Self-Representation & Online Identities

Remember--what we are doing today is something you can take back to the classes you teach, in order to talk about how rhetorical choices create particular effects.

Examples

Kathie Gossett

Samantha Blackmon

Clancy Ratliff

Cheryl Ball

Liz Losh

Malea Powell

Karl Stolley

Kristin Arola

Questions

What is the scope of this representation?

What is the focus of this representation?

To what extent and in what ways does the person's facility with technology influence their self-representation?

What do you like about what you see?

What don't you like?

What adjectives would you ascribe to this person, based on what you see online?

Would this be someone you would want to work with/hire? Why or why not?

What do you think they are leaving out of their self-representation?

Photoshop Skills for Teaching and Learning

At this TWIT I showed a very simple way I used Photoshop in my Visual Media Analysis class. Specifically, I showed how I used Photoshop to create a more powerful chalkboard.

On the first day of class, I projected an image and had students come up with three adjectives they would apply to the image. I then used the layers palette and the type tool in Photoshop to write their adjectives beside the image.

Next, I used the eyeball in the layers palette to display some theoretical terms from the chapter that the students would be reading for the next class.

Finally, we discussed how we might use these theoretical terms to talk about the image.

After class, I saved all this as a jpg and put it on our class website [and on this blog.] This way, later in the semester the students could revist what we did on the first day. It's the equivilent to when somebody writes DO NOT ERASE on the board.

The point of this TWIT was that you can take a really powerful, professional-grade tool like Photoshop and just use parts of it to create pedagogical effects. You don't have to know the whole tool to start using it. And you don't have to use it in really fancy ways to be effective.

I was happy to hear that after this TWIT participant's level of Photoshop-intimidation went way down. I think part of this was because you saw me struggle with the tool in front of an audience (clicking on wrong windows, etc.).

But I think a bigger factor in getting people feeling more comfortable and inspired was our explicit analysis of why a tool seems scary and our brainstorming of strategies we can use to gain an entrance into an unfamiliar tool. Here are just a few of the ideas we had

• Start with a small part of the tool, like filters or text


• Give students a concrete task to do with the tool and a clear starting point


• Steer clear of the giant how-to books, at least at first


• Get help from nonexperts who are supportive


• Have students practice with the technology by doing a low-stakes, non-graded, composing-for-learning-style assignment

As always, as the TWIT moved on, we started getting into more and more interesting territory, like issues of power and our responsibilty to students....

How do students respond to the "let's all learn together approach"...

How well do we need to know the tools before we bring them into class...

What about when a students knows "more" than you...

Can you quantify knowledge like that, isn't that the banking model...

What do we have to teach, what do we bring to the table, what's our expertise....

Can you separate tools from theory?

Thanks to everybody who attended this TWIT...hope to see you again. Karen

(Word)Pressing Issues in the Humanities

Announcing....Wordpress!!!

Wordpress is an open source blogging application that the talented and amazing Gowtham has installed on one of our servers.

Gowtham gave a presentation at TWIT about the benefits of using Wordpress....here are just a few:

• Wordpress has a built in search engine


• Wordpress allows you to pre and post-date your blog entries. (Note: I wish this blogger thing I am using had that feature; then you would not know that I am writing this two weeks after G's presentation and I could make myself look so much more diligent!)


• Wordpress allows you to import different blog entries from different platforms. Thus, you will soon see this blogger blog become wordpressed...

If you would like to set up a Wordpress blog for yourself just send an email to Jim Oliver and he'll set up an account for you.

Wordpress is downloaded 150,000 times daily, so you will be in good company.

Open Source

"In the beginning there was the command line..."
--Niel Severson

So what does it mean when someone says that a piece of software is open source?

The first thing that often comes to mind is that it's FREE. FREE as in speech. But also free as in pizza.

Open source means that you can download a tool without paying any money, but perhaps more importantly, open source means that the code that runs the tool is available for users to take and modify.

The general practice is that when an open source software is modified, the modified version stays open source. This is a kind of pay-it-forward practice.

As a result, people have made an enormous variety of tools to do all kinds of jobs. If you visit this link you will see all kinds of software for specialized jobs.

Here's an important point:

The way an open source system gets developed and released depends a lot on the culture of people who created it, their vocabulary, and their aesthetic sense.

If those people are "nerds" and what they are making is directed at other people like themselves, it can start to get a little intimidating for us novices... In addition, with open source software, you can't call tech support. If you run into an issue, you have to do some research and look for someone who's had the same issue and has written about it.

From a theoretical vantagepoint, I think this is a pretty interesting site for exploring notions of authorship, ownership, and collaboration.

Plus, we are practicing with open source software all time...

Did you know that Firefox or Audacity are open source tools? How many of your students use The Open Office Suite (almost identical of MS Office)? How about the GIMP (a photoshop work alike, stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program)?

If you are interested in open source check out these links:
Open Source Dreamweaver
Source Forge
Free Software Foundation

And check out our post on an open source blogging tool called WordPress.