Working at the Interface: Dr. Kevin Brooks

Michael Neal: a nice discussion of the challenges of rubrics for new media and multimodal composition. Referenced Broad's Beyond Rubrics--a programmatic discussion of new media texts would be interesting. Michael Day has posted his presentation on e-portfolios at Northern Illinois U. Showed / emphasized an online scoring form used--could be a useful addition to our assessment, even if we don't

Charlie Lowe explained that Drupal is a complex design tool, not simply a weblog tool or wiki; design choices available to site designer. Maybe Drupal is the tool for WPGV. See Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6, drupal.org/vidcasts, teaching@drupaled.net (contact Charlie to join). Dan Royer posted his presentation in a Drupal site. Covers the evolution of his experience with

Michael Farris was kind enough to comment on my "Things to remember" post from the end of the semester, and like him, I am behind on my blog reading. When I visited his site, I found this post about Jeremiah Wright that brings together many of my own current preoccupations: white privilege, rhetorical acts post 9-11, mourning, and memorializing. He references a Judith Butler work I am not

I hadn't visited the One Laptop Per Child program in a while, but the fact that the program adopted Windows as the operating system came up at the Computers and Writing conference I am attending. I thought I should see what else is going on a OLPC.

My visit was fruitful. I just found out that donors can now designate where they would like the laptops to go--no initially part of the program. 100 laptops at $299 would probably be sufficient to outfit the orphan center and school Joseph wants to build. A $299 donation would be a very concrete, tangible donation, although it might be something that we want to emphasize after we get basic needs solidified.

Quinn Warnick provided a close, clever, textual analysis of the copyright code, specifically the fair use section;it is tiny and a mess! He quickly looked at the ineffectiveness of the copyright office, and encouraged universities to be proactive in understanding and supporting educator's rights. Virginia Commonwealth presenters analyzed Condi Rice Raps from the perspective of copyright law.

Jim Tremmel from Austin delivered a nicely designed presentation on the value of podcasts in his rhetoric and rock class and his literature and music class. I actually listened to one of his casts a few years back--nice work. Presenting music and interviews via podcast is smart; nice presentation. Janine Solbert's presentation reported on a writing with film class she taught, concluding with a

I've been thinking about Writing Programs as technologies for a long time, but it dawned on me this morning that there might be a good institutional research project on some of the interesting program-wide implementations of technology in writing programs. I learned about UGA's use of EMMA yesterday; they subtly distinguished themselves from the Texas Tech approach to anonymous grading through

Two good workshops yesterday that I haven't blogged, and a lively town hall discussion this morning. More on that later, perhaps. Session A started today with two video presentations, which interestingly is something I have been talking about with people the last few days. Rik Hunter's video of WoWwiki made interesting use of voice over, clips from a WoW event, and screen shots of scholarly

Great news for southern Sudan; $4.8 billion dollars in aid have been pledged to help with recovery projects for the next 3 years. As the article says, southern Sudan is at a tipping point, and it is important that the global community help Sudan now!

I've been reading McLuhan and Fiore's War and Peace in the Global Village (again), and finally starting to understand it. "When one has been hurt by new technology, when the private person or the corporate body finds its entire identity endangered by physical or psychic change, it lashes back in a fury of self defense" (97). This statement makes sense (it could be less dramatic), but the light

My son brought home his weekly reader magazine and showed me a story about a 13 year old boy who started the organization, Hoops of Hope, to raise money for orphans in Zambia. I can't imagine a much better event for North Dakota school kids to undertake some cold day this coming winter, but I also think that a project like this should be kid driven, kid organized. I'll see if I can gently nudge my son in that direction.

I saw on the website that Ellendale North Dakota ran this fundraiser yesterday (May 17th, 2008).

I also watched the YouTube video used to promote the cause during this year's March Madness.

I dug a little deeper into the UNHCR website, and their Nine Million campaign (nine million children world wide living in refugee camps), and discovered a video profile of a young Sudanese boy living in refugee camp.

