Blackjack! Day 21 and Counting

The Card Players,  Theodoor Rombouts, 17th c

Day 21 brings back childhood memories...of playing Blackjack. The kind you get growing up with a card player, a card counter who worked his way through college playing bridge for fun and profit. Blackjack and other card games my father taught me for the arithmetic...and another player. Who else would teach a 10 year old cribbage for someone to play with? Forget learning Go Fish, which did learn until early teens when incredulous friends taught me. 

If I can't find a fabulously grand images for this, it's time to fold. But now onto listing the posts of the day, Staying off Facebook does give blogging a boost. All of these are fat posts. Two massive curations, no quickie re-blogs. Plus I set up Stephen Downes' OL Weekly to post re-post on PD tomorrow.

• on the #precariousfaculty network & around the #adjunct/iverse

• COCAL Updates, November 21, 2014 - 11/21/2014

• #HigherEd in the News - 11/21/2014

Dispatch from the #WriMo Zone Miasma, Day 20

Blade Runner Tribute ©Hideyoshi, Deviant Arty

The subject line indicates of my frame of mind accurately ~ as does my image choice, Blade Runner Tribute over initial (more ironic) choice, Ivory Tower (same artist).

Instead of blogging, I've been napping, surfing, browsing Dr Who pages and back episodes. I did get out two Precarity Dispatch posts, including a beastly long COCAL Updates double header, albeit with fewer potholes to patch, and an Adjunct Stories. I set up another PD ~ #HigherEd in the News ~ to have on hold.

• Joe Berry's COCAL Updates double header: Nov 18-19, 2014 - 11/20/2014
• #CampusProtests in the News—CA, across the nation & globally - 11/20/2014
• Dr #Adjunct or How I Learned to Stop Suffering & ❤ #CollectiveBargaining - 11/20/2014

Once posted, I will not even think about dashing over to blog about something. Sleep is coming on.

Day 19 Dispatch from the #WriMo Zone

Plus set up the next COCAL Updates in drafts ~ a double header. Part, November 19, is reasonably well ordered but Part, November 18, will take more work. I noticed three international news down among the other links and not up with "International."

There are other odd gaps there too: no reference to ISM Week of Global Action or the Insecure Work Conference, Filling them is not my problem although I will probably continue to add fill when a section looks too naked. After all, Updates now go out on the PD in on my network.

I'm still not getting back to community blogging, although the overlap is increasing and I share to the community pages from the ed ones. I sense that the all open and together mode G+ encourages that.

Let me task myself with a community post tomorrow then. A short one, better than none at all...

Blogged today

Dispatch from the #WriMo Zone, Day 11 #nablopomo

Yes, still connected. I'll pass on listing anything for "this day in history" but provide the link in case you want check it for yourself

Two CWL back posts down, two more to go. I'll get out a precarious faculty video (Chomsky on higher education double header) post this evening but may not make it back here to embed the link.

Blogged Today (in addition to this post)

Dispatch from the off-line #WriMo Zone, Day 6

Today's number is 6, not as exciting or loaded with portent as yesterday's 5. That it symbolizes both ambivalence and equilibrium seems somehow appropriate. The real obstacle is not being connected. tl;dr.

Blame it on CenturyLink. I'm definitely not happy about it but helpless to do anything. The disconnect should be resolved by now but is not. If I can't connect by midnight, I'll have blown November #nablopomo challenge, even though I am now writing it now. On the other hand, the challenge is for me -- not BlogHer. I'll write off-line and post when I can with a scheduled back date. If that does not count for BlogHer, it still does for me.

The lessons of the challenge are to show myself I can still do it, train or retrain myself to sit down and plow through no matter what, work out my own personal toolkit (or blogger's sonic screwdriver) of tricks and fall back formulas for post. These posts are formulas. Boring when I go through the motions but fun when I get engaged and inventive plugging in the elements. Yesterday it was with number symbolism, "this day in history" and Guy Fawkes Day.

There's something poisonous in being so serious and always earnest. The condition may be inescapable on precarious faculty, but I intend to avoid it here.

November 6 in history

Day 5 Dispatch from the #WriMo Zone #nablopomo

about this number…in mathematics Five is a Fermat prime and conjectured to be the only odd untouchable number, a Fibonacci and rife with religious and cultural symbolism.

For updating ease during or at the end of the day, I will list blog posts du jour at the end of this post. Speaking of history and protest, which I do on several other blogs, November 5 is also Guy Fawkes Night

Since the release in 2006 of the film V for Vendetta, set in a dystopian United Kingdom, the use of the "Guy Fawkes" mask that appears in the film has become widespread internationally among anti-establishment protest groups. The illustrator of the comic books on which the film was based, David Lloyd, has stated that the character V decided "to adopt the persona and mission of Guy Fawkes – our great historical revolutionary".

