Leaves of Grass 1855 AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!!!

Tuesday we (attempted to) familiarize ourseves with the 1855 edition of "Leaves of Grass," and now our goal is to undo what we have done, and de-familiarized what was (hopefully) familiar.

I think the digitalization of texts has a lot to offer the academic community. I've been using Amazon's "Search inside this book" function to help me write papers for years (for example, if I wanted to find instances of a particular word, or couldn't remember exactly where that quotation came from), and it's really done a lot to make my life easier.

The Walt Whitman Archive gives a lot of options for doing things just like I described (searching words, counting instances of words, seeing words and sections in the con

text of the whole poem, etc.). That's not quite, though, defamiliarizing the text.

The Archive also gives us a lot of funky options with questionable worth. Replacing the words with black text? I could do that with a sharpie and it would be called defacement or censorship. Putting pictures of Whitman's face in where the poem says "you"? The novelty is fun(ny), but when it wears off, what's the real worth of doing something like that? What do we, as academics, teachers, or even students get from that kind of activity that brings us further into or gives us further insight into the poem? Why are those tools on the archive at all?

Maybe I'm being closed-minded.

That said, there are some interesting things the Archive can do. One of my favorites was "Keywords in Context" via TokenX. What's interesting about this, is that the "context" is very limited. It's not, for example, like Amazon's "Search Inside this Book" function.

Amazon shows you the pag

e the word appears on. The context at its max: you can go forward or

back a page, or just go there in your physical book yourself.

TokenX does that defamiliarization thing we're after and takes the word out, centers it (giving it priority to the words around it) and lines them all up neatly.

My favorite thing about the "urge" example, is that it appears three times in a single line. Amazon shows you the page as it looks in the book. TokenX shows you the same line three times, giving each "urge" its own importance and creating a visual cascade tha

t, I think, does add something to a reading of the poem. Whitman does it himself, to some extent, by repeating the word. We can do it even more emphatically by repeating the line, each "urge" packing the same punch as that first one.

"Grass" is another example. This one I think like less. Here, the word becomes so defamiliarized

from the poem, that I'm not sure it's worth the time. What does reading a "text"--the result of a search tool--donate to Whitman's original work? What do we learn from seeing these words so out of context? I truly think it's possible that there might be something, I just can't see it right

away. Certainly, there's something about reading the words that immediately surround this word that gives us some idea of what this particular word means to the poem. But is five or six surrounding words really enough context to grasp something? How much context is necessary to make meaning?

Something else I did and liked was counting up words (again, though, I'm not sure if I really believe this counts as "meaning"). The Archive lets you see counts of particular words for particular editions, but I was dissatisfied that their numbers include the front matter. Since I just wanted to see the poem, I copied it, pasted it into Notepad to remove weird formatting, and then pasted it into a Word document. (A note about searching in word, though, is that if you search "I" without spaces, you get all the letter Is in the document. If you want to find the word "I" you have to search " I " including the spaces.)

Here's some of the more interesting ones I came up with:

I 302

you 103

me 118

grass 11

song 5

sing 2

wait 17

Total words: about 18,000 (this number is inexact because I didn't go through and remove "Page 14, Page 15, etc."

1.6% of the words in the poem are "I." There are 1/3 that amount of "you," and even less if you include "me" as a thematic follower of "I."

Does this tell us anything about Whitman's subject? If i were cynical (and maybe stupid), I would say that this pseudo-numerology proves he was an egomaniac that wrote a very long self-aggrandizing poem about "I."

I am no cynic, however (though maybe stupid). This kind of thing is totally out of context, and doesn't really tell us much at all, I don't think.

It's also interesting that in a poem that evolved into "Song of Myself" there are only 6 instances of variations of song or sing put together. But that's the problem I have with a lot of these defamiliarization tools, I think--I can't get past the "Huh. That's interesting." phase and into the meaning-making phase. Call me a traditionalist, but I feel like at a certain point we're not looking at Whitman's text anymore and are instead looking at something else.

Caroline has a great example of this. She "wanted to remove the individual as completely as possible, changing Whitman's "I" to "we," "my" to "our," "me" to "us," and "myself" to "ourselves."" I would go a step farther and replace the "yous" as well with "we"s. It's a really interesting result, and I'm glad she thought of doing it. Certainly it makes some lines a little bit (more) nonsensical, but the overall effect is nice. And I like it.

