Sarah Morgano | 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.

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July 19, 2010

The Round-Up Where I Realized Summer is Almost Over – 6/12-6/18

Sorry, I guess that was a bummer of a headline. Think of it as a wake-up call, the beach will never be warmer. Seriously.

Things started off this week with some big news from Anthony Picciano’s @apicciano blog about education media giant Blackboard acquiring Elluminate. If Elluminate sounds familiar to you that’s because our very own Adam Wandt @awandt blogged about using it quite a bit last semester. While Adam had a pretty positive experience with the platform, I’ll be curious to see what Blackboard decides to do with it. My hope is that they leave it alone and let the Elluminate team continue to develop it, but I suspect it’s something they want to integrate into the Blackboard portal itself. I can see where it’s clearly a smart move for both companies; Elluminate gets a bunch of cash and Blackboard gets a better feature in their suite, but you know…*cough*…there have been some problems with BB’s stability and I wonder how well it’ll take to something like Elluminate if the two concepts are put together. And that’s not even touching on some of Tony’s greater concerns about centralization that should probably have all of our eyebrows perked a little more.

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more of his work, this week reflecting on art in the age of catastrophe. I hate to play armchair critic, and wince a little when I go back and look at times when I’ve tried to publicly have an opinion on art, so I’ll just say that I really like what you did there. As someone who came of age in the late 90s rest assured that the insulation of padded foam on everything lingered well past the ‘everything is going to kill you’ 80’s. To that end I can’t help but feel like my generation of artists lack a certain appreciation for danger.

After a too long hiatus Helldriver @helldriver returns. It’s hard to write about music, especially in way that does it any justice, but this blog always delivers. Often it’s the insight drawn from writing on music that resonates the most, such as:

But in a broader sense, what’s happened to the 55 is indicative of what’s happened to New York City as a whole, which for the last couple of decades has been busy draining itself of all its wonderfully garish “local” color, and repackaging itself as one more franchise in a global urban chain store, drawing liberally on its own myths to manufacture a brand identity.

I couldn’t have said it better. To be fair, that’s not the moral of the story so do read on, but New York and I are in a fight this week.

That being said, run – don’t walk – and catch up on what’s going on at York College’s ‘Boot Camp’. This project is awesome and I hope to see more about on the Commons. It’s a great idea and I hope as our community here grows we’ll see more projects similar to this appear across CUNY.

And finally, from the Community Team come two posts you should definitely check out. Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano posted to Commons Connections and gave us a handy guide to adding users to your blogs. Scott Voth @scottvoth posted to Wiki Wrangler about the Apture plug-in that allows readers to stay on your site while browsing links from your blog instead of being directed away.

There’s the week that was on the blogs. I mean it people, go out and play. It’ll be back in the classroom before you know it.

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July 12, 2010

The Round Up During the Heat Wave 7/5-7/11

It was basically like swimming in lava last week. The humidity alone tapped into some dormant embryonic gene set of mine and I sprouted gills. I know July is supposed to be hot, but it just seemed cruel. Normally I like to delay the satisfaction of going through some of the week’s blogs with long winded rants about whatever I’ve got going on for the week but I’ll spare you and let a pro handle it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz_ZpoYBzaw&feature=PlayList&p=8F4046994ACE55B6&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1[/youtube]

Look, I know it has nothing to do academia. I know. Sometimes you just find a gem and have to share it.

Things started off this week with Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz fussin’ around with his Alkivia theme and discovering that the WordPress upgrade to 3.0 had shut him out. If you’re having trouble yourself with it, or your own theme, maybe there’s some insight here. I know we get a lot of folks from WordPress coming over here to check us out too so thanks for the help Joe!

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more from the collection. This week was about the explicit and subtle lessons learned as a 16 year old life guard in training. It was kind of a tender post really. It reminded me a little of those posters you see in delis on how to do the Heimlich maneuver. It’s always the same stick figures from the ‘walk’ signs saving each others life. It’s hard not to imagine that those nondescript characters are supposed to represent the part of you that is not supposed to freak out in emergency, as if behind all of the emotion you’re just an animated chalk silhouette that can perform rote tasks.

Tim Wilson @twilson is prolific. That guy puts in work on the blogs man. If I don’t call you out on Footenotes enough it’s pretty much because I’m ashamed of my blogger ethic comparatively. This post over at Franglophone Studies was excellent. Hats off to you for managing to talk about Deleuze and Donald Rumsfeld in one go. I somehow missed the Times piece so thanks for highlighting that, after I’ve had a chance to read it I’ll head over to the comments – come with me Footenoters!

***NEWS FROM ICELAND!***

They found stuff! After last week’s disappointing day at the farm this week gave us some bones, smoking pipes and an awesome bone die (amongst many other things). And VIDEO! Sorry to go all caps lock crazy, but Turf Walls has kind of turned into my own private Discovery Channel. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it – what were these 17th Century Icelanders up to all the time? All they did was smoke and play dice?

