A few weeks ago an older relative mailed me a newspaper clipping. “Free Speech Is the Basis of a True Education” is emblazoned in staunch serif font at the top of the page. Maybe you’ve read the article, which was written by the dean of the University of Chicago …
Austin Skyline at Dusk by Randall Chancellor
Right now I am sitting at work, watching the minutes tick by until I have to field a call from a distance learning company to see if I can cajole them into paying me a living wage. Later I’ll have to squeeze …
A Cool Thing is a weekly post wherein I find something nifty online and talk about why it’s awesome.
“Ducks” is a series of short comics by Kate Beaton (of “Hark! A Vagrant” fame). It recounts a few stories from her time working at a mining site in Fort …
Let’s see if this does what I hope it’ll do. In the mean time, here’s a picture of some dude rocking an awesome uniform:
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I’m learning to tailor my own clothes.
This seems like an imperative thing to learn considering the arbitrary sizing of women’s clothing. I’m 5’3”-ish and 155 pounds, and though most of that weight sits well on my body it is not flattered by commercial designers. I’m unique. So is everyone. …
Okay. Writing. 300 words every single day. Publicly. Writer shaming! It works for other things, yes?
I tried this idea, then abandoned it, and I’m trying to pick it up again because A) I need the discipline and B) I need to learn to be less afraid of sharing my …
I initially wrote this post for the Games and Culture class blog taught by Dr. Zach Whalen at the University of Mary Washington. I wanted to archive it on my own blog as well, partially because this topic is so dear to my heart and partially because I want to …
This has more or less been my life to date, both literally and digitally (yes, even the crazy bit where you freefall out of your house and into the sky. Some days have felt like that, anyway).
I’m coming up on the end of my internship at NANO Fiction (though …
Image courtesy of puuikibeach
That’s more or less what my room looks like right now (sans awesome pirate flag). I’m trying to get all of the crap I’ve collected over the past decade or so sorted out, donated, tossed if it’s past the point of usefulness to anyone in any …
Before I get into the bulk of this post, a minor update: I’m going to be presenting this project at UMW’s Kemp Symposium, which is in actuality kind of a big deal. I’m not sure how I’m going to present the project yet or what kind of resources I’ll have …
Martin Weller’s The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice has finally come up on my to-read list, and I’ve realized that I probably should have started with this book in the first place. Because Weller and Jim Groom share a lot of the same ideas on how digital …
And metaphorically the heart is where all the best words come from.
If you don’t exercise your muscles, they’ll atrophy. This is a truism of writing as well: to write, you must write. Bam, simple. Except apparently if you’re me, and you’re one of those kinds of perfectionists, and …
In an effort to make this blog an actual thing that actual humans (and the occasional small rodent) might enjoy reading, I’m going to stick a few personal posts here. Hopefully that will also make it easier to transition it back to ds106 work and whatever else I want to …
Seriously though. I know astrological spring and meteorological spring are different concepts and I’m all for more snow, but the bouncing back and forth thing has got to stop. GET IT TOGETHER, VIRGINA.
This post is a day late thanks to the Sweet Briar creative writing conference eating most of …
My final paper is proceeding apace. And by “apace” I mean WHY DID I SIGN UP FOR THIS LAST SEMESTER? What made me think this was a good plan? DEAR GOD I GRADUATE IN TWO MONTHS!
Panicking aside, I’ve made some decent progress on sorting out how I want to …
Here we are, just about at the halfway mark, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout so far in my edtech extravaganza it’s that there is so much I still have to learn. Hopefully the conference next week can help me fill in a few more blanks, but man, …
You guys, the next couple of weeks are going to be crazy exciting.
Next Thursday I’ll be attending OpenVA, “Virginia’s First Annual Open and Digital Learning Resources Conference,” as the tagline proclaims. Looking over the proposed schedule is overwhelming, especially since the final schedule will …
This week’s post is going to be a bit short, but I’m hoping to lay the groundwork for a return to where all this madness began: ds106! My initial proposal revolved around framing a discussion of open education and edtech with my experiences in that class, and while I’ve …
All right, I know I said I was going to discuss ds106 exclusively this week and go back to the NITLE paper I started with, but in finishing up this chapter of Alexander’s The New Digital Storytelling I came across one idea that I do want to explore in more …
New text this week! There’s still a lot I have to digest (and re-read) in Spiro and Alexander’s NITLE paper, but for the moment I’m moving on to Bryan Alexander’s book The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media. I’m delighted to have such a specific resource at my …
Before I carry on any further with digesting Spiro and Alexander’s paper on open education in the liberal arts, I wanted to do two things: first, try to clarify a little of what I was discussing last week, and jump to the end of the paper to check out the …
Okay, we’re off and running and I am writing my first blog post for my edtech/online ed independent study here at the University of Mary Washington.
The first point I would like to make is this: I am more than a little overwhelmed.
I’m essentially taking this semester to give …
I DID IT. I HAVE A PROPOSAL THAT MY ADVISER IS SIGNING OFF ON. THAT IS HAPPENING. TODAY.
So if you’re interested in what the Big Scary Research Project is (more or less) going to be about, read on! The short version is that I’m …
If there’s one thing I learned (and actually got some practice overcoming) last semester, it’s that I have an intense aversion to starting new things. So this research project proposal? Yeah. It’s still kicking my ass. The only way to fix that… IS TO BEGIN.
I have taken into account …
Bulk editing of posts is one of the most useful features that WordPress offers. It’s also one of the most fatally flawed, because while you can easily add categories and tags to large numbers of posts at once, it’s impossible to remove large numbers of posts from a category using …
I’m working on making my blog a bit shinier and better for the new year. That means lots of wonkiness and new layouts and generally a lot of derping around for a bit. Also an excuse for more lame bunny puns! Because those never get old, right??
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TUNE IN AND FIND OUT!
Seasonal! Kinda! Also appropriate considering there is a LOT of new stuff! Starting with dusting off the cobwebs on WordPress and getting everything shiny and updated for 2013.
So. Here are my big scary awesome projects for the new year:
Big Scary Awesome Research Paper–…
… is what lies ahead.
Perhaps this is crass, but I have to say it: holy crap.
When I signed up for ds106 last semester, I think I was expecting a fun, creative class that would help me earn all my required credits towards graduation without pushing me over the …
“WHO IS THE STAR-BEARER,
AND WHAT WILL HE LOOSE THAT IS BOUND?”
In 1976, Patricia A. McKillip published a fantasy novel that became a quiet legend among those who read it and fell in love with the world she created. The Riddle-Master of Hed told the story of a man …
