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Steven D. Brewer's blog

Books, life, etc

The summer is flying by. The summer always seems to fly by, but this summer has been crazier than usual. About a week ago, I was directed by the chair to move to a new office.

A new office! With a window!

I've been in the same windowless office for 15 years. Not that I've really minded. It was a nice office, with enough space, and far enough away from the door that I wasn't disturbed by people walking by. But it did have a tendency to overheat.

In point of fact, my new office was *really* the result of work on the first floor displacing the technical staff that they've wanted to bring together in one space for years. And they just had to bump me to do it. But now I have my own office. WITH A WINDOW.

Of course, on the first day at 3pm, when the sun made it over the building and started to shine in right on my head, I emailed the chairman. "I, better than anyone, appreciate the irony of this but... I really need a shade so I can see my computer screen." The guy came to measure for the shade this afternoon.

Still -- I ended up spending the better part of a week moving into my office. Well -- actually, I spent most of the time throwing stuff out. I am a pack rat and don't throw things away if I don't have to. More times than I can count, I've had people show up who needed something that everyone else had thrown away, but that I still had. What? You need a thick-wire media converter? I've got one. What? You need a SCSI terminator? I've got one. What? You need a zip 250 drive? I've got one. But not anymore. Most of that stuff is gone now.

A few things, I preserved in the Living Museum of Dead Computers. I had a couple of shrink-wrapped copies of Caldera Linux that I kept -- those might be worth real money someday. I kept a Kodak DC40 camera. And one of those detestable Apple "hockey-puck" mice they made for a few, horrible months. It was good to keep my mind off waiting for my book.

My book! Presitaj Floroj has arrived. It's wonderful. You can buy it at createspace or you can now get both my books at Amazon. I've gotten a number of copies to bring to the Landa Kongreso this weekend. I don't know how well they'll sell. People I've showed them to here seem to like them (although I don't see them rushing out to buy a copy). And my colleague Dr. Robert Read described his copy as "Tre bela, eleganta, raviganta!" Buy your copy today! Before the Espresso Book Machine runs out of paper! :-)

When will unions become relevant again?

A lot of people have been talking about this graph lately. Today, Phil shared Can Unions Become Relevant Again?, which wrestles with how to reverse the trend. Middle-class and working-class people have come to believe that unions aren't in their best interests -- for a whole variety of reasons. A large reason, I believe, is due to propaganda from the monied interests, but, for whatever reason, it's simply true. So what's the alternative? I don't think there is one.

Unions are simply workers organizing to negotiate in common regarding their employment. If you don't have a union, you're on your own. I think we're going to see conditions for middle-class and working class people continue to decline until they rediscover the idea that organizing has value. For that reason, I don't think it's a question whether unions will become relevant again. It's rather a question of how long -- and how bad things have to get -- before people realize there's an alternative to being at the mercy of your employer.

I'm grateful to belong to a union. It's been a vehicle for me to learn a lot about my employer, the nature of my employment, and how it compares to other places on campus. Knowing stuff is always better than not.

I'm always frustrated when I hear faculty say, "The union [...] they [...]". No, no, no! It's "The union [...] we!" We are the union. The union does exactly what we do with it. The union is a vehicle for us to make the University work better.

Summertime

Summer is a weird time in academia. On the one hand, the students pack up and leave town, making the place feel like a ghost town. On the other hand, all of the work put off during the school year suddenly becomes possible, and I tend to get extremely busy. On top of that, I was involved in our local summer institute and need to build a presentation for another summer institute in Virginia. Plus bargaining, plus getting ready to move to a new office.

I'm switching to a new office! With a window! I've spent large parts of the past several days throwing out stuff: old computer hardware, publications, documents, etc. Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll be ensconced in my new digs.

I've also been working on finishing my new book. I received the proof yesterday and have been checking it carefully. It's turned out pretty well, although I've already found one or two things to fix. Looking back over a year of haiku, I find that I really like a lot of my haiku.

I realized a month or two ago that, although I've written articles about writing haiku in Esperanto, I've never written anything for the English-speakers. Accordingly, I've drafted an article about writing haiku in Esperanto which I've submitted to Poetry Magazine. They tell me they'll respond within 8 weeks. :-/ Lame.

Still, the summer is vanishing quickly: I have one trip in late June and then I'm on the road almost constantly until August. With any luck, three of those weeks will be spent in St. Croix. I can't wait.

Apple Reps Visit Me and are Rebuffed

On Friday, the team of local Apple representatives came in and did their full-court press to convince me that the iPad is the most wonderful thing ever. I remained unconvinced and explained why.

