Monthly Archives: August 2006

Academia, academic institutions, academic models, Concordia, Concordia University, diversity, Learning, Teaching, University rankings

University Rankings and Diversity

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Speaking of Concordia University, it is officially taking position in favour of international principles for university rankings instead of those set out by a magazine.
Full Press Release

Concordia uses two of the items in the list of Purposes and Goals of Rankings for the Berlin Principles to explain its decision not to participate in the magazine ranking.

3. Recognize the diversity of institutions and take the different missions and goals of institutions into account. Quality measures for research-oriented institutions, for example, are quite different from those that are appropriate for institutions that provide broad access to underserved communities. Institutions that are being ranked and the experts that inform the ranking process should be consulted often.

5. Specify the linguistic, cultural, economic, and historical contexts of the educational systems being ranked. International rankings in particular should be aware of possible biases and be precise about their objective. Not all nations or systems share the same values and beliefs about what constitutes “quality” in tertiary institutions, and ranking systems should not be devised to force such comparisons.

Through these items, an image of institutional diversity seems to emerge. Concordia, instead of focusing on prestige or pseudo-objective measures of student satisfaction, proposes an educational philosophy with an emphasis on diversity and flexibility. Perhaps because of this philosophy, Concordia is an ideal context for me to teach and learn. Not that it necessarily deserves the highest ranking in surveys. But that it represents very precisely the type of place where people care about actual knowledge more than about public recognition. Public recognition can help some academic institutions maintain an aura of educational excellence but actual learning occurs in diverse contexts.

Academia, academic institutions, academic models, Anthropology, Concordia, course management systems, cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology, Moodle, ramblings, Spoofs, Teaching

Getting My Fix

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It’s that time of year. Leaves aren’t even falling but classes have started at most academic institutions. Problem is, for me, didn’t get courses to teach this semester. Grrr!
And this is where teaching is “addictive.” No, not like drugs, gambling, WoW, or even pornography. But like Clodhoppers. It just feels right. Or it’s the hype… 😉

Ah, that rush you get from teaching!

Those who haven’t taught can’t really know how it feels. In fact, it’s quite possible that some people who do teach are not feeling it. But once you do feel it, you just want more. Despite all the obstacles. And we all know there’s a lot of obstacles in a teacher’s path! From abuse to social stigma, from grading to excuses… None of it matters. You may tell yourself that you just need one more class to teach, one is never enough.

To make matters worse, every class is different. You think that the next one will be so troublesome that you will run away from teaching but that’s exactly the time when you’re getting the ideal class and you forget all of your resolutions about avoiding the downward spiral of teaching.

Next thing you know, you want to bring a soapbox to the street and teach perfect strangers about the benefits of ethnography or the cultural significance of food. But it doesn’t even stop there. You take a look back at material you prepared for previous semesters and you want to expand them to serve as a basis for “open-source” textbooks. Or you look at your roster for a future semester in awe at the diversity of the student body: from accountancy through women’s studies, from exercise science through biochemistry, from film studies through human relations. And that’s when it becomes really tricky. You can just imagine how fun it’ll be to teach them about uxorilocality, tribes, and friendship. You can almost hear their objections to issues of globalization and ethnicity. You want to reach out to them and prepare reading material to get them started before you even meet. So you go online to your course management system and look at its newest features (if you’re lucky and are using an exceedingly good system like Moodle, Claroline, or Sakai instead of an evil system like Bl*ckb**rd or W*bCT).

What’s worse, you start blogging about the joys of teaching. At night. With no other purpose than getting your fix.

Ah, well…

ramblings

Late August Quickies

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Got many things to blog about. Been keeping some links in my “toBlog” folders. Without going all David Allen on this, it might be a good idea for me to put them out there, even if it means coming back to them.

Got other things from earlier this month. Thought about this format of some entries on the nightingaleshiraz blog.

groupthink, media, Radio Open Source

"You Should Expand Your Reading Base"

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Open Source » Blog Archive » Chomsky: My Dinner with Hassan
Thank you, Thomas Ricks!

