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cac.ophony.org » Communication and the Campaign
If Barack Obama is elected President on November 4th, it will be in large part because of his sophisticated communication with the American public.
I was in Michigan this past weekend, and drove past the “North Oakland County Victory Office” of the McCain Campaign, just west of Pontiac, twenty miles north of Detroit. A placard near the street read “Get your McCain-Palin lawn signs here!” The building looked like a small bait shop, set back from the road, in the middle of a big parking lot with few cars. No one seemed to be there. On a Saturday afternoon. A month ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Fortune Cookie Wisdom
After an MSG-laden meal of Chinese food recently, I opened up my fortune cookie to find the following words: “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
Now, while this was not technically a fortune revealing my life’s destiny, the words on the little scrap of paper did offer guidance for future endeavors: to be succinct and precise in one’s use of language. This is valuable advice for those struggling to improve their writing and oral communication skills (or their campaigns for electoral office).
This advice is also, apparently, quite old. I’ve ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » With Flamenco on my mind
Flamenco is on my mind a whole lot, actually, increasingly so. As with most things significant in my life, Flamenco was an accident, unforeseen and unplanned; I did not know much about the dance when I began learning it about five years ago. Since then, it has become my main way for taking trips outside the academic bubble.
Besides functioning as my escape-mechanism, however, Flamenco serves me as metaphor for pedagogical praxis as well. My students tend to get a kick out of the ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » Syndication-Oriented Architecture, or a Feed Frenzied Framework!
Jon Udell has mentioned the idea of Syndication-Oriented Architecture a couple of times over the the last year of so. One of the things I’ve been trying to spell outabout UMW Blog is how it in many ways is trying to approximate a Syndication-Oriented Architechture using a very hodgepodge collection of plugins and widgets.
What does this mean? Well, for me it means that a university publishing platform shouldn’t only be limited to the sites created within that system (in our case WordPres Multi-User), but rather should be able to incorporate work that students and faculty may be doing on other, ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Deep Attention and Hyper Attention
Reading David’s posting on online reading and watching the McLuhan interview clip led me to ask myself a series of questions. What will our future students in classroom be like? Will they be significantly different from what we have now? What comes next after the X, Y, and Z generations? If the average attention span of “TV audience” is 4-5 minutes, what is the number for the Internet generation?
In light of the media’s role in the ongoing generational shift, I found N. Katherine Hayles’s article “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes” in the 2007 Profession ...
WPMu Ed » Publishing Platforms and Cross-Campus Cultivation
Shawn Miller from Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology re-published my post “The UMW Blogs Story,” that chronicles the work we have been doing over the last several years. I am pretty excited that the approach of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies is providing others with fodder for thought. The group here at UMW is second to none in my mind, and we play just as hard as we work. But I’m not sure this post is about the people I work with, though I love them each and every one of them.
But the work on UMW Blogs ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » I’m Sooooo Q
Communication is not exactly the MTA’s forte. Between their signature garbled announcements (what’s the next stop?) to the impossibility of communicating across the vast gulf between the MTA booth worker and the puzzled tourist yelling helplessly at the glass, when they do communicate something (anything!) well, it’s cause for some serious celebration. Even the notoriously goofy advertisements on the trains (Dr. Zizmore joke, anyone?) serve as continual reminders of botched opportunities to reach the diverse train-riding audience while making substantial revenue– how many times have you seen empty ad space on our broken-down subway cars?
To make matters ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Where are you right now?
If you’re reading this blog, you are presumably connected to a computer of some sort – desktop, laptop, BlackBerry Pearl, iPhone 3G (I’m jealous!) But where are you - work, home, in class, in the park, on a train, on the bus, at a restaurant? In today’s world, portable wireless technologies allow us to communicate and connect with each other at any time of day, from virtually anywhere. This sounds wonderful, but is there a potential downside? One of the topics I’m researching is how mobile technologies (e.g., wireless email devices ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » The UMW Blogs Story
The following questions come from an email conversation Shawn Miller and I had about the genesis and guiding logic of UMW Blogs. Shawn is a member of Duke University’s Center for Instructional Technology, and the group is interested in hearing more about the ways we are using blogs here at Mary Washington. If all goes well an edited version this post will also be published on the CIT blog as a way of introducing the means and methods behind UMW Blogs to the Duke campus. Pretty groovy!
