Category Archives: ramblings

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! 🙂

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.

Francophonie, Québec, Quiet Revolution, ramblings

Quebs

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A former student (also a French-speaking Quebecker) got me to use the term “Queb” to designate my Québécois brethren.

Learned through Radio-Canada’s Carnet Techno (a tech-oriented podcast) that the French-speaking side of Yahoo! Canada was now: Yahoo! Québec. FHQs («Francophones hors Québec» or “French-Speakers Outside Quebec”) have a right to feel slighted. Yet they’re probably used to it. After all, ever since the switch from nationalism to a self-determination movement (during the so-called “Quiet Revolution” of the 1970s) Quebeckers have left the “French-Canadian” label in favour of «Québécois» and equivalent terms.

On the other hand, on the part of Yahoo!, the move might make sense financially. After all, it’s not only because of laws that busineses in Quebec will adopt Québécois-savvy names: it also sells more.

Vive les Quebs!

Anthropology, cultural awareness, culture, fieldwork, globalisation, nationalism, opinions, Orientalism, patriotism, Québec, ramblings, rants

Took a While

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The latest episode of Télé-Québec’s Les Francs Tireurs had a segment on international humatarian aid. (Especially of the Euro-American CICR and Reporters sans frontières style.) Maybe there are more (I don’t to watch much television) but this one was the first television report which had a thoughtful and insightful discussion of the negative impacts of humanitarian aid.

Of course, several parts of the discussion were probably edited out (hosts on the show are sometimes explicit about the “need” for editing) and it did sound at times like discussions that most anthropology students have had at one point or another (usually pretty early on in their training) but it was quite refreshing, especially when compared to the usual news reports on how bad the situation is supposed to be anywhere else in the world (i.e., any place where people live a different lifestyle).

What’s funny is that the two main participants in the show were quite honest about the biases of Quebec society in terms of humanitarian aid. This is a society (my own upbringing) in which people pride themselves to be “open-minded” (often meaning “more open-minded that you“). Yet people take humanitarian aid as a sacred principle, not to be criticised. Some aid workers in Africa and elsewhere seem to think that their mission (the religious connotations were discussed on the television show) is to help Others become more like them. Pretty charitable when you see your own habits as the only appropriate way to live, but pretty damaging when you transform knowledgeable human beings into the object of pity.

Africa, Coffee, communitas, diversity, espresso, gender, Montreal, Montreal Espresso Scene, music, music scenes, performance, personal, personal life, play, praises, ramblings, sandboxes, social butterflies, taste, tributes

Whaddaday!

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Started out the usual way, with emails and blogs. But then moved into very diverse and unique activities.

Went to a workshop on the game Guitar Hero, organised by GameCode and Ludiciné. Stimulating conversations on music, games, gender, sandboxes, playfulness, musicking, performance, competition, etc.

Then went on to the Ethnographic Film Festival. Was only able to watch a short excerpt of a short film from the Wapikoni Mobile project and a good part of a movie about food production in Europe (Malthus was wrong! 😉 ). Unfortunately, there were technical problems with the Wapikoni short, but it seemed fascinating. Glad to know there’s a Wapikoni Mobile podcast, but contrary to the Off-Courts podcast, it doesn’t include video content.

Then moved to a coffee jam at Caffè ArtJava. Had an excellent time and tasted some of the best espresso in my life. CAJ is set to participate in the growth of Montreal’s espresso scene.

From CAJ, went directly to Kola Note to pay tribute to Boubacar Diabaté‘s life and influence on Montreal’s (very dynamic, yet IMHO underrated) African music scene. Many of the players in that scene appeared on stage (in different bands) and the general ambiance was that of a strong community. Reminded me of the Francis Bebey tribute at Alizé, a few years ago, but last night’s event was more free-form, organic, cooperative… African. Got a chance to spend some time with fascinating people (like my good friends Guy Langué and David Mobio) who make Montreal’s African music community what it is.

Some seem to disagree on my observations but I feel this community is quite unique in that musicians cross any line to play and feel together. Appropriate tribute to Diabaté who was a «rassembleur» (bringing people together). In fact, Diabaté was the first person with whom I worked for my master’s degree research. Through this work, I eventually met with Madou Diarra who became more than a friend for me.

Academia, academic institutions, activism, advocacy, Canada, Cegeps, creativity, education systems, enthusiasm, Europe, experimentation, freedom, individualism, Learning, prestige, Québec, Quiet Revolution, ramblings, research, schools, social change, socialisation, students, success in life, Teaching, United States

Defending Quebec's Cegep System

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Disclaimer: So far, I’ve taught at six universities and one college in Indiana, Massachusetts, New Brunswick, and Quebec. In Quebec, I’ve taught at Montreal’s Université de Montréal (French-speaking) and Concordia University (English-speaking). This entry is mostly about my teaching experience in Montreal in contrast to my teaching experience in the MidWest and Northeast regions of the United States. Having spent some time in Mali, Switzerland, and France, I do realise that many education systems outside of Canada and the U.S. work pretty much like Quebec’s.

