Very Tired on a Friday Afternoon. But it’s a good tired.
I just heard that my proposal, “Moveable Types of Information Literacy: Emerging Electronic Genres and the Deconstruction of Peer Review,” has been accepted for the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy this coming October.
Seton Hill University featured “information literacy” in a faculty seminar at the beginning of the year, but thought the content of that training was too basic to be of much interest or help to me. While I’ve found my new media activities to be well-supported here, I do expect that I’ll have plenty of explaining to do when it comes to annual review time. Now that weblogs are mainstream enough that I can expect my students to “get” blogging without much trouble, I need to start thinking critically about how to present the value of blogging to a generation of scholars who don’t automatically go “Wow that’s so cool!” when they see a blog. Hence, this conference proposal.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
I’m still working on “Forced Blogging: Students’ Emotional Investment in Their Academic Weblogs,” which I’ll be giving at the 4C’s next week… I’m behind in my blogging for the Princeton Video Game conference earlier this month, and I’ve haven’t yet managed to unbotch my handling of the paperwork for a conference I attended last August.
What’s this? Little voices from several stacks of papers are calling to me… “Grade us! Grade us!”
Back to work.
Dennis,
During the years that I took formal courses with you, I never thought you were nuts :) Besides, something I learned from all my mentors is that we are not “nuts,” but people who have big ideas and are willing to work really hard for them.
And here I thought I was being pathetically self-centered, and almost deleted this entry without posting it. “Who would care about my happiness?” I asked myself. :)
Bobby, who says I’m not already nuts?
Mike, I probably shouldn’t complain about meetings so much, but when searching for a public scapegoat, I feel more comfortable complaining about anonymous “meetings” than, for instance, complainign about time spent with students or time spent sleeping!
Neha, thanks to you, too.
Congratulations! We’ll all be here wishing you good luck and success!
Congrats on the presentation acceptances. May your funding (and writing time) be plentiful. Speaking of those info literacy sessions, I look forward to doing our own collaborative presentation on blogs to the “Teaching/Learning Forums” in two weeks. We should sit down over coffee and a notepad and try to organize our ideas. This will be one of many opportunities for you to discuss your blog as a form of scholarship, outside the auspices of doing so on your blog itself. I think that’s part of the trick of speaking to that “generation of scholars” you mention. I also would say that once you’re on committees next year, you’ll start to get a better sense of your faculty colleagues outside of your present work zone…and vice-versa. I know you dislike meetings, but don’t underestimate the value of them as social activities among your peers. The less of a “stranger” you are to that tenure committee, the less you have to worry about proving that blogging is legit scholarship. Besides, by the time it comes around, I suspect most will already know that it’s “real” scholarship (or at least have more of a sense of what a blog is) walking in, and they will welcome the opportunity to learn more about your scholarly pursuits through your promotion portfolio.
Dennis,
Congratulations on the upcoming conferences! I still honestly do not know how you manage to do everything you do without going nuts. For me, classes, my own research, and being Lead Organizer for UW-Eau Claire’s English Festival is enough and I run out of time anyway!