Tag Archives: narrative

Rhet/Comp, Durkheim, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Me

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In the last 7 or so weeks as a SIF, I have learned more than I ever imagined I would.

A few weeks ago, I decided to write an article featuring the SIF program. In a stroke of benevolence, Brennan gave me permission to spend some of my hours developing the article. So I set to work – basing the article on a footnote I harvested from Emile Durkheim’s sociologically ground breaking book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life written in 1912:

“A tool is material accumulated capital.”

When I read that note, I knew I was going to use it for something – but I wasn’t sure what – until I began to read Writing Teachers Writing Software by rhetoric and composition scholar Paul LeBlanc.

The article I wrote went live this morning at 3am on Hybrid Pedagogy. Here is the link:

Addressing the Elephant: The Importance of Infrastructure

iPad Research = iPad Play

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Over the last few weeks, I have been playing with the iPad 2 for my Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives project I’m involved with through the English department. The goal is to find an innovative way to record video using the iPad. My focus has mostly been on sound, as I attempt to get to know the iPad and its foreign (to me) software.

Last week, I played with a microphone called a snowball, which looks like this:

snowball

taken from amazon.com

The snowball is a pretty high quality microphone, which I have used to record videos in a booth for the American Literature Videos Project. The Snowball plugs right into a computer through a USB port, which is super cool because it doesn’t even need a separate power source. The unfortunate part is that the iPad does not have a USB port. So I need this adapter:

I want this adapter so bad.

taken from http://bluemic.com/blog/2011/03/snowballonipad/

And we don’t have any at the Exchange. And the Digital Aquarium doesn’t have any either. And no one I know with an iPad has one, with the exception of a friend I have who works a LOT with macs – in Flagstaff, Arizona.

And so I went back to the drawing board and decided to start from the beginning. I realized I really don’t know what a direct video using only the iPad sounds/looks like. I also discovered, during this journey, that the iPad has an app that allows the user to upload right to youtube, and even to edit right in the application.

Tuesday, I went to the Atlanta Collaborative Learning community Digital Pedagogy meetup, and I recorded some interviews with the presenters: one of those is Brennan Collins – so for your viewing pleasure, I give you the video I recorded with what I am referring to as “the naked iPad” (no external hardware helping out) – and with the youtube editing software/uploader:

iBooks Author and Me

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I’m interrupting my workflow on the Tobacco Ebook project to talk about some issues I am having with the tech.

In my post, “It’s the Little Things,” from August 8th, I established that I am not a Mac.

Over the last several weeks, I have spent a considerable amount of time using a cute little MacBook Air. I’ve been familiarizing myself with a program called iBooks Author – a program that can only be used on an Apple product – as indicated in its name. I’m having more problems just figuring out how to download items and use Word on a Mac, that… hours later – I’m writing a blog about it.

Luckily, I have a lot of friends and colleagues who are Mac people. Today I have figured out how to track my downloads, save them in one easy step, and even how to change my scrolling options! I feel so accomplished! Sheepishly however, I did have to use my PC to figure out how to download a word document from sharepoint onto my own computer.

Which leads me to an interesting observation: When there are the EXACT SAME buttons available in the exact same places on both PC and Mac, I can’t see them on the Mac. It’s like I have some weird Mac blindness. This makes me wonder a lot about interface studies in my own discipline of rhetoric and composition – which may even lead to a paper.

Even frustration can lead to some pretty cool ideas and innovations, it seems.

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN)

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One of the projects I am assigned to is to help Dr. Michael Harker work on the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN). The DALN, as we refer to it, is a collection of narratives from all over the world about literacy. This could mean anything from reading, to writing, and even to digital literacy.

I have helped with the DALN in the past, (wo)manning tables at conferences, enticing potential storytellers to our table to get them to speak their narratives into a computer. We then store all these narratives at the link above. Anyone can look into the archive. Anyone can use the archive to do any kind of research they may have relating to literacy, or even beyond.

This week, I’ve been spending hours uploading narratives to the archive that were sent to us on a drive all the way from Singapore. Many of these are about learning English, but some are about speaking Mandarin, Idioms, and several are about computing.

I am the only person on this project. Once I upload the rest of the files from Singapore, I’ll be playing with an IPad 2, trying to figure out a better way to collect narratives at later conferences. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to say about that project in later posts. 🙂

It’s the Little Things…

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A large portion of my life has been spent missing out on little things – normal things that happen to most ‘normal’ people. For example: I had never celebrated Halloween until I was an adult. Sure, my family let us go to ‘The Harvest Festival’ at church, which was pretty much the same thing – but I’d never been trick-or-treating. In kindergarten, I took it upon myself to tell all the other kids that Santa Clause wasn’t real and their parents were all liars. Needless to say, my parents got a call that day.

Fast forward to my college years, and would you believe me if I told you I got all the way to my senior capstone seminar without ever having written a paper over 5 pages? Well, it’s true. It’s unfortunate and true.

And yesterday, one of my closest friends said the following to me: “How have you never extracted a file before? How is that even humanly possible?”

The truth is that I have never had to extract a file before. I have (probably too many) guy friends that are somehow involved with the computing profession and who have always just done everything for me. So on Monday, when I went to download Adobe CS6 onto my personal computer (which I lovingly refer to my PCcomputer [yes I do that on purpose]), I had no idea it would take several hours. Zero of the ideas. I thought something was wrong. I thought I had done it all wrong and everything was broken and it was all over.

As it turns out – my experience was totally normal. Everything uploaded, installed, and extracted just fine. And now I have CS6 on my computer. Next step – learn the differences between Adobe on PC vs. Mac. Another little thing I am just now figuring out. I am not an Apple user. And all the lab equipment in my current lab is Apple. Lo!

You see – it’s the little things I’ve missed out on as I’ve begun my journey into tech. And I know I’m going to have more than a few struggles with very simple concepts, and that’s okay. I’m rather advanced in other areas, despite missing out on the starter activities. It makes me unique. And I’m okay with this.