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February 27, 2005

how i win at kevin bacon

i'm starting to catch up with the class in watts' six degrees, and while i'm not holding on to as much of the math as i'd like to be (i spoke this language once, i swear, but it's been so very long), i'm seeing the impressions emerge, & digging the already-dead metaphors of streams and currents, webs and handshake-associations, even (although i'm glad i'm almost through that chapter) viruses--i knew about melissa, but i didn't know the simpsons had anything to do with it! & i'm finding a lot of kernels like that in watts, more, certainly than i expected: it turns out that all those years i spent as the only humanities major surounded in a social network of CEs & CivEs & double-Es & programming inclined nerds who dropped out but kept geeking anyway have paid off & informed my thinking & ability to grasp things that ought to be outside my realm in really fortuitous ways.

when he says, on pg 156, "just try playing six degrees of kevin bacon without the computer," though, i have to laugh at him.

geeks watch a lot of movies; i don't need a social scientist to tell me that. & while my geeks weren't at uva designing oracles for the purpose ("the university" has actually been the sworn nemesis of every school i've been at until now!) we were certainly familiar with the kevin bacon game. watts' initial treatment of the game as he knew it intrigued me enough that i went to the oracle (which despite my vast experience with the game itself i hadn't heard of until watts explained) & spent an hour-long aim chat with a friend in florida trying to find anyone in the movie database with a kevin bacon number of 4 or higher--we failed, & had to admit defeat & get back to work. part of what frustrated us, though, was the rigidity of the criteria. tv didn't count, bollywood didn't count, stage productions didn't count--and none of the tricks we used were even vaguely admissable. another thing that got old quickly was that the same movies that we'd never heard of kept coming up over & over. the computerized version lacked the resonant associations that mattered to us. it didn't even notice the movies we'd seen & enjoyed remembering, because they weren't significant enough as hubs for the purpose of the game--which wasn't creating interesting chains, at that mathematical level, it was just to minimize the number of steps. kevin bacon has been in a lot of heavy-hitter movies. watching the computer win just for the sake of winning wasn't fun for long.

the latter link above actually describes a much more accurate version of the game we used to play in college--only and always without a computer: whereas the oracle admits only hollywood actors & only collaboration on a film as legitimate associations, we'd take any connection at all, & in so doing, played a game much more like the kinds of multi-group, multi-path-type associative networking watts describes later on. for starters, our connections were relevant to us. if a movie came up in the game at all, it was because one or more of us had seen it (which often led to recommendations and movie-night selections)--it was a conversation, not just a fact. it was a genuine connection, the kind with multiple meanings, not just a binary data-blip flipped to "on" on both sides of the question.

more importantly and far more interestingly, though, we had fewer restrictions on our associations. any connection to kevin bacon was... a connection to kevin bacon. it was that simple. my friend in florida has a kevin bacon number of 3, because he dated a girl who had thanksgiving dinner one year with julia roberts, who was in flatliners with kevin bacon. & me? my kevin bacon number is 1: he & i share a birthday.

(x-posted to 711)

Posted by ttobryan at 09:53 AM | Comments (1)

February 26, 2005

do gnats dream of electric clowns?

i have all the focus of a gnat this morning, but i dare anybody trying to make coherent connections between quantum leaps & transactional reading theories to do any better.

quantum leap: the moment the both-possible solidifies, actualizes, becomes one, not both, & makes the other impossible... or maybe it's the many-possible (all-possible?) becoming one & thus denying all the others.

there aren't (are there?) any quantum leaps in network theory; possibilities increase or decrease the likelihood of other possibilities, but they don't eliminate one another. there are critical points, places from which movement, likelihood, & connectivity increase exponentially, but they're still arrays of options; there may be points at which one or another possibility is denied, but all the others remain open, creating instead of a yes & a possibly infinite array of nos, one or another no that actualizes, having little bearing on the overall array of possible yesses.

listening to: one a.d. | dubometer

this song has a repetitive electronic noise that sounds like maniacal clown-laughter in it, which is not helping solve the gnat problem. tricksy association games come full circle: quantum leaps are impulse-gnats, laughing like electric clowns. i'm blogging theory at 11:30 on a saturday morning. i think i hear the big white padded van turning onto the end of my street...

EDIT: theory-genius husband-person, while reading over the short paper the above puzzle was a part of, said "where'd you get 'both-possible'? who is that?" i'm sure i looked very sheepish when i said "it's me. i don't know. i didn't know what else to call it." i'm still sheepish about this. am i allowed to do that? make up terms? are the theory-police going to lock me up? rhetorical giants come after me with their thumb-wide sticks?

excuse me while i scurry back to the safety of the six degrees of kevin bacon.

Posted by ttobryan at 11:02 AM | Comments (2)

February 25, 2005

tj 308: week 6

this was our first week back on the week-1 plan we started with: i led the class tuesday, with molly there but not doing much (which is gonna change), & then thursday they were hers, & i went to 711 instead, to duck my head into my grad student responsibilities like i was supposed to be doing, which felt a little freeing & a lot guilt-inspiring all at the same time. i haven't been in contact with her since yesterday, so i'm assuming everything went well enough--we'd met & planned & she'd bounced a hand-out off me in advance--to get them through the weekend 'til i see them tuesday.

that sounds--i know it sounds--like i'm the teacher & she's the sub. it won't stay that way. i'm committed to not doing that, for her sake and the students', and as we move into the next unit, which will be more her baby than mine, it should reverse to some degree, at least & even out. yesterday she really was stepping in to oversee a day of class i'd planned & had originally assumed i'd be there for, so i'm hoping those factors justify the impression, so long as it doesn't last.

3 of our students already know her, either because they're in other classes w/her this term or had one in the past, which is good for everybody, & she's really excited about the subject matter & about getting to know them... we're going to meet next week to make sure we've got everything solidified through the beginning of spring break, & then meet again early in the break (before i run off to CCCCs) to talk about the next unit plan, but the preliminary conversation we had after tuesday's class about her plans & ideas sounded great--easily continuous w/what they've started on but also different in tack, so that those whose demands and expectations haven't yet been much addressed will get their turn.

i've talked to miao about his intentions & what's the best use of his time, leyla about her recovering, shweta (with a lot of missing each other) about getting her back on track, & emmanuel about his concerns about having missed a chunk of american schooling somewhere along the way, which i think might make him a little less familiar with some of our vocabulary, but doesn't really set him so far back comparatively as he imagines. i've posted grammatical resources (kudos to cheryl & marc & the mighty grammar gym), hoarded a lot of their work so they won't have time to lose it between now & next week, read a bunch of things in advance of pinning a grade on them as a collected mass when it all comes in... i formally introduced molly & explained what was going on with becky on tuesday, & everybody seemed okay; molly's worried, & becky's worried, that they'll do some panicking about grades and who's doing the giving at some point, but i'm trying to keep a hand on that pulse, & i'm not feeling any nervous flutters. i've reassured them that we'll all stay in close contact & that nobody's going to be pulling any switches on them wherein they were told to work for one person's set of goals & now they're being graded on another, & so far it looks like they're believing me. & i'm believing me, & molly's right there w/me on that, so i'm knocking on wood out of habit rather than concern.