But is liking it enough of a reason to do it? Is there meaning made in the exercise? It's certainly not Whitman anymore (and I don't think we can justify our revision with the idea that he was constantly revising it--it was still HIS). I'm not one of those authorial-intention-is-everything people, but the second we do something about this, we're revealing less about Whitman and more about ourselves. Which is fine and good depending on what you're trying to do.

In this exercise, we are practicing, learning, developing, executing ways to defamiliarize ourselves not only from Whitman but from texts in general. At what point, though, does that action become fruitless? I mean, there must be a point at which the text has become so defamiliarized it is no longer that text but something else entirely (and possibly not a text at all). Where does the line get drawn?

I'm not sure I can answer that. I would also be willing to bet that the answer of anyone who says he can would look different from the someone else's.

Certainly there is value in the Archive. It makes a lot of material (manuscripts, notes, letters, pictures, etc.) available to a much wider audience (almost EVERYONE) than would have been possible before (fuddy duddy academics). There is, I think, particular worth in search as applied to the archive for academics tracing words, phrases, or ideas through Whitman's body of work.

There is also, though, a lot of novelty on the Archive that we could probably do without (funny pictures, and that sort of thing). I don't know. I'd love to be proven wrong.

P.S. Some big questions I considered:

What is the relationship between "I" and "you" in the poem?

Is passive or active language more prevalent or important?

UPDATE: Stephani was looking at the way word counts changed through the course of the poem's publication history. I wish I had done that. I believe I missed the point.

Also, I realize my formatting is wonky up above. I'm blaming the pictures, and I don't really want to go through and fix it. It's still read-able.

Backward Design

I have really mixed feelings about backward design. It seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure I ended up with anything different had I thought about it a different way (though there is a possibility that this is the result of (a) my own failings, or (b) my lack of understanding of what backward design is really supposed to do).

As far as the actual exercise is concerned, it's all well and good to go through it, but how do we actually know if it worked or if we did it "right"?

I still question whether backward desigin isn't something we naturally do as literature people. If we think about it on a microcosmic level (and I think we said this was OK to do)--say the level of a text--then don't we already backward design it? I mean, when we go out to "teach" a text, don't we already have a reading of it in mind. I guess what I mean is, if I were a Frost scholar or whatever and was going to teach the "Road Not Taken" I probably go into it already knowing that the whole point is irony. So implicitly knowing that, I go into the classroom with the decision to teach these kids about irony in the poem. Right? Am I missing something?

Would forward design for teaching a text be like going in and starting at the front of the book and re-enacting it, plot-summary style? By having a reading of the book in our minds, isn't that the unsaid end-goal--to get these kids to understand that reading of the book?

But maybe the point is that we should be "teaching" more than that. But that idea really comes down to our goals as teachers of literature, and not what methods we're using.

I'm not sure about any of this, really. Backward Design did more to make me think about what I want to accomplish as a teacher than give me a new way to actually accomplish it. But maybe that's the whole point is to prompt discussion and thought rather than to give a prescription for success. I can be OK with that, and, like I said, I did find something of value in attempting it.

But if that's the case, then why does the "McWiggins" text give such a detailed prescription of how-to-backward-design?

Diigo was really great until it broke the internet.

Diigo was really great while it lasted. It crashed my browser numerous times, and I finally decided to give up.

I think that the IDEA behind many of these tools is really great, but they lack a lot in practice. That's the way innovation goes, and I'm willing to accept that.

Part of the problem with Diigo, I think, is that it doesn't necessarily scale for 20 people using it at the exact same time to do the exact same thing. I saw some people's annotations and even added a few of my own. In the beginning, I thought, "Wow, this is really great! SO much better than iLearn!" I was really getting into it.

And then it broke. Again and again and again.

The same is true for wikis--they're not made for so many people to be working with the same thing at the same time (though I think Google sites might work better at that than wikispaces, but that's not really the point I'm trying to make).

Anyway, I might pull it up later, but I'm going to do the rest of my annotations the old-fashioned way.

iLearn is ugly, cumbersome, and easy to hate.

iLearn is ugly, cumbersome, and easy to hate. That said, it serves a purpose as an out-of-class way to access course information and classmates. I would postulate that iLearn is trying to strike a balance (a balance, I will hypothesize, they should shift in a more liberal direction). Coopman cites that “students were much more likely to go off task when using Palace [the graphically-intense LMS] than when using the text-only discussion software” and Professor Hanley asks about the role of aesthetics in such a forum. Maybe iLearn is purposefully ugly, cumbersome, and easy to hate.

