I’m marking again. Every time I mark an assignment there are distant students who could have got better marks if they had used a decent scholarly commentary or two, to supplement whatever they, their aunt Jemima (who did a course at Capenwray in the 1960s) or their pastor happen to have. Time and again I tell them, so now I’m telling you, the secret of a massive theological library that offers (at least) several good solid recent commentaries (in stock when you go to look for them)¹ on every Bible book. And, to make a good story better, this huge resource is available in your own home :)

Or a download link

1. And with your local theological library isn’t it always the case that the best commentaries on the book you are interested in have always been borrowed by either a PhD student or a class of hungry students with an assignment due?

I was interrupted by this Welcome Swallow, I think (since they seldom sit around on fence posts) he was on a Half-work Day too ;)

Today was a “half-work” day at Cloudy Paddocks. I got all the work I needed to done in half a day, and so could spend the other half on fencing the pig paddock. This is brilliant when it works as (on the change is as good as a rest principle) I get more than half the work done in each half that I would in a full day. It uses up a day of holiday, but keeps me on top of both my day job and my hobby job.

Pigcatraz or the pigs "happy place"?

Today I finished¹ the new fence for the pig paddock. When Richard was here, but there’s been little progress since.

The fence to this bush needs upgrading still.

I had been calling the paddock Pig Heaven as it has trees, damp patches and all sorts of piggy delights. But then I began to think of the theology of that :( So now, I’m calling it the Pigs’ Happy Place. I know there’s an allusion to the Sky TV adverts in this, but think about it… Sky want to keep their customers more or less content so they become food for advertisers. I want to keep my pigs really content till they become bacon. Not much difference is there? Except I won’t charge my customers!

1. Except for a few bottom staples on battens, really difficult with only one person despite Strainright’s brilliant batten holder, and the “Taranaki gate” which needs some thought.

Click for full graphic

Sadly the students who need this advice most probably don’t read my blog ;)

However, for students and others who do here  is some good sensible advice and a quick revision of some of the more useful operators one can use in searching Google.

HT: Lifehacker from HackCollege.com

PS more than 70% of students in NZ do not use Macs, they still cost too much for most students.

Photo by Wesley Fryer

The stats suggest readers of Sansblogue mainly don’t live in Auckland and are more likely to have children (or even grandchildren) of an age to start tertiary study than to be in this position themselves. However, in case you (or someone you know) IS starting tertiary study in Auckland this year do attend (or suggest they attend) the afternoon Scripture Union and TSCF are organising at the University of Auckland this Saturday. It’s geared to new students heading off to universities and other tertiary institutions “who want to think about their faith in this new context.” It also offers tips on study skills and surviving in the new environment. So a great chance to increase your chances of successful study.

When: 05 February 12:00 – 16:30

Location: OGGB5, Owen G. Glenn Building, University of Auckland (12 Grafton Road)

Details here: Transitions Brochure

HT: Greenflame

Today was Carey Principal’s Day (sort of a staff retreat under another name) two experiences have me thinking about how our changing communications technologies are changing libraries.

The ghost of libraries past (photo from 23 dingen voor musea)

The first was driving up for the day. Our “farm” is three hours away, so on the journey I listened to some great radio, from the BBC and ABC. None of the programmes (not even the always stimulating Digital Planet, or the often intriguing All in the Mind) could get me to remember when they are “on” or rearrange my life so as to listen to them. One silent revolution in my life over the last several years has been the quantity of radio I now hear. Almost none of it live. Digital technology, and Internet delivery, enable me to shift time, and ignore geography, and listen to what I like when I like :)

During the day, when our librarian had presented her dream of the Carey library in five year’s time,¹ our staff comedian (and resident American) Brian Krum quipped: “So you want the library to imitate Borders ;)” Siong is equally quick: “No I want Borders to imitate us!”

