It has been a couple of days since my last blog entry, but I knew there would be times like this when I would miss two or three days in a row.  I just cannot let them happen to often.

So I have continued with Whittaker's Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide with the "Using Media" chapter.  Well, there is really not much to say about this chapter.  It's 31 pages of "blah".  The chapter discusses images, audio, video, and flash.  While it does it good job of this, I guess I knew most of this stuff from simple trial and error.  There are a couple of tips and tricks that I was not aware of, but for the most part, it is all pretty general information, but good for someone just starting out and serious about web authoring. 

Something else that Whittaker does throughout the book thus far which I found extremely helpful is that he supplies information on web pages or other software packages that are much cheaper or even free.  He always starts with talking about something like photoshop for image editing, but he will then give alternatives.

On to chapter 6 for tomorrow.  Yes, I'll be back tomorrow.

That is a question I am still attempting to figure out.  Tonight's post will be short, but not solely because the piece I read is short.  I read Carolyn R. Miller's foreword to Rhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and Communication edited by Stuart A. Selber entitled "Rhetoric, Technology, and the Pushmi-Pullyu."  My first reaction is what the heck does pushmi-pullyu even mean in this context.  Three pages later, yes, it was only three pages, and I'm still not sure if I know. 

According to Miller, both rhetoric and technology have this pushmi-pullyu affect, basically based on supply and demand.  With technology, we are pushed by the supply of discoveries, etc, and pull along by external forces or demand.  I can understand this and see where it occurs all the time.  The iPad, for instance, seems to me like it is a push kind of technology.  There was really no demand for such technology, but the technology existed to create or supply the artifact, and thus, we have the iPad. 

Until I begin actually reading this book, which won't be for a while yet as I have the other book to finish first, I want to leave it with this quote from Miller, which I believe might sum this whole idea up in the proverbial nutshell.  Miller states that "If rhetoric is the art that adjusts ideas to people and people to ideas, we might characterize technology as the art that accommodates the material world to people and people to the material world" (x).  Food for thought.

I have decided to take a break from the book tonight, and yes, last night I did not post.  Between trying to grade papers and finish reviews for a colleagues book proposal, I have been running at full tilt.  So tonight, I did not have the energy to read 30 pages from the book we are working on and decided, instead, to briefly discuss one of the articles for my colleagues book.  I can't give titles yet, because it is not officially printed, or accepted, but I will fill all of this information in later once it is published.  Because the reviews are blind, I can't even give you the name of the author yet.

The author writes about how we need to prepare faculty for engaging 21st century learners and what that means for faculty.  The author is spot on when they point out the short comings of colleges and departments to adequately train faculty or provide them with sufficient professional development.  There are also issues of expecting faculty to teach online and use software with outdated equipment or insufficient bandwidth.  Not to mention the extra work that is involved in teaching a course completely online.

Faculty are also often encouraged, even required, to use course management systems (CMS) that do not fit the pedagogical needs of teaching online.  These systems are always closed and often difficult to interact with.  Not to mention the fact that they often don't function as advertised.

A final point that I will mention here that I wholeheartedly agree with is the lack of incentive for faculty members to take on the extra work load that teaching online ALWAYS requires.  Faculty who are not familiar with online instruction, often believe that anyone who teaches online has it made.  "Hell" they say, "they can teach in their pajamas if they want to."  Well, this is rarely true because we often have to be on campus that day for other obligations, and we figure our chairs or deans would frown on us arriving in PJs to work.  Then there is all the extra work involved in making a course work successfully online.  Everything we want our students to learn online are the same things we want them to learn in the classroom.  We want them to have the same experiences.  In order to make this happen, we have to find a way to upload all of the required information to the online space our students will learn in (the classroom so to speak).  This is not an easy chore and requires a lot of forethought and planning.

So if we do not get paid any extra; and we don't get the training, software, and hardware we need; and we spend tons of extra hours designing our courses and teaching them, then why do we do it?  Why? because we believe in the medium and believe it is important to ensure online learners have as close to the same experience as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. 

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!!! Not that I did anything fun, but hey, it was still a good day.  This post will be short, because frankly, tonight's chapter was a snoozer.  Chapter 4 of Whittaker's Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide entitled "Creating Dynamic Sites" left a little to be desired.  It covered Client-side scripting with JavaScript, Server-side scripting with PHP, and MySQL.  I definitely agree that all of these things are necessary to create dynamic and exciting web pages, but slogging through all of the examples of code was a bit daunting.  And the thing is, I won't remember any of this come tomorrow morning.  Well, I might remember some words and phrases, but I will definitely have to come back to this chapter numerous times to utilize and familiarize myself with this stuff.

