In “Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research” Mark Bauerlein—as part of a larger discussion I may take up over at CosmoPo sometime—asks an important question:

“In light of 50 years of vast research production, backed by substantial resources and subsidies, is not a redistribution in order, particularly toward teaching?”

After outlining the problem of overproduction engendered by the “publish or perish” system he makes two recommendations for change, including the notion that:

“…subsidizers should shift their support away from saturated areas and toward unsaturated areas, in particular toward research into teaching and even more toward classroom and curricular initiatives.”

Can I hear an “Amen?”

Granting even my significant reservations with “education research,” Bauerlein’s recommendation makes sense. Not only do higher education institutions marginalize the practice of teaching in a variety subtle and not-so-subtle ways, but they’ve created an advancement mechanism with a process that works actively against good teachers, creating an artificial zero-sum environment pitting teaching against research and administrative activities.

Of course the entire system of traditional publishing as a measurement of anything (it never had anything to do with teaching, of course), let alone one’s value to an institution, has become epically problematic given that it evolved—in large part—as a way of determining value in an environment where access and distribution were greatly limited by physical and fiscal constraints. But without trying to eat that whole elephant, is recognizing teaching as an important, core part of the institutional mandate not a manageable and reasonable request?

[image by viagallery.com]

I’ve been searching for the perfect portable computer (laptop, then notebook, now netbook) since 1985 when, courtesy of a program at school, I got my hands on a Tandy Radio Shack 100. The new Samsung NC-20 (aka MINI-ME) comes so, so close but for a couple of completely unnecessary changes from TINY-MC, my previous favorite Samsung NC-10.

I don’t intend that a netbook replace my primary computer (at the moment the Dell Precision M4300, which I’m incredibly happy with but for the caveat that the build quality in mine was poor), but to excel at the kind of tasks I spend my time away from that machine doing, primarily: writing—including long documents, surfing—including the requisite amount of video and audio, using Skype, some web development, and some sysadmin tasks using SSH and VNC.

Because I need to integrate fully with others in the office, running Microsoft Office and Windows (XP for now, Windows 7 soon) and Adobe products adequately is also a necessity. Nothing against Linux, which I love in my own way, but the pragmatic reality makes it impractical in this situation.

The NC-20 has pretty much everything I’ve been looking for. The good-great features:

• Powered by the new Via Nano chip, the NC-20’s performance is more than adequate for my use, essentially indistinguishable from the NC-10, with 5-7 hours of battery life without significantly compromised settings
• With integrated graphics and hardware acceleration, video performance is quite good and the 12” screen is bright and runs at 1024*800 resolution, which is perfect for my primary task. The extra 200 pixels in height over the NC-10 makes all the difference in the world
• The keyboard is full-size—or very close—with better feel than the smaller NC-10, which I could already type on at full speed. And unlike many other netbooks, the ENTER, RIGHT-SHIFT, and ARROW keys have the proper relationship to one another
• 160g hard drive
• Onboard 3-in-1 multi-card reader
• 3 USB ports
• Wireless (Atheros 802.11 b/g) and Wired (10/100) LAN
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• 1.3mp built-in web cam

The two things that keep it from being perfect, changed for no good reason from the NC-10:

• The glossy screen. Glossy screens are great on larger displays that don’t see out of doors or bright-light use very often… but MC-TINY’s matte screen was definitely better.
• Two keyboard problems: I can deal with the `/~ key being moved to the bottom row, but why put it right next to the space bar where the ALT key should be? And even worse, there is no LEFT-WINDOWS key, which has been replaced by the wholly useless APPLICATION key. I’ve had no luck remapping a switch between these two keys. This is highly annoying, but not a showstopper since these flaws don’t interfere with normal typing (they get in the way because I use ALT-TAB switching and WINDOWS-Q for the absolutely indispensable Slickrun launcher, which now must be accessed with two hands unless I use some Steve Vai on the fretboard style contortions.

There are many smaller netbooks with even longer battery life and many more powerful netbooks that are significantly more expensive, but the NC-20 is the best of all that I’ve tried, right in the sweet spot for the way I want to use it. Size-wise it is near full-size notebook territory, but with much better battery life and of course a price-point that makes it nearly a commodity. I can’t recommend the NC-20 (and its smaller NC-10, which whups all the 10” competition) highly enough.

Scott Rosenberg—author of the fascinating Dreaming in Code and the always-interesting Wordyard blog—has a new book out that looks even more interesting than his first: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.

There’s an excerpt up at Salon which doesn’t diminish my interest, but does rub me wrong way just a little bit. Either Rosenberg actually believes what I am about to quote, or he doesn’t see the conflation of concepts he uses to make it plausible, or he doesn’t care to make a more nuanced argument. He writes:

According to this perspective, talent is a resource of fixed supply. The existing institutions of the publishing and broadcast world are already doing an efficient and thorough job of finding all that talent and giving it a platform. And all this other stuff that’s spewing forth from the Web’s profusion of blogs and podcasts and videos? It’s just dross that obscures the real talent’s output.

