Status: Doctor

Yesterday I became a doctor.

I went and celebrated with a few friends who are also highly educated, and I admit, it felt a bit like this:

And so this is my final official blog as a Student Innovation Fellow, but I do plan to continue keeping a blog chronicling my journey through a tech world as a Humanities student at https://valerievisual.wordpress.com/ – which admittedly needs a revamp, and a cleanup before I start to use it again. That is not, however, the focus of this entry.

The point of this entry is to detail the status of my life as a doctor at this point in my journey.

Yesterday, my committee signed my paperwork.

My dissertation is titled: The Value of Scholarly Writing: A Temporal-Material Rhetorical Analysis of Google Documents

It analyzes how interactive writing software (IWS) like Google Documents serve to forefront functions of interactivity between writers, and by doing so, reshape and create Western values surrounding the academic writing process that are uniquely post-industrial. The whole thing aligns rather well with the work we do as Student Innovation Fellows, and a lot of my work as a SIF informed some of my theory and analysis.

My work as a Computers and Composition scholar has been validated over and over again in my SIF work. I have worked with cloud computing for nearly two years, theorizing how it alters users perception of time and space, and right when I am feeling like I might be saying nothing new, a SIF colleague who I respect very highly made the following statement, “Whenever I’m working on a Google Doc, I always want to save, and you don’t have to in the cloud. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to that.” I realized that if this colleague is still not used to the save features of cloud software, then I must be saying something fresh.

And again, when I learned how much fun it is to make simple data into visualizations, as I did for Marni Davis, and when I turned Oscar Rieken’s resume into an infographic, a whole new world of seeing opened up to me. I look at information much differently now, thanks to my projects. This factored in to the way I analyzed the features of Google Documents within my dissertation pages.

Working as a SIF also gave me the opportunity to leave the usual spaces of Humanities PhD life and peek inside the Information Technology world. The links between coding and composition have astounded me. As I began to teach  myself HTML and CSS, I began to understand the grammar and syntax behind coding reflect that of natural languages. Not only that, but I am beginning to see the barriers online that fall down as I learn to code, similar to the barriers that fall as we enter discourses. For example, without knowing anything about the language of law, anyone would be completely lost in a court, even if everyone is speaking English.

A problem does remain that the market is stretched thin, and finding a job is difficult for any PhD student. I find comfort in knowing that even the best and brightest students often don’t land jobs their first year on the academic market (a market that is so complicated and unlike any business market, it is difficult to explain it to anyone not involved in the process). What I do have is the experience I have gained during the Student Innovation Fellowship. Unfortunately, I lack the know-how to market these skills in a way that makes sense.

As I explore my options, I am learning about jobs that I had never heard of, skills I didn’t know existed, and a whole new world of technology that is related to my current research. No matter what I end up doing next, I am certain that it will be as interesting as the work I have done as a Student Innovation Fellow – and if I’m lucky – it’ll be even more so.

Immigration to Atlanta: Historical Data Visualization

This week before Spring Break, I was fortunate enough to get put on a new project coming out of the History Department. Working with Dr. Marni Davis, a team of SIFs and I are helping Marni to organize, visualize, and present her data on immigrants to Atlanta. We are beginning with data in the late 1800’s, and working up to the present. Currently, we have a lot of data up to about 1930, which is what I have been working with.

To begin, Marni supplied us with a spreadsheet of data with about 1600 entries on immigrants. These entries have data points such as name, birthdate, port entry city, date of immigration into Atlanta, date of naturalization, country of origin, address in Atlanta when applying for citizenship, and so on. Because I have experience with Tableau (a program which can produce beautiful data visualizations), Marni asked me to take some of this data and create charts that we could put up on her new GSU sites website dedicated to the Immigrants ATL project.

To begin, I decided to try and create a bit of a story that showed very simple data. For example, in the first figure, I show the m/f immigration difference, where you can see that men immigrated to Atlanta 100x more than women in this period.

