Beauty is in the (infected) Eye of the Beholder

from the Bleacher Report website

Just how important are the cosmetic factors in the rhetorical formula of television vanity? I'm not sure, but the recent and unfortunate challenges faced by Olympic Broadcaster Bob Costas surely makes us ponder such issues. While Costas and NBC attributed the removal of the red-eyed Costas to his limited vision, one wonders if there were other considerations, like the "ewww" factor of the discomfort of viewers. Bob's eyes even have their own Twitter account(s).

This could surely be an opportunity to discuss the rhetorical composition of television news:

• What do the producers of broadcast tv choose to show? 
• What do they choose to "not show?" 
• How important are the "looks" of the people delivering us the news?
• How are communications ethics translated for broadcast media?

Interesting and provocative questions, to be sure. But... for a moment of levity, cue up your karaoke track of "Bette Davis Eyes" and sing along to the new hit - "Bob Costas Eyes."

BOB COSTA EYES
His hair is Clairol brown
His lips the games reprise
He’ll never let you down
He’s got Bob Costas eyes
He'll talk about the half-pipe
and about Hockey on ice
He’s pure as Sochi snow
He got Bob Costas eyes

And he'll tease you
just to seize you
coz he know the triple-lutz will please you
He’s precocious and he knows just
How cold it gets in Belarus
He got the Biathalon in his sights
He’s got Bob Costas eyes

He talks about the luge
He breaks down the freestyle
His eyes are getting huge
He’s got Bob Costas eyes
And they’re a little red now
about grapefruit size
as he recaps cross-country
He got Bob Costas eyes

All the boys think it's a sty -
He's got Bob Costas eyes.

When I see him, I just start to cry - 
He's got Bob Costas eyes.

A Confession About The Vocabulary of Rhetoricians and Theoreticians

You may well note that our (rhetoricians and theoreticians) language is often obscure, opaque, deconstructive, and even violently iconoclastic against the status quo of the imperialistic structures of languages/grammars that serve to reify the hegemonic/genderist/specist/racist semantic constructs of power. That our words are non-sens, should bot be conflated with "nonsense," which still operates under the socially constructed paradigm it mocks, but should be seen as an alternate set of  mythopoetic rhizomes of ab/ob-tuseness of the gaze/void of the uncanny.

That is why our vocabulary is gibberish to outsiders. Or, maybe we use our specialized vocabulary for other reasons...

A Few of My Favorite (Digital) Things

As a little Christmas present - I offer a few of my favorite digital things for 2013. I chose these things because they represent an interesting approach to digital literacies and composing for the brave new digital world in which we live. Or maybe just because I thought they were cool. Anyway - enjoy!

• The best new interactive web thingy is Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" multi-channel music video. Oh, yeah they did that - and it's pretty cool. It's the coolest provocation to digital creativity since Arcade Fire's interactive "Wilderness Downtown," (which I still use in my intro to Digital Literacies class.)
• My favorite (though sometimes frustrating) socially-connected app is WAZE. You probably heard about it this year when Google bought the app from its developer for about a billion dollars. It's like Google Maps meets Twitter - a free navigation app that allows users (er, uh, their passengers,) to share info with other travelers such as traffic jams, accidents, weather, and, ahem - location of police. (Admittedly, I started using this last year I think.)
• For me, and I suspect millions of others, TripAdvisor has stolen time and attention from my other travel and dining apps like Yelp and UrbanSpoon. It's desktop website and smartphone apps work well together to provide friendly, useful and comprehensive collection of user-reviews on dining spots, hotels, attractions, etc.
• Did you know you can use video backgrounds for PowerPoint? I just started using this really cool feature this year. Formerly, you'd have to shell out big bucks to get this effect - or use hinky 3rd-party apps that never failed to, uh... fail.
• And, though it is hardware, I just gotta say - I love the Jambox by Jawbone. I use it around the house for the worlds most portable best music, but its easy-synching with my smartphone and laptop means I can have awesome sound for any presentation, regardless of the available equipment at the venue.

What will 2014 bring? I don't know - but I figure that, whatever it is, it will be delivered by my Amazon Prime drone.

History is Not Kind, Doesn't Rewind: Blockbuster's Gone

Every major media outlet ran the headlines we all knew were inevitable:

Blockbuster stores are closing. All of them. Forever.

The New York Times might have had the best Pop Culture Headline about the story: "Internet Kills the Video Store." (Props to the Buggles.) and Quartz has an illustrated timeline of the video store's ;life and death. And, with its death I come to speak to you in this blog. I come not to praise video stores, but to bury them... OK, and maybe to reflect on what this change symbolizes for communicators and educators.

This video, by BuzzFeedYellow, takes older folks down memory lane - and uncovers hidden secrets of our video-screen past for younger viewers:

 

Goodbye, Blockbuster

Marshall McLuhan pointed out that each new medium contains the old medium as content. And I might add that the terms we use with old media (which we know) help us frame our interactions with new media (which we are learning.) For example, we still have skeuomorphic ideas, imagery and language associated with our "Blockbuster past."

• When we return to a previous point in a YouTube video, or in a film we are viewing on Amazon or Netflix, we might still say we are "rewinding." But of course, there is never anything to "wind" to begin with. 
• And when students shoot video , they may get extra "footage" - even though there is nothing to measure in linear dimensions.
• We even call the "footage" (which is not footage at all) "B-roll," though there is nothing that we can roll up - or out.

