What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user Sieanas TokioHotel.]

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

Here’s a friendly reminder, by the way: those of you who already have these social media accounts can follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook page, and contribute to our Flickr photo pool.

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by greenkozi]

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by hilla]

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by Sebastiano Pereira]

If you’re a Mac user, you’re probably already familiar with Dashboard, a feature introduced with the OS X 10.4 (a.k.a. “Tiger”) operating system.

Well, out of the blue, Cory sent me an email announcing that he’d created a Dashboard widget for ProfHacker because he was “bored.” Seriously. This widget is pretty nice. Let’s hope Cory gets bored more often!

Here’s how he explains things:

“This widget grabs the ProfHacker RSS feed and places the content in widget form. You can read an entire article, or click to go to the post on ProfHacker.

When you flip the widget over using the ‘i’ button, you can set the article length. If you move it all the way down, you’ll just get headlines for the articles.”

You have the option of only displaying headlines...

...or you can display as much of each article's content as you like.

You can download a ZIP file by clicking here. Please note: I’ve been using this widget for awhile now with no problems, but neither I nor Team ProfHacker assumes any liability for your computer or your data should the widget suddenly turn evil and damage something of yours.

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by corono]

Remember when we asked you to help us come up with an official comments policy? Some of you took us up on the offer! We’d like to give you about another week to contribute any edits before we officially adopt the policy. What you see below is the current draft, and after that you’ll find a reminder of how to make your contributions to this policy.

We feel like this is a pretty good policy in its current form, but if you have any thoughts about how this policy might be worded, please feel free to get involved. We’d like to have a policy in place within the next week or so.

How can you get involved? Well, if you don’t already have a PBWorks account, sign up for one, then go to http://profhackering.pbworks.com and compose or edit as you see fit. Once the policy has reached a stage that feels something like “complete,” we’ll adopt it as our official comments policy. And, you should know, we’ll publish the policy on the site with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by albany_tim]

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by Sunfox]

Ah, the crazy hedonism of the weekends!  Here are five links and a video to get you through:

• At Teaching College Math, Maria H. Andersen offers a 3-part series on “Organizing Your Digital Self”
• In light of this week’s post on “These Kids Today,” and the comments it drew, see this NY Times article on “Making College ‘Relevant’“  (via Elizabeth Kissling)
• This article on the Brooklyn Museum’s openness toward creative commons-style uses of its collections is encouraging
• Nicholas Carr’s latest provocation: “Information Wants to Be Free, My Ass“
• This week, I’m writing several letters of recommendations for students for local scholarships.  Too late, I remembered George’s handy checklist (adapted from Matt Kirschenbaum) for students when they ask you to write.

This video’s a year old, but it resurfaced on Twitter the other day after John Palfrey showed it in a presentation at the Educause Learning Initiatives meeting.

At my school, classes start on Monday, so this is the last weekend to sleep at all . . .

Image by Flickr user BinaryApe / Creative Commons licensed

What’s on your mind?

How’s your semester going?

Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?

Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?

What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?

Let us hear from you in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by timstock_nyc]

I’ve always admired the brevity of the comments policy found on Dr. B’s blog: “Comments are great; obnoxious comments get deleted. Deal.” However, what would count as an “obnoxious comment”? Ah, there’s the tricky part.

When Jason and I first started talking about ProfHacker, one of the things I was adamant about was the comments policy. “No snark allowed,” I said. Over the last 6 years or so I’ve become increasingly frustrated by what seems to me an increasingly malicious and superficial level of exchange in the comments sections of some of the most widely-read news sites and blogs.

No site in which I have editorial influence is going to allow such comments to flourish. We’ve yet to articulate an official policy, however. This is where you (the ProfHacker readership) come in.

The Idea

We’re going to try crowdsourcing our comments policy. Why? Because we believe that you know what you’re doing when it comes to contributing worthwhile and productive comments. The reason we believe this is because out of more than 2,600 comments that have appeared on ProfHacker, fewer than 10 of them have been the kinds of comments that drive me (and others) crazy.

You’re good at avoiding snark, in other words. What’s snark? I’m thinking of the kind of discourse David Denby takes on in his most recent book. It’s commentary characterized by a condescending, abusive, and dismissive attitude. It’s the cheap shot masquerading as wit. It’s cynicism disguised (poorly) as wisdom.

It’s not what ProfHacker is about. We are committed to fostering an environment characterized by generosity, creativity, and (as corny as it might sound) kindness. These are the qualities that we found in evidence at THATCamp 2009, and that I’ve found in abundant supply when working with–or just asking for advice from–people working in the digital humanities.

The nuts and bolts of how this will work

If you don’t already have a PBWorks account, sign up for one, then go to http://profhackering.pbworks.com and compose or edit as you see fit. Once the policy has reached a stage that feels something like “complete,” we’ll adopt it as our official comments policy. And, you should know, we’ll publish the policy on the site with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

That’s it… No, really!

Okay, here are a few words of advice about group authorship in a wiki environment

• Collaborative authorship can be weird if you’re not used to it.
• Please just go ahead and start adding, editing, or removing materials from the collaboratively-authored document you’re working on.
• You don’t need to suggest something in a comment, or critique the way something’s phrased. Just jump right in and make the changes you think are necessary.
• This is not a delicate writing environment; you won’t break it.
• PBWorks automatically tracks changes, and we can roll back to a previous version whenever we like–barring unforeseen catastrophic failures of some kind.

Any questions?

If so, please leave them in the comments below.

[Creative Commons licensed flickr photo by jtravism]