Thanks, Accreditation, for Impairing My Effectiveness

Need to vent, having spent the better part of this a.m. (with plans for continuing the rest of the day and night and week) and semester (to the detriment of my teaching, research, writing, and personal life) on NCATE and DPI reports. Thanks to Mary Hendrix for the following poem, which she says was inspired by a similar poem by Gloria Pubantz:

NCATE

Aggravate
Irritate
Procrastinate

Stagnate
Obliterate
Denigrate
Vitiate

Lacerate
Incinerate
Strangulate
Mutilate

Stalemate
Complicate
Meditate
Contemplate

Ruminate
Elaborate
Culminate
You're done; that's great!

Tech Thoughts this Week

Technology just saved my wife and me some time. She had created a letter on my laptop last night while sitting in front of tv. She forgot it this a.m., called, and I emailed as an attachment. If I wasn't teaching a tech class right now, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Once upon a time, she would have had to drive home to get the letter, or I would have had to get out of my pajamas and take it to her. On the other hand, if it had been paper instead of digital, she probably would have left it on the table last night and not forgotten it this a.m.

I wrote a grant with a colleague in Morganton this week. He wrote in his office and I in mine. I emailed my parts as attachments and he inserted. Now here's where current technologies and old habits (culture?) collide. The foundation to whom we are submitting the grant won't accept digital copies or faxes. Paper only. So a letter from my Dean had to be overnight-mailed for $14.95 instead of scanned and sent free as email attachment. The grant itself will be overnight-mailed today for another $14.95. However, money talks, doesn't it?

Here's the double-edged sword. We only decided a week ago to write the grant. Given multiple responsibilities, I let most of my part of the work go until late Tuesday night and and early Wednesday morning. Then I emailed it instantly to my collaborator. Once upon a time, roughly a decade ago, I would have had to get right to my writing in order to mail it to my collaborator well ahead of time so he could add to his draft. So, while technology made it easy to collaborate, it also exacerbated a proclivity for procrastination. Say that 3 times fast.

When Miniaturization Matters

Yes, miniaturization is a word according to Dictionary.com (planned or made on a greatly reduced scale). I've been moaning for a long time about the miniaturization of cell phones (too small for my fat thumb and my aging eyes). I don't want to return to the original cell phone that probably should have been called the shoe box phone, but I would like to go back a few years. I've been complaining about small monitors (anything less than 17 inches seems cramped for my multiple-open-program thinking and writing). Ultimately, however, I have lots of choices.

I met a boy last Friday who gave me a different perspective on miniaturization. A second grader, he has cerebral palsy, and is unable to speak or type with his hands. His mother set up his communication device, a Mercury, and this young fellow began talking away through his device. Initially I couldn't figure out how he was doing so---he didn't have anything obvious attached to his head, he wasn't using his hands. His mother pointed out a small dot attached to his glasses, a HeadMouse. I remember long metal headsticks, penlight size optical pointers on the sides of heads, helmets with various attachments. That a 9-year-old boy can operate a computer with something that can hardly be seen, and consequently look and act more like other kids in his classroom, is progress.

So, as in other aspects of life, size matters, and bigger isn't always better. TTFN.

Technology as Addiction

It's 2:11 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I have been working on a grant that needs to go in the mail Thursday. Cool project. We're hoping to expand the pilot work we've been doing with the higher end folks at JIRDC in Morganton, beginning readers as opposed to emergent. And planning to use some technologies to personalize the process.

In any case, for who knows what reason, I just checked my blog while getting information on books for adult new readers. I find 2 pictures in my sidebar. Horrors. Can't let that stay. I realize I've figured out two separate ways to get pictures into my sidebar. One through Dashboard and the profiles--tiny picture, one by copying and pasting some html code I found somewhere and placing the url of the picture I wanted to use.

This is both incredibly mundane and simultaneously very exciting to me. Technology takes on significantly more interest and power when you can use it to accomplish something personal. I'm thinking blogs might be a really motivating way to get techno-phobes hooked, so that they could begin thinking about other tech applications for their students.

Back to the grant. TTFN.

2 Technologies that I Don't Care For

Cell phones are much more annoying than useful in my own life. I am irritated by the rudeness of fellow travelers in airports, who sit near me interrupting my own work and leisure with loud business calls. I continue to laugh out loud at the men standing at the urinals holding a phone to their ear with one hand while taking care of additional business with the other hand. I have even been forced to overhear conversations of two gentleman talking on the phone while they engaged in solid waste disposal. I'm thinking there is probably a hysterically funny book that could be written by someone with considerably more leisure time than me about the inane public phone conversations of cell users. My son at college drowned his cellphone in the toilet accidentally, and when I went to Verizon to see about replacement, they told me that such events are one of the most common causes of premature cellphone death. Scottie, a cartoonist in New Zealand (http://www.scottart.com/index.htm) created the wonderful cartoon above.

