Teaching Digital English by Gian Pagnucci

My latest research project is aimed at exploring the new ways people are teaching English in the Web 2.0 environment. So I'm interested in people teaching English via blogs, wikis, SecondLife, podcasts and videocasts, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, including new media I don't even know about yet. What I want to explore are the pedagogical beliefs of the English teachers who use these new technologies.

After looking through the limited set of choices on this blogging system, I've gone with the Chicago landscape. I couldn't get Indiana, PA, my real home or even Pittsburgh, the biggest city in the area. Philadelphia was an option, but Pittsburghers don't care for Philly. And I'd have liked a city from my home state, Wisconsin, but no Madison or Milwaukee skylines either. So the windy city it is. And light blue is the only color, not even the dark blue of da' Bears.

As the clock cruises towards midnight, I thought I would take just a few minutes to write something on this National Day on Writing. I'm using the day as a spark to relaunch my blog and send it into a new area of exploration: the teaching of digital English. Unfortunately most of my time for writing today was sucked up writing a teaching evaluation for someone. That's important work, but it cuts into ones chance to be a productive scholarly writer. Just as so much other stuff does in the academy. And so I was going to go to bed having given up on oing any other writing today. But then I recalled Donald Murray's call for "no day without a line." So I came back to the computer to post this entry and re-engage with the blogosphere just as the National Day on Writing draws to a close.

Today I'll be giving a presentation about this chair blog I've been keeping. I'm also 2 weeks from finishing up my term as interim chair. So it seems like a nice convergence of things which might bring a bit of closure to this blog. Not that closure is a goal for blogging. Actually, the opposite seems to be true. That blogs have no closure beyond people just giving up on them. On the other hand, both as a writer and a reader, I am always looking for closure. I love when a story comes full circle and some small detail from the beginning proves critical at the end (a la "rosebud").

As I've maintained this chair's blog, I've often thought about my friend Steve Krause's Official Blog. For about 5 years, beginning in Aug. 2003, Steve kept both an official and an unofficial blog. His official blog was "About my scholarship, teaching, and life at EMU." His unofficial blog was about the rest of his life. In Feb. 2008, Steve wrote "And thus ends Steven D. Krause's Official Blog." Presumably, it was too hard to blog in two places or about separate topics. I have to ask Steve about that more. He has written about the topic as well. What he did, though, was to combine everything into one blog about "School, work, life, and everything else." You can read that blog at StevenDKrause.com.

I've thought about Steve's experience a number of times because I have a sense my own blog writing has suffered from this split focus. In this chair's blog, I've tried to separate chair issues from the rest of my life writing. But maybe that separation just doesn't work. It seems like it would be more fun to write about whatever I want to in my blog. It's not like there are any particular rules. No one said my blog had to only be about chiar issues. It's just that's what I've been focusing on in this blog.

But perhaps, after a year, it's time to rethink my blog goal. I'm drawn to the idea of relaunching my blog with a new look, more open focus, and more of a narrative style.

Steve and I will be mulling such issues over at the Computers and Writing Conference next week at UC Davis. If you are in the area, come join the conversation. We'll probably even buy you a beer.

 

Following up on my previous blog entry, I've been thinking about the issue of blog sustainability. Why do some people keep blogging while so many other people drop out of the act. Myself, I'm an infrequent blogger at best. I enjoy writing in my blog while I'm doing it, but I never seem to find a way to make writing in my blog a habit. Most professional novelists will tell you that they write every day at a certain for a set amount of words or a set time period. But as a novelist, one has the time to dedicate to writing consistently.

As a chair, my time is always in flux. For a chair, what is consistent is chaos. Every day, things change. Just when I get some free time, someone will walk into my office with a new crisis or the dean will call and totally screw up my scheduling plans and I'll need to start from scratch. That's daily life as a chair, chaos.

Over time, hopefully a chair learns to carve out time. It's nice to teach while chairing, if you can find the time, because at least that guarantees the chair an hour or two away from the chair worries. The trick, then, is leaving behind the chair concerns so one can focus on teaching. That's a hard trick to master!

