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Coffee-ish Goodness

Thanks to the recommendation of Ruru, I finally joined the pod people…coffee pods, that is. I’m a big coffee drinker already, and I’ve tried just about every other method of coffee making–the french press, the Cuisinart Grind and Brew, Mr. Coffee and his clones, the paper cones, even the coffee sock and the percolator and the stovetop espresso maker. But nothing came close in quality to what I get from the pod machine, and the speed and convenience is just literally unreal. I’m astounded that this has been around for so long without my knowledge!

Bunn My CafeI did a lot of research before coming to a decision, looking at the market-dominating Senseo, the proprietary, non-compatible pod design of the Keurig, and the universally-despised Black and Decker. Single Serve Coffee.com was invaluable in this research, and it led me to what I think is the ideal solution (although expensive and with a pretty dumb name), the Bunn My Cafe. This thing, coupled with some good pods (I’m currently using Cool Beans Pods), really gives me the best cups of coffee, reliably, I’ve ever had. And the process from conceiving the idea “I feel like a cup of coffee” to taking that first sip takes literally under a minute. It even makes great iced coffee, with just as much convenience and flavor and simplicity, and even better, has BLUE LED’s!

I’ve even been tempted to carry my little Bunn with me on vacation. It’s a wonder!

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Moon Landing Commemorative

In honor of the anniversary of the first human visits to the moon, Google maps has added some very detailed, high resolution, moon maps. Be sure to zoom in all the way for the closest view.
Google Moon.

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Eportfolios, Blogs, and Wikis–call them…?

At most every conference, symposium, journal article, whatever, we see eportfolios, blogs and wikis grouped together. They’re technologies which have evolved somewhat together, and even though all three have differences, there is a clear unifying generic theme. But what’s the clear generic title?
Accessible Online Content Creation and Collaboration Tools?
Student Collaborative Content Tools?
Online Content Creation?

I’m not going to get a good acronym, really, and that’s really not important, of course. But it is a bit frustrating.

Eportfolios–allow students to assemble, present, reflect on, and get feedback on artifacts which demonstrate their learning.

Blogs–allow students to present, reflect on, and get feedback on their thinking during the process of developing it.

Wikis–allow students to collaborate on and present information and thinking as they assemble it.

It seems that for all of them, the common theme is the public part–the presentation. Making student work (or any of our work) part of the larger public community of discourse is a very powerful tool. The other half–opening up the work to comment, give feedback, and collaborate, is also part of the equation, but it follows mainly from the first part. It’s the publishing, and the ways in which these digital tools make enable (or at least facilitate) that publishing.

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Happy Birthday

Not to the blog, we haven’t got that far, yet, but to me.

Today’s my own and only birthday, and I’m very glad to be here! Planning to eat a whole lot of oysters, to celebrate, even though it’s a month with no “R” in it.

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Famine and Fashion

Famine and FashionThe official publication date is not until June 28, but we received our copies today of the new book, Famine and Fashion, edited (and including a superb article) by my favorite art historian. The book goes beyond art history, though, examining the rich theme of the seamstress through a wide range of disciplinary and theoretical lenses. I may have a personal connection, but I can still give an accurate back-cover blurb– “A fascinating and much-needed collection, an essential addition to the library of any student of labor history, Victorian cultural studies, or urban studies.”

Or you can trust the publisher’s description:

Like the figure of the governess, the seamstress occupied a unique place in the history of the nineteenth century, appearing frequently in debates about women’s work and education, and the condition of the working classes generally in the rapidly changing capitalist marketplace. Like the governess, the figure of the needlewoman is ubiquitous in art, fiction and journalism in the nineteenth century.

The fifteen articles in this book address the seamstress’s appearance as a ‘real’ figure in the changing economies of nineteenth-century Britain, America, and France, and as an important cultural icon in the art and literature of the period. They treat the many different types of needlewomen in the nineteenth century-from skilled milliners and dressmakers, some of whom owned their own businesses selling merchandise to other women (forming a unique ‘female economy’) to women who, through reduced circumstances, were forced into the lowest end of paid needlework, sewing clothing at home for starvation wages-like the impoverished shirt-maker in the famous Victorian poem by Thomas Hood, ‘The Song of the Shirt.’

This volume assembles the work of leading American, British and Canadian scholars from many different fields, including art history, literary criticism, gender studies, labor history, business history, and economic history to draw together recent scholarship on needlewomen from a variety of different disciplines and methodologies. Famine and Fashion will therefore appeal to anyone studying images of work in the nineteenth century, popular and canonical nineteenth-century literature, the history of women’s work, the history of sweated labor, the origins of the ready-made clothing industry and early feminism.

Available now (pre-order) at Amazon.com!