Tell us about UMW blogs (brief overview) - when? what was the decision ...
[Link]andremalan.net » Learning tools for 2008/2009… revised!
So my last post was a bit premature. Here are some of the revisons to the plan:
1) OneNote has failed me. It worked so well in my previous classes, but I am finding it useless at the moment. Why? Well the lectures are carried out differently. In my previous classes the PDFs required a lot of diagrams and annotations… OneNote handled that perfectly. However, at the moment all the PDFs that I get are pretty self-contained, the only thing I need to do is summarize and organize the material in them.
2) So in order to replace OneNote, I am ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » But, professssssor!!!!
Dana McCourt, over at Edge of the American West, puts today’s campaign shenanigans into a context that any college teacher would understand:
to: john.mccain@maverickymaverick.gov
from: dmccourt@youhavegottobekiddingme.ed~ [Sent On Behalf Of American Public]
subject: extension?
Dear John,
While I sympathize with the demands of balancing both legislative and campaign issues, I cannot, in accord with historical policy, grant your request for an extension on the debate. Dean’s excuses can only be granted in the cases of health or personal emergencies, and would need to be submitted to me in writing. A physician’s note is also acceptable.
Regards,
Dana McCourt
On Tuesday, ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » Smith College gets their WPMu on
I have to give some love to the work Esther White is doing with WPMu at Smith College Blogs, it is well worth a look. She has shared her process for customizing the front page, which details some very cool hacks. Moreover, today she posted about using WPMu as a space for faculty bio pages and personal blogs/sites. I just met with some folks from College Relations to talk about how they could use WordPress for faculty bios, which got me totally amped! They want to make faculty responsible for updating their own bios, which was being done with Adobe Contribute, ... [Link]
cac.ophony.org » Marshall McLuhan on the Televised Presidential Debate (1976)
Among the many things were interested in, here at cac.ophony, are the roles of context, genre and different types of media in shaping communication. (The medium is the message, after all.) Given this, and iIn anticipation of the soon to be televised presidential debates, we give you a provocative tidbit to chew on. Here, via if:book, is a remarkable interview with Marshall McLuhan from the Today show in 1976, in which the famed theorist of media analyzes the televised presidential debates of that year and argues that the tried and true genre of the presidential debate is “completely the wrong form ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » The Baruch College Teaching Blog
I’d like to call your attention to a new blog we’re supporting here at Baruch College: The Baruch College Teaching Blog.
Several faculty have agreed to post to the blog regularly, and to lead an ongoing conversation about teaching at Baruch College. Surprisingly, there are very few blogs like this, which provide the opportunity for members of a college community to discuss pedagogy outside of their disciplines. This is a unique and exciting development for the college and for CUNY, and I look forward to much interchange between the folks who post to and follow that blog and Cacophonites.
