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Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita

sangpeniru — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:40:59 +0000

Sang Peniru 1 ikut serta menyukseskan saja dengan Shared on …/12/2009>>> Silahkan Baca Artikel Lomba Yang Berjudul

Pertamina Peduli Lingkungan Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita

Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita

bloggerinterest — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:34:05 +0000

Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita ku Akhirnya Tersudut

bloggerinterest — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:21:06 +0000

Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita

bloggerinterest — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:14:22 +0000

Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita ku Tersudut

bloggerinterest — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:11:46 +0000

Kenali dan Kunjungi Obyek Wisata di Pandeglang

bloggerinterest — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:41:54 +0000

Sedang jadi Blogger Interest emang mengasikkan, tambah asik lagi kalau saat ini sedang sibuk mensupport ; Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita,Kenali dan Kunjungi Obyek Wisata di Pandeglang,Kenali dan Kunjungi Obyek Wisata di Pandeglang,Kenali dan Kunjungi Obyek Wisata di Pandeglang,Kenali dan Kunjungi Obyek Wisata di Pandeglang,Kenali dan Kunjungi Obyek Wisata di Pandeglang.
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Kerja Keras Adalah Energi Kita

bloggerinterest — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:32:57 +0000

morainium — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:23:49 +0000

In-class Task: a prospective professor is coming to campus to interview for a job with a new media focus. S/he lists computers and composition pedagogy as a specialty research interest. Generate a list of questions to ask this interviewee.

Describe the various physical classrooms you’ve taught in.
- How has that experience shaped your online teaching in setting up a “virtual” classroom?
If you’re teaching an asynchronous online course, how much would you try to simulate the lecture style/component from physical synchronous courses?
What’s the role of supplemental textbook materials in an online course? A face-to-face?
How much discussion do you attempt to facilitate? What’s an appropriate frequency of all-class discussions, and what’s the best format for executing them?
Would you consider using Second Life in your courses?
How would you handle student in distance ed courses?
What does learning in an online space offer vs. learning in a traditional space?
What format do you think is best for measuring process vs. product (compare online vs. traditional)?
What range do you see in online spaces now and where do you see that going in the future?
How do you get to know your students in an online environment?
What is your approach or framework for studying online learning spaces?
What do you see as the proper balance between online work and face-to-face work?
How do you achieve immediacy online–is that important to you and do you think it is important to your students?
What is digital literacy?
If Frank Gehry designed an online course, what would it look like? WHat would a tech classroom look like?
Do you believe distance education is the wave of the the future? Should we, as teachers and scholars, resist? Why or why not?
What kinds of learning can an online setting produce? If not cognitive recall, what other kinds of learning might be important?
What do we gain by seriously incorporating technology in a classroom? What do we lose?
What would you consider a successful learning environment in an online setting?
If you could design an online space and a technology enhanced space, what would both look like?

S is for SoTL

morainium — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:21:42 +0000

(that was a gimme)

This week’s articles on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), a field/discipline/area that seems pretty amorphous and perhaps ill-defined (so much so that the SoTL section of Communication Education isn’t a constant from issue to issue). Maybe that’s why I hadn’t come across the term in any sort of memorable way before, despite my previous research interests (computers and composition pedagogy). Too bad, really. It seems like a field/discipline/area that has something to offer, especially to traditional research-based professors who’ve put more time into developing methodologies than sound teaching philosophies.

For my three selections, I must confess that I waited until several of my peers posted their blogs and cherrypicked from their selections. Sketchy? Sort of. Pragmatic? Absolutely. With an unclear organization of SoTL articles from the very journal in which they’re supposed to appear, we as technopedagogirati are left to collaborate (scavenge) on our own. I picked three:

Sellnow, D. D., Child, J. T., and Ahlfeldt, S. L. (2005). Textbook technology supplements: What are they good for? Communication Education, 54(3): 243-253
Vess, D. L. (2005). Asynchronous discussion and communication patterns in online and hybrid history courses. Communication Education, 54(4): 355-364
Chanock, K. (2005). Investigating patterns and possibilities in an academic oral genre. Communication Education, 54(1).

I found Vess’s article really applicable to the training I’m doing now for teaching tech writing in the fall next year. The focus–nay, the sole content–of my instruction has been to prepare me to teach online, as that’s where the needs of the department are going. The primary topic of discussion in my training is, well, discussion. Discussion online and how to facilitate it when it’s asynchronous. I’m pleased to see the more in-depth spelunking that Vess gives on the issue, and I hope it comes in handy in a year and after that.

More relevant, I think, to the research of SoTL is Sellnow et al.’s investigation of supplementary materials to textbooks. I appreciated the data on the student perspective–I’ve used a number of textbooks that came with companion websites, or CD-ROMs, or other assorted useless bric-a-brac. I always approached them simply as supplements. Extra. Not required. Of limited use. It’s helpful to see what I did wrong (insofar as Sellnow’s research would show). I need to make the supplements required. Fine, I can do that but wh-OHMYGODMYHEADIMPLODEDHOWCANSOMETHINGSTILLBECALLED”SUPPLEMENTAL”IFIT’SNOWREQUIRED.

