C&W 2006 Presentation: Musings

I’ve been sitting around trying to figure out my presentation for Computers and Writing. That means, of course, that I’ve been fidgeting with trying to find information on the conference online, researching this and that, and other “prewriting” activities.

Yesterday, I sadly realized that I actually have to read the Lakoff book very soon. So I’ve been trying to plug through it, but I’m not making much progress. Not because it’s hard to read, but because I’m having a hard time figuring out how I’m going to connect something that is so firmly grounded in Republican-Democratic political ideology to my ideas about technological literacy. In my heart, I just feel like I’m going down some crazy road, where none of this really will make sense. If anyone comes to the session, they’ll just wonder where I got the crack that helped me come up with these ideas.

I seem to be taking more breaks from reading than actually reading, so I’ve been at the computer. I posted that question about computer teaching space names on TechRhet, thinking that since Lakoff is talking about the process of naming perhaps that would be the thing that would tie the elephants to the laptops. I’ve been compiling the names in a spreadsheet, and the answers are, indeed, interesting. Still, I don’t think that I have seen the fundamentally important difference in language use that fits Lakoff’s discussion of language. Sigh.

So I decided to reread my notes from the last CCCC session that I attended: M.20: Info-Ecology, Info-Architecture: Growing and Designing Rhetoric for Critical Technography. That was about an hour and a half ago, and as I read my notes I had this sudden realization. I had -one of those moments-. An epiphany? I don’t know what to call it. I don’t have them often, and the most vivid one came when I was studying for my master’s exam and suddenly realized how everything related to everything else. At that moment, I knew that I understood and that no further amount of studying would make any difference. You could have given me any 4 texts to relate, and I would have been able to do it.

That’s that it felt like. Suddenly, I thought that I saw how everything connected and made sense—technology, architecture/ecology, elephants. My notes aren’t all that complete however; so I used the lazy researcher’s friend. Either I completely understand, or I am totally lost.

	A	B
M.20 session	information ecology, loss of agency organic human interaction with technologies Dickie: "we need a citizenry that understands the best way to live"	information architecture, control of agency human control of interaction with technologies
wikipedia	Quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_ecology: “Information ecology” often is used as metaphor, viewing the informational space as an ecosystem. describe and analyze information systems from a perspective that considers the distribution and abundance of organisms, their relationships with each other, and how they influence and are influenced by their environment.	Quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture: The practice of structuring information (knowledge or data) for purpose In the context of web design (or design for related media) Information Architecture is defined by the Information Architecture Institute as The structural design of shared information environments. The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability. An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. designing the architecture around the needs and capabilities of the intended user audience.
Lakoff’s explanation of national politics via the family metaphor	nurturing parent ". . . children are born good and can be made better. The world can be made a better place, and our job is to work on that. The parents’ job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others." (12) Values in "a community as in a family": freedom; opportunity; prosperity;, fairness; open, two-way communication; community-building, service to the community, and cooperation in a community; trust; and honesty. (13) Types of progressives. #3 of 6, "Environmentalists think in terms of sustainability of the earth, the sacredness of the earth, and the protection of native peoples." (14).	strict father "Children [citizens] are born bad, in the sense that they want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good." (7) "the strict father [government] is a moral authority who knows right from wrong" (7). Government takes the role of the father, knowing right from wrong, and making decisions that reward those who are self-reliant, those "whose prosperity reveals their discipline and hence their capacity for morality" (9).
Cindy’s Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century	Technological literacy "refers to the complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating. The transformed term, critical technological literacy, suggests a reflective awareness of these social and cultural phenomena." (148)	"The prevailing cultural understanding of the term as simple competence with computers" (xx).
K12 literacy education	whole language instruction "instructional philosophy which focuses on reading as an activity best taught in a broader context of meaning. Rather than focusing on reading as a mechanical skill, it is taught as an ongoing part of every student’s existing language and life experience. Building on language skills each student already possesses, reading and writing are seen as a part of a broader ‘whole language’ spectrum."	phonics, NCLB, standards, testing, “scientifically-based” reading instruction, direct instruction picture the guided reading instruction shown in the clips where GWB is observing a classroom read "The Pet Goat" while the planes fly into the WTC.
tengrrl’s musing	organic, holistic	structured, determined

Um, that’s more than enough for now. I started trying to get this explained hours
ago. It’s 2 am now. But I do have to summarize somehow. I’m not trying to set
up a Good/Bad dichotomy here, especially not as it might apply to the CCCC session
on info ecologies versus info architecture. I’m trying to look at the way that
metaphors and language fall out in these discussions and to think about how the
metaphors that are chosen influence the ways that instruction and learning is
(or is not) sustained. I’m still not at all sure how that works. It’s just that
I think I finally figured out how everything parallels the dichotomy that Lakoff
set forth.