Well, OK, iLearn probably doesn't want us to hate it, but I think it might not be too far off. I have long thought that my distaste for visiting iLearn was one of its failings, but perhaps that’s what they’re going for. I visit iLearn only on a need-to basis, maybe once per week for each class that uses the tool). I visit Ning and other tools related to our 790 class at least 3 times that amount. My posts to iLearn on that basis, while only posted because they’re “required,” are entirely academic and well-formed. When I make a post to iLearn, I first write it up in Word, proofread it, and otherwise treat it as a formal assignment. When I post to Ning or to my blog for 790, I treat it much more informally—something I think iLearn is probably afraid of. There’s probably no single reason for these differences, but I can pin down a few. I’ll talk about my own experiences with New Media to hopefully make a point about why iLearn needs a serious update and reconsideration of its values.

On the one hand, my posts to iLearn, as they are purpose-driven, are more formal, academic, and well-thought-out. On the other hand, I’m only going there to post. Because the interface is ugly, difficult to use, and slow, I’m much less inclined to read content posted by my classmates. It’s not a discussion, but rather a dumping ground for course-related content. Even when a professor is trying to force a discussion in iLearn by requiring posts that respond to classmates’ posts, I’ll do it extremely minimally. This is something that marketed products like this discover the hard way—their product sinks or swims based on their users: if their product is hard to use, then no one will use it; if no one uses the product, then it will die. iLearn doesn’t have to pass that tests because students are forced to use it; there is no reason to push to improve it because students will use it regardless.

I think textbooks learned a lesson a long time ago that New Media forums need to learn today. Old textbooks (on a higher education level, anyway) are free of pictures, graphics, exotic fonts, and fun facts, probably because the textbook publishers were afraid of exactly the same thing New Media producers are: off-task students distracted by the pretty colors. Textbooks have learned, though, to try harder to maintain students’ interest. iLearn needs to learn to do the same. As it is, I’m much more likely to discuss normal classroom activity with classmates using an instant messenger or email. That isn’t true for 790: I think I’m more inclined to post to my blog or to the Ning forum, something I would never even consider for iLearn. The interfaces are more interesting, so I’m more likely to use them.

I use Ning, my blog, and our RSS feeds multiple times per week. They’re all easy to access, use, and read. To steal Professor Hanley’s terminology, they’re aesthetically pleasing, as well as simple. Those two criteria are essential for New Media products, academic or otherwise. Complicated but pretty products, as well as ugly simple ones get tossed to the wayside. Ease of use and aesthetically pleasing interfaces make me more inclined to participate in a discussion in an online forum.

All that said, I recognize that there are pitfalls to the more “fun” space. Posts are more likely to ramble, conversations might spiral “off task” as Coopman puts it, and I can see a devolution into appropriateness happening, especially on a level where the students are not in graduate school. I think there are ways around those things, though, that don’t push LMSs into iLearn-like products which students avoid. I also think that it might not be such a bad thing to have off-task discussions happening in these online spaces. I think it might be beneficial for students to be a bit freer here. Certainly, every post might not be incredible, polished, well-thought-out, or even on-task, but there would still be a discussion happening. And I don’t think it would be possible for the students to forget that the space they’re in is academically oriented. Conversations, more often than not, would at least cursorily have to do with the subject matter, I’d suspect. Let the super-structured form of learning take place in the physical classroom, and the more free-roaming educational exploration take place online. Just because hierarchies are upset in an online environment doesn’t mean that they’d stay that way in the classroom. It’s not hard to see that people behave differently online than they do in person—why shouldn’t the same be true of online learning?

I think one of the greatest benefits of online learning is a phenomenon discussed by Coopman about a study done by Lobel in 2005: “in the in person classroom, students tended to address their comments toward the instructor or other identified expert. In the online class, students interacted more directly with each other.” I see this happening even in my graduate seminars (and catch myself doing it, too). Speaking in public is difficult, even in front of a small group of “peers.” Participation in an online forum has far fewer social implications. It’s no secret that people are much more likely to state (strongly) their opinions in online forums, and it’s not just because of the possibility of anonymity. I think people hone-in on the instructor during discussions, not only because of the authority he holds, but because it’s easier to talk to one person than it is to talk to twenty, and the instructor is the one that most needs to hear what you have to say. I’m no sociologist, but I’d speculate that it’s because you don’t feel everyone’s eyes on you. You can clearly articulate your thoughts without many of those nervous hesitations that accompany public speaking. Many of us, especially as readers, are probably more comfortable writing than we are speaking. I think this is generally true of many people, and why it’s important to make these LMS online communities easy to access and use: it’s likely to give the silent students voice, and encourage them to talk to each other, rather than divert to an instructor.

