No rants here: outrage fatigue

Dr. Crazy has a great post on what I've been feeling lately about all the "end of the liberal arts as we know them" articles and MOOC cheerleading. I just don't want to write about it any more, for a while at least. It could be a case of outrage fatigue, and that's what I think it is, mostly.

But it could be something else, too.  I'm serving on a few committees now, one college-wide, where I actually have a voice.  That's where I'm putting my energy right now: speaking up in real life and making arguments that I hope are cogent and compelling.

If Northern Clime decides to go the all-MOOC and Scantron route* for the liberal arts, for example, I'll be one of the people who at least gets to go on record about it. You can never tell, of course, whether committees are real or just window dressing while an administration does what it's going to do anyway, but if you don't act as though it's real and as though your voice counts, it surely won't.

The other thing is that outrage takes time, even on a small level. I made a promise to myself this semester that in the name of productivity, I'd invoke the prime directive for email. This isn't  the Star Trek one, but the one that goes something like this:

If someone's telling you about something you already know or is treating you as though you don't know about something that you do know ("Do you know about MOOCs? Here's why they're swell!"), don't waste time being annoyed at having your time wasted. Stop reading and delete that message immediately.

This message is brought to you by "Outrage: It's not what's for breakfast any more."

*Written in 2008, but doesn't it sort of predict the whole MOOC thing?

Random bullets of Sunday

• If you haven't yet read "My Fake College Syllabus" at salon.com yet, you really should. A sample: "The rest of the period will be spent in class discussion, which by week three will have settled into an “Inside the Actor’s Studio”-esque conversation between me and one or two consistently prepared students whom the rest of you will quietly despise. Occasionally, another student may come out of nowhere, Jeremy Lin style, and dominate a particular class, only to break my heart by fading permanently back into the woodwork the following week, Jeremy Lin-style."
• I am still working with Scrivener, although when I try to find out an answer to a very simple question ("how can I add the complete word count for the ms. to the bottom of the screen?" "how can I read the segments as though this is a whole manuscript?")  I end up finding out five other things that Scrivener can do but never the ones I'm searching for. Still, it's exciting to see how much is done, even if it's mostly in first-draft stages. 
• Boice and Silva and just about everyone else say that you should make an appointment with yourself for your writing time and not violate it for anything, including meetings. They recommend announcing this to all and sundry if someone schedules a meeting for that time.  They sort of imply that productive people will step back in awe and not bother you any more, because they, too, have regular writing schedules. Have you ever heard anyone actually say "I can't meet then; that's my writing time"? What did you do? My feeling is that your writing time is no more sacred than my writing time--or any of the rest of my time, for that matter--and that whatever time involves the least travel/inconvenience/interruption for the whole group is the one when the meeting should happen. You choose to attend or not, and I'll do the same. Thoughts? 

Googling job candidates: do you? should you?

Dean Dad/Matt Reed has a post up about googling job candidates, and while I don't always agree with his take on things (tenure, for example), he's right about this one.

Candidates may assume that we're googling them, but are we? In searches I've served in or chaired, the answer is no, for both ethical and practical reasons:

• Practical: If the average search in English draws from 100-400 applicants (with some searches, I've heard, drawing 700+ applicants), who has the time? Even if you were to google only the top 50 or so, that's still a lot of computer time.
• Ethical and practical: Don't we already have a lot of data (or "data points," if you want to be fashionable) about the candidates? CV, cover letter, rec letters, teaching/research statements, and writing samples--don't these provide a fairer picture than a random google search?
• Ethical: What if the candidate has a common name and the first thing that comes up is a mug shot . . . of someone with the same name? Or if the name-alike or the candidate has really unsavory views on something?  What if s/he went through a phase of huge Goth disaffection with The System and posted said disaffection over the internet--should that taint your view of him/her?
• Ethical: Conversely, if the candidate has assiduously promoted himself/herself through Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter/Storify/blogs and so on, having a big ego and a good sense of public relations doesn't necessarily mean that the candidate is a better or more accomplished researcher than a less self-promoting candidate.  How could you separate these from the other data, once you knew about them? 
• Ethical and practical: I can best sum this one up by saying (1) we want to be fair and (2) HR would have our heads on a pike if we made decisions this way. The whole point of job search procedures, which are very well defined, is to level the playing field.  It's hard enough to know how to deal ethically with additional information, such as supporting emails or phone calls received from those at other universities, without addressing google searches. 
• Ethical and practical: What if the first thing that turns up is teacher evaluations from you-know-which site, for which "help yourself to vengeance" could be a motto? Could you refrain from reading them? 

