Summer 2009 Plans
Like any good or even mediocre academic, I have a mile-long list of plans and projects for the summer. But here are some of the non-negotiable items.
Topping the list is my book on web writing and design, the manuscript for which is due to my editor at Greenwood Press in 155 days (thanks, iPhone countdown app). I got a lot of writing done on it during spring semester and that, combined with my notes and lessons from my spring web design course, has me pretty far along in the writing. Not as far as I’d like to be, though.
Then there’s a book chapter due on the 15th of June for an edited collection; my contribution is a bibliographic review on free and open-source software research in the areas of education and e-learning. I’m surveying only the last 5 years or so, but casting a wide net in terms of the journals and fields of endeavor that I’m hoping to include. This article should also go towards a course offered at IIT on instructional design, which I’m hoping to teach in the near future.
My Computers and Writing 2009 presentation on activity theory and source-level literacy is drafted, as is a very rough article based on it (but which needs a lot of work). I presented both at the IIT Humanities Colloquium back in April, and that feedback from my colleagues has helped me to see how to improve the presentation, and also how the article itself is struggling to hold together because it’s really at least two different articles trying to be one.
There are also courses that need planning, including some revisions to my Knowledge Management seminar based on past evaluations and my own notes and revamping a course called Key Concepts in Technical Communication, which is an overview of the research and methods of tech comm for our PhD students.
I’ve also set out a few new technology development goals for myself this summer; the first I’ve already about completed: learning to use the git version control system. I still need to teach myself to setup a custom git server using gitosis and Gitweb. (Yes, I could use a hosted solution like Github, but I have a mix of public and protected projects plus a brand-new server just waiting to host this kind of thing.) I’m also planning to learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails to a level where I can teach them, for a course on Web application development that I’ll be pitching for spring semester 2010.
And finally, I am consolidating all of my digital files and archives, and my vita and portfolio, from across far too many computers…but that’s the subject of a whole post all its own.