Scholarly Life of a Committed Technofile » C&W

C&W 2007: Serendipity

rrodrigo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:07:04 +0000

I had a shock last Wednesday (well…a couple weeks ago now) while boarding the plane to Detroit for the computers and writing conference–to my surprise my colleague and his wife (also a good friend) were sitting across the aisle from me. They were headed off to a conference about Arab American Writers.
Look at the pamphlet in the lower right hand corner of the picture…it was for their conference, and another colleague and I found it at a local restaurant in Detroit. How weird! I guess we can all start singing “It’s a small world after all.”

C&W 2007: Power of Adjectivals

rrodrigo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:25:49 +0000

One of the nights that we were running around Detroit a colleague kept telling us stories about her former boyfriends. There was the boyfriend with the short arms. The boyfriend during graduate school. The boyfriend with the irritating mother who wanted to teach her to cook. ETC… And of course, the focus here is on the storytelling. We all got good laughs about these former boyfriend stories and what are colleague learned about herself in the process. Finally, at the end of the night, our colleague made a slip. She mentioned something that pulled two of the stories together. Another colleague and I caught on quickly and started to unravel the web of stories. Lo and behold, the stories were all of the same guy! All evening we had been imagining that our colleague has had this wonderful mish-mash of relationship experiences (which indeed, she has) with a variety of individuals (nah…we didn’t think she was a hussy, not us!).

I wish my students had been there to participate in this event. It was a wonderful lesson on the power of adjectivals. All of the different detailed descriptors about the noun “boyfriend” made it appear that there were many more boyfriends in play. Buy splitting up the telling of the adjectivals we slowly built a very multi-faceted understanding of this individual.

Enough of being a word/communication geek!

C&W 2007: Open Source Workshop

rrodrigo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:41:32 +0000

Let’s just start with WOW! The folks who organized this workshop did a great job of providing resources, providing quick introductions and leaving time for play. As those of you who occasionally swing by and read my blog know, both my dissertation research as well as other assessment data from workshops I have facilitated indicates, faculty committed to technology generally just need more scheduled play time to keep up with technology. I felt completely at home with my laptop open, working stuff from this workshop, other materials, and asking questions along the way. Participating in this workshop has helped me stick to my “more open source” commitment.” Mini-me is only running open office. I’m trying to only use open office at home. I’m slowly playing with the other cool stuff they demoed (see the second link below). I’m very excited about them showing the portable apps stuff as well. I’m looking forward to demoing portable apps with a group of students who do not own their own computers.

The Wacky World of Bathrooms

rrodrigo — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:18:02 +0000

About five years ago, a couple of my friends/colleagues and realized that we all liked to keep track of funky bathrooms. Since then, when we find a funky bathroom we generally try to bring it to one another’s attention. This past week when I was in Detroit at Computers & Writing I was with one of my “funky bathroom” friends. Without knowing that the Cass Cafe was one of the places highly suggested by a colleague who went to school in Detroit, we ended up there late Wednesday night (it was one of the few places still serving food!). We had great food, nice classes of wine, and a wonderful laugh over the bathroom.

The other stall had a loop and hook setup that looked like it could hold together a truck and trailor hitching. For more pics from the Cass Cafe, and one of its “tame” pieces of art, check out my flickr site.