All posts by dispar

course management systems, eLearning, Facebook, Moodle, social networking, Web 2.0

Future of eLearning

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Extended quote from  John Battelle’s Searchblog: A Brief Interview with Michael Wesch (The Creator of That Wonderful Video…)

As a university professor I have also found Facebook to be useful. I was inspired to use Facebook for teaching by something I saw while visiting George Mason University. Like many universities, they were concerned that the library stacks were rarely being accessed by students. Instead of trying to bring students to the stacks, they brought the stacks to the students, placing a small library right in the middle of the food court where students hang out. We can do the same with popular social networking tools like Facebook. Facebook is not only great for expressing your identity, sharing with friends, and planning parties, it also has all the tools necessary to create an online learning community. Students are already frequently visiting Facebook, so we can bring our class discussions to them in a place where they have already invested significant effort in building up their identity, rather than asking them to login to Blackboard or some other course management system where they feel “faceless” and out of place.

I hope the community of Moodlers are listening. I keep seeing the potential for Moodle (or another Open Source course management system) to become more like Facebook or to integrate Facebook-like features.  As it stands, Moodle and other CMS tend to force the idea of individual “courses” with subgroups of people with stable roles. Though Facebook could use more role-/status-differentiation, there’s something to be said about user communities going beyond labeled roles in a specific course.

(I’ve discussed some aspects of “that wonderful video” elsewhere, and also here.)

academics, Beer, gender, marketing

Academics, Gender, and Beer Cred

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Psychology professor Diane Catanzaro has been named Beer Drinker of the Year by the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, CO. Dr. Catanzaro’s comments about beer culture are in itself quite interesting and, personally, I’m quite glad that this year’s winner is both an academic and a woman.

Still looking forward to investigate beer culture further, as an academic pursuit. One important dimension of beer culture, as observed by some participants in the North American craft beer scene, is that beer tends to become a gender-specific beverage in North America. Similarly, wine is often seen as more sophisticated than beer (even though, in terms of biochemistry, beer is arguably more complex than wine). Catanzaro’s victory might help dispel some preconceptions about beer.

Catanzaro isn’t the first woman to win the Beerdrinker of the Year award. Cornelia Corey won it in 2001.  Craft beer has probably become more prominent in the last six years. At the time, Corey had linked to an article about beer marketing and gender. Not sure things have changed much since then, but beer marketing itself has slowly but surely been changing.

Good things may come.

Coffee, comment-fishing, personal, ramblings

A Good Cup

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This is more of a typical blog entry, I guess.

Went to bed at 9 p.m., last night. Was exhausted, after teaching (2:45 to  5:30 p.m.). Usually go to bad at 1 a.m. or later but, last night, I was just out.

Woke up at 4. Yes, 4 a.m.! That’s not really me. But seven hours of sleep is rather decent so, I eventually decided to stay up.

Did a few things such as respond to emails, manage some class-related matters, responded to Jess about social bookmarking, looked at some observation reports from my “intro to culture” class…

And, eventually, made myself a cup of coffee.

Now, coffee really is a passion, for me. Like beer and music (which are, to me, all related). I’m quite intense about coffee. It’s not that I need caffeine. It’s that coffee is a major part of my sensory experience.

One of my posts on CoffeeGeek has generated hundreds of replies. In fact, I was going to post a new message in that thread to revive it, yet again. But the coffee I’m having was not brewed in a Brikka, so it’s somewhat off-topic for that specific thread.

Three days ago, I roasted some Javan Domaine, some Ugandan Bugisu, and some Ethiopian Sidamo. About 105g each. All the green beans were bought at Terra. All roasted to some point during second crack. None of them really dark but some were pretty much at the silk level.

That blend was ok but not yet to my liking. Something was missing to give it depth, balance, roundness. Can’t remember the specifics (I forget my less-favourable experiences, which does make me happier). But it wasn’t doing it for me.

So, yesterday, I roasted some Costa Rican Spring Mountain to blend with the rest. The Brikka cup I got soon after that was quite good. Very complex aroma. Wild.