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Teaching Writing Intensively (and Often)
It happens at the beginning of every semester. Tucked into my tiny mailbox are a stack of about fifty blue and white student evaluations. The scantron sections of these evaluations, where students “rate” their professors in several categories on a scale of one to seven, never seem especially helpful to me. After all, it is inevitable that some classes will go better than others from semester to semester. And even when the students are responding to a specific prompt, such as “was the course material presented clearly” it is only natural that many of them are going to respond to their ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » WPMu comments bug
I stumbled upon a bizarre WPMu comments bug today (it may also effect single WP installs, but I’m not sure). Here’s the skinny, if you include to: with two trailing spaces, you will not be able to post a comment on UMW Blogs or bavatuesdays. I’m not sure this is true for all WPMu sites, and I guess others would have to test it for certainty, but it is definitely the case on the two WPMu installs I have tested it on. As soon as you try and post the comment containing the to: with two trailing spaces it will throw ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Reading the Cold Air: Negative Social Vibes and Hot Chocolate
One of the great points that stayed with me after our last Symposium was a Japanese concept of “Read the Air,” introduced by Yukiko. Emphasizing different non-verbal components of communication, it obliges us to be conscious of our and our interlocutors’ body language and mood, as well as our surroundings. Apparently, this subject has been of some interest to the scientists. It turns out that reading the air is not only something that we do, consciously or not, but also something that affects our physical sensations. There was an interesting NYT article “A Cold Stare Can Make You Crave Some Heat” ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Billy Collins’ Animated Poetry
Via Open Culture, a YouTube channel showcasing short animated films of US Poet Laureate and CUNY Faculty Member Billy Collins‘ poems. Gotta love YouTube. Here’s a taste:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuTNdHadwbk
[Link]cac.ophony.org » The Dangers of Online Reading?
I just read an interesting article by Mark Bauerlein in The Chronicle about how students’ approaches to reading and interacting with information online seem to be hindering their ability to read and learn from texts in more traditional settings. Specifically, he contends that:
The inclination to read a huge Victorian novel, the capacity to untangle a metaphor in a line of verse, the desire to study and emulate a distant historical figure, the urge to ponder a concept such as Heidegger’s ontic-ontological difference over and over and around and around until it breaks through as a transformative insight — those dispositions ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Read All About It!!
This week, the Schwartz Institute was profiled in Baruch’s campus newspaper, The Ticker. Here’s a juicy tidbit:
The significance of being proficient in language, both written and spoken, is emphasized throughout a student’s academic career at Baruch. From Freshmen Seminar to Business Policy 5100, students are exposed to the various forms of communication and the countless reasons pertaining to why proficiency is relevant. Courses designated as Communication Intensive Courses or CICs are designed and implemented by faculty members, with the help from the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute to help students become more effective writers and speakers.
Read the whole article here ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Presidential Tweets?
I’m not really a big fan of the whole “John McCain is so old he can’t use a computer” line the Obama camp rolled out today. I think there are stronger, more necessary and relevant attacks that Obama should launch.
That said, the activity level on the two candidates’ Twitter pages does seem to back up the overarching thesis.
Check out these screenshots.
(Note the “Location” each has signified. Obama sharply “outsiders” his online presence.)
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Triumphing Over Your “Little Hater”
My favorite hip-hop vlogger Jay Smooth has eloquently described those nagging voices that reside inside the heads of people who do creative work as “little haters.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TpmJgSfZ_8
He even wrote a song about his:
When I’m writing, my “little hater” tells me I need to find a fifth or a sixth corroborating piece of evidence before I can make a claim, and even after I do, the damn thing still comes out tentative. He sometimes makes me think that the idea that I just came up with can’t be anywhere near as good as I originally thought because, ...
[Link]andremalan.net » My learning tools for 2008/2009
So I’ve now had a week of classes. It feels great to be learning again after 8 months of solid work. Since I last wrote a similar post to this I have a gained a much better perspective on all the tools out there and know what works for me and what doesn’t. So, here goes my big bad list of learning tools for university:
Microsoft Office OneNote:I cannot find any note-taking software that comes even close to OneNote’s ability to keep notes for school. The three levels of navigation and ease of printing PDFs straight to OneNote (seeing as ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » Anarchy Media Player bug in Firefox 3
When putting a series of videos in a post or page with Anarchy Media Player, I get the following bug when viewed in Firefox 3:
Anarchy Media Player, Firefox 3 bug
Seems like one or two videos will show up, then the subsequent videos show just a part of the play button, and no sign of the video anywhere. Are others having a similar issue? I tested it on more than one WPMu install, and the same issue occurs in both. Seems like it is triggered when there are several videos in one post.
