Smell the Productivity
Kinda 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 . . .
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.