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CHE Article – Online Split Personality?

Jun 20th, 2011
by Christian Brady.
3 comments

This weekend an article came out in the Chronicle of Higher Education about academics and academic units with multiple online “identities.” I was interviewed along with several others, but for some reason I was the only one of whom they took silly pictures.

It is a very good article on a topic that really is a challenge for everyone, not just institutions. Everyone needs to ask themselves, what does my facebook/twitter/blog say about myself. If you are happy with the answer then you don’t have anything to worry about.

This is a bit of what I will be talking about at this year’s SBL: “On the Internet no one knows you’re a grad student.” Or how social media can help you, build you up, and tear you down.

Academics and Colleges Split Their Personalities for Social Media

By Jeffrey R. Young

Christian Brady, an associate professor of classics and dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Pennsylvania State University, has created two Twitter accounts, one for personal comments and research (@targuman), and the other for his role as dean (@shcdean).

Chronicle of Higher Education

@targuman: Modern catechism? “Wireless as a common good.” @shcdean: If you are an SHC student or alumnus in the DC area this summer can you let me know? I would like to get a dinner together in mid June.
@targuman:David Letterman is the best and most underrated interviewer on TV. Interviewing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. @shcdean: I want to assure you all that the new, gorgeous softball stadium Beard Field is named after a wonderful PSU supporter and not my chin hairs.
@targuman:Currently listening to the gutters finally being repaired (fell off in January!). Every clunk and thud makes me think $$. @shcdean: Students: assuming funding, why wouldn’t you want to study abroad for a full year? Admits are telling me you are afraid to disconnect.

…

‘It’s Not Schizophrenic’

Christian Brady, an associate professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, has split his social-media identity, as Ms. Feal does. “It’s not schizophrenic and it’s not to hide anything,” he said. Both of his Twitter feeds are public, and he expects that someone who searches for his name on Google will quickly find both his personal feed, @targuman, and the one he uses for his role as dean of the university’s Schreyer Honors College, @shcdean.

Deciding which account to post to is a matter of considering his audience, he says. Those looking to hear from the honors-college dean may have no interest in his research into Targums (ancient Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible), or in his collection of comic books. “I wouldn’t call them multiple identities, but views or perspectives on yourself,” is how he puts it.

Though Facebook was born only a few years ago, Mr. Brady says scholars have long made adjustments in their public personae: “If you’re writing an op-ed piece for the local newspaper, you’re going to use a different tone than if you’re writing for a journal in your discipline.”

Don’t Be Creepy

Some professors use only one Facebook page but wrestle with how open to make that information. One of the most-discussed questions about social networking on campuses is whether or not professors should “friend” their students on Facebook. Mr. Brady’s policy on the issue is one I’ve heard from many professors: He will accept a friend request from any student, but he never makes the first move. “I think it’s a little creepy when the old guy asks his students, Will you be my friend?,” he told me.

Read the rest of the article on the Chronicle of Higher Education

 

Barack Obama is following me – not.

Jun 18th, 2011
by Christian Brady.
2 comments

On Academia.edu, apparently. Then again not. This past weekend Academia.edu was the victim of several phishing scams. Some of you might have received emails that were pretty convincing looking and suggested that Academia.edu had partnered with your university for some project. Then yesterday I, and others I suspect, received the email below, notifying us that Barack Obama, or his campaign at least, was following us. Again, the page was very convincing looking…until you go to the link which was to “academia.notlong.com.”

And that is the lesson folks. Check the URL of any link, whether in email or on a website. If the link appears to say one thing and when you hover over it with your cursor (in most email apps today) it reveals a completely different URL beware. But that is what this scam did so well. The link was exactly what it said it was ”academia.notlong.com.” I have to admit, it took me a minute to realize that the “notlong.com” part was not likely to be from our trusted Academia.edu.

Now to give great credit to Richard Price and his folks at Academia.edu they immediately responded to the email scam, sending us all notifications at 3:45am EST yesterday. And this morning Richard told me that they are already working on ways to keep folks like “Barack” from doing mass follows and hooking us in via the site. It should also be noted that in a perverse way this is a coming of age for Academia.edu. If they scammers are interested, they must have a big enough presence to warrant it.

All the more reason to come to the Blogger and Online Publication session this November at SBL! Come hear from Richard in person!

Photo

 

 

Nisus Writer Pro 2.0 – Hebrew Word Processing

Jun 3rd, 2011
by Christian Brady.
1 comment

In the comments section of my review of Sente Danny Zacharias of Deinde expresses surprise that I was not using Mellel for my scholarly work. He did not realize that any other word processor on MacOS X supported unicode and right to left languages such as Hebrew. Not so! Nisus Software has been producing an incredible Mac word processor for decades and I have been using it for about as long. True, they took a long time porting it to MacOS X, which is why Mellel got a head start, but Nisus Writer Pro has been out for quite a while and they have just released NWP 2.0.