I also tested it on Safari, ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » Tale of the FeedWordPress Tape
Image courtesy of Looking for Fish tacos at ELI 2006, aka CogDog.
Well, I have finally gotten a free minute to get this all down, and get it down I will in hopes that I can drum up some help and support in working through a couple of the issues we’re having with FeedWordPress. So, here goes my state of the union address for FeedWordPress syndicating student work to class blogs on UMW Blogs….
First, FeedWordPress is the real deal, it is a solid interface, not too complicated, works out-of-the-box without cron plugins, and makes syndication a breeze. (D’Arcy overviews ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » I Love Consumerism
Well, I have been sucked into the UMW Blogs vortex. The first week or so just thrills me to no end, people start coming out of the woodwork, and I have fun commenting, reading, and getting a sense of what’s in store. it also makes me marvel just how much cool stuff is happening all around campus, and the syndication framework really bring that into sharp focus (but more on this in technical detail in my next post).
So, I have met with almost twenty faculty during the first week of classes alone about UMW Blogs, and this project seems to ...
[Link]cac.ophony.org » Tsk tsk…
Further proof as this election season revs up that there’s more than the future of humanity at stake this November.
Writing teachers everywhere: this is not change you can believe in.
(kudos to TPM)
[Link]WPMu Ed » Course blogs, Sitewide Tags, and FeedWordPress
OK, I’m officially in full blown UMW Blogs blogging mode, I will most likely prove insufferable for the next month or so, and that’s just the way it is, suckas!
Steve Harris Stalinism Blog (Oh what a header)
Today I actually gave my first advanced training session on WordPress to a group of five faculty. And I have to say it was a ball. Professors Steve Harris (History), Michael Killian (Biology), Betsy Lewis (Spanish), Andrew Dolby (Biology), and Zach Whalen (English/New Media Studies) were nice enough to remain polite through a kind of abstract session on UMW Blogs as syndicated ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » WPMu Sitewide Comment Tracking
I have been mentioning DSader a lot lately on this blog, and that’s mainly because I have been deep into WordPress Multi-User mode for a couple of weeks now. And between the upgrade to 2.6 and the general overhaul of plugins, themes, etc., I find I’ve devoted no insignificant amount of time to plugin hunting –a truly enjoyable activity. For many of my most valuable WPMu plugins, I continually find I am utilizing DSader’s work. He wrote the following plugins that I can name off the top of my head: Userthemes (a must), Sitewide “Three-in-One” Multi Widget panel, Toggle Admin Menus Sitewide ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » New digs for UMW Blogs, or an anatomy of a redesign
UMW Blogs has got a brand new bag, with no small assistance from Andy “EDU” Rush nation who turned me on to the beautiful theme PrimePress (Andy’s the go to theme guy without a question), along with Serena Epstein an Jerry Slezak who provided the gorgeous header images of the UMW campus. The redesign took a couple of days with some on and off work, and before I get into the details of that, I wanted to take a quick poll. PrimePress offers you two different looks, and I wanted to know which one people preferred.
Here is UMW Blogs with ...
[Link]Featured Blog » UMW Blogs all dressed up for the new year
UMW Blogs Redesigned
UMW Blogs is featuringitself this time, for it has put on a new theme for the new academic year. Wearing the elegant theme PrimePress by Ravi Varma, thanks to the unfailing eye for great looking sites of Andy “Edu”Rush. Moreover, the custom images of Mary Washington were taken and freely shared by our very own Serena Epstein and Jerry Slezak. And if anyone else has images roughtly 920 px wide and 150px high they want to offer up, let us know through the contact form. Well, let us know what you think, and let’s change the world this ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » WPMu “3-in-1″ Widget: Tags, Recent Posts, and Archives
I already mentioned that Donncha’s Sitewide Tags plugin was going to make a whole lot of things much, much easier. Well, DSader wrapped all the awesomeness into one bitchin’ plugin for WPMu: Sitewide “three-in-one” Multi Widget Panel. I discovered it through James Farmer’s WPMU.org (already proving an invaluable resource) and I just had to test it out. Lo and behold, it works like a charm as long as you remember to install Donncha’s Sitewide Tags plugin.
