Teaching Digital English by Gian Pagnucci

A Call for Cool Teachers

2009-11-16T03:30:36Z

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.

I have a list of people I'll be talking to over the coming months. And I plan to post short podcasts of some of my interviews with folks. But I'd also love to get suggestions from people about cool English teachers who would be worth interviewing. So, if you happen to be reading this blog, and you have a good idea for a teacher I should talk to, please post a comment. In fact, you don't even have to recommend an English teacher, though I am primarily focusing on English teachers for my research. But I'd be happy to talk to anyone interesting. So feel free to make some suggestions.

Site Design

2009-11-16T03:23:08Z

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.

Johnson-Eilola's book looks at design issues, so I have to say I feel pretty limited with this blog system's lack of choices. But the Bears did once train in my hometown, Platteville, Wisconsin, back when they won the Super Bowl in 1985. So I'm still a Bears fan and will be an adopted Chicagoan at least for now. Plus my good friend and mentor, Dr. David Schaafsma, teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he invited me to UIC to give a guest lecture about superhero graphic novels. So that must make me some kind of honorary Chicagoan (but only kind of, since I almost misspelled Chicagoan as Chicagoian, but I was always bad at spelling).

The National Day on Writing

2009-10-21T03:22:28Z

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.

I hope many of you had a chance to write today as well. Better a little late than never when it comes to writing!

Computers & Writing 2009; Closure?

2009-06-19T15:31:02Z

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").

I can see from my first day at the C&W conference something I already basically knew was true. That those who blog actively also make blogging a part of their constant work/life practices which are saturated with tech use. So while attending a workshop, I observed people who post their notes on their blog as they listen to the workshop (in this case using a ning private social networking site). People also carry their cell phones with them (iPhones of course!) so they can twitter about their experiences or post brief facebook entries about their experiences at the conference. In other words, there is a growing group of people who remain linked in all the time so they can communicate and record their experiences.

That's not a radical observation. It's already been made by others. What is interesting for me as a chair, though, is to see how some people's work styles have shifted while other types of jobs remain rooted in earlier modes. As chair, I've found I actually prefer to use even email less and less to solve problems. I can in 5 minute conversation explain and resolve issues with faculty and persuade them to things which I could never do on email or via facebook. Time, or the lack of it, is always the key for a chair: Time to manage people issues, time to meet deadlines, time to track progress on issues. As chair I need less linkage to the large tech community and more local linkages to my faculty and administrators. Now if all those people were linked in, as they might be in a big company, I would be able to resolve issues, perhaps, via twitter. But of course my faculty, like so many in English, are mostly not linked in.

I had a friend years ago who left the technical writing company where we worked to take a job at Microsoft. This was back in maybe 1990. At the time, MS was just rising and she thought it would be a really exciting place to work. What she found, though, was that people there didn't talk to each other much in person. They talked to each other via email or chat from their cubicles. She said she missed our small firm chats around the coffee machine. I'm sure that wasn't the only sort of interaction that went on in at MS in those days, but she was struck by the difference when she got their.

All of this calls to mind the book Feed I'm reading about teens who are permanently linked to the world net through a sort of neural link surgically placed in their head. The mechanics of the link are only sort of explained in the book, but it's classic cyberpunk and the concept makes sense. The kids stay online in their heads all the time, so they can call up encyclopedia info., chat with friends, even watch TV and news in their minds. But they also are constantly bombarded with ads telling them what to buy to stay hip. The kids are, as one might expect, a bit screwed up. A cool book overall which I am only a ways into. But the language and writing style is fascinating. One of our grad. students, Josh Lederman, told me about the book last year. He regularly teaches it.

Blog Transitions

2009-06-11T17:44:49Z

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.

Blog Sustainability

2009-06-11T17:36:28Z

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!

Blog Topics

2009-06-11T17:29:27Z

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.

End of the Semester

2009-04-24T18:49:21Z

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.

A Blog from the Road (live from CEA!)

2009-03-28T12:58:38Z

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?

Email Quotas

2009-03-28T12:47:51Z

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.

Charging for Email?

2009-03-28T12:40:57Z

There's an electronic hoax that has circulated about the government charging an email tax so that people would have to pay a fee for each email message they send. I think in Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign she was asked about it and said she would fight the tax. Then of course her staff learned there is no such bill to impose a tax. That's still true, as far as I know.

But would an email fee be such a bad thing? Probably. Still, when I think about how much stuff everyone copies me on as chair. And sometimes, people will be in the middle of a discussion. Then someone copies me on it. So I read the message and think, "what the heck are they talking about?" That forces me to decide if I do somehow need to respond to this issue so I have to backtrack, but often I never did get the first few emails. Plus no one ever bothers to say, "let me catch everyone up on the situation."

If people had to pay a small fee, even 10 cents, for each message, at least they would think twice about sending unnecessary emails. And maybe that would make spamming non-cost effective, though who knows if spammers could be forced to pay the fee. Though it might be possible for the internet service provider to charge the fee.

Still, in the long run, I suppose it would be the average consumer who would have to pay the fee and it would be another $40 or $50 per month we'd have to shell out. So I guess I should just admit it's not the best idea.

