“Private Eyes Are Watching You” – Part Two
In the previous part, I set up some basic parameters to discussions of the right to privacy, particularly that I’m discussing the moral right to privacy that is independent legal concerns. (If you missed it, go back and read it. Even if you read it, the music video posted makes another visit worthwhile.) In this [...]
“Private Eyes Are Watching You” – Part One
This past semester I taught a class on the ethics of human rights. One of the more interesting discussions took place concerning the right to privacy. Today I’m starting a series of weekly(?) posts that will discuss what exactly is meant by the right to privacy, in part, by looking at a set of thought [...]
TED-Ed and Beatboxing with a Cockroach
So remember that time I wrote about how much I love TED? And also the time I wrote about how cool Backyard Brains’ Spiker Box is and how I used it in class?
Well, as it turns out, TED and Backyard Brains seem to get along pretty well…
In other news, what do y’all think of TEDed? Here’s a little primer – it seems like it could be really great! Kind of a crowd-sourced Khan Academy?
And then there was…a completed dissertation!!
This past Monday marked a monumental moment in my life: I finally (and successfully) defended my dissertation, now officially making me Dr. Johnson. Well, I suppose I technically have to walk across the stage and get the actual Ph.D. come May, but for now I’m basking in the glory of finally making it so to speak.
As I sit here pondering this monumental moment, I am left amazed. Amazed I have come this far, amazed that after five years in graduate school I have finally come to this: the end. But really, it is just the beginning. As I wrap up my time here at Baylor in the small city (town?) of Waco, I am left amazed. I’m amazed at the love and support from countless friends and family members I’ve had along the way. I have spent many a disgruntled late night studying for an exam or trying to get a data set to work or just moaning on the floor while I thought about actually having to finish the dang document (i.e., the dreaded dissertation). And all along the way, I had fellow graduate students/ friends/ colleagues and loved ones who groaned right along side me, knowing how painful it could be at times. I’m amazed at the good friendships I have made in my time here and even more amazed at how much my life has changed over the course of graduate school.
At the start of year one in my graduate program, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a social psychologist. I was just “trying it out.” Now, five years later, I am obsessed with my job – I LOVE it. And I’ve grabbed some amazing things along the way. Most notably my best friend and dear husband, Patrick, whom I married last May. And so I sit here, ready for the beginning, not the end. I thought getting my Ph.D. would feel so final, so “end of the road,” but really it just makes me feel like a million new exciting possibilities are opening up for me. It’s a hopeful feeling.
The next step for me is to wrap up my time and life here in Waco and head to the big city (quite literally – moving to NYC) for my new job at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine as a researcher in the Cancer Prevention and Control Department. It is so weird to think of moving forward, and yet I can feel that my time here is done. Like the end of a good chapter, so is my life here at Baylor. My time here is coming to a wonderful, beautiful close. I am ending on a happy note with the city of Waco. But I am excited to start the next chapter of my life, where the girl who’s spent far too much time in an office with no windows (this still kills me) gets to see even more of the world. It’s a new step in so many ways for me. Wait a second. Come to think of it, my new job doesn’t have a window either. But you get it – figuratively I’m seeing more as I move to NYC. And there everything will be new. A new city. A new line of research. A new job. A new way of living. But I am excited. With my Ph.D. in my hand (well, figuratively), I am joyously ready for the next step in the adventure. Thank you to all of you who have loved and supported me along the way. This has been an accomplishment that I truly could not have done without each of you.
Some Reflections on a Recently Defended Dissertation
Yesterday was a day I had anticipated for many years. I successfully defended my dissertation, Toward a Richer Account of Human Rights in Christian Moral Theory: From Wolterstorff and Hauerwas to Wojtyla. This process has led to some reflection on the path to here. Jim Stump told me as a freshman that I wrote like [...]
Guest Post: iBooks Author
As a special treat today, I have a lovely guest post for you from Bryan Blakeley regarding the new iBooks Authoring tool. Bryan is a graduate student in history at Boston College, a graduate assistant in educational technology, and, incidentally, my husband. A big thanks to him for covering this for me, and I hope you all enjoy.
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I recently had the opportunity to visit the Apple headquarters here in Boston. They invited several educational institutions, both higher ed and K-12, to discuss use of the new iBooks Authoring tool. The seminar was designed as both demo and workshop, as we heard from their engineers about use cases they had envisioned as well as viewing a few examples of ebooks created by the educational community. It was clear that they were anxious for feedback from those of us who had started to work with the software.
