rochelle.mazar.ca

How would your college/university experience have been different if you had had to sign this in order to attend?

Well, I can’t figure out which one of these is me: Personality & Breast Shape. This is incredibly heterosexist, and disturbing. Surreal.

blue doesn’t think so, but I think these Paper Dolls are kind of cool.

Layers
A whiff of lavender…Could it be that EvaB is looking for you in Tabula?
She pages, “uknow photoshop?”
She pages, “and the idea of layers”
She pages, “visible and invisible”
She pages, “well i think of people like that”
She pages, “if you save the file as mere jpg cause its for public consumption then you flatten the layers”
She pages, “if you save it as .png or .psd its a drain on the memory BUT”
She pages, “all the layers visible and invisible get saved”
She pages, “whether you have made them visible or not”
She pages, “i find that comforting knowing there are layers on layers beyond layers of psd in people”
She pages, “you forget the layer you made and then you make it visible and you realize yeah it was always there”
She pages, “moral: you have enough memory to remember just because you are not seeing some layers now they dont exist but maybe she is not ready to see them”

Things die
Things die, and you don’t have to like it, but you have to accept it. Eventually.

Deleting stuff isn’t usually good
I got frustrated and deleted my a-dock last night. That wasn’t wise. It was just doing it’s job, and I like having it. A-dock is a small bar that floats on my screen and tells me what programs I have open. I really, really like it. I think it also acts as a launcher, but I don’t like that. I want something very clear for that. If I just have one program open, that’s all I want to see. I usually let it float on the right side of my screen, under my apple list of what’s open. This is a fake out version of something that’s in OS X. I really, really like it.

I also deleted what I was using as a launcher. I want a separate launcher that comes up as a small screen that I can open with a hot key and close when I’m finished with it. I had been using something that was a non-floating strip of icons, very small, that I could snuggle on one side of my screen and call up with a hot key. But I was never really thrilled with it. I’m not really sure why. So I downloaded a new one called x-launcher. So far I really really really like it. It’s small and you have folders that when open show you icons of the items you can launch. And it has a ‘main’ folder for stuff you use a lot. Fab. I have it hotkeyed. That’s better. I have both of them in aqua themes, and they look very clean and clear. I like I like I like.

So maybe deleting stuff stuff isn’t always bad.

Neanderthal child recreated in Switzerland….from that picture, it looks to me that it wasn’t imaginary fairies running around pre-modern Europe. They were neanderthals. Cooooool. In my head, the word ‘neanderthal’ still means dirty, hunched over, scary-looking dude. This is great….look at how useful computers can be in traditional disciplines…

Happy Birthday to me
Well, I went out for dinner with salmon tonight and had a lovely time. Yack yack yack, I talked my head off about stuff I don’t usually get to talk about much…school stuff. And then it hit me…I’m EXCITED to talk about school stuff again. Amazing! And I’m not even taking any pills of any kind anymore. It’s my own joyous goodness. All me. I’m saddened that it didn’t strike Heidi has a nice idea to wish me happy birthday today, seeing that I flew my ass out to do the same to her. I knew today would be bittersweet because of that anyway….

But here’s a strange omen (what do you think of THIS, Eva?); this evening the city was filled with aphids. FILLED. Swarms and swarms of aphids. By the time we ambled back home again they were gone…but during the day, it was insanely strange. I mean, they weren’t doing anything, they weren’t biting or anything, but it was just strange that we were wandering around in clouds of tiny little bugs. And first no one was sure what they were…even the entomologists. But it was finally determined that they were aphids, but no one’s sure why they dropped in all at once. Something to do with the weather, and possibly migration. Surreal. Eva, I really do need a reading on that….

Did I mention the dream about being a butcher and slicing off my hands for money? How odd. 🙂

Well, I’m 27 years old now. I’m anticipating a very good year.

