Jefferson's Newspaper

Given that one of my primary occupational roles is providing tech support, I offer the following question in part as preemption in my own self-interest but also in the interest of exploring the scope of instruction in the digital humanities (or the “digital” anything for that matter): Should Your Syllabus Include a Note on Web Browsers? If you teach an online class or a class with a significant online component, the answer might be yes.

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Today I think I’ll share a few email excerpts to illustrate some of the more annoying aspects of my job, each of which involves public school district IT Departments acting in ways that are (in my very partial and partially-informed estimation) either a) lazy, b) incompetent, c) draconian or d) all of the above. If I come across as a curmudgeon in the process, it’s because I am. Still, it’s important to note at the outset that I understand the challenges faced by the well-meaning folks charged with managing school (and perhaps also business/enterprise) IT. They do so with many skills I do not come close to possessing and under tremendous pressure to meet legislative and policy directives, but are often lacking in the money, staff, and training required to keep up to date with the demands of acting as local gatekeeper and eternal overlord of the internets. Nevertheless, in my brief experience thus far as a member of the ed. tech community, I have yet to meet a school IT coordinator (in public primary and secondary schools, that is, and not in higher ed where the environment is a bit more competitive) who was what I would call “in touch” with the latest goings-on in education/technology/educational technology. In any case, I hope this comes across as constructive. That is my sole intention, to save the fucking children.

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Somewhat self-righteously, I consider myself a pretty good teacher.  I teach high school modern American History on the west side of Cleveland where some consider making it to the end of the day a victory.  I’ve been slowly pushing myself and my students to aim for goals much higher however.  Call me audacious. The recent explosion amongst the ranks of historians, history teachers, and digi-gurus in promoting both historical thinking skills (See Wineburg and the site) and web 2.0 technologies demands serious attention with this goal in mind.  The two can be intimately tied together to achieve a mastery of both.

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I’m one of those people who listens to NPR all day.  In the shower, in the car, while cooking, as a Sunday morning activity with my partner.  I almost never watch television, but I love passively listening to smart people talk, which is not really substantially different than watching dumb people swap wives when you get down to it.  Though I suppose it’s also not unlike sitting in an undergrad history lecture.  The point is, I like to be entertained and I also like to learn.  And I like doing it with my ears, so I can use my eyes and hands for other things.  What follows is an incomplete list of high-quality podcasts dealing with various topics in history.

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Like any zealot, I spend weekends, evenings, social engagements, and holidays ranting about the things that really get on my nerves.  Today, July 4th, a day commemorating the birth of our glorious nation, I spent the early afternoon orating on the relative merits of the LMS in hopes of fomenting revolution.  I am currently taking an Information Architecture course, ironically offered only through BlackBoard, the arch-nemesis of all that is righteous and enlightened in higher education, a blithely tyrannical George III to Web 2.0′s promise of digital democracy, a naval blockade on usability and information seeking behavior, an unjust tax levied on the collective sanity of the student body.

Maybe I’m taking this too seriously, you say?  Well, what did you do to celebrate America today? Eat some hotdogs?  Listen to some Lee Greenwood tunes?  I think it’s clear who the real patriot is.  Hit the break for the full thread.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent, the neutral, and the obsequiously monarchical.

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So, I really like the looks of this nifty little flowchart, though I’m not sure it’s logically consistent.  In fact, it kind of reminds me of the inscrutable maintenance manual that came with my Taiwanese scooter.   I’m feeling compelled to take it down and make some revisions, but I think it best to just move on to writing my little article about the challenges inherent in digital history at the institutional level.  So here it is…

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Recently, I’m noticing a lot of chatter about “crowdsourcing history.” The discussion about leveraging crowds in history-making has been going for quite some time, but only now seems to be reaching a point of acceptance. In case you’ve been living under a very Amish rock, here’s how Wikipedia – the king of the crowds – defines the term.
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