One of the most satisfying parts of being a search chair, which is a hellacious amount of work, is having the power to run a fair and equitable search and make sure that everyone is given the same consideration. I don't think googling them accomplishes that, but is refusing to google just hopelessly outdated as a concept? Bardiac? Flavia? You've both posted recently about the job market; what do you say? 

If you're sick, stay home. If you're productive when sick, shut up about it.

In the novel Diary of a Mad Housewife, which I read a hundred years ago, there was a scene that so infuriated me that I've remembered it ever since--and it's not one you'd think.  The main character gets the flu and decides to read Proust, because someone tells her that Proust and a hot toddy is just the thing when you're sick.

I'm sorry, but if you're reading Proust, you're not sick. If you--like a colleague I once had--say that you use the time when you're sick to catch up on reading Derrida in the original French, you're not sick.

If you say that you're sick and you finished writing an article and grading 40 papers, and isn't it lucky that you didn't have to teach because you are so productive when you're sick because it forces you to slow down, you're not sick.

If you can do anything more intellectually challenging than guess which of the three houses the people on House Hunters International will choose, you're not sick.

And if you think you can struggle into the classroom or meeting, coughing and sneezing and spreading whatever pestilence is going around this week and we will be grateful because you're just that important, here's a news flash:

Don't be "determined" to do something so that we can catch your germs.

Stay the #@$%^ home.


(Sorry, IHE columnist, but you really hit a nerve with this one.)

Thank you! I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your server.

Historiann as (as usual) a good post up this week about a phenomenon she calls "Mr. Warmup"--the kind of student who, when you walk into a class, has already broken the ice and has the class chatting, which makes the transition to discussion easier for everyone. Being your own Mr. Warmup can work, too, she says.

Now that she's named the phenomenon, I realize that I've had some of these, too--not always an older student, but often a male student, although I've had small groups of women students do the same thing.

If you have to be your own Mr. Warmup, it helps, I think, if you don't plant yourself behind a lectern but wander around the classroom chatting before the class.  It also helps if you have some common ground that you're not going to turn into A Lesson for them.  I'm hopeless at telling jokes but can usually come back with a quip or something that makes them laugh within the context of the class, if the opportunity arises.

I'm teaching a large lecture class now, which makes me think even more about how to get the students engaged.  A few of them have laptops, but most of them seem to be engaged with what we're doing, even if only maybe 25% of them speak up during the class. I can see their faces, and they're thinking even if they're not talking.  It's a different experience from one of the classes I had last semester, which was small and "decentered," with far more participation than lecture.

The thing is, I genuinely want them to tell me things and have set up what we're doing so that they (I hope) want to speak up. It's not a grim march toward a predetermined end where they tell me what X word in Y poem means.  I was looking today at the copies of the marked-up poems that the students had discussed in previous iterations of this class, and no two classes said the same things--and yet they all said good things.  I haven't seen a Mr. Warmup in this class yet--it's still early--but wonder whether one will emerge now that the ice is broken a little bit through the class's participation.

Random Bullets of Recommitting to Writing, with a side dash of MOOCs

Between MLA and a bout of illness, I've fallen off the writing cliff big time. Here's a self-reminder list about why I need to climb back up.