I really like the idea of ebooks. As I recently wrote, I think the opportunities are spectacular for the integration of rich content in ebooks. Apple’s iBook Author provides this integration in a WYSIWYG fashion. Everything from slideshows to 3d graphics to video can be easily embedded in iBooks with just a few clicks. Importing content from MS Word documents is a snap. A small range of templates provide a simple point of entry for novices, and HTML5 widget support is provided for those looking to integrate customized content presentation (including network-aware content). In short, this is a very user-friendly desktop publishing tool.
There are problems here, however. The first and most glaring issue for me is cross-platform compatibility. Not only does iBooks Author require a Mac running OS X Lion to run (which is not terribly surprising), but the iBooks themselves can only be read on an iPad. Notice I said iPad and not Mac – iBooks produced through the author cannot even be utilized on a Mac! When building an iBook in iBooks Author, there are some widgets that don’t even run in the Author tool, but instead require you to push your book to the iPad to quality check. As at least one person in the workshop mentioned, Apple has already built an iPad emulator for the Mac, so why doesn’t iBooks work on this platform? The Apple engineers were either unsure or invoked Cupertino secrecy to dodge this particular question.
Let me make something absolutely clear: I respect Apple people. Their products are beautifully designed and generally well-executed. Their control over both software and hardware allows them to fine-tune their products in a way that others cannot match. The fact that this integration also presents certain business opportunities is simply a fact of life. The iBooks Authoring tool serves at least two purposes for Apple: attracting content to their distribution network (aka the iBook Store) and selling iPads. Though one would like to see iBooks on other devices, and especially other tablets (especially Android tablets), this makes very little sense from Apple’s perspective.
This leads me to two main observations about the iBooks Authoring platform. First, it cannot realistically serve the publishing needs of a device-agnostic institution. Unless educational institutions mandate purchase of an iPad for certain classes or disciplines (as some are starting to do in Business schools), then the Authoring tool will be of limited usefulness. This leads to my second point: this platform may be more broadly applicable to K-12 models. Some of these institutions have begun to adopt the so-called “One-to-one” model where each student receives an iPad when enrolling in a particular school. In this case the institution mandates device choice and can generate content specifically for students using this device.
In sum, the iBooks tool is a slick desktop publishing app that easily integrates multimedia content, but I think it will have limited usefulness in higher education as long as it remains proprietary and device specific, or as long as institutions stay device-agnostic.
BU Instructional Innovation Conference
Today I attended BU’s Instructional Innovation Conference, and while I ended up being a little late (thanks, public transportation!), I ended up hearing about a lot of cool things going on around campus and picked up some ideas to integrate into my own teaching. I apologize in advance for the bullet-pointiness of the post.
I was happy to see several sessions on the itinerary that dealt with using technology in the classroom. The first dealt with tablet (Tablet?) technologies in the classroom.
The School of Hospitality has a mobile iPad lab of 65 iPads, and the students can either use an iPad or their own laptop. The main purpose of having the iPads is apparently for polling and course-specific software. Now, as far as I know, clickers can cover the polling, so I guess depending on the “course specific software” in question, I feel like maybe this isn’t really the best use for something like an iPad. It’s no different than just using clickers or individual laptops. Even in a class that was given iPads (as in, they belonged to the students), shouldn’t we be thinking about the things that the iPad (or other tablets) can do that a traditional laptop can’t? Are there things that an iPad can do that a laptop can’t? Discuss.
A better example (I think) was another classroom that had 6 tables, each with a netbook connected to a projector. There’s also a SMART board (think Minority Report – pretty cool) at the front of the room for the instructor to use – this, I think, would allow for a LOT of collaborative/creative work and because it’s being projected, my guess is that cuts down on the messing-around-online stuff that everyone gets their panties in such a twist about (I’ll talk about my personal thoughts on that issue another time).
Another presentation was by a woman who did a bit of a “flipped” classroom (an idea that I talked about earlier). She put video podcasts up for her students to watch before class, but she never put up anything longer than about 12 minutes. She said that was just about the right amount of extra time in class to add some discussion. She used Echo360 and had a super easy time recording it. (Have any of you used Echo360? To what effect?) She only did 5 or so podcasts for the whole semester, but I’m wondering why you wouldn’t do more?
I also saw a lot of “data” from student evaluations – whether or not they “liked” whatever was done in the class. I wish people would collect data like Eric Mazur! Let’s talk about student outcomes (even looking at the grades between semesters of the same class), or something more than whether or not they liked it.
There was, overall, a very different feel at this conference than others (like ELI) that I have attended. While I applaud the things people are trying here, I thought, overall, that there was a bit of a lack of gutsiness. There was an undercurrent of “yes, but the students will do everything they can to do as little work as possible, they’ll mess around on any technology we give them, and basically they’re a problem to be dealt with.” Which I don’t like so much. I know this is, sometimes, the reality. But there were very few people (that I saw) that seemed really passionate about teaching or fostering curiosity/creativity in their students. Maybe I just went to the wrong sessions.
