Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley December 2, 2013 Deadline January 2014 Issue Our Valley Home: Virtual Life in the Valley Mornings begin with a check of the local headlines, a glance at the weather and a skim of Valley-related Facebook group updates. The top of my Google News page features “Fresno-Visalia” regional alerts. I try to be an informed, engaged resident of the Central Valley… except for the minor detail that my wife and I now live 2521 miles away.   We are “virtual” Valley residents, with friends, family and clients in Tulare County. Thanks to the Internet, cell phones and wireless data plans, we maintain some connections more actively than we did when living in the Valley. Even our cell phone numbers begin with the 559 area code, something that helps us remain connected to the region.   Being virtual residents of the Valley has drawbacks. We can read about the Blossom Trail and see the photos, but that’s not the same as driving through the foot...

Online education is an accommodation to life's realities. For years I denied that online education was in many ways inferior to physical campuses. But, now that I'm working at a research university, my views are evolving. There simply are things that online education cannot do. Denying the differences, the strengths and weaknesses of various "locations" of education, can lead us to become promoters of either online or physical campuses. We should instead admit the space in which an institution exists matters. I once argued that online degrees awarded by leading universities could improve a regional economy. Now, I admit that the most a handful of degrees can do is improve the lives of a fraction of residents. A quick tangent: most online degrees aren't from leading universities. I've taught in an online program at a regional university and online was not equivalent to the on-campus degree. I don't blame the instructors who did all they could to ma...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 27, 2011 Deadline August 2011 Issue Online Universities: An Opportunity for Valley Residents Individuals with college and university degrees have a substantially lower unemployment rate than others in our community. Every political, business and educational leader I’ve met in the Central Valley has told me that education is essential to improving the quality of life in our region. Unfortunately, for many Valley residents the dream of a college degree remains merely a dream. While I have a doctorate specializing in technology and literacy education, I remain skeptical when anyone starts talking about the potential promises of online education. My research identified many barriers to success online, from poor visual design of classes to teachers not interacting with students. Too many students do not finish college degrees they start, either online or in traditional classrooms. This leaves many people burdened with debts they cannot repay. O...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2, 2010 Deadline October Issue Nurturing the Valley’s Tech Economy   “What can we do to improve, or even create, Tulare County’s tech economy?” When I receive messages after a column is published, they tend to ask technical questions. This summer, I received poignant messages about topics of special interest to me: our schools and our economy. There is no quick and easy way to nurture a high-tech economy. Sadly, there are more examples of failure than success. In the Midwest, states have been trying to transition from manufacturing to technology for the last quarter century. Driving through these states, one finds empty business parks, faltering science-focused charter schools, and cities with uncertain futures. Tax breaks, special incentives, and substantial federal aid have not produced rivals to Silicone Valley or the Route 128 “Tech Corridor” of Massachusetts. However, this summer I visited Texas, where high-tech is expanding...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 7, 2010 Deadline July Issue Personal Reflections on Education and Technology Technology has a way of becoming invisible in our lives, something we take for granted. The initial “Wow!” factor fades and we start to assume everyone has access. Yet, not every student has easy access to the Internet. Not every student has access to computers or typewriters to prepare papers for classes. My previous assumptions about technology in our schools have been proved incorrect, and that troubles me. A student with no word processing skills, who is unfamiliar with spreadsheets, and struggles with basic Internet research faces serious challenges in this labor market. For the last four years, I have been fortunate enough to visit states from coast to coast, meeting educational experts and civic leaders who are attempting to address many of the same problems we face in the Central Valley. My travels have taken me to places nationwide that are closing schools...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2009 Issue September 27, 2009 Beyond the Valley: Are We There Yet? The Virtual Valley was supposed to bring us all together. Our physical location was supposed to matter less than with whom we connected online. Yet, there seem to be limits to our online social networks. Researchers have studied online communities for almost three decades, often assuming virtual communities were going to liberate us from traditional barriers. This year we saw evidence that barriers persist online. Eszter Hargittai, a sociologist at Northwestern University, calls this the “Whose Space?” phenomenon. Users, however, being less politically correct than academics, have rechristened MySpace as “MyGhetto,”  “GangstaSpace” and “MyHood.” According to Hargittai’s data, Hispanics are twice as likely to use MySpace as Facebook. There is also a high correlation between educational level and which social sites someone uses. Of those using a social site, 86 perce...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2008 Issue August 11, 2008 Checking on California via the Web As an educator, I have always used a lot of maps. If data can be mapped, they have been. We’re all familiar with weather maps, population maps, and the infamous political “red versus blue” county maps. As a birdwatcher, I consult maps to confirm where some species reside. My wife uses maps to determine what plants grow best in a region. It turns out, there are maps some of us don’t expect to find. These are maps that change more frequently than books or magazines are published. A “live” map of earthquakes is definitely something a textbook could not include. There were 1324 earthquakes in North America during the first week of August, 2008. A third of these were in or adjacent to California, half were in Alaska, and the remainder were scattered about the West. These data are from the U.S. Geological Survey, better known as the USGS, which maintains a live map of earthquakes ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 2007 Issue April 4, 2007 Why Computers Hate the Valley Summer Summer is nearly here and I’m already worried about the heat. More specifically, I’m worried about the heat and my computer systems. Computers hate warm temperatures, even though you can use some systems as space heaters during the winter months. How can anything so hot hate summer days? Typical computer chips are not very efficient. While electricity powers millions of transistors in a processor or memory chip, most of the energy is lost as heat. As a computer warms, it becomes even less efficient. This is because heat increases electrical resistance… causing more heat! So, though computers don’t like heat, they create it.  Eventually, the ever-increasing resistance interrupts data flow and serious data loss occurs. In the worst cases, chips literally “fry” and motherboards melt. As a technician, I have seen melted parts first-hand. When I ask if the system had been acting ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 19, 2006 Wanting to Share Visalia: Our Wiki Entry Nobody seems to know how to say “Visalia” or “Tulare” when I travel. I explain where I am from by mentioning Fresno and Bakersfield, but it turns out most people have no real understanding of where those cities are, either. “How close are you to Los Angeles or San Francisco?” people asked me at the “Computers and Writing” conference in Lubbock. The intention of the gathering was to share ways to better include technology in meaningful classroom assignments, so I turned on my laptop and headed for some familiar Web sites. “It’s surrounded by farmland,” I tried to explain. “And on a clear day, you can see the Sierras.” I turned to Google Earth to show satellite images of farmland. That still didn’t do the trick. The Texans wanted more information if I was going to claim some place in California was anything like Lubbock. “Just show me the entry on Wiki,” a Texas Tech professor suggested. ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 20, 2006 Searching for Visalia Anytime I prepare to visit a new city I turn on my computer, open a Web browser, and head for Google. Entering the city name into the search field usually gives me a great idea of places to see, things to do, and what the local residents consider important. I used to sit in Borders to skim Rand maps and Frommer’s guides, but Google changed everything. In the last three months, I have “Googled” cities in seven states. I often begin with a search for the best Mexican food, a requirement no matter where I travel. Then, I search for places to stay. Ideally, I like to stay within walking distance of whatever I’m doing. It’s amazing what Google has helped me discover, but Google can only find information already on the Web. I began to wonder what would happen if I “Googled” Visalia in exactly the same way I do other cities. I went to Google, entered “Visalia” into the search field, and clicked “Google Search.” I anti...