If your students have any doubts about the importance of good copy editing, perhaps you could use this for “show and tell”.
Author Archive for Agnieszka
The Finance Economics team recently experimented with using the Turning Point Technology. It is an audience response system which allows students to participate in presentations or lectures by submitting responses to interactive questions.
Each student holds one of the thin little clickers and answers the questions you placed in your Power Point slides. You can see the results immediately (or hide them from the class if you choose).
We were apprehensive about having to learn new software and then adjusting it to work with a Power Point presentation and a workshop we have been working on for months already. But it worked very well. The IT resources tech support person was happy to train us, it took barley half and hour. A little experimenting later and we were able to figure out how to make it work for us. It was as easy as creating additional slides to add to our Power Point. But the benefits were clear: we were able to ask students to respond to questions which then allowed us to introduce a related element of the workshop, or helped us explain a point we were making, or, at the end of the session, we were able to ask student to asses the workshop: what they learned, found useful, found challenging. After the session, with a click of a button, we printed out a report with percentage and graphical representation of the answers (see the fragment of it at the picture attached to this post). We designed very simple “yes” and “no” questions but the possibilities are endless.
The added bonus is that the box of clickers for students is brought to the classroom and then taken away after the class is over, by an IT person. You don’t even have to pick it up. Hopefully, some of our Institute’s PCs will have the Turning Point installed. You can also try it on your home PC. Give me a holler if you need help figuring it out.
Here is the letter to the NYTimes Ethicist:
“I am a tenured professor. My provost asked me to evaluate an overseas colleague. I did so, responding in an e-mail message. The provost then contacted the colleague, quoting my report and attributing it to me. I was stunned: such evaluations are assumed to be confidential. When I complained, the provost replied, “If it’s in an e-mail, it’s public,” adding that our colleague deserves to know what is being said about him and by whom. Your opinion? J.H., NEW YORK”
What do you think? I am surprised that the provost thought that email being the mode of communication, somehow changes the fact that it is still an evaluation. Who is right?
I want a cool phone. I am going to hold out ( with my old chunky Nokia) for a super duper model that can do all the things Japanese cell phones can do: read barcodes, serve as a credit card, have fingerprinting system to protect my data. Wow.
This might happen soon thanks to some amazing technology being developed to serve the needs of the disabled. New software developed for cell phones will allow low vision users to read supermarket products info or street signs. Or how about a program which allows the physically disabled to guide a computer mouse by neural impulses, or imagine a solar system visualization program where a blind person would use a forced feedback device to feel three-dimensional reconstructions of terrain on other planets (whaaaat???). Soon there will be worldwide open-source Web site on which disabled persons and software developers can collaborate on new ideas and add to existing programs. Most of these projects are run by universities and supported by some business like Goggle, but they are to be non- commercial, open-source projects. Very cool.
And on a related note, check out this New York Times Magazine article about the guide animals for the disabled. It is not just dogs anymore. Now it’s monkeys for quadriplegia and agoraphobia, guide miniature horses, a goat for muscular dystrophy, a parrot for psychosis and any number of animals for anxiety, including cats, ferrets, pigs, iguanas and ducks.
Do you remember when there were only two state owned TV channels and they mostly showed footage of the old First of May Parades, or Russian movies about a romantic love affair between a brave female tractor driver and a burly construction worker who made up four hundred percent of his production norm? You don’t remember? Ok, so maybe you did not grow up in Eastern Europe. Now, information is bombarding us form all directions, and it is hard to resist checking your email multiple times a day, reading news, not just daily but hourly, and, if you are a foreigner, checking the immigrant press in the country you are now living in, but also, thanks to internet, checking out the publications from your home land. How much did Sarah Palin spend on clothes? Who endorsed Barak today? Where is the next Bike Kill happening? Did Polish minister of health really say that women should not request an epidural because they need to handle a “normal” childbirth? Who wants to be my new Facebook friend? What’s new on cac.ophony.org? What are other grad students at the Graduate Center writing about? It’s all overwhelming, but also exhaustingly exciting.
Of course we need information to make sense of the complex world around us, to be better people, better citizens, better voters, better humanitarians, better teachers. As graduate students we also need reliable data to built our scientific arguments, and the multiplicity of information can make it easier to access a lot of different data sources.
Hyewon in her post “Deep Attention and Hyper Attention”, talks about research showing that we are moving away from a generation of “deep attention”, the ability to concentrate on a single subject for long periods, toward a generation of “hyper attention”, the tendency to prefer multitasking and high levels of stimulation. 
Alvin Toffler in “Future Shock” (Random House, 1971), theorized that the human brain has finite limits on how much information it can absorb and process and argued that information overload will eventually lead to widespread physical and mental disturbances, because with overloaded brain thinking and reasoning become dulled, decision-making flawed and, in some cases, impossible.