• Unless I want to move to a non-pseudonymous blog where I can talk about MOOCs and brag about my posts on Twitter, the way everyone else does, my writing life lies elsewhere and I ought to knock off talking about them while I work on the book. 
• Ditto for the comically inept and silly MSM posts about lazy professors and the rest of it. 
• Double ditto for the MLA debates over the "dark side of Digital Humanities," which is an interesting discussion but a distraction.
• Jonathan Rees's recent post about disaggregating knowledge and separating it from the workers who own it (a MOOC practice reminiscent of labor-busting in the olden days) reminded me of this New Yorker article in which Atul Gowande argues that a Cheesecake Factory model of consistency might help improve medical practice. While Gowande makes a good case for this in medicine, it occurred to me that this is the MOOC model, too. In the "I'll teach/lecture, and you can be my tutor/assistant/handmaiden" model now being hyped for local professors, we're all going to be the  sous-chefs doing prep for a meal that we never get to create. If I'm going to be stuck in a food assembly line arranging arugula leaves on a plate hour after hour, day after day, for the creative foods that the MOOC superchef/lecturer hands down for us to replicate, having your own writing as a focus is going to have to replace the satisfactions of teaching.
•  Time to get to work. 

Random Bullets of MLA 2013

Back from MLA 2013 in a cold but bright and sunny Boston. Random trivial observations:

• Great choices on the hotel sites. You could walk outside if you wanted to, but for those with health issues affected by the cold, like some of my colleagues, it was possible to get from the Sheraton to the Westin and other points via the giant mall.
• The giant mall meant more places to eat, get coffee, and so on, so there was less stress about grabbing a quick bite to eat. 
• Also good: no secret password for wifi--yay! Every year I go hunting for it, since it's not published, but this year when I asked at the registration desk, they told me there wasn't one.  That's a good way to increase access and engagement, so thanks!
• Really good panels, even if some weren't well attended. I don't agree with the commenter at Dean Dad's who said that MLA ought to count the audience and get rid of low-attendance ones.  Just as there's room for tentpole movies and small indy ones, at the MLA there ought to be the big sessions but also more focused ones so that people in emerging fields can connect with one another.  Does every panel have to draw the audience of The Dark Knight Rises? Also, are you really going to hold the Sunday at noon sessions entirely responsible if they don't draw a huge crowd?
• Like Dean Dad, I noticed a lot of Macs being used for presentations and also a lot fewer of the "I can't get this thing to work; I think we have to turn off the projector and reboot" or "It's showing on my screen; I don't know why it's not projecting" problems of yesteryear.  Is it that technology has evolved, that Macs are easier, or both?
• The signage was better, and there were a lot of people to help you find rooms. This sounds trivial, but when you're walking (lost) through a cavernous convention center or are trying to figure out which floor the session is on, having someone there eager to help makes a difference. 
• There were people checking badges this time, and not just at the book exhibit.  

On the more substantive side, Michael Berube and others put the focus on jobs and the state of the profession, which is where it should be. 

Checking in as 2012 checks out

I'm checking in to read everyone's great New Year's posts (too many to link fully; see the sidebar).  Some are looking at the year in media and culture (TR, Madwoman with a Laptop, Culture Industry), while others are doing more of a roundup of their year (What Now, Bardiac, Dr. Crazy--and Z and Dr. Koshary say it with music).

Despite the holidays, it's been quiet here now, and peaceful, in part because of getting away from Facebook and Twitter. As good as Twitter may be for some things (read this! follow this link! participate in this conversation! pay attention!), you could spend your life on it and never catch your breath or regain your focus. Like the rest of the Internet, it commands your attention until you think it's your oxygen.

The whole frenzy will all start up again in a couple days with MLA, and then with classes right after that. But right now, sitting here and looking out at the snow with a glass of red wine and a sleeping cat beside me, the quiet sounds pretty good right now.

Short holiday hiatus

I'm going to try a short internet hiatus except for the writing I need to get done (hello, MLA!).  Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that the new MLA dates are much better in terms of being  stressed out over Christmas? I still need to get things done, but not having get up before the crack of dawn for a 12-hour travel day on the day after Christmas is a big improvement. Thanks, MLA!

Happy holidays, everyone!