Immigrant-Gender-1

In the next figure, you can see a comparison between when Asian/Pacific peoples were immigrating into Atlanta, versus when Central Europeans were. Additionally, you can see that there were far more Central Europeans immigrating to Atlanta than there were Asians.

Region Immigration Comparison

The visualizations are really wonderful in that they make the data much easier to mentally process and compare, and they will be easy to present in any venue. Further, we can arrange any data visualization into a kind of story that we want the data to tell.

Currently we are working to create more graphs like you see above, but also to incorporate some maps that show data such as average age of immigrants into Atlanta from various regions, countries, and cities.

While these visualizations are gorgeous, and not difficult to make, there are some issues that arise to complicate matters. For example, there is not a year of entry for absolutely every immigrant to Atlanta. In order to create the graphs, I have to omit whole people who may only be missing one piece of data. Further, I learned the hard way, that Tableau does not read the formulas that we make in Excel. I had a lot of loading issues and eventually found that Tableau is set up to do my computing. After several hours of trying to load, visiting the Tableau sub-reddit, and doing a lot of Googling, that I could subtract the Immigration year from the Naturalization year right in the graph.

Next, we are going to build out more visualizations, meet with the rest of the team to see what they are working on, and hopefully create a really robust and face-smackingly wonderful set of data that Marni can present in any venue easily as she works to collect and manage all this data.

Student Work Collection

The last thing I did for the Student Innovation Fellowship on-site was co-host a couple of faculty workshops with Brennan Collins designed to get faculty interested in creating digital portfolios specifically designed to collect outstanding student work in a central location.

Since then, some of my tech-minded gears have really been turning. What would the university atmosphere be like if all instructors collected student work to be showcased on their personal portfolios?

If you visit the link above to Brennan Collins’s portfolio, you will see a very simple page that is a basic list of the student work. Brennan has collected this work over several semesters, and we are using it as a jumping off point for the first projects we may showcase on Edge Magazine. If you scroll through, you will see videos, PDFs with visuals, Prezis, and other media that students have used to present for Brennan’s course. This leaves open possibilities for Brennan to provide examples of his work above and beyond the usual documentation instructors provide such as assignment sheets or student evaluations (say, if Brennan were looking for another job, for example).

This kind of portfolio, it is important to point out, is different than a digital teaching portfolio. With a simple Google search, I found several examples of basic teaching portfolios on the open web. Below is a screenshot from an elementary school teachers’ home page.

example dig-port

As you can see, Stephanie Ladner has several sections, including her teaching philosophy, and a project she sponsors. But she does not collect student work. Of course, at this level, that would likely be a violation, given that she works with children who cannot give their permission for public display of their work. I am however, using Miss Ladner’s portfolio as an illustration.

Now imagine if all the instructors at GSU had simple portfolios like Brennan’s. Not only could instructors use this kind of portfolio for future career prospects, but they could use student examples to mentor new colleagues, to display what kind of student work comes out of their department, or to contribute to school-wide projects like Edge. And these are just three ideas I am coming up  with on my own. With more heads involved, I’m confident there would be so many wonderful uses for excellent student projects like the ones Brennan’s page features.

In order to promote the idea of digital portfolios showcasing, Brennan and I have hosted two workshops on the idea, and they have gone rather well. The instructors we have worked with are interested, and willing to spread the word. If the idea catches on and other instructors are also willing to collect outstanding student work, GSU could set the standard for this kind of sharing. With student permission, of course.

Edge Magazine in Development

Maybe you’ve heard the buzz, and maybe you haven’t:

Edge Magazine is coming to Georgia State University next Fall.

What is Edge Magazine?

Edge is an undergraduate project and research magazine/journal hybrid. It will be a fully online publication that encourages interesting multimedia presentations of excellent undergraduate work done in and out of class.

Why Edge?

You may have heard that GSU already has an undergraduate research journal called Discovery.

