Microsoft is evil.

I know, I am beating a drum that many have beaten before me but being the nice lady that I am, I listened to my friends who are schooled in the ways of Gates and installed the XP operating system on my dinosaur of a computer and have been miserable ever since.

My misery springs from the fact that I have held on to Microsoft products for the simple sake of accessing my Blackboard Gradebook from off campus. Internet Explorer is the only browser that will allow me to do this. If I try to use Mozilla, the application hangs and I become increasingly frustrated. Add the fact that Service Pack II has only made my life more difficult and one can understand why I wish to run screaming into the world of open source computing.

I used to love blogs. I thought they were going to be the Next Great Thing to introduce in the classroom. After three semesters, however, blogs are losing their lustre. Students are confused by them, unable to write, paralyzed with fear of blogging, or they are already light years ahead of the class with their own LiveJournals which have all the bells and whistles.

I have discovered that my honeymoon with blogs is over, mostly because there really is no room for spirited interaction between my students and myself in the blogs. Yes, I can require that they respond to another person's blog, but one student said that, compared to a discussion forum, leaving responses to blogs felt more like leaving a note for someone who is out. The discussion forum, she said, felt more like an ongoing conversation which was more fun.

Check this out:

One of the Deadheads posted this in chat this morning with the preamble:

"When President Bush was questioned about tribal sovereignty in the 21st century at a gathering of minority journalists he responded: "Tribal sovereignty means that. It's sovereign. You're a ... you're a ... you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity." Jesse Jackson makes light of Bush's remarks at the conference and we speak with Mark Trahant, the reporter who asked Bush the question."

Then he posted this bit:

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking at the UNITY Conference this past Friday. Afterwards, the Reverend Jesse Jackson held a news conference and he was questioned by Brent Merrill of the publication, Smoke Signals.

Hello everyone!

I decided it's finally time to rev up my blog and join my esteemed colleagues from USF: Patricia Roy, William Toms and, of course, my favorite Matt Barton. I am joining, partly to offer Patricia an ally on the Literature side (I mean that lightheartedly of course), but mostly to share my experiences, frustrations, joys, and hallucinations about rhetoric and composition.

I am in my third year of attempting my MA in Lit at USF, but I have been teaching Comp I and II with some success for all the semesters I've been here in lovely Tampa. I was priveleged to be Joe Moxley's assistant last semester, and am also priveleged to be helping in the development of the current online course. Today, I am working on developing the FYC Syllabi for traditional, face-to-face classes.