Random soothing questions

• If you live in a part of the world (as I do) where a significant number of older men have white beards, do children think they are seeing Santa Claus in street clothes?
• True or false: one of the benefits of sending Christmas cookies to relatives who don't bake (or don't bake any more) is that, if they don't like the cookies they don't have to eat them and you'll never know. 
• Has it struck anyone yet that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, especially in Sherlock, are really . . . Spock and Bones from Star Trek, without any integrated personality character such as James Tiberius Kirk?
• Speaking of Sherlock, was it a deliberate choice to make Benedict Cumberbatch resemble a Mr. Darcy-like hero with that Regency-style coat flapping in the wind as he strides along? 
• Do you find it heartening, as I do, when you go out shopping and see people being kind to one another--chatting with the food sample ladies at Costco, talking with cashiers, and generally behaving as though we all should get along?
• Has anyone ever found some television show or movie that they actually wanted to watch for free on Amazon Prime? 

"Wrecked, solitary, here"

Sadness and rage at those terrible events in Connecticut. Why, again, do all the deer hunters need assault rifles? Why does Mike Huckabee call himself a Christian when he is obviously filled with hate?

I am thinking of the children, teachers, and parents. I can only follow Bardiac's lead and post this.

I FELT a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,	5
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul	10
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,	15
Wrecked, solitary, here.

Signs of progress in discussing literature

**Content note:  post mentions sexual assault scenes in literature.**

After reading the post over at nicoleandmaggie's and seeing the word "creeper," I got to thinking about a difference in discussing literature back in the day and now.  "Creeper" wasn't a word that was used back then, nor was "rapey," not just because those words weren't invented yet, or because creepers didn't exist, but because the concept of whether a male character should behave this way seemed to be absolutely out of bounds in a literary discussion.

Literary discussion was all about being objective, and a character wasn't a person but a literary construct, and we weren't supposed to make moral judgments, and OMG Death of the Author and all of that.  While it was okay to discuss whether the character's twin forehead cowlicks had phallic/Satanic/symbolic overtones, his actions weren't really open to question.

Oddly enough, though, it was all right to dissect the thought processes of Tess Durbeyfield and figure out whether she was raped or just seduced because of Nature coursing through her veins and her attraction to Alex d'Urberville. We were supposed to admire the intricate wordplay of Lolita and feel compassion for Humbert Humbert because he is a literary construct and in the grip of compulsion and anyway, look how Lolita behaves.  See, she's really in charge and he is helpless. I didn't buy it then, emotionally speaking, but I know a party line when I hear one and after one protest (met with scorn: "Can't you see that he's a literary construct?"), I shut up.

When we talked about novels this semester, though, my students would have none of it.  Yes, we talked about characters as literary constructs and about symbolism, but then someone would say, "Character Z is a total creeper" or "Why is he being so rapey in this scene?" And then we would talk about why Z is a creeper and how that affects the scene and why he shouldn't behave that way.

I don't think M. H. Abrams is going to include "creeper" or "rapey" in his Glossary of Literary Terms, but that's not the point. Talking about those ideas is not "moralizing," as it used to be called.  I think it's a sign that feminism and the awareness it raises about these issues is working.

"I'm going to miss this class"

Not as in "I'm going to miss this class, and did we do anything important, and can I have extra credit because my brother's girlfriend's roommate had to go to the airport and my car broke down on the way" but as in having students after the class linger and say this: "I'm going to miss this class and our discussions."

I'm going to miss it, too. I have had good experiences in teaching online courses, but I wonder how much of this semester's students' reaction is due to our being an "embodied class"  as Historiann's Baa Ram U calls it, where we looked at each other when we talked about the literature. I could see their faces, and if they were confused or enthusiastic about a point, I could call on that person or shift gears so that they could speak up.  What's the opposite--a disembodied class? But we all have bodies and lives, don't we, unless we're teaching at Northeast University for the Undead, so don't we need to recognize that their faces tell a story, too?

Figure 1. Undine makes a dramatic point.

In Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) tells Joe Gillis (William Holden), "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" In an embodied classroom, you can have dialogue and faces. Maybe someone can promote what we used to call "classes" and now call "embodied classes" by saying that there is "synergistic value added" (or whatever buzzwords business prefers this year) because as an added bonus, you get faces along with your discussion.