This has been a long-standing dance with me and the Apple representatives. Apple has consistently been wrong-headed with respect to education. Just as they're also increasingly wrong-headed with respect to the ability of technology to empower human creativity and freedom.

Our old rep and I had this conversation many times over the years where, with a nod and a wink, the rep would indicate that he understood the points that I was making, but that he was going to toe the Apple line and mouth the necessary talking points. This time, however, I was talking to a True Believer.

I tried to explain up-front that our goal is for students to be participants in knowledge construction. I explained that we're less interested in resources that are designed for traditional, didactic teaching that are intended to transmit information.

"Have you seen our new iBooks app?" he said and proceeded to show me a bunch of examples of resources designed for traditional, didactic teaching intended to transmit information.

I explained my position about textbooks (which is that the textbook companies are ultimately going away). I believe that the model where textbooks are designed to appeal to faculty, who require that students purchase them, is fast coming to an end. I pointed out that a number of our faculty were at the point of telling students that it didn't matter which textbook they got (new, old, whatever), because class was increasingly about small group problem-solving, where the goal was to present reasoning to support a good answer -- not to remember a particular right answer.

He continued that the app to create the books is free (as in beer) and that teachers and students could create similar resources. I admitted that Apple was deploying a clever strategy to monetize markets. I showed them the recent xkcd about this but continued that I would much rather have students working collaboratively on documents -- not creating them in isolation. And that the format of a "book" was less interesting (as a scientist) than having students create scientific papers and posters, which are the two most common forms of discourse in the life sciences -- not that writing for the popular media isn't also worth doing, but that textbook presentations were uniquely uninteresting as a form of student discourse. I indicated that I would much rather have students reading and extended Wikipedia. I showed that if you search for "mitosis" in Google, the first page that comes up is the Wikipedia page and that students could be profitably engaged checking and referencing statements there.

"But how can you know that Wikipedia is true?" he challenged.

I explained that one of the goals is to get students to embrace a more robust and tentative model for knowledge: to understand that any statement needs to be considered, checked, and integrated with prior knowledge. And that while the other resources depended on some authority (like the "author") -- they were probably just paying unknown writers to generate the content -- Wikipedia provided a history, so you could see who had contributed content when. I showed how you could assess the validity of a page by considered how many edits it had and whether those edits were gradually refining a topic, whether it was being edited back-and-forth by competing partisans, or whether it had been created by one person and not subsequently edited -- all useful information.

I also showed how I have used Drupal with the Diff module to have students write collaboratively and how the history of revisions allowed me to assess whether the writing was the work of the students and whether the members of the team had all contributed meaningfully to the project.

When I asked about centralized support of the devices, he explained that, although the devices really wanted to be "loved" by one person, it was possible to support them centrally (by using Apple's proprietary tools). We discussed BYOD and the challenge in having students come in with devices all configured differently.

I finally gave them my monologue on why I refuse to be bound to proprietary technology. How, as a grad student, when Supercard went bankrupt, I discovered that all of the work I'd done for 6 years was held hostage to someone else's business model and how I now assured that all of the work I did used open standards and could be done using Free Software.

They guy tried to argue that Apple supports Free Software, but I pointed out that Apple has moved away from any meaningful participation with the Free Software community and that, concurrent with their move into the cell phone industry, they were increasingly becoming a walled garden: that the Apple hardware you buy doesn't really belong to you and functionality often requires paying someone money so that Apple will unlock the functionality. I pointed out the recent article about how cameras in China won't do geotagging because the Chinese government doesn't permit it and how Apple had created a broken iPhone 3G for the Egyptian market for the same reasons. That kind of behavior is deeply disturbing to me.

As we were leaving, I showed him the recent Android tablet I've purchased recently and explained why I got it: on top of all of my reservations about Apple, I needed to write Esperanto characters and Apple won't let me have a keyboard with Esperanto characters. "That's an opportunity for someone to make an app!" he said.

"No, no, no!" I replied. "There is an app that I can use to copy-and-paste Esperanto text, but a third party can't fix the keyboard that you use in regular apps. Why can't I just type Esperanto characters in Twitter, Mail, and Facebook? It's a tiny fix: just a keyboard map. But Apple won't allow one to be provided. There are literally a dozen solutions in Android. But it's a problem that can't be fixed on the iPhone, because of the locked, proprietary operating system. That's just wrong."

Apple Store for Education Chaos

A few days ago, I discovered that the Apple store for education had changed and that I couldn't build proposals to order stuff. The directions were unclear: it said I needed an "Apple ID for Business", which I figured was yet some other Apple account: I've had problems for years because at some point I created two accounts with Apple (one as my regular account and one as my developer account) and Apple invalidated my regular email addresses for developer accounts and, well, let's just say that Apple's never been a database company.

