speaking of dance videos…
Why didn’t this kind of stuff happen when I lived in Boston?
See here and here for additional examples of Sound of Music-related flash mobs.
Even if Julie Andrews doesn’t know about this phenomenon, Mashable does!
And, somehow, all of that reminds me of this from 2007,
which Henry Jenkins eloquently discussed in his post, “Hustling 2.0: Soulja Boy and the Crank Dat Phenomenon.”
Sigh…more to discuss with the freshmen when I get to the YouTube chapter!
video driven evolution of skills
I’ve been teaching for 1 week now, and much of my planning and reading for my ENG 101 class has been related to literacy, particularly “What it means to be literate” nowadays. Teaching on a laptop campus has its challenges, but the best part is projection in every classroom. That way, I can show videos and ask students to livetweet responses/comments/questions OR I can ask them to close their laptops and, even if for just a few minutes, focus on only 1 screen.
I’ve used TED talks in the past, JZ’s, Mena Trott’s, and Rives’ contributions being my favs. This one by Chris Anderson, which references “The LXD: In the Internet age, dance evolves…” and which further reminds me of this “participatory media” post by Henry Jenkins, is a new favorite because it focuses on how video offers us new ways to share information, not to mention visually and perhaps physically learn from it:
We don’t get into the YouTube chapter of our textbook New New Media for a couple weeks, but I’ll be interested in hearing how students seek, watch, produce, and incorporate video into their day to day lives, whether for learning or entertainment. I wonder how many will already be familiar with TED and/or other video sites like hulu or dailymotion.
Do you have any video sites that you visit more frequently than YouTube?
back to school; back to blogging
In case you haven’t noticed, ever since I started my job at UW-Stout in 2008 I’ve hardly blogged. The dissertation [on blogs of all things] consumed me and even though I defended in March, formatted in April, skipped the Tampa graduation in May, and finally received the diploma in the mail in July, I took the summer off from anything over 140-characters.
Sure, I traveled to NYC, TX, and Italy, and could write volumes on those trips. I even taught a summer course and scored thousands of AP essay exams in June, but I just couldn’t bring myself back to reading blogs until a few weeks ago.
Now, though, I have some fresh new research and publication ideas, which I will post on later this week, so beware: I’m totally throwing myself back in to blogging!
It helps that every course I’m teaching this Fall has a technology emphasis:
- ENGL 101 is using the textbook New New Media and while these students aren’t required to blog, we will be relying on Twitter [in class only] to generate questions and reactions of assigned readings. 1 section of the 3 is dedicated to a Learning Community called the Google Generation, and I’m excited to see how these students connect our reading and writing to that assigned in the Information and Communication Technologies course they go to immediately after mine.
- ENGL 495 is a brand new 2-semester capstone course. I have 1 very diligent student, and this semester we’re focusing on research methods with the final project being a proposal and pilot study. I’m having him purchase Research Confidential and Internet Inquiry as well as read a bunch of PDFs that either discuss methodology or put mixed methods into practice.
- ENGL 745 is a brand new graduate course in our brand new Master of Science in Technical and Professional Communication program. Students are reading Socialnomics as well as 40+ journal articles/book chapters [including some from Always On, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, and Convergence Culture], all with the goal of “interpreting the ways emerging media and digital technologies affect writing, rhetoric, literacy, and the discipline of technical and professional communication.” If anyone has any suggestions for more tech comm-y texts that I should include, please let me know!Aside from academic posts, I can tell you already that I’m also going to share my opinions on various TV shows since I’ve become quite the fangirl. Between watching stuff online, via Netflix, and now with cable at home, I’ve got quite the list of favorites. To close this post, I’ll share 2 swoontastic pics of my man, Don Draper. Please note, I don’t have a crush on Jon Hamm. It is only Don Draper that makes me weak in the knees.
GAGA
 |
| From LADY GAGA |
I have had the great fortune to see Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball twice now. Once last December in NOLA and then this week in St. Paul. [Thanks again @fablor!]
