Writing and Time

So, here it is almost the end of the week and I have writing tasks piling up which is very stressful. Here are the tasks I currently have and where they are (in order):

1) Article for magazines on GPS surveying in Iraq: I have 20 pages to read and need to draft the article ASAP. However, this is a paying job so I need to get on it.

2) Article for magazines on archeology in Egypt: a phone interview is set up for Friday afternoon. Otherwise, I know little about this one. Again, paid work.

3) My co-author and I need to finish the Harry Potter chapter for the book Reading Harry Potter II. It is due after Spring break. I have ordered the books we need to my shelf in the NYPL-Humanities. Academic articles do not pay.

4) The journal article Alien Ware is in a long rough draft (again with my co-author), but I need more research for it—probably at the NYPL Performing Arts branch. The due date it loose on this one. I hope this goes into Science Fiction Studies or Science Fiction Television and Film.

5) My solo book on Virtual Culture is on hold until summer, though it is in a long, ugly draft. Ugh. Maybe I can finish it this year. Maybe not. I want this one done so I can get on with either the gaming book or the SF Film one.

So, I don’t exactly feel better after making that list, but it seems a bit more manageable. Kind of.

Abbreviations

It just occured to me that I use a lot of abbreviations. A habit from online teaching. Here are some of them:

EOC End of Class
Bb6 Blackboard6
PPT PowerPoint
LOL Laughs Out Loud (this one is an "emote" for you techno-peasants)
ROFLMAO (Figure this one out on your own), LOL

WEEK TWO BLOG

Please read "The Allegory of the Cave" on Wikipedia. What, in your own words, is an allegory? What is the allegory all about? What connections can you make with The Matrix? And, yes, there is a lot of material on the web about this. If you use ideas from a source, be sure to tell us where it came from and post the link. Do not cut and paste off someone elses' blog or website onto your blog.

Hectic

So, the last couple of days have been hectic. It takes a few weeks for students (and myself) to get used to the quick pace of the media cluster. Now that we have to start the ePortfolio sooner in the semester that gives us three complictaed tasks to master in a few days--blogging, Blackboard, and ePortfolio. For next semester I need a PowerPoint that explains what the three are for, what the differences are between them, why we are doing them at all and etc. The good thing is, of course, that my students always end up being pretty tech-savy by the end of the semester as we also learn PowerPoint and (as time allows) Movie Maker as well.

This weekend I will finish out the schedule for the rest of the semester so I can "hand it out" (that is, post to Bb6) next week.