Hevel.org: A Chasing after Wind

Let’s see, where was I?

Oh yes, Brooke called my attention to Charles’ challenge for us to read The Context of Scripture through in a year.  He has provided a helpful schedule for doing so.  An excellent idea, and a good chance to use my Accordance module.

This is the first week of class, so optimism is at its cyclical high, but I feel good about this one.

EDIT to add that today I saw that CoS is on sale at Accordance.  $150 is a very good price for this resource, especially given all of the cool things you can do with text searches, etc.

Fabulous. Boing Boing has a few pages from the upcoming graphic novelization of Genesis, based on Robert Alter’s translation. This is going to be excellent.

I don’t know why, but I have always been fascinated with flappers. This site (via Boing Boing) tells us all about these fascinating women, with links to several other informative sites.

Here is my favorite literary flapper, the incomparable Lady Caroline Dester from Enchanted April:

Edit: Here is a video of the best movie flappers of all time, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis:

I heard about this study on the future of humanities journals in the new episode of the Digital Humanities podcast.

I am still working my way through the 55 page report, but the study concludes that the current journal ecosystem cannot be maintained through a move to exclusive online or open access distribution. As Robert Townsend writes,

The report also highlights an important challenge for sustaining journals such as the AHR, particularly as they are called upon to use their resources to do more interesting and creative things in the digital medium. The report indicates that while almost a third of the production costs of HSS journals could be saved by eliminating print, they would lose that much (and in some cases more) revenue from lost print subscriptions and advertising.

The losses would be quite high for the Review. Currently, more than half of our institutional subscribers have opted for print-only subscriptions (even though e-only subscriptions cost slightly less). And our individual members have shown a strong preference for print as well. A survey of Perspectives on History readers conducted in 2008 found that 63 percent read only the print copies of our serial publications (a number that is, if anything, skewed lower than the reality since the survey was conducted online). So for the moment, the AHR has far more to lose than gain in dispensing with print.

I have two immediate responses. First, there is no guarantee that the journals that have been important up to now will continue to be important in the future. Particular journals may be unable to maintain their level of circulation or prestige as scholarly communication moves to the digital realm. This points to an important fact that one should not forget: the shift in medium at the same time reflects a shift in content, priorities, and form. Many people read Perspectives on History in print form. That is because it is a well known history journal with a healthy following among senior and younger scholars. As history scholarship incorporates visual forms and other media, as well as different forms of presentation such as interactive exhibits, the important “journals,” whatever they look like, may be different. We cannot shy away from the future of the field based on what those changes may mean for the current journals.

Second, Townsend says that their subscribers have a strong preference for printed material. Heavens be! Why would this be true? A bound journal, printed and mailed in physical form, is inferior in almost every way to electronic distribution, except perhaps in aesthetic appeal. Even there, however, who really likes those bland rows of old journals on their office shelves? If I want to read an article in the bath for some reason, I will print it out and mark it with a pen. But I still love having the electronic version for storage, searching, and pasting quotes into my research notes. Who are these hoards of paper-loving, luddite scholars?

Mark Goodacre continues his innovation and trend-setting with a public “office hours” conversation via Duke’s Ustream channel.  I’m looking forward to this one.  Be sure to tune in at noon on Friday, September 18th.

Does anyone know of other uses of live streaming for higher education?  What if a professor streamed her whole course via Ustream, taking questions and comments from public viewers via the chat room or Twitter?  Would that be just a gimmick, or would it have a real benefit a) for the public or b) for the students enrolled in the course?

I haven’t chimed in on the gender and biblioblogging stuff because I don’t think it’s a very interesting issue.  As far as I can tell, the women in the field probably feel like they have better things to do.  No one is preventing anyone from starting a wordpress.com blog, are they?  If we were talking about faculty appointments, tenure review, or publishing I’d be open to the “old boys network” argument.  But seriously, the whole point of this medium is to provide an instant, unmediated, and egalitarian access to internet readers.*

OK, so maybe there are structural issues that I, as an elite white male, cannot recognize.  That is the gist of the long quote in Crossley’s post about Gender and Blogging.  I might be open to that argument as well, but not when it reads like this:

There is often even an overdetermination of the difference of the “other” in this respect (whether that “other” is a specific method or content), while the center appears to lack the cultural, racial, ideological, and so on bases that defines the “other.” Thus, the absence of these facets from the center defines the center of the discipline—here historical studies—as neutral. Moreover, while the “Asian-American” critic or the “female feminist” can point out the perceived ideological nature of the dominant “male” perspective, the normative “male” center—consisting of those who perform as white, heterosexual males—are expected to maintain the fundamental guild structures.

OK, so who’s playing insider/outsider games now?

* Note: I would be interested in having a debate about the “Top 50″ over a pint at SBL, but not here.

EDIT: I wanted to point out that I find Judy Redman’s comments to be helpful on the larger question (for example, here, here, here.)  What I like about this approach is that she understands the issue to be a symptom of larger problems in the church or in academia.  This recognizes the tricky fact that “biblioblogging” comprises different communities that sometimes overlap online (secular academia, the conservative church, and others in between).  I might buy the argument that women in conservative churches would not open up a blog because they have internalized the idea that “women don’t know anything about the Bible.”  [However, I would question whether that is the issue as much as the attitude that women shouldn't teach the Bible in a mixed context.  I think there is a difference, but I digress.]

What I can’t accept is that the same attitude would operate in a liberal academic context, which is where I am  coming from.  (I am also a member of a mainline church that is very accepting of women leadership, fwiw.)  I don’t think that those of us who see this as part of our academic work (even if connected to a church in certain ways) should be lumped together with people who work and/or live in traditionally patriarchal religious contexts.