It’s partly my bias as a Québécois, I’m sure. Or it’s the weather. Yet I can’t help but being amazed at how well-prepared my students at both Concordia University and Université de Montréal have been, so far. Though personal characteristics could conceivably play a part, I usually see my Quebec students’ preparedness in relation to the Cegep system that we have here in Quebec.

“So,” I hear you ask, “what is the Cegep system anyway?” Well, it’s the educational system that we have, here in Quebec. It includes Cegeps.

“But…”

Yeah, I know. 😉

“Cegep” or “CEGEP” (pronounced “sea-jep” or “say-jep”) is a Quebec French acronym which stands for «Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel» (“College of General and Professional Education”). A Cegep is a post-secondary institution («Collège») which serves both as a comprehensive («Général») transitional period between secondary school and university as well as vocational («Professionnel») training («Enseignement») in fields like nursing, robotics, or computer science. People in the U.S. could think of it as a blend of a vocational school, a community college, a prep school, a continuing education program, and a two-year liberal arts college. A Cegep’s degree («diplôme d’études collégiales» or “DEC,” pronounced “deck”) can be compared with things like the French «baccalauréat» or the Swiss «maturité», but less Euro-hierarchical. (Please note that «baccalauréat» (or «bacc.», pronounced “back”) is used in Quebec to refer to the bachelor’s degree.)

Though I haven’t been in direct contact with many Cegep students for quite a while, I find the Cegep system to be one of the best features of the Quebec education system.

Of course, I tend to idealise things a fair bit and I know many people whose opinion of the Cegep system is much less enthusiastic than mine. Still, through both informal and formal discussions with many university students and faculty in Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States, my positive perspective on the Cegep system keeps being reinforced.

One reason this issue keeps being relevant is that provincial politicians, school board administrators, and some other members of Quebec society occasionally attack the Cegep system for different reasons. On the other hand, I have yet to meet a university professor who has very negative things to say about the Cegep system. They might come out with this blog entry, but it would take a fair bit to get me, as a university instructor, to see Cegeps in very negative a light.

Cegeps were an effect of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution (late 1960s through the 1970s). They’re a somewhat recent phenomenon, so we can’t really see all of their social effects, but have existed for long enough a period of intense social change that they have really taken roots in the fabric of Quebec culture. (I love mixing metaphors! 😉 )

I’m a little bit unclear as to whether or not the requirements have remained the same since my own time as a music student at Cégep Saint-Laurent (1989-1991), but here’s a description in the present tense of how Cegeps worked when I went to one almost twenty years ago. All Quebeckers younger than 21 who wish to go to a university in Quebec need to complete at least two years’ worth of Cegep courses after secondary school (grades 7-11, here). “Professional” (vocational) programs last three years and also work for university requirements if a Cegep graduate wants to go to a university. For those 21 or older, life experience usually counts as equivalent to the Cegep requirement for applying to Quebec universities (at least, that’s the way it was, way back when). Even then, most university applicants go through Cegep even if they are old enough to enter a university program without a DEC as Cegep is an efficient way to prepare for university. Many programs at Quebec universities use representations of Cegep grades (kind of like a normalised GPA) as admission criteria. It wasn’t the case for my B.Sc. in anthropology at Université de Montréal (1991-1994). Unlike the United States where standardised tests are so common, Quebec students don’t take SAT-like general exams before going to university. To an extent, comprehensive training in a Cegep achieves some of the same goals as SAT scores do in the United States.

As far as I know, non-Quebec students need to go through specific requirements before they can begin a Bachelor’s degree at a Quebec university (B.A. and B.S. programs usually last three years, here). I’m not really clear on the details but it implies that even non-Cegep students are specifically prepared to go to university.

Even with students who never went to Cegep, the existence of Cegeps makes a large difference in the Quebec education system as it raises the bar for university behaviour. In Quebec, the kinds of mistakes college students tend to make in their “college years” in the U.S. are supposed to have been done during Cegep years in Quebec. So Quebec’s university students are less likely to make them

Unlike pupils in secondary schools, Cegep students enter a specific study program. On paper, course requirements in a typical Cegep program look quite a bit like freshman and sophomore requirements at a North American university or college outside of Quebec. Students choose their own courses (possibly with an advisor, I can’t remember) and usually get a fair bit of “free” time. At Saint-Laurent, my weekly scheduled only included 15 hours of classes but I also had 15 hours of Big Band rehearsal every week and would usually spend thirty hours of individual instrument practise as well as thirty hours of study every week. Yes, that was a bit much but I feel it really prepared me for an academic career. 😉

The equivalent of “General Education Requirements” in Cegeps include philosophy and physical education courses. The philosophy courses are quite basic but they still prepare students to think about issues which tend to be very important in academic contexts. And, at least in the courses I’ve had at Saint-Laurent, we did read primary texts from important thinkers, like the complete text of Nietzsche’s Zur Genealogie der Moral (translated into French).