So, I try to build a new account and it says, "Oh! You already have an Apple ID" and puts me into a screen where I need to enter a "Customer number" for my institution to continue. It says I can put in the institution name, but no lookup seems to work. It says I can find the number on a recent invoice, but none of my invoices seem recent enough. When I do put in a number from one of them, the system hangs. So I contact my Apple rep and he forwards my email to someone who replies, but by then the person I was trying to help has left.

It appears that the number is unique ID for our institution in Apple's new SAP database system. I finally get the number and look up my institution and get signed up. But then I'm left at the screen where I can create "Applications" or "Locations" -- with no guidance. I'm stumped for a bit. Eventually, I figure out that I have to create an Application of the type to "get access to a store" and then indicate the store. OK -- just 48 hours in and we're finally getting somewhere. It says to expect an email and here's the email I get:

Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 17:01:35 +0000 (GMT)  
From: My Access 
Subject: Access Request Notification
To: sbrewer@bio.umass.edu
    
[Notification]
[Apple Online Store]
[Your request has been submitted and is being processed. 
We'll get back to you shortly.]
    
[Request Information]
[Request ID:] 100000016422
[Request Date:] 05/24/2012
[Name:] $firstName $secondName
[Company / Institution:] UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS 
[Customer Account Number:] 39390  
[Corporate Customer Number:] 4603 
[Contract Name:] UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

Wow. Pretty craptastic. This is an email from Apple -- FROM APPLE -- from the company that supposedly prides itself on customer experience and beautiful interfaces. Blech.

I forwarded the message back and suggested that where it says "$firstName $secondName" they probably had some problem with their code. I get a reply indicating they're aware of the issue and it has already been escalated.

Now I can see why my Institution lookup failed. I was searching for "University of Massachusetts" and "University of Massachusetts Amherst" and "UMass Amherst", but not "UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS". :-/

I check periodically for hours and find that I still can't get into the store. Finally, around the time I'm leaving work, I see that my account has been approved.

The next day, I finally log into the store and am able to poke around a bit. The store is confusing too. You can't select something and then configure it. Now you're supposed to look at the basic entry, see that there's something you need to change, configure it, and then select it for your cart.

It's not clear why they deployed this system now, when its obviously not ready for prime time. And especially now when this must be when a huge number of educational clients want to order stuff. When I saw the Apple reps on Friday, I asked them about and they admitted this is not "their finest hour". It would be interesting to know what led to this debacle. But more about the Apple reps next.

Negotiating

My union, in our most recent contract negotiations, settled the economic parameters early -- very early -- in time for them to be included in the actual state budget negotiations, which is unprecedented in the time that I've been at the University. This means that, rather than having to hope for some supplemental spending bill to activate our contracts (which we have sometimes had to wait for years), there is every likelihood our new contract will take effect immediately. I credit both my union, which organized a grass-roots campaign to the push for this, and the new UMass system president Robert Caret. However, due to the expedited schedule, we were unable to discuss a number of additional issues and, instead, agreed to separate bargaining committees to discuss these issues subsequently. I agreed to serve on the committee bargaining for issues related to non-tenure-track faculty. We met today for the first session of negotiations.

Our MTA representative had encouraged us to develop a set of principles that could serve as the basis for our proposals and this strategy seemed effective for focusing discussion today. We haven't resolved any issues yet, but I thought it generated fruitful discussion.

I was also impressed with leadership of the administration team, who listened carefully to our issues and spoke carefully in response. Afterwards, I spoke briefly to him and mentioned how much I learned about the circumstances on different campuses and in different disciplines by participating in discussions like this.

The next step will be to continue discussions on our local campuses and return to the main table toward the end of June, hopefully to wrap issues up. It's an interesting and productive experience.

Pedal2Pints

Combining two of my favorite things, I participated in the 2012 Pedal2Pints ride yesterday with my great friend and colleague Buzz Hoagland. We arrived early and enjoyed the breakfast spread served by People's Pint general manager Beth Fraser. We were among the first to arrive and soon people were pouring in.

At first I felt a bit out of place wearing a t-shirt and shorts: almost everyone else was wearing a fancy riding jersey and seemed to have a high-end carbon-fiber bike. But we soon discovered that the first wave was composed of riders going on the 70 mile loop (that headed down to Amherst and over to Northampton, before heading for Greenfield). They left after a few minutes and then the short-loop people started arriving: I felt more at home among them.