Darn it, I said I wasn’t going to write on this, but I just did.

Yesterday I posted:

It is clear to me that Apple now needs an iTune U app for the Touch and iPhone. The content I have grabbed through iTunes U is still mixed in with other videos and audio files in my Videos and Music applications. In Music, they are not even with the podcasts, but rather sorted with the normal music.

It occurred to me that the piece I was forgetting was iPhone OS 3.1, which I just installed on my first gen iPod Touch. I am glad to report that Apple has separated the iTunes U content in a way that makes it easy to follow and manage on the device itself. Here are screenshots that show the simple interface.

Notice that iTunes U shows up under “More,” and so could be moved to occupy one of the choice positions at the bottom:

Here are the iTunes U subscriptions that I have synced, with the number of items in each. The little TV icon shows which ones contain video:

And, finally the page showing this new item under a particular program:

Just like podcasts, you can click on “Get more episodes,” which takes you into the iTunes store for downloading. I love that little word, “Free:”

The best part about this is that it integrates both audio and video content. Everything is contained right here in one app, even if it is the “Music” app.

Good work, Apple. I still believe, however, that they should allow third-party developers to create alternative ways of displaying and managing content, whether podcasts or iTunes U. I’m not a developer, but I can think of several ways to improve the experience. For example, how about an application that integrates iTunes U and Twitter? Or, how about a Disqus module that allows people who are listening to or watching the same lecture to engage in discussion?

I am working on a major revision of the blogroll, but I wanted to point out this blog by Colin Toffelmire.  I have enjoyed reading his posts, and commend him to you.  Colin is also one of those folks that you see in comments all over the place, which in my view a sign of a good member of the nebulous biblioblogging community (i.e., this is something I would like to do better).

I just posted about iTunes U, but I wanted to add one complaint to the mix.

It is clear to me that Apple now needs an iTune U app for the Touch and iPhone. The content I have grabbed through iTunes U is still mixed in with other videos and audio files in my Videos and Music applications. In Music, they are not even with the podcasts, but rather sorted with the normal music. Here is Mark Goodacre rubbing shoulders with Metallica and Miles Davis:

A tip: one can get a list of all iTunes U content by browsing to Genre and iTunes U. This is better than nothing, but not a real solution because the iTune U content is split between audio and video. What if the same course includes a mixture of both? The student is forced to skip around and hunt for whatever is next. That isn’t the Apple way, now is it?

This is where Apple would benefit from allowing someone to write an app specifically for organizing and presenting iTunes U content on the device. Given their stance on Podcaster, however, I am not optimistic. Perhaps they will eventually get around to it, or will allow someone else to meet the need. The large schools providing content for iTunes U (their “featured” partners) need to pressure them in this regard. In the meantime, iTunes U is a wonderful resource and easy to manage on the computer side, but needs work before it shines on Apple’s premier platform.

Apple has quietly been putting together one of the best resources for higher education on the web, their collection of university sponsored and uploaded content called iTunes U. I have bragged on it a couple of times, as have many other bloggers. The new iTunes 9 software, however, is a game-changer. For the first time, users can manage the iTunes U content on their iPods separately, as they have long been able to manage podcasts, videos, etc.

Notice the screenshots below. One can manage settings for iTunes U in general, or for individual subscriptions. In the settings within the iPod, one can choose to sync all items, all new items, or some number of the newest or the least new items. That last bit is something that used to bug me before they fixed it. Even with normal podcasts, often I don’t want to hear the most recent unplayed items, I want to start from the beginning and work my way forward.

This new functionality is in addition to an important change made in the iPhone 3.0 software, the ability to download and manage iTunes U content directly on one’s iPhone or iPod Touch.

Here is Apple’s introductory page for iTunes U, and here is a page spotlighting new iTunes U content.

I am currently working through ways to put some of my course material online in a publicly accessible way, and these new developments have convinced me that I don’t need to reinvent the wheel (i.e., create my own website), administer a complex CMS (i.e., Drupal) or put up with clunky hidden gardens (i.e., Moodle). The extra piece that Drupal or Moodle gives you is the conversation and feedback, but there are plenty of dedicated forum and commenting systems that are relatively easy to setup and can be used alongside the iTunes delivery mechanism.

An important objection is that this system ties people to Apple’s software, music players, and handheld devices. Yes and no. First, one can view all of this material on the computer in iTunes, and so is not required to buy an iPod. For watching or listening on the go, an iPod is necessary, but I am willing to accept the limiting nature of that in exchange for Apple’s market penetration. [I would not have said this 5 years ago, but I am getting more practical-minded in my old age. Am I selling out, my young firebrand friends?]

Schools that are not already on iTunes U (hello, Furman?) need to look into it as soon as possible. Browse through the Duke University offerings (one of the first schools to embrace iTunes U a few years ago) to see the possibilities. In addition to courses, lectures, and dialogues, they feature at least one podcast (Mark Goodacre’s excellent NTPod) and student generated content associated with particular campus organizations.

On the religion/Bible front, there is some good content on there, but the conservative schools (RTS, Fuller, Dallas Theological) seem to have a big head start. I love that they are on there, don’t get me wrong, but let’s get more full courses from Duke Divinity, Candler, and, yes, Furman to balance the spectrum a bit.

Finally, I am not going to rehearse my arguments for putting scholarship online, but I will reiterate a bottom-line point: this is an amazing marketing opportunity for universities and individual scholars. The days of the “public intellectual” are gone; let’s have public academia!

[UPDATE: See this post about iTunes U management on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is an integral piece of the puzzle.]