You'll know when you get there

I chose a place on the map that looked like a likely spot to have a nice hike, a falls somewhat off the beaten track. I put the name of the falls in my map program and pressed start. As it turned out I didn't really need the map program because helpful brown nature signs were posted along the road at intersections.  

I parked the car off the road and headed down the trail. Soon I could hear water running.  Louder and louder. I could just glimpse water through the bushes and was headed that way when out of the depths of my pocket came a muffled electronic voice, "you have arrived."

At the Hostel

The almost middle aged, middle-eastern looking man with the scruffy beard seemed to be the only other person besides me who used the hostel's common room-kitchen. He fixed himself dinner the first night. The next night he waited until a couple finished cooking their dinner and then asked me, "you cook?" "No thanks, I'm just having tea." 
He puttered in the kitchen as I read in an easy chair. At length he came over and asked "you soap?" As he waved the bowl I understood.  My gratefullness flowed out in a wave. "I'd love some," I said with a wide smile.

At the Post Office

"What kind stamps would you like?" asked the post mistress. "We have birds and flags and the new Christmas stamps. The madonnas are nice."

The madonnas were nice. Rich reds and glowing golds.  

As I inspected the Christmas stamps, mulling over my choices she added encouragingly, "And none of the parts that shouldn't be showing showing", 

"What parts would that be?" I inquired, thinking of many madonnas with a tennis ball of a breast exposed.

"Oh, in last year's stamp the baby's little thing was dangling.  See how in this year they don't show that lower half of the baby."

Sure enough, Jesus was cropped at the navel.

"I'll take the madonnas," I said.

The University of Texas Sniper and My Journalism Career

AP Photo

Fifty years ago today a man climbed to the top of a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and ended, not only the lives of 14 people, but also my journalism career.

I was working as a copy girl at the Albany Times Union during the summer of my sophomore year in college. My job in the afternoons before the deadline for the evening paper was to carry the copy from the bank of very loud teletype machines to the copy editor. I tore stories off as they were typed and made sure the editor had the latest news stories from the wire services with which to work.

As the story broke the wire services were updating the death count every few minutes. As the deadline for press drew near, the editor told me to just stand in the teletype room and shout the latest number out: ten…. eleven…..   twelve.

I don’t know if we went to press with the final number or not. I do know that my enthusiasm for pursuing a career in journalism died that afternoon as well. This was one of the first mass shootings, surely my first.  It was necessary to put all feelings aside and just report, yell, the numbers.  That evening I decided journalism as a career demanded more than I was willing to give.

Machine Scored Discussion Boards

This started out as a joke but the more I think about it the more I like it.

What every learning management system needs is an auto-scored discussion board, a discussion where the computer scores student entries.

This would be useful to instructors who:

- want students to post a response to a question

- and then post a reply to another student,

- who want the posts to have a point value,

- but who don’t want to spend time scoring responses.

 (and trust me, there is a lot of navigating work to get posts into a format that you can see what you need to see to grade them.)

So why not have the Learning Management System automatically score x points for posting and x points for replying.

This would make it possible to have a low stakes assignment that does not take up excessive time grading.  The instructor could still read the posts and comment as they feel is appropriate. They can spend time reading students’ thoughts and engaging them in conversation, not grading. 

Where Was I?

I’m glad the 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington is winding down. Frankly, it was making me ashamed. 

Ashamed of myself. 

I should have a personal memory of that time. Of that event. And I don’t. 

In August 1963 I was about to enter my senior year in high school. I was old enough to be civically engaged. I  would weather the death of President Kennedy 3 months later. I have vivid memories of that.  Why don’t I remember the March? It just didn’t make it on to my radar. 

Four years later in 1967, as an exchange student to traditionally black Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, I witnessed a spontaneous re-enactment of the “I Have a Dream Speech” by Clark College students on the steps of the dining hall. But in 1963, I, like so many others I’d guess, didn’t notice it.

82nd and Fifth

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is publishing a video series throughout this year in which their curators talk for two minutes about one of their favorite objects from the collection.  It is a stunning work in progress.  

All images of the objects are still photographs They are revealing in a way that a video would not be. Seeing them glide by while the curator talks is a contemplative experience. There is often a series of views approaching the object. You see the object in its museum setting. And you hear the curator explain why this object is special, special to her or him.

Curators' describe their personal experience that led to their selection. Curator George Goldner says of El Greco's View of Toledo "The first time I saw it I was 10 years old, I think...  

I always thought of paintings as being.... they reproduce reality, and that's what they were all about.  Seeing this painting... it was the first picture which attracted me to art. “

Most objects are not so famous as the El Greco and they are not paintings. Tapestry, sculpture, clothing, crossbows, guitars, a spoon, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal and the official signature of a sultan are all focused on with loving care and, of course, considerable knowledge.

In addition to the video each object can be viewed in a program that allows you to zoom in on it and turn it around. One of the most effective is Rembrandt’s drawing of Leonardo DiVinci’s Last supper. You can move a slider to view Leonardo’s fresco behind Rembrandt’s drawing. You can even display the black and white engraving  of the fresco that Rembrandt may have worked from. He never saw DaVinci's original.

A couple videos are published a week and you can subscribe to the series.