People in both genders know that a romantic dinner can make for a fun evening, especially when the only other option is Shit-cobeck. What I’m going to do in this post is let you in on a real “cool tool,” a simple dinner that looks looks fancy, tastes great, and only takes a minimal amount of work, although you might want to have some good prep time.

The menu includes a good steak, tomato salad, Italian bread, and chocolate covered fruit.

Other Advantages to the Joseph McMahon Special:
- You’re eating reasonably healthily, but I wouldn’t eat this every day. You could definitely do worse.
- You have almost no dishes to do afterwards.
- You get to use delicious fire.
- You’ll attract the attention of other fine ladies/gents who will smell what you’re making.
- You’ll spend less than you would at Outback. Outback sucks anyway. (This dinner cost $35 for two)
- You’ll feel more accomplished when you’re done cooking.

Let’s break it down into separate dishes, and make a list of ingredients.

First, you’ll need to get some charcoal, unless you use a gas grill, in which case you’ll need to get a pair of balls. Just get straight-up black charcoal, forget the smoke flavorings and other balderdash. Kingsford makes a “BBQ Bag,” a fair deal for a college student, and you can just light the whole bag on fire. If not, get some lighter fluid, too.

Chocolate Fruit

This is actually the hardest part of the operation, and will take you the longest. In the baking section of the store, get some good chocolate chips. Skip the semi-sweet, go for milk or dark, depending on taste; you’re not adding any extra sugar. You can also buy “dipping chocolate” or “melting chocolate,” but it’s all the same stuff.

Get some fruit. Strawberries are awesome. Get some that look good to you, if they look too dark or bruised, find another box. I usually have to throw out only one or two strawberries from each pack. Bananas are good too, as are oranges (which you’ll want to segment) and grapes. Stay away from stuff that’s too soft. Raspberries are a mixed bag, I think they’re too seedy. You’ll also want to get some waxed paper.

Once you have your fruit and chocolate, wash the fruit and pat it dry. The next part is tricky. Chocolate burns very easily, burning chocolate gives off an unpleasant odor and starts to “crust.” Gross. In order to avoid this problem, make a double-boiler, that is, fill a pot with some water, and put an empty pyrex bowl on top of it. Put the pot on medium heat, and dump the chocolate into the pyrex bowl. The steam from the water will melt the chocolate, and it won’t burn so easily. Once the chocolate is melted, glossy, and smooth, turn the stove off. Rock and roll. Line a plate with the waxed paper, start spearing the fruit with a fork, and dip those puppies. Transfer to the wax paper, one at a time, until you’ve made a huge mess and/or you’ve run out of fruit. Immediately put some soap in the pyrex bowl, and dump the hot water into it to soak. The pot is already clean, unless you’re really anal about water and pots or something.

Send the fruit to the fridge, the chocolate will be set within 2 hours.

We kind of ate some before I could take a picture. This was simple strawberries and oranges.

Tomato Salad

Get some good, medium-sized tomatoes, good olive oil, and red wine (or balsamic) vinegar. ‘Nuff Said.

Get a good-sized ball of mozzarella cheese. They cost about four bucks, if you need help, ask the deli dude.

Get some fresh basil. If you can’t find fresh, powdered will do, but here’s a tip: you can keep fresh basil in a freezer for half a year, and nobody will know the difference. Slice the mozzarella cheese and tomatoes, and arrange them on a plate so they look like this. Add basil too. In this example, I put a little Ms. Dash Italian Medley (dried shit) on top, but that’s optional.

Drizzle some olive oil, vinegar, and salt on the tomato salad right before serving.

That was really easy, wasn’t it? All you had to do is slice some vegetables and cheese.

Italian Bread

Go buy some from the store. The stuff at Giant is really good, and it costs $1.69. You don’t have to heat it.

The Steak

You’ll need to get a couple of steaks. Steak is good stuff. Don’t worry about getting filet mignon or the most expensive cut there is, it’s not worth it. You can’t go wrong, though, with a standard t-bone. They’re moderately priced and easy to spot in the store. Try and find one that has good marbling, that is, with some white fat in the middle. A lot of the fat melts away on the grill (that’s what falls in and causes flare-ups), but you’ll want to trim the excess fat off the sides.

