Twitter Visualization: THATcamp tweets
Social Collider is a Twitter visualization tool that displays tweets as points on a grid; x-axis is conversations/topics, y-axis is time (days). The tweets are connected in this way:
- if a tweet started a conversation, it connects horizontally to the next tweet
- if a tweet did not start a conversation, it connects vertically to the next tweet
Social Collider is full of API calls and calculations and as such is pretty slow. So that we don’t overwhelm the service (or our own machines) with repeated queries for the #thatcamp hashtag (tweets that took place over the past week surrounding the THATCamp unconference), I took a screenshot of the visualization.
You miss the little bits of interactivity with the tool, but you can quickly see why some of us already have plans in the works two write about, essentially, the rhetoric of the twitter backchannel at (un)conferences such as this one.
June 30, 2009
Tags: conferences, tech geeky Posted in: Techie 
One Comment
Updated CV
I finally got gutsy and posted my current academic CV. I say “gutsy” because it’s kind of embarrassing. I mean, I feel like I should have done a lot more by now.
Then I remember that I took a big ol’ break to work in industry, did my MA while working full-time, am doing my PhD while working full-time, and I just finished coursework a few weeks ago. So when you see the lack of academic publications, don’t judge me too harshly. I really am working on it!
June 28, 2009
Posted in: Academics No Comments
Conference Abstract for Presentation on “Digital Natives”
The day abstracts were due for the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association conference (Nov 6-9, 2009 in San Francisco), I whipped up an abstract for the “teaching with technology” panel. I am assuming, based on similar conferences I have attended, that the audience will consist of people mostly unfamiliar with technology but willing to learn; these are the late majority, definitely, and in some cases laggards (in the language of the technology adoption lifecycle by Rogers et al.
My goal is to dispel some myths, orient people toward work already done/going on, and provide some “best practices” (which actually riff off Jeremy Boggs’s Three Roles for Teachers using Technology post from February. I wrote this more like an evangelist than an academic, hence the lack of a colon or parentheses in the title.
June 27, 2009
Tags: conferences, pedagogy Posted in: Teaching, Techie 3 Comments
Keep Inflexible Technophobes Out of the Online Classroom
When I read the Chronicle piece, “I’ll Never Do it Again“—about one professor’s experiences teaching online—I thought to myself, “Great! Don’t. More work for the rest of us.” I hope there’s a Chronicle piece in the works by someone who enjoys teaching online and whose students perform well. I could name at least fifteen people without even trying who could write such commentary—including myself although my sample size is (admittedly) in the single digits. Are there problems with purely online courses? Sure. Are there problems with purely face-to-face courses? Sure. Are there problems with hybrid courses? Sure. Conclusion? Teaching and learning are challenges faced by all instructors and students everywhere. This isn’t news.
I don’t know if I lucked into having the best graduate faculty ever, but since day one in my MA and PhD programs I’ve had one word drilled into my brain: FLEXIBILITY. To that, I’ve added the following on my own: SELFLESSNESS. My classes—virtual or otherwise—aren’t about me. In every class there are goals for the students to achieve, and readings and activities and assignments that I believe will help them meet those goals, but gosh darn it if the class goes in a different direction on any given day, so be it as long as the students learn something. We regroup the next time, and I keep on listening to them (virtually or otherwise) and watch how they working with the material, and together we find a way for them to achieve those course goals. [Now, I'm no pollyanna—I know sometimes things just don't work, and only brute force will get people back on track. So be it.]
When I read Clift’s five points about how teaching online “doesn’t compare” to teaching in the classroom, my first thought was that Clift had a negative experience because she went into it not understanding the platform and not understanding online interactions. My second thought was that the negative outcome was shaped by a fundamentally inflexible pedagogy. I’m not saying Clift is a bad instructor, because I don’t know her at all and it would be completely unfair to say such things with her essay as my only evidence. But I do know that just as many institutions provide checklists for students about expectations before taking an online class, instructors should have a similar expectations document regarding teaching an online class.
June 17, 2009
Tags: pedagogy, tech geeky Posted in: Teaching, Techie 9 Comments
ASLE Roundtable on Space & Place Blogging
Last week I was at the biennial ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) conference. Those of you who know me purely online or as a digital humanities geek might be surprised to know that I do a lot with literature and the environment (specifically Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir), or Western American literature, but there it is. I do. So, I’ve been looking forward to this conference for two years, and I’m already looking ahead to 2011 when ASLE is at Indiana University in Bloomington. After the experience I had this week, there’s no way I am going to miss it ever again (if I can help it). But that’s for another post.
This post is about the roundtable I was part of: “The Virtues of the Virtual: Using Blogs to Communicate Place across Space”
June 8, 2009
Tags: blogging, blogosphere, conferences Posted in: Academics, Techie 4 Comments