Scholarly Life of a Committed Technofile

I took the initial notes for this blog entry in my notepad on 8/14. Yeah…I’ve been that busy. As you’ll see from my blog postings in the next couple of days, I’ve been up to some good stuff; however, it’s just been time filling. I wish I had Alan’s self-discipline blog regularly (heck…write regularly, I’d be done with my dissertation already); however, I’m playing catch up now on my way to North Carolina to spend some work and play time with my partner in scholarly crime.

I guess this is a belated “welcome back” posting. When I took these notes it was the week of accountability (week before classes start) and it was crazy meeting, to meeting, to meeting type of week. As an introduction to the semester, I figured I’d warn everybody of what I’m up to and what topics of blogs you should be looking forward to.

Dissertation: I’ve shifted from a focus on deadline to a focus on process. 300 words or bust! Basically I want to commit to 300 words a day (don’t worry, I’ll grow it, anything is better than the current nothing).

Textbook: All I can say there is I’ve signed a contract and have deadlines! But it will be fun to start test running materials in my classes.

Ocotillo (the districts teaching and technology group): I have an R&D position. I’m “testing” blogs, RSSs, and “gluing” stuff together. Basically they are giving me a little money/resources to do the stuff I was going to do anyway. But what does this mean, I’ve got my students using blogs, bookmarking tools, and working up to RSS aggregator/Portal type things.

Shelley’s Sandbox Series: This series will function as some of my workload for Ocotillo. Basically it is the idea that in an hour and a half “workshop” the facilitator only spends 20-30 minutes introducing a “new” technology and then leaves the rest of the time for the participants to play with it. I had my first one yesterday, I think it went smashingly!

Humanities Instruction Council: I’m Mesa CCs representative to the district HIC. We’ll see what goes on there. I’m excited about stirring up the pot a bit! I think we are in a ripe space to make some innovative revisions and additions to the curriculum.

English Technology Group (the department’s technology committee): We’re working on the department webpage, imaging/upkeeping department computers (esp. classrooms), making a department technology acquisition and turnover plan, and run some “teaching with tech” workshops.

And of course, my classes on top of all this. But I’m excited about those, and barring the vague emails of the past two weeks (I’ll get them trained to include their name and course in every email yet), they all feel like a good group of students.

Hang on…it’s going to be one of those, I’ll be more productive because I’ve got so much to do, types of semesters.