Beyond the obvious arrogance, this view misreads and underestimates the Web in several ways. It’s a mistake to think of human creativity as a kind of limited natural resource, like an ore waiting for society to mine; it is more like a gene that will turn on given the right cues.

I can’t disagree with where Rosenberg is going, but not only is the idea of talent as a limitless resource wrong on its face, but it’s not “obvious arrogance” to keep that fact in mind when considering the media and artistic landscapes that the web is part of.

The idea that there is limitless talent is just another take on that warm, particularly American, and ultimately harmful mythos that anyone is capable of doing everything if they just (gosh darn it!) work hard enough. But there’s no evidence that this happy fiction has any truth to it… and plenty of evidence, in the shape of the world of art and media around us, that it’s untrue. It’s easy—and it feels good!–to maintain this illusion as often as we can, despite it’s harmful consequences (just look at our train-wreck of an educational system to see some of them). But put yourself or a loved one in a situation where their life or livelihood depends on the skill of another—undergoing delicate brain surgery, say—and you know as well as I do that you’re going to want the surgeon that has not just trained and worked to become the best, but who did so with the most generous helping of talent to capitalize on.

But Rosenberg’s second paragraph above is true, thanks to a conflation of talent and creativity. Talent is clearly a limited resource. Creativity is not. Anyone can, and should, create. That is a fundamentally fantastic characteristic of the read/write web. They might not have any talent at writing in general or the specific forms they choose to utilize. But in most of the important ways that’s not the point.

A more nuanced argument could go along a few different lines. You could say that, since everything is news to someone, there’s no need for the traditional focus on that kind of creation which will appeal to the most people. You could argue from the perspective of the positive aspects of self-expression and creative activities regardless of the talent one has (or doesn’t have). You could argue that while talent is limited, it’s very difficult to know where those limits are—and impossible to know in advance—so there’s no harm in acting as if there’s no practical limit. You could argue that limits on talent aren’t important because it isn’t really about how much talent there is, but how many talents, because each person must find theirs (this isn’t a philosophy that can be proven, but at least it takes into account the very obvious condition of individuals having little or no talent for particular activities, despite their effort). The last sentence quoted above goes in this direction, but because an important change has been made—from talent to creativity, which are not synonymous—it doesn’t quite get there.

The important point being made by Rosenberg still stands, of course: the old rules don’t apply. But it’s not because there’s no such thing as talent and it’s not because there’s a limitless supply of talent to be had… it’s because in one important operative, functional sense, one reason that talent mattered—as a way to determine prioritization of access to limited resources for publication and sharing—has become relatively unimportant. That’s a huge, fundamental change, the importance of which can’t be overstated… but let’s not use it to perpetuate a myth of endless talent and absolute equality which, ironically, serves to undermine our culture’s support for that already beleaguered natural resource.

[image by Carissa GoodNCrazy]

Slate has a new review of web-based task management (to-do list) programs. You might want to check out the details, but just so you don’t suffer from heart-palpitating suspense, the top two applications were:

• Google Mail Tasks from Gmail Labs (30/30)
• Remember the Milk (which I use) (29/30)

While I like the minimalism of Gmail Tasks (as the review notes, the decent design + a lot of capability can make RTM a time sync, particularly if—like me—you find getting ready to do things much more fun than doing them), I spend too much time in different Google mail accounts, and tasks are tied to individual accounts, resulting in two wholly separate lists. That doesn’t work for me. So, RTM for win!

From an interview with Jeff Tweedy in NYT Magazine:

Q: Although “Wilco (The Album)” was released on Tuesday, you streamed the songs free online in May after they surfaced illegally on the Internet.

Wilco: As a musician, I don’t want to expend any energy whatsoever preventing people from hearing our music. I think that’s antithetical to the idea of making it. Yes, we streamed it. Basically we set it up so people who felt guilty about stealing our music could donate some money to our favorite charity.

Oh, and he explains why the band is called Wilco, which you may have known, but I didn’t.

Running into Jamie Smith this morning (and want to talk about some great teaching, check out what Jamie’s been doing with his students this summer) reminded me that I’ve been remiss in putting notes from some of the interesting NMC 2009 Summer Conference sessions I attended.