Tech Pet Peeve #2: I have colleagues who share the same hall or physical space who email what they could tell me. I have on-campus students who email instead of dropping by to see me. I have a backlog of over 500 unanswered emails because everyone and their brother on and off this campus can include me in group mailings, and everyone one who has an interest in my work can find me easily electronically and contact me instantly.

Okay, so here's a realization. I don't dislike either of these technologies. I dislike their overuse, misuse, abuse, and the way they allow strangers to intrude in my life. So, both technologies are useful, but should have training programs, learner permits, and licenses that can be taken away for their misuse. I propose a new Tech Police Force. This would be a much better use of my tax dollar than pouncing on folks driving 8 miles an hour over the limit on Hwy 421.

Technology in My Life this Week

I've been thinking about technology and how it improved my life in various ways this week. Yesterday's completion of an overdue task in a wireless internet cafe with a good cup of coffee still amazes me (a sign of my age I'm sure). Sitting at a table in Morganton, I searched the library at Appalachian, uploaded a couple of articles to my home directory, created new links on my webpage, and emailed students in seven different locations simultaneously with the update info. In my own academic career once upon a time, I would have gone searching through the library physically, and it would likely have taken 3-4 times as long to find what I needed. I would have photocopied the article, taken it to a copy center to get copyright permission and multiple copies for class, and students would not have gotten the information the same day. I would have had a paper syllabus, made fewer changes as discoveries were made, and communicated with students only in my office. I see all these uses of technologies as benefitting my teaching, my students' learning, and our communication.

My youngest son is struggling with a new piece that he is to have memorized by Friday. No one else in our home plays a musical instrument, so we couldn't help him. Hugs are nice, but they don't play the tune on c0mmand Friday. We telephoned my sister, who plays and teaches violin, viola, and piano. She talked my son through his difficulties, he's had a great week, and life is good because expertise in Duluth, GA could be connected to a need in Boone. I'm willing to bet there are musicians and other skilled people providing virtual instruction in more elaborate and interactive ways. Imagine, e.g., sitting at your piano taking a lesson from your teacher via video and audio teleconferencing. The teacher can show you new skills, listen to you play, provide feedback. The power of making expertise instantly or simulataneously accessible to remote locations or to low-incidence populations or to a class spread across half the state is a remarkable gift.

Luddites and Leadites

I was thinking about Luddites this week when one of our job candidates couldn't figure out how to get the projector to work. Darrell Morris commented, with a knowing shake of his head, "That stuff'll let you down."

I had had the same problem with my computer earlier in the week, and found that I needed to go to the control panels where I increased the time before the screen saver kicked in, increased the time before the computer went to sleep, and unchecked a box where it said something like "put hard drive to sleep when able." We regularly credit our own ignorance in using a tool (technology) to a failure of the technology itself. I've called him a Luddite in the past, but he's not that violent. I think he's more of a Leadite.

I was thinking about Luddites and the Lead Pencil Club (Leadites) after this event. Here's what I found at Wikipedia about Luddites, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite.

The Luddites were a social movement of English workers in the early 1800s who protested -- often by destroying textile machines -- against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they felt threatened their jobs. The movement -- which began in 1811 -- was named after a probably mythical leader, Ned Ludd. For a short time the movement was so strong that it clashed in battles with the British Army. Measures taken by the government included a mass trial at York in 1813 that resulted in many death penalties and transportations (deportment to a penal colony). The English historical movement has to be seen in its context of the harsh economic climate due to the Napoleonic Wars; but since then, the term Luddite has been used to describe anyone opposed to technological progress and technological change. For the modern movement of opposition to technology, see neo-luddism.

Here's what I found out about the Lead Pencil Club (Leadites) at Amazon.com, where you can purchase Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club: Pulling the Plug on the Electronic Revolution.

Amazon.com
Contributions from such diverse and intelligent voices as Russell Baker, Cliff Stoll, David Gelernter, and Doris Grumbach elevate this collection of essays criticizing our computerized lives above the usual Luddite screeds found in the daily media. Many of the essays are skeptical of cyber-life, but even those of us who use computers constantly can gain insights into how technology may be affecting us in ways that hardly constitute progress.

From Publishers Weekly
Publisher-editor Henderson named his whimsically conceived Lead Pencil Club after the trade of Thoreau's father, a pencil maker. The club quickly won a following for its outspoken antitechnology stance. The members, mostly in a spirit of desperate fun, rebel against much modern gadgetry designed for speed and comfort, but which, they say, is actually depersonalizing human life: voice mail, e-mail, the proliferation of worthless TV, word processors, computer "education"?and, most especially, anything to do with the Internet. The book is a collection of articles, columns, snippets, quotes, Lead Pencil member letters, even a smattering of cartoons. Some of it is, expectably, smug and self-satisfied, but much, particularly by the likes of Neil Postman, Clifford Stoll, David Gelernter and Mark Slouka, is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. There is indeed a quasi-religious mania about some of the claims for the Web, and it's true that this goes ill with what is, after all, an enormous marketing bonanza for software and hardware manufacturers (was Windows 95 really the Second Coming?). For technology skeptics, it's good to have so much informed dissent gathered between covers. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.