14 WDL (Working Days Left) Last Lecture

Bend Bulletin, 9/3/1995

I started my last lecture tonight thinking about cake.  A rich, dense fruitcake I bought from somewhere in Texas in 1991 through AOL.  No pictures appeared on the screen showing how delicious the cake was.  Just lines of text.  Perhaps I'd heard about the cake on NPR.  Or perhaps I was just scrolling through the descriptions of online retailers provided by the folks who liked to tell me, "You've Got Mail."  I don't really remember and goodness knows there are no photographs of the younger me sitting in front of the computer screen at 10:15 p.m. after a night of grading papers, thinking about how wonderful it would be to have some cake. 

I don't think I was still using the ancient ITT with its yellow lettered screen.  I'm sure its brain wasn't big enough to access even what passed for the web back in those days.  I believe I had bitten into my first Apple by that time. 

I was thinking about old tech times because my very last lecture as a college professor was about "Virtual Groups," a lecture based on Chapter Eleven of the wonderful but horribly overpriced textbook I've been using since its first or second iteration in the early 90s:  In Mixed Company by J. Dan Rothwell..  Not steadily.  I have done due diligence to try and find a cheaper book that was just as well written and documented, but to no avail.  Rothwell tells good stories, covers the material thoroughly and has a well constructed text that works for the ten-week quarter. 
He works at Cabrillo Community College and is a nice guy.  This year at WSCA he got the "master teacher" award. Still, his book, now in its 8th edition, is $135 at Amazon ($77 Kindle).  But I've always had one or two copies on reserve in the library for those who can't pay the extortionate price.

But I digress.   At the top of this column I pasted a scan from an article I found in the "top drawer" of my rapidly emptying office file cabinet.  Written by Barney Lerten (now at KTVZ), the article was entitled "Local computer users discuss future of online services."  In it, I call myself a "geek" and say one wise thing about the internet:  "It has the power to connect people who might otherwise be isolated . . . For example, the Southern Baptist in the middle of a Catholic city, or the homosexual in Rigby, Idaho, may want to connect with people they find more accepting."

This comment (combined with my early shopping history) shows that I was well ahead of Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel.  Rothwell opens his chapter on Virtual groups with a story about the Today Show pair who, during a break in 1994, talked about the internet beginning with Gumbel's question, "What is the Internet, anyway?"

LY #132 Technirritation

This will be a very short post because it's the middle of finals week and I have a boatload of grading.

Right now I am annoyed with technology and my own inability to have it work smoothly. Yesterday I found myself annoyed with Blackboard because of its complexity and mysteriousness. 


First of all, unlike my old handwritten grade collector or even Micrograde, Blackboard's many functionalities (which, I agree, are special and make life better for those who like a lot of choices) require me to select or write five different times for every column in its Gradebook.  Sometimes I forget a click.  My second issue with the Gradebook is that sometimes Blackboard doesn't "feel" the number I type in and if I'm not looking right at the screen (for example, when I am recording a list of scores written down on a paper in front of me) I won't notice my error until a student calls it to my attention.  These two BB Gradebook issues occured yesterday in a single class.  While I encourage students to keep track of their grades and police my input skills, I still have the occasional pang of embarrassment if I have to be questioned more than once about a single score.

  And finally, a special BB issue that came up for me yesterday is that Turnitin Grademark was acting differently in my school desktop Windows mode than it does on my AppleOS home laptop.  I was  not able to select anything on a student paper.  Why why why would it act that way?   I'd already told my online students that I'd have their papers finished by the end of the day.  But rather than going through the effort of either solving the mystery myself by Googling for "windows, Blackboard 9.1, issue, Grademark Turnitin" or contacting the helpdesk, I just decided I'd finish up today, Wednesday, instead.  So I BB spammed out a note of apology.  Then  I literally "threw up my hands" and stalked away from my desk to the coffee cart and got a snack.

So yesterday combined two of the primary reasons I'm so so so so ready to retire:  grading and wonders of always improving technology. 

LY #57 The Retirement Meeting and the Tech Wall

Today I visited with Sally Sorenson, our new H.R. director, who went over some of the key issues related to my upcoming retirement.  It was a pleasant meeting because Sally is a very pleasant person.  She was also wearing a very attractive jacket stitched with a pattern of autumn leaves.

The question most important to the school is, "Are you planning to continue working part time."

"No.  Nope,  nyet,  keine Möglichkeit,  pas de temps partiel, ho finito con l'insegnamento!"  Well, I didn't really add all that emphasis.  But you get the idea.

We agreed that instead of bolting right after turning my grades in on June 19, I would take until June 30 to get my stuff moved out of my office.   I asked about getting emeritus status which, according to H. R. 11-3.2 means that I may

Receive bulletins, announcements, and other publications of the College; participate in commencement; be listed in the College catalog; receive free admissions to all regular College events; full use of the College library; full use of Computer Center services; attend the annual professional retreat of the College; use of an office set aside for emeritus; receive occasional and limited secretarial assistance for pre-approved projects related to the College of the individual's discipline; be listed in the Speakers Bureau.

We also chatted about the big issue -  health insurance - and my three decision making choices:  OEBB, PERS, or the Marketplace.  How I look forward to doing that research.  Much as I look forward to my next trip to the dentist.

While visiting the H. R. offices I also chatted about what PERS does with my left over sick leave days.  The person who reports them is Shelley Huckins, a delightful blonde person who is a head honcho in payroll.  Now she has a truly important and necessary job.  She talked about how the recently retired payroll poobah, Lori O.,  is trying to get used to going shopping or to the movies in the afternoon.  Payroll work is what I think of as a "real job" (as opposed to teaching college).  People who have "real jobs" usually don't get more than a week or three of vacation every year.  And as Shelley noted, it was only a couple of years ago that anyone in the college payroll office was able to take more than one week off at a time.  I thought about what a luxury it's been to have summers and winter holidays off for most of the past 25 years.  Time is as good as wealth.

I wound up telling them both about my current tech-wall.  I shared that when I first came to COCC I was shocked by this one senior faculty member who never touched a keyboard and expected the "secretaries" to type up his classroom assignments (he didn't have syllabi so he didn't require those to be typed).   Now I have become that guy.  As you know from last night's screed,  I have hit the tech wall.  The thought of having to text my students or letting them text me just seems so, so.... misguided.  A violation of the fourth wall, if you will.

Not that I hate all things softwareish.  I will indeed be introducing new techniques to my tired old brain but they will be in service of its right side.  I look forward to doing more with movie making, sound editing, and photo manipulating softward -- just no more techademia.   

That part of my brain is full.