What else do you need? Nothing, really. Don’t marinade a t-bone. If you get a cheaper cut, like a strip steak, or flank steak, (still perfectly good cuts of meat, but you get what you pay for) you can put some sauce on it, but you shouldn’t need to marinade a really good steak. I usually rub some olive oil on the outside (keeps it from sticking to the grill), add a couple of peppercorns, salt, and some garlic powder. That’s all you need.

Steak cooks better at room temperature, but if that grosses you out, don’t worry about it. I usually rub the oil mixture on the steak just before cooking it.

Dump some charcoal in that grill, or light your BBQ bag. If you go the former route, let some lighter fluid soak on for a couple of minutes. LIGHT THAT SUCKER. BOOM!!!! The grill is NOT READY for delicious steak if there are flames coming out of it. When the charcoal is ashed over and glowing red, you’re set. See if you can get your hand to within a few inches of the grill grate. You can’t do it without burning yourself, and neither can the steak, but the steak is already dead, so it doesn’t mind being cooked. Use tongs to put the steak on the grill.

The trickiest part about grilling steaks, and making meat in general, is testing for doneness. Eventually it will become intuitive to you. People will attempt to teach you how to “touch your hand” to test, but that never worked for me. If you got a t-bone, and you like your steak cooked like most people do, cook it on one side, uncovered, for five minutes. Flip it over and cook it for another four minutes. Touch the tongs to the center of the steak; it’ll have some give, but won’t be “squishy.” Cover the steak for the first five minutes, and leave the cover off after the flip.

Put the steaks on a clean plate, ignore the blood. Seeing some blood is actually another sign that you’re eating meat that’s cooked enough to eat. Don’t ask me why. Let the steaks sit for a couple of minutes, and serve with the tomato salad and bread.

This is how my steak looked.

You shouldn’t need any sauce or anything, unless you really, really like sauce. I like putting a few drops of the Chipotle Tabasco on mine, but that’s like on everything I eat.

That’s that! All you’ll have to clean up is a couple of plates and a pyrex bowl.

My test subject for this operation approved.

Image editing is absurdly basic, including options for saturation, color, red-eye, and a few effects. However, it does integrate with Facebook, and (surprisingly) Google’s (also free) Picasa image editor and organizer. Very cool. Also included are 2GB of storage. But Adobe, come on, no resize option? Give me a break.

The interface is very, very slick, but it also seems pretty resource-intensive.

It’s still in beta, and has a few flaws, but definitely worth checking out. A feedback option available throughout the site allows you to put your input into a short survey. I recommend it.  www.photoshop.com

Bonus: personal URL, also free. Flickr does this too, but you can’t beat http://joemcmahon.photoshop.com .

You might be saying “well there’s no organizational or personal need for Facebook, but students use it all the time anyway so you’re just a BIG DUMMY!” I’m getting there.

If I were a professor designing a course, any course, I would ask myself all of the following questions long before day one: (FLOWCHART ALERT)

1. How can I enhance my course using instructional technology?

There are almost always some answers to this one, let’s say I settle on one way. I want to install a class wiki for English 101.

2. Do I really need to use this technology? Is this the best way to achieve an academic goal?

What if the answer is “no?” I decide under the guidance of the Division of Teaching and Learning technologies that I really don’t need the wiki. THAT’S OKAY! It’s part of the greater process of deciding what works and what doesn’t work, in the context of a particular class, and if I’ve made some sort of relationship with a sub-organization that can help me in the future (DTLT), all for the better. I’ve also saved myself and my class a TON of work, because I realized before the class started that it just wasn’t going to work.

What if the answer is “yes?” I decide that the wiki is the best possible space for creating (for example) a class literary glossary.

3. Can I come up with a persuasive, needs-based argument to explain my solution to the class?

If I answered number 2 “yes,” I should be able to create the argument. Maybe I won’t get everyone super-engaged in my solution, but at the very least, they’ll understand how it makes sense, and take it seriously. Some of them might be inclined to do the work.

4. Do I have an effective method of teaching the technology? Do I need assistance from an ITS?

This can be hard to do. On one hand, many students like technology, and are more than willing to “try it out” and mess with a particular system until they get it right (it’s called nerd theory). Most students, however, have better things to do with their time than technological experimentation, and would rather have an explicit “crash course” on how to use it.

Students who don’t understand how to use the technology will either not use it, or use it begrudgingly. It might seem like I’m really restating the obvious here. In that case, I give anyone reading this a challenge. Ask a student who has a UMWblog why their subtitle says “just another umwblogs.org weblog.” These students are obscenely easy to find. Once you’ve done that, ask them how they can change the subtitle. I guarantee, GUARANTEE that you’ll get the following response at least 70% of the time:

“UHHHHHHH…..”