A new blog showed up this week – GovDocs I love and hope you will too. Jane Cramer @janec posted this week about some tools we can use to watch the oil basically destroy everything in the Gulf. Sorry, I’m bitter. Aren’t we all? I really excited to see what else shows up here and thanks for building this great resource for us!

Emily Channell @echannell over at Appalachian Anthropology has a really interesting post about coming down the mountain and trying to write for a broader audience. I hear you. Trying to publish outside the horse blinders of tenure tenure tenure can be taxing. It’s hard enough to write in a way that speaks to your peers, but to try and translate that knowledge and enthusiasm in a way that speaks to people with much more general interests requires a kind of tight rope agility. I really wish you the best of luck, please keep us posted when the ice starts to thaw.

And our very own Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano was channeling ‘Rawhide’. The ‘Commons Connections’ blog got a makeover and some new plugins. Coming soon we’re going to be doing a lot more to highlight various features of the blogs and ways for you to use them. If you ever have any questions about doing more with your blog look up and of the Community Facilitators and we’ll be happy to help.

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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!

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April 24, 2010

Things I Learned About Myself on the Commons…Round Up!

Well, first I learned that I can’t remember if ‘About’ would be capitalized in a title for a blog. I’d go grab my copy of Strunk & White but…you know.

More importantly I learned:

Mary Carroll is my new hero.

Apparently I’m buying an Android.

I am a Twitter moron.

And…

I don’t go to enough Black Metal shows.

Let me explain.

So I started to read all of the blogs for this week’s round-up and things got off to a great start with Mark Carroll’s Always a Bridesmaid. I was basically stopped cold in my tracks when I got just one meager sentence into the post and read:

“I decided I would Nora Ephron them with my morning coffee.”

Never in my life have I seen Nora Ephron turned into a verb. Genius. So genius I didn’t get it at first. Was Mary Carroll going to reveal the identity of Deep Throat or was she trying to land a gig at Huffington Post? Nobody cares about Mark Felt anymore (Nixon who?) but the writing was great. Tender when it needed to be, acerbic for the rest. I have to say though, couldn’t you just Modge-Podge some of your old acting posters all over your husband’s sculptures?

The rest of the post brings up a good point about online and blended courses, and what we lose as educators when the classroom turns to pixels. In our rush to meld the internet and its endless features into a measured instrument for education we often let our enthusiasm overrun an appreciation for face time. Not to get all Martin Buber, but those breakthrough moments are hard to see on a Facebook update.

Speaking of Facebook updates, I mean Twitter, I finally caved and signed up. I was reading Sarah Morgano’s post at Commons Connections and started to feel a little left behind. I’m following four people and they’re all co-workers. Epic. I’ll be sure to blog about my life with Twitter as I get the hang of it. Fortunately there are a lot of great resources around the Commons for getting up to speed. So what is this number sign # thing supposed to do?

Foolishly I thought I was inciting violence last week when I ragged on Apple products to Michael Oman-Reagan, resident Mac guru at the Grad Center. Turns out he’s just as unhappy as I am. He made a post this week about Steve Jobs’ touchy feelings on porn. Apparently King Steve doesn’t want smut on his products. No surprise there, that’s long been the standard at Apple, but it does raise some interesting questions about who gets to shape morality in this age of open source. Is market ubiquity the same thing as censorship? Are Apple products so good looking and seductive that we’re not even tempted by anything else? That being said…we all remember what happened to Betamax.

Anthony Picciano from Tony’s Thoughts is away at a blended learning conference so no links this week. Hopefully on his way back we’ll get a post about what was going on there. Maybe they addressed some of the issues brought up at Always a Bridesmaid.

Helldriver was back this week blogging about the Immortal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. First off, any black metal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple sounds rad. That place must be charged with like 150 years worth of super secret Masonic ritual stuff. We’re lucky the Earth didn’t split open and unleash a thousand winged Dan Browns all over Brooklyn. More importantly, this:

“They absolutely exploded when the lights went down, and the shadow of the drummer appeared behind the kit, and then the other two members of the trio sprang from the wings in a miasma of noise and smoke. They banged their heads and made devil-horns. They knew all the words, and “sang” them, too, as surely as if the lead singer had said, “Now, boys and girls, aspirate along with me …”

Seriously, whatever you were doing that night wasn’t half as fun.

Finally – Carl James Grindley is just about done with Poetry Month. I’m not exactly sure why this makes me happy, but it works on the same level as when I watch the marathon run right through my neighborhood each year. For no real reason other than the thrill of it I just stand there waving my stupid inflatable TMobile balloon as the athletes slug through. You’re almost there!

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