Whip It Whitman

I want everyone to take a moment and stare at the mess I've made. It is located directly above this sentence. If it isn't clear, then you should be able to click on the image itself, and it will pop out into a different window. Here it will be easier to view this impending disaster. You might tell yourself: It looks like a bunch of words puked all over themselves. Or maybe something more like, it hurts my eyes!

Both of these are appropriate responses. I completely agree. And now for an explanation that is neither logical nor sane.

What we have here are layers on top of each other. The layers are the poem in different stages, as it progressed over the years. I have labeled each layer with a date corresponding to the edition, then morphed, altered and grafted the next revision on top of that layer. On the bottom of the pile is the first edition (1855) and the last edition is on top (1891). Everywhere in between, on top of and woven through, are the other editions. All of these images are from the Whitman Archive. I had several ideas for using images and the text from the archive to convey a message or meaning, but I went with this one for the time being to emphasize some sort of coherent point. It also took a while to do this. Perhaps this is because I didn't feel like reading A Hunger Artist again for another class. Anyway, I don't know if this image-thing actually works. The text I have taken are the lines:

The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and
looks at the oats and rye,

The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,

(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room;)

The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,

He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manu- script;

The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,

What is removed drops horribly in a pail;

Our group's big question focused on the (dis?)connect and correlation between the soul and body, while keeping in mind if and how the narrator is or might be attempting to convince the reader of something.
For some reason I was drawn to the (^^above^^) section which focuses primarily on people in action. The really compelling lines were: What is removed drops horribly in a pail

So...where am I going with this? I honestly don't know. But I'll try and make something up that could work.

This line over the course of Whitman's revisions became more pronounced. Instead of being embedded within lines, running from one person's actions (the farmer, the lunatic, the printer) to another, the line began to draw attention. It got moved around. It seemed to visually grow, and make it's way into significance, creating a pronounced identity for itself. By the last revision in 1891, the line has trickled down the page and found a home all the way on the last line. The eye immediately is drawn to it while reading. It is the last thought before turning the page:

What is removed drops horribly in a pail

I dare say that it is so purposefully placed, that it reminds me of something T.S. Eliot would spend years crafting, and Pound bitching about. Okay, BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN! Well. I don't know. But maybe it could mean something. Part of your body is being dumped into a pail. Not just part of your body, but your malformed-limb-part of your body is being chopped off and discarded. At this point it is far too late to apologize for grotesquerie, but think about it: some part of you, perhaps your soul, is vehemently attached to whatever is being lost. And much like the other people in this section who are moving through the actions, this action must be reflected inward, as Whitman says,

And these [people?] tend inward to me and I tend outward to them, / And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, / And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

I feel like I could push this thought further, but I don't know how, or if I can just yet. It's something that I will have to think about more.

But back to the technology bit. The Whitman archives provided a way to come to this realization (or whatever it is). I kept staring at the book images of that one line, and decided to squash them all together into a clustermuck of Whitman-Big-Ideas. By individually cropping the poem lines on the digital image, I zoomed in on the parts I found important, and contrasted them with the exact same lines over a period of time. In a mad-hatter sort of way I'm pleased with the result, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

But if I take the concept of archiving literature, say about something I'm fascinated with, then this would be fantastic. Really. It might even help me, oh...say...when I'm writing my thesis. Next semester. So here's my dream archive that will never ever exist because J.D. Salinger is a grumpy old man who hasn't even seen a computer; let alone would never approve something this awful and wild.
Por ejemplo, say you were writing a paper about the Glass family. There are dozens of short stories since the late 40s that involve the Glass family, but say you were looking for short stories that involved only Seymour Glass. Again a whole bunch. These have been published in so many magazines it's not even funny. Some of them don't even exist anymore. But with the magical END ALL SALINGER ARCHIVE, you can search his name, and boom. Instantly find the stories you have always wanted to read, but never knew existed. No need for greedy universities in Texas to hold a secret stashes, or walk around pretending they don't exist.
Things in the literature world--and the humanities world for that matter--would be a lot simpler, and could be a point of growth. It could mean an infinite number of possibilities, whether academically, creatively or something entirely other.

