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overview | teaching | service | career plan
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significant scholarly achievements
achieving objectives |
effectiveness | changes
To summarize my objectives from last year's self-evaluation and the progress I made toward them. Discussion follows below.
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objectives |
progress |
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video |
finish Alden video |
not done |
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choose sabbatical projects |
chose to do the Niagara biking and Dutch microscopy projects |
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start preproduction: script and storyboards (spring) |
developed the biking project |
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production: video shooting (summer); document, still image, audio acquisition (fall) |
shot most (all?) of the video for the biking project acquired almost all of the rest of the media assets |
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prepare for post-production and webmaking: new laptop and editing software (fall) |
laptop not acquired until December 15 |
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webs |
Use more CSS (cascading style sheets) in my webs. |
partially done |
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Start learning the scripting language in the Flash authoring environment for creating interactive websites rich with video, graphics, and animation. |
not done |
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Keep learning about information design. |
done |
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research |
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I chose the biking project and did the necessary research. |
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I am also beginning to learn Dutch. |
I far exceeded my expectations. |
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I will continue to keep up online with the latest technologies and developments in network culture / media network studies |
done |
Over the past year, my scholarly activities have developed two skillsets, video making and the Dutch language, along with its history and culture. I also chose the topics for my major sabbatical project. These activities fit the new handbook's section 4.5.3.3.1 Types of Scholarship as noted here and detailed in my portfolio.
The best way to learn how to use a tool is to use it. This year, I continued to shoot video in a variety of settings under a range of sub-optimal lighting and sound conditions. I used the Sony Handycam that I have been using for several years and that will hold me in good stead for another couple of years.
However, the laptop I have been using to edit the video is not adequate. One of my goals this year was to get a new laptop, and I did, thanks to the approval of my department chair and the dean. When I wrote my last annual self-evaluation in January 2007, I anticipated getting the new laptop in September or October, and I wrote an annual plan that included the video-editing and Flash programming that the laptop would have enabled.
As it turned out, I did not get the laptop until mid-December, so I was not able to
complete
the Alden video
learn
the new software, Final Cut Pro
learn
Flash
However, now that I have it, I will move these activities to next year's objectives.
In spring, I taped undergraduate student presentations and discussed their performances with the students.
In June, I taped the opening ceremony of the Alden High School Sculpture Garden to provide an ending for the video documenting the project.
During the summer and early fall, I taped about five hours of video on location along the Niagara River. Working from a script outline, I was much more efficient. Online, I acquired many of the still image and audio assets that I will need.
In fall, to provide video assets for my GEN 230 Creative Expression students, I taped several hours of Medaille men's basketball games.
In December, I taped the final on-campus MBA capstone presentations.
Because I was waiting for my new laptop and the Final Cut Pro software, I did very little video editing this year.
I did another draft of the Garden of Earthly Delights video for Clear Light Studio. I redid all the titling, substituted some footage, tightened the editing, and better equalized the audio tracks. It is available on disk by request via email: doug at tolearn.net
Since my last sabbatical, all my course materials, including the "textbooks",
have been publicly available on
RicciStreet.net or linked to it. Over the
summer, I detached myself from it emotionally. It now lies with the links
rotting, and I need to decide what to do with it.
While one small section of Ricci Street was organized course-by-course, the rest was organized in other ways. Without Ricci Street, I returned my course webs in fall of 2007 to toLearn.net, my original domain and where I housed course material in the two years before I started Ricci Street.
The biggest difference for me is that rather than having the course web have only course-specific material on it and the text and other material elsewhere on Ricci Street, I now have all the text and other material on the course web. That sends a very bad message to students about the coherence and integration of knowledge, but I am going to live with it until I can figure out what else to do.
I made a new home page for toLearn.net.
The web at ClearLightStudio.com served two purposes. It provides a web presence to a local small business and it provided a living case study for my MBA 604 Marketing Through New Media course. In that sense, it was instructional material, and I used it often in class for examples. Even though the on-campus MBA program no longer exists, I continue to maintain the web.
my
professional portfolio <
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/ >
this
self-evaluation <
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/ >
For over a decade now, this topic has been one of my ongoing research topics. I pay a lot of attention to how other web sites are built and how they function. I participate in online discussions of this topic, and I try to practice what I have learned on my web projects.
I want to have webs on my server that will draw traffic and be linked to. That will happen only if they provide useful information in an interesting manner.
I did a lot of reading and watching this year to learn how to make better videos. The reading was mostly about hardware and software. The watching was mostly about camera angles and scene transitions.
I spent a fair amount of time this year exploring almost a dozen ideas for sabbatical projects. In my previous self-evaluation, I mentioned these three:
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biking along the Niagara River
the Devonian fossils of the south branch of Smoke Creek
the patterns of art
Only the first made the cut. I looked at half-a-dozen others before finally
getting taken by one. 
In preparation for moving to the Netherlands, I was
reading a lot about Dutch history and culture. I was especially taken by the art
and music of the Golden Age of the 1600's. That led me to Anthony van
Leeuwenhoek (left).
The microscope hadn't been around for more than a few decades, and everyone was using it to look closely at things they already knew. Leeuwenhoek was the first to look at things no one had ever seen before. He was Adam in a microscopic Garden of Eden. There weren't names for what he saw. He had to make his own microscopes (left). Lots of people, most people, didn't believe him. No one knew what to do with or about what he saw. It was another 150 years after his death before biological and medical science caught up to Leeuwenhoek. All he left were a couple hundred long, chatty letters about his methods and descriptions of his "animacules". His story has not been told often, recently, or in a popular style. I want to make a historical documentary video and web that will help science and critical thinking teachers explain to their students the importance of rational, empirical thinking. And check out that little moustache!
