Little League starts practice tomorrow.  Soccer practices start in another two weeks.  Which can only mean two things: On the one hand, five evening/weekend slots just filled in on my calendar, but, on the other hand, it means the end of the semester is officially close!  As you’re out and about this weekend, a few links worth thinking about:

• AFT Higher Education has an important new report out on ways unions can improve diversity on campus: Of the 10.4 percent of faculty positions held by underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in 2007, 7.6 percent were contingent positions—which means that 73 percent of underrepresented faculty hold positions that do not give them adequate wages or benefits, job security, or meaningful academic freedom.
• The final word on backups, from John Moltz’s “CARS Total Backup Plan“: Hard drives are great and they sure are fun to whip a...

March 18 saw the second iteration of a project by the digital humanities community to document what that field actually looks like.  A Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities (Day of DH) asked participants to write about at least 3 DH-related activities from that day, and, where feasible, to upload pictures, too. Their posts will ultimately be made available to the research community as a whole, “whether as a data source for academic analysis of various kinds, or as a resource for those interested in knowing what it means to self-identify as a digital humanist.”

The roster of participants is terrific, both in terms of scope and also diversity. Faculty members, staff, grad students, people in the private sector–all working together to solve common problems.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “am I doing digital humanities work,” or, “what the hell is ‘digital...

Eleven years ago, as a graduate student, I was the program assistant to Emory’s British Studies Abroad program, which lets students take Emory courses at Univ. over six weeks, along with day trips to London, York, Edinburgh, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Cotswolds, and elsewhere.  Back then, being in England meant, by and large, resigning yourself to infrequent verbal contact with folks back home, it meant lots of fumbling around with guidebooks or maps (instantly marking yourself out as a tourist), and carrying lots of gear.

The last two years I’ve taken students to London with CCSU.  Here are three important differences between now and then:

• Skype and video chat.  We stay in a facility that has wireless internet access, so if you brought your laptop (and many students do), it’s trivial to talk in real-time with your parents/loved ones/children at the end of the day.  This...

Here’s what you might’ve missed last week on ProfHacker:

• Alex Jarvis and I speculated about the “5 top reasons students become lazy.” Guest author Dave Parry argued that”Wordpress [Is] a Better LMS,” while I wondered about “ChatRoulette for the Classroom.” Mozilla announced the “JetPack for Learning Design Challenge Winners.”  George offered “5 Suggestions Concerning Disability, Accommodation, and the College Classroom.”
• Erin explained how to craft “The Conference Abstract” to perfection.
• A colleague has me thinking about “Bullying in Higher Ed.”  If you’re looking for a fun way to manage habits, “Daily Deeds” can help.  In the spring, a user’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of backup.  Jeff showed how he answers the question, “Where’s the Prof? Twitter Feeds for Your Office Door.”  Natalie pointed to one of Gmail’s new...

At the time this posts, I’ll be climbing on a bus with 18 students and a colleague for a week in London, where we will be greeted by a week of rain and a national rail strike.  Ah, the crazy hedonism of spring break!

• Sid Meier talks about how he designs video games like Civilization to maximize engagement.  There’s a lot to mull over from an educational point-of-view, especially the moment when he realizes that part of “realism” includes incorporating his target market’s innumeracy. (Thanks, Drew!)
• The story behind the anti-gravity monuments at several New England colleges.
• Chris Grams looks at “Love, hate, and the Wikipedia contributor culture problem“: And if traditional bureaucracies (like those in governments and large companies) tend to stifle innovation, what happens in a bureaucracy where the bureaucrats aren’t getting paid and aren’t getting any...

An anonymous commenter on “Open Thread Wednesday” asked if we believe that chairs should intervene when faculty members treat one another badly. 

In effect, I think the answer is yes: Rigor doesn’t demand that we berate or needlessly humiliate each other, or that we treat staff members with contempt and disrespect, or that we harangue our students.  It’s a bit hard for me to understand why academic freedom would include the freedom to drive each other mad.

Here are some resources worth checking out:

• No Job Is Worth This is a good place to start.  They’ve assembled a wide variety of resources, including some (hard to watch) videos about the impact of long-term workplace bullying.  Their focus is not exclusively academic.  (The colleague who’s done the most to draw this to my attention, Kathy Hermes, is featured in one of the videos.)
• C.K. Gunsalus has an excellent Inside...

Here at ProfHacker, we love to-do apps.  Whether you roll with Things, Remember the Milk, Google Tasks (forthcoming!, Teux Deux, or something else, you’ll find an enthusiast writing for the site.   There are some tasks, though, that you want to do daily and that might not sit well with a full-blown task manager.  Say you’re trying to pick up a new habit–or quit an old one.  Then, you want to keep track of your progress, but you don’t necessarily want to be thinking about it while you’re working.

Daily Deeds is an iPhone/iPod Touch app designed to help you with just this kind of low-level problem. It’s simple and clever, and what it lacks in power features it makes up for in easiness and fun.  Here’s a screenshot of one of my daily tasks:

As you can see, I’ve done a pretty good job of annoying her–4 out of the past 6 days!  And when I get around to annoying her today, I just tap...

ProfHacker has been asked–both in search meter and in person–why students become lazy. (For the print version, see “My Lazy American Students.”)  Official ProfHacker Undergrad Alex and I wanted to give this question serious consideration, and have come up with five reasons:

5. Due to Daylight Saving Time, Dunkin Donuts franchise makes all decaf.

4. Local headshop offers buy-one, get-one special on Resinate.

3. Instead of saltpeter, cafeteria accidentally larded food with tryptophan.

2. Up too late recreating the banter of Aped and Troy.

1. Sexting.  ChatRoulette.

“Students” don’t get lazy.  Sometimes, students might be tired–if it’s midterm season, for example, or, again, if it’s Daylight Saving Time.  Students might be stressed for all kinds of reasons–and they get disaffected or disengaged for all kinds of reasons.  Some of those reasons include...

In February, media hysteria about sexting seemed to recede somewhat as a new beast slouched onto the scene: ChatRoulette.  ChatRoulette connects you with random people–potentially anyone with a video camera, giving you a “next” button as your gong: If the person you’re talking with is boring or offensive, just shuffle off to the next person.

This technology has been pretty exciting, as guys are now able to show their penises to unsuspecting people from around the world, as opposed to just their neighbors.  The media coverage has been so overheated that John Stewart–no social media enthusiast–mocked it:

Casey Neistat takes a more data-driven to ChatRoulette, complete with stopwatch and pervert-graph...

ProfHacker writes a lot about backing things up.  (Viz. “A Few Ways to Back Up Your Website.” “Prof. Hacker Reviews: CloudBerry Online Backup.” “Backup for Back-to-School.” “Stop E-Mailing Files to Yourself.” “Syncplicity: Syncing More than a Folder.”)  And here’s another post, albeit a quick one, to encourage you to set aside some time to review your backup strategy.  Spring is a great time to do such a review, because you can peg it to an annual rite: the onset of Daylight Saving Time, filling out your NCAA bracket, or even doing your taxes.  (Because fiddling with your offsite backup is still better than doing taxes, right?)

This month’s reminder is brought to you courtesy of John Gruber and Merlin Mann, both of whom have excellent advice for automated, redundant, and regularly-rotated backups.  It all started, as these stories often do, with a...