Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in deanc1's LiveJournal:

Sunday, October 29th, 2006
8:54 pm	Questions About Social Sciences Step One Take five minutes to post a question, to our Moodle site, that you have about teaching your current unit. (Think pedagogically: how can I work with teaching social sciences methodology, how can I work with editing, or how can I get my students to revise their work—rather than just edit it.) Step Two Respond to eachother’s questions, and, after we are done, be ready to talk about the experience or conversing this way. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 3rd, 2006
7:02 pm	What Do Your Think About Music Now? What Music Means to Me Write for ten minutes about what music means to you now—after a quarter of writing and reading about it. Feel free to do your writing in any form. Write your piece in word, and then transfer it to our livejournal page. Read others entries and comment on them after you post yours. We will talk, face-to-face, about this briefly. Chris’ Sample: The Freewrite It is more evident to me now that music is as much about technology and culture as anything else. I think I have mainly thought about music on what Aaron Copland calls the sensuous plane; however, after this class I am much more aware of what makes music more than notes and feelings. Music is the crossroads tale of Robert Johnson (indicative of the outcaste state of bluesmen in the 1930s delta); it is the way that Rock and Roll waited to explode until the rise of Elvis (despite the first generation of rockers being Black); and it is the way that hip-hop can still, after 20 years of existence, polarize people. The more I think about music, the more I realize that technology has played a role as well. The early acoustic guitars allowed Johnson to play, and the early technology of recording allowed him to be recorded. Without both bits of technology, we wouldn’t have had Johnson's haunting, incredible music. Without the electric piano, there is no Ray Charles putting a buzz saw through gospel with RandB—creating “What I Say.” Without the iPod, we do not have a library of music at our fingertips (I’m still waffling on whether this is a good or bad thing.) Chris’ Sample: Haiku Six silver and bronze Strings held by long fingers and Hearts of ash and flame Thump of bass, dirt floor Shriek of sax, polished oak slats Electro drone in ears. (57 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 29th, 2006
10:09 am	Our Online Discussion on iPods Take ten minutes and respond to the following: What are some questions that you have from our reading or about iPods generally? Pose them not as informational questions, but as discussion questions. (i.e. Do iPods really cut us off from other people? Vs. What is the number of people who use iPods to tune out the surrounding world?) We will then pose the questions online and work through a discussion of iPods—leading towards forming a debate question for next Tuesday. (67 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 7th, 2006
9:15 pm	Sex Pistols Entry After reading about the pistols, take a few minutes and write down a comment about the reading, the band, or the idea of "punk" music. If you're stuck, write down what, after reading the piece, you take "punk music" to be? What are its musical qualities, its social agenda(s), or its take on fashion and culture? After you've written your bit, check out what your classmates have read, and then make sure to respond to them in a kind, but speculative way. Ask further questions, politely challenge ideas, or agree. Your post should be about a paragraph in length (50 or so words), and you should respond with two to three sentences to at least two</a> classmates. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
9:05 pm	Ray Charles Entry What I'd like you all to do is to spend about three to five minutes posting any questions that you have about "The Last Days of Brother Ray" by "commenting" on this post. Post discussion-based questions, questions that are not concerned with the facts of Ray Charles life (i.e. "Where was he born?"), but more about asking open-ended questions (i.e. "What influence do you think the church, and church music, might have had on Ray Charles' music?") Post a question, and then spend your time (10-15 minutes) answering others and engaging in an electronic discussion. (179 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 9th, 2006
5:58 pm	Class Poem on Songs Prompt Place Shel Silverstein taught us all, at a young age, that poems (and by extension song lyrics) were great fun. Silverstein was a wonderful poet and singer, and if you want to remember how wonderful, then go to http://www.shelsilverstein.com/indexSite.html. Today, before we get serious with the web, we're going to play with poetry a bit. What I want you to do is to post one of the "best" images that you wrote in your freewrite in our regular classroom. Just simply post one image that you wrote. Next, we're going to get into groups of three, and, in ten minutes, we will mine the combine images to create a series of poems about music. We will do this as a large group then, we will actually have time to work in groups of three to create your group poems. After this, you will have a chance to go over the poems face-to-face and talk about breaking them down, leading towards the paper that we will be writing. (78 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 4th, 2006
4:25 pm	U.S. Census Data Post your question about the U.S. Census Data here, and then look through and see if you cannot answer someone else's question. CHRIS' SAMPLE QUESTION: What is significant, in terms of long term job planning, about the fact that the average income of people rises as their level of education increases? (129 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
12:54 pm	Do we Need Grammar FREEWRITE: Please respond to following quote by the poet John Clare. (You can learn more about the poet, who lived from 1793-1864, by going http://www.johnclare.blogspot.com/.) "Grammer in learning is like Tyranny in government--confound the bitch Ill never be her slave." DISCUSSION POINTS: * What did Clare say, and why do you think he said it? * Are there mistakes in grammar in the sentence, and do these mistakes effect the meaning of the sentence in your opinion? * Consistency in spelling and grammar--are they important or not in your opinion to understanding something? * Does the context of Clare's life, his poverty and time spent in a mental hospital, account for his opinion? What do you think? * What are some ways to correct this sentence? * Why do we, or don't we, need grammar? (26 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 14th, 2005
1:09 pm	Where Are You With Research What questions, concerns, or discoveries do you have about your research to date? (29 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 6th, 2005
3:53 pm	What Do You Make Of Gates and Portable Computers Take five minutes and Answer the following Question For you, what is a superior source to learn from: book or some sort of electornic technology? Please explain why you feel that electronic technology is superior to a book or vice a versa. (40 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
2:54 pm	Ideas for Paper #3 Take a minute and post as many ideas as you can about what you, or others, could do their last piece on. Remember you have two options: the first option is to work with the idea of science and technology, making use of our readings; the second option is to research on something that interests you a great deal. Throw out ideas for either, and if you want to see a sample look at my response to this post. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
4:39 pm	Online Gaming Directions: Play some games (for ten or fifteen minutes) and respond to the following questions. *What is the objective of the game? * What is your role in the game, and how does this differ fromyour role here as a student at UCSB? * How does your body react? Does your pulse rate quicken? Do you tense up pysically? * How aware were you, while playing, of the environment that we are in? Did the environment on the screen matter more or less than the physical environment of the class. THE GAMES Choose a game in which you assume an identity of some sort that is different from your "typical" one. Do not, for example, play solitaire or chess. If you have a favorite online game, that requires no downloading, then play it. JUST SO LONG AS IT HAS A CHARACTER DRIVEN PLOT. If you don't have a game, try out some of these sites. Battle On Adventure Quest All located at http://darkzard.battleon.com/Build24/game29.asp New Grounds Kaboom! Pico's School (Pico fights the Goths): http://www.newgrounds.com/pico/index.html The LambdaMOO Introduction to the MOO: http://www.lambdamoo.info Shockwave Moutainbike Madness http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/mountainbikemadness Smacky http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/smacky Ratinator http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/ratinator The Writing: Discuss, informally, how you think the videogame(s) you played were, or weren't, different from your "true self," whatever that is. Also, some of these are violent video games. Is there a problem with playing video games that are violent? Adapted from Lisa Swanstrom's Exercise in On-line Gaming, Virtual Communities, and Identity (53 Comments |Comment on this)