I’m not faulting anyone for not teaching how to change a blog subtitle, if that’s what’s going on, it seems like a pretty benign, mundane thing. But can students really be expected to navigate the system, post, edit, and make comments if they don’t understand that they can change the subtitle of their own blog?

This scenario is so obvious, no wonder students feel awkward and uncomfortable asking questions about it. The reality is, technology needs to be taught so that questions don’t need to be asked. Again, critical course time which could be used for teaching the content is wasted in favor of technology training seminars.

5. How can I engage my students in my course technology?

I have my wiki, and my training days. I’m ready to teach this course, but something is still wrong. Why, oh why, oh why aren’t these students getting into it? AAAARRRGGHHH!

This is the ultimate question, isn’t it? Again, there’s no “miracle answer.” Students are still selfish, arrogant, stubborn, lazy bastards, but let’s go back to the Facebook example for a second.

If every college professor were as effective as Facebook at engaging students, academic woes would be over. What is it? What’s the magic secret? Is it that I can go and drool over pictures of Jeff McClurken whenever I want to? That I can exert my lovelorn gaze upon the profile of a cute sophomore history major? Is it the fascination with Steve Greenlaw’s similarities to Santa Claus? That’s all part of it, but it’s more in how Facebook is implemented. In fact, any amount of truly engaging content works the same way, Internet-based or not.

Conventionally, technology is implemented using a push system. That is, the technology is introduced in an organization, and its members are expected to use it. “All employees are expected to use the new BlackBerries within one week.” Email was pushed until it became a global communication standard. Basically, the technology is “pushed” to the user, who is expected to use it. The result is hardly engaging.

Engaging technology, on the other hand, uses a pull system. I realize I keep going back to Facebook for this, but it’s a brilliant, brilliant example. Pull systems use a series of incentives to “pull” the user back towards the technology, again, and again, and again. Facebook says to a new user: “use Facebook to…keep up with friends and family, share photos and videos, reconnect with old classmates,” etc. Nobody “pushed” me into using Facebook, but those are some pretty strong incentives to get me to join. I might not necessarily need to use the service, but boy howdy that sounds like a lot of fun, I sure want to.

Once I’ve joined, the incentives continue. When someone posts on my wall, or tags me in a photo, I get an email, giving me a pretty big incentive to go back to the site. It’s a masterful exploit of self-interest. Eventually, I don’t even need the emails anymore (I opted out after a while). I have become engaged so far into it, I can’t easily get out.

Blog comments work the same way. When someone comments on my blog, I want to go back to my blog site to read it. I might counter-comment, I might read their blog, I might even post again. Who knows, but I’m more engaged than I was before I got the comment, even if I’m the laziest student alive. As Serena poignantly pointed out to me yesterday, “everybody is a comment whore.”

Not that it’s really feasible to say: “let’s create a class blog based entirely on a pull incentive system.” That’s really hard, although it could be doable, maybe by Gardner. There is, however, a lot more freedom to experiment with incentives in a classroom setting as opposed to, say, a corporate setting. It could be possible, even, to create an environment in which students, normal students who otherwise would be quiet, to go beyond what they would normally do. That is, go outside of the “comfort zone,” as Gardner says.

Why are incentive-based technologies mutually beneficial? They engage the students, for one, and they also engage the professor. Let’s say I’m a professor who stresses the importance of blog commenting, for example. In addition to the built-in, self-interest incentive, I tell the students that their final grade will be raised by one full letter if they regularly reflect critically on their own content. “Regularly” remains intentionally undefined. Some may call foul on the ambiguity, but in essence this isn’t really any different than saying “20% of your grade will be based upon class participation” which is also a very nebulous concept.

Suddenly, people are posting comments on blogs, and at the very least, they are slightly more technologically engaged than they were before. Engaged in the content, class, and themselves.

There’s another, much simpler way of getting the students engaged. Once I, the professor, get past the initial moans and groans (remember how I did the needs-based explanation, so the students are taking me seriously) of teaching the technology, it’s a lot less work to post journal entries on a blog than to write them in Word, print them out, bring them to class, etc. It seems really obvious and mundane, but I just eliminated a lot of intermediate steps. Plus, it’s encouraging to students when they understand that blogging isn’t quite as formal as regular classroom writing, and typically isn’t graded as harshly.

