gl.

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

 
7:42 PM: the crawling chaos [#] [3]

so i'm finally out of media dep, if you don't count the 3-day descent into madness i spent at the hp lovecraft film festival. but now i have catchup to do: over 250 blog posts (thanks, rss) and 50 emails i need to reply to. so be kind to me if i'm slow for the next week or so.

today sven & i dashed through the new contemporary art wing at the portland art center. it was strangely unsatisfying, especially as you must enter via a tunnel from the other building, which gives you much less of a sense of walking into a neat new building. perhaps the two floors we didn't get to would have held more secrets: its format was archeological, so as you ascended in floors, you rose through decades of work.

we also made a stop for sven to meet the apple store. mmmmmm, nano! very tempting, even as just an auxillary brain-like object (especially w/ voodoopad!). and i still drool at the wafer-thin sony cybershot. alas, no new imacs w/ the built-in isight, which i was really wanting to see.

and i am surprised to find myself writing about my former life, but apparently blackboard & webct just merged! didn't see that coming! i don't mean to be snarky, but they are both lumbering & clumsy: if webct is mothra and blackboard is godzilla, what hideous lovechild will they create? glad i won't be around to find out. :)

Comments:

oh gretchin you are the most clever at describing webct and blackboard, i thank you for my biggest laugh today from the very descriptive last paragraph. i have had the most difficult time with webCT this semester, could it be any more unusable!

# posted by  windhowl : Fri Oct 14, 10:23:00 AM PDT

 

Go ahead, be snarky. It's cleansing.

I've helped M. struggle with WebCT during her years at Pueblo Community College. Now she is teaching at your alma mater, where Blackboard is the default app., but she hasn't tried to deal with it yet. I have resisted so far, using all sorts of other things instead. Some in the English Dept. still like Daedalus. It's a muddle, and learning new software all the time takes away from advancing in your own subject field.

# posted by  Chas S. Clifton : Wed Oct 19, 05:08:00 PM PDT

 

i don't have a dark enough heart to keep the edge on my snark. i begin to qualify myself pretty early. for instance, i've worked w/ both products (& even for webct for a while): both webct -and- blackboard began with good intentions, and i still believe that web-based & web-supplemented learning has a lot of potential.

but you're right, chas: "It's a muddle, and learning new software all the time takes away from advancing in your own subject field." i've grown disillusioned by institutions that fail to reward the time it takes to do this, faculty who resent the process instead of adapting what works for them, the classism inherent in faculty/staff relations, and the webware that makes it so difficult for no good reason. all of that muddle takes away from actually TEACHING STUDENTS, which rarely seems to be the primary motivation of anyone involved.

no, really. ask me what i really think. :)

# posted by  gl. : Sun Oct 23, 12:43:00 AM PDT

 

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