The ghost of libraries to come? (Jan Steen "Argument over a card game")

Siong is right, libraries (already in part, by five years away so much more) are about breaking down borders. The library of the present/near future is a Library without Borders. Library users no longer need or want the hushed “study space” of yesteryear. Or if they do they are hopeless stick-in-the-muds who enjoy anything “retro”. The information and ideas libraries distribute is increasingly available anywhere anytime. Libraries are becoming places to interact with others about that information and those ideas.

The old, outside-in, library was a place you went to in order to acquire something. They were “study spaces” where ideas were mulled and books composed (as  Karl Marx and hundreds of others did in the British Museum). Coffee shops were places where ideas were discussed and debated.

In our world we need outside-in libraries, places like the coffee shops of old where people meet, linger and talk – or better still argue! Now that’s a revolution that most libraries cannot make, yet. They, almost all, have a massive investment in books, and books take space and human resources to curate and distribute them. It is not only the ancient and massively endowed Bodleian Library that is running out of space, the much humbler Carey library requires staff to assist in “culling” its stock! That inertia means that for some time to come libraries will be both “inside-out” places we come to – increasingly infrequently – to get information and ideas, and also “outside-in” places to go to in order to share those ideas with others, talk and argue.

Many of my readers, I know, are aflicted with codexphilia. I used to be a sufferer. The once scores, then dozens of boxes that accompanied my moves were mute witness to my plight. I still enjoy the look and feel of a well-produced volume – increasingly seldom, for publishers in search of “cost savings” must still compete on price. But I know how I’d spend the budget if I was a librarian, and a coffee machine and some decently comfortable couches would rank higher than more dead trees ;)²

1. How anyone, especially an information specialist, can think that far ahead amuses me!
2. No. You got it wrong! This is not another rant predicting the death of the book, or even the codex. I think, and hope, that codexes will be with us for generations to come, new and beautiful ones as well as those redolent of age. But they are already – and will increasingly be – either works of art, or of antiquarian interest. They will not be tools of my trade.

Image from BecomingJewish.Org

Jonathan (my always stimulating, still just, but soon moving on, colleague) of ξἐνος pointed me to a piece in the NY TImes by Lisa W. Foderaro “In a Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks“. This may be, and much of it reads like, the traditional claim that “books won’t disappear anytime soon”, digital technologies and books are different, and the new cannot replace the old… Cant that has been around at least since the first enthusiast on the other “side” proclaimed with equal evangelical fervour the death of the codex. It is different from the run of the mill in a couple of ways.

First it is based on research. Among other things this gives hard figures. For example: “three-quarters of the students surveyed said they still preferred a bound book to a digital version.” Which of course is a resounding vote of confidence in the codex textbook, especially in view of the fact that a couple of years ago the figure would have been over 99%.

It’s the implied competition and contrasts between e-textbooks and paper ones that interested me.The three paragraphs I quote below came, in reverse order (with just one paragraph from the original left out) which I think enable me to make a reverse case.

“Students grew up learning from print books,” said Nicole Allen, the textbooks campaign director for the research groups, “so as they transition to higher education, it’s not surprising that they carry a preference for a format that they are most accustomed to.”

This familiarity factor is gradually diminishing as students come into the system with less familiarity with print codex works as a major part of their previous study. Already some of our first year students (younger than the average, and straight form school) only use print books if we encourage them to. Most of these students’ assignments are written using resources available on the Web, if I am lucky through Google books. But often from websites of pastors sermons, or reprints of devotional classics.

Many students are reluctant to give up the ability to flip quickly between chapters, write in the margins and highlight passages, although new software applications are beginning to allow students to use e-textbooks that way.

But of course the very things these students are reluctant to “give up” are precisely the things that any decent e-text should make easy! Non-sequential access is what hypertext is all about, commenting and user annotation are easier and more flexible in an electronic environment, and highlighting is basic. It is only publishers rushing shoveleware onto the market repurposing existing titles into containers that are designed to mimic a dead tree that makes current e-textbooks unresponsive and equally dead!

“I believe that the codex is one of mankind’s best inventions,” said Jonathan Piskor, a sophomore from North Carolina, using the Latin term for book.

