Latest Ramblings

digital humanities as jazz

March 18th, 2011 | Comments Off

As I think about the Day of Digital Humanities, my participation in 2011, and the digital humanities themselves, speaking an odd and evolving technical language of 1 and 0, I am reminded of Julio Cortazar’s short essay, Take It or Leave It, from Around the Day in 80 Worlds. In it, he likes writing to Jazz; he argues that perfection is practiced, studied, and recorded, but it is somehow not real. Life and literature, begin and end, in takes. In the improvisation–of the designer, coder, project director mashing up ideas and open API–there is magic. In that improvisation we extend, build, and energize our work. With all this recent talk about sustainability in digital humanities (guilty, as accused) one cannot help but wonder what might be lost in the quest for such permanency. Either way, if you ask me to define the digital humanities, I just might sent you to Cortazar, jazz, and improvisation.

Here are Cortazar’s words (with the caveat that I went to find these on the Internet, not from my bookshelf; they might not be quite right; but that is the improvised universe of the digital humanities.)

“Strange power of the record, which can open for us the workshop of the artist, let us attend his successes and failures. How many takes are there in the world? This edited one can’t be the best; in its turn the atom bomb could someday be the equivalent of Bird’s Hold it!, the great silence. But will there be other usable takes afterwards?

“The difference between practice and take. Practice leads little by little to perfection, what it produces doesn’t matter, it is present only as a function of the future. In the take creation contains its own criticism, so it often interrupts itself to begin again; the inadequacy or failure of a take has the value of practice for the one that follows, but the next one is not an improved version of the preceding one, rather, if it is really good, it is always another thing entirely.

“The best literature is always a take; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement.

“I don’t want to write anything but takes.”

I don’t want to digital humanities to be anything more than takes.

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Setting the Record Straight

February 26th, 2011 | Comments Off

I just learned from the Ohio Conference of the AAUP about Misleading testimony, with factual inaccuracies was given late Tuesday afternoon alleging inefficiencies and skyrocketing costs in higher education.

On Thursday, February 22nd, Inter-University Council President, Bruce Johnson testified in favor of SB 5.  The IUC represents the Presidents of Ohio’s public universities, and it could be understood by many as speaking on behalf of the state’s universities. University faculty would generally not agree that the cause of inefficiencies and rising costs in higher education are because of faculty unions or faculty salaries.  To the contrary, they are tied to rising administrative costs; indeed University administrators have proliferated AND they earn far more, sometimes by a factor of 2 or 3, than faculty.

Thus let me share the response from the Ohio Conference of the AAUP.

“Here’s the fiction as stated by Mr. Johnson, followed by the facts, which are overwhelming, and incontrovertible:

Fiction: Mr. Johnson asserted that “collective bargaining places very little value on efficiency and productivity”. He also said, “If people knew about all of the processes that go on relative to Ohio’s public sector collective-bargaining law, they would be offended by the time, energy and talent that is underutilized.”

Fact: The source of inefficiencies, and of rising costs in higher education, is administrative expenditures. You need not take our word for it. An independent think tank, the Delta Project on Post-Secondary Costs, Productivity, and Accountability provides a report on “Trends in College Spending: Where Does the Money Go.”

“From 2002 to 2006, total spending on education and related services declined for all types of institutions except research universities. Additionally, the share of educational spending dedicated to classroom instruction declined at all types of institutions from 2002 to 2006. By contrast, spending on academic support, student services, administration, and maintenance increased as a share of total educational costs over the same period.”

Along these same lines, the report finds that spending on faculty is a minority of total spending in most institutions, and it is a proportion that has been declining in all sectors for the last two decades. (See their reports: http://www.deltacostproject.org/index.asp).

These findings support the research of scholars of all persuasions about costs in higher education in the past three decades.   On balance, an increasing share of higher education expenditures is being spent on non-educational, administrative expenditures, and a decreasing share is being spent on educational expenditures.

Fact: One of the services provided by the AAUP is to do financial audit analyses for faculty groups seeking valid information about the financial health of their institution, and report precisely how their institution is spending its resources.  A consistent finding of such reports on Ohio universities such as Akron, Toledo, and Wright State is that even in the tight times of recent years, the share of total expenditures going to administration increase whereas the share going to educational expenditures is decreasing.

Fact: No less a bona fide conservative organization than The Goldwater Institute, which describes itself as “an independent government watchdog supported by people who are committed to expanding free enterprise and liberty” issued a recent report entitled “Administrative Bloat at American Universities: The Real Reason for High Costs in Higher Education” (find the report at http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article/4941). To quote from the Executive Summary,

…universities now have more administrative employees and spend more on administration to educate each student. In short, universities are suffering from “administrative bloat,” expanding the resources devoted to administration significantly faster than spending on instruction, research and service.” Indeed, the entire report does not mention unions or collective bargaining at all. Thus, it is administrative costs – not those associated with faculty or custodians or other workers who may be unionized – that explain shortfalls in “efficiency and productivity.”