I keep a collection of media devices from across the ages to show students what "footage" really is, what TV announcers meant by "don't touch that dial!" and how some songs became famous even though they were on "the flip/B side." But now - it is evident that the video cassette will become even more important in the Smartphone Museum exhibits.

ThingLink: Connecting Internet Materials Visually!

Below is a photo of me.
Not a particularly flattering photo.
Not a particularly interesting photo.
Not a particularly useful photo.

But... with a little application called ThingLink, it can become a gateway to a plethora of resources! For example - look at the photo and see the difference an app can make. Notice how clicking on the 35mm camera takes you to a world of legal-use, free photography you can utilize in your classes? See how clicking on the video camera links you to digital video clips you can incorporate in your video editing projects? Observe how clicking on the headphones leads you to lots of usable audio, including music, sound effects, etc.? (Even clicking on the goofy-looking guy will reveal his website.) And clicking the bulletin board will take you to the program that makes this visual connectivity possible: ThingLink!




Try out this free app to spice up your blog or enhance your web site with a fresh new way to link students to web materials visually. You can find it at https://www.thinglink.com/

Ain't Nobody Got Time For That!

Some people call me tech-savvy. Some call me digitally-connected. (No one calls me Maurice.)

But some make the mistake that I engage in technology for technology's sake. I don't. I can't. As the eminent 21st-century philosopher, Sweet Brown says, "Ain't nobody got time for that!"

I do invest time in learning about technology, true. And not all technology I research will be useful to me, also true. But the technologies I consistently engage are those which bear some usefulness to me - aside from being cool gadgetry. (Even if sometimes the purpose is entertainment.)

For example, blogs like this one. I don't blog just to be blogging. I blog to record ideas for teaching or research to which I can return later. I blog to share ideas with my colleagues. I blog to provide resources for students' projects and assignments. In fact, the main audience for my blogging is me. I don't have the illusion that millions of people are waiting to see what I might write. (And if I had such and illusion, I could just look at the blogger stats and be disabused of such notions.) But if I DO become famous for my blog, then so be it.

So, let me share a few ways I use technology for my own benefit - and to share ideas with others. These are not all the tech tools I use, but a sample to show that your tech usage can actually be a time-saver rather than a time waster.

First, I use Delicious to archive all my bookmarks. I categorize my bookmarks with "tags" so I can retrieve internet resources easily for my own research, or to share with students or colleagues. For example, if my students ask where they can find "legal use" images for their presentations, I just send them a link to the Delicious Links I tagged "Images for Multimodal Composition" and voila! they have access to thousands upon thousands of copyright-free images! Do you have an unruly set of bookmarks? Try Delicious.com.

Second, I use ScoopIt! to help me handle all the articles that I have read, and need to read again - or use in class or research. Someone recently asked me how I knew about a certain digital tool, and I said, "Well, I read a lot." And I try - but reading in my field can be overwhelming - so i use ScoopIt! to help me handle all the articles from magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc. I save articles related to Digital technology in a "topic" category called "From Chalkboards to Smartphones." Then, all those articles are in one place for me when I want to return to them for research. Maybe this tool will be helpful to you as well.


Lastly, I let an "aggregation app" called Pulse organize my news for me so I can quickly skim articles so I can stay current in various topics (like news, tech, sports, travel, etc.) from selected publications (like the NY Times, Smithsonian , The Atlantic, ESPN, WIRED, CNET, Gizmodo, Boing boing, or the Food Network.)  And, because I have the app on my phone, I can skim the day's news while having a cup of coffee or eating lunch. Here's what my Pulse feed - for tech sources I selected - looks like on my desktop:

Resumes, Digital Footprints, and Ethos

Though it sounds preachy - it is  true that your resume (or c.v.) is NOT the document you meticulously design, craft, revise and format. In an increasingly "connected" digital world, your resume is the ethos you have established in every area of your life. (Ethos here refers to your credibility, your standing, your relationship with others, your reputation, etc.)

A recent article in Digital Trends, titled "People Still Don't Understand Their Online Lives Can Cost Them Their Real Jobs," discusses new research that reveals "one in 10 young people have been rejected from a job because of the content of their social media profiles."

The most surprising part of the article is not that people lose jobs because of their online behaviors, but rather that they are clueless that it is happening!

People have been getting fired for their activity on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for a while, but this report is noteworthy because it underlines how common it is to have negative real-life repercussions from fooling around on the Internet. You’d think that this widespread rejection would make young people more cautious when posting online, but the On Device study noted that two thirds of the respondents are not concerned that their social media will damage their careers. That means there’s some kind of disconnect happening between what people think is acceptable to employers online and what’s actually acceptable. -Digital Trends, June 3, 2013

from AVG Digital Diaries

When we consider that our c.v. - which stands for "the course of my life" - is just that: everything you write, say, do, etc., then it is clear that it would be a disservice to students to teach them proper formatting and grammar, and not to address the core issue of professionalism we call ethos! With every project, relationship, and deed, we write our c.v. - digitally, visually, relationally, figuratively and literally.

A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. -Proverbs 22:1