Duh! Of course it is. It revolutionised the world almost as much as the invention of writing. That’s why we may expect that the next big step forward, e-text, will be equally (or at least nearly) as revolutionary.

So, who is interested in a Free Open Source Old Testament Textbook?

Ever since I got this laptop (a lovely light, if a bit too big, Acer 4810T) I have struggled with the operating system. Microsoft Vista is a nightmare made real. However, until last week my gripes and Vista’s delays were never quite enough to drive me to attempt to install a new OS with which I have no experience. (I have two decades of extensive Windows use behind me, and another few years of MS OSes before that.) Last week however, Windows Explorer threw a tantrum, if I tried to send a file to the recycle bin, or to change its name the dialog box would remain open until either I rebooted the system, or Windows Explorer crashed and was restarted by the system – which happened happily often.

For the last few days I have been doing half my work running UberStudent, a Linux (Debian, Ubuntu variant) OS designed for students. I have been suing it from a USB stick, to test, but it has been a dream. Out of the box it supports Firefox with Zotero, Open Office (or if I want to get really sensible in my writing – i.e. uses styles properly and write by function more than appearance – LyX which also integrates with Zotero) and loads of other nice programs and features. It took minutes to add my other Firefox add-ons, and not long to change the look, and put the bars on the sides of my widescreen (thus giving me effectively more vertical space – widescreens are a gift to laptop designers, but a pain for users).

Three things I need were missing:

1. a good audio editor (I did not need to download drivers for my external soundcard/preamp like I had to in Windows, in Linux such extras seem to work straight out of the box :)
2. a way to sync my phone diary with a calendar program on the laptop
3. Dropbox which I can’t now live without, syncing my using files to the cloud is just SO handy and such an easy backup scheme (admission of interest: this Dropbox link will get both and installing the free program will get both of us a bonus of extra storage space)
4. BibleWorks (yes, I must try one or more of the Linux free Bible programs, but I do appreciate having the Westminster Morph Hebrew text available)

It took a wee while to learn how to get new programs in Linux, but soon I had Audacity installed, and discovered that the OS came with a utility that is on the whole better than Nokia’s phone syncing program (though I still have to discover how to get the diary syncing with Thunderbird). Dropbox also installed easily, the only tricky bit is that the folder needs a different name in Linux and in MS Vista (but that will cease being a problem once I give Vista the heave ;)  That just leaves BibleWorks, and I’m told that’s a simple install under Wine (which again comes preloaded).

I expect that with a couple of hours more playing I’ll happily be dual booting, and probably only seldom returning to the sad difficult and frustrating world of Microsoft.

Johnathan at ξἐνος has posted a striking announcement of an exciting new technological breakthrough:  New Technology Coming Soon!!!!!!! Despite his predilection for exclamation marks, and despite the video being in Spanish, you probably ought to watch it before the one I repeat below (in Norwegian, but both have subtitles for the linguistically challenged) ;)

Photo by Dick Rochester

In our intro class, students write a summary of the message a biblical text had for its intended audience. This should be one or two sentences and less than 50 words.

Writing a summary is like packing for a journey, some people want to take everything! Then it is an exercise in writing tight. Most students write much as they speak. In speaking we include padding – unneeded words and phrases that allow us time to think. Writing tight involves removing the padding.

Googling “tight writing” produced lots of advice, but many writers could not practise what they preached. (Several high ranked hits were written on contract, to raise the word count for the writer ;)

So, here’s Tim’s guide to writing tighter

Don’t repeat yourself

If a word occurs several times in a paragraph some of them may be unneeded. Using two words where one will do (tautology) is wasteful: “tightly stretched” only says the same as “stretched”.