Discovery Journal Banner

Discovery features only Honors student work and is a much more traditional approach to research that Edge intends to be. We hope to be a more interactive take on the undergraduate research journal.

 

Edge is not DiscoveryEdge is its own entity – it’s own experiment. Edge is Edge.

What’s up with the name? 

We chose the name Edge for several reasons:

  • In an attempt to make sure we are, in fact, a little ‘edgy’ in terms of what a journal could be, Edge seemed like the logical choice for a name.
  • We want to be on the cutting edge of what a research journal can be.
  • Sometimes, when we come to the edge of something, a cliff, an idea, a sidewalk, it seems that nothing further can be done. We want to be that ‘further’. We want to do what research journals have not yet done. We want to go there. Over that edge.
Taken from http://fiqixirsi.com/most-beautiful-landscape-photos-of-norway/

Taken from http://fiqixirsi.com/most-beautiful-landscape-photos-of-norway/

Who is our audience? 

Edge will be outward facing, so that anyone with an internet connection may experience it. It will not be kept behind a paywall. It will not be limited to GSU students’ eyes only. If you contribute to Edge, your parents, your friends, your uncle Jack in Sarasota will have access to your work.

This means our audience will be anyone who is interested in experiencing the amazing work that is coming out of Georgia State University today. These are people who are interested in knowing what is happening at GSU. They are people who are interested in experiment, innovation, and ideas.

What is the vision?

There is no link to Edge as I write this entry today. This is because we are still in vision mode. I have drawn up plans for the amount of labor we will eventually need, and plans for the editorial process.

We are in the stage where we get to build the ideal. And that ideal is currently to create a multimedia journal/magazine hybrid that is accessible and fun for the audience to read, while maintaining a cutting-edge format where authors may attempt to showcase their research and project work in ways that research journals haven’t ever before.

You might see multi-layered work with lots of hyperlinks and videos. Or you might see text with audio spliced in and an image or two. Or you may see something unexpected that I can’t envision enough to explain yet.

What’s next?

We are excited about the possibilities of this project and are attempting to set the groundwork for an exciting launch during the next school year. In the meantime, we need to construct an infrastructure capable of maintaining a website that is actually on the edge of content that comes from a research university and showcases the work that undergraduates are capable of.

At the moment, we’re cobbling together ideas from a bunch of brains that are as capable as they are brilliant, in order to launch the skeleton of a website which will be both malleable and  fluid in its ability to be molded to fit the content we receive.

We are preparing with images, banners, video capability, lots of other great art, and some really wonderful content that will hopefully be interesting and surprising.

Birch_Ave_Mural

Here is one of the images I captured for the image archive to enhance content with provoking images.

 

As we come up with a logo, a basic site, and more solid visions, I will be updating you here, hopefully with more images. Stay tuned.

Randy Swearer – The Provost with a Message

Dr. Randy Swearer came to Georgia State University to give a 2-part talk titled “Understanding Emerging Trends in Higher Education” last week. Swearer has been provost of Philadelphia University since 2009 – and I find this to be an exceptional detail.

It is exceptional because this is the first time I have heard someone with this kind of institutional power speak about a radical change in the system of higher education.

Let me give you a summary:

Swearer talks about the need to unbundle the university system.

Swearer-2

This means, in general, that we need to be less focused on disciplinarity, and more focused on a more flattened hierarchical system that relies on training for skills, rather than training for tests. It is student-centered, and it is a place where faculty can focus on a variety of ways to deliver content, rather then the way we have been doing it for the last 150 years.

What is more, Swearer has a model that he believes might work.

Swearer-4

In the picture above, Swearer is showing an overview of his Part 1 talk before he goes into detail about his proposed system. Here, he proposes to disintegrate the existing model, opening up new ways for students to move through the system – minus arbitrary grading, lecture-only classrooms, and other models that critical pedagogues argue against.

Once the talks were over, everyone I attended with that works in the Exchange had some very interesting conversation about Swearer’s proposed model.