Design Diigo Wiki's and Whitman=System Failure

A funny thing happened just now. I felt overwhelmed with the amount of work for for tomorrow's class, so I decided to stop. And just blog about all of it, because I'm getting nowhere just sitting there staring at the screen trying to decide what it is Whitman is touching, and where.

I suppose I should start somewhere, and since I've prefaced this with my exhaustion for Whitman, I'll start there: I really love reading Leaves of Grass. I've never read this before, and I am really excited to explore this prose poem more. That being said, my frustrations with Diigo have made me a little reluctant to continue. Things started out simple enough, the Diigo toolbar worked properly, I was hilighting words and phrases successfully, and then all of a sudden my computer turns a funny shade of gray. I'm using Ubuntu, so when this happens, it usually isn't a good thing. Firefox crashes. I reboot. Happens again. And again. And again. I decide that loading the Whitman Archives page is not a good idea, so I temporarily avoid it. It seems to run better when I avoid pages with highlight-active-diigo pages. Like any responsible person, I retreat to G-Chat and rant my frustration out like a five year old to Joseph. While doing this, Ned messages me informing me that he is highlighting green. What is happening? I ask myself. After about the eighth episode reloading firefox, Diigo is working again, but extremely slowly. My OS has never run this slow before, and I'm blaming it on Diigo. As I slowly make my way through the poem, I realize I'm having a hard time reading the poem online because everything is becoming blurry. I don't have horrible eyesight, but anyone's eyes hurt after staring at a screen too long. I increase the font size on my page. Somewhat better.

And yet.

I'm having a hard time reading this much online. The sticky note boxes don't save your notes if you stray away from the page you are on (no use of tabbed browsing allowed, while posting a note). You can't increase the font size within the sticky notes. This is bad. I'm already forming these borderline violent reactions to Diigo, and yet simultaneously I feel extremely guilty. I'm sincerely trying to use the program, and I really love the idea of doing something like this: commenting on the web. But If the application is hindering my ability to successfully produce a coherent thought, then I don't really find any use in it. I've managed to read the poem online, and struggle through diigo's post-its without my eyeballs falling out, but it wasn't easy.

While I'm lashing out at technology, I should probably go ahead and diss the use of Wiki's. Again, don't get me wrong: the idea is an amazing one, and I'm trying my best not to be negative. Seriously. But judging from our classroom experience, and my own personal frustration, I really do not want to use the Wiki's again. I mean, I will use them if we are working on a group activity, but my greatest concern was how extremely unorganized everything was.
Now this leads me into my Backward Desgin Rant: If I had gone into the lab, better prepared for the activity as a group, then the assignment would have been fairly successful. The problem for our group, as Alden articulated quite well, stemmed from the fact that we had too many issues, ideas, and problems to hash out without the use of the computer, before we were ready to sit down and post our results, assessment, and design to the Wiki. So we went into the lab awkwardly arguing over iMacs, and making lame group names like TWFG (The Wiki Face Group). Even I barely remembered the name, because we were so wrapped up in everything else.
As for the design itself, the actual methodology behind backward design, I found this to be problematic yet worth further exploration. I want this to work, because this is a fantastical idea and approach to the standard format. That being said, I found the actual assignment extremely difficult. Once we finally had one vague result written down, I felt we were putting a Halloween mask on Forward design, and telling it to just be Backward design. It wasn't working for me. I have been in classes during my undergraduate in which this design worked well, and was fun and different; but perhaps at this stage in my life I am unable to create a compelling enough, and result focused design that is worthwhile. So maybe I just shouldn't be a teacher...but that discussion belongs in my other blog, not my class blog.

I don't know if this relates to class, but this is neat.

Read: "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious"

Ok I'm done.

ZombieLearn

Before I begin analyzing the hell out of iLearn again, I have an observation to make:

Something I have found myself doing since I have subscribed to RSS feeds via Google Reader, is editing what I read, and how I read it within the context of RSSing. I wind my way into Reader, scroll through my little blog list and skim...for...what? If I find something, a sentence, a word, or maybe a title post that particularly strikes me, I make it a point to visit that person's blog. I don't mean read it through the lense of GoogleReader, but I go to their site and take it all in. (I think Dustin had a similar feeling). Individually visiting these sites makes me more focused on what it is I'm reading while in the blogosphere. If I'm simply scrolling like a crazy person through Reader, and glazing over posts like a mindless zombie, then the application has no use for me. [I should note here that zombies will be a recurring theme in today's post.]