The "get it done" grading system

It's the grading season right now, and we are pretty much all grading. Flavia just wrote a great post about this, and I'd agree: Grading can be satisfying if you just resolve to, well, "git 'er done."

The way I've graded for a few years goes like this:
1. Gather what you need to grade: papers, books for checking citations, etc.
2. Get yourself a "cool tool" or two. For me, it means this:

•  Filling up pens with an interesting color of ink (green, purple) for the paper versions.
•  Download e-versions to grade electronically on the iPad (iAnnotate has improved exponentially lately!).
• Or, if it's early in the semester where I'm still giving lots of explanations about things, open up the file of auto-text or cut-and-paste entries so that I can use those for routine things and spend more time really writing comments about the content.

[Update, because Flavia asked in the comments: students have the choice of turning in a paper version OR an electronic version, so the "cool tool" I use depends on what they gave me.] Now, these are not Hammacher-Schlemmer cool tools, but they are what pass for cool tools with me. They may seem frivolous, but they aren't.  They make grading exciting (yes, they do), and they make you want to get started.

3. Write down the students' last names in some kind of order. I mix it up so that I don't read the same students' papers first or last every time.  This serves two purposes: (1) you can't avoid a student's paper and (2) you get to cross the names off the list.  If you are at all the "cross it off the list is very satisfying" kind of person, this really helps.

4. Get a timer and figure out how long you're going to allot for each paper.  You may need to adjust the time after the first few, but if you've been teaching for a lot of years, you should have a pretty good idea of how long they should take you. If you're tempted to take longer, ask yourself this: "Is the student going to benefit from this additional comment or correction?" Sometimes it's "yes," but often the answer is "no," and you have to move on.

5. Build in some breaks or changes in activity. Flavia recommends taking a break every 6 papers, and that sounds good. I also change it up by grading X number of electronic versions and then X number of paper versions. A change may not be as good as a rest, but it helps.

I have colleagues who prefer the "10 a day, every day" system, and if that works for them, that's great.  Since I am an ace procrastinator, what this meant was that I would spend a couple of hours dreading grading, a couple of hours grading, and then a few hours trying to settle down to writing or reading because my mind was still back with the papers.  Where grading is concerned, I'm a monotasker and definitely not a multitasker.

Another advantage is that for me, there's a norming process that goes on so that I can grade more consistently from paper to paper, since the overall features of the whole set and its issues are in my head somewhere.

Grading still takes longer than I think it ought to, given this system, but the end result is what Flavia talks about: once it's done, it is done, and you don't have to think about it any more until the next set. That's incredibly satisfying.

Writers' tech: trying out Scrivener

As the latest step in either true procrastination tactics or an attempt to get a handle on the whole manuscript and where the latest piece fits, I started moving chapters into Scrivener yesterday. I had tried before but had given up the lengthy tutorial because hey, the Internet has destroyed my attention span just as it has everyone else's. There was a 10-minute video at the site that gave me the basics, though, so with that I marched ahead.

What had made me buy it in the first place was the cult-like devotion that Scrivener users seem to have for the program, and who doesn't need another cult to join? Seriously, though, there were two main reasons for finally trying it:

1. I can put the chapters along the side, one folder per chapter, and break it down from there, so I can really see what sections I've got and what I still have to write. 
2. A corkboard with index cards on the screen! How cool is that? I can't figure out yet how to get the corkboard to look like the screenshot, but breaking the chapters down so that each main topic in one gets a section (and an index card) looks like a good plan.

A highly productive colleague who's writing a book right now has index cards of various colors on her walls as an organizational tool.  I tried that, but there were problems: I spent more time rearranging the cards than Martha Stewart would give to a wall display of antique plates, and, once I was on my feet, it was too easy to wander away from the computer in search of distractions. "Apply seat of pants to seat of chair" is still good writing advice, even if I can read things standing up or even walking on the treadmill. 

There are all sorts of other features I haven't figured out yet-- how to use the Research folder, for example.  Although my desk has a "mind-map" quality to it, with things spatially arranged for what I'm using now--the air-traffic controller model--I've never been able to use official mind mapping or brainstorming or whatever they're calling it this year. On the screen, there has to be a linear order, and what I'm hoping Scrivener can give me is a way to visualize the order even for things that are out of sight. 