Fact: Student numbers are up, and the goal is to dramatically increase numbers in Ohio public higher education institutions. The Ohio Board of Regents calls for substantial investment in facilities, by hundreds of millions MORE dollars than are being spent now.

No mention is made of the need to hire more faculty, advisors, and counselors, to teach and serve these students.

  • Class sizes are up, and will go up further.
  • Student faculty ratios are up, and will go up further.
  • The system is already operating too “efficiently” on the educational side of the house, at the expense of effective, high quality education in which students have high levels of attainment.
  • What is operating inefficiently is our administrative side of the house.

Fiction: Mr. Johnson cites numbers allegedly from the University of Toledo, saying that it could save up to $10 million dollars (over an undisclosed number of years) were it not for the burden of contract negotiations. Johnson speculates that similar savings could be realized at other institutions.

Fact: Mr. Johnson presented no facts and no data analysis. Only an assertion that the state is spend large amounts of money to hire consultants on restructuring, and to pay large lawyer fees to fight having to consult with the faculty.

Fact: Based on the independent reports and data about the source of inefficiency in higher education, we know where much more than tens of millions of dollars could be saved in Ohio public higher education. Students are paying more for administrative costs and getting less in the way of educational support.

The real cause of inefficiencies and rising costs in higher education are the growth of administrative costs. SB 5 and Governor Kasich call for greater “managerial flexibility.” We have seen what that sort of flexibility meant on Wall Street, and firms like Lehman Brothers, for people on Main Street – greater flexibility to grow managerial costs at the expense of the consumer,  and of the employees.

  • The only collective voice fighting this pattern of managerialism is that of the faculty union.
  • The only collective voice fighting to put the money where the students are is that of the faculty union.
  • The principal collective voice fighting for affordable, high quality higher education is the faculty union.
  • SB 5 seeks to silence that voice – it seeks to silence all of us – Make our voice heard.

The Senate and the IUC are about to make decisions based on misleading testimony and mistaken beliefs.”

Once again, the people are called upon to counter the disinformation campaign of administrators, who are unchecked in the current system and will do whatever their management wants. Poor administrative leadership harms Universities, not the salaries of faculty. WE are the University.

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Thinking about my iPad: apps, ideas, and uses

February 6th, 2011 | Comments Off

Here are some apps that I have on my iPad, and the rationale. This, it turns out, is a great exercise, because it forces you to really self-consciously address your technology needs and (actual) use. Note that some of the suggestions that I am making include apps for which you have to pay.

The Center’s goal for getting iPads was to allow us to demonstrate Cleveland Historical (http://app.mobileclevelandhistory.org/) to folks on a big screen (since we cannot project it from PCs and don’t always have PCs present.) Cleveland Historical is cool on a smartphone but it is hard for two or more people to share a smartphone easily. We also want these to be productivity and teaching tools. How can they be so used; is it something that we imagine using and/or having students, teachers, and community collaborators use? Finally, we also wanted to explore the iPad as a publishing platform for the stories/sites we’ve developed on Cleveland Historical. How, we want to ask, is curating a city different on the larger tablets? On this last count, the answer is yes, and we’re working up some exciting solutions.

We purchased the 64GB version, without 3G connectivity. The 3G connectivity is expensive and for most of our uses, wireless connections will be available. Additionally, I have a phone (HTC EVO) that acts as a wireless hotspot, so for the cost of just one phone/4G data connection, I can receive calls AND operate my iPad. I think this latter is an important configuration, and might be superior to paying for two phone lines/data connections.

Second, we bought little mac wireless keyboards to go with the iPads because they transform our set-up into a more functional productive tool that can be used on the road.

In that vein, we have bought a series of productivity applications, which I will tell you about briefly.

Keynote, which allows you to project power points (and do some modest editing of them.) Important for making presentations with your ipad on the go. I use this in my teaching on a regular basis. Even when I am not using the iPad to project on the screen (and am using my laptop instead), I have my notes open on the iPad to help me with my lectures/presentations.