For me – the outcome has little to do with Swearer’s solution. Instead, I am excited that Swearer, a provost with a very loud voice, is on a speaking tour, talking about how much things need to change. Swearer’s model may not be a good solution – and it might also be a wonderful solution. We can’t know until his group enacts it. What I agree with most about Swearer’s talk is that change needs to happen. What I would love to see are several different groups trying out different systems simultaneously, while collaborating to attempt to find what works and what doesn’t along the way.

Digital Portfolio Workshop

Yesterday, I delivered a 1 hour workshop on building a digital portfolio. 11 people showed up, but three of them were Will, Taylor and Heidi, so I’m not sure 11 is cheating or not. I WAS excited to see them there – don’t get me wrong.

The Interact Wall in CURVE in action

The Interact Wall in CURVE in action

Overall, the workshop was well received, though it felt a lot more like a class than a workshop. I spent the first 30 minutes talking through points which covered online presence, types of hosting, available apps, and potential content. I was really hoping people would have their own attempts at digital portfolios to share — but I think that might be a different kind of workshop all together.

We had a variety of people with different levels of knowledge in the group though – which I was really hoping for. Two people from career services showed up and provided some helpful tips, and a student from the art department had some really great questions about presenting an art-forward portfolio as opposed to the professional job-forward portfolio I have designed for myself.

If I do this again, which I might since many of you expressed interest, but couldn’t make the date/time, I would probably find other examples of portfolios online – both successful and unsuccessful and we would have a discussion about what works and what doesn’t. At this point, I’m unsure whether I focused too much on design, or not enough. I tend to forget that even though most of us spend an astonishing amount of time online, we often don’t soak up how the design works. Design, at this moment in Web 2.0 history, is minimalist with lots of white space, only little splashes of color, and lacking anything too flashy. This kind of design may be becoming naturalized for many users so that not only is the interface of the operating system invisible, but the very design of the site is also invisible. In fact, this is what we’re going for when we design (most of the time), so that means the design aesthetic is successful. But this then becomes problematic for people that don’t work in tech to break into this seemingly opaque world of design.

My overall aim was to make building a digital portfolio seem like a relatively easy, approachable task for people new to the idea. I was quite surprised to find that no one in the audience had a portfolio of their own – not even an attempt at one. So I decided to talk to that point and highlight the ease of the WYSYWG and the fact that my content was quite limited in terms of the way I showcase myself in a general way that could appeal to many kinds of potential employers.

If you have a desire to see this workshop and couldn’t make it – please leave me a comment below and we’ll see if I can’t get another one scheduled.

Building Digital Portfolios

I will be holding a workshop on digital portfolios Monday March 30th, at 1PM in the CURVE.

The workshop is for both students and faculty. If you are a student, you may want to come to see what kinds of options are available for you to create your own digital presence. If you are a faculty member, you can come for the same reason, OR to get tips on how you might teach the digital portfolio. I will be presenting a few versions of my own portfolio, and then we will be discussing ways to present ourselves, and sharing new tools and tips together.

In order to prepare for this workshop, I had to do a lot of research and a LOT of building. I want to be able to showcase a few of the major sites where portfolios can be hosted, both free, and at low cost. I learned an incredible amount about web building and design. I’ve picked up new coding tricks, and learned how to embed a Google Doc, though Google has some of their own bugs to work out concerning that.

Let me show you some examples of how different portfolios can look (this also serves as a sneak peak at my workshop):

Below is my Squarespace website. I own the domain, vrobinphd.com and I have been working on this for quite some time. This is my permanent portfolio, and the one I give to potential employers and promote on my social media.

Squarespace

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 12.17.42 PM

As you can see from this front page, the design is sleek, and professional looking, with a lot of white space, which is what the trend for design is right now. Squarespace is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), but it also has options for coding, so you aren’t always limited to the template parameters. For example, I was able to drop an embedded Google Doc in as my CV, using the code function. This took some experimentation (and Googling), as I assumed the embed function would do it – and this turned out to be not the case. Unfortunately, this cool red button you see in the header, is not something I can code or manipulate to make it show up on other pages. So while I can manipulate much of the template, I can’t control all of it. Also – it is important to note that buying into Squarespace allows me to create my own logo with tagline. You can’t see the little red robot well here, but you will see it on other portfolios below.