& it's going to be okay. that's really what this entry is about; i meant it to be about what's actually going on in the class, what the students are working on in their projects, how collaboration seems to be going here as compared to in 205... but they seem to be doing okay, or at least doing something that promises to coalesce into a thought-baked textual creation of some type taking on the theoretical complexities of teaching style by way of imitation, so i'm rather freed up at the moment to worry less about the "what" of their activities than about the multitude of different "hows" i feel responsible to at the moment.

next week, i promise content. but there really are a whole host of different layers to pay attention to when doing this, & you can't hit them all every time.

listening to: animals on wheels | plot lost sixteen

Posted by ttobryan at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

tj 205 week 6

we're teetering on the edge of being finished w/unit 2 & sliding into 3, & i let myself be bullied into extending the deadline of the one into the gearing-up period of the other... although i recognize that that's really just linguistic dodge-ball: they weren't actually bullies, & i didn't decide anything that didn't make sense; it would have been more arbitrary to keep the date just because it was decided-on than to change it based on polite requests for a little more time to coordinate around group members' schedules.

as for the groups, they seem to be... wildly various, but problem-solving on their own & not crying to me for intervention, which is really all i ask. they're going about it very differently, and i'm trying to be pretty hands-off about it:

eugene & landel & tanard are doing a lot of their work together in athletic tutoring, & always look a little scattered about it, but have astute questions & observations to make when i come around to see how they're doing; tiffanee & casey c. are having a little trouble working around a rush week issue, but seem to be juggling it with aplomb on both sides; george & nicole are so on top of the working-together deal that they're making each other nervous about whether or not they're overlooking something, i think because they both think this should be harder than it is; i'm not sure what john & javier are doing, but every time i check in they have either a question or an answer at the ready; bryce & julianna and the tacie-casey-jon crew are so organized they make my academic work look like a train wreck. jen & ken are kind of a train wreck in their own right, but they're aware of it & taking steps--maybe not the best steps in the best order, but they're learning from the stepping anyway, & that's really what it's all about. i'm a little nervous about scott & jesse only because so very much of what they're up to is going on behind the scenes, but they keep giving me chances to ask one or the other of them alone if it's working, and i'm getting guarded but hopefull yesses from both, so we're just going to keep rolling on.

the big fear with group work is always that someone will disintegrate & take somebody else along, & i think we're in the clear on that; the ones who are a little off-balance seem either to be stablized by who they're working with or working to counter-balance somebody else's "off," so i'm not anticipating any pinpoint-blame-able falls. i do worry that i'm not doing enough... hands-off as a philosophy works for me, but i'm not sure--you're never sure--how much guidance they really need, & how well they really know whether they have it as under control as they seem to or not until the work comes in. we're not spending much class time on the craft readings, because i'm not getting the sense that they need the same babysteps, but i don't want to find out later that i've stepped entirely around anybody who doesn't even know he/she is behind to ask for a hand.

they have a chunk of draft, or most of them did, in class today; they did a global workshop today & have a more specific one monday; monday we start brainstorming for unit 3, close-edit papers, & then they're on their own to finish up for friday while we carry on. we've talked about claims, today they were scrutinizing each others' introductions for background, problem-stating, & responses, describing concluding strategies, & trying to account for main & supporting claims (i should really have them share those findings on monday before we get to the close editing)...

so, yeah, we're rolling, rolling, rolling right along.

listening to: jill scott | honey molasses

Posted by ttobryan at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2005

"if you want to know what the man believes in, look at his metaphors."

--becky howard, specifically in reference to bob connors, but highly generizeable.

Posted by ttobryan at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

projectiles elaborated (p.1)

i have several justifications (& why this is a space for listing justifications i suppose i should consider later & x-post to 711) for including that entirely non-illuminative rambling about a project i haven't really started yet:

i've started no less than 10 conversations with my beloved advisor about what i think i'll do a diss about (& a shout-out to a. jabbur, who says "i love that word: dissertate. it sounds like something one should do in the bathroom"). i have got to stand still long enough to do this. and to do that--i finally get it--i've got to see how it connects the all the other things i considered & still care about & couldn't keep hold of in isolation with one another, even if i can't develop or thoroughly explore the implications of all of those connections. if i know it's a web, and i can document that connectivity, even for myself, then i'm hoping i can transcend that "fly" feeling grad students supposedly all get trapped in & be my own spider instead.

listening to: moxy fruvous | spiderman

which isn't far from being batman.

Posted by ttobryan at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)

project(ile) over(board)

(x-posted to 611... but it's evidence i'm here, anyway...)

the grand scheme, refocused: color me returning to the land of the lit review for this project, whose broadest goal is to better acquaint me with the theoretical frames & practical applications that have characterized collaborative writing in composition during the 1980s and 1990s. i am keenly interested in the archival work i initially proposed to undertake, but realized i was going about this out of order: before making cogent sense of the artifacts i hope to study, i need a better sense of what's happened, and what kinds of sense have been made of it already.

concrete objects: there are two piles of books concerned with issues of collaboration, writing as a social activity, and intellectual property on my desk, 3 from 1987-90 (Ede & Lunsford, Gere, and LeFevre), 3 from 1994-2000 (Buranen & Roy, Leonard, et al, and Spigelman). there is a 1978 reading theory book (Rosenblatt) on my recliner-chair. College English is accessibly archived online & available through the SU library website & JSTOR from as early as 1939; my version of Adobe is current & working just fine.

not exactly distillation:
Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind.'" College English 46.7 (November 1984): 635-52.

Buranen, Lise and Alice M. Roy, eds. Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World. Albany: SU of New York P, 1999.
*primarily articles from sections 1-3 (definitions)*

Gere, Anne Ruggles. Writing Groups: History, Theory, and Implications. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.
LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.

Leonard, James S., Laura Brady, and Robert Murray. "Collaborative Writing: A Browser's Bibliography." Author-ity and Textuality: Current Views of Collaborative Writing. Ed. James S. Leonard, Christine E. Wharton, Robert Murray Davis, and Jeanette Harris. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill P, 1994. 229-250.

Ede, Lisa and Andrea A. Lunsford. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.

Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978.

