In the News: E-mail and Teaching

“To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me” from the New York Times has caused a stir on all the teaching listservs that I’m on. It just seems like another one of those articles that really ought to focus on audience and purpose in writing—along with a dose of understanding writing environments and situations (for students AND teachers). Overall, the folks in the article seem to lack any real understanding of the media they choose for their messages. Until they understand that important piece, e-mail is never going to work for them.

Daily Work: Accomplishments!

Today we found that one of my lesson plans is mentioned in IRA’s Reading Today—and I’m offically named. Fun to look down and find my name in a publication :)

I spent most of the day reworking a lesson plan which is going to be used in a forthcoming MarcoGram (a free e-mail newsletter that highlights lesson plans and resources on specific topics). The lesson was okay, but there were broken links and it needed an interactive.

Tonight was the Math Summit for BlogShares, and my appointment to the GIC was announced. I was a little surprised. I thought it was going to be announced after the summit, not during it. I began work on a personal GIC blog, but I’m having a horrible time getting it to FTP to the server. There’s not much content anyway, so I’ve given up for tonight.

In the News: Tagging and Teaching

eSchool News online – For some educators, tagging is ‘it’ explores how del.icio.us and other tagging systems can be used to manage resources for classes, workshops, and other educational settings.

Daily Work: Being Lazy II

The best thing about the Presidents of the United States is that they have a day and I get it off. Yes, I lazed about in bed today too.

Did some preliminary work on Inbox, searching for articles, and created another IRC tutorial: Forgotten Passwords.

In the News: Moleskine for Writers

Putting Pen to Paper Anew sings the praises of my cute little notebook :) I got a Moleskine Pocket Diary for Christmas, and I love it. It’s helped me keep track of the various projects, which really helps when I’m doing content reports and trying to catch up on entries that I haven’t written. Beyond all of that, I love the feel of my words on a page. There’s something about handwritten words that never compares to typed or printed words.

Daily Work: Being Lazy

Not an overly exciting day, but I did make a lovely Monte Cristo in the toaster oven and installed the new pink toilet seat (not at the same time). Surely that is enough for one day. Okay, I did more than that. I watched Poirot on TV and worked on IRC tutorials for logging in and partipating in the Math Summit:

• First-Time in IRC
• Returning to IRC
• Gaining Voice to Ask a Question

In the News: Blogged Out of a Job

Blogged Out of a Job—another exploration of the horrors that people get into when they communicate online. “The poll [conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management] also found that 59 percent of employees believe employers should be allowed to discipline or terminate workers who post confidential or proprietary information concerning the employer, while 23 percent of employees would support a fellow worker who criticizes or jokes about employers, co-workers, supervisors, customers or clients.”

What intrigues me about this piece is that you’d think it’s the blogging that is the new problem that causes these downfalls into poor business behavior. How are any of the circumstances in the article different from missent e-mails that divulge too much information, leaking information to someone who ought not have it, or any of the dozens of other communication faux pas that are out there in the business world. It’s hardly the blog that’s to blame. It’s the failure to understand audience, purpose, and business behavior.

In the News: Communicating with Images

Here I Am Taking My Own Picture – New York Times: “The era of cheap, lightweight digital cameras – in cellphones, in computers, in hip pockets, even on key chains – has meant that people who did not consider themselves photography buffs as recently as five years ago are filling ever-larger hard drives with thousands of images from their lives.”

I’d like to see a more sophisticated analysis of this trend. To what extent is it the technology and how much of it is immediacy and availability? More bothersome to me is this commentary:

“In a funny way I don’t see this as photography anymore,” said Fred Ritchin, an associate professor in the photography and imaging department at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. “It’s communication. It’s all an extension of cellphones, texting and e-mailing.”

The implicit statement there is that images weren’t/aren’t communication. Especially in a School of the Arts, that is such a perposterous statement. There are no messages in visual images?!! Please.