What’s more, DSader notes that this plugin can also be edited to…
pull from multiple blogs by editing one line of code ("clones" the widget ...
WPMu Ed » WPMu Subdomain Mapping
As a follow up to my last post, I also tested out mappng subdomains with CPanel on a WPMu installation using Donncha’s Domain Mapping plugin. And surprise, surprise, just about the same method works for mapping just a subdomain to a blog on WPMu. To clarify, when I say mapping just a subdomain I mean mapping just one part of a domain, rather than the entire domain. For example, I dont want the domain jimgroom.org to only host one WordPress blog because I plan on using this domain name for other things like a MediaWIki or even Drupal installation 
So, all ...
cac.ophony.org » Facebook In Reality
With all the talk on this blog about Facebook and other social networking sites (see here, here, and here), here’s something that humorously encapsulates some of what unnerves many people about Facebook — particularly how social networking of this sort can make us vulnerable to unsavory characters of various sorts and what some people are afraid can be done with the information we typically make available on Facebook.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs
[Link]WPMu Ed » WPMu Domain Mapping Plugin on CPanel
Well, I have written a bunch about domain mapping on WPMu over the last year or so. Up and until tonight I have been using Richard Bui’s tutorial here along with David Dean’s Multi-Site Manager Plugin. The combination of the two have worked great for me thus far, and I liked that with this combination each mapped domain could act like its own, stand-alone WPMu install—with each domain having the possibility of unlimited dynamic subdomains—a feature I’m not so sure is available with this plugin. That said, you did have to be brave enough to muck around in the database. ... [Link]
cac.ophony.org » Testing New Email Notification System for Cac.ophony.org
This is a test.
[Link]cac.ophony.org » test2
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "test2", url: "http://cac.ophony.org/2008/08~ }); [Link]
cac.ophony.org » test
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "test", url: "http://cac.ophony.org/2008/08~ }); [Link]
cac.ophony.org » x Minutes of Freedom
From the Dept. of We Stole It From Lifehacker: Here’s a great idea for those of us needing to focus for chunks of time. An application for Mac OS X called Freedom helps keep your nose to the grindstone and away from Facebook, email, LOLCATZ, or whatever by disabling your internet connectivity for a designated period of time up to 6 hours. The developers have yet to figure out how to make an allowance for online library catalogs, the ability to IM your friend who knows everything, and the Olympics medal count.
Now that’s American ingenuity.
[Link]WPMu Ed » Anyone else have problems upgrading WPMu 2.6 with subdirectories?
I’ve been upgrading a number of different WPMu installations. And while the upgrades I did for WPMu 2.6 installations that ran on dynamic subdomains went smoothly, two installations I upgraded that run on subdirectories (a result of them being hosted on shared hosting that would do dynamic subdomains) ran into problems. The upgrade seemed to go fine, but when I tried to login into a blog other than the main blog (or even login as another user) it simply remains on the login screen that redirects to itself for all blogs except main.
I did a quick search and found this ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » UMW Blogs support videos for WPMu 2.6
The inimitable Andy Rush (a.k.a. EduRush) and I have been working diligently to create a whole slew of screencasts documenting the new interface for WPMu 2.6. We've finished a whole bunch of them over the last week or so and published them on the now official UMW Blogs Screencasts site, so below is a list of the ones we have created. They're all under a Creative Commons license, and while they're currently published as SWF files, we will be uploading them all to Blip shortly. Keep in mind that these screencasts are specific to the UMW Blogs installation, but they ...
