Poet Ponders the Digital

This year has been a study in contrasts. I chose to teach a traditional technical writing course in the fall and a hybrid course during the spring semester. The differences in student projects, the quality of their analyses, and general attitudes is remarkable. I know research found no easily quantified differences in learning outcomes. However, I think anyone could compare the group projects between these courses and see a difference in the products. While the lessons learned and the facts students retain might be similar, the results do demonstrate something. Some elements of are "intangible" because they are social and philosophical. For example, groups struggled online, even with guidance and gentle remainders to establish schedules and routines. In the traditional course, groups developed stronger bonds and worked together frequently. It should be noted that the face-to-face (F2F) students exchanged more e-mail and chatted more often than the students on the officia...

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...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 2009 Issue March 30, 2009 Virtual Romances, Real Complications “He was in my guild. Probably the best thief I’ve ever met.” When I began approaching acquaintances for a column about finding romance online, I expected to hear stories like you see in the television commercials. You know the commercials: the matchmaking service finds the perfect match based on math and science. “We chatted online while plotting strategies. He was clever, funny, and I just knew I had to get to know him outside the game.” As it turns out, my friends are either skeptical of the hype or they are too cheap to pay for online matchmaking. Instead, the people I know have found online romance when they haven’t been searching for love, proving the old truism about love finding you. Apparently, love can find you between heists in virtual worlds. Since I am not an online gamer — I play Scrabble, Word Jong, and Chessmaster on a Nintendo DS — I had no idea people were me...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley April 2009 Issue March 2, 2009 My Addiction to PDAs: From Visor to iPod Touch My life is digitized. Calendars, contacts, and various lists I need have been “in my pocket” for nearly a decade. I’d be lost without my personal digital assistant, better known as a PDA. Before I had my first PDA, I carried around a Day Runner. I like Day Runner products, but they don’t fit into a pocket. I ended up leaving my planner behind more than once. If it can be lost, I will lose it. Also, the Day Runner requires that you develop good habits that I never did master. I’d forget to check ahead for appointments, for example. My to-do list was never current. I ended up with a collection of business cards shoved between pages. The planner simply reminded me how unorganized I am. My first PDA was a Handspring Visor. The Visor, created by former Palm employees, included an expansion slot for everything from memory to a GPS adapter. The black and white, unlit screen...

Sometimes the technology wins. The reality of computers is that they are still machines. This means that parts wear out — hard drives certainly come to mind. We rely on fragile little boxes, in my case a MacBook Pro, to store our daily work, our family memories, and much more. Even the "non-moving" parts are technically moving on an atomic level, with heat slowly taking a toll. Memory chips start giving "exception errors" and video cards make abstract art of our virtual desktops. This is why I make lots of backups. It is why I have three external hard drives, and hope the digital demons never cause all three to die at once. One drive is a clone of the MacBook Pro's drive, so if disaster strikes my current work is ready to be revived on another system. The other two are archives, saved for those "I think I did something like that before" moments. With the preceding in mind, I now admit that even following good, defensive habits is not ...

My students are not as tech-savvy as I assumed. No only are they not on the bleeding edge of technology, they suffer from the standard inattention that all students have. Online courses aren't as forgiving as "traditional" courses, which means the normal problems students have become more serious. For example, not reading an assignment calendar in a "physical" classroom can result in a late paper, but the student generally has several ways to at least get partial credit. Online, my course accepts late papers for two days... and that's it. Done. The paper is no longer merely late -- it is a zero. In a traditional class, my reminders would be verbal. Online, they are "announcements" that most students don't seem to read. Reminding students to check the calendar doesn't seem to take hold. Assignments are missed anyway. The online system requires Java for some features. When a student was having problems uploading files, she w...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 2009 Issue Feb 2, 2009 Social Networking and Facebook The “Mommy Revolt” on Facebook earlier this year was evidence social networking has gone mainstream. Members of the social networking site were upset when Facebook employees deemed photos of mothers nursing inappropriate. It was a case of original intent versus user desires. The mothers ended up forming a Facebook group of angry nursing mothers and their “fans.” I’m not sure anyone would claim not to be a fan of motherhood. Facebook certainly didn’t like being perceived as “anti-mom” and soon relented. These women had learned to use Facebook’s social networking features against the company. Facebook’s executives have said they don’t want to lose any “mature” and “responsible” users. The problem is, users have a way of not being serious all the time. No matter what a company might intend when it creates a Web site, visitors tend to determine how the technology will be used. And so, wha...