Seminars, to a great extent, are largely meant to do away with the hierarchical structure of the lecture. Because of the way people behave in such a forum, though, that medium is limited in its capacity to do its job, and I’d say that the limitations increase as educational levels decrease. Online forums such as the one employed by iLearn have an even greater capacity to limit hierarchy than seminars, but only if the system allows it to happen. As discussed by Coopman and Kotcamp, those systems do very little to facilitate the destruction of hierarchy in their spaces. It’s extremely important, especially in graduate school, to get over the sense that one has to talk to the professor as the authority.

Learning should be collaborative, and, at least to some degree, students and professors should learn together (I’d argue that this is at least partly true on all levels—degrees, of course). New Media, like LMSs, have a great capacity to bridge the gap, but if that’s indeed what they’re trying to do, they need to try harder, be less afraid of “off-task” students, and more encouraging of participation.

LMSSSSs

First, I'd like to echo Ryan's frustration with LMSs like iLearn and Blackboard. I've had extremely negative experiences with tools like this, and they do become, as she point out, a chore.

I think the foundation for a good idea, though, is definitely there. Based on my own experiences, I think there are two major things missing from such systems.

The first is motivation. In our discussion in class today about the learning process, I was struck that most of us talked about learning as something that we WANTED to do. Which, I think, makes sense. We're graduate students. No one is forcing us to be here but ourselves (hopefully). We're learning because we want to. Students in high school (and, I think, to a great extent college) don't necessarily possess the same motivation. As a result, Blackboard forums are a place people go to because they have to, to complete an assignment. This is externally-imposed learning (I'm sure there's a fancier word for that, but I don' t know what it is, so that'll do) as opposed to self-imposed learning.

I think Coopman's example of the bio students participating more actively in an online forum receiving better marks in the class. She neglects to ask a question that boils down to a question of the chicken or the egg. The students that are participating probably would have received higher marks in the class with or without the forum simply because they're more engaged and interested in the material. The forum has nothing to do with it other than being another way to show that they're more interested and engaged.

To be truly effective, a discussion forum has to be something that students participate in WILLINGLY. It can't be handed down from above that they have to go there, make 12 posts in 6 forums about 9 topics, each of a length of 675.2 words. No one is going to benefit from reading Joe Schmoe's bullshitty post that he makes just because he has to--it'll be just as boring to everyone else as it is to him, and it will just dilute the real substantive posts that come from people who really care.

That brings me to my second point, which is that Blackboard and iLearn are incredibly un-intuitive and not user friendly. If a product is difficult to use, people aren't going to use it. I hate iLearn, and I only visit the site when I have to (and not because I'm not interested in the material). I don't hate Ning, blogger, or Google Reader, and I'm using these tools even when I don't have to for classroom-related activity.

The tools we're using for 790 are (to some extent) market-tested. In other words, they're already successful products because they're easy to use and serve a purpose. I would be willing to bet that if a professor set up a discussion forum with a more user-friendly interface, it'd be more heavily used than iLearn and other common academic products.

I think part of the reason for their user-unfriendliness is that academia is unwilling to give up those hierarchical notions of student-teacher (despite the lip service given to the idea) and want to prevent online anarchy. Yeah, as Coopman points out, students are going to be more off-task when the tools they're using allow them to post pictures, sounds, and have a more free-form environment (as opposed to text-only), but they'll also be more engaged. My solution is simple: ditch the fear and deal with problems from a defensive state-of-mind rather than an offensive one.

What I mean is, go for the completely radical horizontal environment that lets students and teachers post, see, and comment on everything in an electronic environment that's easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and not too concerned with people's hierarchical relationships. If someone abuses privileges, then take them away from those abusers, give them warnings, or somehow or other deal with the problem after the fact, rather than trying to prevent something that might not even happen to the detriment of the whole community. Even most online message boards have moderators that oversee things. It would be more effective to start with unlimited privileges (eliminating them as necessary) than it is to start with already-limited privileges.

I also don't think it's such a bad thing if people are off-task in such a forum. If people are having personal conversations, it's going to create a tighter-nit community of students that is more comfortable learning together. I'd even say that there SHOULD be an area where students are encouraged to be off-task in their interaction to promote that community-oriented environment.

I don't have a solution to making students more engaged in the material. It might just be the way things are. I know I'd never sign onto a discussion forum about nanotechnology as it relates to the population of tsetse flies in Africa. But here I am posting a blog about New Media for an English class. It's not that hard to figure out why.

