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...

A drawing made in Tux Paint using various brushes and the Paint tool. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2, 2015 Deadline December 2015 Issue Randomly clicking on letters, the young boy I was watching play an educational game “won” each level. He paid no attention to the letters themselves. His focus was on the dancing aliens at the end of each alphabet invasion. Situations like this occur in classrooms and homes every day. Technology appeals to parents, politicians and some educators as a path towards more effective teaching. We often bring technology into our schools and homes, imagining the latest gadgets and software will magically transfer skills and information to our children. This school year, I left teaching business communications to return to my doctoral specialty in education, technology and language development. As a board member of an autism-related charity, I speak to groups on how technology both helps and hinders special edu...

I agree with this, and hope we eventually realize that technology-driven education (often how online is marketed) is a mistake. Technology should support pedagogy, not drive it. And, no matter what some universities claim, they are letting the technology lead, especially because they view online education as a revenue stream. Technology Has Its Place: Behind a Caring Teacher - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education : After millennia of experimentation, we know a great deal about how people learn. We know that the best learning involves practices—lots of them. We know that effective learning is best achieved through the engagement of other deeply attentive human beings. The learning might occur in a traditional classroom, but it might happen in a different space: a lab, a mountain stream, an international campus, a cafeteria, a residence hall, a basketball court.  No PowerPoint presentation or elegant online lecture can make up for the surprise, the frisson, the spontane...

There are colleges and universities moving towards 120-semester-unit bachelor's degrees, down from 132 or more in many cases. Others are seeking ways to offer "accelerated" degrees in three years instead of four. Of course, the not-so-secret truth is that many students take much longer than four years to graduate as it is — for a variety of reasons. Nationally, the four-year graduation rate from our state and regional public universities is 31 percent, according to Jeff Selingo, editorial director for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Private universities graduate a slight majority of their undergraduates, 53 percent, "on schedule" based on their degree plans. Consider the following example, which is representative of graduation at state institutions nationally: June 11, 2012. — Middle Tennessee State University is making efforts to increase its graduation rate, but still just over half its students are completing college within six years. According to ...

I'm taking a short break from designing my Blackboard shells for both an on-campus and online course because I'm exhausted. Don't let anyone try to persuade you that online courses and courses with online content are somehow "easier" to prepare and to deliver. The time and energy required is substantially greater than the effort to prepare a traditional university course. Universities need to consider this time and energy more accurately. The minor stipend I receive for creating an online course does not reflect the time I invest in the effort. I definitely believe there are more benefits than negatives to providing online content to students, including extra content for traditional on-campuses courses. But, we have to admit that effective online delivery is time-consuming. The reasons for this are many; I can address a few now: 1) The course management software itself requires time and effort. Everything online is simply more time consuming. The benefits in...

On March 1, 2011, I wrote about the difficult state of the academic job market in fields such as mine: "digital rhetoric" and "new media" studies. Even with a specialization in "special needs pedagogy" (disabled students), the market is challenging. There are several reasons for this and I want to share those before I share my personal update. Let me first point to a trend that has finally reached the university setting: "Software as a Service" (SaaS). For several years, and even before the rise of the Internet, companies and non-profits alike could pay to access software remotely. In fact, this was the original model of computing back in the ancient days of mainframe dominance. A company would "lease" time on a mainframe, housed at a data processing center. Universities would lease time on their mainframes, too. Often, smaller universities and local public schools would use a regional minicomputer or mainframe. Today, this is "the...

Last week, the university program from which I earned my doctorate hosted its annual "visit day" for potential doctoral students. I wanted to e-mail each of them, "Don't do it!" Not because it isn't a good experience (it wasn't) and not because you don't learn something (you will learn something, mainly about humanity). You should reconsider a doctorate in the "digital humanities" because the job market is saturated, driving down wages for the few jobs that do exist. I had a state college hiring committee tell me they could only offer $38,000 to $42,000 a year for a new professor. That's simply not enough money to justify selling a house and moving in my case: my wife is an engineer and technical writer with a great employer. Taking such a post would be impossible, financially. My wife's career and our overall security do come into play. Plus, we have already cut our expenses dramatically. Student loans must be paid, and they are ...

Selected Bibliography Some texts either specifically or indirectly on the history of education and education theory (pedagogy) that have influenced me. The list is exported from my Bookends database, so there might be some formatting errors. I am trying to clean up my database, but I have several thousand books in the system (and on my shelves). Beniger, James. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures : Refiguring College English Studies . Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition. West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2003. Corbett, Edward P. J., Nancy Myers, and Gary Tate. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook . 4th ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 0195123778 (alk. paper) Cuban, Larry. The Blackboard and the Bottom Line : Why Schools Can't Be Businesses . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. ---. How Scholars T...

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.

I am currently dealing with three major projects: Completing my dissertation. Applying for 2010 positions Finishing home renovations. The middle task, quite literally sandwiched between the other two in my daily life, is one of the most difficult for any person. I tell my students that career changes -- including starting a career -- are always difficult. The likelihood of rejection, at least a few times, is quite high. It is emotionally draining to hunt for work. To be in the job market along with my students will be interesting. It should remind me of the challenges they face. Portfolios are common for my students. Many have studied fashion design, architecture, or landscape horticulture. They need to present evidence of their projects to prospective employers. I also have to present evidence of my work as a graduate student, teacher, and writer. The portfolio will be something of a shared experience, this year. I'm not yet sure if a digital portfolio will be ...