Just an average day: in praise of student interaction

Yesterday was just an average day, and yet it was a good day, too. It was our first day back after Thanksgiving, and there was some small talk before class about how odd it felt to be back.

I made a little joke as I handed out the course evals, and they smiled. You can't comfortably share a space with a group of people for 15 weeks without liking them, and the wrinkles we had early on have been worked out by now. "Well, you can come back in; we've finished shredding you," the student said when he came out to get me after the evals were done, but he smiled and was obviously kidding. Like Sally Field, I hope they "liked me, really liked me," but all I can say for sure is that we are more comfortable with each other.

This may be because they are more comfortable with assuming responsibility for their own learning. This semester I've encouraged more student responsibility than I've done before. Students have researched and presented on things I'd usually lecture on. They've led discussions and asked their classmates questions. They're more comfortable using the board, presenting, working in groups, and saying what they think.

Did we "cover" everything? Maybe yes and maybe no. But did their work take the class in other directions, and did they learn a lot from that? I learned things, and I hope they know that they did, too.

More of them are talking to me after class or in my office about their projects, about what they want to do, or about random things that relate to works we've studied that they'd like to share. Yes, it means a lot of grading, but I'm looking forward to seeing their final projects. (You can tell from this sanguine tone that I haven't been inundated yet.)

Soon it'll be grading time, and it'll be over with, and there'll be the post-semester letdown, which makes absolutely no sense logically but is there nonetheless. Then you get to do the whole thing all over again.

I feel as though I've complained and ranted so much that I just wanted to celebrate what we all take for granted sometimes: nice human interaction with students and a good day.

Last MOOC post until 2013

I promise: no more Cassandra-like questionings of MOOC cheerleading until 2013.  Jonathan Rees at More or Less Bunk has got that covered anyway, and he's actually taking a MOOC class, so his points are more legit than mine.

This piece of MOOC cheerleading--"The End of Higher Education as We Know It?" with an implied "Yesssss! Go, Team!" at the end of it-- is from TheStreet.  It's just as uncritical and glittery as the rest, although you'd think that a publication that thinks it's based in economic reality would ask a few questions.  Here are some excerpts, with a few comments from me:

The economic problem with college, as Shirky notes, is that it's labor-intensive and does not scale. You can push down salaries to an extent [and God knows we've tried], but it still takes a lot of people, many buildings and a lot of land to produce even a mediocre college education. What makes an elite education is the unique talent of its faculty [but not, apparently, the quality of its research, its labs, or the ability to learn from other smart, highly motivated students in person], which can't be discounted because demand for it is so high.

What Udacity does is spread that limited talent across to the broadest possible audience, while doing away with those other costs. [Because developing courses, creating infrastructure, and other costs are nonexistent.] Everything else can be done through one-on-one tutoring. [Paid for by whom? Provided by whom, once local universities are gone?] Standardize on the best courseware, with the best lecturers , and use the Internet to deliver that to the widest possible audience. [See? Easy-peasy once you redefine education as the best courseware and brand-name lecturers.] 

Again, there may be value in MOOCs, and that value may even lie in the quality of education they provide--but nobody's asking the questions. With that, and with apologies to Alexander Pope, I'll shut up about this until the New Year:

Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,

Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.

All MOOCness is but Art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see

All discord, harmony not understood,

All partial evil, universal good:

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, whatever MOOCs, is right

A milestone, of sorts, and the gamification of writing

I keep seeing articles about the gamification of learning or of working, which translates into getting people to do things for rewards such as those in video games--the gold stars of childhood writ large and within a game context.  I believe in that idea, because who didn't want to win a gold star instead of a red one?

That's one of the things that MOOCs and other types of badges-based learning get right. There's a feeling of satisfaction in doing something right and seeing it there on the screen: getting all the answers right in an online quiz that you take for fun, for example, or seeing if you can beat your high score and earn some free rice for another country.

I've been thinking about this, because 750words.com has a badge system.  My badges haven't changed since I started using it in September 2011, so I usually paid no attention to them, but yesterday two new ones popped up: one for writing 5 days in a row, and the other for writing 100,000 words since I started with the site.