The Economist explains "How  Guy Fawkes Became the Face of Post-Modern Protest"

Also on this day ~ November 5 ~ in history: 

• George Foreman becomes oldest heavyweight champ in history, 1994
• Nixon wins presidential election, 1968
• FDR re-elected president,1940
• George Selden patents gas-powered car, 1895
• King James learns of gunpowder plot, 1605
• Mughal victory assures Akbar's ascension, 1556

As for blogging du jour, the original work-around purpose of this series:

• UK @unisontweets marking #boycott as #academicprotest « @GdnHigherEd #NAWD  ~ Precarious Faculty (Tumblr)
• Precarity Dispatches — Joe Berry's November 5, 2014, #COCAL Updates #NAWD links 
• NAWD links from the #BigRedA is for #Adjunct ~ precarious faculty

Day 3 in the #WriMo Zone: reflections on #adjunct blogging

Hoohah...posted  today's first one before noon: current issue of The Scout Report at (or in) McGee's Cyber Closet. At this point, email, social media, and a clutch of PF Network posts were fighting for my attention: Sunday Matinee I missed, Nassau adjuncts revisited, a final DoE comment period post/exhortation.

Two more on the Tumblr section of the PF Network: a call for submissions on Precarious Faculty and COCAL Updates on Precarity Dispatches.

Now after that fine speech I fell asleep, barely missed posting this but did miss posting to precarious faculty. The lesson? Overload. Hubris. Procrastination. Priorities. Pick one.

blogging to map virtual learning walks

…rounding up several to connect through shared practices, words, writing and the central word cloud (found, hacked to remix here as 4-way bridge connecting three separate blogs (none registered with #clmooc), with Making Connected Learning in the lower right quadrant. Going counter-clockwise from there: Poets and Writers Picnic, the New Faculty Majority blog and Mountainair Arts (a community blog but not the only one).

I wrote one reflection today for another blog, intended to write three but didn't make it. The rest, including the one I would have included here, will have to wait.

I am an old fashioned letter writer

…yet another MOOC…this one about writing, so I'm putting CWL back in harness to post assignments and reflections. The course is English Composition I: Achieving Expertise, from Duke and on Coursera. It may seem like an odd choice for someone who has taught FY comp: since I have already blogged recommending it to my ESL self-paced study group and on Facebook to local GED students (albeit both with qualifications), I should check it out personally ~ and definitely before recommending it further or adding it to my GED and Independent Learning pages on Scoop.it. 


The first writing activity, "I am a Writer," is a "brief essay (~300 words) in which you introduce yourself as a writer to your classmates and instructor. How would you describe yourself as a writer? What are some of your most memorable experiences with writing? Please draw on your experiences with writing and refer directly to some of these as you introduce yourself as a writer. After you have written and posted your essay, please read and respond to two or three of your classmates' postings." Mine (also here on the course Forum) follows:

A “letter writer” long before the internet, I penned and snailed hand written letters in another lifetime. I come from generations of inveterate letter writers. That shapes my earliest writing memories. Learning languages, I would start writing letters in the new language as soon as I had a handful of words to rub together. I still am one: same genre, different medium. 

at long last: hello #multiliteracies, #POTcert11, #CMC11 & #change11

Finally! Today is the day I break the block, stop procrastinating and MOOC blog. So long, too much territory to cover.  I won't even try. Even so, it is still long enough to invite procrastination. 

I started impressions in 750words, an online writing application to develop the habit of daily writing. The purpose is just to write, get started writing and keep writing, with no other purpose ~ certainly not create blog posts, create documents, answer mail and so on, but the morning word dump gets me started.

Quick take on current state of my mooc activity at this point: if I had a compelling reason (i.e. credit, professional development, to add to CV) to or cared about optimum keeping up, I'd be in a drowning panic. I'm not though. Each mooc is a different gem, a view through a different lens that I'd rather not set aside in order to meet recommendations set by someone else.

Sure, I'd like to be getting more done but this is not all I am doing, not even all I am doing online. Try six+ blogs, four Facebook pages (in addition to profile and a number of groups), a bulging feed reader (even the filters have filters), four Scoop.it pages, three Pinterest boards, four Twitter lines (unsuccessfully trying to hand off local farmers market one), a NetVibes aggregation page and a static web page. No surprise that neither of the last get enough maintenance time. Moocs enrich and inform the lot.