There are a number of new features in 2.0 that make the upgrade worth while and if you haven’t tried NW before, you should do so now. (Disclaimer: There is nothing to claim or disclaim. They have never paid me or given me free software. They have been very nice to me, however, and very helpful ever since 1994.) From their site, new features in 2.0:

  • Track Changes.
  • Drawing Tools (shapes, lines, floating text boxes, etc).
  • Watermarks.
  • Vertical ruler.
  • Paragraph-level borders and shading (which may be enforced via paragraph styles).
  • Saving a PDF creates clickable links for cross-references, pages numbers in generated TOCs/indexes, and hyperlinks. PDFs also include a proper TOC (eg: shows in the drawer in Preview.app).
  • Export as EPUB (electronic book).
  • Customizable Special Characters menu and palette.
  • Can link inserted images to a file on disk. These linked images update automatically if the original file changes on disk. Double-clicking a linked image opens the original file in an external application.

NWP can open and save as Word, RTF, HTML, etc. and has all sorts of searching bells and whistles that I will never understand. I have to say that I have not done a lot of writing lately with Hebrew and Aramaic, but NWP handles the paragraphs and occasional word that I throw at it with grace. You can also set up an infinite array of key commands, making this a “power user” app, including a simply command to switch language and font all at one go.

For example, using “Paragraph Styles,” I simply press cmd-2 and NWP changes writing direction for right-to-left (line starts on the right), my Hebrew font and fonts size is chosen and away I go. You can even set up, as I have done, different key command-font-keyboard combinations. So I have one Hebrew font for Biblical texts and another for Aramaic (although for the printers I think I will have to go to one font, SBL Hebrew).

One new feature that I am very excited about is exporting to EPUB format. I have already tested it with my doctoral thesis, which I would like to make available to all through the digital outlets. There are a few issues, but all seem to be the result of the fact that I am first converting a document that is 13 years old. That being said, NWP does an admirable job of bringing most of the 343 page document in intact. As you might imagine, footnotes, headers, and table of contents are messed up. Still, the Hebrew looked good in iBooks and the footnotes linked (but only one way, to the back of the document! again, this may be a legacy issue and I will try it with a more up to date document soon).

There is much, much more to this app and this is not a proper review, but I encourage you to try it out and see if it works for you.

 

SBL Scholarship and Technology Advisory Board formed

May 25th, 2011
by Christian Brady.
3 comments

The Sacrafice of IsaacI am very pleased to announce that the Society of Biblical Literature has formed a new advisory board, and one with a great acronym. STAB, the Scholarship and Technology Advisory Board, will have its inaugural meeting at this year’s SBL meeting. The board will consist of the following individuals, most of whom are probably well known to the biblioblogging community.

SBL staff members:

At the request of  John Kutsko, Executive Director of SBL, I will serve as chair. As the name implies, this board will be an advising mechanism for John and SBL committees whereby we would offer advice and counsel about how SBL ought to be engaged and deploying technologies, including everything from questions about WiFi at conference venues to establishing a peer review process for online initiatives such as blogs, ebooks, and so on. The charge would read something like this: “The Scholarship and Technology Advisory Board provides counsel to committees and staff by identifying and evaluating opportunities for technology to enhance scholarly exchange and professional development.”

This is just a beginning and I believe the first meeting will likely be nothing more or less than discussing exactly what the mission of STAB will be. I look forward to any and all thoughts that you all have. I also want to thank, and I hope that you will join me in doing so, those named above who are willing to serve on this board. The world of technology has and will continue to impact our little cosmos of biblical studies and I am very excited that John has had the vision to lead SBL to the forefront of such considerations.

 

 

Digital Research in the Liberal Arts | A Digital Learning Lab for Faculty

May 20th, 2011
by Christian Brady.
1 comment

If you are interested in using digital tools in your research (and you must be since you are reading blogs, right?) then head on over to this new blog. It will follow the discussion and progress of a group of faculty from the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State. I am pleased to have been able to beg my way into this great group.

In this summer research project, we are exploring the use of the iPad, whether first or second generation, as  tool for academic research and other scholarly work by faculty.   To accomplish this, we are working in partnership with Education Technology Services, which has graciously loaned us the use of seven first generation iPads for this project.  Other faculty members are participating by using their own previously purchased iPads, and still others have been given permission to apply research funds toward the purchase of one, which is ordinarily not permitted.

via Digital Research in the Liberal Arts | A Digital Learning Lab for Faculty.

 
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