1 I am really back...

 ...in grad school this semester. That's what I say to my husband, "I am really back in grad school this semester." Which means I am working my ass off at breakneck speed. And it's hard 'cause I now have a big fat full time job and a new spouse and a billion and one projects and business ideas I want to start...

...riffing off of Karyn's blog comment about personality types, I'll say this I am an ENFP--the ADHD (my diagnosis not theirs) of personality types. I flit from one thing to the next, one idea to the next, and one half-baked startup project to the next. This course is just getting better and better for me...

...yup, I bitched and bitched with the rest of you about structure and excessive emails. No joke, I really don't like all of the emails, still. And I need structure so I don't explode... I am spastic on the internet. It takes me forever to do something online because I have no attention span in the virtual world. For instance, it occurred to me that I installed the Digg Plugin for FireFox but had not installed it. So I dropped everything to  do that. It's funny because I still can sit down an read a book in an afternoon. I think it's the format that trips me up, but I digress...

Like, um, really, really, digressed. I just checked back with the assignment and realized I am not supposed to be babbling...but wait, I need to select an image for this post so...OK, got it; now onto the real work...see what I mean? Check out this video I am making made...another distraction that will take about 15-30 minutes 3 hours of my time before I actually get around to writing what I am supposed to...





So what did you just see? You saw me:

1. Start blogging  
2. start feeling distracted and wanting to check my email
3. decide I should record my actions instead
4. blog some more
5. remember that I did not install my most recent Firefox plugins with my Digg feature
6. install new plugings
7. check back with the class assignment to make sure I'm on task
8. decide I needed a pitcure
9. look for and insert an image
10. blog some more

What you didn't see in the 6 hours it took for me to write this post:

1. exporting the video to something iMovie would recongize
2. learning how to speed up video in iMovie (this required Google searches and watching a video on YouTube)
3. editing the video in iMovie
4. getting a -34 error when I tried to export to YouTube
5. Googling "-34 error iMovie" to search for the problem
6. finding out I ran out of HD space
7. combing through my HD looking for files to delete
8. freeing up enough space to make the video
9. Exporting it to my HD (while I was waiting for this, I went over to my other computer and checked the analytics on my blog and uploaded more DIT cake images to the Flickr account linked to my blog.)
10. Uploaded video to YouTube
11. Decided to write out my "real reflection" on paper to make it easier to organize my ideas and not ramble so much or get distracted...

So the point of the story is this: It takes forever for me to do the work in this class. In part because we are going through a lot of material and in part because I get really into exploring. And in part because the internet is no longer a text-based medium. I don't always want to express myself with text alone. OK, so point proven. On to...

The "Real" Reflection 
I will take a cue from my fellow blogger, Rick Foster, and do a run down of the good the bad and the ugly.

THE GOOD:  

I have a little secret. I tend to stick with tools that work. While I am highly curious, once I find something I like, that's it. I am the type of person who orders the same thing every time I go out to eat. This class has been great for giving me an excuse to explore more. For example, I love WordPress, but I have had an opportunity to compare it with Blogger in this class. I also love Yola for quick website building, but have also explored CMSimple. Lastly, I never would have had the courage to become a wiki editor without the assignments this past week.  So in a nutshell, one of the biggest strengths of this class is the opportunity to try new things.

I also like the community. This is the first time I have had more than a handful of students in a class. Boy does it make a difference. There was hardly any per-to-peer interaction in those classes. There were just too few people. Now, I feel like I am a member of a vibrant community. Most of us have complementary skills, and it tickles me to see members of my cohort grow and gain mad skills (I'm thinking of you Shelly!)


Related to this, I have learned so much from my classmates. I so appreciate getting tips in my feedback. I am thinking specifically of Krysti's feedback about my logo and matching colors and Lucy's feedback about defining ambient in my ambient intimacy glossary word. I like being able to try new things in a relatively safe and supportive place.
 

THE BAD:
I still hate the emails, but I foolishly refuse to unsubscribe to them for fear of missing something. This is no one's fault but my own. So I will move along.