I have been keeping this blog on and off for a year now while I've been interim chair of my department. I think one limitation of my approach has been that I've kept my blog to one limited focus on chair related issues. That's useful in terms of blog theme, but it has a major drawback. It's not as interesting to write. Lots of blogs are more free flowing, weaving in all sorts of topics from a person's life. As a motivator for writing, this free topic approach lets the person write about any topic they want. That's great for letting a person keep tackling issues which they find exciting. Chair issues, by contrast, can get a little depressing at times. So I wonder if sometimes I don't get around to making blog entries because I'm weary of dealing with the same chair issues over and over.

Well the Spring 2009 semester is winding to a close. I was telling a colleague one thing I really missed when I first went to work after graduating from college was the cycle of semesters. As a teacher, I love working on my syllabi and getting psyched about the coming semester. Then there's the fun of meeting your students and getting to know them. But then things never quite go as you plan. I usually plan too much and can't get to it all. Every semester I tell myself to leave some catch up days, but then I get too ambitious and don't want to give up the time. Which backfires. You would think I would learn!

As the chair, it seems I'm  just as busy now as during the rest of the semester. I am looking forward to May and hoping that it will help stem the ongoing flood of emails. There are a lot of awards dinners and luncheons to go to at this time of year. Those are fun, especially because these events give me lots of chances to brag to IUP administrators about how great the English department is. But those meeting all take up time. And now we are into monitoring fall enrollments, hiring temporary faculty, and doing some end of the year reporting. The work keeps coming. Just as well, though, since the sun hasn't been out much in Indiana until today. But it's supposed to be in the 80s this weekend, so I'll try to get out for a walk with my family.

For once I'm on top of things enough to make a live blog entry while I'm traveling. I had hoped to do that when I went to Taiwan, but my wireless access there kept dying. But today I'm sitting in the lobby of the William Penn Omni hotel and picked up a decent wireless single. Of course who knows who is hacking into my computer as I write this?

At any rate (I should tag that phrase since I think I'm using it too much in this blog), today I am giving a presentation on about the blogging I've been doing as a chair. Just realized that I should clarify that CEA is the College English Association. That's a natural organization which looks combines interest in literature and composition, two areas which usually get separated more. I've been a longtime board member of PCEA which is the Pennsylvania affiliate of CEA. We hold a conference every year, and I manage the PCEA Web Site.

I'm really just at the formative stage of this topic. Partly I need to get more disciplined about making blog entries. But then often I'll sit down and spend some time writing in the blog and feel guilty because then I'm not doing something more important. Still, surely I have some sort of obligation to my reading public. Or at least I had an obligation before I alienated that reading public by getting too sidetracked and not posting anything for too long.

Anyway, I do feel I'm back on track with making regular entries. Hopefully. Plus I find I start to really enjoy this writing after awhile. I like the idea of mapping out the chair's work over time. So though I've completed a pretty incomplete map, at least over time there will be something to look back at.

Plus, I've always wanted one of those globes with the pictures of the sea monsters on it. I mean, its easy to find an accurate map. But what fun is that? I prefer to think there is still a little magic and mystery left in the world. Maybe that's what this blog really needs, a few fantastical entries. Maybe I'll just make something wild and sensational up. A little fiction. Would that throw you as a reader?

Ok, this will be my last email blog post, I promise! (at least for awhile)

One thing about being chair is you tend to think, I better keep a record of that. So I am always inclined to save emails, even my own outgoing messages, whereas prior to this I deleted like crazy. But the chair has to be ready in case there are any accountability issues to deal with. So I am constantly saving emails and trying my best to file them in a systematic way.

For awhile, I was keeping everything in online folders which I access through my various computers using imap. But, that quickly led to me getting the dreaded "email quota at 90%" warning message. That's a message you don't want to see. Plus, while mail on the macintosh is a good email program for handling tons of email on a server, Outlook on the pc side slows to a jurrasic pace whenever it encounters too much email on the server. Just one more of those little "macs are better" items.

With this problem in mind, I went to IUP's Academic Computer Policy Advisory Committee (ACPAC), of which I have been a longtime member, in hopes of getting the problem addressed. Naturally, it's a cost issue. IUP gives faculty 500 MB of storage. I think it is about the same for students. Google was giving people 2 GB (about 4 times as much) and recently jumped to 7 GB. Some people felt raising the quota would just encourage undisciplined email use. Probably true. But even the people who are really good at managing email have told me they often hit the quota warning. So I was pleased that IUP's Chief Information Officer (I think that's the right IT title--I have to check) said the quota will grow to 2 GB in the fall. Thank goodness. A lot of us need that.