But again, I like Whittaker's approach.  He states that even though this chapter "only covers a basic introduction to client- and server-side scripting, it is important to have at least this essential familiarity with them as they drive so many Web 2.0 technologies" (92).  Again, I think Whittaker hits the nail on the head with his pedagogical approach that while most will never need to do raw coding, it is still imperative that one at least understands what one is looking at when one sees this code.

It's late, I'm tired, and I still have work to do.  On that note, good night.

So for tonight's post on Jason Whittakers Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, I need to tell you a story.  I was one of the last group of people who went through the Navy's electronics training "old school".  What I mean by that, is that we learned it all.  We learned in months what was equivalent to a 4 year college degree in electronics.  It was intense, but I learned the theory behind how it all worked.  I learned what resistors did, capacitors, transistors, and I learned the formulas for figuring out what size of resistor or other components were needed to make things work.  I learned binary theories, what "and" "nand", "or", and "nor" gates did.  That if you put two "1"s in to a certain kind of gate, you got a "1" out.  I learned how to troubleshoot circuits using specialized equipment down to the component level.  I learned the theories behind crypto gear, I learned how to be an electronics technician "old school".  Soon after I went through, they changed the way they approached electronics training, and they made it about board swapping.  It was supposedly a quicker, more efficient way to troubleshoot in the field.  But what did they learn?  They didn't learn any MacGyver style tricks.  If they troubleshot down to the board and then found they didn't have that board on hand, they couldn't take it any further because they did not have the skills in their toolkit necessary to do so.

So what does any of this have to do with Whittaker's text?  Whitthaker is taking both approaches in his presentation or explanation of developing for the web.  Tonight's chapter, chapter 4, on "Designing for the Web" really drove this point home for me.  He discussed principles, text, links, images, color, tables, forms, and layout, and he basically discusses how these things should be handled using CSS, or cascading style sheets.  But before he explains how to do this, he describes how this would be done via HTML coding, or "old school style".  At one point, Whittaker argues that he "would not recommend trying to construct by hand in raw code, although it is important to understand the HTML in order to troubleshoot and be clear what you are trying to achieve" (70).  This is exactly the type of MacGyver tricks that everyone needs up their sleeves to be able to fix problems with confidence and skill.  Sure, it is easier to swap out a board then it is to find the tiny resistor or transistor that needs to be replaced, but if you do not have the board, you are at a loss.  Knowing the logic and reason behind electronics or HTML coding help you to understand the easier way of doing things, while allowing you to do things "old school" if required.

I never seem to make very smart decisions when it comes to doing things.  I get excited about what it is I want to do and I run with it, and that is exactly what I have done here.  While I perhaps should be grading papers (and believe me, I will be getting to that shortly), I am instead reading chapter one of the first text I decided to run with...Producing for the Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  And I gotta tell you, 14 pages into the chapter and I am DEFINITELY feeling like a student!!

Even though I have 14 more pages to go before I complete this post, I decided to take a moment to jot down, as it were, a couple of things I've noticed so far.  First, I believe this is an excellent text for students.  One reason is the smoothness with which Whittaker repeats things that he knows a student needs to really comprehend before moving on.  After about the second time of seeing statements about how computers can't decipher XML without instructions, I started taking note of every time he would mention this in one way or another.  I have a feeling I've not seen the last of this yet.  Second, Whittaker gives plenty of useful examples to get the point across.  For me, the more I see something, the more it begins to make sense. 

Off to continue with the last 14 pages, so I'll just virtually pause this entry until I am done.

Alright, I'm back with 14 more pages read and a slight headache.  The chapter started out just as I suspected: it is, after all, entitled "Pre-Production".  So it started out discussing the planning of a website, talking to the client, storyboarding it so to speak, but that only lasted for about 7 of the 26 pages.  Then began the in-depth conversation about web technologies, online media toolkits, and setting up a server.  That is a LOT of information to digest in one night.  But again, I have to point out that the information was thorough without being TOO daunting.

Will I retain everything that I read about Ajax, PHP, Apache, Flash, Java, MySQL.... you get the picture.... No, I won't, but when someone mentions it, I'll know I've read it, and I'll have a clue as to what the hell they are talking about.  Something that the Whittaker keeps pointing out is that a lot of this stuff you will never really get into deeply, but you need to at least know what it is and have a clue as to how it works.

With all of that said, tomorrow night's reading may possibly be only a half a chapter, as it is longer than tonight's, and I have papers to grade and clothes to wash.

So stay tuned tomorrow for the next installment of Producing for the Web 2.0: A Student Guide entitled "Designing for the Web," or Dianna comes to terms with the web not being magic like she always thought.

This post will begin a series of posts on Jason Whittaker's book entitled Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  After reading chapter 1, or the introduction, this morning, I have decided that I would like to finish this book.  It is only 9 chapters, so if I am lucky, the last post will be on the 10th give a couple of days or so.