Spigelman, Candace. Across Property Lines: Textual Ownership in Writing Groups. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000.

what i want to know: what does "collaborative writing" variously mean to different experts? (i.e. co-writing, peer editing, collaborative drafting with one person having final editorial "say" over the product, writing that takes place in a conversational milieu, some or all of the above?) where are the sites of collaboration in these writers' conceptions? (i.e. between people sitting side-by-side with a text in front of them, between writers and readers, between writers and other people not present in the space/time of the writing event?) what is the relationship, for these authors, between the traditionally individualistic conceptualization of the solitary writer and the definitions & purposes of collaboration as they define it? how do the writers who deal with the development of collaborative work in the field describe its history? how do their accounts differ? how do their accounts and projections correspond with my experiences in writing classes during the decades in question?

the clock is ticking: tasks = 1) download .pdf & read it, because it's the oldest thing on my list, & 2) skim these books, or the sections thereof that seem most relevant, in something approximating chronological order, & 3) take better notes than i've taken for white & connors. 4) post abbreviated versions of those notes as an annotated bibliography by march 10th (i.e. before spring break, because becky is crazy). 5) take books to CCCCs, & do the reading on the plane & while i'm there that i've faked in order to rush out annotations. 6) create a relatively chronologically-organized draft of what i've found by april 7th, & solicit feedback specifically geared towards arrangement & presentation: chronology's easy, but what's the bigger picture here (if there is one), & how can/should i arrange these bits to say something? 7) offer brilliant & insightful feedback to my compatriots by april 14th. 8) revise the stuff into a more coherent, focus-driven account in time to post on april 28th. 9) take everybody to chuck's for hot cookies (we'll call ahead to remind them to make some!) to celebrate finishing projects. 10) provide more brilliant & insightful feedback, with chocolate-chip fingerprints, by may 6th.

Posted by ttobryan at 07:29 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2005

rolling with whatever "it" comes along

670 semester 2 observation 2

stats:
dave nentwick, WRT 205, thursday, 2/17/05, HBC 009, 8-9:20 am

materials:
2 handouts, one an overview of annotated bibliographies explaining what they are, what they're for, why they're a good idea & what different types of annotative elements they can include, with a few example entries on the back, & one outlining questions to answer about each others' papers w/space to fill in representative observations.

students:
by 8:07 he's got 8, sitting 2, 2, 3, & 1 at the cluster-tables, but he overrides that will-to-entropy this time; after his intro he drags them into the center to work at the table interactively such that eye contact & conversation happened--and they did.

david started slowly, letting the students trickle in while he concluded an argument with the copier; it was a snowy, slow, grey morning, & everybody seemed in rhythm with "slow." when the handouts were ready & it was too late to keep stalling to see who else would come in, he shared the papers with them & talked through the annotated bib assignment due next class, for which they need to have citations & 4-5 sentence annotations ("make all three of these moves: summarize, evaluate, & reflect--how does each source fit into your research?") for everything they'd found so far for their projects.

while tedious in production, annotated bibs are useful research tools, he explained, ones that make comparing, contrasting, & aguing from a wide array of sources much easier. "we've already actually done all of this," he added, referring to the citing & summarizing & responding in short paragraphs they'd done previously--"so if you've been keeping up, you've done this for a lot of your sources already & will just have to cut and paste those in. if you don't have them typed up yet, you'll need to do that, but then you'll find yourself cut-and-pasting elements from these summaries into your papers later on--and your final works cited page will just be a matter of cutting and pasting too."

with that arranged, he put them in groups--since a third of the class wasn't there, their original groups weren't going to work, so he asked them to just come in & work 4 & 4 at the ends of the long central table--to re-do tuesday's whole-class conversation about sources & what writers do with them in specific contexts in small groups focused on each others' artifacts. "share the 3 copies of your homework that you were supposed to bring... if you didn't, you'll just have to improvise." they didn't, but they didimprovise; one group pulled papers out, traded, & started reading, the other pulled nothing out, pulled their chairs closer, & started talking.

improvising was the theme of the day; when dave went through the sheet of questions & things he hoped the students would talk about, it was detailed & sounded time-intensive--he had high hopes for the intricacies of their conversations. when they got going, they went fast, & zipped through the questions, so he had to keep juggling, sliding back & forth between groups to ask harder questions than the ones they were trying to take up, to push their analysis deeper, to make examples out of whoever's work was on the table when he came back by, & that seemed to be effective; when he'd leave each group, they'd keep up with the strains he'd started. the paper didn't provide as much guidance as he'd hoped, so he had to do more work to get out of them what he wanted them to put in, but with only two groups meeting, going back-and-forth worked just fine.

one elaborated worksheet task, broken into sub-questions: 1) "think through your opening moves--when i read through your last papers, i noticed a lot of variety in how you approached beginnings, so there are a lot of different ones in the class--the more options you have on the table, the better you can make decisions about where you want to go"; 2) "the blank space is there for you to jot down others' ideas"; 3) "consider why--what are the reasons for your choice? what does it allow to happen? what options does it limit?" then, at the end of the sheet, he left space for a brief reflective paragraph saying "which things you've heard in the group will be the most helpful or likely to influence your writing."

one thing i learned today, from eavesdropping on david fine-tuning students' use of vocabulary in the group nearest me: "flack" isn't just any criticism of the media--it's specifically "conservative groups critiquing the media for being too liberal"--"it's like propaganda--we can't spread it, it has to come from the highest levels of power in society."

what's cool: his students are working with a wide & admirably diverse array of sources, from academic papers to popular publications to the D.O. to live tv news broadcasts to letters & editorials. i wouldn't feel qualified to offer advice & guidance to them for all of those things, b/c i've never done most of those kinds of research, but dave's either better qualified or just braver than me--and does what i try to do & want to do--ask more of them than i know how to do myself, because the goal is for them to become better at what they need to know & be able to do, not for them to leave knowing more of what i already know than they did when they arrived.

what's also cool, although more clearly to me, i'd imagine, than to them: the group i was closest to had this conversation while he was working with the others.

"this is hard! my 105 teacher was like a kindergarten teacher, like 'okay, kids, now we're gonna do this!'"
"mine was like somebody's grandma."
"i got an A in 105--now i'm like 'aaaaaaaa!'"

"aaaaaaaa," according to this teacher, anyway, is fantastic. the end of kindergarten, the beginning of some legitimate challenges. brain-stretchers. things that hurt, & require hurdling. kudos to david for pushing them there, and for the tone of rueful but entirely not resentful frustration in the "aaaaaaaa" i overheard. she might not like it, but she knows--and believes, not just is able to repeat the maxim--it's good for her.

(+ critical glaring note to self: dave's planning next week's conferences, & i haven't scheduled any yet!)

Posted by ttobryan at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2005

over my shoulder @ lj

listening to: sarah slean | "me & jerome"

i've been doing a lot of complaining lately, & i must say that, as nice as it is to have a place to complain, it's also nice to come over here to these nice crisp pages & take a break from it (and from the sometimes over-syruped silliness that populates those columns & quizzes to balance out the worst of the bad attitudes). but.

there are a few little threads about hearts & folk singers & snowflakes that i don't want left in one place or another, but i want instead to carry, wear like sweater-wool against the cold, woven into everywhere i go. obviously, i haven't quite gotten the hang of this multiple-venued multiple-audience multiple-blog business. i suspected it was a bad idea all along, but conflating in either direction still sounds like a worse one.

(they're prettier from the mainpage, but only for brave waders through fluff & bitterness)

this weekend i have both found-again old friends & made new ones, and that is a damn fine accomplishment to claim. the stack of books i've ignored to do so doesn't make me the slightest bit guilty right now. ask me again in the morning.

