March | 2010 | voxygen.net

From the monthly archives: March 2010

Beneath the circuits, the tree of life

By ~LS~ On March 31, 2010 · Add Comment · In Random Musings, Technology, This is my life? and tagged Tagged With: Haraway, Tattoos, Technoculture

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Link-o-mania – Too Random to Categorize

By ~LS~ On March 26, 2010 · Add Comment · In Link-o-mania and tagged Tagged With: Obligatory Links

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Spaghetti marshmellow towers

By ~LS~ On March 25, 2010 · Add Comment · In I have to work?, Pedagogy and tagged Tagged With: BRCC, Teaching, Teaching Activities

In order to analyze teamwork, I have the students in my classes do various silly activities that I’ve stolen from people or from websites here and there. One of my favorite is the spaghetti marshmellow tower. After building the tower, the students then analyze their role in their group. So the way the tower works is that students must “buy” their materials (spaghetti = 10 ¢, large marshmellow = 25¢, small marshmellow = 5¢). The tallest tower wins, the cheapest breaks a tie. The rules are that the tower must support a ping pong ball at the top and the tower must be free standing long enough for me to measure it. Often the groups get competitive with each other, which makes it entertaining and messier.

My business communication students this semester built the tallest towers yet. Both were over 25 inches if memory serves. They were solid structures, too. [...]

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A day of lessons in stereotypes

By ~LS~ On March 25, 2010 · Add Comment · In I have to work?, Politics, Race and Racism and tagged Tagged With: BRCC, For Wordies, Pedagogy, Race

Today has been an interesting lesson in stereotypes.

Lesson one:

I had a guest speaker from Deaf Services in BR come to my Interpersonal Communication class. He was dynamic and interesting and the students loved him. Before his visit, I decided to learn a little more about Deaf culture the capital D is important to people in the Deaf community). I’ve been fascinated about it ever since a friend of mine demonstrated the way that sign language is not a literal interpretation but a more poetic one. She did this by signing a song. I’ve learned a long time ago that it’s your responsibility to educate yourself about others who are culturally different rather than to expect them to translate for you. I think the most memorable statement came from Audre Lorde who said that white women expect women of color to “stretch across the gap of ignorance.” So in [...]

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Confessions of a Facebook slacktivist

By ~LS~ On March 24, 2010 · Add Comment · In Politics, The Web and tagged Tagged With: Al Franken, Facebook, Politics, Slacktivism

I was playing on Facebook Facecrack tonight when I noticed how many groups, pages, and causes I’ve joined. The accumulated weight of my mouse clicks shocked me not only because of these groups’ sheer purposelessness (i.e., the various Farmville hate groups) but also because joining generally leads to nothing fruitful even when the groups are actually meaningful to me (i.e., Southern Poverty Law Center).

Now, I could justify my joining via the route that says Facebook allows us to construct ourselves in this very strange hybrid space of reality and virtual reality. So that means that I want all these groups/pages/causes in my profile. They are little hyperlinks to represent who I am and who I associate with in the hyper-reality that is Facebook. They actually do mean something — to me, to everyone who fans or joins because I’ve done it, to everyone whose fanned or joined before me [...]

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Reality check on health care

By ~LS~ On March 23, 2010 · Add Comment · In Politics and tagged Tagged With: Obama, Politics

See? It just proves it!

Today, in the wake of the “historic” bill signed by the “historic” president, the liberal blogosphere has been crowing over the health care bill. I find this disturbing. People are cheering because the bill was resuscitated after its near death and they applaud that the bill went through with enough votes that Democrats didn’t need to rely on parliamentary shenanigans such as reconciliation. Admittedly there are those who acknowledge that the bill has little meat and that it’s basically a symbolic victory. Nonetheless, they are giddy with their success.

Well, Imma glass-half-empty kinda girl.

Hello? The Democrats scraped by tooth and nail to get this bill passed. They made enough concessions that much of the bill was gutted. Insurance stocks soared when the bill passed, right? That can’t be a good sign.

Right now, liberal folks are at once gleeful and indignant that the Tea [...]

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Page 1 of 212 »

Beneath the circuits, the tree of life

Link-o-mania – Too Random to Categorize

Spaghetti marshmellow towers

A day of lessons in stereotypes

Confessions of a Facebook slacktivist

Reality check on health care

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Beneath the circuits, the tree of life

Link-o-mania – Too Random to Categorize

Spaghetti marshmellow towers

A day of lessons in stereotypes

Confessions of a Facebook slacktivist

Reality check on health care

Categories

Archives

Tags

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Meta

Catch me if you can!