Dipping my toe into the virtual lake...

12 May 2018: Over this past week, I have been completing Shepherd's online teaching certification course, basically the class you have to take to be allowed to teach online. I have about zero interest in teaching online during the regular semester, almost entirely because so much of my teaching is discussion-based and I just can't think of how I could make the adjustment. (This is actually more a criticism of myself than of teaching online.) But for summer classes, which I have struggled a bit to fill recently, it might make sense to at least try it. Like the little kid refusing to eat broccoli, I need to try it before I dismiss it. So I am taking the class which more or less concludes today.

I can see lots of potential (and work!) if someone wanted to do this right. And it's been kind of fun (sort of?) playing around with some of the tools out there.

Here's one example. I know it's boring and the sound is terrible (long story), but I think it's kind of cool.

True story...

So Bing just came and sat next to me on the arm of the chair--right behind my ipod, which was also on the chair's arm. He can't resist not touching something that he shouldn't and he must have had his little paw just so, because the next thing I know, this voice control box pops up on it. And that's how I learned--almost two years after I got the darn thing--that the ipod even has voice control. That's kind of fun.

And yeah, my cat taught me something about technology.

That was depressing...

Day two of humans versus the computer on Jeopardy did not go well, at least not for the humans. Watson wiped the floor with the competition. And watching it was 30 minutes of well, not fun. Blake Eskin over at The New Yorker says it pretty well:

"When its data-processing algorithms are on target, it is indomitable, and even its runner-up guesses and slipups made you think about how it works. But after one round of questions, its novelty was beginning to wear off. Our television critic, Nancy Franklin, observed on Twitter, 'On the fun/tense scale, things on Jeopardy are leaning toward too tense, not enough fun. Watson just hits the button faster than people can.'...Of course, Watson’s servers have been optimized for correct answers, not for pleasure, ours or its own....If Watson does not eclipse the best human players by Wednesday, one assumes it is only a matter of months before it would blow them away. Watson has many potential applications in medicine, law, science, and other fields, but its prospects for a career in television are no better than Brad Rutter’s. Who would want to watch a computer win seventy-four nights in a row?"

Simply put, it just hasn't been enjoyable watching these last couple of days, maybe because playing Jeopardy with a computer is like playing Scrabble against a dictionary (yeah, I know that's not a perfect analogy...). Take the humanity out of Jeopardy contestants (their individuality, their strengths and weaknesses) and it's just not the same game.

Do it for humanity!

So the long-anticipated match between Watson the computer and the two great Jeopardy champions begins tonight. I am a bit surprised at how much I am emotionally invested in this match-up. It's like a preview of Maximum Overdrive or something. The humans must prevail. Seriously.

Facebook as personal narrative

I read this piece (through a link from the Daily Dish) last night and it gave me chills. We put so much of ourselves online these days--and I don't think that's inherently bad. One unintended consequence--Facebook creates a narrative of one woman's life and very sad death.

Generation gaps and stuff...

I had to put a parental block on my phone...to protect me from myself.

I had a mysterious $9.99 charge on my cell phone bill this month...for something called "Jamster." I have no idea what that is and definitely didn't intend to buy/subscribe to it. So I called customer service, told the very helpful woman on the other end of the line that I had no idea what Jamster is, and she canceled the subscription and credited my account. How cool is that?

The best I can figure is that my phone, which I keep in my work bag and which occasionally turns itself on, must be the culprit. There have been times that I take it out of my bag and find that it has gone online or something. (See, I don't even know the terminology!) The customer service rep explained, "Well usually you have to confirm those kinds of purchases on the phone's screen." I am sure she was right--I just happened to be unfortunate enough to have the random moves and jostling of my bag click "confirm" before I realized the darn thing was even turned on.

I confessed to the customer service rep that it was probably (although indirectly) something that I did, but she still credited my account. That made me happy. Go AT&T wireless!

Then, to prevent it from happening again, she put that parental control block on the phone so that I can't purchase anything over the phone. So I am all protected...from myself.