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...which brings me to Joseph's post. He is right on target with how I've been feeling concerning the subject of iLearn as a new media application. As he cleverly points out, textbook publishers have learned the lesson of aesthetics the hard way: by finding a balance between what is distracting and useful. iLearn seems to have opted for neither of these things. There is no happy medium, just plain dullness. If we are "reading the interface" as Coopman and Kotkamp suggest we do, then what we're reading when we examine iLearn, is a vision of greyness without form.

The eyes have a way of glossing over any general announcements, or assignments that might be posted to the News Forum, or any other forum that is created by the professor. As Meagan points out there really is a little person, a little blue university student crammed into the letter "i" of iLearn. We're boxed in, we've been had! What is it that iLearn is bringing to us as students and teachers? Well, I started tooling around with iLearn while blogging this, and I went into my account for the class I'm TAing for. There I have a teacher role, with the option to turn on the student role. In student mode, this online space feels like an empty gap. There's just something missing. There is a disconnect between the classroom discussion of the online assignment, and actually viewing, processing and accessing said assignment. No matter how many times the professor repeats that the syllabus for the class of 135 students has been posted to iLearn, that as a university we aren't allowed anymore to make that many copies of anything, the students still seem to be confused as to where the document actually is, and show up to class in a state of confusion and annoyance...or they don't show up at all. It seems that it would be easier to send a mass email with attachments to the students, rather than go to the trouble of posting documents onto iLearn.

The frustrations with this CMS stems from a variety of sources:

Interactivity, as I said in my previous post, is also limited. With something like a blog, or a forum in Ning, anyone can contribute to anything that is posted. Yeah yeah, okay we all know this. But also, there is this strange feeling that comes over a person while logged into iLearn that they are required to be here. They must engage in online dialogue in strictly an academic fashion. Which of course might be the bee's knees for some students, while others happen to detest it. For these other students, (Coopman's "off task" students) they find rather difficultly that within the confines of iLearn, they are unable to express any personality to their post, (no sidetracked thoughts, rambling, ect.) or their words must be screened for errors or slang phrases (ex: Bliggity Blog). But for me, it's in these distractions sometimes, that I come up with some of my best ideas, or things that turn into ideas. I mean, my most recent learning moment stemmed from my nonsensical sidetracking while at work. So who is to say an entirely academic environment and methodology is best for learning?

Even I feel that way when I'm required to use iLearn. During a required assignment, I sit there staring at the computer with either one of two emotions: a drooling-mindless-trance (zombie-like) that is spurred by my complete apathy toward the assignment; or a panic-frenzy (crazy person) who is haphazardly trying to finish the assignment before they are locked out of the system, only to suffer a failing grade.

I don't know which one of these feelings are worse. But I do know that using a blog, Ning, and having a chance to go over what we talk about in our blogs, within the physical classroom setting is entirely beneficial to me: in a way that iLearn has never been able to create for my mind. For some reason this blogging thing creates, like Joseph said, a more freeing feeling to writing and posting and interacting with other students inside and outside of the classroom. And for me that is crucial.

And yet, I don't mean to entirely destroy or put down iLearn. I'm not trying to do that, I just think that, as with any new thing--especially that involves technology and new media--it has great flaws, especially in conjunction with the university. iLearn can be useful, of course. Professors use it, and it works (as best as it can) because there is no other option. And of course this isn't the way it should be, but it is until something better comes along. Or until someone decides to make the effort to change. But back to what I was saying: iLearn can work. Teachers can post documents to the main page to download, forums can in fact be created and manipulated to the desires of the students. Just have the person in the teacher role create an open-forum-free-for-all in which everybody goes crazy posting whatever they want, despite the discouraging aesthetics of the whole system. Just imagine that the CMS is pretty, or something. I'm being silly, but the main thing to remember about iLearn is to what end is this CMS being used? What is the end goal, what is it that the teacher wants the student to learn and to take away from their class: whether online or not. Just a thought.