Edit: There was actually a guy (like an older man, clearly a professor) that said using iTunesU to post lectures or additional materials was nothing more than vain self-promotion. And then he wailed on Sal Khan. No joke. I almost yelled at him across the room. You want to know why Khan is making videos in subjects that he doesn’t have a degree in? It’s because YOU ARE NOT.
Sigh.
40 DD: Infographic Aside
Is Facebook a relationship market? If so, it’s another example of a market characterized by an imbalanced sex ratio. Per the data cited in this infographic (from 2010), there are 1.28 female FB-ers for every 1 male user. The extent of the gender gap in usage, though, varies by age bracket.
Look-see: 
40 DD No. 5
Do birds of a feather flock together or—Thank you, Paul Abdul—do opposites attract?1 If you’re quacking, you’re correct. No need to reinvent the wheel here; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook said it well:
“Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people’s personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics.”
The people in our social networks look a lot like we do, but why? Part of the reason has to do with the demographic characteristics of the places and spaces in which we spend our time—think of your neighborhood or workplace or some extracurricular group (like a running group or a…I don’t know, what do people do in their spare time?). These tend to be demographically homogenous: people of similar racial/ethnic and class backgrounds concentrate in certain parts of town and certain types of jobs and so forth.2 This is more or less the opportunity structure for social interactions created by physical proximity—who’s around you on a day-to-day basis? We’re more likely to form close ties with people near than far and/partly because seeing people regularly provides a shared context that makes it possible to form bonds.3
Forming relationships with others who are like you in a variety of ways is the norm. There are, however, degrees of homophily/heterophily. I may have just made up that second word. But put differently, our membership in some groups is more important than membership in others and can determine the extent to which we engage with and form close relationships with people outside the group. By “close relationship,” I mean the kind of relationship that involves confiding or asking for money4. Close relations are those you depend on in crisis.
One of the ways that this is framed within the study of religious organizations is strictness. How strict is a denomination or specific church? Strictness depends on the absolutism of a group’s belief system—like how black and white its truth claims are (e.g. is Jesus the only path to salvation and how do you get to Jesus anyway?)—as well as how much the doctrines and norms of the group encourage or require the group members to focus their activities within the group.
Members of strict churches tend to concentrate their activities within the church both because the norms of the group encourage them to do so and because the norms discourage them from pursuing other kinds of activities. <It’s Wednesday night, for example—are you working on your dissertation at the pub or are you at bible study? And which of these are going to result in words of praise from your fellow church members as opposed to castigating facial expressions?>
Since propinquity, or nearness, is one of the primary social factors involved in relationship formation, church strictness matters for religious individuals looking to settle down <if that expression applies here>. Propinquity can refer to both geographic and institutional proximity—the kind of physical nearness that comes from being in a neighborhood (geographic) or a workplace or social organization (institutional) with someone as noted above.
As a result of institutional propinquity and the norms governing social interaction in such churches, singles in strict churches are faced with a different set of options for partnering than singles in mainline churches. Theologically, the former emphasize exclusivity of belief (the importance of spouse sharing this exclusivity may be implicit or explicit), while the latter are more pluralistic in orientation. Socially, membership in a strict church suggests that more time spent will be spent in activities related to the church (and hence in the company of other church community members) than would be true for members of mainline, or less strict, churches.
Institutional propinquity and strictness combine to create marriage markets in some churches.
<And stop. I’ve read the last three paragraphs so many times and it is now so late that I can’t tell whether my argument sounds tautological. It should say: people associate with others like themselves. This includes associations like church. Some churches are strict. Members of strict churches are pretty involved in their churches at the expense of involvement in other groups in their free time. Involvement in a strict church is also important to the identity of the member—part of the reason so much time is spend in church activities. Strict churches, then, are a kind of marriage market because of the priority given to involvement in church activities, time spent in them, and opportunity for meeting a potential mate. So…the latter parts need developing I’m seeing. Getting sloppy…sleep…>
- I wasn’t thinking of the title, of the article I’m about to reference when I wrote that first sentence earlier today, but ever the sociologist it makes sense that I’d think in disciplinary catchphrases. And so: McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily and Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2001
- I know this only pushes the question back a step—Well, then, why are these homogeneous—but I’m ill-equipped to address that one at that moment
- Like getting closer to a co-worker through a joint hatred of a boss or a workplace banality
- which is one way that sociologists determine the closeness of a social tie. How many of your friends could you, would you call if you found yourself suddenly in need of $100?