RSS in (outside of?) the classroom

I think one of the most powerful tools of RSS, especially in the way we're using it in conjunction with student blogs, is the ability to share classroom-related ideas outside of classroom time in real-time.

Similar to what I said in my last post, RSS, as a conglomeration of work and play, brings those two things together. I'm able to see the moment someone from our class updates his/her blog, and read it when I was in the middle of something else. It prompts me to think about ideas we've been talking about in the classroom outside of the classroom. In essence, learning invades my personal time. Of course, I could choose to ignore the updates until I'm ready to put on my student-cap again, but the possibility for that kind of overlap is there. It keeps conversations going, and keeps classroom topics near the top of the list of things that I'm thinking about.

That also, though, brings up a limitation of RSS. In order to get the full scope of what's going on, each person must be subscribed to each other person's blog. In other words, RSS is not a message board.

I guess what that means is that RSS isn't designed in such a way as to promote the kind of horizontal learning described in the articles we read for today. It might be more useful in a more hierarchical model (i.e. students subscribe to the professor's blog, and are led on through a learning experience that way as the instructor posts helpful and insightful links, articles, and thoughts).

Google reader has some new, more socially-oriented tools for sharing, commenting on, and "liking" posts that pop up in your reader with your other google contacts (or with the greater population, I think), but from what I can tell they're in the early stages and not many people pay attention to them (but maybe I just don't have a lot of contacts that use Google reader). Clearly, though, the issue of sharing, commenting, and creating a discussion surrounding posts that show up in RSS feeds is something Google is thinking about.

An aside

I decided against creating an email address specifically for this class for a couple of reasons:

1. I'm lazy and I don't want (yet) another email address

2. Gmail has enough tools to keep things relatively separate and organized

Something I didn't think about until today, though, is my Google Reader. I use reader heavily, and now I have a whole bunch of class-related blogs mixed into my personal reader items (albeit in separate folders).

I'm discovering that it's much different having personal emails mixed into class emails than it is to have personal blog-reading mixed into class-reading. But it's also interesting because it's going to do a lot to mix what I think about in my free time with what I think about in my school time. Seeing someone post something about New Media and literature in the middle of reading a review of the latest issue of Spider-Man makes for an interesting mix of work and play. It's certainly going to prevent me from separating my academic life from my leisure life, which maybe isn't as bad as it sounds.

Maybe this is part of what Manifesto 2.0 is all about: the mixing and intermingling of things so that we can't tell what's work and what's play anymore (among other things).

Manifesto?

Looking over Manifesto 2.0 again, I'm struck especially by the notion that Digital Humanities "is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices." That is, it's a action or a method, rather than a body of knowledge.

To my mind, a practice is a way of doing something, not a something. This falls in line with the authors' notion that curation need take the forefront in their nonfield of methods. It makes perfect sense that the leaders of a method would be those who develop ways of performing those methods. I agree that the curator has a big responsibility--if I think about museum displays for instance, who but the curator is in charge of what I see? It almost seems like a form of censorship: I can only see what they choose to show me, and whatever narrative I come up with after viewing an exhibit is based on the pieces they've laid out for me. It's like the difference between completing a jigsaw puzzle and creating a painting. One is an exercise, and one is an act of utmost creativity. That's an extreme example, to be sure, but I think the sentiment is right.

I've digressed a little bit from my intended point, but I think it's ok for blogs to ramble a little.

What I wanted to get at is their notion of the Digital Humanities becoming a "virtual department" and their notion of redefining the Humanities topography. I think I'm particulalry struck by this section because of a disconnect that I think happens between where they started and where they end up (but maybe they weren't sure where they were going at all, since the Manifesto itself is a work in progress only at version 2.0). If Digital Humanities is a method, then how does it become a thing to be reorganized? If Digital Humanities is a way of doing Humanities, then how does it become a department?

Maybe I'm being closed-minded. But it seems to follow more that Digital Humanities would overlay onto the current system. I'm not advocating for complete segregation of disciplines. There's a fair amount of cross-polinization that goes on already just through normal print media, and I also think that there are many many tools in New Media that would enable and even encourage further overlap between disciplines.

Something else I was thinking as I was reading this, is that it's a long way off (which I think the authors probably recognize). This isn't the kind of thing that's going to happen with an overnight revolution. I think the major limiting factor here is technology. Print isn't going to die until there's something as cheap and user-friendly as paper and ink that can be distributed to the masses. It's all well and good to say that something like Digital Humanities would open the University up to everyone, but it's something else entirely to buy everyone a Kindle.

Next: Blackboard vs. iLearn