Posted by ttobryan at 08:29 PM | Comments (3)

February 15, 2005

tj 308: when "we" is spelled m-e?

in a sound--for both body and mind, & i'm applauding, not complaining!--moment of genius agreeability, my brave, esteemed, and wonderful co-teacher has allowed herself to be convinced that in order to recover fully from her traumatic event, she needs to let herself do it gradually, and that to do it gradually means not trying to do everything at once, and that to not do everything at once means to stop doing at least one of the things she's over-committed to, and that the most logical of the things she's over-committed to to stop doing is co-teaching 308 with me.

"m"s & "w"s have a lot in common, especially if you're a dyslexic child.

there's a lot they won't have in common in the real-live application of me taking over this course single-handed, which i'm not quite sure right now whether i'm doing or not. i've offered. i want to. but it's a department, see, with lots of smart, experienced people in it, & it tends to try to involve several of them, & not just one sometimes-hasty grad student to make these kinds of decisions.

if i get to keep the course, single-handed, i won't be, of course. no one in a good program--and for all i bitch, this really is a good program--ever is. "we get to carry each other." if it's just me officially in charge, i'll still have becky on board (i should make a diamond-shaped sticker to that effect, & affix it to everything i own), because she's my fpp advisor--overseeing & advising my teaching endeavors is already one of the other things she's over-committed to. & she's quite willing to help with the planning & the idea-bouncing & the rationalizing & explaining that'll go on behind the scenes. i'll be supported, thoroughly. i'm not at all afraid of being stranded.

i'm more afraid, really, that i'll be asked to either hand the course over or take on another partner.

the first idea upsets me for a combination of selfish & altruistic reasons: i want having taught an upper division course on my resume when i leave here; i also don't want to disrupt these students, who've been great so far about flexing with our ever-changing demands, any further. they've done their part, & then some. i'd like things to fall into & stay in a rhythm for them. i'd like to make that happen, & be continuous, & allow them to finally relax into knowing what to expect next week & having a sense of how they're being judged & how much risk they're safe to take. and--i'm not sure which category this fits into, really--i really want to see where this is going. just because i don't have a detailed plan yet doesn't mean i don't have a lot invested in the outcome. i'm desperately curious. i stand to learn a thousand things. i want to be there to do the learning.

the second idea upsets me primarily because it would completely dissolve the veil. i don't know what i'm doing in this course, although i do think i'm at least almost as qualified as anybody else here to puzzle along with it. i can keep rolling the ball i've started in motion, & see where it goes, & stay just one step behind it, & guide it like a soccer ball all the way down the field. i learned to dribble when i was eight, & i haven't forgotten; i got to practice kicking lumps of ice down the sidewalk w/j just a handful of days ago. but i can't see far enough ahead to explain, to ask for help in an intelligent way, to really include anybody else in where i am right now. so asking someone in--not just to observe, but to co-create--won't be much different from relinquishing the whole project altogether, except for how i'd still have lots of work to do.

would i, honest-moment, be relieved if someone took it away & said "you have enough to do; we'll handle this"? to a degree, yes; i saw that relief on becky's face today & felt a little twinge of envy. but there are burdens i'd far prefer to have lifted, if burden-lifting were an open option... and the regret would be by far the bigger burden.

listening to: gordon lightfoot | canadian railroad trilogy

Posted by ttobryan at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

the blood of coding?

becky at stepaside suggests vampiric metaphors: MT coding is an addictive blood that, once we've started sucking, none of us will ever live without. she's crazy. it's not true. i didn't code this:

listening to: tori amos & maynard from tool | "mohammed my friend"

i don't know what she's talking about. but if she's right, she's so the head-vampire.

Posted by ttobryan at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

tj 308: week 4

status check: still rolling.

when i'm feeling helpless, i visualize the first few weeks of this course like a football bobble. "ooh, he's got it, no, he's losing it, wait, it's in the air, no, his fingers are on it, you know, i really don't think we can call that 'control of the ball!'"

when i'm more optimistic, i see it like scattering wildflower seeds in a large arc over the patch of grass-less mud beside our house last spring. we had no idea what would grow when, & for a while we weren't sure anything would, but then this wild, unpredictable blooming started, & little plantlings that had been invisible burst forth.

i'm hoping, & most days betting, on the seeds. the re-starts weren't wasted efforts to scrap, but planted kernels we're obliquely watering, that we'll come back to with that sunlight, & when we do, strange & wonderous things will bloom.

more specifically, i have several incomplete stacks of papers i keep delaying grading because i'm not sure yet what to grade them for, and i don't want to be capricious; i also don't have all of any of them, and i'm a little anal about that. it's infinitely preferable to me to look at everybody's initial imitation response at once, when i'm in an initial imitation response groove, than to read 10 of them now, 4 next week, 2 the week after, & always wonder where the last three are. i don't want a procrastinated groove, i want to do this, return it, discuss it, move on!

but they'll need these for them to move on, so the ones who are on the ball shouldn't have to wait. sports metaphors infiltrate everything. about the rest of it, though, i'm seriously thinking about just holding on to it until the end of the unit, then commenting on & returning stacks of things to students who i've asked to bring folders to class, & having them respond to their portfolios as a whole, right there, first-glance-back over the stuff they've done. it's not just a stalling impulse; if i do that, they won't have the chance to lose any of the pieces. i'll keep collecting, i'll know where things are, & then when they turn those folders in, i won't have to search & wonder where things are & what in the world they've madly labeled them, because i'll just have seen all of the pieces already anyway.

sounds crazy. we'll see what happens. that's been the most persistant motto of our year so far: we'll see. but at least with becky back online--and planning (knock on wood) to be back in the classroom on tuesday, there's more of a "we" to squint ahead & try to do this seeing!

Posted by ttobryan at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

tj 205: week 5

(no, i don't know exactly what happened to week 3--it must have been swallowed in that kennedy reflection.)

unit 2 is pretty much running itself, & i'm delighted. we've been lucky enough to get lots of chances to be in the cluster--teaching at 9:30 means that not many people are meeting then, & so the competition for the space isn't fierce at all--so they've gotten to do some unstructured initial-research browsing, & then to walk away from it to read a few chapters of the craft of research to talk about & do mini-activities from, supplemented by improv debate, of course, & then monday we're back in for them to get serious now that they've had a chance to reflect on both their processes & the specific projects they want to undertake.

nagging (although ostensibly already either solved or solveable--look, resident anxiousness, refusing to be logically quelled!) concerns:

Posted by ttobryan at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2005

terministic discrimination [years]

(my [years] friends are all geniuses, in far-flung fields. i'll pontificate at a later date about their greatness. argus in the sidebar is one; i think i'm the only other of us currently actively blogging.)

friend becky (b2) wrote:

...and honestly, I don't see why we can't throw the religious view in with the other evolutionary theories as long as it is presented as a theory...

friend jim(iny) answered:
really? on the surface, i can give you a couple reasons we shouldn't. but i don't think that's really what you mean...

read an interesting article in national geographic a couple months ago on darwin and evolution. the teaser on the cover said "was darwin wrong?", the article started off with the word "NO" in two inch letters... one of the points in the article was that we refer to evolution as a "theory", when really it's only a theory in same way gravity is a theory. we didn't write the rules, so we can't really call it a "law"(although we often do with gravity), but our math and science explains the "theory" pretty well, our experiments support the "theory" without fail, and no evidence has been brought forward to show the "theory" to be wrong.