That aside why am here? Orient, declare, network, cluster, focus and all that jazz?

Basic Blogging, #potcert11

Explaining how to get started blogging was on my mind before this course started: a friend asked for help with basics. I assumed (and we all know the cliché about how that breaks down) everybody taking the class would already be a blogger. So I thought, why not revise and repurpose for the class? Too basic, just ignore it: filtering practice.

Blogging is not that different from writing email. The compose screens are very similar. Instead of emailing to designated addressees, you publish - send it into cyberspace. A number of blogging platform offer post by email, making blogging even more like email. Compose in your email program and save in drafts. Alternately, you can compose in a word processing program and then copy paste into the message screen. Use WordPad and save to rtf because Word has too much hidden garbage code that may not transfer well 

Explanatory stuff + links below the fold. Looking over a few blogs about teaching and in your subject area will help you get a feel for blogging and the possibilities. Best advice: just do and figure out the details as you go along. Ask questions: anyone you know who blogs is part of your learning network.

Into the #MOOC again

... but you never enter the same MOOC twice.

Adding the blog right off as part of the enrollment process put the feed right out there. Will that encourage regular blogging or blogger's block?

My own MOOC-blogging reticence puzzles me. I run a gang of blogs and generally post to about three a day. That's not counting affiliated twitter accounts and Facebook page. In other words, I've danced at this party plenty of time before, in front of both friends and strangers, so why be shy now? Maybe regular assignments are what I need ~ just like setting realistic blogging goals as New Year's resolutions.

Here I am, working my way through the POT list:

• already in the FB group
•  just filled out form
• waiting for password to add feed
• already in Diigo but need to join mccpot group
• finish reading syllabus (e.g. practice what we preach)
• writing that 1st blog post right now
• and then the Howdy Y'all blog post 
• on FB too

I am particularly pleased to have learned how to create a feed just for a single tag or label. Good news for a schizo multiple strand blog like this one. Although I've used this blog for a number of online workshops or courses with blog requirements, that is not it's primary purpose, especially between times. It started out being about the intersection of computers and the internet with teaching language/s and writing. Multiliteracies didn't take it OT, but MOOCs about teaching online have been a stretch. Both functions have suffered as a result. From the sidebar:

ABOUT ~ Writing includes email, blogs, wikis, genres less bound to but still involving computers. Web 2.0 collaboration, interaction, feedback, tech tools and apps that enhance the writing process. The blog started as part of an online workshop about teaching writing, with ESL instructors the intended audience, but has now gone beyond that and other boundaries. What happens to language when writing and computers collide? Or writing when language and computers meet up?

 Maybe I should write separate learning objective (per previous post) for each MOOC, including past ones with self-evaluation (eek). Learning objective should keep writing component in mind. I still intend to get to the Digital Divide too.

navigating chaos

"Managing chaos" is an oxymoron. I'm changing out the expression for "navigating chaos" or "chaos coping." A colleague uses "intuitive chaos navigation" (suggestive of Dune's blind navigators on spice), but I'm not ready for that yet. The intuiting part not the spice. Wondering about the chaos part? Look at the tags.

How much mail and such can I wade through this morning before ordering groceries and calling the electric company about billing (autopay fell off the wagon)? I do seem to be handling mail more efficiently thanks to tips from the EVO (Electronic Village Online, pre-TESOL Annual Conference) multiliteracies workshop. I really fell behind this year, but feel I am getting much more out of this year's workshop than previous ones.

That's one prong of the forking pathways of retirement interests. It would be less confusing if they did not keeping crossing one another, economies of scale not withstanding. The workshop is online and covers/involves web 2.0 tools and social media.

As the workshop comes to its end-game, we are to construct either ePortfolios or PLN (Personal Learning Networks). PLN can evolve into a Personal Knowledge Management Plan.I think this is where I'm headed but my conceptualization (mental grasp still exceeding reach) has yet to gel coherently. 

Unlike the other workshop participants, I am retired from active teaching, on line or ground ~ or some mixture thereof. Yet I remain ed involved with an adjunct advocacy group and by volunteer teaching ESL online. The former deals with academic politics and issues; the latter with pedagogy. Both involve social media and have blogs.

See the social media and CMC (computer mediated communication) connection? The thread in the maze that will lead me out and away from the minotaur... or take me down his maw. 

So what about the rest of it? Bear with me, I'm getting there. I blog, not just here. A lot and about all these threads. I figure the "Knowledge Management Plan" will help me keep threads straight, in hand and untangled. It's worth a try.