While I am happy for the weekly structure that forces me to explore new web 2.0 platforms and forums, I am still confused as to how it all fits together. This may represent failing on my part, but, I am not sure what the overall goal or product of the class is. The syllabus has a lot of vague language unconnected to any clear and measurable goals. For example, several comment have been floated around about our CMSimple site being a portfolio site. But we don't seem to be fully committed to that each week. IDK, like I said, this may be more a failing on my part than anything else. Comments are welcome in this regard.

I'm not a big fan of  CMSimple, full stop. While I appreciate the opportunity to try new things, and I understand D.I. realy really likes CMSimple and thinks its easy, I much prefer Yola for ease and WordPress for flexibility and expandability. Now I don't think everyone has to agree with me on these matters. But if I am required to build a portfolio, I would like to do it on a platform that makes sense to me, that I can expand, and that I have full control over in terms of templates and URLs. The way I see it, I am at D.I.'s mercy regarding my CMSimple site. I cannot control whether it stays up or comes down; I may or may not be able to modify the template; and if I scrape out my content and migrate it elsewhere, the duplicate content may screw up my SEO efforts.

THE UGLY
This is more a self assessment than anything else. 

I just can't spend enough time on this course to yield results  I am completely happy with. I am basically unavailable Tuesday-Friday, leaving three days to cram my work in. Don't get me wrong, I read the "Monday-Monday assignments and poke around on the internet, mulling the assignments over, but you will notice little activity from me during the week. I am convinced that D.I. and everyone else thinks I am a hack and a slacker. I've contemplating dropping because of this.


I guess the root of the problem is I am working out side of my field. Or, this field is new to me. For example, I spent six years studying American history, with a focus on the turn of the twentieth century. I can read a historical monograph in a day and grease out a five page critique about it in three hours. Why? Because in grad school I was responsible for three monographs and three papers each week. I got really really good at reading and writing quickly. And I did it well enough to fetch A's. 

I say this not to be a jerk or to brag, but to illustrate how unfamiliar I am with being out of my comfort zone. This class is hard because I am new to digital media and have not mastered it enough to do the assignments quickly and well. I am simply doing them quickly. I feel that most of my work is mediocre at best. If I were grading myself I would give myself a B. I need to mention here that I hate Bs. An A- would make me cry in grad school.


Sooooo, re-reading the above paragraph makes me realize that I have some baggage to work through. I mean really, I am an adult. As long as I am learning and meeting my own learning goals, what difference does it make if I get and A or not, sheesh! Still, I think I can try to be more consistent with my postings. I will try to build in at least an hour each evening to read posts and look at student work during the week.


THE AVERAGE
Everything else is fine... 

Collaboration image provided by:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fncll/ / CC BY 2.0

 

1 Digging Delicious just a bit more...

Here is another instance where I made an account I never used. (See my first blog post) Weeeeeellllllll, I have been a Digg member since 2008. No Diggs, no friends, no profile info...nothing. What a surprise, LOL.

OK, sooooo time to start digging in earnest, but before I launch into that story, I might add that I am an avid delicious user. I manage and keep fairly up-to-date three accounts: my work account digitalheritage; my personal account whatCLOknows; and wedding blogger account hindsightbride. I use delicious frequently throughout the day, but more on that later.

Digging the Internet:

Since I am fairly familiar with Delicious, and I am generally up for a challenge (read: creating more work for myself) I decided to give Digg a whirl. Of course my Digg user name is mtnhistory, like the blog you're reading.

First Moments on Digg

I was immediately impressed that I could see the trends in any given topic. Essentially Digg is a giant internet voting machine. Want to know what people are looking at right now? in the past 24 hours? past week? past year? You can see what others were digging. I can see this as particularly useful for following tech and education news. It is also a great way to keep up on popular internet culture.

After clicking around a bit and digging a few things, I set up my profile page. I like that I can link back to my delicious accounts. I like that I can friend people to see what they are doing. Unfortunately, none of my "friends" are active :( Is this another Gex X thing?)

Digg: What works; what doesn't
WORKS:

• great for watching trends
• helpful for promoting sites
• very social; I can see what my friends are Digging...this may even spur a real life, real time conversation!