Has anyone tried this before? I don’t know, but I imagine that there are plenty of other ways to give students a reason to WANT to use the technology. Here are a few that I came up with:

1. Controversial Subject Matter: Students are very, very vocal about what they think, and they are not afraid to say so. In fact, the like talking about it. I certainly do.

2. Enabling the Curious: Students are very curious. Once they firmly understand how to use something, introduce a way to make their job even easier. How might you integrate flickr into a blog post or wiki, for example?

3. Free beer. Wait, what?

No solution is going to engage all of the students at once, there’s always going to be pissants.

It’s hard to come up with new ideas for teaching and learning, especially as a student. I’m a student. I’ve done very little teaching, and I appreciate how hard it is. I’m just saying, here’s what I observed, I’ve been here for four years, and here’s what I think about it.

I’m also not blaming any one group for the lack of learning engagement. Students are often obnoxious, and always difficult. Professors often jump bandwagons. Let’s face it, most new media software (wordpress, mediawiki) is not terribly student-friendly, but that’s not really my realm. And some people will just never, ever care, no matter how much pushing or pulling a professor may do. Unfortunate, but true.

With that I would like to propose a Faculty Academy presentation and discussion on this sort of thing. Maybe collectively, students and faculty can come up with some solutions on to how we can better engage in instructional technologies.

Thanks for reading. PS. Thanks for everyone who commented so far.

All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall…

You are a new teacher at a small liberal-arts university of approximately 4,000 students. Your task is to teach English 101. Yes, welcome to academic Hell. Before the class begins, you hear about a fantastic solution from the university’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. The solution is a free, community-wide blogging site. The first day of classes, you explain the system to your students with great enthusiasm.

“You’ll be BLOGGING your ASSIGNMENTS!”

You glance around the room. A couple of students are about to jump for joy. A couple more look like they’re about to drop the class. Overall, the response is melancholy, nonchalant. It’s the loudest “ho-hum” you’ve ever heard.

What went wrong? Why do two people love the idea, while another two are considering suicide? How are you going to engage the vast majority of your students who just don’t care?

I don’t know, exactly. I’m not a teacher. It’s ultimately your job. But I can tell you some things I do know about this sort of thing. I’m not expecting to blow any minds here, I don’t have a “miracle solution,” and any teacher is going to have dissenters, no matter what. I’m only telling you what I’ve seen from four years at this academic institution.

Students Don’t Use What They Don’t Think They Need

Most students wouldn’t be able to define “organizational need” if asked, but I’m consistently amazed at how privy college students (especially freshmen) are to the concept, if subconsciously. Students as a whole will fundamentally reject things they don’t feel they have a need for. Working people usually don’t have the freedom to make the rejection. That is, “I don’t need all that crap, I’ll take a different section,” to “Use the BlackBerry, or you’re fired.” There’s not a whole lot of wiggle room in scenario 2; a student can slack off in some areas and make up for it in others.

That in mind, I’ll tell you about another good example. In middle through high school, we had binders. A lot of binders. A binder for every class. You know what? Fuck binders. I had 5 binders for 5 classes when I could’ve used 1 binder for all my classes. But we HAD to have them. And if a teacher was really, truly horrible, he/she would have a graded “binder check.” I failed my binder checks, because I gave my teachers the big “fuck you,” and I didn’t care. Everyone failed the binder checks, because everyone knew they didn’t need the binders.

There’s another very similar group to students in terms of needs assessment. The elderly don’t like technology, either. It’s not that they think it’s hard to use. An older person who says “it’s too hard for me to learn” says so because they are either astoundingly ignorant, or, more likely, that they just don’t feel like putting in the effort to learn how to use it. Why would an older person use a cell phone when the rotary worked fine for 40 years?

I’m not trying to say that the institution should shy away from experimental learning, in any way. I fully believe that if an educational option looks like it’s going to be viable, it should certainly be explored, at least evaluated, and teaching faculty certainly have a say in this process. If I were a professor, however, I would very thoroughly consider the needs of my class before selecting a potential option. If playing Half-Life 2 looks like the best possible way to explain interactive narrative to a course, so be it, but I really need to be able to explain exactly why this is the best option, or my students are going to be anything but engaged.