As compared to most North American universities, Cegeps charge almost nothing. When I was at Saint-Laurent, we had administrative fees of about $80 and no tuition fees. It has probably changed since that time, but I’m quite sure Cegep fees are nothing like the outrageous tuition fees paid by college and university students in many parts of the United States. What this means to students is that the financial cost of a Cegep program is fairly minimal. Of course, there are many costs associated with going through school during that time. For one thing, a good proportion of Cegep students live in appartments, which can be fairly expensive. And it’s difficult to work full-time while doing a Cegep degree. But, as compared to the typical situation in the U.S., the stakes in dropping a Cegep program or switching to a new one are low enough that students use this time as an opportunity to get to know what they want to do with their lives.

In other words, Cegep students who may look like they’re “wasting their time” are going through the period of socialisation associated with late adolescence in different parts of the world. If, as is quite common, they find out that they don’t necessarily want to get a university degree or that their original degree program was nothing like they planned, they still got something out of their Cegep experience at little cost. Given the functioning costs of universities, such shifts in learning orientation carry very high social and individual costs if they happen in universities. “Wasting” a DEC in Natural Sciences by then moving on to become an artist is nothing as compared to dropping a pre-Med degree to join the Peace Corps. In cases where public funding to universities is important, the difference is extremely significant, socially.

For many people, Cegep is in fact a way to experience student life to see if they like it. As painful as it may be for some academics and prestige-hungry parents to learn, many people don’t really want to spend that many years (and that much money) as college/university students. In fact, there are those brilliant students who, one day, realise that they just want to learn on their own while working as, say, a cashier at a university cafeteria. My guess is that social pressure and diploma prestige are the only reasons such people ever go through post-secondary education in the first place. I also feel that they should have a right to choose the life that they want. You know: “Pursuit of Happiness” and all of that…

As some would be quick to point out, there are some people who spend years and years in Cegeps, unsuccessfully looking for the perfect program for them, and end up working at low-paying jobs all their lives. These may sound like lost souls but I really think that they are more likely to contribute to society as a whole than the equivalent long-term “undecided majors” in U.S. universities.

Because Cegeps’ individual costs are relatively low, Cegep students often do experiment a lot with courses in different fields. It may seem like a stretch but my hunch is that this experimental tendency might be one of the reasons is so productive in creative domains like musical productions and circus shows. If it weren’t for Cegeps, I would never have spent two years of my life in intensive training as a musician. I already (since age 13) that I wanted to become an anthropologist and my DEC in music wasn’t necessary for anything I ever did. But it greatly enhanced my life more than many university programs ever do.

Cegeps often count significant numbers of what U.S. college people tend to call “non-traditional students” (older than the “typical” post-K-12 undergrad). These include fascinating people like mature women who are getting a Cegep degree as part of a life-changing experience (say, after a divorce). Because of this, the average age in a Cegep can be higher than in the typical U.S. graduate school. It also means that Cegep students coming directly from secondary schools are getting accustomed to interacting with people whose life experience may involve parenthood, career development, and long-term personal relationships.

For diverse reasons, Cegeps are the locus of most of the active student movements in Quebec, some of which have led to important strikes and other forms of student protest. Student strikes have had a deep impact in Quebec’s recent history. Not that students have forced long-lasting policy changes by themselves but many members of recent generations of Quebeckers have gotten a taste for political involvement through student protest. Though I was living in Indiana at the time (2004-2005), I have seen important effects of the most recent student strike on some dimensions of Quebec society. At the time, around 200 000 Quebec students went on strike in protest of the provincial government’s changes to the financial aid system. At one point, 100 000 students had taken to the streets to march as part of the student movement. The government eventually backed down on the changes it was implementing and people still talk about the effects of this strike. It is likely that the strike will not have any effect on any specific political party and political scientists would probably say that the strike failed to produce a “political class.” Yet, and this is an important point, the target of the strike wasn’t a political party but a perceived discrepancy between the ideals of two generations. In my personal opinion, such a social movement is much more important than partisan politics. In such a context, it isn’t surprising to see many young Quebeckers become social activists, may it be for environmental causes or to fight some global inequalities. They become like this in Cegeps. Since the majority of secondary school students eventually go to Cegeps, this social involvement has nothing to do with the elitism of “Revolutions” of the early nationalist era. Cegep students are the perfect example of individualistic (one would say «libertaire») social engagement.

Not only are Cegep students socially involved but they are usually considered to be socially mature.

Quite significantly, many young adults in Quebec learn how to drink by the time they finish Cegep. Drinking age is 18 here and people usually start Cegep at age 17. As has been happening in different parts of the world for the longest time, cafés and bars around Cegep and university campuses tend to be important meeting space for students. Coffee is the drink of choice for many students during the day but alcoholic drinks (including craft beer, nowadays) bring students together for long discussions in the evening and nights. Because student alcohol consumption is widely accepted, students never feel the need to hide in residence halls or “greek houses” to enjoy each other’s company.

In such a context, it’s easy to understand why university students in Quebec are very generally seen as responsible adults. In the U.S., I’ve heard both students and professors describe university students of any age as “kids,” a term I find very symptomatic of tricky educational and academic issues. As I see universities as a place to do serious academic work and not as a place for parents to drop their kids until they grow up, I have many reasons to support Quebec’s Cegep system or anything which may achieve the same results. 🙂

Academia, collaborative learning, Content Management Systems, course management systems, Education, educational technology, eLearning, Ethnography, Facebook, Learning, Moodle, profiles, ramblings, social networking, students, Teaching

Moodle and Collaborative Learning

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Something I just posted on a forum about the Moodle course management system.