This morning, I got some of the same aromas in my moka pot cup. Oh, it’s nowhere near the best cup I’ve had. It’s even flawed, in some ways. But it fits. Ideal for today. The first whiff I took was a very pleasing experience and the memory of that whiff remains with me. It changes everything.

Well, ok, not quite. But, at least, it motivates me to post a coffee-related blog entry.

As luck would have it, someone will probably reply with their own coffee experiences.

That’d be nice! 🙂

Blogging, commenting, mac os x, PDAs, tagging, Web 2.0, WordPress.com

Bookmarks and Tags

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In response to Jess on organising one’s information.

FavoUrites: Social Bookmarking (PART)

My own use of social bookmarking isn’t that social nor that efficient. At this point, I tend to simply add things to my del.icio.us account as a way to remind myself that I would eventually like to blog about those links. Sometimes they’re academic items, but more often than not, they’re not.
On the other hand, I do tend to blog as a way to keep links handy for later reference. It reminds me of what I was thinking about when I approached the material at first. Those can be academic, especially if they come through academic mailing-lists, but they’re often ideas which connect to my research interests in some ways.
Reading notes, to me, are different. I tend to take notes on my Clié, with page numbers. I can then search through my Clié for a specific idea I was thinking about. I also take a lot of notes about different projects, usually linking them in different ways. Instead of sorting my references, I prefer to search through them. After moving 19 times since December 2000, I wish I had all my books and articles online.
Reference managers can be very useful and some of them are getting to feel a bit like social bookmarking. For instance, RefWorks is online (so you always have access to your citation data) and you can share those references publicly. In fact, you can even use RSS, comment on the references, and have some tagging “descriptors.” What’s more, there’s a RefGrab-It bookmarklet to help you insert references from webpages you visit. Especially useful if people use DOI.
In terms of database design, tagging is almost a revolution. In fact, the “Web 2.0” concept has a fair bit to do that information may be non-hierarchical because you can tag instead of taxonomise (as in “classify in a taxonomy-style hierarchy of paradigmatic concepts”). Of course, your tags can be in a taxonomy. But they don’t need to be. And the taxonomy can be completely ad hoc (yes, yes, “folksonomy” is the term used for those ad hoc taxonomies). Think Technorati and the benefits of tagging blog entries (which explains why my WordPress.com “categories” are really thought of as Technorati tags).
As for bookshelves… Mine are well-disorganised. I still wish I had everything online instead of having to go through shelves, all the time.
My Mac desktops have always been known to represent chaos, to other people. Yet I could always find what I was looking for, and I would only resort to folder hierarchies for very broad classifications (academic texts vs. homebrewing resources, for instance, though I still plan on publishing on homebrewing culture). Different courses usually have their own folders but folders for current courses were usually on my desktop and I would move between different things by using the outline view. Searching was always very efficient and Spotlight almost makes folders irrelevant. Metadata elements are more powerful than any folder hierarchy. Even the Piles interface is less needed now. Especially since desktop files and database items (including email messages) are integrated in the same search.
Having switched to a PC, I tend to have a harder time making my way through things, for several reasons. Cramps my style. I can’t be as “chaotic” as I used to be. Yes, there are “Desktop search” solutions. But they just don’t do it for me. And the lack of a high-quality outliner makes my life less fun than it was with OmniOutliner. I’m slowly discovering OneNote but it’s not the ideal solution to repurpose data.
So I end up keeping many things online. Especially on Gmail, actually. Or in Technorati-tagged blog entries. Or in del.icio.us. Or in Zoho documents (looking forward to Zoho Notebook!). Or in Refworks.
Well, to be perfectly honest. Many things I tend to keep in Scrapbook, with the firm intention of going back to them if I ever get a chance. I never do. I also use browser tabs as reminders that I should do something with specific pages. But I eventually end up keeping them on the back burner anyway.
Ah, well…