Actually, his attitude through most of that conversation is quite refreshing. Humble yet assertive, honest yet tactful, insightful yet unafraid of obvious facts. Just shows that there’s life outside the New York Times groupthink, even within the United States media-obsessed world…

Blogging, blogging tools, WordPress, WordPress.com

Blogging Tools Redux

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Was just looking for another blogging tool to help me blog from my XP machine (as opposed to my former iBook). Yes, again. Turns out Microsoft just started a beta test for their own blog client, “Windows Live Writer”

Writer Zone: Introducing Windows Live Writer

(It was listed on WordPress.org along other blogging tools.)

That tool is really meant for non-coders. Most, if not all, blog editors are meant to be somewhat WYSIWYG. Microsoft’s WLW follows that principle quite directly and emphasizes ease of editing, not advanced features. As such, it’s somewhat similar to Apple’s iWeb but, as CNET writers and readers keep pointing out, with a wider range of publishing options.

Of course, there’s a range of blogging tools out there. Several of them are free or quite inexpensive. Most of them do support several APIs. In fact, WordPress is supported by a good proportion of blogging tools. Didn’t realize it until today but the open-source LiveJournal editor Semagic does support WordPress if you change server settings (doh!). Other standalone blog editors (free of charge) like Qumana, JBlogEditor, Blog Writer, and Post2Blog Express all seem rather decent. Browser-based solutions like Flock and Performancing work for some people but kind of defeat the purpose of a blogging. And Mozilla-based browsers don’t support “spell as you type” underlining, unlike Safari.

So far, ecto has been my favourite. It’s inexpensive, cross-platform, seems stable, easy to use. As a blog client, ecto not only lets you publish new blog posts but really helps maintaining multiple blogs. Fortunately, ecto does have multilingual “spell as you type” underlining. The main thing missing for me is on-the-fly WordPress categories. It seems that WordPress.com’s web-based editor is the only tool which allows for such a feature. But ecto is scriptable and accepts Technorati tags (which WordPress.com’s categories doubles). A del.icio.us-like tagging function would work well too. Another feature it could have is an integration with your browsers’ histories so you can easily enter links instead of copy/pasting them. Maybe in ecto 3!

blogs, blogue, commentaires, readership, shameless plug, statistics, WordPress.com

Almost 10k

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Started this WordPress.com blog on January 9, 2006 and will likely get to 10,000 views withing a few hours. Been getting anything from 60 to 130 views everyday day, for an average of maybe 80 views per day. The most popular entries seem to be:

Probably because of the way they’re referenced elsewhere.

None of this is really important, as my purpose is not to get as many eyeballs as possible. In terms of experimenting with blogs, it’s just interesting to see what’s happening here. Not that it’s representative.

If only more people could comment! 😉

Beer, CBC, craft beer, expertise, Montreal, Québec, researchers

Beer Comments by a Wine Expert: Redux

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CBC’s Home Run did the second part of their “crash course” on beer, with their “wine expert.” For some obscure reason, they used a wit and a lambic as the main examples for ales. Comments made during the show had more to do with personal experiences of enjoying non-wine alcohol and getting drunk than with actual qualities of fermented beverages made with grain. We have a long way to go.

See my previous blog post (on the first part of that show’s “crash course,” talking about lagers). Here are my comments about this weeks discussion of ales:

This installment of Bélanger’s beer “crash course” is somewhat more appropriate than the previous one (although, lambics are usually not considered ales as S. cerevisiae isn’t necessarily the main fermentation agent). You might still consider getting help from one of several beer writers in Montreal. Some of them write in the local beer publications mentioned in my previous message, which has been reproduced here.

Not to be flip but, in Quebec, asking a wine expert to talk about beers is like asking a rugby expert to explain hockey. In Quebec, beer is more than a simple summer beverage and the craft beer industry across the globe is taking an interest in beer people in Quebec. It would make sense to dedicate a short segment of your show to quality beers in Quebec, especially if you get one of the numerous beer writers in Montreal.