Using Moodle: Thinking Through Groups

Here are some comments and observations about the “Groups” interface (where an instructor can put participants in distinct groups) and other group-related features in Moodle.
I’m currently teaching a smallish ethnomusicology seminar and a large (170 students) introductory course in cultural anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. I decided to get my intro students to work as teams on an ethnography project. It’s the first time in my (still relatively young) career that I’m getting students to do teamwork. Yes, it’s a challenge. Moodle has made it both easier and more difficult, IMHO.
Several of these are probably common feature requests from Moodle users and I’m not enough of a coder to implement any of those ideas. These comments also include “pie in the sky,” wacky, wishful thinking, “you gotta be kidding” thoughts about the potential of Moodle’s group-related features. Please excuse the craziness but don’t worry, it’s not contagious.
I’m using “instructor” for my role as the course creator and “participants” or “students” to refer to the people the instructor is putting in groups.

Observations, Comments

  • Listing participants by first name is inconvenient for large university classes. I would like to be able to sort students as I wish, as in the Participants list.
  • In large courses, it’s difficult to select participants who aren’t in any group yet. I understand that the interface is meant to make it possible for participants to be in multiple groups. But I believe it’s common for the instructor to be putting all students in separate groups. In such a case, it’d be so much easier to have the left-hand list of participants hide the ones which are already in a group and only show participants who still need to be put in groups. With 250 participants, scrolling that list back and forth has been very inconvenient.
  • The Participants and Groups sections overlap in function, IMHO. Maybe they could be merged. This would be especially useful in terms of messages. While searching for participants by group, selecting them, and adding them as recipients for a message works, it becomes quite cumbersome after a while.
  • When I click on a participant’s name in the left-hand list, I expect to be able to see to which team(s) this participant belongs.
  • I can select multiple participants in the left and right columns but I can’t select multiple groups to temporarily merge teams. This could be useful, especially while sending messages.
  • Several students seemed a bit puzzled about finding their groupmates. There could be a “group” section for students where they could not only see links to their groupmates’ profiles but also manage a kind of group profile.
  • It’s still somewhat unclear to me how Moodle handles groups. For instance, what does group visibility (separate or visible) mean for journal entries?
  • Maybe they can but I haven’t noticed how group participants may change the group’s name. That would be useful. Especially if they can add some information (available to the rest of the class or only to the instructor) about their group. Something like a group profile. In fact, it could summarize the profiles from all of the group’s members in one page (visibility to students as an option).

Feature Requests

  • In a way, it would be possible to work with groups as if they were individual participants. For instance, we could give grades to a group as a whole and have those grades show up in the group participants’ grade list. Or we could have one-click messaging for a group as a whole, directly from the Participants list.
  • It would be useful to be able to create a new group with selected students instead of having to prepare the groups in advance.
  • It could be neat to have both a group name and a unique group ID, especially with relatively large numbers of groups (I have about 40).
  • The number of participants in a team is very useful data and it helped me rebuild teams which had lost members during “drop and add.” Such data could be put in the interface so that the instructor can sort groups by numbers of participants.
  • Drag-and-drop (through AJAX) would be much more convenient than the current method for adding participants to groups. I guess this one is in the official plans but I want to voice my support for it! wink
  • It could be useful to be able to upload and download CSV or tab-delimited files with all the team information. The data might be available with grades or some such but it’d be very useful to download a grouped list of participants directly from the group interface. It would also be quite efficient to create groups in, say, Excel and be able to implement those groups in Moodle with a simple upload.
  • There might be a group building tutorial but I haven’t seen it in obvious places. Given the fact that the Moodle community is full of experienced instructors, that tutorial could have some advice about good grouping practices, maybe with some links to pedagogical issues.
  • There might be a group building tutorial but I haven’t seen it in obvious places. Given the fact that the Moodle community is full of experienced instructors, that tutorial could have some advice about good grouping practices, maybe with some links to pedagogical issues.
  • I haven’t checked if it might be available already but it’d be useful to have grouped Reports. I don’t want to monitor the activities of most of my students but it’d be useful to know if at least one group member is accessing Moodle frequently.
  • According to many people, it’s usually best for the instructor to create the groups, and it’s what I did. Yet, I wonder if there’s a way for students to create their own groups. If there is, I haven’t noticed it and my students haven’t either. (Maybe it’s a setting…)

Would These Work?

