One of the major issues that comes up in my computers-and-education course is the idea of making electronic content accessible to people who use alternate technologies for reading/consuming information online. Intellectually this makes a lot of sense to me, but I’ve had some gut level resistance. And I think when you get down to it, the reason is that I’ve distributed course notes as PDF files for a few years now. My logic was that I didn’t want students to have to worry about how a browser would mangle the notes and make them harder to read or follow, and I do think that that’s a valid concern. But the problem is that PDFs are rotten for screen readers and other software that people with vision handicaps or other problems might use to navigate the web. So now I seriously have to think about re-formatting these online notes as XHTML pages with cascading style sheets, and at least see how they print out. Yeesh. Technology. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Author Archive
Guess I Gotta Buy the White Album Again
Posted September 5, 2007 By Dave ThomerSmell the Productivity
Posted September 4, 2007 By Dave ThomerKinda wanted to have some brilliant thoughts to mark my return from blogging, but my brain’s getting ready to shut off, so we’ll have them tomorrow.
A lot of my energy today has gone toward technology problems. I want to make PDF files of several major writings from the anti-Federalist side of the constitutional ratification debate available to my students. The photocopier at work has a setting to create PDFs and e-mail them to you, which is great – but it could only handle documents that were three pages long. So now I gotta stitch ’em together.
Some of my students can’t even access the online material I’m posting using the university’s system – that’s the reason I’ve always set up course web pages on my own server, but then I always get students who look on Blackboard (the education system) rather than on the site. So I’m trying to work with the system and getting frustrated by the interfaces and lack of access.
I also had to do some work on a wiki for one of my education courses. In between arguing with the interface, I know I’m setting myself up to be a major putz, because I went through altering fonts and reorganizing material in a way that I thought made sense. I’m not sure my OCD allows for the plays-well-with-others skills required for being a wiki contributor . . .
Taking the Rest of the Week Off
Posted August 13, 2007 By Dave ThomerI think it’s time to recharge the ol’ batteries, so I’m gonna spend a week or so ruminatin’ on various topics before I return to the blog here. Have fun and keep cool.
Excellence Defined
Posted August 12, 2007 By Dave ThomerWent to visit some college friends today, who are terrific people that have a daughter right around Alex’s age with whom she gets along with famously. On top of all this, when they moved down to the Philly area they bought an HDTV. So we had that on showing various sporting events in the background while we swapped stories and kept the kids from taking over the world. Or so we like to tell ourselves, anyway. Thanks to HDTV, we were able to tell that Tiger Woods was very, very warm when he won the PGA Championship today. I think I’ve mentioned before that I only turn on golf when Tiger’s about to win a major. There’s just something about someone at the top of his game doing things that no one else can really do that I like to see.
It also occurred to me today that when/if we ever get an HDTV, the important thing might be asking the store what a standard broadcast looks like on the HDTV. ‘Cause the imperfections of a standard broadcast can become even more noticeable, which is kind of a bummer. But ah well.
All About the Music
Posted August 11, 2007 By Dave ThomerYesterday was probably the best experience of live music I’ve had, one of those everything-comes-together situations that just makes me feel incredibly lucky to be living the life I’m living. I’m gonna try and get some of those moments onto the record and point you to some spots on the Internet where you can catch a glimpse of them.
I went downtown to World Café Live to see a Free at Noon concert with Crowded House and Joan as Police Woman, a concert you can hear online at NPR. I’d never been to the venue, but it’s a very nice little theater and the sound was pretty good. Joan was pretty good, doing three songs on the keyboard with a bassist and drummer before switching over to electric guitar for her finale. The radio host misread her notes at one point during the interview, which made me feel bad – I beat myself up when I mis-speak in front of 30 students, which is merely one reason that a career in radio is probably not for me. But this is an important point in today’s story – we’ll come back to it in a moment.
After Joan’s set Crowded House walked onto the stage, looking very much like they wanted to know whose bright idea it was to get them up to perform this early in the day. Most of the band members were wearing T-shirts, and I’m not sure Neil Finn had gone near a comb that morning. They were in good spirits, though. When someone from the audience yelled “You forgot Tim!â€? (Neil’s brother and frequent collaborator), Neil feigned surprise – “I knew I left something behind!â€? – before nodding toward his son Liam and saying “I brought his nephew.â€? At this point the radio host started introducing the band and referred to their most recent album as Together Alone, at which point the audience started murmuring in a way that I interpreted as “Umm . . . should we interrupt her?â€? before Neil said, “That wasn’t very recent . . .â€? Turns out the host had written a note to say that the band had just put out their first album since Together Alone. The philosopher in me thought that was an interesting case of how our brain can just grab a piece of information and run with it based on prior patterns and expectations, but I put that out of mind. There was music to hear, now with the added benefit of a running joke. Read the remainder of this entry »
And Number 1200 on the Countdown . . .