I am so not part of the texting generation. (But that doesn't mean I don't still covet an iPhone.)

Speaking of generation gaps, I posted this link on Facebook this morning and it's gotten tons of responses, so it must have touched a nerve. My initial reactions: the Buffy reference (#6) is a weird one--why refer to the movie, not the show? Also, #4 made me laugh out loud, #19 is kind of poetic, #32 is just weird, #46 is cringe-inducing, and #49 is all kinds of awesome.

About the Buffy movie thing, I get that it's probably included because the movie came out in 1992, the same year most of these freshman were born (!), but the movie references (Hemery High and Lothos) are pretty obscure compared to the show's references.

Technological difficulties

I am doing my best to finally get this darn Poe article done and sent out for review. Lately, though, it seems that the universe (or at least the technological universe) is conspiring against me. First, my most recent, heavily revised version of the file simply vanished from every place I thought I had saved it. I suspect that this was actually my fault, that in an effort to copy the folder with the article and all my notes from my university network drive to my flash drive, I actually did the opposite--copied from flash drive to network drive and somehow deleted the article.

Major crisis, right? Well, it was, but thankfully, I had a print-out version, which my awesome friend David passed on to my awesome friend Aaron, who scanned it for me and emailed it to me yesterday. Yay! I shudder to think of the labor I would have had if that print-out had not existed...I still have my scribbled on, earlier drafts, but they are a mess. Plus, what makes it to the next draft is never an exact replication of those scribbled annotations, etc. So yeah, David and Aaron are awesome.

Next step: clean up the scanned version. As you might know, when you convert a pdf to a Word document, things get slightly messed up. Characters get switched, certain formatting gets lost, etc. Fixing the errors is a time-consuming process, but obviously less time-consuming than having to retype the whole thing. Plus, it makes you re-read everything again--and closely--which is always a good thing at this stage of composition.

Yesterday, after the end of Day 2 of Session 2 of Freshman Advising and Registration (more about that later, maybe), I spent about an hour cleaning up the document. It was actually kind of fun work. Yes, this is because, neat-freak that I am, I even enjoying cleaning documents. Plus, it was cool to see the progress in front of my eyes. Then the student I was doing an independent study with showed up, so I had to stop for awhile. She actually showed up about 15 minutes early, so I saved my work on the network drive, and only the network drive. This is okay (theoretically) since the network drive is super-secure and backed up every night, etc.

When an hour had passed and the independent study meeting was over, I turned back to the computer, which was displaying some pop-up messages about "network connections" being lost, etc. No big deal--this happens, then things get fixed. The document was still on my screen so I thought, "just in case, I'll save a copy on my desktop," but then Word crashed (don't know why) and that didn't work. And when I restarted my computer, the network drive was unavailable. Email wasn't working either. I eventually went home, where my Shepherd email was working (in web form) and there was an from IT explaining that there were all kinds of server problems, etc. "No big deal," I told myself, because I know that document is okay--just sitting on the network drive waiting for me to get back to it.

But now it's almost 11:00 on Friday and the network is still inaccessible. So much for getting those revisions done today. Very frustrating.

End of my technological venting session.

Zotero and RefWorks

Have any of my academia-dwelling friends used either RefWorks or Zotero before? We had a workshop on both (sponsored by our awesome Center for Teaching and Learning) and they blew my mind. I am really drawn to Zotero--it's free, and you have to use Firefox, but that's no problem for me. It also seems much simpler and more integrated into your browser than RefWorks, although RefWorks apparently has some features Zotero doesn't have.

If you are working on a long project, check these programs out. They might revolutionize the way your conduct your research.

Back to school...

It's been a weekend of digging out and cleaning up and getting back to life as usual. I was thrilled to make it back up to my office on campus both Saturday and Sunday (today). If you know me, you know I do really well with normal routines, etc. and getting lots of work done at school is a major part of my routine. (Yes, even on the weekends...sad, I know).

