February 19, 2015 | A Shepherd’s Journal: The Fragile Crack of Frozen Stars

When it is -11 degrees Fahrenheit (-24 C), the snow doesn’t so much crunch as it …squeaks. I wait in the dark at the gate. Again.  Yesterday was a meal best left behind for the post trauma to come.  Today I voice a prayer for ‘no new mamas’. I listen deep inside like an equitorial tracking station pinging for … Continue reading February 19, 2015 | A Shepherd’s Journal: The Fragile Crack of Frozen Stars

A Portfolio Response to Summary

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An Improvisational portfolio on the subject of Ferris Jabr’s “Why Brains Prefer Paper”. For class,  Friday the 13th, February, 2015 1. Here is the article for summary: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/?print=true 2. Here is the diigo annotated link: https://diigo.com/07c2ai 3. Here is the diigo outliner that scraped all the links and little bit more as I attempted to ‘Backward engineer’ … Continue reading A Portfolio Response to Summary

February 7, 2015 | A Shepherd’s Journal: Nothing. Done.

I have a reason to be about inside this beastly hour scrubbing the moony fields for lambs. a mule braying at distance. Mars two handbreadths away from a waning full moon. shadows full as noon. Young toms touching whisker trading sniffs of where they’ve been. neighbors a mile away security lights ablaze. stars even farther. … Continue reading February 7, 2015 | A Shepherd’s Journal: Nothing. Done.

Engagement: I Do Not Think It Memes What You Think It Memes

When I search Google for “engagement WKU” or “student engagement”  I get a hot mess of stuff.  In fact it clarifies for me how the word has lapsed into confusion (at least for me).  The Google nGram chart below for “student engagement” indicates that before 1962 there is no record of  the use of the … Continue reading Engagement: I Do Not Think It Memes What You Think It Memes

Petty Joys: A Series | Part Two: If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It

One of my grand joys has been using a fountain pen.  When we were kids my parents let us fill our own ink cartridges with syringe and a bottle of Shaeffer peacock blut “Quink”.  I never had a ‘stick’ pen until I went to junior high school and I sharpened my pencils mostly with a pen knife … Continue reading Petty Joys: A Series | Part Two: If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It

Discoveries from ‘Data’: Not New Landscapes, New Eyes

(mouseover gif above) I asked students to respond to a Google Form for class last week. The point in doing so was to see what students made of the data from that form. I wanted them to look over what amounted to a snapshot of community activity. (If you are interested in the data, just … Continue reading Discoveries from ‘Data’: Not New Landscapes, New Eyes

Feedforward in the Garden of Your Mind

One of the projects I have started the year with is a Google Form survey. I have asked students to fill out this form.  Tomorrow we will look at the data in this spreadsheet that the form above generated. There is an amazing cache of data in there and I have asked my students to find … Continue reading Feedforward in the Garden of Your Mind

El Lector

I am no believer in Fate, but I do pay attention to what the British philosopher David Hume called “constant conjunction”.  In this case I have had two instances of “reading aloud” conjoin my path.  This I do not ignore. The first was from a recent episode of the highly recommended Gweek Podcast that featured … Continue reading El Lector