Posted August 10, 2007 By Dave ThomerAt this very moment, I am listening to the last song on my iPod’s random playlist of my entire library. I have an even 1200 songs on the Pod, and I need to put a few dozen more on. But I couldn’t plug the iPod in to resync it without resetting the Shuffle Song list, and by God I was determined to get through all 1200.
It’ll probably be a while before I try this again.
At any rate, oddly enough, songs 1199 and 1200 were both tracks from Don Henley’s End of the Innocence album. (And 1197 or 1198 was Matthew Sweet’s “Nothing Lasts.” Don’t tell me the shuffling algorithm wasn’t programmed with a sense of humor.)
A Legacy Honored
Posted August 9, 2007 By Dave ThomerYou know, some days it’s good to realize you can still be amazed. The space shuttle endeavor is currently in space for STS-118, an assembly mission to the International Space Station. One of the mission specialists is Barbara Morgan, a former elementary school teacher who has been a full time astronaut since 1998. Morgan was Christa McAuliffe’s alternate for the Teacher in Space mission aboard the Challenger in 1986.
21 years later, she’s in space.
I really have no words for how wonderfully cool that is.
I See, I See, Said the Blind Man
Posted August 8, 2007 By Dave ThomerAs he picked up his hammer and saw . . .
(No, I do not get tired of that joke. Yes, I know it’s not particularly funny.)
Had an eye exam today. Got off to a good start when the doctor took a look at my glasses and said “I had forgotten how nearsighted you are.” Went downhill from there, as my prescription had to get stronger – again – as my vision had deteriorated to 20/50 with my old glasses. Walked home in the sunlight, and even though I had the protective shades, I am stunned I did not walk right into a moving car. When I could keep my eyes open, I saw the whole world through a haze.
Then my first attempt to get new glasses failed when the closest LensCrafters’ machines were broken. So we drove to another one and discovered that my current health insurance doesn’t cover glasses. Unfortunately, I had already donated blood earlier in the day, so trading plasma for the glasses was impossible. Visa is very happy with me tonight, lemme tell ya.
On the other hand, when I finally did get the glasses, I was amazed by how much clearer things seemed, and by how light the glasses were – lenses have apparently gotten even thinner in the last few years, which is great. I hope that lens-thinning technology manages to at least keep pace with my deteriorating vision for years to come.
So, long story short, if you haven’t replaced your glasses in a few years, and have a spare kidney, check out what’s available.
Oh, and if you can at all persuade your optometrist not to have Rachael Ray’s talk show on in the waiting room, go for it.
Matters of Perspective
Posted August 7, 2007 By Dave ThomerInteresting feature on ESPN.com about Atlanta’s history as a center of the civil rights movement, and how that history motivates the way many people in Atlanta view the Michael Vick case.
There are certain parallels between the situation and the 2003 mayoral election here in Philadelphia. When a bug was discovered in the mayor’s office, it was not hard at all for some people to believe that the listening device was a racially and/or politically motivated attack against a black political figure. I was in the middle of doing research on Martin Luther King, Jr. for my thesis at the time, so I certainly couldn’t say it was impossible to conceive. And I’m not someone who really lived through that atmosphere of distrust.
In this situation I find myself vacillating somewhat. I know about the idea of innocent until proven guilty, and I believe in that from the criminal justice point of view. But from the what-do-we-think-of-the-man perspective, I’m not sure we’re under an obligation to pretend that nothing has happened to a public figure until the trial is over. And there seems to be a lot of evidence that one can use to draw a conclusion. I know people bring up the Duke lacrosse case as an example, but the way I remember things, within days of that story breaking, problems with the case and the evidence were coming to light. I just haven’t seen that happening yet.
But then again, I still have an instinct to trust the authorities, that there’s probably a good reason that they filed these charges. If I weren’t inclined to give them that benefit of the doubt, I’d probably have a very different perspective.
An Ongoing Argument with My Spellchecker
Posted August 6, 2007 By Dave ThomerCan someone tell me when dialog became a preferred form to dialogue? This has been driving me nuts for a while.
It’s always the little things that send you to the nuthouse.