i read the same article jim did, although i read it a little differently. here's what i see as the fundamentally problematic rhetoric beneath/between these lines: we're working w/two different definitions of "theory," & we don't differentiate between the two. when used interchangeably, they cause an awful lot of confusion & resentment.

def #1: (probably the more common, "layman's" hallway/watercooler term) a theory is a guess, hunch, or idea that, if true, would explain something in a way that would make it easier to understand. my comp. teacher, in one of her early books, defines it as an "enabling fiction." it's something we use as a frame to understand something else. we have "theories" about who took the lunch money, why stacey acts like an idiot whenever billy is around, & how to put literal readings of the bible into informative & productive conversation w/other ways of talking about the origins of our speices.

def #2: (what i think of as "scientific theory") a theory is a set of "facts" based on observed or observable characteristics that explains something complex as well as it can be explained until more data is gathered. this type of theory doesn't pretend it can answer everything; when it says "this is what happened," it always means "as best we can figure currently; we have a few outliers, but they aren't really patterned yet; when we know more, we'll change the theory & explain it differently."

the problem, in usage, happens when we treat scientific theory as always-true fact, instead of best-explanation-so-far fact (because we were taught to, because we have this enlightenment preoccupation w/pretending we can know everything & that there's any such thing as objective knowledge, & we have lots of objective language that makes it hard for us to talk about the world in any other way), and when we say of anything that it's "just" a theory, as if "theory" were a pre-step toward an idea's becoming a totally-knowable Truth (capital platonic t included).

gravity IS a theory. it works predictably most of the time. there are still outliers that physicists can't yet explain. there are still patterns being sought after. we don't call gravity "just" a theory b/c we're used to assuming that b/c the parts we see are reliable, the whole thing is proven & seamless, but it isn't any more seamless than evolution, than translating creation-stories out of mismatched treatises in dead languages. if we're going to teach our children that anything is a theory, let's teach them first what "theory" means to science--to use the word properly in the first place--and let's drop the "just." all it does is obfuscate an issue that's complex enough--and fascinatingly--already.

Posted by ttobryan at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)

"an insane flowering"

searls & weinberger in world of ends:

When Craig Burton describes the Net's stupid architecture as a hollow sphere comprised entirely of ends, he’s painting a picture that gets at what’s most remarkable about the Internet’s architecture: Take the value out of the center and you enable an insane flowering of value among the connected end points. Because, of course, when every end is connected, each to each and each to all, the ends aren’t endpoints at all.

some part of me knows that "value" here in too many ways only means money, but i'm stubbornly holding into believing that that isn't all (& if it were, anyway, the "wai-wai-wait" flag everybody threw at EPIC wouldn't always land at the "& everybody contributing gets paid according to the (popularity?) consumer-value of his or her contribution" point). because when people write metaphorically i fall in love with the pictures clusters of words make, and i'm seeing this great sparkling empty sphere surrounded by a tight-weave of contagiously rippling buds bursting into bloom.

no wonder people (i'm thinking of a few of my marketing majors in particular) get sucked into the rhetoric of "market" & "potential" "optimize" & "opportunity," when it's set up this way.

the flower metaphor continues: "the internet's value grows on its edges" like weeds on the garden-wall; but we all, like gardeners, have the power to "grow value on its edges"--to plant & nurture roses instead? like weeds (& roses) the flower-net is "outside," "open," "unowned," "not in the...hands of," "connective," "resiliant," "natural," "transporting" "bits" like water wicking up a stem, encouraging users to "flit" like butterflies.

& the metaphor's enemies are rigidly inorganic: "artificial," "barriers," "ownership," "propriety," "control," "force," "censorship," "permission," "private," "exclusive," "authorized," & "hate[fully]" resistant.

do i think the elaborately thematic rhetoric here might be a little over-the-top in an effort to jam an idea brightly down a reader's throat? i do. but i don't mind, & not just because i want the organic model & the laughing piracy of "hah--take that, recording industry!"--to win over those steely-grey words in my second collection above every time. it's a way of looking at the internet that we'd do well to listen to, & spread around perhaps like fern spores, even while also listening for some of the warnings i'm sure less effusive models offer.

(xp to 711)

Posted by ttobryan at 03:34 PM | Comments (1)

on observing, & being observed (p.2)

670 semester 2 observation 1

stats:
dave nentwick, WRT 205, thursday, 2/3/05, HBC 009, 8-9:20 am

materials:
handout about the burkean parlor--brilliant & already stolen from
hw/source activity questions--also brilliant; i especially like q#5

students:
11 total; 8 women, 3 men, all sleepy-headed & reluctant to speak at 8 in the morning; some of them proved more prod-able than others over the course of the period, & i'm interested in seeing them again to get a broader sense of that dynamic. 009 is a big room for 11; the hum of the machines creates a lot of white noise, the lights are bright and far away, the empty space dominates. i didn't think of it then, but now i think if i had only 11, i'd have them at the front 2 tables (5 machines ea) + the main station & kept it closer in.

because this is an observational write-up of a colleague worthy of dignified treatment, i will not say anything connecting tim from his student-run "we want to change voting access in new york!" organization to head lice in homeroom.

i will simply move beyond tim, and the polite introductions dave made for the class of him and me and the class's brand new student (who would have been # 12 had someone else not been missing), & get to the part where dave prefaces the day's activities by explaining & contextualizing their homework assignment--not just what to do, but how it's like & unlike the last assignment (they're writing another in a series of summaries, but this time specifically not looking for a scholarly source, trying to find something produced by mass media for its necessarily wider audience. he also gives them some guidance as to how to do this, suggesting (while they're at the screens to see them) specific databases & database categories to search to find the kinds of sources they're looking for.

next, he "gathers them around the boardroom table" (009's perk) to talk about the handout. he does the vast majority of the talking, but not for lack of trying--he asks good questions, he gives them time to read back over the sheet & think, he's incredibly patient, in that silent room, w/the wait-time, & when he eventually does give in & start calling names, the agreeable tone of their responses suggests to me that they're relieved to have the silence broken too, but had forgotten how to do it.

once he pulls the first few teeth, they extract really insightful gems, make non-obvious comparisons between the different research-models the handout presents & at least a handful of them are willing to discuss the relative merit of those models for their own thinking. bridget says "in burke you're more passively listening & you just fall in but in the encounter model [adapted w/permission from anne & margaret's pre-publication intro] there's more active seeking-out of relationships and meaning." danielle says "the parlor looks more unchangeable, whereas the encounter loks more like you can change things, have opinions--it's more free-flowing." carla says in her research she starts in a place like the parlor model, & then moves more towards the other. dave's wrap-up gloss of her & others' contributions: "the 2nd one puts you in the driver's seat; the parlor model is relatively static--it's a physical room you're sitting in, it's contained. the encounter model explodes that 'space.'" he added connections to technology & the web changing space-metaphors & then bridged the handout to the work they've been doing with readings & the database searching they're supposed to do next.