Sorry. All better now.

But I do think the required portion of “supplemental” materials can be a useful tool for teaching multimedia skills, provided the supplementals are actually useful. The onus then falls back on the publishers to field-test the extras with technopedagogirati boots-on-the-ground instructors. Maybe they already do and I don’t know it (Jordan? any help here?). Something to bring up with our guest speaker on Monday, I supp0se, or at 4C’s and NCA.

(originally posted to %$&#* Tumblog on Sunday, October 18, 19:58).

E is for Ediface, Education

morainium — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:05:12 +0000

(S could be for Struggling with my post titles)

Past readings made us think of how we build our courses. to fit a diverse generation of supposed aborigitals; this week’s articles make us think of how the way our classrooms are built impact how we deliver those courses. Due to the number of articles this week, I’m going to focus primarily on two which I’ll dub “The Creepy Treehouse” and “The Spark.”

The Creepy Treehouse: EDUCAUSE’s Learning Spaces offered a variety of perspectives on the spatial considerations of teaching in the 21st century. Chapter 3’s “Seriously Cool Places: The Future of Learning-Centered Built Environments” seemed to encourage blurring the line between classroom and social space (a subject which Jason and Kati both addressed in their posts this week). It seems to me that this is trickier than the Dittoe lets on. We’ve hashed out the problems this causes with teacher-student relationships in virtual space (e.g., using Facebook for class reminders or even as a CMS), which can range from a perceived invasion of a student’s out-of-the-physical-classroom privacy to distraction to a full-blown “creepy treehouse.” From my own experience and in keeping with my own teaching philosophy, students need a physical separation from where they eat, play, sleep and socialize to where they learn with their classmates from their instructor. However, remove the instructor and we find more common learning environments that blur the school/social boundaries (informal study groups in the library or the coffee shop (or at the bar if you’re my junior year of undergrad)). So the key to space-based institutional improvements shouldn’t be on making classrooms more like the social spaces our students are accustomed to when class ends, thereby establishing “a physical space that supports multidisciplinary, team-taught, highly interactive learning unbound by traditional time constraints within a social setting” (Dittoe 3.9).

The Spark: I have to give a particular nod to Chapter 22 of EDUCAUSE’s Learning Spaces, which featured LeBaron Hall Auditorium at Iowa State University, my master’s alma mater. My very first teaching assignment was as a TA for SpCm 212: Intro to Public Speaking. The course had 600 students per semester and was taught by a single professor with 8 or 9 of us as assistants. Twice a week, we each took 3 lab sections of 22 students or so to work on individual speaking issues and do more hands-on work. The other class period was spent in LeBaron, where 300 students would gather to learn all the vocab related to public speaking. We’d sit with our sections, monitor their behaviors, help pass out tests, and foster small group discussion when necessary.

Given that I had never taught before, and given that I went to small liberal arts college for my bachelor’s where no class I had exceeded 70 students (and that one was an anomaly compared to the average 13-18), I assumed that all large lecture halls were as nice as LeBaron, both at ISU and elsewhere. I’ve since learned that we were especially blessed by our facilities, and especially by the chairs:

Auditorium designers worked with an educational furniture manufacturer to come up with a chair that provided more flexibility. The manufacturer agreed to modify an existing 180-degree swivel chair to reach 240 degrees. This allows students to turn their chairs to face most adjacent peers. Due to this advanced arc, the chair’s “spring back to front” feature had to be disabled. This actually benefits students, who now don’t have to subconsciously fight the chair’s spring to stay facing a neighbor. It causes minor problems for janitorial staff, however, as they must maneuver around chairs that are left facing all different directions.

These did make a world of difference for small group discussion and overall comfort. Uncomfortable students make poor listeners. While it seems odd to fixate upon something as insignificant as chairs, it reminds me that our teaching practices are sometimes shaped in a very real way by the physical environs to which we’re assigned. More broadly, reading about LeBaron from the context of a new university and several more semesters’ worth of teaching under my belt reminds me that not all colleges are as technologically endowed as ISU or NCSU (both land-grant R1 universities with renowned engineering colleges that bring in tech-related funding for the rest of the campus). Reading Jordan’s and Jason’s posts this week on teaching tech comm in non-lab classrooms also reminds me that we technopedagogical researchers and practitioners sometimes forget that the digital divide extends to infrastructure as well. The first time I taught 101 here at NCSU, I was in a “dumb” classroom (no projector or computer or multimedia of any kind). At first, I was outraged–”how do they expect to employ a computers-and-composition teaching strategy without a %#*ing computer in the classroom!?”–but I learned to adapt and it made me a better teacher for it (as I’m sure not teaching in a lab has done for Jordan and Jason). I think that’s the primary takeaway from the readings as a whole this week: we’re better teachers when we’re challenged by the constraints and reminded of the affordances of each semester’s learning spaces. After all, if/when we go on the academic job market, we’ll be much better prospects if we can draw upon a range of diverse teaching experiences that go beyond course content alone.