  • There could be a feature which would divide the course up into randomized teams automatically. I eventually used Lab Partners to create random teams that I then grouped in Moodle. It didn’t take me that long but it’s a bit error-prone and cumbersome. Fortunately, my teams will remain stable during the semester.
  • This one may seem like a far-fetched idea but it would be great to have more information about participants while we’re forming the teams. For instance, there could be a database field for majors or even MBTI results. Then, one could combine teams based on theavailable data. Of course, it’s beyond the purpose of Moodle and can probably be done in Excel, but it’s much easier to have everything in the same place.
  • I will have students assess the participation of their teammates. For a while, I was looking at the Workshop module as a way to implement this in Moodle. I ended up deciding on the use of a custom-made peer-assessment system (built at my university) but it could be an interesting feature of Moodle groups.
  • This might sound crazy but I imagine a way for groups to have their own Moodle subsection. We keep talking about peer-teaching and such and I can’t imagine a better than to have students create and manage their own mini-course. One major benefit would be to improve the interface, IMHO. The main Moodle section for the course would contain all the public information and activities. All the “separate groups” activities and material would appear in “group mode.” Students could then understand very clearly what is visible to everyone in the course and what is meant for their subsection only. In separate sections of a course taught by the same instructor (or, in fact, by different instructors) it could also have amazing benefits. I seem to recall something like this instructor-section idea being discussed for a future version of Moodle. But the Moodle take could also have a student-focused structure. Of course, this should not have to go all the way to the Moodle administrator and instructors should be able to create these subsections themselves. But, if at all doable, it would help Moodle leapfrog Sakai (which does handle course sections).
  • I pretty much like the notion of a “session” or “workspace,” which might be the reason why I tend to separate a student’s participation in the course as a whole (through the main Moodle interface for a course) from a student’s participation in a specific team (through a subsection of the Moodle site for the course). So this might be idiosyncratic (and lunatic) but I’m getting a very clear idea of how this might all work. After all, the granularity of “a course” is both too large (“coarse?” wink ) and too fine for many of our needs. Any “course” could become something of a “metacourse” and the structure could be somewhat recursive.
  • Participants could have profiles to be shared only with their groupmates. As it stands, I think the scope of Moodle profiles is system-wide (students have the same profile for all of the courses they take at the same institution, but not for courses they might take on other Moodle installations). Having group-only profiles would be interesting as students manage their relationship with teammates.
  • Another crazy idea: groups working a bit like social networking sites (e.g. Facebook). You get “friends” with whom you can share “stuff” (images, comments, chats, etc.). Those groups can go beyond the limits of a single course so that you would use it as a way to communicate with people at school. The group could even have a public persona beyond the school and publish some information about itself and its projects. Moodle could then serve as a website-creator for students. To make it wackier, students could even maintain some of these contacts after they leave the school.
  • Or Moodle could somehow have links to Facebook profiles.

Ok, I’m really going overboard. It’s just that I really love Moodle and want it to do everything at the same time. Using groups has opened up a whole new side of Moodle for me and I find myself thinking out loud a lot.

media, podcasting, ramblings, rants, speech recognition

Why Podcasting Doesn't Work (Reason #23)

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Was listening to the latest episode of Scientific American’s ScienceTalk podcast (for Januray 3, 2007). As is often the case with some of my favourite podcasts, I wanted to blog about specific issues mentioned in this episode.

Here’s the complete “show notes” for this episode (22:31 running time).

In this episode, journalist Chip Walter, author of Thumbs, Toes and Tears, takes us on a tour of the physical traits that are unique to humans, with special attention to crying, the subject of his article in the current issue of Scientific American MIND. The University of Cambridge’s Gordon Smith discusses the alarming lack of any randomized, controlled trials to determine the efficacy of parachutes. Plus we’ll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this episode include www.sciammind.com; www.chipwalter.com; www.bmj.com.

AFAICT, there’s a direct link to the relevant MP3 file (which may be downloaded with a default name of “podcast.mp3” through a browser’s “save link as” feature),  an embedded media player to listen to the episode, some links to subscribe to podcast through RSS, My Yahoo, or iTunes, and a menu to browse for episodes by month. Kind of neat.

But what’s wrong with this picture?

In my mind, a few things. And these are pretty common for podcasts.

First, there are no clickable links in the show notes. Sure, anybody can copy/paste the URLs in a browser but there’s something just slightly frustrating about having to do that instead of just clicking on a link directly. In fact, these links are quite generic and would still require that people look for information themselves, instead of pinpointing exactly which scientific articles were featured in the podcast. What’s worse, the Chip Walter article discussed in the podcast isn’t currently found on the main page for the current issue of Scientific American’s Mind. To add insult to injury, the URL for that article is the mnemo-friendly:

http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?&articleID=33F8609A-E7F2-99DF-3F12706DF3E30E29

Catchy! 😉

These are common issues with show notes and are easily solved. I should just write SciAm to comment on this. But there are deeper issues.

One reason blogging caught on so well is that it’s very easy to link and quote from one blog to another. In fact, most blogging platforms have bookmarklets and other tools to make it easy to create a blog entry by selecting text and/or images from any web page, clicking on the bookmarklet, adding a few comments, and pressing the “Publish” button. In a matter of seconds, you can have your blog entry ready. If the URL to the original text is static, readers of your blog are able to click on a link accompanying the quote to put it in context. In effect, those blog entries are merely tagging web content. But the implications are deeper. You’re associating something of yourself with that content. You’re applying some basic rules of attribution by providing enough information to identify the source of an idea. You’re making it easy for readers to follow streams of thought. If the original is a trackback-/ping-enabled blog system, you’re telling the original author that you’re refering to her piece. You’re creating new content that can, in itself, serve as the basis for something new. You might even create a pseudo-community of like-minded people. All with a few clicks and types.