What happens when the professor sets up a class blog for the sake of class blogging? First of all, most of the students don’t really care. They are not engaged, and they don’t feel like doing the work. This aggravates the professor. The professor becomes disengaged in the students. But it’s much more frustrating to me, because I see (and there are those who share this opinion with me) that it is totally, blatantly wasteful. Wasteful of class time, both mine and the professors, and wasteful of my money. The time spent learning how to do the work could’ve been used to do the work, for a lot less hassle. Now, obviously, if I’m taking a computer science course, or XML writing course, there needs to be time in class to learn how to do the writing, but I shouldn’t have to blog (as an example) reports that I could’ve done much, much more efficiently in Microsoft Word.

Speaking of “organizational need,” don’t even get me started on Tablet PCs, the biggest waste of university funds in human history.

Tomorrow I’m going to finish this post, with some more encouraging ideas, including how to get students to actually want to use information and instructional technology by creating mutual incentives. This is a process, I feel, that is both engaging to the professor and students.

Stay tuned.

I like gardening, and growing things. Green things in general; I like ‘em. It so happened that I bought a head of garlic from the store a couple of weeks ago, and, as luck would have it, a couple of cloves sprouted in my kitchen.

“So,” I thought, “that’s interesting, that usually doesn’t happen in this weather.”

I am poor, so I made a makeshift pot out of two tupperware containers. I cut a hole in one and it drains into another. I have a bunch of potting mix leftover from repotting my pineapple plant, so I filled up the tupperware with mix, and planted the garlic.

About a week later, lo and behold.

I’m going to let this go for a while, and replant it in a pot in March. We’ll see what happens.

I think it’s pretty funny that we get more storage space on UMWblogs than what UMW actually gives us for our own personal use. Looks like 75MB to (don’t quote me on this) 10 or 15MB.

There isn’t a lot of stuff that really, really gets on my nerves, and I very, very rarely am truly angry. Some things, however, are completely inexcusable, and have come up in the past week.

Number one. If you have more than 15 items, do not go to the express line at the Giant. Especially if you’re a raucous old woman, and you have a calculator, and you’re tabulating exactly how much everything is going to cost you, and you decide that you’re going to pay for your groceries with gift cards.

No, I’m not lying, and, in fact, the cashier told me that this was a regular occurrence. Yep, even the gift card part.

I am truly, truly at a loss as to why this happened. It should be a felony, especially if you’re pedantic enough to bring a calculator to a grocery store. I’m glad you can deftly calculate the sales tax on your year’s supply of Midol, please figure out how to count. You malodorous bitch.

Number two. I really hate it when people come up with ridiculous analogies in an attempt to get out of arguments. You know what I’m talking about, when you’re having a civil debate with somebody:

“Well maybe the best solution is to pull out of Iraq.”
“Well that’s like saying you’d just leave your grandmother at a crosswalk.”

No. It isn’t. Do you compare hockey to football? No. You don’t. Shut the fuck up.

Here’s a classic example.

“I still think abortion is a woman’s choice. I ultimately don’t really have a say in it, as I do not have a vagina and am currently unfamiliar with the intimate operations thereof.”
“Well that’s like saying you’d be willing to throw babies into mass graves off the African coast.”

No. It isn’t. Congratulations, you have the approximate logical reasoning ability of a two-year-old.

You want to give me an answer you didn’t pull out of your ass? We’ll talk. I know I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, but even I can do better than pull this shit.

Number three. John Mayer and James Blunt. I don’t know why, they just really irritate me.

Hmmph.

In keeping with the spirit, however, I’m reminding everyone about a cool tool that’s absolutely free. I’m talking about the free AVG Anti-Virus. From my experiences, it’s twice as easy to use, more effective, and a lot less resource-heavy than Symantec Corporate. It’s also compatible with Clean Access.

Dr. Joe’s advice? Get rid of Symantec and install AVG Free.

 http://free.grisoft.com

Squash is a phenomenon. Squash: a noise, action! Onomatopoeia! A child steps on a crawly critter on a summer afternoon, and then refuses to eat his dinner. Squash? Gross! Vegetables! No, mom, that’s not really spaghetti, what are you trying to pull? Squash! Play! Rally! Blinding speed, hearts race with the swish of rackets. Squash. Subdue. Quell. Better stop that uprising. Squash is a phenomenon, squash is contextual, a disambiguation page. Squash is versatility, flexibility, strength, weakness, joy, tears, heartbreak, and love. Squash is complex. Squash sure can be difficult sometimes, so don’t worry if you can’t digest it all!

More on the way, I think.