Adam Wandt | Footenotes

September 6, 2010

The Contrite Round Up – 8/24ish to 9/5

I knew it would happen.

I made a sad-sack Round Up wondering where all my peeps went and then I vanished last week when the blogs blew up. It’s not that I abandoned you, I was super busy putting the final touches on some outreach documents we’ve been working on. I know, I know – it’s not an excuse. All the same it’s been great to come back to the blog roll and see a bunch of new faces. I’ve gotten kind of lazy about hoping up on the soap box before I get into the blogs and I miss abusing my power here so let me thumb through the news and see what I can rant about…

Well there was my favorite Arizonan, Jan Brewer, having a fantastic meltdown. I’ve pretty much said all I can say about her and stay employed. It’s not like Footenotes is FootenotesonJanBrewersterrifyingrisetopowerinwayssarahpalincouldonlydreamof.com so I’ll leave it at that. But seriously, her poll numbers actually climbed afterward.

On a slightly less catty note, folks are starting to take notice of the impending disaster students loans are going to be for us. This handy chart does a little explaining of the shape we’re in and makes for a quick read. At this point I don’t even look at my student loan statements, I just put them in a shoebox and quietly wait for the apocalypse. I’m sure after my dissertation gets published and I start getting royalty checks from the movie they’re going to make about me while I was writing it everything will be fine.

Ok, enough – let’s talk about blogs before we all get bummed out!

First off – Tim Wilson’s @twilson long slow project to teach us French has started to pay off. Another francophone blog popped up! I’m excited to see so many languages turn up around the Commons, it even looks like an Italian language blog is in the works out there. Speaking of Italian, I noticed a new blog crop up – Beniamina Cassetta’s @beniamina A Cosa Stai Pensando / What’s on your mind? With posts alternating between two languages it’s great see the French set with some competition now. Beniamina had some pretty nice things to say about the Commons too and we’re glad to have you!

Maura Smale @msmale returned to the blogs to share some changes that have come to your library. The big three article archives messed around with their interfaces and Maura walks us through them. There’s a little note at the end about librarians lighting torches and storming JSTOR, check it out.

Resident Elluminate expert Adam Wandt @Awandt has been interviewed by the Elluminate folks. As you will recall he walked us through his experience with the software right here on the Commons.

Of course you can’t mention Elluminate now without thinking of BlackBoard. The folks over at BlackBoard took out the checkbook and snatched up a good thing when they saw it. Everyone has their own opinion of the education behemoth – Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano gave us hers. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Helldriver @helldriver had been on hiatus, but returned this week with a prolific post about Demolition Hammer. I don’t know who this guy is but I imagine he must have the most fantastic record collection in New York. Usually I try and say a little something about a Helldriver post and then realize that I’m totally inarticulate when talking about music and feel like a putz so I’m going to leave this one alone. All the same it’s good to have you back.

Finally Michael Smith also returned with a great post about the art of watching the police. Seems as though there have been a crop of stories in the news lately about people getting arrested for doing this very thing. Naturally a quick Google search fails me for the recent things I was thinking of but I assure you it’s happening. Not that that’s assuring…

Anyways, it’s great to have everyone back and welcome new faces! Here’s hoping this semester is our best yet on the Commons. See ya next week.

2 Comments

July 5, 2010

The Round Up I Wrote After Not Seeing Any Fireworks 6/28 – 7/4

Mayor Mike, we need to talk.

I wasn’t happy about the third term thing, I thought it was a little beneath you actually, but I understood. There was the financial crisis and you always fought for gun control and Christine Quinn seemed really really into it so I thought, “what the hell” and shrugged it off. I know, I know I’m a lazy citizen, but after 8 years of basically being hysterical all the time and marching at everything I just didn’t have the energy to fight on this one.

And then you messed with the fireworks.

I didn’t move to Greenpoint for the perogis. I moved to Greenpoint so I could stand on my roof every 4th of July and have the best seat in the house. I know that you have nothing to do with the fireworks committee. You don’t sit around your desk in the days leading up to the 4th picking out flag pins for your lapel and making phone calls to make sure those stupid smiley face fireworks are actually going to perform their job and make a smile. I understand that. But if you’re going to flagrantly indulge in chop-shop democracy the very least you could do is take some time out of your billionaire schedule and put the fireworks between two actual boroughs of the city of New York and not between us and…it hurts to say it…New Jersey. The coast of New Jersey is just bunch of NYC ex-pats who wanted cheaper rent anyways – they’re turncoats – that’s why we shame them. You can’t just steal Brooklyn’s fireworks and give it to a bunch of people who have bigger, cheaper apartments in a whole other state. Their reward is there on earth, ours is supposed to be in the heavens.

Not that my 4th was terrible, I spent it in a hammock at a bar-b-que in Fort Greene sipping whiskey, but I’m still mad.

Blooooooooooooogggggggsssssss!