Compare with the typical (audio) podcast episode. You listen to it while commuting or while doing some other low-attention activity. You suddenly want to talk about what you heard. Go out and reach someone. You do have a few options. You can go and look at the show notes if they exist and use the same bookmarklet procedure to create a blog entry. Or you can simply tell someone “hey, check out the latest ScienceTalk, from SciAm, it’s got some neat things about common sense and human choking.” If the podcast has a forum, you can go in the forum and post something to listeners of that podcast. If the show notes are in blog form, you may post comments for those who read the show notes. And you could do all sorts of things with the audio recording that you have, including bookmark it (depending on the device you use to listen to audio files). But all of these are quite limited.

You can’t copy/paste an excerpt from the episode. You can’t link to a specific segment of that episode. You can’t realistically expect most of your blog readers to access the whole podcast just to get the original tidbit. Blog readers may not easily process the original information further. In short, podcasts aren’t easily bloggable.

Podcast episodes are often big enough that it’s not convenient to keep them on your computer or media device.  Though it is possible to bookmark audio and video files, there’s no standard method to keep and categorize these bookmarks. Many podcasts make it very hard to find a specific episode. Some podcasts in fact make all but the most recent episodes unavailable for download. Few devices make it convenient to just skim over a podcast. Though speed listening seems to be very effective (like speed reading) at making informative content stick in someone’s head, few solutions exist for speed listening to podcasts. A podcast’s RSS entry may contain a useful summary but there’s no way to scale up or down the amount of information we get about different podcast segments like we can do with text-based RSS feeds in, say, Safari 2.0 and up. Audio files can’t easily be indexed, searched, or automatically summarized. Most data mining procedures don’t work with audio files. Few formats allow for direct linking from the audio file to other online content and those formats that do allow for such linking aren’t ubiquitous. Responding to a podcast with a podcast (or audio/video comment) is doable but is more time-consuming than written reactions to written content. Editing audio/video content is more involving than, say, proofreading a forum comment before sending it. Relatively few people respond in writing to blogs and forums and it’s quite likely that the proportion of people who would feel comfortable responding to podcasts with audio/video recordings is much smaller than blog/forum commenters.

And, of course, video podcasts (a big trend in podcasting) aren’t better than audio podcasts on any of these fronts.

Speech recognition technology and podcast-transcription services like podzinger may make some of these issues moot but they’re all far from perfect, often quite costly, and are certainly not in widespread use. A few podcasts (well, at least one) with very dedicated listeners have listeners effectively transcribe the complete verbal content of every podcast episode and this content can work as blog-ammo. But chances that such a practice may become common are slim to none.

Altogether,  podcasting is more about passive watching/listening than about active engagement in widespread dialogue. Similar to our good old friend (and compatriot) McLuhan described as “hot,” instead of “cool” media. (Always found the distinction counter-intuitive myself, but it fits, to a degree…)

Having said all of this, I recently embarked in my first real podcasting endeavor, having my lectures be distributed in podcast form, within the Moodle course management system. Lecturecasts have been on my mind for a while. So this is an opportunity for me to see, as a limited experiment, whether it can appropriately be integrated in my teaching.

As it turns out, I don’t have much to do to make the lecturecasts possible. Concordia University has a service to set it all up for me. They give me a wireless lapel microphone, record that signal, put the MP3 file on one of their servers, and add that file in Moodle as a tagged podcast episode (Moodle handles the RSS and other technical issues). Neat!

Moodle itself makes most of the process quite easy. And because the podcasts are integrated within the broader course management structure, it might be possible to alleviate some of the previously-mentioned issues.  In this case, the podcast is a complementary/supplementary component of the complete course. It might help students revise the content, spark discussions, invite reflections about the necessity of note-taking, enable neat montages, etc. Or it might have negative impacts on classroom attendance, send the message that note-taking isn’t important, put too much of the spotlight on my performance (or lack thereof) as a speaker, etc.

Still, I like the fact that I can try this out in the limited context of my own classes.

gender, personal, Radio Open Source, ramblings, rants

Grapho-fétichistes et discrimination

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Les nostalgiques s’emballent, les romantiques se renfrognent, les alarmistes s’exclament, les sentimentalistes se morfondent. Mais ceux d’entre nous qui préfèrent regarder vers l’avenir se réjouissent. Optimistes, idéalistes, naïfs, jeunes, enthousiastes, amants du renouveau. Nous vivrons heureux.

J’écris mal. Très mal. C’est ce qu’on m’a dit toute ma vie. Ma «main d’écriture» est atroce. Ma caligraphie est horrible. «Tu écris comme un médecin», se moque-t-on. La honte. L’opprobre. L’insatisfaction. La discrimination.

Sérieux. Mon séjour aux écoles primaires et secondaires fut dominé par mes problèmes de caligraphie. À l’époque (de la fin des années 1970 à la fin des années 1980), c’était presqu’une condamnation, de la part du milieu scolaire (encore sclérosé). Non, on ne m’a pas tapé sur les doigts. Oui, on m’a «laissé faire». Mais on m’a jugé. On a utilisé mon écriture, ma caligraphie, contre moi.