I am completing an online portfolio, which is always a good process for self-evaluation as an instructor. See: http://www.tameri.com/csw Because I ask my students to create online personas and to work on various digital projects, this is a good way to keep myself grounded. It reminds me that the process is never easy, no matter how experienced one might be with the genres involved. My teaching philosophy took me two weeks to edit, and I'm still not pleased with the results. The sidebar and overall site design isn't what I had hoped to create, either. Something about it doesn't seem to convey who I am. At least I can sympathize with my students. Some of the university job listings ask applicants to describe the classes they might want to teach. I could list two or three dozen, easily. I am a proud generalist, with too many interests and a complete inability to focus on a specialty. That's not a bad thing, since I can be a "utility player" withi...

When I consider what I hope to teach and research, I begin with the question how online collaborative tools shape the composition process. How does technology restrict or expand the choices available? Is composing enhanced or degraded for those with special needs or language limitations? Because I am a creative writer, I view "team" compositions of interactive fiction with the same curiosity I have for non-fiction projects. Composition, in my mind, includes a mix of what we often label as creative and academic genres. What matters to me is the writing process, regardless of how we might categorize the product at a specific moment. "Composition and rhetoric" are often perceived as limited to the study of academic genres. I cannot foresee myself being limited to genres I want to challenge and reshape. The "rhetoric of fiction" and "rhetoric of theatre/film" are topics I would hope to teach in the future, from a technological and co...

I spent the day preparing the course I am teaching. It's a hybrid, with online content constituting half the course. That is a positive thing, considering last semester. It's already known that I need at least one more eye surgery, maybe more, and one internal surgery. Both of these can be done out-patient and are relatively minor. (Minor if you like having your eye scrapped with sandpaper.) With these things in mind, and the miscellaneous emergencies last semester, I have completed most of the handouts and homework assignment sheets for the upcoming course. If/when I am medically indisposed, a situation which I seem predisposed, the homework schedule can be maintained. That's the joy of an online course. I am going to supplement the course with podcasts and screencasts, giving demonstrations of basic tasks so students can review the lecture concepts. This is going to be quite the adventure. The recorded materials can also become part of my portfolio. Yes,...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 2008 Issue May 12, 2008 Time to Require Pen and Paper Again? When I was a student at Golden West High School, a particularly well-read English instructor quoted from a text he held in contempt: the Cliffs Notes guide to Albert Camus’ classic novel The Stranger. Dr. Postelle informed us that he had read the same paragraph, sometimes paraphrased and sometimes not, in numerous papers during his career. It was his way of warning us that cheaters would be caught. Now, as an instructor at a university, I am longing for the days when the laziest of students would copy from the same tried (and seldom true) source. Unfortunately, I do catch a few students trying to offer the wisdom found on Wikipedia as their own. As the spring semester ended, I had a university senior offer an entire Wikipedia entry as his paper on a famous scientist. When I asked how he could do something so incredibly brazen, he replied that he didn’t have the time to use Google ...

My students have been using Wikibooks, a LEGO CAD application, and various DTP tools. I think their skills will translate much better to the workplace than merely learning about writing. Unfortunately, there is never enough time to really teach the skills that matter... and what matters today won't apply to the next generation of software. I am wondering if I should demonstrate other types of software writers might use. Should I make sure these tools are included in my next writing class? If so, how would I organize the course content? These are questions I might consider over the summer.

How do I respond to student writing using online technologies? I tend to make extensive use of Microsoft Word's "track changes" and "reviewing" modes. The real challenge for me as an instructor is to not make every edit for a student. My primary concern, and research seems to support this, is that students have been inculcated with the notion that you make the suggested corrections, no more or no less, and that is what constitutes "revising" a paper. Online, this habit becomes even easier... cut-and-paste or simply "accept change" and the revising is "done" in the view of many students. When I first started student teaching, in the late 1980s, I fell into the trap of making too many comments on papers. Now, I try to minimize how often I correct mistakes students need to discover. I also do not make as many suggestions as I did years ago. Online tools have made editing and leaving short comments much easier. For all the dang...

I know excuses are inexcusable, and being even a week or two off schedule bothers me. But, the last few weeks have been miserable. New Glasses . I've never worn prescription glasses before, but I ended up needing them to deal with some strange color separations and "starburst" effects I was seeing. The glasses ended up being incorrect the first time I tried them, so the optometrist had to repair them. I lost a week of computer use while struggling to see. Even now, I'm not used to the glasses. Family Things . Let's just say that my wife's family will not be visiting from California. But, until Mother Nature's wrath was felt we had been rushing to accommodate visitors. My Best (Feline) Friend Died . He was 16, and had been with me for a lot of years. Losing him was tough and both my wife and me; she even took time off work to care for him. Not sure how any of this fits with pedagogy, but it goes to show that even the most obsessive student can get s...

I am a skeptic when it comes to technology in the classroom. From accounts like those found in The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology , by Todd Oppenheimer, to the works of Larry Cuban, one finds a series of issues with technology that keep repeating every generation — as if technology and the excitement that always follows it will translate into better-educated students. Oppenheimer is an award-winning San Francisco journalist who toured the country to study how computers were used in the classroom. He began as an optimistic believer in technology and ended the work on a skeptical note, almost a "back-to-basics" philosophy based on everything from the price of technology to the lack of technical support and training teachers generally receive. Gene I Maeroff's work, A Classroom of One: How Online Learning Is Changing Our Schools and Colleges , is authored by one of the leading experts on education. Maeroff has written 11 books in 3...