 

This next one I made on a website called strikingly.com which I learned about from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education called “How to Curate Your Digital Identity as an Academic.”

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 12.18.26 PM

Strikingly is ONLY a WYSIWYG drag and drop application, and it only allows you to have one page. This page however, can be as long as you could ever want it to be. So instead of your visitors clicking to find content on new pages, they just scroll to each section. Strikingly allows you to upload backgrounds to enhance certain sections, and provides lots of neat, attractive buttons to place along the way for people to click on to email you, or visit a project you’re working on outside this site. It’s really simple, so it will be great for people who can’t code, or just want easy maintenance.


 

The last one I have to show you here is from wordpress.com which is on a template/theme called ‘pen scratch.’

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 12.18.51 PM

I chose a theme that looks clean and has a lot of white space to stay in the theme I have going among these portfolios I’ve made. This one is currently in heaviest build mode, but creating new pages, and showcasing my content has been very easy. WordPress is both a WYSIWYG and has coding capabilities you can use to manipulate both theme and content. I have learned a LOT about themes from working on the Tools Wiki project, including how much each theme can make or break the look of your site. I may find out as I continue to build that ‘pen scratch’ does not, in fact, work for my portfolio, and it could look COMPLETELY different by the time I give the workshop – this is one of the things we’ll cover in the workshop, actually. For now, you can see it largely works well, and there’s my cool Squarespace robot up at the top.


 

It’s been really fun hanging out at the Exchange researching, and building, and saying, “pssst, does this look stupid?” to other SIFs that hang out in the Exchange with me. I’m really excited I get to give the workshop, but I’m MORE excited about all the invaluable things I’ve learned in the process.

If you find yourself in need of portfolio help, please let me know and I’ll be happy to put my two cents in.

Defining Innovation with Fun and Creepiness

This week I’ve been working at outlining a paper exploring the definition of innovation, and how I am applying that to the DALN booth at the upcoming CCCC’s conference in Tampa Florida. What that means, is that I’ve spent even more time than usual researching this illusive word – chasing it down like the Hobbit to my Ring-Wraith.

I’ve read that Everett Rogers defines innovation as ““an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or another unit of adoption” (2003), which gets at the idea that ‘innovation’ has very much to do with audience perception.

Erin Frost, in a journal called Computers and Composition writes about student innovation as “the key to the development and vitality of technology” as users. Yet Frost never actually defines ‘innovation’ for her audience.

This is not unusual.

This same week, A friend on Facebook shared out an article that was so entertaining, I cried a little laughing at it:

The Creepiest Things You Can Do on Faceboook

The author leads us through a photo narrative about how she ‘messes’ with some friends for her own amusement.

Some might call this ‘hacking’ Facebook = using an application for something other than its intended use.

To me, this is innovation.

Interestingly though, Ashley Feinberg, the author of the article above, does not define her work as innovative, but it is. It MUST be. I say this because she is finding a new way to get people to laugh. She is finding a new way to entertain herself and others in a way that is unexpected, and minimalistic. I’m not sure exactly what it is about innovation that, to me, intrinsically points to minimalism, but it does – today, it does.

Fascinated by this ‘innovation,’ as I see it, I tried it on a couple of my own friends – to see what would happen.

The first experiment might be my favorite:

Nicole_InnovationAnd to my pleasant surprise, a few more people chimed in to my (hilarious) post:

Nicole_Innovation_2This pleased me so much, I decided to try the more invasive angle Feinberg gives us, by posting my own image on a friend’s feed, with no comment. I chose a friend who is a little strange in his own rite. He snapchats me ‘work selfies’ regularly, so I knew he wouldn’t be very freaked out by my random selfies on his page.

