Monthly Archives: February 2014

Ian’s Project Ideas

Here are a few project ideas I’ve been considering lately:

1. For the Core 1 term paper, I considered how digital technologies could be utilized in teaching introductory linguistics courses. I reflected on our readings and discussions of education and learning, and decided that some existing technologies could be used in combination to assist students in analyzing language they use or encounter in their homes and communities. The issue is that most linguistic analyses utilize “cooked data”: clean categorical representations of the real continuous messy data. Cooked data is typically used to do analyses in intro classes because eliciting and cooking the data yourself is difficult and time-consuming. The basic idea I’m considering is creating a cooking suite (called “The Linguists Kitchen”?), where existing speech analysis and transcription tools are brought together in a very user-friendly way. While this will not automate the cooking process, it may at least provide an opportunity for students to try analyzing language that they actually interact with, which may make studying linguistics a more meaningful experience.

2. As an experimental linguist, I often think about the logistics of finding and recruiting participants for experiments. I’ve been thinking about the possibility of creating some sort of database where individuals interested in participating in research can sign up and list (or not list) various traits they possess that experimenters may be interested in (I’m thinking of traits related to language knowledge and usage). While something like this may be extremely useful to researchers, it seems like it would raise a number of ethical issues concerning confidentiality, security of personal information, etc. Perhaps an equally useful alternative would be to create a CUNY-wide database of ongoing research projects in need of participants. Individuals interested in participating in research could then peruse participant selection criteria and contact experimenters if they find a project they’d like to be a part of.

3. For the past year, I’ve been meeting weekly with a small writing group of fellow linguistics students. We help each other set writing goals, balance our personal work with our many other commitments, and find ways to help each other meet the goals we set out for ourselves. This group has been extremely helpful and, lately, I’ve been wondering if we could be even more useful by actually participating in each other’s writing process. This idea sprouted while I was somewhere in Chapter 2 of Planned Obsolescence and was crushed when I got to Chapter 3 and discovered that CommentPress exists. I’d like to try using CommentPress this semester with my writing group to figure out if there are any modifications we could make to align it more with (or better complement) the nature of our in-person interactions.

who am I? – Kelly, sometimes

I am Kelly, most of the time. Sometimes I am Kelly A.K., when I publish something I have written ( I have two published books in Spanish, links to follow). I am Kelly Aro when I do television (or did, I was in a science program in a PBS-like channel back home and yes, I am googleable, and yes, I did dress up as supergirl for one of the shows… no student of mine will ever see those videos). I am Kelly Aronowitz in my PhD in Comparative Literature (third year, working towards my first set of orals). I am Prof K. or Prof Aronowitz to my students at Baruch College where I teach a requirement literature course.

My area of research is erotic literature. i explore the second half if the 20th C onwards, although I do look and read back a lot.

 

I am just plain Kelly to my friend and family even though it is not a very typical Mexican name. Did I mention I am Mexican? yeah, I could have fooled you, or most anybody. I usually bet my nationality and win, always.

I am also a translator and do live interpretation on all sorts of subjects.

You can find me in most social medias as awokenbeauty

links to my books:

 

Pamela’s Project Ideas

Here are some thoughts, mostly embryonic, about possible independent projects:

1) I’ve been working on incorporating simple digital tools (online searches and PowerPoint/Prezi presentations) into a dramaturgical pedagogy with my theatre classes. I’m just trying some things out this semester, but I think that there is more to be developed here, including some kind of formatting that students can plug their information into so that they don’t spend too much time on form rather than content.

2) Since I will be on a Writing Fellowship next year (location TBD), there may be opportunities to develop something in that context. I’m especially interested in the ideas of active learning and critical learning from James Paul Gee’s video game pedagogies.

3) I’d love to work on a mapping project related to my own research into the movements of scenic designers around Europe in the seventeenth century.

4) My department has an image database that is constantly growing but not widely utilized. It might be useful to see how it might better serve student need and try to optimize it.

5) A central location that collects freely available theatre images, films, and sound files is something that I know I would have liked to have when I was starting to teach, so maybe putting something like that together.

6) There are large number of my colleagues in theatre who don’t know what tools CUNY makes available to us, or how to use them particularly well. I could coordinate a few workshops on CUNY tools particularly for Theatre students.

7) I’m just branching out into mapping (I’ve done a little using ArcGIS) but I’ve found that learning tools tend to focus on examples that don’t work for the humanities (optimal locations for businesses, density of certain professions). I’d like to see (put together once I’ve developed stronger skills) a workshop focus on mapping for the humanities, with an emphasis on how we can gather our data and get it into the appropriate file format because often we can’t pull from readily available sources. I’d also be interested in learning more about open source GIS, since it isn’t dependent on institutional access.