FAILS:

• no user tagging feature (that I am aware of) Please correct me if I am wrong here, but I don't see a way to organize my links in a way that will allow me to find them again once I have "dugg" a bazillion pages.
• I'll say it again: no way to effectively organize "dugg" pages, or if there is, it is not very intuitive
• Not every site has a digg this icon. If I want to Digg something, and I am not a Firefox user, I have to toggle between the page and my Digg account (Firefox has a Digg plugin)
• there don't seem to be as many people in my fields (education, technology, ed tech, photography) on digg. It's more trends and mimes.

Why I Like Delicious Better

• Easily tag, organize and reorganize delicious pages
•  Does not sacrifice the utility of bookmarking for the social side of things: I love love love that I can access all of my bookmarks from any computer. I love that I can easily import and export entire accounts. I love that I can import my local bookmarks.
• I can find an follow users (if I so desire, which I typically don't)
• I can watch trends on the delicious home page (if I so desire, which I typically don't)
• I can key word search and both my bookmarks come up as well as others bookmarks with the same tags. Often times this yields much much better results than a mere Google search
• Can feed delicious updates to my twitter, FaceBook, or blog accounts

The final low down
I'm sticking with Delicious as my primary social bookmarking workhorse. It functions more as a tool for me. To be frank, I just don't need another social (emphasis on social) networking anything right now. I am not deeply interested in making my internet vote count. I am already social enough through FaceBook and Twitter and the numerous forums and discussion networks I belong too. I don't need more social. I need more information and tools that work. Delicious works.

0 Wikipedia and Partial-Gen-X-Paralysis

Oh don;t I feel on top of the world this morning. It has been 14 hours since posting a new paragraph on a wikipedia article and no one has changed it, deleted it, or said "Yankee! Where do you get off writing anything about the south?

In my heart, I feel that this is wrong thinking. What makes globally collaborative environment work is change, and discussion, and disagreement. So why am I so attached to having my contributions remain intact and unscathed? Is it my generation--Generation X?

The Pew Research Center shows that my generation "is the most likely group to bank, shop and look for health information online. Boomers are just as likely as Generation Y to make travel reservations online."

But look at how many blogs we create. On the whole Gen Xers are online consumers rather than producers. We are mostly lurkers and shoppers. Are there exceptions? Sure. I am convinced that most of the historians on Wikipedia are older. Most of the blogs I follow are written by Gex Xers. However, most of the Gen X bloggers are doing so as professionals for work rather than out of some internal need to share their knowledge and worldview with the globe.

Still, I fear that I will make a mistake online, be publicly ridiculed, and have a permanent record of the whole episode for everyone to Google in perpetuity. There, I said it. So is this a generational thing too?

Apparently not. A quick Google search on "Gen X and Gen Y," or "Gen X and Gen Y workplace" will yeild all sorts of Generation Wars articles. But it is also unmistakable that there are key words to describe Gen X, and collaborative and open are not among them. Gex Xers have been identified as competitive, distrustful, and overall non-collaborative. We are loners at work and lurkers online. The generation wars foot soldiers in the blogosphere do not disagree on descriptive words. They disagree on their values. For example, is collaboration or competition better?

So what does this have to do with me. Well, it offers perspective. I love web 2.0 stuff. Over the past 2 years I have become I am a regular blogger; I have a vibrant FaceBook life. I tweet, bookmark, and upload videos and pictures to social media sites. I like to think I am a hip Gex Xer (though the fact that I use the word hip gives me away.) Still, I am worried about the implications of putting so much personal information online. And I certainly don't want to look like a fool.

But instead of berating myself about it, I simply acknowledge that the cultural context of my upbringing affects my behaviors today. With that, I simply muster my courage and sally forth, making my mark in the virtual world.

References:

• Triangle Direct Media Update of Internet Usage by Generation
• Pew Research Centers Generations Online in 2009
• L'Atelier Gen Y is Web 2.0, Gen X Web 1.2?
• Read Write Web Forget Gen Y: Gex X is MakingReal Change
• Generation Y, The Millennial Generation 
• Uptown Uncorked Working with Gen Y, Gen X and Boomers

1 SL

My Second Life name is Twist Merryman. Like Neil Torda, I first logged into SL in 2007. That was when Neil was building Catamount Island for Western Carolina University faculty and students.