Tel ce prof de français «enrichi», en Secondaire III qui m’a avoué, après que je me sois lié d’amitié avec lui, que la première fois qu’il a vu mon écriture, il me croyait avoir été mal classé, souffrant peut-être de déficience intellectuelle. Pour quelqu’un qui a officiellement été désigné comme «débile» à la naissance, c’est frappant comme commentaire.

On a cherché à expliquer mon manque d’aptitude pour l’écriture cursive. D’aucuns blâment mes yeux. Soit mon manque d’acuité visuelle (presbytie, myopie, astigmatisme). Ou mon strabisme. Ou ma latéralisation puisque, selon mon optométriste préféré, je suis gaucher (même si j’écris de la main droite). Quoi qu’il en soit, mon écriture manuscripte a été l’objet de nombreuses discussions. Évidemment, faut s’y attendre quand on a une mère ergothérapeute spécialisée en stimulation précoce, un père psycho-pédagogue spécialisé en dyslexie et une certaine facilité dans les matières scolaires…

J’ai parlé de «discrimination». Le mot est fort. Je l’assume, mais avec réserve. Je n’essaie pas de comparer l’attitude des gens face à mon écriture à de véritables actes discriminatoires. Je n’essaie même pas de dire qu’on ne m’a «donné aucune chance dans la vie», à cause de mon écriture ou quelque autre caractéristique. Mais j’ai longtemps été ostracisé par mes pairs.

«J’écris pas pour me plaindre, j’avais juste le goût de parler.» L’attention qu’on a portée à mon problème d’écriture n’était pas vraiment néfaste. En fait, elle m’a probablement permis de développer divers éléments de ma personalité. Au Cégep, l’illisibilité d’une de mes copies d’examen de philo m’a valu une faveur déguisée. Puisque le prof ne pouvait lire mon écriture, il m’a demandé de la lire moi-même. Ce faisant, j’ai pu donner à mes mots l’intonation qu’ils semblaient mériter. Je déteste le favoritisme, surtout quand j’en suis l’objet. Mais je crois qu’en cette circonstance, le privilège qui m’a été accordé était approprié. D’ailleurs, je crois bien que le prof m’aurait donné la même note s’il avait pu lire ma copie par lui-même.

Encore là, on me mettait à part. J’ai l’habitude, vous savez. Surtout à l’école.

De l’ostracisme contre le «maudit français» qu’on percevait en moi (mon père est Suisse et mon français parlé était plus européen que québécois) à la difficulté de me lier d’amitié avec qui que ce soit en raison de mon isolement constant. En passant par le fait que, n’ayant pas été baptisé, j’étais exclus de tous les sacrements catholiques qui unissaient les élèves de mon école. J’étais aussi le seul «enfant du divorce», dans cette école. Du moins, durant les premières années (mes parents se sont séparés au cours de ma première année scolaire). Par la suite, le divorce est devenu chose courante mais on ne m’a pas accordé plus d’intérêt pour autant. Mon strabisme, que certains peuvent aujourd’hui trouver «charmant» m’a longtemps convaincu de l’inesthétisme de mon visage. Jusqu’à ce jour, je me réjouis en voyant le strabisme accepté (à l’occasion) par le public télévisuel.

En contraste avec ma position en milieu scolaire, je jouissais d’une place de choix dans un milieu familial et social qui comptait surtout des adultes. Un peu l’animal de cirque d’un cercle de gens intéressés par l’apprentissage (y compris plusieurs profs). Dès mon plus jeune âge, j’ai eu la chance d’avoir de longues discussions avec des personnes fascinantes, généralement beaucoup plus âgées que moi. C’est sans doute ce qui m’a fait passer pour un type intéressant, pendant un temps.

Toujours est-il que je n’ai jamais été comme les autres. Et mon écriture le prouvait. Il y a fort à parier que mon écriture soit devenue, pour moi, une façon de m’approprier mon individualité. Pas vraiment une révolte contre l’autorité. Une négotiation avec elle. Une représentation frappante de mon amour du désordre.

Par ailleurs, mon manque de «talent» pour la calligraphie m’a clairement poussé dans une direction inverse à celle de l’artiste visuel. Pas tellement surprenant pour quelqu’un qui porte des lunettes depuis l’âge de deux ans mais je me suis jamais senti poussé vers le visuel. J’admire bien certains objets mais ma sensibilité visuelle est quasi-nulle. J’aime écouter et parler. C’est en m’éloignant des «arts plastiques» au début du secondaire que je suis devenu saxophoniste. C’est en devenant musicien que je suis devenu anthropologue. C’est en devenant anthropologue que j’ai commencé à être accepté. Tout ça à cause de mes yeux, diraient certains. Ils ont peut-être raison.

Ma motivation à écrire ce billet provient d’une discussion plutôt dérangeante pour moi, au cours d’un épisode de la balado-diffusion Open Source animée par Christopher Lydon. Toujours friands d’actualité (!), l’équipe de Lydon a décidé de sonner le signal d’alarme: l’écriture cursive disparaît et, avec elle, toute trace de «civilisation». Comme dit l’autre: «tout fout l’camp!». J’exagère à peine.