I think somehow we are able to manage the flow, but it is not an easy task and includes some time management techniques and making choices.
I can’t wait for the election to be over , so perhaps I can take a breather from the constant news cycle. Not that I am complaining, I am doing just fine, ok, ok, chicken soup, pirates, Colin Powell, whaaaaaat?
Each semester, as I introduce myself and the Schwartz Institute to new students, I talk briefly about our philosophy and the importance of communication in all disciplines. I also think about how political and empowering it is to teach communication. Socrates believed that: “to become eloquent is to activate one’s humanity, to apply the imagination, and to solve the practical problems of human living.” We at the Institute stress the Holy Trinity of the written, oral and computer-mediated communication.
But Socrates believed (or maybe he just liked to postulate…) that the young should not learn how to read until they learn to prove, analyze and internalize knowledge (leading them ultimately to posses wisdom and virtue). Literacy would undercut that effort by allowing students to merely decode information, without the necessary skill of internalizing it.
Cognitive neuroscientist, Maryanne Wolf, thinks that Socrates’ concerns warrant a second look as we enter a historical transition in prevalent modes of communication.
She writes (“Socrates’ nightmare”, The Boston Globe, September 6, 2007) about “the plight of the reading brain as it encounters this technologically rich society.” She argues that literacy – as a “miracle” and a skill that transformed the neural circuitry of the brain and the intellectual development of the species – is threatened. This is supposedly “a consequence of the transition to a digital epoch that is affecting every aspect of our lives, including the intellectual development of each new reader.” From the neuroscience vintage point, there is apparently not enough research to answer the questions: Will the students become so accustomed to immediate access to escalating on-screen information that they will fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination and knowledge that have led us to this stage of human thought? Or, will the new demands of information technologies to multitask, integrate and prioritize vast amounts of information help to develop equally, if not more valuable, skills that will increase human intellectual capacities, quality of life and collective wisdom as a species?” Brain research shows that learning to read (a skill by no means natural to our species) may help us “to go beyond the decoded text to think new thoughts of our own.”
But, would Socrates argue that we should forbid the use of technology until the students learn to be critical thinkers? C’mon, don’t tell me that you are not just a tiny bit tempted by this idea, especially when you receive an email from one of your students, sent via a Blackberry and filled with symbols and emoticons.
This recent New York Times article provides an interesting perspective on the popularity of networking sites. Some academic researchers argue that the recent growth of online social networking and the popularity of sites like Friendster and Facebook are reminiscent of ancient patterns of oral communication in tribal societies. One of them argues that “the popularity of social networks stems from their appeal to deep-seated, prehistoric patterns of human communication” because “we evolved with speech, we didn’t evolve with writing.” The way we express ourselves online is more like talking and this “orality”, which is participatory, interactive, communal and focused on the present” is what “unites people in groups.” (Walter J. Ong, coined the term “secondary orality” in 1982 to describe “the tendency of electronic media to echo the cadences of earlier oral cultures.”)
An anthropologist studying a tribe in Papua New Guinea now applies the same ethnographic research methods to the rites and rituals of Facebook users. He sees parallels between how ones’ identity in tribal cultures is wrapped up in the question of how many people one knows, not unlike on Facebook, where you define yourself by the friends you have.
Obviously in virtual reality it matters much less who you know, because your real, and not virtual, survival does not depend on it. The biggest difference is the superficial nature of online “friendships” but it is this shallow bond and the elimination of the need for physical proximity which stimulates online intimacy. “That distance makes it safe for people to connect through weak ties where they can have the appearance of a connection because it’s safe.” So how does all this new way of relating to each other affect the way we… relate to each other? Some “worry that the rise of secondary orality may have a paradoxical consequence: It may be gobbling up what’s left of our real oral culture.”
I wonder about one more thing. Apart from their use as purely networking/fun/hobby spaces, these sites are used as pedagogical tools, for instance when we start a Facebook page to encourage semi-academic discussion among our students. And so, when we employ these methods to reach out to our students, who are obviously well versed in them, are we risking that we will make them less “cool”, thus subverting our own purpose and making students less likely to use them in learning/teaching processes? Or maybe a question like this is redundant. In the time I spell-check this message and click the “post” button, a brand new networking site will be up, starting as a small, “cool” outlet, and spreading through the virtual world, until us educators get a whiff of it and make it “lame.”
This article from The Independent finds that students are weary of allowing academics to intrude into their spaces, while teachers often find that their students’ Facebook pages provide insights into the students and offer an opportunity to connect. These sites are private, independent, and can decide on membership, content and the discussions that take place there are not sanctioned by the universities, even if often there is some learning going on and students may be building real connections, something a university will welcome. Some professors are weary of using such a private forum for knowledge sharing and argue that academic work on Facebook is inappropriate while there are plenty of new technologies that can be used in teaching, such as discussion groups, wikis, or Second Life, but social networking is not one of them, unless it’s restricted to an institution’s virtual-learning environment.