100,000 words? That gave me pause. They weren't all great words or even finished text; if they were, this book would be done. Some were just notes on texts for the book or research brainstorming, but they were all words related to this book project, and the computer had counted them, and now I had a badge to prove it.

Did it motivate me? You bet.  This is one sort of motivation (badges); other sites like writtenkitten.net give you cute pictures (positive reinforcement) and some, like writeordie.com, terrify you with loud noises if you stop writing (negative reinforcement). The reinforcement is intrinsically meaningless, since you're imposing it on yourself with the aid of technology, and yet it works.

I wonder if we could gamify the teaching of writing in the same way.

Writing Inspiration and Positive Thoughts: Tony Kushner on Writing

From the Fresh Air Interview

DAVIES: I read that when you wrote the screenplay, you gathered just the right fountain pens and notebooks. Is this true? What's the role of that?
 KUSHNER: I write everything with fountain pens. I don't know why. I've done it since I was bar mitzvahed. I was given a fountain pen, a Parker fountain pen, and I loved it, and I've never liked writing anything with pencils or ball-points. I just can't stand it. I love - fountain pens have a very expressive line. When you're upset, and you're writing really, really hard, it gets thicker and darker, and when you're tentative, it's thinner and more spidery, and, you know...
 DAVIES: So it wasn't putting you in the 19th century, you didn't don a wig or anything?

KUSHNER: No, no, I keep notebooks, and I write in - I find it, you know, I'm 56 years old, and I find it easier to write when I'm first pulling things together, with a pen and paper. The computer, the noise of the computer feels like impatience. It's sort of the sound of impatience to me. And I like having a paper trail of what I've crossed out because sometimes I go back and realize that I shouldn't have done that. It's just a more natural way for me to write. I'm sure I'm, you know, of the last generation that will ever say anything like that.

And some other positive thoughts for the end of the semester:

• Instead of thinking how much you haven't gotten done with only a few weeks left, think about what you have gotten done.  Among other things, you can answer our former president's immortal question "Is our children learning?" with "yes, they are." 
• Even if the weather is bad, a short walk in the fresh air, even if it's just around the block, will help.
• It's a time of year when you may feel that you don't have a lot of choices, but you really do.
• For example, in most meals, there's something you really want to eat (food excitement!) and the rest of it is just food-because-it's-there. Eat the food excitement first--for me this is usually salad, which I love--and refrigerate the rest. Eat it later if you're hungry. Or not.
• If something makes you unhappy, like checking Facebook, stop checking it even if everyone is pressuring you to do otherwise. 
• Stop and think about what you're doing before you do it. You may have to check email, but you don't have to do so as a reflexive move first thing in the morning; you can choose not to check it on the weekends and the world will still exist. I think of it this way: why choose to take on someone else's thoughts and problems before you've had a chance to think about your own? 

Happy non-shopping day!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all and a happy non-shopping day today.  In addition to NOT shopping today, I'm going to try to get out to Small Business Saturday tomorrow and support local stores. Yes, I hate to shop. Yes, I know that this is something being supported by American Express, and yes, I know Consumerism is Bad yadda yadda yadda, but at least it's in the right direction and AmEx deserves some props for it, don't you think?

My desire to support local businesses is inspired by Amazon's evil Judas action last year about turning stores into shopping showrooms and local shoppers into unpaid agents in its quest for world domination so that it can undercut the prices online. I have heard that some people even do this in independent clothing stores: try on clothes and then write down the information so that they can get the clothes online for cheaper.  It's legal, but it's unethical. I'd say it would serve these people right when there are no more stores because they've driven them out of business, but that would be an expensive "I told you so" for the rest of us, since the stores would have to cease to exist for that to happen.

Yes, it's more inconvenient, not to mention expensive, to pay shipping rates and stand in line at the post office for stuff you buy locally, but here's the thing: If we don't support local independent stores, who's going to?

And since this is a MOOC-free post, any parallels you see between this and previous questions raised about MOOCs on this blog are purely coincidental.