I Learn in Blackboard and WebCT

Both Stephanie Coopman's Article and the Erna Kotkamp article provided ample criticism on the format and functionality of WebCT and other Learning Management Systems. And personally, they were pretty painful to read. But I get the point. Truly.

These will be called LMS's from now on because I'm not typing that out again.
Ahem. Problem number one: we're calling this an LMS. These LMS's are websites that function as on line depositories, places where instructors may dump their syllabi and bully students into taking online quizzes. LMS's, WebCT, Blackboard, iLearn and whateverLearn are places where instructors watch the tally counts on the web page increase and convince themselves learning is taking place. Or do they? Or they are places in which in class discussions become diverted to these LMS forums, thereby becoming a forced thing in which all students must take part in, or else suffer a bad grade for the semester. I've seen it happen.
In my experience, these LMS's have always been fairly insufferable. I have seen these e-learning environments fail many times. For example: A professor brought to my attention that I must post at least three replies to three separate threads in four different forums, but I am required to bring up at least one of these topics in the following class period. In the midst of all of these tree branches of commentarypostydiscussiony forums, I am also simultaneously supposed to be thinking about Beowulf, somehow. I am too busy clicking, scrolling, reading too many posts and timing out of my sessions to comprehend anything about 8th century literature. Really.

I digress.

I make this sound like the instructor responsible for such mayhem in the classroom is a monster or something. He or she is in fact not a monster, nor harbouring any sort of ill will toward students and technology. These LMS's are a two way street. How well Blackboard or any other sort of online LMS succeeds, depends on the intent of the instructor: where does the instructor want the class to go?
More importantly, it also depends on the willingness of the students to throw themselves into new, uncertain and disturbing situations. They don't always want to do that. Thus are the hazards of using new form of technology. Kotkamp paraphrases John Dewey in this point by stating, "A certain amount of insecurity and chaos is crucial for an effective learning process." And I agree. This should be the case in any classroom, using technology or not. The hybrid class of physical partipication in the classroom combined with online partipication outside of the classroom is a very delicate balance to maintain. The class must be structured and organized in a way that makes the content through these LMS's relevant and meaningful. Clearly as expressed far more eloquently and academically than I will ever be able to muster, Coopman and Kotkamp agree that the current use of LMS's need to be revamped. The human should never be or become an object, the OOP the OOA or an OOmpa LOOmpa.
Part of the problem with these LMS's, are the too clearly defined roles of Instructor and Student. It literally is instructor versus student. And it shouldn't be like this. Coopman suggests branching out into something that allows students to more fully express themselves and their personality, by using a blog in conjunction with in-class interaction. This bliggity blog allows students to have their voice heard, that might sometimes be silenced in the classroom. Which it does. I mean why would I ever say BLIGGITY BLOG in the classroom. I mean, I might, but it isn't likely. Case in point. And after the student initially gets over the fact that everybody in the class will be reading the thing, the blog becomes something that is just a different form of communicating an idea.
Using the concept of the blog with a class is loads better than the Blackboard or Ilearn format. The discussions and forums, and posts and quizzes created in Blackboard either feel like a chore, or they become these fake and forced discussions that students are required to engage in. They are phony ways of interacting with a topic.

Here's an idea for the digital humanities:

Write about things you are interested in, outside of class. Okay...what do I mean by that? Take things you have written for classes, and use them to create a online website/journal/e-newspaper/community, catered to the specific department (humanities, foreign language, comparative literature, film, ect) that features articles, clips, writings, poetry, whatever written for students and maintained by students. That sentence was entirely too long. These documents can come from class papers, and can be posted to the site for criticism, and feedback, or anything else of note. Ok so that's our campus newspaper. No, it will be specifc for each department. So take the humanities: Certain themes could be introduced to inspire writings. Moreover, these students that partipicate in the creation of and maintence of the site, (but also people who contribute to the site) can have their own blogs to which people who visit the website can access more writings from a particular author. These writings do not all have to be so serious, either. They can be casual, or they can be entirely academic. The point being, is that there is a way for the humanities department to connect to each other, and collectively bring together a communities ideas.
Granted, this is all entirely too optimistic and idealistic. Even I know that, and I'm not known for being an optimist about anything. But it's a idea that feasibly could work. With effort.