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July 25, 2007
Busy busy busy (part the next)
I promised to talk about my feelings about the end of the Potter series today, but I have been overtaken by events, so that post will have to wait until tomorrow.
In the meantime, here are a few interesting tidbits:
ITEM: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the fastest-selling book of all time, with at least 4.1 million books flying off the shelves in the first 48 hours of its release. It's possible that the figure, as Scholastic insists, is actually 6.9 million. In any case, you won't be seeing Deathly Hallows on the New York Times bestseller list. Ever. Michael Giltz explains why. What do you think about this outrageous traveshamockery?
ITEM: One of my colleagues had asked me a few days ago to help her to set up a course blog. UVM supports and hosts faculty, staff, and student blogs using Movable Type, which is nice of them, but MT isn't easy or intuitive. To prep for my meeting with my colleague, I set up a new blog, Standing Still, and have started posting how-to instructions for doing different things with MT. I hope to make the blog a useful resource for my entire department. Next up: including images in posts. If you have struggled or are currently struggling with MT, especially at UVM, zing me an e-mail with topics to address in later posts.
ITEM: Henry at Crooked Timber ventures into the Dark Side of the Force and joins Facebook. I've gone back and forth on this question, and have not yet joined, even though (or perhaps because) UVM has its own Facebook chapter now. Besides the issues Henry discusses, I'm also concerned about infringing on my students' space. What do you think?
ITEM: And finally, something specially for The Spouse (though other academic spouses may find it eerily familiar). Ph.D. (Piled Higher & Deeper), a web comic by Jorge Cham that I recently got tipped to, has quickly become one of my faves. If you suffer from graduate school, or are a recovering graduate student, Piled Higher & Deeper may be right for you. Here's a strip that I found particularly amusing/distressing, and if you've ever inflicted your own academic work on a non-academic significant other, or been the victim of this sort of abuse, you'll get a kick out of it too:
Posted by reparent at July 25, 2007 2:48 PM
Comments
Great idea for the new blog, Richard. Will you be allowing comments there?
I've been on Facebook for ages and while I don't spend a lot of time there I do find some people are more willing to communicate with me there than via e-mail. Given that it's now open to the general public, I'm also finding it to be less of a student-oriented space. While at one point all my "friends" were students who added me, perhaps out of the novelty of finding one of their profs there, all my recent friends are in fact current friends and family and quite a few long lost acquaintances. I'm still ambivalent about Facebook in general, but can't see getting rid of my presence there anytime soon.
Paul
Posted by: Paul Martin at July 25, 2007 4:01 PM
Hi Paul - yes, I'm planning to make Standing Still a commentable blog. (Actually, I'm surprised I haven't already. I think I thought I had. Oops.)
And your Facebook experience is really interesting. Ambivalence is a real drag, ain't it?
Posted by: Richard ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://reparent.blog.uvm.edu/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 25, 2007 4:56 PM
I guess I've warmed to Facebook over the last couple of months, but it's still not something I could ever see replacing my blog(s), my homepage, or even Twitter. The opening of Facebook outside of schools and universities, along with the introduction of applications have made it more interesting and usable to me. Most of what I do on Facebook comes from things I do outside of it. My Facebook page pulls in my blog's RSS feed, so all of my posts appear there and then go out to my "friends" via my Facebook feed. My Facebook status messages actually come from Twitter and using Twitterific allows my Twitter status to also be posted as my iChat and MSN Messenger status.
All those features make Facebook more usable to me, even though I'm not actually using Facebook (if that makes any sense at all). It just serves as another online presence for me and has seemed to allow a different group of people to connect with me than have connected with my blog or have found me online here at UVM.
I think it's worth playing around with, especially for you. When I have student who rarely bother checking their UVM e-mail, I'm often able to contact them in a matter of minutes via Facebook. I find it pretty interesting how much of the student communication at UVM now occurs through non-UVM tools. I'm also find it intriguing that many students are savvy users of tools like Facebook or MySpace and yet can simultaneously be completely in the dark about things like RSS feeds, blogs, or podcasts. When I talk about RSS feeds in my courses, as I always do, usually only one student, if any at all, has HEARD of RSS, even though through Facebook they are reading and creating feeds all the time.
All that said, I'm still on the fence regarding Facebook. It's a tool I use on a fairly regular basis, but it doesn't move me in anything close to the way other tools and platforms do.
Posted by: Paul Martin at July 25, 2007 10:26 PM