I think, also, that we are close to the dangers of technological thinking
that Heidegger explains—totally via Cindy’s explanation: "When humans have
a technological understanding of the world, we see technology in a very narrow
way: as a tool for solving problems, as a means to an end" (140). "As humans
adopt this ‘instrumental’ understanding of technology, we also begin to think
that all problems can be solved with technology and that the newest technology
is all we need to master the natural environment as well" (141). And finally,
"This way of ‘enframing’ the world (20) becomes dangerous when it limits
our repertoire of response to a ‘single way’ (32) and when our other ways of
understanding the world atrophy and disappear" (141). I think, and I really
emphasize think there, that that Heidegger might well fall into the B
column, the strict father view, with its singular focus on good and scientifically-determined
ways of doing things, without attention to other existing ways. i think…

I no longer know where any of this is going. I’m not sure how it relates in any
way to my
original C&W abstract. Hell, I’m not even sure if it makes any sense
to anyone other than me. On that one level, as I typed hours ago, it feels like
I suddenly know how everything relates to everything else. On the other, I’m
not at all sure what it means or if it’s even right. It’s 2:21 now. Perhaps it’s
time to sleep on it.

Secrets

Sometimes, I honestly think these [one and two] stupid postcards are me. Damn you PostSecret.

Movies: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Miles, am I going crazy? Don’t spare me. I’ve got to know.

No, you’re not. Even these days, it isn’t as easy to go crazy as you might think. But you don’t have to be losing your mind to need psychiatric help.

—Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Republic Pictures

For Web: Scrapbooking meets blogging – Lifehacker

Scrapbooking meets blogging – Lifehacker—intriguing…

Do you ever sit down to write something and find that you can’t figure out anything to say that even begins to sound useful? I have been trying to write this entry for over an hour. I deleted it twice. This is at least the third try, and yet I still can’t seem to figure out what I mean to say. I only know that I want to say something. Sure I could report the events of the day. I did this and that, and I didn’t have the energy to do these other things.

It’s almost as if my head is empty of anything other than flat statements that just seem incredibly stupid. I write them and then I delete them. It doesn’t actually accomplish much in the way to writing.

I don’t know why I feel compelled to write an entry right now anyway. That is a lot of the problem I am sure. I’m not even sure what I want to write about; yet I need to write something. I have things that I need to say, but somehow I can’t say them or I’m not allowed to say them. I have to keep quiet. And as a result, somehow I’m stuck. Would it help if I said everything? Not really. It would only make things worse I expect.

I’m just stuck in the same little pattern. Over and over. Get up tired, go dressed, go to work, work and work and work, drive home, turn on the basement light because I need to deal with the laundry, walk up the steps into the kitchen, realize I’m too tired to clean or cook, sit in front of the computer unable to write, realize I don’t really have anyone to talk to anyway, walk out to the kitchen, prepare junk to eat because I’m too tired to invest in cooking, look down the open basement door and feel guilty about the laundry, look at the kitchen and feel guilty about the dirty dishes, go back to the computer, eat and feel guilty and sick because I’m eating bad food, search the Web for diet options, stare at the computer some more, realize I’m too tired to do anything like exercise and too overwhelmed to eat the right things, randomly search around for things that I don’t find, stare at the computer some more, eventually give up and go to bed, sleep restlessly, turn off the alarm clock three times because I’m too tired, start over.

Stuck. Stuck and overwhelmed by the inertia it would take to fix any of it. So I just sit here. Wishing and feeling guilty.

In a spot of boredom, I was playing with camera settings, and figured out how to do close-ups. They appear to be more fuzzy than the already fuzzy regular versions, but I was entertained by the ability nonetheless.