I don’t know what happened this week but we managed to summon all of these long dormant blogs out of the ground. Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz at Prestidigitation had a lovely post asking whether or not we’ve yet to understand the capacity of the recorded lecture. For an excellent example of the potential of the medium Joseph linked to David Harvey’s latest:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0[/youtube]

The animation is certainly more compelling than the TED format, but I have mixed feelings about what it takes to make something like the Harvey lecture possible. I’m glad that a lecture of all things put some animators to work, but to what extent can we expect professors with a long view of their lecture to also be production crews? How do you slip something like animators across a department chair’s desks?

Pedagogy was also on Benjamin Miller’s @benmiller314 mind this week. Majoring in Meta made an appearance on the blog roll with a slightly neurotic look at whether meta-lecturing was instructive or just driving students crazy. I had to admire the candor of one of Ben’s students who basically told him to make a decision, but lolz aside, I think Ben’s on the mark. You don’t exactly get a ‘how to teach’ course with every masters and PhD. More to the point, on a good day the classroom isn’t just a person who knows something telling others who don’t, it’s a bunch of people in a room learning something new together. Teaching on the go facilitates that and can bring you to some unexpected places. That’s the real secret knowledge of the professor.

Adam Wandt @awandt did some investigative live blogging for us and discovered that ‘death grip’ has plagued iPhones well before the newest one. Not that it matters to the tech-mob I guess, I was at the Apple store on 5th Ave this weekend and the only death grip that counted was the one you could get on an employee. I have to say though, Adam, I think you have bigger problems than reception…

How can you read everything backwards?

Aaron Kendall @Akendall checked back in this week from Iceland. Still no sword…yet…but some nice pictures from over yonder. This week on the island our hero and team went digging around some farm land. Then John Locke flipped out and turned into smoke. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I still miss it. Apparently the lake near where they were ate away the midden and dashed any chances for some interesting finds. I feel like if I was an archeologist I would be constantly stressed out because apparently this sort thing is a persistent problem. I can barely cope when I can’t find the other sock so digging holes all day and then finding nothing usable would break my heart. Not to nag but you promised us some video!

Michael Smith @MSmith said he’d make a post a week and the guy is serious! This week we got Physical Chemistry, a tract about relationships, or atoms, or science yoga. I suck at physics. It’s ok, I know that. I can talk your ear off about gender construction or mid century shifts in theology but come at me with wave/particle stuff and you can almost see the cartoon birds orbiting my head. That being said, if someone had just taught me physics through art there’s no telling. I think you’re an attic’s worth of old art projects away from a syllabus.

To wrap things up Tony Picciano @Apicciano caught Maureen Dowd getting all sentimental on the 4th and encouraging us to let our “freakin’ flag fly” I’m not real sure what Maureen had in mind, but I’m gonna head to the park and read some more David Harvey.

June 28, 2010

That Round-Up I Wrote Recovering from Pride – 6/21 -6/27

Oh Commonsers,

My poor head aches, my shoulders are red with fury and my feet are exhausted – but what a day for a parade eh? Hunter and Baruch were out this year. I was hoping CUNY would have a float but it didn’t happen so I’ll make you a deal, right here on Footenotes; If we can talk CUNY into putting a float in the parade next year I’ll liveblog on top of the thing. Nothing sexier than a shirtless blogger.

I can’t remember if I saw these last year or not but it looks like the storied rainbow flag has some regional competition:

Personally, I like ’em. I was going to post photos of the Hunter and Baruch groups and these new flags that were everywhere, but my camera didn’t make it back home with me. Ah well – I hope it met another nice camera of the same gender and had a good time.

Alright alright, you get it, enough about my weekend.

The Blogs!

Thing were busy this week, I love it. We started off with a post from Michael Smith @msmith at It Cannot Be Trivial about his works on cross aesthetics. As I’ve mentioned before, the back-story on a work of art is often of more interest to me than the work itself. I think part of that comes from the fact that art is so often a subjective experience and yet it can create this plutocracy of ‘taste’ that may or may not just be a reflection of gallery reps and auction house interests. To hear the story of how a certain piece came to exist can really open up a work and give the viewer a place in it that was somehow closed before.

After I reread that little paragraph it started to look like I was saying I didn’t like this week’s display. To the contrary Ive been crazy about crosses regardless of their religious dimension since I was little. I was a spooky kid.

Speaking of crosses and spooky stuff, Michael Oman-Reagan had two posts out this week. The first was an early bird reminder about the AAR’s meeting in Atlanta this year. I know we have a couple of religion groups and programs here on the Commons so take note. The second was about Congress getting all nosy and bothering Steve Jobs. Turns out the gummerment is concerned about whether Apple might be overstepping it bounds with its Location Services features. Honestly I didn’t even know that was a feature and after hearing about it I still don’t know how threatened I supposed to feel. I mean if Jack Bauer can just triangulate a cell-phone call to find anyone on Earth then I’m doomed as it is.

Next up in my queue of blogs to cover…oh…uh…so about what I said up there about print being dead…sometimes I just run my mouth without thinking. Apparently we’re all missing Book Expo America. Librarianship in Lower Manhattan blogged about this weird book-lover Xanadu with free booze and librarian worship. Awesome. Also – who knew that Kathleen Collins @kcollins , one of our own, had a book signing there? You have to blog about this kind of thing so we can show up!