Both times were amazing and I truly love her music, but despite her appeals to her fans AKA little monsters to be themselves and her donations to the ReGeneration fund, at both concerts she gave a speech that totally contradicts those beliefs:
“…there is one thing I hate more than money and that’s the truth…I’d like a giant dose of bullshit any day.”
What? After all her promotion of equality, being who you are and not feeling ashamed or insecure, why would bullshit be the choice? Wouldn’t authenticity trump that?
I should put my scholarly researcher hat on and theorize/analyze this further, like they do at the FABULOUS Gaga Stigmata blog, but for now let me hear your thoughts on the matter.
Colbert on Privacy
“CONTROL-SELF-DELETE”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Control-Self-Delete | ||||
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wordle
I’m going to experiment with colors and word layout settings, but here’s my first go at pasting my 150-page dissertation into Wordle
And since my dissertation is on blogs, here the Wordle of what’s here at DaisyPignetti.com
Twitter on paper
BTW if you follow me on Twitter you know that I’m in the final push of formatting the dissertation according to grad school standards. As soon as I’m done I plan to compose thoughts longer than 140-characters and update this blog with details about my defense experience, feedback I received, and ideas for future projects.
treme
Cannot wait! Thank you HBO!
This will be an amazing addition to syllabi that currently include Katrina texts:
heading to #cccc10?
Join this diigo group beforehand and start bookmarking those interesting finds!
Google Map Time Machine
Does anyone know when Google Maps updates its street views?
It’s becoming common practice for those impacted by disaster to use Google Maps to either organize efforts or search for views of homes/neighborhoods, but I was surprised when tinkering around with Street View to see my now razed home still showing up.
Some background:
As I blogged in September 2005, the site Scipionus.com allowed me to type in my address and find this information:
My parents chose to move permanently to Mississippi instead of rebuild and when I went home over Christmas they saw the house had finally been demolished. Here’s a pic of my brother who visited NOLA in January:
While I’m all about the Internet providing more accurate and authentic information than traditional media, I have to say that, especially during this time of finalizing the dissertation, it was comforting to see my home still there…
the brilliance of @stephenfry
on Twitter, poetry, agony columns, texting, profanity, and an open society
MVP Media
Has Drew gotten any sleep since Sunday?
Krewe of Drew!
Check out the baby Bacchus football!
And, finally, the pre-game chant is revealed!
WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN! WIN! AGAIN!
this is the turnaround moment
Thank you, Drew and Sean!
And thank you, Cokie Roberts!
NOLA’s future is bright and I couldn’t be happier! Just wish I didn’t have to wait til JazzFest to get down there to celebrate…
Speaking of which, other than Twitter, which I can scroll through pretty quickly, I plan to be offline a lot for the next few weeks. There are dissertation deadlines to meet and with only about 20 pages left to write up, I’m not stopping now!
rhetoric & the “truth”
My favorite way to start a semester in Advanced Rhetoric:
In addition to readings from our three course texts: Rhetoric and Human Consciousness, Rhetoric and Style, and Rhetoric Online, the semester will bring in PDFs of readings like Tania Smith’s “What Connection Does Rhetorical Theory Have to Technical and Professional Communication?”
I also plan to show Thank You For Smoking, The Invention of Lying, Shattered Glass, and, if there’s time, SuperSize Me.
So much to cover and so many arguments to analyze, but I think my upper-level undergraduates can handle it!
It also helps that I’ve got 85-minute class periods. 
superbowl bound!
I cannot believe it!
But I should know better. If there’s anything the city of New Orleans and Saints fans all over know to do, it’s to BELIEVE!
After reading that headline, this is how I feel:
export/import
I’ve been in serious dissertation writing mode this new year which means I’ve hardly tweeted, watched little TV other than that on DVD and returned very few emails. Sorry about that, but that’s what consumes my life when the semester begins. Well, not the TV part.