Campus looks great--the grounds keepers are amazing. Of course, there are a lot fewer parking spots (again, where do you put 40+ inches of snow?), but on the whole, we should be back in business tomorrow--even with another snow blast hitting us tomorrow afternoon/evening. (This one should be relatively tame--maybe 6 inches at most. Funny how your definition of "tame" changes...)

Some follow-up on the discussion board experiment: I think it actually worked really well. I am especially pleased with the English 204 boards. All I had to do was ask some questions (admittedly leading questions) and then sit back and watch them go. They covered all the important points I would have made if we had class. This morning, I spent about 90 minutes reading over both classes' responses and then summing up/concluding each thread. One frustrating item to note: lots of students didn't post anything, or only did half of what they were supposed to do. If they don't show up with their reading responses tomorrow (the alternate response), I am not sure what to do. Maybe some zeroes for quiz grades? (This also means giving people who did their work some 100s for quiz grades.)

The upper division classes' boards are (predictably) looking very good. I haven't finished reading/responding to them yet, but I am looking forward to doing so.

Thanks, by the way, to those of you who suggested strategies for keeping on schedule using online teaching.

That's about right...

My friend Bethany forwarded this cartoon to me. It's perfect, right?



On a related note, as several of my friends know, I hate text messaging. Some of that is because I am so darn slow that it takes me 2o minutes to type a line. Some of it is because it costs me anywhere from 10 to 30 cents to send or receive messages and I don't like that I don't have choice about whether or not I want to receive them. But a whole lot of it is because I hate "text speak"--the abbreviations and general butchery it does to language. Similarly, I can't send emails without salutations and proper closing, much less without punctuation or capitalization. I know that I have issues...

Imagine my horror, by the way, when someone (I have no idea who!) taught my 60-something year old father to send text messages and he took to it a like a fish to water. I mean, he texts with the enthusiasm and frequency of a 17 year old girl. The other day, I got this message from him: "How r u". Seriously?

"The Clbuttic Mistake"

I'm doing a bit of blogging catch-up tonight, finally posting some of those links that have been piling up in my bookmark folder. Here's an instant classic, collecting some wonderful instances when obscenity filters go wrong.

Class of 2012...

Check out the annual Beloit College Mindset List, a useful (if kind of scary!) tool for college teachers facing a new group of freshman every year.

Some of my favorites:

10. Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
32. There has always been Pearl Jam.
38. Lenin's name has never been on a major city in Russia.
44. Caller ID has always been available on phones.
55. 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.

Feeling old yet? The insights about technology are especially useful as each year's freshman class is more wired than the year before and that affects the way they learn and the way we need to teach them. (Check out this story about a plan to put iPod Touches in the hands of an entire middle school.) I also appreciate the insights about the wonderful sense of multicultural sensitivity so many students bring with them. That should give us some hope in a crazy world that often seems too divided.

Come fly with me...

I've been meaning to post these for a while: photos from a visit I took to the Udvar-Hazy Center, a branch of the Air and Space Museum out by Dulles Airport. I'd been to the Udvar-Hazy (isn't that an awesome name? fun to say, too!) once before a couple of years ago with some of the Roanoke crew (Jane, Shannon, Beth, Ian, and baby Caitlyn) and thought it was a blast. This time, my companions were my parents, my sister Erin, and her boyfriend, Eric. Fortunately, Erin's new home is right near Dulles, so it made for an easy, interesting, and affordable way to spend an afternoon. (You just pay to park--$15.)

A shot of just part of the ceiling of the museum to give you the idea of how much there is to see. Basically, it's a huge hanger with planes on the ground and suspended various heights.

My mom and Erin posed in front of an F-14 Tomcat. We Hanrahans are partial to the F-14 not just because of its Top Gun fame (remember when Tom Cruise was that hot and not scary?), but also because they were made by Grumman, a Long Island-based company. In fact, at the museum my dad reminded me of a canoe trip we took once with my fourth-grade class (my dad was a chaperone). As we paddled down the river, these F-14s roared by over our heads on a test mission. It was amazing--their speed, the volume, the overall coolness of the whole thing.

