"Re-mediation Roomy-Nation" is my work blog and web site. I'm an Instructional Technology Specialist at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg VA. In that role I spend a lot of time thinking about and implementing new ways to represent knowledge and ideas through technology, as well as dabble in the various hardware, software, and trouble-shooting fun involved in working with faculty from a variety of disciplines. My favorite technologies to explore are XML, XSLT, and RDF / Semantic Web approaches to knowledge searching and dissemination.. I'm getting fairly good with Javascript and PHP, and my next mission (partly to train myself better) is Python.
The title of my blog tries to capture some key aspects of how I imagine my work:
- Re-mediation
- I think of the term "remediation" in this context as the translation of teaching and learning activities, practices, and approaches from 'traditional' media (pens, paper, chalkboards, classrooms, etc.) to various electronic media (blogs and wikis, audio and video, screens, browser sidebars, semweb data delivery, etc.). I describe it as a translation as a close analogy to translating between languages. It's cliche to say something is always lost in translation, but by the same token something is always gained. I work with faculty to consider carefully both what is gained and lost, and to help them use the technologies they choose to employ.
- Roomy-nation
- The pun is meant to capture a lot (not the least of which is conceptual playfullness). But I also want to approach any technological choice with clear and deliberate rumination.
- -nation
- Here I'm signalling an importance of community. Whether it be learner comunities, instructor communities, technologist communities, coding communities, or what-have-you, social cohesiveness in work, play, or technology is high in my mind.
- Roomy-
- I have two things in mind here. First is expansiveness and inclusiveness in the communities referred to above. Second is the usage of the 'roomy' image in Anglo-Saxon. It can refer to one's mind being broad and strong:
Nysse ic gearwe be ære rode riht ær me rumran geþeaht þur ða mæran miht on modes þeaht wisdom onwreah.
I did not readily know about the true cross until to me a roomier mind, through the greater power, revealed wisdom in my mind.
Cynewulf. Elene
You will remember me from UR, I hope. I saw your picture on Gardner's blog which I read frequently. Then I saw his link to your blog. I am doing, in many ways, the same thing you are. I work with our tech liaisons here in our Center for TLT, but I am supposed to be the "teaching and learning" person! It is a weird, precarious, technology-and-yet-not-technology role. My title is "faculty development specialist." Do you guys have anyone like me in your group?
I will keep reading your blog now too, along with Gardner's...
It sounds like our roles are very similar. A year or two ago there was a deliberate name change from being 'liaisons' to being 'specialists' in an effort to distinguish between the technological kernel of hardware and basic software to the more teaching and learning-oriented development of practices and use of specialized applications to enhance the classroom.
Interesting to see that the comments feature is set up by default to be able to sustain a threaded discussion. I hope the RSS feed is comment selectable: it'd be cool to subscribe to all comments, or to those comments whose threads are of particular interest. Very cool.
Love it. Keep it coming. . .
Inspiring stuff. Keep it coming. Kudos!