I was right. I began with something simple, and he was not phased:

Sunfeather_1 So I went in a little closer. Still unphased:

Sunfeather_2

But then he responded a way I didn’t expect, though perhaps I should have. My friend, Sunfeather chose to hit me back with a similar idea, one I chose to engage (I got his permission to use these images, by the way):

Sunfeather_3

In the end, I’m still processing what this kind of play means for innovation. It certainly means something, though. It means connection. It means minimalism. It means that something interesting and unexpected is happening.

THIS process of innovation-play seems to be a mix of audience and user interactivity with the technology, but it doesn’t actually change the use of tech in any way, that I can tell. Or perhaps we are on a social precipice with this sort of Facebook ‘hack’ – or perhaps we are doing nothing at all…

 

End of Semester

If you read my last blog entry, you know that we were planning a party/meeting to finish off the very first semester of our wonderful SIF program. It went off really well – there was so much food, we could have fed the people across the hall too!

Look at this amazing spread!!

Look at this amazing spread!!

As people trickled in, we waited to have the ‘meeting’ portion, and everyone ate in rounds. Whoever made that bean dip — you’re my hero.

Eventually, I asked Roxanne to put an interactive video made using Captivate 7 which featured our own Will Kerr building a box fort. Having sufficiently embarrassed Will, we opened the floor for people to ask any questions about the upcoming semester, and to show off projects they have been working on.

Our audience is not only captivated by presentations, they are also a very good looking bunch of smart people.

Our audience is not only captivated by presentations, they are also a very good looking bunch of smart people.

Robert Bryant blew us all away with his project wherein he has been creating digital models of 3D objects using Agisoft. He set up his computer and showed us how to interact with digital objects by waving your hand in front of a little device that reminded me a lot of the way the Wii system works.

Behold the Digital Ball

Behold the Digital Ball

We also got to watch several videos made by Thomas, Babacar, Ameer, Ryan and others that showcased the work they’ve been doing to promote Hybrid Pedagogy courses here at GSU. And we got to see another interactive video Roxanne and Ameer made for the science department which shows a hilarious young man named Kory making mistakes while using the Vacufuge Plus machine.

In all, the meeting was fun and informative. Even though I’ve been working to collect everyone’s accomplishments and achievements, I haven’t gotten to see all these projects yet in action.

Success.

Party in a Pinch

I sold my soul to Google a while ago.

I think it’s for this reason that the tasks I perform using Google products almost never feel terrifically ‘innovative,’ but as I wade through a dissertation wherein I analyze Google, I’m beginning to think that the way I use Google IS innovative – even to me.

As the end of the first ever semester of the first ever cohort of Student Innovation Fellows (SIFs) comes to a close, I wasn’t about to let it go down without a party. And also holidays. So I mean really – party.

Lucky for me – Justin was willing to let me plan the party – as long as I understood that the budget is exactly $0. Done. Easy.

I executed all my party planning via Google = I created an invitation (okay, so I used Publisher which I eventually converted into a PDF after Justin said, “I had no idea Publisher was still a thing”), which I linked to a Google spreadsheet and a Google form.

Here is a link to my invitation:

Partay!!

As you can see – we’re going the potluck route – and let’s be real: these SIFs are not only smart and savvy – they can cook. Hallelujah.

We have an editable Google Spreadsheet so people can contribute to said potluck – and I am quite excited about this upcoming gathering. I’m a grad student. Food is pretty much all I care about.

AND – because I wasn’t sure where people would be at with the idea of a cute little gift exchange, I used a Google Form to ask whether or not people would like to have a gift exchange.

I have loads of response forms and data to indicate that this will go off without a hitch. And all it took was a few clicks, and some key strokes. That’s… innovation.

Absolutely no paper was exchanged or harmed in the planning of this party. The budget remained at exactly $0 – and we’re still having a party.

Thank you Google. Treat my soul well, please.