During my first visit to the museum, I was so thrilled to hear that there was an actual space shuttle there. Much to my disappointment, you can't get inside it, but it is still pretty darn cool. (Full disclosure: the Enterprise never actually made it to space, as you can read about if you follow the link above.)

The space wing also has all kinds of vehicles from the early days of space travel and computers/technology that made space travel possible. Check out this old UNIVAC. Seeing big old computers like this (which are downright tiny compared to the earliest computers) reminds me of just how far we've come (especially as I prepare this post on my laptop with a wireless internet connection).

Back in the front part of the museum, you'll see lots of early planes and gliders. Looking at something like this, I can't help but marvel at the guts it took to fly these sorts of things.

I also found myself repeatedly cracked up by "planes" like this. What really made me laugh is that a lot of these are have "experimental" written on them. That seems a bit unnecessary. When you are taking off on what is basically a lawnmower with a propeller, the label "experimental" is obvious.

Another highlight of the museum is the Enola Gay, although I must say that it's a highlight that is also sobering.

Close up of the plane.

Erin posing in front of a shiny silver plane. She looks so cute, right?

One last picture: Erin and Eric posed in front of this awesome yellow plane.

If you are looking for something to do in the DC area, try out the Udvar-Hazy. I haven't even mentioned all the other features: an observation deck where you can watch the planes leaving Dulles, an IMAX theater, flight simulators, and more.

As if writing exams wasn't already hard enough...

...here comes an article about a new site that allows students to upload tests for others to use. Ugh.

The Ups and Downs of Elevators

Another article that I've been meaning to get to is this one from The New Yorker from a while back. You might not think that an essay about elevators would be a good read, but this one certainly is. One of my favorite facts gleaned from the piece: most "door close" buttons in modern elevators do not work. They are just there to make passengers feel like they have some kind of control. The writer adds, "Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command."

Flickrvision

Remember the post from a couple of weeks ago about how you could watch Wikipedia change? Well, I've been meaning to link to this site which is kind of similar. It shows you the photos people around the world are uploading to Flickr. In just a few moments of observing, you can see: pictures from a Barack Obama campaign event in Illinois, beautiful pictures of birds posted from Germany, an old church in Brazil, a soccer game in Liverpool, and of course, families and friends hanging out all over the world. (That last one is kind of cheesy, I know). It's kind of awesome and heartening to see all these touches of humanity.

The next iPod generation...

A couple of months ago, I was working here in my office at school. I usually work with my iPod on, as it helps me close out distractions--and just generally puts me in a better mood. Anyway, as I was working, my friend Tim came by and laughed, saying, "Man, you are really are part of the iPod generation." Now I think part of this is because he is still shocked that I am, in his words, "a baby." (This comment came from his quick calculation of my age when I was introduced at a faculty assembly and the Dean read off the dates of my degrees). Anyway, we could blog for weeks about how iPods and MP3 players have changed the world, but I thought today I'd just blog a bit about the next generation of iPod users--users a good 20+ years younger than me.

My niece, Kelsie, got an iPod Nano from her parents for her birthday. (My mother, by the way, thinks this is a completely inappropriate gift for a nine year old, but I am not so sure. Maybe she's just a little too young for it and it is a bit on the pricey side, but didn't we have Walkmans and things like that when we were around her age? I don't know--what do you think?) Anyway, she loves the darn thing and brought it to Thanksgiving at Tara and Jeff's house. (Another side note--her winter coat has an inside pocket specifically for an iPod. How cool is that? I want a pocket for my iPod in my coat! That also says something, doesn't it, about how many kids her age have these things?)

I had been telling Kelsie how my nephew Colin's favorite song right now is "Hey there Delilah." Tara tells me she hears him singing it to himself in his room at night or as he plays with his train table. How cute is that? I got to hear him doing it a bit and it was so sweet, I almost got a cavity. Anyway, Kelsie has that song on her iPod and played it for the kids, who loved it.


