How stupid is this? Using this as a plan to notify students would assume many absolutely ridiculous things.
1. That students have access to a computer at all times.
2. That students are constantly logged into facebook, even when they are supposed to be paying attention in class.
3. That Facebook won't become obsolete ten minutes after being mainstreamed like every other social networking technology known to man.
What the hell are these people thinking?
Here's an idea for university administrators (here and elsewhere). We have 36K students and God knows how many faculty and staff members. Contact three major cell phone carriers. Tell them that we want to special Purdue package that offers all students 100 minutes a month with free nights and weekends with a basic phone (with the ability to upgrade phones and packages) for $10 a month. Wait for the companies to try to underbid each other. Here we are also making note of the fact that a good number of our students already have cell phones permanently attached to their heads.
At this moment what parent wouldn't work an extra hour or so, in the most extreme situations, to insure that their children were alerted in case of emergency? Maybe you can even agree to have some kind of parental block put on the phone so that the students can't run up ridiculous phone bills. Either way, it seems that the promise of upwards of 40K new customers would get most cell phone carriers excited.
Tengrrl sent me this link today because she wanted to make sure that I wasted valuable time playing games. Oh wait....I like playing games and it's part of my research, Nevermind. Thanks tengrrl! ‘Speare: The Literacy Arcade Game by the Canadian Apollo Games is basically a space shooter (much like space invaders except you don't get to hide behind barriers) where you destroy enemy ships in order to retrieve orbs that bear key words of a Shakespearian phrase that you are supposed to complete for that round. During each round you also receive a series of "transmissions" that give you Shakespeare themed trivia facts. Once you successfully complete each round you can then answer a series of trivia questions for additional points. Accumulated points can be used for ship and weapons upgrades.
I played the demo through and it kept my attention for a few minutes. The trivia facts were more interesting than the Space Invaders knockoff interface, but they definitely pulled you out of the narrative of the game in the attempt to build a Shakespearian meta-narrative. I'm not sure of what the proposed age range is supposed to be, but the ringing endorsements from a 13 year old student and a 6th grade teacher makes me think that the intended audience is middle school aged children. As a former elementary school teacher I am a bit skeptical of edutainment type games (even if the developers don't want to call it that) because children generally see through the thin level of entertainment very quickly. Oddly enough I think that 'Speare might actually grab the attention of a gamer for a few moments. The question is how do you draw in a non-gamer? One of the things that I noticed about the game really quickly was that there were a lot of transmissions coming through, but no faces to put with the voices. I wonder if adding a more "personal"/human touch to the game might be more friendly.
I also wonder about what happens if you die. Do you have to start all over again? You have a limited number of ships and you can earn more, but to be perfectly honest I am too damned competitive to actually keep dying so that I can see what happens when/if I run out of ships/lives. Someone else want to try out the demo and tell me what happens?
I have been playing lots of flash based games over at Kongregate and one of the things that I have found most useful. There is a series of 4 (so far) games called "Understanding Games". Episode 1 deals with rules, representations, and interactivity, Episode 2 deals with player motivation to continue in a game and fun, Episode 3 (my favorite) deals with the concept of learning in video games, and the latest installment, Episode 4 deals with player identification in games. While episode 4 isn't as game-y as some of the previous installments it does cover some basic and important concepts.
Got an hour or three to spare? Head over to Kongregate and play around a bit.
In order to try to facilitate knitting related activities at future conferences and just to give us someplace to talk to one another, I have started a Google group for knitting rhetoricians and compositionists (at the request of others). If you're interested in joining in on the fun feel free to use subscription box below or keep an eye out for the posts on WPA-L and techrhet.
Becky posted a link to a great YouTube video done by a professor at Kansas State on Digital Ethnography and it does a great job of demonstrating what it is that we do. At the same time, while I am thinking about game modding and authorship I wonder if/how modding as writing would fit into this video. Take the time to watch it because the Machine (really) Is Us/ing Us.
Clancy over at Culturecat has been asking how many hours people actually spend in meetings.
She has heard
.. for years now when hearing professors talk about all the meetings they have to attend, I've wondered -- just how many meetings are we talking about, really? What's the big deal? I would say that something around four meetings per day for a period of a couple of weeks would be tiresome, especially if they're being held all over campus and you're having to be on the go constantly. Are most professors having to attend meetings on the order of ~15-20 per week? Or mostly just those with administrative posts?
I decided to sit down and figure out my meeting schedule (including only standing committee and department meetings and not directed reading, mentoring, or student meetings which would easily add 5-10 hours per week) because I see student meetings of this sort being necessary and productive.
faculty meeting 2 hours (at least)
research meetings (includes meetings with research assistant, research group, and a colleague) 12-14 hours
committee meetings 6 hours (more if they actually pay attention to my availability one of the 50 times a month the secretary emails me to request it)
university comm meetings 4 hours
So that works out to 24-26 (44-66 hours with student meetings) per month NOT including prep time or the time spent on working on assignments from committee meetings or subcommittee meetings that branch off of those meetings.
I think that we kvetch most about these meetings because most of his stuff is spent balancing egos and could probably be best handled with a 10 minute email exchange. Especially if it involves working with a bunch of male geeks who don't want to listen to a woman under any friggin' circumstances.
Ok, enough meeting itemizing for now. My advice to junior faculty members who still find themselves protected is to enjoy it while you can!!!
Let me just start by saying. I hate having my picture taken! Any one of ya'll who has pointed a camera at me knows as much. That being said, my hatred of the camera is the only thing that makes this story frightening.
I don't want film of my class posted the dang internet. It's not a question of intellectual property. Any student (or any one else for that matter) is freely welcome to all of the intellect that I have.
Do I have bad teaching days? Hell yeah, Who doesn't? Do I care if people see them? Probably not, just let them learn what not to do when they are standing in front of a class. :-)
Now let me get back to begging the university for money to fund my gaming research during my sabbatical (aka filling out grant applications).
We took a last minute weekend trip to Chicago before the madness of school truly kicks in. We did some shopping (can you say shoes??) :-) and checked out some new restaurants. Places that I can definitely recommend that we visited this weekend?
Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co. We split the Pizza Pot Pie and the crazy Italian Festa salad that there was still enough food left for 4 or 5 people!
Ann Sather Lisa had the V-4 omlette and I have the pecan french toast. I should have gone the healthy route and had the egg white omlette too, but....
and my favorite was Hot Chocolate. We went there for dessert before dinner, but ended up having dinner because we were so impressed with the menu. We tried the pasta and the best super rare burger that I have had in a long time!
On another note, I didn't have to paint (yet) because Lisa started to paint her own office in the middle of the night (yep, she has insomnia too). Anywho...I am back and feeling revived and ready to take on the world!
If you have sent me email in the last 2 weeks. The university decided to change our email addresses and switch servers with basically no notice. Email sent to my old address was held (some seemingly lost) and most (literally thousands) coming through all at once!
I am currently trying to wade through tons of spam AND important messages. Don't think that I am ignoring you and if you sent me something important it is a pretty good idea to just send it again.
BTW my new email address is blackmos(AT)purdue(DOT)edu.
I can't believe that orientation starts tomorrow and I haven't done anything this summer that I wanted to do. I actually decided about half way through that I would do whatever I felt like doing and nothing more. Too bad I didn't feel like doing anything most of the time :-P
Now I have to kick it into high gear and get my new research agenda solidified before sabbatical. I'm also gonna need to get my IRB stuff together. I have an undergraduate research assistant this term and I really don't want to waste this opportunity for me (or for him!).