The introduction does a great job of discussing the history of the web without going into too many boring details or putting one to sleep.  I will admit, however, that I would read a bit, and then something in the text would spark a relevant or completely random thought in my head, which resulted in me have a seriously ADD kind of morning, bouncing back and forth between reading, tweeting, facebooking, googling, playlisting, etc.

The intro also attempts to define some of the differences between what we have come to know as Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.  When I use the word "attempts", it does not mean that he tried but didn't quite get it right.  It means that I appreciate anyone who even enters into that discussion.  One of the biggest issues with the term Web 2.0 (as coined by Dale Dougherty and Craig Cline, or DD and CC as I like to call them), is that no one really knows how to define it in a solid, concrete, set in stone kind of way--you get the picture with all of the hard, rock images going on there.  So for Whittaker to not only define, but then compare Web 2.0 to Web 1.0 is inspiring.  What's more, I walked away actually feeling like I had a better understanding of it myself.

Whittaker takes the time to discuss what many feel would make the perfect web developer recruit.  What it boils down to is that the person who fits all on the wish list would be that superhuman kinda person.  Not many of those around, and Whittaker wants to make sure we know this.  What is important, though, is that web developers be aware of what these items are and maybe even be proficient in two or three of them.  Seems like sound advice to me.

Given my interest in web design and development, and the fact that I will be teaching the Intro to Web Authoring professional writing course this fall, I think this is a good book for me to continue on with.

Here is where I need to leave you with a cliff hanger that ensures you will come back tomorrow for the 2nd installment of Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  *Scratches head, thinks, ponders* 

Join us tomorrow when Dianna learns the revealing truth of the relationship that exists between Pre-Production Planning and the success of any website.

Dun Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnnn

I can't believe the first of May is already here.  This is the official day that I decided I would begin my project of reading at least 260 articles or book chapters in a years time.  This means that by April 30 of 2011, I should be at or beyond Project Post 260.  For me, this is exciting.  This is a journey for me: both a personal and a professional journey.  I am not doing this for anyone but myself.  However, joining into a conversation with others about things I've read, and hopefully what others suggest I read, will be an added benefit.

With that said, the article that I decided to start with today is Jennifer deWinter and Stephanie Vie's "Press Enter to 'Say': Using Second Life to Teach Critical Media Literacy."  Second Life is my area of study, so I thought this was perfect to begin with.  I'll start by simply saying that in the margin on the front page I wrote "Seems like most of this article is underlined!!  Sign of a good article for me!!!"  And it is.  I find if I am underlining and writing a lot in an article, then it is one that has engaged me.  In the abstract of this article, deWinter and Vie state that they will "argue that students need to develop critical awareness of their own subject formation and their position in new media environments" and they "further contend that composition instructors can look to Second Life . . . as a dynamic text to engage students in questions regarding power, ethics, intellectual property, and community" (313). 

I couldn't agree more with these statements.  As someone who has used Second Life to teach first year composition, I have witnessed students engaging in these types of dynamics.  An SL resident accused three of my students of harassing her, these same students battled with issues of power and control in this world, and others felt marginalized during assignments.  I believe using the tool of SL in composition classes can teach students critical skills they will need in life.

But there are some things that deWinter and Vie mention or say that I do not believe they discuss enough or I do not agree with.  The first thing is really very minor, but as an immersed resident of SL, I think it is important to point out.  They use the words "play" and "player" a few times in conjunction with SL.  I think perhaps they make this rhetorical move in order to connect with what James Paul Gee discusses about using video games in education.  I never consider myself a player or playing when I log into SL, and I discourage my students from using that language as well.  I want my students to treat this environment as another culture.  To that end, I often have them keep field notes about the things they witness.  If we expect students to treat the environment seriously, even at times of play within the world, I think it is important that they understand it as a different cultural experience.

The other thing that deWinter and Vie touch on briefly but I wish they would have delved into a little more is the risk involved in using SL.  The authors note that "instructors must be aware that racism, sexism, and other forms of harassment may be unavoidable; as such, instructors should approach these as teachable moments to help students understand the changes that online environments have wrought on our understandings of privacy and safety" (319).  This is all very true.  What I think they fail to point out is that this "environment" is no different than taking students into third world countries to perform research, or just down the street.  I think if SL is approached as research, and the possibilities discussed, taking students into SL should be not more of a legal issue than taking students to other cultures to learn.  Just as we cannot control our students' lives once they leave our brick and mortar classrooms, we cannot control what they do in SL outside of class.  That is life.  At least they can simply log off if they find themselves threatened in SL.  One cannot log out of real life situations.

deWinter and Vie's article has succeeded in validating my own ideas about using SL in the composition classroom.  So many things can be explored in this environment that simply cannot be in RL.  Want to queer something?  Take a walk into SL and queer away.  Want to challenge authority?  You can do it with little risk.  This was the perfect article for me to begin my journey of 260 days of learning.

The article can be found on ScienceDirect but requires a subscription through a library.