Focus

Writers should have something to say. They should say it. Often, though, we also want to say other things. Tight writing omits such diversions. It keeps focused. The asides that often pepper this blog in brackets or as footnotes are examples that should be cut. (Except I like the effect, and am not trying to save words and do help the reader by using parentheses to mark the digressions off from the body text ;)

Don’t be passive

Good Grammar checkers (like MS Word used to have) hate passives. They are correct. Passive sentences are longer, and usually less clear: “The ball was kicked by John” vs. “John kicked the ball”

Cut conjunctions

Long sentences usually waste words, needing extra coordination. Several short sentences work better.

Very that

“That” is often unnecessary. It can often be pruned, it sometimes signals other words that¹ can be pruned. Extra adjectives are also an easy target “very” for example usually adds little. Karen Luna Ray offers this sentence: “See how many unnecessary words that you can remove from this very lengthy sentence that I am writing..” Which becomes: “See how many unnecessary words you can remove from this sentence.”

To be or not to be

The verb “to be” often encourages wasted words. Compare: “She is a powerful writer” with “She writes powerfully.”

Avoid adverbs

Often we employ adverbs when a stronger verb does the job better. Suzanne Lieurance compares:

Flabby: She smiled slightly at the photographer.
Fit: She grinned at the photographer.

Above all, rewrite right

Paragraphs, and even sentences, are seldom  written right first time. Edit cutting flab. Read your text aloud. Read it silently. Each reading will show fat to prune.

Have a sit down and a nice cup of tea

After a break (better a good night’s sleep, but a cup of tea will do), edit again. Cut again!

1. Though notice sometimes it IS needed ;)

By didbygraham

Plagiarism has been a hot topic in staff rooms over recent years, and there has been a flurry of interest in the social media over the last day or two. Charles Halton has a nicely provocative piece Authors or Criminals? as well as attempting to set felines among columbida:

What’s all the fuss about?

We live in a very odd culture that extends ownership rights to non-tangible things like ideas and words.  However, these are relatively modern inventions.  Within the ancient world there was no such thing as “intellectual property” or even “authorship” as we understand it.  Literature was composed not by individuals but by communities–whether these communities were sitting around campfires recounting stories real or fiction or in between or whether the communities were scholars writing for other scholars.  Within the ancient world literature developed over time and subsequent generations of composers used previous work in order to fashion their own accounts.  Hardly any scholar put their name on their work (there are a couple exceptions of acrostic poems which spell out a scribe’s name).

All this fuss about plagiarism has me thinking–are students merely reverting to an ancient view of authorship?

This post has generated a fascinating discussion of “ancient” authorship and its conventions, the comment thread is well worth a look! But I want to address that final question: “All this fuss about plagiarism has me thinking–are students merely reverting to an ancient view of authorship?”

Firstly: I am thinking of students operating in a Western academic context, I am aware that different considerations apply to students of other cultures operating within those cultural settings. “You cannot step into the same river twice.”¹ Culture has moved on and so has technology, in a world of Zotero the habits of Baruch are no longer applicable.

Secondly: Plagiarism is a matter of respect. If I present another’s words or ideas as if they were mine I fail to respect them treating their work as of no value to me. I also fail to respect myself, for by failing to distinguish my own contribution to the conversation, or indeed situate it within a conversation, I suggest it is of no value.

Thirdly: Plagiarism is a matter of socialisation. There ain’t no such animal as a “digital native” we all, including your twelve-year-old, learned to speak video and audio we have been socialised into these modes of discourse just as we were once toilet trained. We can all no matter how young or old (within limits, but these are limits to all aspects of academic life) be socialised into citing our sources, just as we can all (again with only fairly extreme limits) be socialised into not depositing our excreta here and there as the urge takes us!

There are no digital natives. Indeed on the issues of plagiarism and citation, our classes commonly have students between late teens and seventies, with the majority between twenties and fifties, I have most problems with those in the middle of this range. The young are eager and willing to learn, the old also (or at that stage of life they would not have undertaken a course of formal education). It’s some of the the middle aged, fat and forty, fat in mind not necessarily body, who won’t learn! But, if you won’t learn, then you fail. End of story :(

1. Heraclitus of Ephesus, Fragment 41; Quoted by Plato in Cratylus