Alright, I was talking to salmon about this and didn’t manage to really remember what I was originally thinking. How would I do it? I can totally justify the blog thing, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I would use blogs for a history class. To me, it’s a given at this point. Now, at that point I would hope that we would have edublog fully underway (by then it would probably be at 3.0 or so)…now, if we could have edublog work along with achieve, we’d really be rocking. Because then I could tell students to get a char first, which would generate them a blog. Yeah. But anyway….MOO teaching…

Okay. Assignment one, which would be the weeding out assignment and intro to MOO #1; login in (through Bingen’s own login screen) and wander through Bingen. I would want a short written report on three historical elements that they saw; I’d have to think more about how to word that question so that they get the most out of it. I might hand out a scavenger hunt, and have kids go complete it and hand it in. It would be a fairly specific sort of hunt, and it would be a hunt for historical fact. No no no, I wouldn’t hand anything out. I would tell them that our first assignment would be a field trip. I may or may not insist that they meet in a specific lab…I expect most students would have internet access at home. I think that will depend on how comfortable I feel about directing moo experiences online at that point. My goal with the MOO right now (as in, this summer) is to make the MOO user friendly to the point that if students come on without a better introduction; well, I would like the MOO to require less introduction. I would like it to be easier to figure out. And I think we’re getting there….it will get better and better as we tweak and fix and so on. More about that later….okay, so that would be assignment one…

The next thing I would do is set up office hours at a fairly un-fun time. Like, first thing monday morning or Friday afternoon, or something like that. And I would set up much more fun office hours online, and let students know that I’m available at Achieve during those times. There would probably be a lot more of those hours.

Then…I would set up a series of tutorial times. Tutorial #1 would be to send them through the tutorials I’m writing right now and build a home for themselves. I’d like to do something to get them working together on something….maybe I would just have them build homes in groups of 5 or something. Undecided.

Then….real assignment one. Mid-term assignment: Pick two historical moments covered in the course to date. Recreate them. I’ll have to create an generic justification object (!!) so they can drop one of those somewhere and tell me why they think each moment is so significant. I would give them two weeks to do it.

Then: mid-term exam. This would probably happen about a week or two after the assignment is handed in. This is in class, and it would be held in a lab. I would pick from the scenarios the students created, drop an object in each of them with the exam question on it that relates to the incident in particular. I might also link three or four projects together, and ask for an answer that incorporates all of them. Ah, so they would be in segments: There would be an exam room; with an exit to a short answer questions room (pick 5) and essay question room (choose 2 of 5). There we go.

Term 2: Well, we need a research essay. Essays are important, I realize that. So they would write a research paper. But I still want them to build something relating to it. I want them to build a key point of their essay, with no justification object, I want the building itself to do the justifying for it. The written part is the research paper. Final exam: propbably similar to the mid-term.

Hmmmm…

Twenty seven
Happy birthday to me. Bah. Too early. Why am I awake, please?

jason says, “you’re a total failure at being nasty”

[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “I just wrote blog entry #99”
[+][beam] salmon exclaims, “wooo!”
[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “I’m going to end it with a clean 100”
[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “that seems like the right thing to do”
[+][beam] jason goes Woooooohoooooooo! across the channel.’
[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “I would like to take this time….to thank God….”
[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “I’d like to thank my parents…”
[+][beam] salmon grin.
[+][beam] EvaB wipes another tear
[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “without whom I wouldn’t be here…”
[+][beam] Hildegarde says, “And all our sponsors”
[+][beam] EvaB whips out the camera
[+][beam] Hildegarde poses, Angelina Jolie style
[+][beam] EvaB whistles
[+][beam] Hildegarde exclaims, “Oh…..I just…I just love you ALL!!”
[+][beam] Hildegarde starts to cry.
[+][beam] EvaB says, “yeah we like you we *really* like you”
[+][beam] jason affectionately rubs noses with Hildegarde.
[+][beam] Hildegarde falls apart laughing.

I just suckered EvaB into going through my new tutorial! WOOOOHOOOO! She really is the inspiration for these things…..the tap dancing and weeping and expressions…she’s my favourite dramatic MOO person, after all. 🙂

20 minutes to go! 20 minutes! There’s no way I can fail now. Unbelieveable. At 6am I didn’t think i’d still be here. 3pm seemed SO far away. Wow….

Radio quote: “I know when I was younger I saw God as a sugar daddy.” The murder of a child changes the sugar daddy image of God who looks after everyone, who provides for everyone, who makes sure you get what you want. “Good people do experience tragedy…we can all be targets for something. We not only need to give our lives to God….we also need to give our deaths.”