Here they are listening, one ear-bud per kid.

Then Kelsie played their other favorite song of the moment--Gwen Stefani's "Sweet Escape." Olivia and Colin don't call it this, though--they call it "Woo Woo!" As soon as they heard the opening bars, they both shouted "Woo woo!" and started to dance. It is hard to dance while sharing ear-buds, though, so they had to calm down a bit.


Still, as this picture shows, Olivia couldn't help herself and danced right where she was. This picture makes me happy. Hey, as they sing in Hairspray, "You can't stop the beat."

"No facebooking!"

I found myself using the words from this post's title today in my English 101 class before I let my students do some work on their essays. Our classroom has computers in the back, which is great in a lot of ways, but also problematic. After all, it's hard to make sure all 25 students are using class time to actually work on their papers and not spending it on Facebook, myspace, or even checking email. Anyway, as I heard myself turn the name of that popular website into a verb, I recalled this recent article from the Kane County Chronicle, out of Kane County, Illinois. (The link came to me in a weekly email from the NCTE.)

In short, the article is about how corporate names work their way into our language, as we "Netflix" movies, "google" our old classmates, and "Mapquest" directions. The article quotes Denis Baron, a professor at the University of Illinois, who explains, “This is one of the ways that language naturally works...Common inventions, technologies and products become embedded in the language and extend their use to other areas. That’s how language changes and spreads.” For me, this is one of the aspects of language that makes it so exciting and so much fun to study. The article also quotes a Scott Osmundson (and, in a bit of poor writing, I think, it doesn't explain who he is and why we should care about his opinion), who sounds a bit afraid of such changes: “We’re starting to lose the English language,” Osmundson said. “Especially with texting and how people abbreviate words now.” I can understand some of the apprehension here, but we aren't "losing" the language--it was never this static, contained entity.

Another interesting issue to consider: what do corporations gain from such linguistic turns. As Baron suggests, it isn't always good: “It’s tricky for [corporations],” Baron said. “They want the names of their products to be on everybody’s lips, but they don’t want it to be used as a generic [word]. They don’t want all tissues to be Kleenex.”

This last line made me laugh out loud: “My friend just ‘Googled’ herself,” said Woods, 25. “That’s weird.”

Thanks for the nightmare material...

Am I the only one who finds this thing pretty freaking scary?



Meet Zeno, a new robot creation from Hanson Robotics. You can read all about him here. FYI: the creator's son is also named Zeno. Tell me this isn't some B horror movie plot waiting to happen.

And it just gets scarier! According to its creator: "It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you." Yeah, a relationship of fear and terror as it chases you through the house, calling you by name.

Brave new world

Back when I was in college (a phrase that makes me sound old!), the only campus-wide alerts we ever listened for concerned the weather. Would class be canceled because of that half-inch of snow? But my, how the world has changed. In the aftermath of the shooting at Virginia Tech, schools all over are implementing text-message alert systems. They are really publicizing it here at Shepherd, and you can read about it here. I just noticed that they are instituting a similar plan at Roanoke, which you can read about here.

This topic brings up so many interesting sub-topics. Notice the language used to talk about these programs, especially in the Shepherd announcement. Talk about dancing around the real impetus behind the program. (I can't say I blame them, though). Roanoke's is a bit more straightforward, even going as far as to discuss an "Active Shooter Protocol."

Beyond the rhetoric of it all, though, it's strange (and sad) to think that such programs are necessary. Of course, I can remember when Columbine happened. I was a senior in college and my house-mates and I sat around the table talking about how we couldn't have imagined something like that happening in our high schools. (And it was even that long ago that we had been in high school). It's amazing how quickly "normal" changes after something horrific happens. I also remember us talking about how sooner or later, we would have the same worries at colleges and universities. I wish we had been wrong about that.