Looking Before Facebook Facebook has become the quintessential online social network, but it has not always been so, nor was it the first of the online social networks. Online social networks emerged as the earliest forms of the Internet, like dial-up bulletin-board systems (BBS) (Grabianowski, 2009). These early tools were designed to connect people with…
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At this point in the class, more questions than answers face me. In one sense I recognize the relative simplicity of a network: a connection of nodes. On the other hand, I quickly complicate my simple definition with questions: Are nodes relatively static? Are they predefined via framework or developed on the fly through the action of…
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I have chosen Google Analytics as my object of study for ENGL 894 Theories of Networks. More specifically, I have chosen the Google Analytics account I manage on behalf of the University of Richmond School of Professional and Continuing Studies. Although this account is a sub-account on the larger University of Richmond Google Analytics roll-up…
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Although some might argue otherwise, it’s difficult to theorize without immersion in the topic of study. So we started the class this evening by creating our own class network using Popplet, a mind mapping tool. Check out the results of this evening’s work. Networks are a little messy, especially at the beginning. This class, itself…
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I’m reading a series in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the digital humanities, and it’s sparked this question: assuming I intend to focus on technology and new media in my doctoral program, will my scholarship be considered “digital humanities”? To me, “digital humanities” suggests more visual presentation and analysis of data rather than traditional…
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I’m in the process of reading and annotating the text I’ve selected for my spring class, and I came across what I consider a great paragraph with a great message that I want my students to grasp and understand. The text is Everything’s an Argument with Readings, 6th edition, by Andrea Lunsford, John R. Ruszkiewicz,…
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The time lag between this post and the previous post is roughly proportional to my level of stress and busy-ness over that same period. As long as the time was between posts, so was I stressed and busy. The first semester of my PhD studies has drawn to a close—I submitted my two exam question…
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Scherff, Lisa, and Debbie L. Hahs-Vaughn. “What We Know about English Language Arts Teachers: An Analysis of the 1999-2000 SASS and 2000-2001 TFS Databases.” English Education 40.3 (2008): 174-199. Print. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) School and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the subsequent Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS), the authors seek…
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English studies no longer exists. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn after half a semester of PhD coursework. Too bad I’m getting a PhD in English. An English department may exist as a political or organizational unit on some campuses, but it’s unclear to me that, at the graduate or higher level, there needs to be…
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I find myself in this situation pretty often: with about 15 minutes left in my day, however that gets defined (often “the time I go to bed” or “the time I go home from work or teaching”), I sit down to draft a post. At the end of a typical weekday, I spend about an…
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