then they get back into the groups they were in before (he adds emily, the new girl, to one) to workshop drafts, looking specifically at their work with outside sources. their tasks:

what was really smart & cool: using the room's technology in a way i hadn't ever thought of. he put the questions in a word-doc on the main screen & through the projector so everyone could see them, gathered responses the way in a "normal" room you'd do on the blackboard, & entered them in under the appropriate question, so that the gathered information could then be printed & copied as a handout for everyone or uploaded to Blackboard for everyone to access &/or print at will. written out, that looks simple, obvious, & like something i know i've heard suggested in some form or another by someone, but when he was doing it, it was quick & clever--& allowed him to combine agendas, recording their ideas & observations, making them collaborators in the handout's creation, & also making sure the things he wanted them not to miss made the list.

before they leave, he reminds them again what their homework assignment is, reminds them also to answer question #5 for hw since they didn't get to it in class, & collects papers.

then, as they leave, he tells me he was nervous having me watching. nervous? the great and mighty dave? being watched by li'l ole me?
i told him i forgot people got nervous, because i'd been doing this for so long, but that i thought (true story) he was terrific, & (also true story) i've already stolen & implemented more borrowed ideas than the burke passage i read aloud off his handout to my class today.

Posted by ttobryan at 01:15 AM | Comments (2)

February 11, 2005

substitution

"he had me juggling teacups all night. teacups! with tea in them!"

--schmendrick, re: king haggard

"she had me reading about quantum physics all night. quantum physics! with mechanistic paradigms!"

--me, re: louise whetherbee phelps

Posted by ttobryan at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

on observing, & being observed (p.1)

i prepped for class today more than i usually do, because i knew in advance an observation was happening... or at least because that knowing coincided with my plans to do something i wasn't entirely familiar with already. usually i don't plan much at all; i sketch out intentions, & then i go w/the flow. & i think it was prepping that made me a little nervous, because usually i'm also not nervous at all about being observed. the little disappeared once i got going, of course, b/c i was responsible to 16 people who had something to learn from what i had to say, & 1 there (ostensibly) to critique, & critical mass of interest/purpose triumphs really easily in that direction for me. & then my usual approach takes back over--i didn't do half of what i planned to, but elaborated on what was working well to let it keep on doing so.

anne came to be my stealth-observer, but she wasn't very stealthy, mostly b/c i gave her no opportunity to be--fortunately, she didn't want to be, & responded beautifully to me throwing her into a demonstrative skit with no warning whatsoever (i picked an easy question). & the class was terrific.

"housekeeping" first, of course; here's something to keep in mind about blackboard, who else has responses to hand in, here's a re-cap of why you're revising summaries (i should e-mail a reminder just to make sure we've all got it all straight, b/c i keep adding tiny things to make sure that they end up w/a paper trail to refer back to come write-up time) & by when & what "summary" really means anyway.

then i read them a passage of burke on the "parlor model" for visualizing the researcher's job/positionality, having them close their eyes & visualize the actions he described, & from there took them to thorley's key verbs that encapsulate the same idea: there are ongoing conversations out there about whatever you want to learn about. your job is to 1) locate those conversations, 2) listen in to what's being said by whom, 3) report back on what you've heard (geniuses, they got right away that "summarize" was another verb for that step) & THEN & ONLY then "weigh in" with your own ideas, interpretations, questions, responses.

we talked a little about that, in terms of the work they've started doing as conversation-locators & listen-in-on-ers w/their projects so far, & that seemed to clear up too a little of the confusion about how summarizing isn't responding, b/c they're distinct steps in the model, & the i asked them "so let's say you've been kicking around this question about why you're here--why this is a required course in the first place. where might you locate conversations about that to listen in on?" & they had a few good ideas, & then eugene pointed at me, & then i said "oh, look, & there happen to be two of us here!" & threw the question at anne.

& we went back & forth for a few points talking about some pros & cons to the requirement, & she brought in some scholarship on both sides (crowley & i can't remember who in opposition), & they listened. & then i had them summarize/"report back," sharing what they wrote down around the circle, & then i had them "weigh in" first on paper & then sharing those contributions too, & then anne & i decided we needed them on the next decision-making board, because they brought really thoughtful & good considerations to the table. (& obviously i'd completely forgotten about any baggage related to "observation" i might have wandered in carrying by then, b/c we conducted this conversation w/me sitting cross-legged on the table between tacie & julianna, b/c i wanted to be closer to the rest of them & not just standing at the board-end far away.)

& then i asked them & their partners to start "reporting back" a little on paper about the conversations they'd started listening in on so far in their research, & we spent the last 15 minutes of the period on that, with me wandering around to listen in & contribute & ask questions.

it was great. seamless. building from one idea to another. they started out w/slightly dubious faces, got into it in the middle, & i had to interrupt their busy working to dismiss them at the period's end.

as anne noticed, as we walked chattily back across the snowy, sunny campus, they're a great group. far-ranging in opinion, background, experience, interests... but all with interests in putting something into this, & getting something out. i may be totally faking my way through this course, but i'm not in any danger of drowning at all. because they're great. and this really is--more than it's ever been in courses i've taught, although i've often idealized about it being (& said it was to try to nudge it there) a collaborative project. i told them this course would only be good if they made it good. they're making it good.

Posted by ttobryan at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2005

balancing acts?

rhythm, intention, networking, keeping (nod to derek here) all five fingers in the weave, the physical logistics of being at the machine, connected to a functioning wireless port, having or forcing time between other tasks, obligations, ideas, distractions, the phone ringing, the knock on the door, the clock's insistence on rushing ahead

my last post was not about what i sat down to write about. it was not about what i originally titled it after i'd already changed direction from what i sat down to write about. i've lost those things already; i might find my way back to part of one or both; i might never see the flicker of their idea-bulb resurface (& how mixed is that metaphoricity?). fortunately, in with the loss, an unexpected (& now a nod to madeline) creative gain.

Posted by ttobryan at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

the house of network?

today class was good. this is not an informative sentence, really, although we construct it & sentences like it in the halls all the time; it doesn't convey anything other than that it was the opposite of "bad," an almost equally neutral term. "good" classes are classes in which nothing "bad" happened. & yet we--the teachers i pass in the halls and i, in these halls, in the halls where i used to work, in the halls before and before and before that--keep asking.

perhaps the value of the exchange is an overall climate-indicator; when most people are saying "class was good," then the program's okay, the curriculum's okay, the students are okay. or at least not "bad." when we hear "not so good" once in a while, it's a conversation-piece or a problem to solve & a learning opportunity, but when we hear it often, we have to start looking for thematic distress. & if we hear it often from the same person, we have to look there, because either that particular group of students, or the text they're working with, or the unique outline of the assignment, or the teacher him/herself isn't okay, and because the rest of us presumably are, we can pitch in. offer ideas. observe a class. listen to an anecdote and relay one of our own.

what started this:

here's what mike said:

[C]onsider the way news was read and disseminated in the 19th century. Men (and some women) would stand around a news print. One would read, the others would discuss, all would break up and go on to share that information with others. A network literacy?