A close-up of Joseph in his robes, then
Joseph with his sister Amer (far right), his sister Akon, her husband and fellow NDSU student, Daniel Geu, and their children.

I embedded the ASAH Concept video on the The Hub. The Hub is website with hundreds of human rights and advocacy videos--worth a visit!

I discovered that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has a YouTube channel and a Flickr Stream. The UNHCR runs the Kakuma refugee camp where Joseph spent about 10 years of his life; these images and videos provide incredible glimpses into the lives of refugees.

I also discovered that teh UNHCR is sponsoring a World Refugee Day, June 20th. We will have to look into doing an event for that day.

Deb Dawson, ASAH Producer, sent out this message on Friday:

Dear Friends of African Soul, American Heart,

Please join me in congratulating Joseph Akol Makeer on his graduation today from North Dakota State University where he earned a degree in Criminal Justice. You will probably agree that this is an extraordinary accomplishment for a 31-year-old man who spent his childhood trying to survive by escaping his war-torn country of South Sudan, who learned to read as a teen in a refugee camp, and who came to Fargo, North Dakota in September of 2003. In only 4 1/2 years since that day, he has earned a college degree, written a book, and inspired a group of talented people to help him tell the story of those who continue to suffer in his country and his desire to help the orphans there.

I am proud to announce African Soul, American Heart is now incorporated and our non-profit status is pending approval. Our board of directors is actively putting together information about costs for building materials, supplies, labor, and staffing so that we might build an orphan center in Duk Payuel, South Sudan, the village Joseph left as a ten-year-old.

Our film director and editor will be working hard over the summer to edit our documentary. We hope to have a rough cut by the end of August and a finished product by November. African Soul, American Heart (the movie) will be available then for showings and to submit to film festivals around the country to help us generate interest and funds to support these children who have no one to care for them.

For more information about our project and to VIEW A 3 MINUTE EXCERPT of our documentary, check our website.

______

To add a personal note, yesterday, as I was driving my Sudanese friend Joseph home from graduation, we heard this NPR story about Lost Boy Emmanuel Jal, now a successful musician. As Jal was describing walking to Ethiopia, then back to Sudan, and living through those incredibly difficult years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I turned to Joseph and said, "can you believe that you were there, too, and now you are here, in Fargo ND, a graduate of NDSU?" He said he couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it.

I heard an interesting story this morning about the murder and legacy of the Congo's first leader of the postcolonial era, Patrice Lumumba. I don't know much about Lumumba yet, but a documentary about him looks like a good place to start. Yesterday, as I was driving my Sudanese friend Joseph home from graduation, we heard this NPR story about Lost Boy Emmanuel Jal, now a successful musician.

Thanks to the more or less anonymous comment two posts ago, I just discovered the inaugural issue of MediaTropes is devoted to McLuhan: "Marshall McLuhan's 'Medium is the Message': Information Literacy in a Multimedia Age." Great contributors, good looking articles = lots of reading.

Through my involvement with Friends of the Congo, I learn about initiatives and petitions like this one, seeking to pressure the State Dept. to play a more aggressive diplomatic role in getting Rwanda out of the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I met and have gotten to know Martin Buhendwa and his family; Congolese refugees who have been living in Kakuma, Kenya (the UNHCR

Crunch time this week--4Cs proposals due this Friday. I'm at a point where I need to propose something I haven't quite started yet, so a few different ideas are floating around blogosphere. Conference theme: Making Waves. 1. War and Peace and the Global Village. I have been wanting to do something with this text for a while, and I am doing a seminar in the fall WPGV: Rhetorical Acts Post 9/11

A student of a friend of mine analyzed my blog for an assignment and came to the conclusion that I never blog on more than one idea at a time. I think that was a nice way of saying my blog is boring, so tonight, two ideas! Wait, not really ideas, just links. John Walters used the phrase "OHM Thesis," to refer to the Ong, Havelock, McLuhan thesis that, in McLuhan terms, boils down to "the