Pinterest Podcast

Here is this week's podcast on Tumblr, image macros, and Pinterest.  Enjoy!



Looking forward to seeing your image macros.

Teaching Tools and Implications

In a couple of posts, I may have conflated some of the assignments. But for this week, you should read the week eight readings. The first reading, Lisa Lane's "Insidious Pedagogy," focuses on course management systems (CMS) like Blackboard. While you may not have CMSs available at your school, the article does raise questions about how our tools affect our pedagogy. Specifically, Lane is concerned that CMSs have the potential to confuse and alienate certain instructors and students.

Bollyut, meanwhile offers a somewhat affirmative discussion of the role of Google and Apple in shaping education. Now that you've had a chance to use some of Google's tools, it's worth considering what it might mean that so much of our education is now rooted in for-profit tools.

Finally, the "Exploring the Digital Nation" reading provides an overview of the trends in digital media use. As you read the report, consider issues of access and technological availability for students and others who might be (or might not be) using digital technologies.

Because I conflated two different weeks, I will make your blog post an "open" post. You can write on any topic related to the course. But I would also like you to contact me via email this week so that e can begin a conversation about your Big Project. I'd like you to send me a formal proposal by the end of week nine (the week after fall break).

I will also be skipping the podcast this week only.

Google Docs and the Big Project

Here are the two podcasts for this week )both  relatively short). The first is my discussion of Google Docs and other similar free tools that you can use to edit student papers (or to provide them with one option for free word processing tools:




The second is a discussion of the Big Project, which I have formalized as a 14-15 page paper about a research question related to our course.



And, yes, I misspelled "Big Project" on the Internet Archive page. So that may be up there for all of eternity.

Looking Ahead

Most of you should be working on digging through the archives to find resources that you might find valuable in your teaching and writing careers. But I wanted to alert you to what will be happening in the next few days.

First, I will be posting the Big Project assignment sheet this weekend. The basic version is that you will produce a document of some kind discussing the implications of using digital technologies in your workplace (whether that is your current job or an imagined future career). The document will be the equivalent to a 12-15 page paper and must have a thorough bibliography.

Second, I'd like to provide a brief frame for next week's readings. As you'll notice, there are no specific tools attached to next week. Most of these readings have to do with the implications of widely used (and promoted) technologies ranging from Course Management Systems like Blackboard to heavily marketed tools from Google and Apple. One of the articles also discusses the extent to which students (and others) have access to broadband Internet and how individuals use it (or not) on a daily basis.

What I'd like you to do with your blog post is to respond to some of these theoretical questions and to consider how extensively a technology-heavy curriculum or classroom should be used. You might also review the list of (mostly free) technology tools and discuss whether any of those might be of use in the classroom.

Corrected Link

Here is the correct link to the Carrie Fried article on laptop use.

Podcast on Research and Archives

Here is the podcast for the unit on Google Search and on media archives. Looking forward to learning about what you found while browsing some of these archives.


By the way, here is the link to The Living Room Candidate, an archive of every television advertisement ever made for a presidential candidate. This is another great resource, especially for those who teach recent American history.

Addendum: Big Data

Just a quick pointer to an article on Big Data that I referenced in both the written lecture and podcast. The article discusses how consumer tastes aligned with political voting habits. You could see, for example, how people's beer, fast food, and clothing store preferences match up with their likelihood to vote and for which party. Both parties have spent millions compiling this information and used it in crafting their appeals (or in deciding who to appeal to). Hope you enjoy playing with that.