8)Two possible ideas for the “ethnography of technology” option: a review of instructional technology in introductory theatre courses, or an investigation of the methods and effectiveness of an ongoing Twitter project in CUNY undergraduate acting classes started by some of my colleagues.

Borrowing, buying or creating?

Hello all,

I guess here is where we start the thread on this week’s reading. Is that correct?
I really enjoyed the meta-reading, going back and forth between the original text and the links. It makes so much sense to read this way. This is how I read nowadays anyways and this is how I teach my students to read too.
If you find a term, a word or something that you don’t know or pikes your interest, why not just go ahead and look it up?

I liked the W and H and have been thoroughly thinking about my proposals. Where do we post those? (I am a little lost in terms of where to post things).

Borrowing, buying or creating? I would like to discuss this more later.

I am very grateful to be in a class in which the professors are insisting we DO something. I don’t know if this happens to many of you, but sometimes, quite often actually, in the PhD writing papers does not feel like doing something. That is why I knit. (or one of the reasons at least). Knitting is tangible. I make something with my hands and then I use it to keep me warm or look nice, or I gift it to someone else for them to use, etc. But it is real… intellectual work often feels like it is not real.

I have felt this way since my undergrad, I found my oxygen in radio and giving theatre games workships and other things. Late ron I moved on to more intangible things like a masters in critical theory. A PhD in Comp Lit is still very intangible and oftentimes I wish I was doing something more tangible and physical…

lastly, I just wanted to post this to think about tecmology…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9CEqlUJGCE

#readings, #posts #provocation

Pamela Thielman

Pamela Thielman is a second-level PhD student in Theatre at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Areas of research include Baroque theatre and performance, history of scenography, and theories of cultural encounter. Currently, she teaches Introduction to Theatre at Baruch College. She also holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from Columbia University School of the Arts and works as a freelance dramaturg.

my project ideas

Project ideas

 

  1. Yesterday I went to the wiki-editing event and, it was so much fun! I did most of my editing and writing into the wiki in Spanish and realized why when I was teaching in Mexico I didn’t allow my students to use Wikipedia and here I do. The wiki in Spanish is AWFUL! No sources, bad writing, etc, etc. So I was thinking of doing an event, or a series of events, inviting people from all over (especially in NY and Mexico, which is where I have contacts) to edit and add to the wiki in Spanish. I could even promote an event at Baruch (where I teach) for everyone to add to the wiki in their own language (being it that the student body is so diverse).

2. My topic of research is Erotic Literature. I am still unsure of what my dissertation will look like, but my ultimate goal has always been to find out what makes a text erotic. (in comparison to just plain cheesy or pornographic). I could go different ways – techwise- with this. DO a data anaylsis of texts, repetition of particular words, or set of words, and how they work.

3. The other way I could go would be to create a database of some sort, a place, perhaps a website, which is an erotic literature encyclopedia, indicating where to go, what to read, what can be expected, etc. I am talking about high quality erotic literature, which is really hard to find, considering most of the smut and corniness around.

4. Another erotic diagram could be on influences of literature, very visual as to who has influenced who in forms of writing. It could also be following the way something has been described, i.e. the orgasm, or even more specifically, female or male orgasm. by compiling the data some form of analysis could be made, no? (or description of particular parts of the body?) (it could also be compiled in different languages and even compare translations)

5. Something else erotic related…

6. Create an app or website which teachers can approach to get teaching approaches. I would do this for literature classes for non-lit majors. I love teaching non English majors, students who, for the most part, dislike literature. I love the challenge of the turning of the screw, of finding a way to connect with the students, helping them find a way to connect with the texts. I know many teachers struggle on how to teach particular texts, so this could be a peer-to-peer, user generated content site. Many students who are not literature or art oriented usually don’t like to read. The kind of requirement courses we often teach are the last resort we have to enamor students to literature. I have found that by using alternative and more tech oriented forms of teaching, students find a way to connect to the texts better and find reason, joy and pleasure in reading.

7. Why not make students teach other students? If students use ‘rate my professor’, why couldn’t they use a similar ‘rate my reading’ site? What to look for in a class, what assignments with a particular teaching or in a particular requirement class are harder and what is easier.

8. Another part of this last idea would be to give the students a place where they can share their works. It happens that they work very hard on certain projects and then it doesn’t go beyond the teachers eyes, or sometimes their fellow peers. What would happen if we could build a platform where the students could ‘paste’ their work, in an anonymous way, but also in a way that would help their peers study for the exam, come more prepared to class, etc. (Like I make them do Tumblrs, why not share what they have made? Another class has them do tiki-tokis. I will also have them do, as an optional assignment, youtube-book reviews)