Invités lors de cet épisode, deux spécialistes de caligraphie (qui ont toutes deux échoué lors de leurs cours de caligraphie à l’école primaire), un graphologue et un graphiste. Les deux premières fétichisent les lettres manuscriptes, les associant à toutes sortes de valeurs sociales (une d’entre elles compare d’ailleurs la caligraphie à un complet veston d’homme d’affaires). Le troisième défend son travail en expliquant que des entreprises françaises, des joalliers et des services secrets utilisent la graphologie pour distinguer des candidats à divers postes. Profond?

Mon opinion des graphologues en tant que déterministes réductionnistes est supportée par plusieurs commentaires d’un d’entre eux, Roger Rubin, lors de cet épisode d’Open Source. Percevant une corrélation entre l’hyperactivité et la diminution de l’importance de la caligraphie, il assigne la causalité d’un phénomène psychique complexe à la simple écriture manuscrite. Fascinant! Même McLuhan était plus prudent!

D’ailleurs, d’autres invités parlent de ce que les études ont «démontré» («hors de tout doute») au sujet des rapports entre cognition et caligraphie. J’aimerais vraiment savoir ce que ça implique pour les non-voyants, les paraplégiques et tous ceux qui, comme moi, ont moins de facilité avec l’écriture manuscrite qu’avec d’autres moyens de communication.

La voix de la raison se fait entendre, vers la fin du programme, par la bouche du graphiste Chris Lozos. Plutôt que de lamenter la perte de l’écriture cursive si chère aux autres intervenants, il parle de l’écriture cursive comme d’un outil facilitant ou suppléant à certains types de communication. Toutefois, Lozos lui-même sombre à son tour dans l’extrapolation abusive, maugréant contre l’utilisation de la messagerie instantanée cause de la pensée mal formée. J’ai bien hâte que les membres de cette génération anxieuse aient fini de prendre ses opinions sur les générations plus jeunes comme des observations pertinentes.

Non, j’ai rien contre les générations qui nous ont précédé la nôtre. Et la nostalgie fait partie de mon quotidien. Simplement, ce dont je m’ennuie, ce n’est pas l’époque du cours classique et des religieuses autoritaires qui enjoignaient nos parents à s’asseoir dans la posture la plus droite possible (ce qui, soit dit en passant, n’est peut-être pas la meilleure posture).

L’animateur Lydon et Brendan Greeley (celui qui surveille le blogue) ont toutefois parlé de façon indirecte de différentiation sexuelle et d’écriture. Les jeunes filles qui «trippent» sur le papier, les vieilles dames que nous rappelle la notion d’écriture cursive. Personnellement, j’ai pas besoin de l’écriture cursive pour faire valoir mon côté féminin. Et, ne vous en déplaise, je ressens tout autant d’émotion à la lecture d’un message électronique bien senti qu’à la réception d’une lettre manuscrite.

C’est d’ailleurs le point central. Les nouvelles technologies de l’information et des communications nous éloignent de l’écriture cursive. Ça tombe bien pour moi.

adaptation, art, creativity, freedom, innovation, intellectual property, music, opinions, public domain, ramblings, rants

World Intellectual Property Exploitation Organization Ultimately Threatened (WIPEOUT)

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I do hope they realize it. The infamous, and famously exploitative, lobby group for “intellectual property” is ultimately going to lose.

Signs of their ultimate demise abound in the actions of both the RIAA and the MPAA (as well as equivalent lobby groups in other North America and Europe). These people just don’t get it.

Been laughing out loud at some comments about the recent debate over the alleged benefits of extending British copyright for performing artists over the fifty years that anyone in their right mind would think is fair. Even some musicians are revealing the lack of breadth in their argument: they just want to be able to live off the money from their recordings from the late 1950s and early 1960s. That would stimulate innovation how, exactly? The fact that it took these people that long to realize that copyrights are meant to be temporary is preciously funny. “Oh, wait! I thought I was supposed to keep my monopoly over these recordings forever.”

Also funny is the stance of Apple Corps. and the remaining Beatles over what should be done with their music. Their first recordings will come out of copyright in the UK (and several other places) in a few years. Instead of taking advantage of the situation by making sure that the last people who by their music get added value, they prevent online music stores from selling their tracks and release a set of anachronistic remixes. Weird.

Been thinking for a while about a type of “two cultures” theory. What Larry Lessig calls “Free Culture” on one side and “Commerical Culture” on the other. The meaning of “culture” used in those cases can be relatively close to anthropological concepts, though it’s also about “creative culture,” including arts and entertainments. In the U.S. of A., Lessig’s primary target, “free culture” seems to be under attack. Elsewhere, it florishes. In any way we think about it, “free culture” is more beneficial for the greater group than a “closed culture,” whether it’s based on commercial value, on jealousy, or both. If we think competitively, there is little doubt in my head that “free culture” will eventually win and that U.S. “commercial culture” (or “permission culture,” as Lessig calls it) will collapse, bringing down a large part of U.S. society.

That is, unless some people finally wake up.