Poet Ponders the Digital

When I read academic job listing for "Digital Humanities" the skills range from HTML coding to video editing. Some list audio editing. The jobs are so varied that you cannot pinpoint what the phrase means. Is my doctorate in rhetoric, scientific and technical communication sufficient? Often it is not. Some posts suggest an MFA or Ph.D. in media production. Starting January 2016, I am going to be working towards completion of my MFA in Film and Digital Technology. This feels like a last-ditch effort to revive my academic career, while also giving me more credentials to support my creative writing. With or without an academic revival, I'll benefit greatly from the courses and the exercise of creating and editing digital works. One of the frustrations I've had on the job market is that nobody seems to know what the "Digital Humanities" are or how to prove you have the skills to teach the courses. My age and my experiences are a serious obstacle on this...

Math Mark (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley December 5, 2014 Deadline January 2015 Issue In 2013, California began phasing out the algebra requirement for eighth grade students. Math and science requirements have been reduced in Texas and several other states that followed California’s lead. This is the wrong path, especially for Central Valley schools that have extreme achievement gaps among socioeconomic groups. In 2013, some social advocates argued that the algebra and science graduation requirements disproportionately penalized poor and minority students. Instead of reducing our standards for middle and high school completion, our schools should have developed better math and science education in our elementary schools. I fear the choices made a year ago will lead to more economic isolation for the Central Valley and similar regions. Cutting math requirements might make graduation easier, but it also limits the future opportunities for our youn...

IBM PC XT with green monochrome phosphor screen and 10MB full height 5,25" hard disk drive (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 6, 2014 Deadline November 2014 Issue Thankful for Computing Technology Computing technology touches every minute of our lives, and it has made life better for most of us. Though I am thankful for computers in general, some inventions have changed my life in dramatic ways. I am celebrating this Thanksgiving by listing the technologies for which I am most thankful. Home Computers The early Apple, Atari and Commodore computers I used in school and at home during the early 1980s ushered in the personal computer revolution. Costing a fraction of business computers, these devices empowered the young people who would launch the dot-com revolution. We learned to code in machine language, BASIC and Pascal on computers with memory measured in kilobytes, not megabytes or gigabytes. When IBM decided, somewhat half-hearted...

If you decide that learning computer programming offers students much needed critical thinking (and job) skills, then the next question is which language(s) should be taught to which students. Computer programming changes, so any opinion I offer will be bad advice in a few years. What I offer below are my views at this moment, and they reflect my biases as a programmer. Suggestion One: C It's not flashy, it's not trendy, and it isn't the first choice of most programming courses. Yet, C is the language of operating systems, programmable controllers, and a lot of portable logic. When you learn C, it's easy to transport those skills to almost any modern language. C compilers are free, there are many integrated development environments (IDEs), and lots of resources are available for learning. You can code C in any text editor, too, and compile from a command line. For OS X and Windows, I suggest using the tools from Apple and Microsoft to learn C, C++, and either...

Like most educators interested in technology and pedagogy, I have followed the digital revolution down many dead-end paths. We want to believe in publishing (and sharing) for the masses, but I'm less convinced today than I was twenty years ago that the masses want to share serious ideas. The masses want to share kitties, their latest meals, breaking celebrity gossip, and photos they will regret sharing almost as soon as the images enter the data stream. Blogger. Facebook. Twitter. Tumblr. I have five semi-active Blogger-based blogs. My wife and I have a less active writing blog. I have Facebook pages for the blogs, Twitter feeds, and two Tumblr accounts. The traffic to the blogs is in decline, from thousands of weekly visits to a few hundred. The Facebook pages are also trailing off, as Facebook seeks to charge for promoting content. Twitter just annoys me, with an endless stream of automated tweets. I do have one account from which I follow real people posting real,...

Earlier this semester, there was a "glitch" with the Blackboard shell for my writing course. I had spent hours and hours uploading content, organizing the shell, and trying to perfect the course. And then it was gone. The Blackboard team eventually restored most, but not all, of the content. It was a tough reminder that online systems are, like all computing systems, imperfect. Systems crash. Databases get corrupted. Things go wrong and you need a contingency plan. The Blackboard bungle left my students frustrated and has cost me more than few hours. While I had copies of all materials, they were scattered about my hard drive. I didn't want to duplicate files, which I thought would waste space. I sometimes used "links" (aliases) to original files, as a compromise. On my computer, which is backed up to three external drives and mirrored to another computer, I now have a directory system that aligns with my Blackboard shell. There are folders for each w...

Back to school means back to the battles with Blackboard (I've posted on that plenty of times). Even if BB was the perfect learning management system, there would still be the days spent planning and organizing online content for a new course. This week, I'm gathering the reusable materials I will upload and preparing new materials. By next week, the shell for the writing course I'm teaching will be reasonably complete. My summer was meant to be spent learning to program in Objective-C. It was also meant as a time to finished a research project and revise an academic book chapter. None of those things happened. Life in the digital age doesn't seem to give us more time, but it does give us more potential tasks. My to-do list kept growing faster than I could complete projects. Maybe it is a time management issue. I completed a lot of tasks in the last few months, many of them creative writing projects. I also am preparing a new website complementing my creative inte...

I like comments in computer programming source code. I've never been the programmer to claim, "My code doesn't need comments." Maybe it is because I've always worked on so many projects that I need comments  to remind me what I was thinking when I entered the source code into the text editor. Most programmers end up in a similar situation. They look at a function and wonder, "Why did I do it this way?" Tangent : I also like comments in my "human" writing projects. One of the sad consequences of moving to digital media is that we might lose all the little marginalia authors and editors leave on manuscript drafts. That thought, the desire to preserve my notes, is worthy of its own blog post — so watch for a post on writing software and notes. Here are my rules for comments: Source code files should begin with identifying comments and an update log. Functions, subroutines, and blocks of code should have at least one descriptive comment. ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 6, 2013 Deadline June 2013 Issue BYOPC: Build Your Own PC Building your own computer lets you decide what matters most: processor speed, graphics, storage, sound or something else. Multiplayer gamers dominate the BYOPC movement, with a willingness to spend serious money for every potential advantage over opponents. Vendors recognize this, so many of the parts available target the gaming market. I enjoy assembling computer systems and encourage my students to try it. If you do join the BYOPC ranks, plan to build a powerful, high-end system. First, you will save more if you build a top-notch system. Second, such systems are easier to upgrade and maintain for several years. My experience is that if you plan to spend at least $1000, BYOPC is worth it. If you plan to spend even more, the benefits of BYOPC increase dramatically. Don’t build a cheap computer, unless it is only a learning exercise. I compare building a cheap system to assembling an ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 29, 2010 Deadline August Issue Back to School Computer Shopping Back-to-school sales used to mean new jeans, shoes, and school supplies. Now, along with binders and pencils, retailers discount computers as summer ends. Computer manufacturers have joined in with back-to-school promotions, making August and September great months to consider a new computer, especially for college students. When buying a computer for school, two common mistakes are bargain shopping and brand loyalty. There are instances when buying the cheapest possible computer makes sense. If the student only needs to type papers for class and perform some basic spreadsheet functions, then almost any computer is up to the tasks. Even the most affordable netbooks, at under $200, can surf the Web and run a good word processor. Considering the abuse portable computers take in college settings, I’m all for buying an affordable system. I’ve seen students knock computers off the...