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.

Daily Work: Rhetoric and Technology, and Housework

That’s right. It’s the weekend, and as usual, I didn’t bother to get dressed. But I did do lots of things, even if I wasn’t dressed. That has to count for something.

I attended a Computers and Writing Online Symposium session:

“Computers & Writing–A Discipline?” Cynthia Selfe, Fred Kemp, James Inman, and Cheryl Ball. What defines Computers & Writing as a discipline? Is it a discipline? What distinguishes it from the discipline of Composition and Rhetoric, for example, or Technical Communication? What research and what theory inform its pedagogy and practice? How are we defined on the job market and then what roles do we play within our academic departments?

The session touches on some of the issues that my paper is supposed to cover. I’m still not sure how I’m going to present, given that I don’t think that I’ll actually be there. I’m thinking that it may have to be some kind of Flash-driven PowerPoint sort of thing. I’m trying not to think about it. My proposal, which was written more by Dickie and Karla than me, is below:

“Don’t Think of the Technologies: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate” George Lakoff in Don’t Think of an Elephant, suggests that we need to know our own values and reframe debates based on those values, not on others’ conception of what we do. This presentation describes the values embedded within NCTE’s successful and popular ReadWriteThink website and the practices that grow out of such values. ReadWriteThink is based on the premise that sustainable digital environments must focus not on the technologies themselves, but on the literacies and pedagogies they support. Accordingly, when people ask how to use software to teach, they are in turn asked how they already teach–or aspire to teach. The advice they receive then emphasizes how technologies can support their current or future practice.

We’ll see how it all plays out. I’m somewhat worried that I’ll be able to pull it off.

I managed to finally get the toaster oven into the kitchen. Two months on the couch is long enough for a Christmas present. I still can’t figure out where to put everything so that it fits and makes sense. I end up going to the kitchen, putting one thing where it seems to belong, and then going back to sit down. When I go back to the kitchen again, it’s like I’m trying everything out to determine whether it really fits where I put it. Mostly this process is telling me that I really want a bigger kitchen, but since I’m not interested in remodeling, I need to figure this all out.

Between the kitchen and thinking about various things that I’m supposed to be writing, that’s about all that I accomplished. Still, it has to be good enough. It’s certainly better than most weekends when I take long naps and get nothing at all done.

Rhetoric: Conversational Terrorism: How NOT to Talk!

Conversational Terrorism: How NOT to Talk!—A nice collection of argumentative fallacies, set up as they are used in meetings and whatnot. Should be approachable and applies to more than just oral conversations. I just wish the folks on BlogShares actually left such things out of their disagreements.

Daily Work: Leaving a Character and Errands

My first day off of a four-day weekend. We need more Monday holidays. Even though I took vacation today, I ended up doing a bit of work. It’s impossible not to really. Makes more sense to answer some e-mails then to let them wait. Reviewed a lesson plan that needs to be polished up a bit for a forthcoming MarcoGram (the free, themed, monthly newsletter that MarcoPolo sends out). I’ll need to get that work done by the 22nd, which is their deadline for the issue. It’s not too difficult, but an extra thing that I didn’t plan to do. I’m going to work in one of my children and technology books, so at least it should be interesting to do.

To everyone’s surprise, I showered, dressed, and left the house on a day off. I went to Target for some things that I needed now that I’ve switched out the old microwave. I still don’t know how I’m going to get the old microwave out of the kitchen. It’s so heavy :( There was also grocery shopping, and I needed to pick up prescriptions.

In my wandering around in Target, I found the new Carl Hiaasen book Flush in hardcover for 30% off—$13! I snapped it up, but haven’t started reading it yet. I haven’t been able to finish the book that I have been reading for weeks now, Donorboy by Brendan Halpin. Not for the normal reasons that someone doesn’t want to finish a book. It’s that I don’t want it to end, so I’ve been throwing a sort of temper tantrum for weeks by not reading the last few pages. I don’t want the characters to go away. It’s the first young adult book with technology integrated that actually felt authentic. The text actually sounds like a journal written by a depressed, angst-ridden girl—full of run-ons and misstarted sentences and abbreviations that flow through the text rather than stand out like someone trying to be cool. I have really enjoyed it, and I just don’t want the characters to go away. I guess I have to finish it eventually, but I can put it off for a few more days.