Turf Wars @Akendall checked in and gave us an update on the Icelandic excavations. Turns out there are sheep and clay pipes buried in the earth. I’m excited to the see the video out of there and whatever else they managed to pull out of the ground. I’m a dork about that kind of thing. I do think we ought to start a pool here on what he’s going to find. My money’s on a sword. I don’t know why, it’s just a feeling. Come on folks, step right up and place your bets.

Maura Smale @msmale was up in Connecticut giving a presentation on a game she created called Quality Counts. Please don’t turn you game loose on Footenotes. We’re like dinner theater here: bad dinner, bad theater. That being said, she titled the post ‘Still in the Game’ and something struck me as familiar. Did you really reference late Steve Winwood?

Linda Wadas @lindawadas from over at ‘For the benefit of all sentient beings’ pointed out a couple of kinds of vetch that popped up in her yard. You can’t eat ’em but they look pretty.

And finally this week we’ve got a couple of new things from the Community Team.

Scott Voth @scottvoth – resident Wiki overlord – made a great post about integrating wikis into your blogs. This is a great resource if you’re using your blog for classroom work or online courses. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, but I’m off to do that after we wrap up here. You can always message Scott with wiki questions, he’s here to help!

Sarah Morgano is bringing a new feature to the Commons that I’m really excited about: 5 Questions With… This week she talked to Adam Wandt @awandt about the Commons, blogs, and Twitter. Got something to say – go find her! Otherwise she’s coming to you…

and between Apple Location Services and her all around Jack Bauer-ness you can’t hide.

See you next week!

1 Comment

May 1, 2010

Finally – April’s Over!

Good Lord what a long month.

The blogs were in bloom this week on the Commons. Maybe it was the never-ending rain that forced everyone to sit home and write poetry, or maybe we all just felt like chumps for letting Carl James Grindley do all of the heavy lifting this month over at Poems in Progress. Whatever the motivation there was poetry in spades here. Timothy Wilson was feeling prolific towards the end and broke out some Spanish on us. Good thing we’re not in Arizona or…you know…he’d probably accused of being a Mex’can terrorist commie illegal or something. Ok, alright, Footenotes isn’t exactly a bully pulpit, but come on Arizona. COME ON!

Shhhh…just relax, it’s ok, they’re far away from here and it’s not like I’m in dire need of turquoise or anything.

Anyways, poetry. All of our favorites threw in. Michael Oman-Reagan posted perennial favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti via Religion Scholars and Linda Wadas at For the Benefit of All Sentient Beings offered some photography as poetry. I was holding out for Scott Voth to write a little ode to wikis but, alas, it was not to be.

But it wasn’t all sonnets and stanzas around here. Tamar Zilkha made a return to the Commons this week thoroughly annoyed with the Census Bureau. It was an interesting post about what constitutes race to the government and good ole Uncle Sam might be a little out of his league when trying to define race. Honestly at this point I wish I hadn’t turned in my Census form yet because I’d love to make a few changes to my own answers. Especially in light of this stupid friggin law that Arizona passed.

It’s basically like a bunch of people in Arizona realized that they’re referred to as the “South-West” and decided it was time to invest a little more in the “Southern” part of South-West. Like, maybe Arizona just got lonely because the only other states that would hang out with it were Utah and New Mexico. I’d be pretty lonely too, but making eyes at Alabama just because you’re tired of the dry heat…I don’t even know what I’m saying. As a southern refugee I always looked towards the desert peoples as wise sages of the brush. Now you don’t need a license to carry a concealed gun and it’s ok to stop anyone (Latino) and demand papers. Because the wild west was so much fun you know, just like at Six Flags.

No seriously, it’s ok, I’m done.

Tony Picciano pulled up Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in the Times this week about the Goldman Sachs hearing over on Tony’s Thoughts. As much as I’d love for something to come out of the criminal charges headed towards Goldman I just don’t see it amounting to much. What I suspect is that Lloyd Blankfein is just going to erect a giant wall of gold bricks around Goldman Sachs downtown and throw big diamonds at SEC investigators till they give up from all of the bruises.

While Scott Voth did not deliver on a wiki poem, he made a post over at Wiki Wrangler giving us a sneak peak at his masters thesis work. The post cards are lovely and it’s a great project suited to the scope of Omeka. Takes some time to visit the Omeka site and learn about what they’re doing.

Speaking of technology and academia, Adam Wandt had a really touching post on the increasing use of technology by the elderly. He set up his grandmother with a computer and got her to explore the internet and technology with some really great benefits on the side. The links towards the end are a nice touch if you’re looking for some further reading on the mental benefits of technology. Congrats Adam!

Finally, Helldriver made it in just under the wire for this week’s round up. It’s a post about spring and music. That, of course, is an understatement, but were I to try and explain what a great post it is I’d just ruin it. To be frank, I think the best thing I can say about Helldriver’s post today is that it’s enough to make me wrap up this week’s round up and get the hell out of my apartment.

See ya next week folks!