Anyway, since I am in this dissertation state of mind that means I’ve been in a Tampa/USF mood too, checking in with the graduate program assistant [Lee is amazing!] and talking to current grad students and former faculty. I even checked my USF email account to make sure my final tuition payment went through and was surprised to see a blog comment notification. For months I’ve been trying to log in to my blog.usf.edu space with no success. That’s part of the reason I even started this new space and bought my domain name. Just last week I even checked the main blog.usf.edu site and saw nothing. I figured they took all of them down to save on server space. I don’t think there were many active bloggers using the service. After seeing that blog comment email though, I tried one more time and saw my Doctor Daisy blog as a newly revamped WordPress site! I no longer have my fleur de lis theme over there, which you can see in the web.archive.org version, but that’s OK.
Taking this discovery a step further, I decided to explore the export/import tools since both of my blogs are Word Press. Short story short, it literally took 3 clicks and now this space has ALL 475 of my USF blog posts.
WordPress ROCKS!
Now to update my blogrolls!
images of the dissertation
tis the writing season again! Have a reprieve from the grading and have been back to work!
Typical day begins with editing existing pages, reviewing notes, then artifact-ing [or story boarding] them on a sketch pad.
then moves to the dry erase board where the lists help me stay focused.
UNDEFEATED!
Thank you, Sharon, for linking me to this latest WHO DAT fan song!
SYTYCD & Ellen
I’m not into Season 6 of SYTYCD as much as I was Season 5, but while trying to find video of ballroom boy Ryan’s solo from this past week I came across this appearance by the Top 10 on Ellen.
Go Ellen, Go Go GO!
Pet Shop Boys
My beloved Boys have launched a new i-phone friendly version of their website, which includes a neat interactive media player where you can remix tracks, watch videos, etc. Love, etc, that is…
another twitter link roundup
And another attempt at NaBloPoMo down the tubes. Oh well! I still plan to post as often as possible, now that I feel that my weeks are more manageable, even with the stacks of grading.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m very much into Twitter and have a growing list of bookmarks on diigo, which are also copied to delicious, and then shared with my 4Cs Emerging Social Software SIG members.
Several I’d like to feature here include:
Some Professors’ Jitters Over Twitter Are Easing
The most recent Pew Report on Twitter and Status Updating [which I heard first at AoIR]
and finally
30 predictions for the future of Twitter, which includes the video below.
Enjoy, and I look forward to updating my own “Teaching with Twitter” page at the end of this semester since I’ve revised the instructions I give students and now assign some readings from The Twitter Book to assist new users. I also incorporate more live-tweeting into my class discussions, calling on students who post in addition to replying to Q&A.
Now let’s all go tweet about this…
the Saints are coming!
We’ve come a long way, baby! 7-0!!!!!!!!
google wave
While I was at AoIR everyone was all a buzz about Google Wave. I too suddenly wasn’t complete until I received an invite, but then when I got one, I didn’t know what to do with it. I noticed several of my Twitter followers saying the same, “It will be a good tool but there aren’t enough people on yet.”
Thankfully, I was added to a Digital Humanities wave, and there I could see things in action. The most important thing I learned there, via Lifehacker, was the “with: public” command, where I could see all of the waves out there and decide which ones I might want to join.
Doing that “with: public” search actually led me back to the gracious soul who sent me the invite in the first place, Matthew Kaskavitch, a student at UW-Stout who I’ve never met, but who is an active Twitter user and social media in higher ed proponent. (Yes, that “one professor in the English department used Twitter in the classroom to communicate with her students” is me. I’ve actually gone on to incorporate some of those suggestions too and now more actively ask students to tweet on readings at the beginning of class then call on them to elaborate during large group discussions).
An interesting Wave that Matt’s started is the “University of Wisconsin Wavers,” which is allowing folks from any of the campuses across the state to communicate and collaborate in ways never before. Of course, things are still in the early stages, but I think it’s a great start to a dialogue amongst tech savvy folks and much more fun (to me at least) than listserv messages.
Other helpful WAVE how-to’s can be found here:
HOW TO: Get Started with Google Wave
Google Wave: A Complete Guide
Google Wave Guide: User Manual Released for Wave
Still, even with all of this, I don’t see myself becoming an active Wave user until I get some invites to share with colleagues. Where those at, Google???