Email Subject Lines

2009-03-28T12:32:44Z

At the Ward Churchill event I wound up chatting with this bright CMU student named Heather. I was telling her about the nightmare which is the chair's email load. And in particular I was complaining, why can't people learn to use a simple subject line? I have one graduate student who for some reason never puts anything in the subject line. Most people use very vague or generic email subject lines which require you to then read the message. And then lots of people just hit reply to any old message. Some people will start a whole new issue up by replying to an old topic so that the subject line has no link to the body of the message. That's fine if you only are getting a handful of emails each day. But I get 100-200 per day. If the subject line is clear, I can more quickly decide how to handle a message. Or to ignore it. I suppose a vague subject line forces me to look at the email. But if the subject line is an old issue, I might think the message is unimportant when it really is critical. I suppose the larger problem is just that as chair I get too much email.

Email Mountains

2009-03-28T12:22:29Z

Hmm. Here's a new aspect of blogging I had not considered before. In my last blog entry, I mentioned the mountain of email the chair faces after returning from a conference or other trip. That reminded me that there are several email related chair topics I was thinking of writing about in the blog. But now I'm wondering if I have written about these issues before. I guess I need to explore the blog search feature to make sure I'm not being redundant. But at least some of these issues I know are new.

Anyway, about that email mountain. When I can, I do bring my laptop on trips to stay on top of the email. That can, help, but it can be equally depressing. At CCCC I was sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco chatting with my wife on my cell phone. As I sat talking to her, I could see my laptop on the desk. In the space of 10 minutes I watched about 20 email messages come in. And this was after I had cleared the new messages out.

One other problem linked to email is that while I have a laptop, half the time I can't get wireless. Wireless had been free in airports, but now there is always a fee through this boingo hotspot service. And conferences are often in Hiltons which charge about $14 per day for wireless. I wouldn't mind paying if my total travel budget at IUP wasn't under $400. I don't even get any extra travel money as chair! I suppose I could allocate some funds to myself, but that doesn't really seem fair and the budget for the dept. is too small anyway. At least as chair, I finally was prompted to apply for an IUP senate travel grant since I had written about a dozen letters for my colleagues who were applying for travel grants. And the result? Still no word. Hopefully I didn't mess up the application for the grant somehow.

Conference Season

2009-03-28T12:13:28Z

Well I'm getting back to my blog after the rush of the conference season. I had 3 different talks to give in March plus revising a book chapter, so I'm afraid I fell way behind on my blogging. Of course I made a lot of these speaking commitments before I realized I would be filling in as interim chair. I gave an invited lecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago on why interest in superheroes has persisted for so long and become greater in recent years.That was a fun talk to give, and it was during IUP's spring break, so I didn't have to miss my chair duties to give the talk. But since it was 3 day trip, it also meant I didn't manage to do much catching up as chair during the break. The real difficult thing is that whenever I go away as chair, I usually return to a mountain of emails. And when I went to CCCC in San Francisco, I returned to yet another faculty member who had become ill. That's always hard, both because its tough hearing about my colleagues dealing with illnesses, particularly when they are serious, and also finding replacements always requires lots of time.

Academic Freedom and Ward Churchill

2009-02-20T18:26:48Z

I've certainly learned this year that it's never a dull moment when you're chair. Next week Ward Churchill and Cary Nelson are coming to IUP to talk about Academic Freedom after 9/11. Churchill has been attacked a lot by conservatives across the country. He was especially targeted by Bill O'Reilly who seemed to mentioned Churchill over 40 times on his T.V. show. That's a lot of T.V. coverage for a professor!

I should point out that I disagree with Churchill's use of the phrase "little Eichmanns" in his controversial essay. I'm very sympathetic with his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. The Bush administration did a terrible job, in particular, with foreign policy, making us more hated than ever around the world. But we weren't blameless before. Still, if I had been Churchill's editor, I would have told him to take out the "little Eichmanns" comment. I don't think you should ever blame a victim of a horrific crime. And even if American big business has hurt the rest of the world, as it has, some guy trying to make a living as a stock broker is just that, a guy trying to make a living. No one person can change American business practices. At least, not one little person. Eichmann, bad as he was, was in a position of influence and power, not just doing a job.

But whether or not I agree with Ward Churchill, I will say this: the man has a right to express his views. In fact, I am glad to have the opportunity to hear him talk about his views. It seems very clear to me, particularly after reading an article by Eric Cheyfitz on "Framing Ward Churchill: The Political Construction of Research Misconduct" in vols. 26/27 of Works and Days (2008-2009) that Churchill got mistreated by his university. It seems to me that whatever pretense to academic principles was made, Churchill was really being fired because he had made unpopular statements. What was worse, the statements were not even objected to until some conservative commentators started complaining. You can't start a whole process of inquiry after a huge news story breaks and then somehow pretend you are being objective. That is dishonesty at its worst. Churchill's academic work only was investigated because he'd been attacked by conservative voices like O'Reilly's.

And that brings me to Churchill's talk at IUP. A small group of people have called/emailed to object to Ward Churchill's coming to campus. That's their right. I'm happy to let people complain. Many have also contact us to think the event is great. Some people, though, call to say, "are you using state tax dollars to pay for the event?" I wasn't aware that individuals can redirect tax dollars. I have a lot of tax spending I am not crazy about: the war in Iraq, the auto bailbout money, etc. But I can't call the President and say, "hey, I want my money spent on education." I wish I could. What I can do is support people's right to speak, no matter what they say. At universities, that's called academic freedom. And if we aren't careful, that's a freedom people will take away. You have to fight for freedom. You have to fight so people like Ward Churchill can say what they want. If we don't fight, then we won't be living in America any more. We'll be living in a country that's not free..