To date, I don't hang out in SL much. I think it had been about three months or so since I had logged in. (I couldn't make our class meeting, but I logged in the following morning to see if anyone was around). I had logged in looking for Neil. I could not reach him by text, cell, or iChat. Before that, it may have been 8 months or so between logins.

You see, I don't really know what to do in Second Life. Or rather,  Second Life doesn't really appeal to me. Don't get me wrong, I like to attend professional events and meet faculty and students on Catamount island, but I not so sure about the rest of the virtual world. I'm just not that into it yet. In fact, the outfit I wear in SL is the stock outfit my Avitar came with. I have done precious little customization.

This might surprise some that know me in Real Life. I am generally outspoken, outgoing, and dare I say loud and opinionated at times. Online, it's a whole different story. With "the world watching," I am constantly considering my career goals and how my actions would be interpreted by a boss or potential employer. I do not cuss on Facebook, I do not air my emotional dirty laundry on Twitter, and it was not until this semester that I started loosening up a bit with YouTube and blogging. I reglarly Google myself to see what comes up. When it comes to virtual environments I am much more private than I am in real life. That's why I'm ambivalent about gallivanting around SL for fun. If it's not a professional event or meeting, I'm just not that into it.

Basically, I don't know anyone who uses SL regularly; therefore I don't. Don't get me wrong. I see the potential. Watching IBM workers forging strong working relationships on Digital Nation thrilled me. The implications for distance learning are fast becoming a reality as classrooms and labs are being built across SecondLife. But it takes more than one person to build a world and to make education in a virtual world work. I guess I just haven't found my tribe yet...

0 Diigo Annotations for Weblogg-ed

I'm testing out integrating my Diigo account with my blog...
:-)

• Weblogg-ed » Morning at RSS-Blog-Furl High School Redux

  tags: web 2.0, teaching, RSS

  • - post by mtnhistory
  • New York Times headlines that are displayed on his homepage
  • He clicks the link, reads about the new version on the site, and then clicks on a different �Post to Scuttle� button that uses an account set up for all of his department colleagues to share. When the form comes up, he writes a couple of lines of description about how it might benefit the department, and then tags it �Technology� which automatically archives it to the tech page of the English Department Weblog.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

2 CXC: Communicating Across the Curriculum

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/ / CC BY 2.0

	"It's not just about writing anymore... Communication these days involves digital media of all kinds..."                  ~ Dr. Lillian Bridwell-Bowels                 Director, CXC at LSU

I love love love it when leaders model the behavior and communication styles they seek to see in their student bodies.And when Universities organize themselves in ways that maximize student learning and link what they learn in the classroom to life beyond college, regardless of one's major.

It seems clear that digital media is not a fad and is certainly not the sole province of the young. Twitter and Facebook accounts are everywhere in corporate America. Everything from Morning shows to department stores encourage their markets to "follow them on twitter" or "find us on FaceBook." YouTube is also a major platform for corporate advertising and marketing a new type of marketing and PR is emerging that harnesses Web 2.0 technologies.

One university that remains on the cutting edge of preparing it's students for this new style of communicating is Louisiana State University (LSU) with their Communication Across the Curriculum (CXC) program. Launched in 2005 and designed to expand the writing across the curriculum programs that have become standard in higher ed, the CXC program has a useful video that explains this innovative, university-wide program, and peer-reviewed article/webpage was published based on the nuts and bolts of CXC.

Just like the writing across the curriculum programs, CXC emphasizes honing students' communication skills. As LSU's Vice Provost of Academic Affairs aptly puts it,

"Whether your in science or the arts, you really need to be able to communicate if you're going to be at the top of your field."

Blogging is one example of the ways in which mutimedia and social networking meld to advance carreers and build knowledge. Indeed, many folks at the top of their field are bloggers. Blogging is fast becoming a legitimate way to further your career, whether academic or otherwise. Blogging (well at least good blogging) of course requires strong written and research skills. But blogging standards also suggest that images, video, and other multi-meida elements are helpful for getting information across effectively. That and comments are a crucial aspect of blogging.