WPMu Ed » UWM Blogs support videos for WPMu 2.6
The inimitable Andy Rush (a.k.a. EduRush) and I have been working diligently to create a whole slew of screencasts documenting the new interface for WPMu 2.6. We've finished a whole bunch of them over the last week or so and published them on the now official UMW Blogs Screencasts site, so below is a list of the ones we have created. They're all under a Creative Commons license, and while they're currently published as SWF files, we will be uploading them all to Blip shortly. Keep in mind that these screencasts are specific to the UMW Blogs installation, but ... [Link]
cac.ophony.org » The Film Club
I have not read David Gilmour’s The Film Club: A Memoir reviewed a few months ago in the New York Times. It’s about a man who decides to home school his teenage son through a diet of film, film, film. Three a week. And nothing else. I was curious if anyone perusing this blog has read it, and if so, if they have any thoughts about it concerning alternative schooling and pedagogy.
[Link]WPMu Ed » If I were a dog…
…I would be going to WordCamp 2008 like the great Alan Levine, but being only a bava—which in fact is not only the surname of my favorite film director but also Italian for drool—I’m not. So, after reading Alan’s recent call for examples of WordPress in education I tried to add my 50 cent, but Alan’s blog was intentionally blocking my long, link-filled comment of utter genius because he is petrified of the Reverend’s wrathful range, as one should be.
But never fear faithful reader, for the Reverend has got his own publishing platform, and can make the good ...
[Link]andremalan.net » Site redesign
So anyone visiting might have noticed a new theme for this site. I’m going to be doing a complete overhaul in a few weeks time, but I thought I would start using the theme that I am going to be modifying in order to get a feel for it.
andremalan.net » Fireworks
For anybody unlucky enough to not live in Vancouver, here are some photos and a video that I took from English Bay at the 2008 HSBC celebration of light finale. The HSBC celebration of light is a 4 million dollar show that is put on every year at English Bay in Vancouver. It runs over four nights and each night has over half an hour of fireworks. The rest of the pictures can be found on my flickr
andremalan.net » WordPress as a CMS… Advanced Navigation
One of the things that is starting to happen at OLT is that we are creating an increasing number of WordPress based websites. Using WordPress as a content management system is not a new idea at all, there are a ton of examples out there of WordPress blogs out there that have been turned into sites. There is however, a dearth of information out there on how to do it (there are some out there… including some in amazing detail from Alan Levine).
One of the things that I couldn’t find was a stable way ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » The Many Languages of UMW Blogs
Recently I have been working with a French professor who had been playing around in Blogger, and was thinking abut using a blog in his class. I got to see some of the finer features in Blogger, and I really liked the fact that this professor could choose the default language for administrative backend and theme. So after we talked, I decided to see how easy or hard this is for WPMu given I had never tried it. Well, it’s simple to have one WPMu install support different default languages on a blog-by-blog basis.
Here’s how…
Create a ... [Link]WPMu Ed » Upgrading UMW Blogs to WPMu 2.6 Screencast
Andy Rush and I sat down yesterday morning and did a “live” screencast of the process for upgrading UMW Blogs from WPMu 1.3.3 to 2.6. It was conceived as a straightforward video for an easy process, but even easy is hard for a moron like me. So forgive all the upgrading bloopers and blunders. This video might be enjoyed more as a cautionary tale of what not to do when upgrading than an informative how-to. It’s availabe for anyone who is considering doing an upgrade but is concened or nervous about the prospect. In fact, the upgrade is quite painless ...
[Link]WPMu Ed » UMW Blogs Documentation updated for WPMu 2.6
I tweaked the documentation for UMW Blogs to reflect the administrative back end changes for WPMu 2.5 & 2.6. I figured this may be helpful to some folks that are using this application and might need some screen shots, quick documentation, etc. It’s all Creative Commons, so no need to ask, just pilfer and pillage at will. Additionally, I put most of the screen shots on the UMW DTLT Flickr account so that folks can use what ever they need. Andy Rush and I will be turning to the videos soon, but as of now they haven’t been updated.
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