We headed out, up route 5, then turned off on 116, and then took to the backroads. We stopped for a few minutes at an apiary that provides honey for mead by Green River Ambrosia. We headed out again, mostly uphill, and I was quickly dropped by the rest of the pack. That suited me just fine: I rode at my own pace -- walking up a particularly steep hill -- and periodically checking the route on google maps. There were some markings on the pavement, but they were a bit inconsistent. When I got to a particular point, the markings were ambiguous and I missed a turn. I ended up in the middle of Greenfield, so I just headed for the People's Pint brewery, where we were scheduled for lunch. When Buzz pulled in a few minutes later, I called "What took you guys so long?"

Lunch was pleasant with a sandwich, apple, and beer, although the sun was pretty brutal: there wasn't much shade and no shade on the tables. Buzz had decided to attach himself to the front riders of the second wave, so he set off a bit before me. I set off by myself again and set my own pace.

The route was pretty nice: mostly good roads with plenty of room for cyclists, with a few exceptions: the bridge over the Connecticut River being full of nastly potholes. You don't have a lot of choices for crossing over from Greenfield to Turner's Falls, but a better choice might have been to cross the Deerfield river and then take the bike trail over the Connecticut River -- that's a beautiful ride.

As I pushed on, I read the description of the route and found that it talked about "swooping down" into Millers Falls and then having a really steep climb back out and decided to turn off early and head straight for the Book Mill while I was still on high ground. Once again, I got there a few minutes ahead of the lead riders and said to Buzz, "What took you so long?" We had pint of IPA in the shade and rested before the final leg of the ride.

The last part went along Falls Road in Sunderland: one of my favorite destinations. There are cool grottoes and lovely waterfalls, picturesque farm fields, and great vistas of the Connecticut River. Everyone who passed me was very encouraging and, in the event I was stopped, people unfailing asked if I needed assistance. It was a very supportive crowd.

I was kind of dreading the last climb along Mount Sugarloaf, but it turned out not to be as grueling as my mind had made it out to be, and I rolled in to the BBC in good order, ready for good beer and good food (and bacon-chocolate-chip cookies!). I was a bit sunburned and my legs were sore, but I had a great day and look forward to riding it again next year.

MTA: Ideas Not Welcome

I attended the Annual Meeting of the Mass Teachers Association again -- probably for the last time. It's become clear that it's not an organization that welcomes new ideas. The goal of the leadership seems to be to run the annual meeting on rails where the delegates sit, stand, clap, and vote on cue with any input or new ideas discouraged -- or quashed if necessary. Why go to the effort and expense of bringing people in to a meeting if you're not going to structure things to welcome, encourage, and foster their ideas and initiatives?

Announcing my next book: Premitaj Floroj

My next book of haiku Premitaj Floroj, should be ready in time for the Landa Kongreso in June. I've started collecting imagery from the UMass Herbarium and arranging haiku together with representative images. The book will be around 100 pages long, printed in black and white, probably around $6.

When I printed my last book, I was amazed to discover that you could print a full-color book for less than $10. It meant making no profit and distributing the book only through the most limited channels, but I wasn't expecting a large readership. Not that I expect to find a mass-market for this book either.

Still, I'm having fun. I've lined up someone to write an antaŭparolo for the book and I'm enjoying the technical wizardry of compositing the text and graphics. Great fun.

Update: I've changed the title from "presitaj" to "premitaj". Thanks to Vastalto for catching that.


Rising tuition does not equal rising cost -- or quality

An open letter to President Obama:

I have serious concerns over the rhetorical arguments currently being raised by the president regarding the need to control rising tuition. The problem of student loan debt is a disgraceful crisis, but it is not a solution to blame universities for increasing tuition.

Rising tuition is not caused by increases in the cost of education. States have been slashing the funding for public higher education for decades: this has resulted in tuition increases for students, but does not signify that the education they receive costs more. In fact, colleges and universities have been quietly reducing the cost and quality of education being provided to students for a generation. Students are paying more, yet classes are larger than ever and are more and more likely to be taught by a harried, deprofessionalized, non-tenure-track faculty member. Many of these faculty don't even have an office or phone.

The greatest loss to our society is that students emerge from college deep in debt and are left unable to pursue their life's work: instead they're forced to find a job to repay their loans. Our country would be much better off if students could begin their career with the ability to become a writer or artist or small-business person on a shoestring: pursuing their craft or dream, rather than just trying to pay the bills.

If you really want to improve education, please frame your arguments so that it is clear that we need to refund higher education by investing in the idea that it benefits everyone to allow our children to rise to their highest educational potential, regardless of means. Get higher education the funding it needs and students won't need loans to pay for it.

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