We lost intrinsic.nu a while back….“sorry folks, but i have to go to bed. my head is spinning just a little too much.thanks to all my sponsors. see you next year.”

Truly amazing how many pictures of a random guy can be posted within a 24 hour period.

Screwing around with the description of Achieve Centre. Trying to make it a little more…user friendly?

a bloggable event
Well. I counted my posts for the blogathon, and discovered that this is post #92. Good thing I wasn’t counting. I should do something nice for #100.

Anyway, i was still thinking about #11, sheesh…I got all interrupted and discombobulated….

Okay, I got to 50 and then my blog stopped. But there’s more, Oh, I’ll get a complete total…..

Hildegarde sneezes.

Sleepy sneeze. Back in a sec.

After all the blogging I do, I wanna know why I’m only #20 on this list. Well, I guess you can’t have it all….

And now, just for the heck of it….(cringe) I’m going to go back and see how many times I actually posted. My sister has already commented that my blog was ‘like a history lesson’, and you have to say that with just the right tone of voice, you know what I mean. (Heck, I’m a phd student in….say it….yes…history, so I guess I should take that as a compliment.)

Paging Melissa Mazar
[+][beam] salmon [to Hildegarde]: tell your sis i’m okay

Melissa: consider yourself told. 🙂 She’s alright, she’s just feeling like a salmon shoe today.

Melissa…my dearest darling sister….you see how easy it is? Yes, you NEED a blog. My my. Yes. And I’d love to see what yours would look like…

The phone rang and I wondered who the heck it would be….so sweet of my sis to check up on me. Older sis’s are like that, I guess. 🙂

Reminds me…I need to put that link on my blog permanently…

Now….where was I?

My sister called! She’s the coolest!

The sheesh, I’m really sorry it’s been so tough award goes to Anodyne, who writes: “Ten more posts. Oh wow, it’s methadone time already. I have got to put some pants on and get my flaccidiferous caboosenik down to the little building with no sign on it wherein are dispensed legal opiates in little plastic cups for people like me who fucked up and became junkies. The stuff saved my life from heroin, which is nothing but good. It also made me fat. Which isn’t so good. Though I dun’ think it’s pointful to make much of it, sometimes it decides it wants to be made much of, and I am just sort of pulled along with it.” Ouch. And I thought I had it tough just trying to make it to 3pm.

As you know, I’ve been keeping an eye on blogs in the ring the whole darn time….salmon and jason are just starting to poke around. (What were they doing all this time?) I wish metafilter were up….

Started to think about what kinds of blog awards we would hand out. 🙂 There’s a good wrapper-upper activity….

In spite of the fact that I agreed that description would be best…..I am making a new gif. Typical.

#11 continued
This is like a star trek episode. Yes, everything is like a star trek episode. The ship is caught in a loop, where they relieve the same day over and over and over….and they keep starting it again without realizing, and just get deja vu. Once they realize that this is happening, they see that they only way out is to send a message to themselves in the next loop. But it has to be short and it has to clear. So how do you give out an important bit of imformation to someone who doesn’t realize that they need it, without overwhelming anyone, and without being too cryptic?

#11
Okay, so the only way I can do this is to keep talking. And keep focussed. As long as I do that, I should be able to make it to the end. So now I’m going to focus on #11.

For the unititiated: #11 is the first room you arrive in when you visit achieve. I’m not terribly happy with it, because it doesn’t really 1) welcome you, or 2) give you any direction on what to do next.

I was talking to some of the bloggers who came by to visit us over the last few (many) hours, and I think I’ve got some ideas about what needs to happen in #11. First and foremost: we need something big and bright right away that tells you how to speak. People don’t click around looking for that information, because they don’t realize they need it. So how can we do that?

Possibilities: 1) a bright gif as a pic on the room that tells you, 2) an audio file that tells you, 3) room noises that remind you, 4) instructions in the room description, 5) a pop up window that describes it. That’s all I can think up right now. I’m leaning toward….well, the easiest one, description. Though i think it would be cute to have an audio clip. 🙂

I think I fell asleep for a second or two. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing yet. I’ll think about something to actually say….