I love getting new stuff. My wife gets in a tizzy sometimes, and I know being greedy for material things is not the road to happiness. But, damn, I love new stuff.
I just got a new IMac. It is so cool looking, sometimes I just duck my head into my office so I can get a glimpse. The display (screen) is 21.5 inches. That's bigger than any computer screen I've ever had. I get lost in it! And fast! Has the double intel processor and a ton of ram memory; speaking of memory: one terabyte. That's like a million gigabytes!!
The end result is so clean and detailed that there's a 3D effect on some of the applications. If, say, you do a background of red bricks, and put another level on it with some text or something, the text looks like it's floating above the background.
While I was at it, I sprung for a Time machine. All my work gets backed up automatically every 15 minutes, but only if something new was put in.
It's true. I'm bad. I love new stuff.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Interesting Class
Began today with a large group question: tell us about your topic. I was delighted that each person had a topic. This is a truly fantastic group.
Lots of different directions; as always, the hardest part was leading them to narrow the focus of their topic. People kept phrasing their topics in terms that would require a couple of books to explore. Sigh. But there were a number of leads given by class members.
I liked the follow up also: asked if anyone had a question about his topic that he would like to ask the class. Essence did. Two questions. A kind of instant survey.
I can't think of anything else to say. I think I'll stop now.
Lots of different directions; as always, the hardest part was leading them to narrow the focus of their topic. People kept phrasing their topics in terms that would require a couple of books to explore. Sigh. But there were a number of leads given by class members.
I liked the follow up also: asked if anyone had a question about his topic that he would like to ask the class. Essence did. Two questions. A kind of instant survey.
I can't think of anything else to say. I think I'll stop now.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
One of the reasons we English teachers first fell in love with ISearch papers was the variety of sources the process makes use of. This was about 1979-1980. Hard to believe that there was a time with no internet, nothing but libraries to go to for information! Kenn Macrorie who was the guy who came up with the idea in his book, I Search, suggested such radical ideas as interview people, look at a movie, visit a place and hang out. Wow! Freedom! Later, as the internet became more and more in use by scholars for research, the process worked just as well, but back then: what a novelty!
His basic idea had to do with why not have students write about things that were really important to them. Why insist on having them search for things that had already been searched? The "I" replaced the "Re" in thinking about the kind of research this was really about: what do "I" care about...really care about.
He suggested some general topics of things people care about in their lives that really matter: can I become a fireman? what kind of car should I buy? what does it mean that I have Parkinson's disease? why did my grandparents leave their country to come to America?
And when we collected our first set of ISearch papers, we discovered the next great thing: unlike research papers, ISearch were really interesting to read! We found ourselves spending more time on them because the writers wrote out of genuine interest and this made the writing great fun to read. What a concept!
The academic purists who could not see at first how this method would help in scholarly work, we used the same MLA citations and source lists as any other research paper. Moreover, the interesting (to the student) topics helped develop writing skills simply because the writers had much more of a feeling of ownership for the papers than they once did. One more moreover was that Isearch papers were easy to translate into academic papers; students simply changed the case from first to third person. The research was valid, the sources were valid--at least as valid as any other research.
And the final capper had to do with our own experience writing Isearch papers. I have written them up through graduate school. They really are fun. My sense was and is that I got as much if not more academic payoffs than writing a more traditional paper. I learned more, I researched more, I considered going to sources other than the printed page. I was a "free writer"--wow, I made a joke. Thank you for noticing.
His basic idea had to do with why not have students write about things that were really important to them. Why insist on having them search for things that had already been searched? The "I" replaced the "Re" in thinking about the kind of research this was really about: what do "I" care about...really care about.
He suggested some general topics of things people care about in their lives that really matter: can I become a fireman? what kind of car should I buy? what does it mean that I have Parkinson's disease? why did my grandparents leave their country to come to America?
And when we collected our first set of ISearch papers, we discovered the next great thing: unlike research papers, ISearch were really interesting to read! We found ourselves spending more time on them because the writers wrote out of genuine interest and this made the writing great fun to read. What a concept!
The academic purists who could not see at first how this method would help in scholarly work, we used the same MLA citations and source lists as any other research paper. Moreover, the interesting (to the student) topics helped develop writing skills simply because the writers had much more of a feeling of ownership for the papers than they once did. One more moreover was that Isearch papers were easy to translate into academic papers; students simply changed the case from first to third person. The research was valid, the sources were valid--at least as valid as any other research.
And the final capper had to do with our own experience writing Isearch papers. I have written them up through graduate school. They really are fun. My sense was and is that I got as much if not more academic payoffs than writing a more traditional paper. I learned more, I researched more, I considered going to sources other than the printed page. I was a "free writer"--wow, I made a joke. Thank you for noticing.
Monday, October 19, 2009
This One's for Real
I alreadyknow what the quote means to the person who first made, a guy named Alfred Korzybski. He wrote a lot about the meanings we give to words. How it is that often, far too often, we confuse the word with the thing it represents.
What if, we're going on a date? Being cheap, you decide to write the name of the person on a piece of paper and take the paper instead of the person? We do stuff just as silly. React to a person's race or profession or where he lives, but not react to the real person.
There are two general things different betwen maps and territories: 1. A map is never completely up to date, the territory keeps changing. 2. No map ever contains everything in the territory; maps leave out most of what's there. Words are like that too, but we think because we label something, it will remain that something forever. In the time you've taken to read this, thousands of your body's cells have fallen off your body, and thousands more have come into being to replace them.
I'm really interested in what you think.
What if, we're going on a date? Being cheap, you decide to write the name of the person on a piece of paper and take the paper instead of the person? We do stuff just as silly. React to a person's race or profession or where he lives, but not react to the real person.
There are two general things different betwen maps and territories: 1. A map is never completely up to date, the territory keeps changing. 2. No map ever contains everything in the territory; maps leave out most of what's there. Words are like that too, but we think because we label something, it will remain that something forever. In the time you've taken to read this, thousands of your body's cells have fallen off your body, and thousands more have come into being to replace them.
I'm really interested in what you think.
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