Since focusing on Leeuwenhoek, I have read the three standard biographies as well as a lot of background information in the history of science. Through the good auspices of Betty Robins in the College library, I got to look through a replica of a Leeuwenhoek microscope at the Buffalo Museum of Science. For a device that fit into the palm of my hand (the section showing in the image above is about two inches high; the glass bead lens is less than 1 mm in diameter) I was startled at the size and clarity of the image.
I taught myself to read enough Dutch that I can make my way through most newspaper articles with the help of a dictionary.
As usual, I try to be as self-sufficient as possible. Rather than use proprietary software and third-party sites, I use open source software and my own server.
I have become involved with the Open Knowledge Foundation.
I improved the Garden video by doing another draft of it this summer.
I shot the video for the biking video and felt as though I made better choices about what to point at and when to record.
To work around the challenges of live audio capture while filming, I did hardly any filming where I needed to capture audio. I need to get more practice with both sound and lighting hardware.
Based on how the undergraduate students use the course webs on toLearn.net compared to how the graduate students used Ricci Street, I think that what is lost is making it explicit for the student how one course relates to another. On Ricci Street, the course web was part of a whole. On toLearn.net, each course is its own separate fragment, unconnected to anything else in Medaille's curriculum.
I learned this anecdotally and by analyzing server logs. The toLearn.net webs show shorter user sessions and more one-page sessions. In other words, students are coming for one thing they need and not hanging around to explore. Why? Because the course web is very small compared to the resources at RicciStreet.net.
I made great progress this year in four research areas:
open
content on the Internet
the
Niagara River bike paths and surrounding parks
Antony
van Leeuwenhoek and microscopes in the Dutch Republic in the late 1600's
Dutch
language and culture
Putting aside my self-taught computer mark-up, scripting, and programming languages, I haven't tried to learn a foreign language since French in high school and college. After college, I supported myself for a number of years as a French-to-English translator (accredited by the American Translators Association) of scientific and technical materials, mostly petroleum geology and petrochemicals. Languages of any sort are easy for me to learn.
In May, I sat down to learn Dutch. I found some word lists and made gamesets for the Mix & Match Association game by Senator Games. I made four dozen games of forty Dutch words each and spent many hours drilling myself.
Then in the fall, I started
reading Dutch news sites online. I found that with a little dictionary
program from P1 (left), I could quickly type in or copy and paste unfamiliar
words. Soon, I was reading most news stories with high comprehension.
I find Google News very helpful. It links to half a dozen versions of the same story in various Dutch media. By the time I get to the third or fourth slightly different re-telling, the reading flows easily. The financial stories are the easiest. The sports stories are the hardest.
Next, of course, comes listening. For the past year at home, we've been listening to Dutch radio online. I can pick out lots of words, but I'm not catching whole sentences and phrases yet. For speaking, I have been using audio programs and have started to learn how to pronounce the words, but that's about all. And writing? I haven't even tried. The few people I have corresponded with in the Netherlands all write excellent English.
In general, the feedback I get from others tells me that my videos are interesting to watch and look pretty good. In other words, the cup is half full. The feedback I get from myself tells me that my videos could be compelling to watch, not just interesting, and that they could look much better. In other words, the cup is also half empty.
I will make every effort in scripting, producing, and editing my sabbatical video to make it more interesting and attractive than any I have done so far.
I need to:
increase
my
proficiency with tools I already know, like style sheets
begin
learning tools I don't know, like Flash's scripting language
find
a way to integrate my course webs into a larger, wider, deeper knowledge context
sabbatical creates need for research to write scripts and storyboards for my
video / web projects.
continued
attention to open source, open knowledge, and network cultures
increased
attention to international topics, especially European and Dutch
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Learn more about how these how these shorter term objectives fit into: |
Over the next year, I intend to finish one video, about biking along the Niagara River, and make significant progress on a longer, more ambitious video about microscopy in the Dutch Golden Age.
Currently, one video -- documenting a local artist-in-the-schools project -- is in post-production. I expect to finish it during the spring of 2008 now that I have better video editing hardware.
pre-production: research, script, and storyboards (spring)
production: video shooting (spring, summer); document, still image, audio acquisition
(fall)
prepare
for post-production and webmaking (summer, fall)
make
two microwebs -- Niagara River biking and early Dutch microscopy -- that is,
small single-purpose webs with their own domain names. The microwebs will have
video embedded in them as well as interactivity.
make
some interactive web applications using Flash and AJAX
make,
revise, and use webs for each of the courses I teach in Fall 2008
more research
on early Dutch microscopy so that I can write an engaging script. I will be
living within a couple of miles of Leeuwenhoek's home.
more
Dutch language and culture as well as broader European cultures. I want to better contribute to the College's burgeoning
study abroad program by gaining current experience with living and
working abroad. If not a blog, I will maintain a set of web pages at toLearn.net/nl.
Depending on how the biking video and web progress, I may need
to do more research and filming.
I will continue to keep up online with the latest technologies and developments
in network culture.
I plan to attend a conference, OKCon: The
Annual Open Knowledge Conference, sponsored by The Open Knowledge
Foundation, on Saturday, March 15, 2008, in London.
modified: December 2007
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/2007/scholarship.htm