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ITC

We’re right in the midst of our Integrating Technology in the Classroom Institute, and I have to say that I feel that it’s going pretty well. Can’t be completely sure until the evaluations (midway and final) come in, but it seems like there’s a good, positive, buzz so far. It’s always hard to run these things–given the diversity of levels of interest, and levels of skill and experience, among the participants, but I think we’re learning every time. Finding the balance between pedagogy (what we care about most) and technology (where we find the biggest deficits) is difficult.

One thing that works very well, though, is the cohort-building this kind of program can accomplish. Keeping people together, all day every day, through a lot of activities, feeding them (fairly well, at least by BMCC standards), and making sure that they get chances to talk to one another, online and f2f, formally and informally–that always has some kind of effect which grows as the days go by.

Each day I seem to think of something else that we should have/could have/would have liked to add–but there’s only so much time and so much capacity the human spirit can tolerate. And we still have them biweekly in the fall!

And I have to say, in all modesty, that I thought my keynote: “Imagination, Knowledge, Magic and Crap: Teaching (and Learning) with (and from) Technology” (alternately titled: “Gunslingers, Bankers, and Whores: Teaching, Learning, and Technology on the Frontier”) was very well-received. I had fun with it, anyway!

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Kansas City in ’07

Heinlein CentennialI’ve just volunteered to help organize the Heinlein Centennial, in Kansas City, July 7, 2007. Don’t know what I can really do to help, but it’s likely to be a huge event. Hope I can at least manage to attend! (Kansas City in July–lovely!). 100 years since the birth of the dean of SF. I’ve got a big Heinlein post to write, sometime–maybe soon, I hope.

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British English

Mindstar RisingI’ve read quite a bit of Peter Hamilton (as I’ve described before) lately. So recently I stumbled on two volumes (the first and last, Mindstar Rising and The Nanoflower) of his earliest trilogy. These books have some of his strengths, but not all, and they’re certainly rough around the edges (besides having among the cheesiest of examples of cover art in recent SF history–I mean, the macho 22nd-Century secret agent in a Guess jacket, moussed hair, and a digital watch!), but it’s always fun to see a good writer at an early stage, before he gets the full confidence to do his real work. There’s an excellent portrait of a post-global-warming, post communist, neo-capitalist, England.

His protagonist, Greg Mandel, in these books uses a couple of phrases over and over again, and I’m wondering if they’re common British English, or just Mandel/Hamilton English. I’ve never heard them used before. The first of these, “no messing,” means (obviously) something like “seriously,” or “no shit.” Like “this is a bad situation, no messing.” And the other one is less unusual, but still I kept catching my toe on it, so to speak. He has several characters consistently say “telling you” as an intensifier (similar to “no messing”). So there are sentences like “telling you, Lisa’s in a bad way, no messing.”

There are other Britishisms that I recognize, and have seen before, and they’re just a fun flavor. But those two really did keep disturbing me–I couldn’t seem to read through them transparently.

Among the more familiar ones, too, there’s one that I’ve always wondered about. Where American English would use “it’s up to me” (or “you” or “them” or whatever), the British English version is always “it’s down to me” (as in the well-known lyric from the Stones’ “Under My Thumb”) to mean “it’s my responsibility” or “fault” or “depends on me.” That one gets me very curious. Why the divergence? Where and when did it come from? Neither usage carries a particularly apparent logical or semantic advantage–it seems just arbitrary. But why are they down and we up? Puzzling!

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Some Encouragement

In a follow-up to my rant a couple of weeks ago, I should report that I emailed all the members of the NY State Assembly’s Education committee, to tell them how I felt about the idiotic Assembly Bill 8306 (requiring the teaching of “intelligent design” in NY public schools). The majority of them responded with the standard automated “thank you for your interest blah, blah, blah” email.

But Scott Stringer (who represents Manhattan’s West Side and Clinton), bless him, not only responded with a real email, written by a real human being, he also has exactly the right position on this stupid bill.

Dear Dr. Ugoretz:

I am writing in response to your email regarding Assembly Bill A. 8036.

I strongly oppose A.8036. Assembly Bill A. 8036 would require all New York
State public schools to teach intelligent design alongside the theory of
evolution. While I respect the right of individuals to their personal
beliefs, it is the state’s duty to make sure that recognized scientific
theory rather than religious doctrine shape the curriculum of the public
schools. The Theory of Evolution has been a widely accepted foundation for
modern biology. Lacking comparable support within the scientific community,
intelligent design should not be taught alongside the theory of evolution.

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns. If you have any further
questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact my office.

Sincerely,
Scott M. Stringer
Assemblymember, 67th A.D.

Applause, Assemblymember Stringer!!!

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