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The podcast of our first SITES speakeasy is now available. Erin and Chad hosted the event, with guests discussing technology and graduate life, the Chapel Hill community chorus, and the foreign language requirement for graduate students. Erin and Chad also featured the music of Amos Lee. Give them a listen, and watch for announcements of future speakeasy events.
I have recently become interested in Problematic or Pathological Internet Use syndrome (PIU) which is characterized by the "addiction to internet use." (There is a quicky description with self-help tips here.) I appreciate that any technology can be misused used, but I am suspicious of some of the claims that disparage the forms of communication that internet technologies provide. Does the psychiatric profession pathologize people who prefer IM, email, chat boards, and internet dating over those who embrace parks and bars as vehicles to meet others because their communities are lesser? Or are internet communities just as vibrant and viable, but mediated by a technology? Further, how does the stereotype of the basement-dwelling, 30yr bearded male-video game player enter into this? Is the expectation that those who "suffer" from PIU have no social skill and are unable to connect with others? Or do they connect differently, with techology?
NY Times article on podcasts in classrooms.
Via Bradley Dilger a piece from A List Apart called Thinking Outside the Grid speaks to the need to educate ourselves about CSS and think about some of the canon issues related to Web design. Myself, I've found it hard to make the leap to CSS precisely because I learned Web design pre-tables with self-contained <HTML> </HTML> thinking. There seems to be a strong association of grids with usability, but where does this come from and how rhetorically flexible an approach can come from it?
This article has much more to do with high school teachers than university professors...but of course high school students' problems with reading and writing typically follow them to college. We've been thinking a lot this year about different kinds of literacy (visual, computer, etc); this author raises the question, "at what cost?" As he writes, "Even trumped up as "fluid intelligence," one senses from them that "visual learning" actually exacerbates the already debilitating need for instant gratification, delays maturity, and contributes to a generalized attention deficit disorder among young people." I don't personally think the solution is a return to 1950s-style primers, but something probably has to give.
For more on how many students aren't able to perform basic critical reading/writing tasks, see this.
I never thought of text messaging as writing (and there are some horrifying moments below--like breaking up via text message), but this article from the Washington Post raises some interesting questions about how text messaging allows (or discourages) the broaching of certain topics, and how the format affects style and diction. Obviously not too serious or academic, but kind of fascinating.
I just posted a quick reflection on an exercise we did in class today in which we explore alternatives to the desktop/office metaphor for computing. I have to say that the simple process of stopping the familiar and focusing on just how it is we understand the computer-based composing environment was a big help to our Web building. Before we talked about H: drives, we thought about conceptual spaces--if the computer were a kitchen, what might a server be? A warehouse? A restaurant? A restaurant with an attached warehouse? [update -- see siteslab.org for a related example.]
Please join the SITES interns in Donovan Lounge on Friday, January 27th, as we record our first podcast LIVE! We'll be discussing the role of technology in the life of a grad student at UNC. We know you've all experienced both techno-delights as well as techno-snafus in your years of studying and teaching here, so please come tell us about them!
Donovan Lounge, Friday the 27th, 9:30 a.m. Refreshments will be provided!
In this blog, an English professor from Canada compiles and comments on a variety of web sources and articles that explore how blogs and bloggers both affect and are affected by the Media. In one sense, "while bloggers may enjoy looking down at Big Media, most of us would reach very few people without Big Media's help." True, but as he notes, bloggers have been instrumental in raising awareness of and disseminating information about events like the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and others. What seems interesting about a site (or blogger) like this is how very self-conscious it/he is about its/his role as as writer, as a source of information, and as a public authority of sorts. This blog seems much more interested in directing its readership to other sites, rather than providing lengthy commentaries on a given issue. How, then, is a blogger's authority different from another kind of writer's authority?
For more on blogs in education, see this blog on, well, blogging.
The SITES lab will be closed on Monday.
Okay, so this wasn't the strongest first post, but I wanted to get something up on the blog. Yippee!
As the new semester begins, I've been working on fleshing out the new layout and converting the old pages to the new format. While there aren't any visible changes yet, look for the new SITES to gradually take shape over the coming weeks.
A couple of notes for SITES interns regarding the design of the webpage:
1. Those of you who have accounts set up to publish in the blog can access it here. If you don't have an account to write blog entries, please contact someone who does (right now Dan, Stephanie, Erin, Chad, and me) and we can set one up for you.
2. For those of you inclined to the Photoshop and graphic design, one thing we could really use is a snazzy new banner image! The image should be exactly 710 pixels wide to fit into the available container space. If you're design-inclined, please play around with this when you're in the lab!
3. The new design will incorporate all of the old content into blog posts, rather than stand-alone pages. What this means for us as interns is that instead of creating a lot of .html files and applying templates, we'll be cutting and pasting content into posts. Once everyone is set up as authors, things should go pretty fast. The cool thing about having things in this format is that our information will be organized via categories - when you post an English 11 web-design assignment, for example, you can choose for it to be included in categories "assignment," "composition," and "web-building." Thus, visitors to the site can look for all assignments, or all comp assignments, or all web-based comp assignments.
If you have any feedback on this general organizational scheme, or on any particulars of our redesign, post a comment here!