DocstoGo: This is the best editor for word docs, excel, and powerpoint; may allow you to create pdfs, I don’t recall.
Dropbox: This is easy to use and free; it allows you to create a web folder on your laptop, school, home desktop, and ipad (and any smart phones) that is accessible to all.
goodreader: This allows you to connect to all your web folders (including dropbox, google documents, and the xythos web development system that we have at CSU, as well as virtual desktops, if they are available.) I think it costs, but we use all these tools, so I downloaded; importantly, it is a sort of safety net if my use of dropbox (i.e. I forget to save a file there) lets me down. Also, we share hundreds of files on grant projects, so it is easy to “archive” them and have them available at a later date. (This is where we save hundreds upon hundreds of hours of audio, thousands of unique images, and such.)
gogodocs: This allows you to manage your google documents folder. As suggested above, our team uses google docs widely (primarily for documents), so this is the direct entree into those.

I would, on the above tools, imagine them simply in this way: a) docstogo lets you edit your documents, b) dropbox lets you manager your personal files, without needing the little thumb drive, c) gogodocs gives you access to files shared with other folks, such as your colleagues at Bay, d) if you have more complex web folder setups, then good reader gives easy access (in one place) to your complete archive of materials.

Atomic web browser: Wow. Safari is a very limited browser. Atomic lets you mimic other browsers, it lets you print, it lets you project webpages (you have to get a little dongle thingy to connect to projectors, by the way), and oh so much more. I don’t use it as a default but as my very specialized project, work-related browser. It is awesome. So good, in fact, that I should probably just ditch Safari.

Printcentral: I purchased and downloaded several print functions because I want to be able to print to my home printer, on a home wireless network, while I am playing on my ipad at home. Imagine reading a document (perhaps a syllabus or a document shared by a colleague), maybe editing it in docstogo, and saving it to your dropbox. But, you decide you want to print a copy of your revisions and give them to your colleague the next day, or perhaps make a pdf. You discover, quickly, that you have to go to your traditional laptop/desktop, fire it up, go to dropbox, open, and then print. That sucks. So, I experimented with several print applications (bought three actually) and this one worked the best and easiest. The print quality is a little compromised, but it is great.

On a separate note, if you operate a wireless printer, consistent with Mac Air, then you are good to go with the iPad, or so I am told. But, I don’t, and I have to print in multiple settings, and this allows me (in theory and so far in practice) to connect to different sorts of networks and print.

Evernote: I love Evernote for keeping and taking notes that I later use … It allows me to tag, organize, and share them; you can get it on desktop, multiple smart phone platforms, and ipad.
Plaintext: simple text editor, allows you to email and other stuff.
Simplenote: like Plaintext, with a bit more functionality, though not as simple as plaintext.
Both Simplenote and Plaintext are like Notes, which is already available. I am thinking these are a matter of personal preference, but maybe not. They are all clearly in the same category, though.

Flipboard: This is by far my favorite app for iPad. I love its slick design. But, I also love its functionality. It allows you to connect, via RSS I think, all your various information feeds, like twitter, Facebook, and flickr. Also, connects you to pre-arranged content feeds that fliboard makes available (about technology, the arts, museums, … a wide range of relatively esoteric subjects.) It formats those feeds and makes them available in a sort of magazine format. Not only does it look cool, but it makes them easier to read. To me, it suggests some important future directions in integrating social media into cultural applications; for example, I can imagine Cleveland Historical running social media, designed/formatted and well presented, as part of a tablet presentation.

Feedlerpro allows you to take your google (or any) RSS feeds and displays them; I use this for connecting the to various blogs I try to read. Now, I read them more often, about once a week, but unless this is important to you, I am less impressed. the jury is still out.
Flickrstudio connects you to your flickr photo stream.
Zinio appears to be a magazine publishing platform. I love how it looks and the magazines that are available. I think magazines are going to comeback because of ipad and other tablets and readers. They look great and are fun to navigate.

I have some other stuff too: NPR, Angry Birds, Doodle Jump; Remember the Milk (which is cool, but I am not yet a convert to such memory jogging todo list software; though it syncs on ALL my platforms), NYTimes; Friendly (for Facebook, which is terrible); iBooks (using it to keep PDFs of my course syllabi and such, which is so, so, so convenient); BBC News; TWC MAX+ for weather (although I have yet to see a weather application that I like); (which does not work as well as it should nor as well as it does on your Firefox browser); Guardian Eyewitness; WordPress (which allows me to make blog posts easily); Wikipanion; Discover (also based on Wikipedia); and Dragon Dictation (which I used rarely.)

By the way, my google calendars integrate well with my iPad calendar and present beautifully. I now use my iPad to control all my calendar functions, which has made me way more organized.

As much as I love my smart phone, I find that the larger screen of the tablet has really piqued my imagination. Let me know what works for you too!

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Authored by Mark Tebeau, Urban Humanist explores history, landscape, and place. It reflects the random and digressive thinking of an urban historian seeking digital bliss. Email at mtebeau at gmail dot com or tweet at urbanhumanist. (Note, that the views expressed here are solely those of Tebeau.)

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