welcome booth at 9:00am Wednesday morning at CCCCs. Well, at least we tried. Since we didn’t have a booth until about 9:55am, we hung out, chatted, said “hi” to people we hadn’t seen in a year, etc. Once the booth got set up we spent the last 5 minutes (of course it turned into 20) trying to get the fancy banner up. We could either pay the hotel lots of money to do it…or…figure out something ourselves. I think we did ok. Needless to say, …
...Continued | April 03 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
Technology is more than computers
I know this. Really, I do. However, like so many people today I still get caught up equating the term “technology” with “computer technologies.” Or, I know that they are not the same; however, I am very guilty of saying “technology” and meaning “computer technology.” This last week in NYC, I had the visceral reminder that “technology” DOES SOLELY NOT EQUATE to “computer technology.” Because the conference hotel was ridiculously expensive, I stayed at a hotel on the upper West side. This meant that I took the metro/subway to get to …
...Continued | March 30 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
Day 2--CCCCs
I didn’t do much conference related stuff today. I was scheduled to sit at the newcomer’s booth from 9-10am. The booth didn’t get set up until 10am. So I sat and chatted with a colleague for an hour. I then helped hang the newcomer’s table sign with paperclips. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the slightly crooked sign. I’ll do so tomorrow; however, I’m betting someone didn’t like it’s slanted nature and will have fixed it. We’ll see… I think went to the NYC public library. However, I …
...Continued | March 22 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
Cyborg at the Shoe Shine
I wish I had taken a picture; however, I’m not sure I could/can. (Another to-do, what are the ramifications of taking pictures of people, posting them to flickr, and then blogging about them?). Anyhow, so I had just come through security at the airport and looked up at a white man in a suite getting his shoes shined by a Hispanic man. The business man was in one of those elevated shoe shine booth things and had: A laptop in his lap, (Bluetooth?) earpiece in his ear, and Palm or Blackberry …
...Continued | March 22 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
More Tweets about Twitter
Ok, so I’m liking Twitter. I would really like it if my both my roommate and my partner in scholarly crime (I’ll get pictures later) would do it—we would then be updated with who is doing what, where! However, I’m liking that it functions as a tracking mechanism…if I do it regularly during the day I have a chart of what I did (so I can then blog and reflect later). I also liked the idea from the Lifehack blog about using it as a to-do reminder. I have already …
...Continued | March 22 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
Day 1-travel
At first I was...eeek, I still need to get ready and I’ll have to get up super early to get stuff done. And then I smile...getting up early just gets me used to EST quicker in my trip. I have to get up early W-Sat...so might as well get on their time table now. Despite all my good intentions, I did not get as much grading done as I would have wished. I’m sure the fact yesterday was my b-day (and we celebrated) didn’t help. I warned all my students I’m …
...Continued | March 20 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC
Gearing up for CCCCs
I’ll be heading off to this year’s 4Cs (Conference on College Composition and Communication) conference in NYC next Tuesday. Instead of taking a pile of work that I should, but never do, get done during the conference, I’m going to focus on the conference (what a concept). Part of this focus comes from the desire to produce multi-modal reports out on what I’m doing/learning/thinking as I go. To help with this I will do the following: Get caught up with grading as best I can, then tell students not to …
...Continued | March 17 2007 | CommentsPosted in CCCC