The silly camera has face tracking, and I didn’t realize that it was keeping me from doing close-ups and whatnot till about 15 minutes ago.

None of this is helping me solve my problems, and I think the only reason that I am posting this picture is really that it’s so close that you can’t really tell the details of my portly reality.

Someone said today that from the back, my hair looked like it should be in a shampoo commercial. Why can’t I be a Barbie everywhere damn it?

Today was another day. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about Lubbock, but I do know that I need to figure it out. I just feel so brainless. I want all the wrong things, and they’re not even things that I have a chance of getting; but I guess that isn’t really getting us anywhere.

I thought about trying to guess out what my requirements were for Lubbock. Maybe that would be more helpful than that list of to-do’s that I created.

• must have a/c or will die
• need to have cold water and/or the CF diet soda (ice chest? frig? something)
• must have a bed that I can pile up properly so that I don’t cough all night

I guess those are the most important things really. The rest is mostly things that I would like. The sticking points are money and location. The dorm is probably closer to the folks I would want to see, and it’s cheaper. But the dorm is least likely to fit those three needs. I don’t know what to do. I know that I will need more hotel rooms, since it’s a 2-day drive each way. I know that it’s pricey when you add up all the money. And I left out the privacy issues. Communal showers are not my thing. Really they’re fairly impossible for me given how much I hate myself.

Everything that I really need points to the hotel. The things that I want point to the dorm. Hell.

I should just give up. I’m useless at conferences anyway. stupid me.

Another weekend passes. I’ve done some more reading of Norma Fox Mazer’s What I Believe; but I still haven’t quite finished it yet. I actually started it weeks ago, but put it down because it was depressing. It still is, so I’m not sure why I chose past tense there. It has no connection to what I normally read. No computer or technology connection. I had Lisa get it from the library for me because it looked like it might help with the “This I believe” sort of lesson plan that we need for the site. I knew back then that it didn’t fit; but I hate to not finish a book unless there’s a really very good reason.

Maybe it was the style that kept me reading the book. The School Library Journal review on Amazon does compare it Sonya Sones’s What My Mother Doesn’t Know (2001) and Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey (1996), both of which I have read; so maybe it’s not that strange that I’m reading it. But I wonder how much of it was the content and emotion. The protagonist, Vicki, struggles to deal with the fallout of her father’s lost job and his depression, the family’s related move into a small apartment, and their ongoing financial issues.

I’m not sure why I’ve given to read of folks with depression and other woes. Misery loves company I guess. Sometimes I wonder if there are any truly real books though. There must always be some knowledge born of the woe, some lesson learned in the process of facing so many challenges. Reality, however, can often be cruel and mean for no reason whatsoever and with no related lessons other than that the world is a harsh place. So I’m sure that no matter what the many challenges that the protagonist faces in What I Believe, things will turn out. They always turn out it seems, even when real life rarely does.

This morning felt like a summer morning in Houghton. Almost chilly, but clearly going to get warmer. Things chirping and blooming. Lawn mowers whirring.

Can you be homesick for some place you didn’t live?

Daily Shoulds Continued

So I realized that there were several things that I left out. For Lubbock, I need to know distances as well, walking distances. My messy body complicates everything.

And I’m supposed to be writing up all the blog drafts that I’ve saved over the last ten days or so. Lots of clippings and whatnot that I need to comment on, or have written partial comments on. I really need to get that finished before they’re all irrelevant.

There’s a ton of reading that I need to do as well.

Maybe that’s it. It takes care of the things that I knew were missing anyway.

I continued work on a blogging overview that I’m doing for a couple of lesson plans.

My eating is all mixed up. I can’t seem to find the right combination of things to eat. That pizza last night tore through my system, and then today, I stupidly ate lettuce. I seem to eat far too much of just about everything that I can eat, perhaps because at least it doesn’t make me sick. My system is just a mess, and I’m puzzled. Maybe it’s the soda. I have slid back into the habit of drinking soda. Maybe that’s the beginning of the problem. I’m a little lost to be honest. I half think I’m going to have to reset by eating cheerios again, and then slowly add things. And the other half of me says to just eat everything and deal with the consequences when they come. Not really the best way to deal with reality. I’m just too disorganized it seems.