i understand that institutions need structure, & so that's why we have structured 670 as a set of scheduled meetings to make sure that inexperienced teachers--whether inexperienced at teaching in general or just teaching in this climate with this curriculum--have a chance to hear from and share with more experienced teachers. but there's too much structure, or at least too much on our agendas. and too many people listening when one person's talking, when we could each be doing one or the other, when we could be getting enough grading done that we'd have time to stand still when a hard question arose in the hall that warranted a decently thought-out answer.

i learn so much more from hallway lore--from those temperature-gaguing questions, from the anecdotes, from the euphoric & exhausted & anxious & puzzled looks on my colleagues' faces on their way back from class-meetings. & it seems so much more germane there in the moment of joy or confusion, there in the place where so much of it happens, the halls between offices & classrooms, between conferences & copiers, the desks at which we grade & respond to student e-mails, rant & overhear others' rants, crow & commiserate.

i'm uninterested in war metaphors. these halls are not trenches, & although we use the word "dungeon" when kidding about the poor lighting, lack of ventilation, unreliable cell-reception of our over-heated window-less basement, its here that we do our networking. it's here, not in the most well-intentioned of organized meetings, that we learn first- & second-hand what goes wrong, what goes right, what ingredients & influences contribute to those wrong & rights. what we huddle over isn't the newspaper, but the stories we share are more relevant to what we're doing daily than they would be if it were.

Posted by ttobryan at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2005

tj 308: week 3

this week was an actual week! i was in the classroom both days with our WRT 308 class--a first, & it looks like this week will be a second, although noël reminded me thursday that i'd said at least once i'd let them meet online & discussion-forum or live-chat a class discussion instead of meeting in person. we don't have anything on board to discuss yet, though, so i'm guessing that's going to have to be later, if the weather warrants it, or maybe even if it doesn't.

a whole week was wonderful. for the first time they felt like my students--like it's possible this actually is "our" class, because it's also-mine.

tuesday we met in the cluster...

and i ad-libbed through the things i'd planned to do, spending way more time on grammar & glaser than i'd planned--becky kept insisting that glaser was easy, & i kept trying to agree, but the class was repeatedly stumped by things i thought were simple. of course, i found kolln more accessible than she did, and they were stumped by that too. these grammar books expect a working-knowledge that i think our students lack--or at least a working vocabulary. they're good at noticing when things are wrong... most of the time. and either fixing them or creatively working their way around them. but they can't tell you that what's wrong w/a sentences is called an "adverb," and getting them to take filler out of examples to create more clear sentences was way more like i imagine pulling teeth would actually be like than i'd expected this to go. so we didn't end up w/time to do any peer review, although i did get corey's paper up on the overhead so we could at least make a few comments as a class. his was too slick, though (he was the one who volunteered), for us to do more than look at a few of his minute stylistic decisions in terms of "i like how you do this," and "i think i would have done this this way instead." not, i'm guessing, a very informative model for the rest of the group.

they're all well-versed in the practices of the workshop, though--and of workshop avoidance. "i read his already. she's got mine. i've already read that one." <-- that's tom & kevin, who seemed to always have print in front of them that they weren't reading & to be muttering about something else during thursday's rescheduled workshop session. everybody else seemed to get something out of it, though, even the people who'd missed classes & come in w/last-minute work no one had pre-read, so that was very nice indeed. the intricate plans i'd laid out for who would read whose when had completely dissolved, and i explained that. "it's going to be chaos," i said. "there's really no help for it. you've read some papers--find those people and share your ideas w/them. somebody's read yours--find that person too. if nobody's read yours yet, find somebody who isn't doing anything." and they did. i don't know why the freshmen lose it at those kinds of instructions, but these guys--in that 30-minute block so clearly not freshmen--choreographed the time beautifully. i did a little nudging for a few people, but even without it most of them were reading & talking about each others' texts the whole time.

the imitation handout i made & the mini-lecture introducing unit 2 that went with it didn't go over as well... i've been reading this stuff for too long to have any idea where to start, and the place i made up as a starting place wasn't helpful, apparently. betsy was so confused as to be almost hostile about it, but i'd already gotten the "sometimes betsy gets hostile" vibe, so i didn't worry much, just tried to connect it to a few strands & promised we'd come back. once we got a discussion going about how it could be negative--before i'd really done anything to convince them of the positive, other than to lay the obvious on the table--they took off & got thinking, though, & that's the part that matters. the handout was just a jumping-off point, and there's jumping happening.

i'm not concerned about betsy. i'm concerned about wade, but he wasn't there thursday to worry about. i'm afraid he saw me tuesday--when i was nervous & overly hyper--as being overly critical & confrontational instead. i wasn't trying to be, but that doesn't matter at all in light of whatever he percieved.

what's both weird & good: lots of people at work offering to help out, cover classes, pitch in however. i really appreciate it, although it seems a little strange, since i was supposed to be teaching this class anyway, albeit w/more input from becky. i keep telling them i have it all under control. i don't, but it's not a hopeless mess, either, and i really think it'll go better if it's a little jagged but steered by only this 1 1/2 pilots than if we get another 2 or 3 involved. my own vision of where this is all going (or ought to be) isn't clear enough to share in a way that'll make help productive right now--which is probably similar to where becky is, really--so i have to shrug it off politely.

i keep hoping, though, that near the end of the semester when i'm still backlogged, &, say, not keeping up w/my workload in somebody's class, that that memory will have lingered & there will be forgiveness. or at least extensions!

Posted by ttobryan at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)

tj 205: kennedy in retrospect

i'm a little behind, as you can tell, although since i wasn't actually here friday to finish out the week, i suppose being off-rhythm isn't entirely inappropriate. it's the first day of week 4, and we're at the end of our requisite "researched text," which i'd be remiss if i didn't mention i've had plenty of hesitation regarding teaching and talking about. i tried not to show that. i tried to act confident, act relaxed about the potentials for disagreement, & to channel that into the discussion-forum--which was amazing, and i need to figure out how to get it into a format i can post ethically.

we had a fantastic discussion today about people's reactions to kennedy's book as a whole. most of them said they'd recommend it to others, that they were glad they'd read it, that there was a lot in there that either they hadn't known, or they thought others needed to know, or both. stepping up to be particularly articulate about it, george said "i would definitely recommend it. because i think a lot of people--especially a lot of black people--don't know nearly enough about the word, about its history, about what it means." jesse added: "we think about a lot of this as being history, things that happened a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. but a lot of the examples he's talking about happened just a few years ago. this is still relevant--it's still going on today."

they were also observant about its rhetorical properties; john said he'd reccommend the content but only moderately recommend the book itself, because the abrupt ending frustrated him. he was looking for more of a conclusion, more guidance as to what to do. even as he said this, though, he started making room for qualification; as others immediately stepped in to point out, there are no answers. kennedy knows, just like they know, that exposing the complexity of the issue doesn't solve the tension underlying it. "you can't just tell people 'don't say nigger,'" george said. "they won't do it."

but it's still a book, as several people noted, and we have expectations about books. "we expect conclusions," casey said. "this looks like he just... quit. his whole conclusion is four pages long & doesn't say anything." i brought up authorial choices & the tension between form & content--they agreed that the content required leaving the discussion open-ended, but most of them thought the form demanded something else, & that put us in a great place to start talking about the choices they'd soon be having to make regarding their own projects. they'll have to choose voices as well, and consider the audience they want those voices to reach. landel spoke approvingly of kennedy's stylistic decision to be straightforward, using plain language and putting aggressive ideas right out there, rather than circumlocuting using the legalese that as a harvard law professor we can only assume he has at his ready disposal. "he was writing to everybody. regular people," eugene summarized.

the best part was their comfort level. george and eugene let the word fall un-self-consciously, nobody else flinched, they contributed ideas that didn't entirely agree without frowning at one another, people who hadn't been saying much spoke up (maybe feeling particularly qualified by the subject matter?)... it was a good class. i don't want to say "i did that," because i didn't. they did. if i'm lucky, if i'm good, decisions i made helped enable more than restrict the possibility from forming, but that's all.