Ruben Puentedura’s session on “The Infinite Canvas Reloaded: Digital Storytelling, Webcomics, and Web 2.0” (slides in rather large PDF form) was particularly interesting. Using Scott McLeod’s concept of the digital space as an infinite canvas for creation, Ruben explained—and shared examples of—characteristics of the infinite canvas and what they meant to storytellers. Following are my slightly cleaned up notes taken during the session with the all important links to examples and more information… they can’t convey Ruben’s obvious love of the topic and the medium, but they might be a good place to start in considering this important aspect of storytelling. [My personal interjections are in brackets]

Central question: how does the change from the bounds of paper to the infinite canvas of the screen effect the mechanics and conventions of comics?

The "infinite canvas" in 200 words or less…

Example: use of vertical orientation, space beyond what’s possible on paper (note the falling panel) – Scott McCloud’s Zot

Changes with the infinite canvas:

• In a traditional comic, each panel is a "beat" in the story– with the infinite canvas you have as many as you need… pacing is minimally constrained.
• Opening up the "meter" allows the equivalent of pianissimo to fortissimo – dynamic range isn’t (or at least is far less) constrained
• In printed comics, spacing between panels is relatively uniform and constrained… in the infinite canvas distance (can) equal time

A (sometimes) related characteristic: use of groupings/proximity [looks much like the poetic line/stanza] that are conceptual in nature, not dictated by physical requirements.

Example: Scott McCloud – Porphyria’s Lover – note the trails, which are functional and ornamental – one way to indicate when not following standard lexicographic order:

Storis can unfold incrementally (literally). See Demian.5 ’s When I am King. This really looks more akin to film… or a flipbook. Incremental, gradual development of the story, figuratively and textually.

Technique: establish a dominant direction which is then purposefully manipulated [much like using form and meter] to create and then divert/thwart reader/viewer expectations.

Drew Weing – Pup – New comic authors are often purposefully experimental. Note the disappearance and reappearance of panel (frame):

[How have I missed these great comics? I guess the same way I spent so long not seeing graphic novels. But the affordances of digital presentation has some really radical effects!]

Use of visual space to establish time [and a format that resembles instant messaging/texting] – Eros Inc: The Third Degree.

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey – 24:Three (a 24-hour hypercomic):  Excellent design implementation. Experimental in directionality, multiple points of entry, fracturing of the story. Still uses trails, but adds interactivity that carries the reader along the chosen path and zooming for emphasis/de-emphasis.

John Barber – Vicious Souvenirs – some would argue this is less "pure" as an infinite canvas – example of overlays –

Question: why do we (educators) care? Why does this matter?

One reason: infinite canvas provides a rich complex of possibilities [image above, moving really fast here]: image assembly (such as Five Card Nancy) narrative sources; narrative constraints- sequential art: Comic Life – pictorial vocabulary; narrative transitions; text/image integration – moving image Center for Digital Storytellying (CDS) Seven Elements [and CDS Cookbook (PDF)], montage structures- interactive media, Pachyderm narrative structures; narrative flows- interactive fiction, Inform 7 ludic elements

Resource: Puentedura – "Digital Storytelling: An Alternative Instructional Approach" – Slides (Slideshare) and Text (PDF): 

Second reason: Powerpoint, which is so commonly used, has so many intrinsic constraints and default (if not solely available) structures (see Tufte – The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, 2nd ed.)

Toolkit:

1. The Tarquin Engine (Example: Icarus Tangents)
2. InfiniteCanvas (Mac Only) -  (but no longer being devloped, buggy)
3. Infinite Canvas (microsoft) – example Brad’s Somber Mood (Scott McCloud)
4. Prezi [am I going to have to change my prezi position?] – designed to be an infinite canvas, but not positioning it that way in marketing terms because that scares some people – Prezi still has purposeful constraints, so it’s not just a blank screen, empty page, white canvas – can import flash INTO Prezi – important aspect: the frame acts like the frame around a comic.

Important note about Prezi: the company "gets" the infinite canvas and will be rolling out more features that support this kind of creation.

***

Transitions are particularly important in the comics built on the infinite canvas – understanding the mechanics of panel-to-panel transitions will help clarify when viewing and creating them.

Four approaches to the page (Benoit Peeters): http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v3_3/peeters/

***

Some Prezi examples

• Nice example of almost a concrete poetry approach to using Prezi to convey a piece of Alice in Wonderland (http://prezi.com/56035)
• Second example (http://prezi.com/56151): reenvisioning of a powerpoint presentation, uses proximity and distance, not traditional lexicographic ordering

***

Infinite Canvas as Terrain – the infinite canvas is a terrain; we can apply concepts of mapping to it.

Resource/ToRead: How Maps Work – Alan MacEachren

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Considerations on "restraints":

• OuBaPo: experimentation on constraints
• Matt Madden – Exercises in Style

Note: music is a better analogy for understanding comics than film– comics aren’t chopped up bits of story akin to chopped up scenes in film.

***

Contact Info:

• Ruben Puentedura (rubenrp@hippasus.com)
• Ruben’s blog: http://hippasus.com/rrpweblog/