The CXC program is built upon solid, university-wide policies, including encouraging faculty to incorporate 2 out of 4 modes of communication (writing, speaking, visual and technological) in assignments.  The goal is to have students leave LSU with a portfolio that showcases real, transferable communication skills to grad schools and potential employers.


CXC fundamentally impacted the way I assign research assignments. I have a digital media requirement in my historical research projects. Now only does it develop different communication skills, it also fosters more creativity than traditional written assignments. However, It occurs to me that an entire university must mobilize to make these programs truly effective.

2 YAY Google Image Labeler...

YAY Google Image Labeler, YAY ESP, YAY Rice Game...

As a new blogger, I am commonly searching Google images and creative commons projects for pictures that support whatever I'm blogging about. I usually do keyword searches based on emotions or actions I want to convey. For the first post on this blog, I searched for "yelling" and "bitching." For this post I simply searched for "YAY."

I get a lot of garbage doing this, but I also get a few gems. Take for example the toddler to the left. Arms outstretched, mouth open in a squeal. According to the file name (yay-new-shoes.jpg) she is happy with her new shoes.

So this is likely not a product of the Google Image Labeler or ESP programs. The search result came from the file name. Other images I saw, came from content and text near the image. So the images you see on this blog are the results of user tagging and labeling.

Nonetheless, it's exciting to anticipate the results of projects like Google Labeler and ESP. Image searching should become much more accurate. Instead of relying on the individual who uploads the image to label and tag in a way that is useful, Google Image Labeler and ESP harness the power of "the crowd" to determine appropriate tags.

And yes, I do find both games addictive. If you still have not played, here is the low down.

1. You are paired with an anonymous partner
2. Each of you see an image and begin typing in labels for that image. Sometimes there are words that are off limited. These are generally words that others have picked and are the most obvious. For example, on the image of the little girl above, off-limits words may be: girl, dress, and shoes.
3. When you both pick the same label, you earn points and move on to the next image
4. You have two minutes to match labels for as many images as you both can

ESP was the original game (I'm not sure if Google stole the idea or not). ESP has expanded to include music and video identification. I have had lots of fun playing all of these games.

I got a little bored with the rice game. In this game you answer academic questions to earn rice to relieve hunger in Africa. There was not enough action for me. And by action, I mean I was playing against a computer. Sure I wanted to score as high as I could, but there is something about playing with another person that compels me. That, and I don;t really understand how playing an academic game helps to donate rice to Africa. I smacks of slacktivism to me.

Nonetheless, this is not just crowd sourcing. These projects don't depend (solely) on altruism or highly motivated people to lend their expertise/creativity/solutions. No, these are games. The whole idea that problems--whether world problems or world wide web problems--can be solved through gaming is interesting and exciting indeed.

0 Information Overload!!!

I watched the iPad keynote on live on ustream. I was with Neil Torda. A small but active group of WCU staff and faculty were sharing information and comments as events unfolded. I had a lively post-keynote conversation with Neil both after Jobs' presentation and in the carpool on the way home. My mind churned with blogging possibilities and discussion post opportunities. That was last Wednesday. To date, I have not blogged about the iPad; I have not engaged in a vibrant dicussion about it in my other class; and I have not posed it as a topic in my web 2.0 class. 

What gives? Well, I could tell you that the recent snowstorm set me woefully behind as my power and internet connection was intermittent at best. And that would be the truth, but only partly.

The truth is, I am again struggling with information overload. At the beginning of the semester, I was simply flabbergasted by the shear number of email messages hitting my inbox. Once I realized that many were redundant and I was not obligated to respond to them all, I began to feel a bit more in control. Then the discussions began to ramp up in quality as well as quantity. 

What to do? Well, as I waded through the 100+ emails that had piled up over the past five days, I realized I needed a few pointers on managing so much information. Not just for my classes, or for my job, but also for my hobbies, and my friends, and for my online social life, and for my career goals, and...well...you get the point.

I found a decent blog with a few basic but useful tips at Digital Alchemy. I think the biggest thing I have done to help info overload is to presort my mail. I am also committing at least an hour a day to go through emails, even if I don't respond.

What are your tips for managing information and preventing info overload?

Photo Courtesy of:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/ / CC BY-SA 2.0