Posted by ttobryan at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2005

one limitation of print media

here's at least one way that blogging is just like other forms of conveying the written word... you still have to write it. with your hands.

i've written at least 6 clever, pithy blog entries today. entries for 711, entries for lj, entries for here. problem is, i've written them in my head. while i was virtuously vacuuming the house, washing dishes two three times today, scrubbing bathrooms, running & switching & folding 4 loads of laundry... and no matter the alarmists' predictions, the technology doesn't allow for automatic telepathic thought-transmission during other thought-inducing but hand-occupying activities.

(linked from 711 b/c my limited tech prowess doesn't include proper trackback-pinging ability.)

repercussions:

1) my rhythm's off. blogging is exactly not supposed to happen all in a chunk on sunday nights.

2) i've mostly lost track of those 6 (or more?) bright ideas, and whatever i come up with in their stead, even if it's brilliant, won't feel as brilliant as it would have if i'd done it in the moment.

3) "virtue" is negotiable. i feel good about what i've accomplished. i feel bad about what i haven't. this isn't a new conundrum, of course, but it is one i didn't expect to happen with "post to your blog" as the thing i feel guilty about not doing.

4) i had more things to put in my teaching journal instead of fewer this week, & so now i'm further behind than i'd have been had i been inspired to clean last week instead.

5) i find myself complaining in a post about what i haven't posted about. i hate when bloggers do this. i NEVER want to do this AGAIN.

6) when i catch myself reflectively complaining, in my head i sound a little bit like madeline. and i find that charming.

7) all day, while i was cleaning, blogging in my head, accomplishing some things, neglecting others, and watching inspiration run down my arms and into the sudsy sink un-recorded, i kept thinking: "derek does this & raises a teenager. ty o'donnell does it with two toddlers. aleshia & jonna do it--all of it--with three kids to come home to. every day. madeline goes home to four. and i'm proud when once in a too-many-week period i find time to vacuum?"

8) re: the mommy-blog defense... these maligned women are at least posting about children. real children. real diapers. real learning to share about besting real challenges. real communitiy-building. me? the inconvenient overlap of the assignment schedule & my threshold for cat-hair accumulation. hardly a cultural assertion of anything at all.

9) another thing i wonder: who are the real alarmists, the ones who think all of this technology is leading to direct brain-to-machine encoding, or the ones distressed that it's taking so long to come about?

10) in a way, there's probably a very cogent point in here about embodiment & technology. my cyborg tendancies aren't supported by my hardware.

Posted by ttobryan at 07:35 PM | Comments (5)

February 05, 2005

thought-full

"reading cannot be separated from thinking. reading is a thought-full activity." --frank smith, understanding reading, 20.

sometimes scholarship reminds me of winnie-the-pooh.

(xp to lj)

Posted by ttobryan at 04:23 PM | Comments (3)

February 02, 2005

a post-what WHAT?

brooks, nichols, & priebe characterize their students responses to using blogs in a variety of ways to extend classroom work into other writing opportunities as follows:

the generally positive response to weblogging that emerges despite these differences suggests that as the genres and motives for weblogging are understood more clearly, the practices has sufficient cultural and pedagogical appeal to encourage and motivate student writing even in a post-literate age.

i hit the end of that paragraph like the titanic on that infamous iceberg. a post-literate what? a post-what age? i'm beyond confused, but i think first that maybe i'm missing something; maybe this is one of those terms that seems transparent but in usage has come to masquerade as something else.

so i "google" "post-literate age,"--an activity, i hardly think i need to add, that involves a several-tiered process of textual negotiation requiring a great deal of print literacy (what i assume they're referring to) in addition to what others variously call "computer literacy" or "technology literacy"--and found two dominant explanations of the term. one distinguishes between a "scientific" & literal conception of language and a more poetic, fluid conception, applying the term "post-literate" to the latter; the other, which i'm assuming is what brooks, nichols, and preibe had in mind, can be exemplified by the following explanation in a 1997 essay by brian rotman:

We are at a juncture when computer technology, a medium as awesomely powerful, transformative, delimiting and invasive as writing once was, is changing the world forever; we've reached a point when 'writing', as the linguist Roy Harris put it, has 'dwindled to microchip proportions' [The Origin of Writing: ]. We are living in momentous times: the inventions spawned by computing and the digital logic that goes with it are gobbling, at an accelerating pace, ever larger chunks of human culture and rendering obsolete practices that have lasted for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. As the medium of writing displaced orality and changed forever how humans encounter, respond and imagine each other, so the medium of computing, just as totally and relentlessly, is displacing literacy.

say what? i'm no less confused. everything i do with relation to computers is textual, literate, screen-print (most of it easily transferable to print-out). my geeky (no offense, anyone) coder/programmer friends spend all day writing--sometimes documentation in sentence form, sometimes memos and briefs in paragraphs, sometimes, yes, code, in a different language than the one i'm using now, but it's still a writen language system--it's still writing. it still requires literacy, where literacy = the ability to decode/make meaning from (theoretically definable as two very different things, i know, but i'm leaving that be for now) a visual collection of symbols representing word-based information.

how can that possibly be post-literate? when has any civilization ever in the history of the world made literate practices--reading, writing, whether on paper or on screen, usually both--more fundamental to its functionality? if anything, i'd call us uberliterate--but "post"? or is there something about what these writers mean by "computing" that's eluding me completely here? or is there some theoretical association with "post" not actually meaning "after b/c instead of" that i'm missing?

i've spent long enough looking for the context of the harris quote rotman's working with; i don't expect 1997 = 2005; i'm out of disclaimers. maybe instead of missing something i'm missing a lot of things. but... post-literate?

(x-posted to 711)

Posted by ttobryan at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2005

en français, si'l-vous-plait

this morning i learned that poseur is actually a preferred & equally-if-not-more legitimate spelling than poser, for spelling the same thing. & all this time i'd thought there was something ironically apropos about including a dash of posturing & pompous french spelling in one's endeavor to insult another's lack of authenticity.

thanks, jeph!

Posted by ttobryan at 06:35 AM | Comments (0)