Francophonie, glocalisation, Québécois, télévision

Jeunes francophones au Canada

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En réponse à mon billet sur l’émission Les pieds dans la marge (de Radio-Canada), un lien sur l’émission VOLT de TFO-TVOntario. Cette émission ontarienne semble avoir été le lieu de rencontre du trio marginal de RadCan. Les deux émissions se ressemblent dans une certaine mesure mais Volt me fait l’effet d’une émission dirigée vers un public légèrement plus jeune et, surtout, [après avoir regardé On se French, mais est-ce qu’on se connaît?, il me semble clair que le public cible a le même âge que pour Les pieds dans la marge] spécifiquement franco-ontarien. Puisque les Québécois connaissent généralement très peu de choses des francophones canadiens hors-Québec, les liens entre les deux émissions sont plutôt intéressants.

Là où Volt a l’avantage, c’est que plusieurs portions de l’émission sont disponibles en balado-diffusion. Idéal pour un «Canadien errant mais non banni de ses foyers». Ça veut donc dire qu’il me sera possible de voir certains bouts de Volt depuis le Texas, à partir de la fin de l’année.

Si au moins Radio-Canada pouvait faire la même chose avec Les pieds dans la marge et Infoman, rendant ces émissions disponibles en-ligne. Et si Télé-Québec pouvait suivre la tendance en diffusant, en-ligne, des épisodes complets de Pure laine, Méchant contraste et les séries du Rebut Global. À tout bien penser, ce sont les seules émissions que je regarde, à l’occasion.

Dans une certaine mesure, la mission de TFO ressemble à celle de Télé-Québec. Dans les deux cas, l’aspect régionaliste et décentralisateur semble important. Pour le reste, il y a toute la portion éducative, la question de la diversité culturelle, etc. Historiquement, ces deux réseaux de télévision me semblent avoir été fondés dans des contextes socio-politiques assez semblables mais désormais distincts.

Évidemment, à moi qui ne regarde que très peu la télévision, il m’est facile de me méprendre sur le sens de certaines politiques de programmation.

happiness, language, personal, ramblings, relativism, writing

Writing Relativism

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As I’m still learning as much as I can about language ideology of North American English-speakers, I find public discussions of prescriptivism simply fascinating. Not that we don’t have the equivalent in French. We clearly do. But the connection between language prescriptions and cultural values seems clearer to me in North American English than in French.

And the following comment, made in a discussion of typographic and spelling variability, does make me think about my own relationship to relativism.

Language Log: Foolish hobgoblins

a mischievous reference to “the thin edge of the moral-relativist wedge”, alluding to the many people who believe that making linguistic choices is a moral issue, so that tolerating (or, worse, advocating) variability is moral relativism of the most deplorable sort.

Of course, the author favours this type of relativism in his blog post. But the notion is that some people (closeted prescriptivists) might object to the relativistic nature of somebody’s tolerance of variability.

Come to think of it, there is an obvious connection between linguistic relativity and a specific form of moral relativism. A friend of mine, clearly a relativist, was telling his son that a language form his son had used was not inherently wrong but that “we typically use another form.” Personally, I find such training quite useful but it does reveal a relativistic tendency which, apparently, makes some people cringe.

Of course, I don’t think of relativism as “anything goes” the way many people seem to define it. To me, relativism implies a relation with “context,” broadly defined. An action may have deep implications and those implications should be kept in mind in making decisions about the action.

Clearly, my own relativistic tendencies push me to relate relativism (and relativity, actually) to other dimensions of Life, The Universe, and Everything. To me, relativism isn’t an absolute value. But it can be pretty useful in daily life.

Relativism helps me remain happy.

Uncategorized

Enthusiasm and MS?

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Office 2007 is a bit unusual, for me. Been using it for a while (since it became available to Indiana University’s community) and have been enjoying some of the features. Still don’t really enjoy the “tape” interface in Word or PowerPoint but some things seem to have been planned pretty carefully.

For instance, I’m currently writing this in OneNote which seems greatly improved over OneNote 2003. Zoho Notebook seems simpler to use (and, obviously, will be available at no cost) but OneNote is sufficiently better from previous incarnations that it is conceivably a cool tool.