A few weeks ago, the democrats debated each other in front of a live audience, as usual, but also on millions of computer screens via You Tube. The format of this event, co-sponsored by CNN, was a bit different than usual. The internet users were invited to submit their questions on video as well, and those were played on a large screen and then the responses of each candidate were also posted online.
Is this format really a revolutionary new approach? I am sure it was meant to attract young voters, and offer a “fresh” approach to an old, tired way of doing things. But was this a successful attempt or simply a rehash of “same old” with a new technology attached to it? Jon Stuart’s Daily Show had a rather harsh critique of the idea and its execution.
More recently, the LOGO, LGBT channel, hosted a democratic presidential debate as well.
This was a live debate, where a couple of moderators asked the candidates questions about issues that the LGBT community cares about. It is also an innovative way of doing things, and certainly this type of event would probably not be possible 10 years ago. But there were no technological gimmicks here, and yet I think I learned more about the candidates’ opinions about a few specific things. In this particular case the technology of the You Tube/CNN debate did not contribute to providing information or clarifying the issues.
Ampelmann, or “street light man”, is a figure that appears on street lights in East Berlin, in green or red. He wears a wide brim hat and seems to be freeze-framed in the midst of a jaunty stride.
While the nostalgia for all things East German (Ostalgie) seems to have passed, Berliners vociferously opposed a project to homogenize all the street signs with the more boring looking West German design. The Ampelmann not only survived, but became an icon of the city and a popular tourist souvenir.
It seems that the street signs represent not only the right of way for pedestrians but also a way of life, a collective memory and a need to preserve a cultural heritage. Even though the street light man is a remnant of the old regime, he is also a part of the collective identity of East Berliners. People don’t necessarily associate the Ampelmann with the Stasi secret police or the DDR government but with their city and with their everyday lives.
Certainly Germany is in a very particular situation because the country had been split in two. After reunification, there was a trend to erase all remnants of the old regime and create a united national identity. Unlike the countries in the rest of the Soviet block, East Germany simply stopped existing. The people who lived there became Germans, but yet they are not simply Germans, not entirely. They had an entirely different history for the past fifty years and there was a feeling that a lot of the changes were imposed by the west. The Ampelmann is, in a sense, a way for East-Berliners to hold onto a part of their identity and resist the rush to erase the past as quickly as possible.
In Poland, the country found different ways of dealing with its past. Most of the Soviet era street names have been rapidly changed, and many monuments to the Soviet solders or prominent communists were destroyed. There is now some remorse for this rush to erase so many memories.
I have just found Sounds Familiar?, a fantastic website and have spent much time playing with it. It reminds me of the George Mason University Speech Accent Archive.
The site contains numerous recordings from the British Library of regional accents and dialects from every corner of the UK–some recorded as far back as the 1950s and many recent recordings up until 1999. There is a section on phonological, grammatical, social, and lexical variation: this means you can pick a region on the map and hear and learn about how a given pattern of speech developed, or how it fits with the language spoken in the rest of the UK. You can submit to the database and analyze your own accent, if you are British. You can spend hours clicking on the map of the UK to hear how words are pronounced across the region and how dialects change over time and space. Apparently, there are more than 150 audio clips of Geordie – the dialect of Newcastle-upon-Tyne – arguably one of the most recognizable dialects in Britain. You may want to hear how ethic minorities pronounce British English (check out the sound files for Asian English Phonology), or practice your Received Pronunciation, if you are feeling proper.
It is an interactive site allowing you to investigate how the language changes and progresses over time, using learning modules suited to college or high school students. In fact, the entire site is nested in the website of the British Library, and if you venture into the rest of the site, you’ll find all kinds of treasures.
The Sounds Familiar site is fairly new, hence this Guardian story about it.
The article ends with this passage:
Language evolves for many reasons – even something as superficial as the hegemony of supermarkets, as any Midlander trying to buy a pikelet will tell you. In Sainsbury’s it’s a crumpet or nothing. But change is not something to be judged or mourned; it’s something to be observed and understood. The purpose of the website is to document the history of language – with schools and universities invited to become part of the process by sending in their own regional recordings. As Upton says, “We’re not in the business of preservation. The only language that doesn’t change at all is a dead one.”
I know that there are some for whom this is not a self evident truth and in fact this statement invites controversy. But for those of us who accept it, I think it has implications for how we teach, communicate, and think about pedagogy, especially in a universe as diverse as CUNY and Gotham. Doesn’t it?
And for dessert, and since we are talking about accents, check out this truly bizarre, yet funny, (?) clip:
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