Poet Ponders the Digital

What happened to the blogosphere? Why is the USENET dead? How did Yahoo and Google groups (listserv-like services) wither so quickly? Why is podcasting struggling? The answers to some of the above questions are simple: USENET was killed because ISPs feared being sued for the amount of illegal files being distributed via the newsgroups. Groups and listservs died thanks to a mix of spam and inconvenient delivery methods. Who doesn't stuggle to manage a flood of email as it is, without mailing lists? Forums require frequent visits, and the "loudest," most annoying members drive the curious and open-minded away. Forums are now for true believers… arguing about ideological purity. Podcasts and music downloads have lost ground to streaming audio and audio-on-demand services. It's still "podcasting" in a form, but through larger services like iHeartRadio and TuneIn. Blogging and forums are the saddest loss, to me, though I miss the USENET programming ne...

The word "community" is overused in academic fields, but it is the best word for what it on my mind today. I closed a Web server this week on which I had created a Drupal and MediaWiki site on special education. The site was functional for about two years, which is an eternity online. The reality is that online communities come and go so rapidly that what was popular a year or two ago is often "inactive" now. There are dozens of Yahoo groups that are dedicated to special education. Most of these were active five years ago, but have since fallen out of favor with users. Just as the Usenet groups and most "listservs" have faded away in the last five years, so have many online forums. The Internet has accelerated the speed with which a community grows, propers, and then declines. The timeline of the Internet is punctuated by technologies and business ideas that were "hot" for a moment. When is the last time you used IRC or read a newsgroup? Remember...

I am a believer in outlining and planning before, during, and after the drafting process for most long forms of creative writing. Generally, I'm always searching for a way to better organize my thoughts. As a writer, this means I experiment with various outlining and "story plotting" tools. Two popular story plotting applications are Dramatica ( B000H774K0 ) and Contour ( B002ABL3IK ). In addition to my thoughts on these tools, you can read reviews on Amazon and various writing-focused forums. Bluntly, Dramatica Pro 4.1 is too precise and Contour 1.2 is not precise enough. Contour guides you through a serious of basic questions based on a single "Blockbuster" template for screenplays and novels. There is one, and only one, Contour story structure. You can create a basic story outline in a few hours, assuming you follow the model. Contour could be great. It looks a lot better than Dramatica, but the beauty is only skin deep. The Contour application does...

This weekend I installed WordPress on our personal server. The process took about two hours, including customization and tweaking beyond the basic installation. No great PHP or MySQL skills were required; as long as you know how to use the command prompts you can install WordPress. The modifications included adding Amazon code to the PHP-generated pages. This allows us to use Amazon links without long URLs. To do this, I had to copy code from our Amazon Associates account and paste it, formatted, into the PHP code. Not a challenge, thankfully. I also enabled two spam filters via the PHP code. What makes WordPress, Drupal, and Moodle popular is the ease with which these systems can be extended. Third parties have created numerous plug-ins, widgets, and themes for these three open source platforms. I could, rather easily, support a pretty large number of teachers and students using open source software (OSS) for Web applications. The price is ideal and the skills required are incre...

I recorded grades and the end is near. The last day of class was May 4… teaching is over for me, for now. The future isn't clear, yet, but it appears I won't be teaching next year and maybe for a few years to come. I'm not sure I'll have much of anything to say about teaching and technology, but you never know. I do leave thinking Moodle is much better than Blackboard's alternatives. Moodle was a much better experience, overall. The gradebook, forums, wiki, and other features were fantastic. Maybe I'll be teaching again sooner than I anticipate. In the meantime, I'll be writing away.

In the last few days, I have noticed what might be called an "explosion" of activity on the forums for my writing class. With 23 students, these where the statistics: Thursday: 56 new posts. Friday: 246 new posts. Saturday: 100+ new posts. After you scroll through the posts, reading them or not, Moodle marks the posts as read. This means that each night's posts were counted separately. I make that distinction because WebCT didn't take the same approach -- some posts I had read would remain marked "new" for several days. What leads to twelve discussion threads being so active? I'm not sure but I am going to explain what I do. It should be noted that I use online spaces for every class, so students always have access to materials. However, I do not use the online spaces for instruction when a course is not specifically online. The current course is traditional and the forums are mainly to help students discuss assignments. 1) I set "weekly...

I went back to requiring weekly responses to readings and lectures after two semesters without the requirement. I know students always complained about weekly responses and I found that the grades in a course would not change with or without the responses. But, something told me that the online conversations were valuable. There are already 138 posts to the forums on Moodle this semester. The students are using the forums actively, along with the group wiki pages I set up on Moodle for students. The posts reflect a much deeper attention to detail than I think the students exhibited in the courses without weekly responses. While the grades might not be different without the responses, I'm convinced the overall quality of work and reflection is higher. I realize that if the grading were more objective this would not be an issue — in a writing course we always "curve" the grades somewhat based on the work in that class. Also, I think the students rise to what they perc...