D is for Definitional Work

morainium — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:33:20 +0000

Ed.D. Thesis snapshot: towards a bedrock definition of literacy

In all our in-class talks of literacy–digital and otherwise–it helps to remember that there are those who devote their entire dissertations to even defining it.

C is for Competition

morainium — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:42:52 +0000

I want to primarily address a very minor point brought up in Lisa Gerrard’s (1999) “Feminist Research in Computers and Composition.” She talks about women’s role in shaping C&C pedagogy, and cites several influential leaders in the early field (Hawisher and Selfe, Susan Miller, etc.). I’m grateful for all of their pioneering work in bringing the field to where it is today.

However, Gerrard spoils her article for me when she starts talking about democracy in the classroom. (To be fair, she spoiled her article with me by writing it like an unfinished thesis prospectus–honestly, how many questions can you get away with asking before the publisher cuts you off and tells you to rewrite?) Perhaps the following comments and criticisms will reveal that I probably don’t hold to feminist goals in shaping my pedagogy, computer-aided or otherwise. Nothing against those who do, but it just ain’t my bag.

Gerrard writes:

“compositionists might also study whether e-mail promotes another goal of feminist pedagogy: to diminish hierarchical relationships within the classroom. Feminist teachers seek to equalize power among students and, as much as possible, between the instructor and students” (p. 191).

Throwing these two goals alongside each other creates a problem for me. I’ll address the second point of power relationships between student and teacher later. For now ,it’s the first point about equalizing power among students. On one hand, I’m for creating an equal playing field among students, giving each of them the opportunity to succeed across the board. However, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t think competition is a good thing for the classroom, the university, or society as a whole. I know. What a male thing to say. And I said it on the computer no less! What a male tool to use.

Especially with technologically-focused assignments, I want my students to compete with each other to see who can compose the best assignment. Competition produces truly unique accomplishments and saves us from cranking out average-looking assignments. The students who go above and beyond to do something creative and original in, say, creating a slideshow or a small website are the same students who will go on to the workplace and drive industry innovation. My goal as a teacher should be to give each student the means to create that innovation, but not to ensure that the advanced students tone it down a notch to make the struggling beginners feel better about their own technological skills. I hold my students to a high standard, yes, but it’s one I develop through individual surveys and assessments that tell me where each of them starts out with their technological literacy. That way, I don’t treat the class as an amorphous whole that has the same abilities and expectations. Hierarchies are a necessary, and I would argue, important, part of that.

Because this article was written in the late 90’s, when e-mail and discussion boards were still “new” technologies to use in the composition classroom, I think Gerrard was talking more about equalizing cultural hierarchies. “Some instructors have argues that e-mail minimizes power inequalities based on characteristics such as race, age, or gender (Selfe, 1990)” (p. 191), and then later on, “students come to class aware of their status relative to their classmates–status conferred not only by gender, but also by such markers as membership in campus groups, athletic skill, academic achievement, ethnicity, race, wealth, physical attractiveness, and “coolness.”" (pp. 191-192). I frankly don’t care about the hierarchies created by these dis/advantages. My focus is on learning outcomes and individual progress. And that’s where it should be.

Returning to the second issue of hierarchies between student and teacher, I think we fall into a false idealism of the composition classroom as a “truly democratic” space (p. 192) where all students are somehow magically embued with the same abiliites and the relationship between teacher and student is a democratic one as well. If the classroom were a true democracy, our students could vote us out of office. We’d have to campaign to keep our jobs, and there would be ballot referendums on grading. Especially in C&C, we have technological multiliteracies–at the functional, critical, and rhetorical levels–that our students don’t, and therefore we exist in a power structure for a reason. It’s more than just grades. The democratic classroom is a myth, and it should stay a myth.

E is for E-mail

morainium — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:37:03 +0000

In his blog post this week, Jordan writes

More interestingly, I have a question for my colleagues. Is it ever okay to complain to your class about the emails they send you?

Yes. Unequivocally yes, but do it with a reason. Like you said, Jordan, communication is not a switch you can flip on and off, and whatever communication habits our student acquire under our watch in the classroom will most likely carry over into the workplace. Now, we might wonder whether it’s okay for students to communicate informally to their co-workers informally via e-mail, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, and so many others, but wouldn’t the same principle apply when they need to communicate externally to their clients and potential investors? Don’t we owe it to them to curb those habits now before they fester into a potentially multimillion dollar problem? And before we argue that grammar and punctuation don’t matter at all and we shouldn’t waste our FYC efforts teaching it, we might remember the $2.13 million comma.

And I’m going to continue answering Jordan here when he asks,

do you think the way students use email negatively affects student self-sufficiency?

Yes. Unequivocally yes. I used to pride myself on being able to turn around student e-mails within an hour and a half on average, including those sent at 2 a.m. What a gigantically unhelpful disservice I did to them, in hindsight. I probably did it because I like being right, I was proud of my information literacy and research skills, and I was up at odd hours. None of these are good reasons. Now, I try to gauge each e-mail I see based on legitimate problems: if, based on what I’ve observed in the classroom and the lab, I think a student can figure the problem out on her own, I won’t respond to her e-mail for at least 12-16 hours or so. This semester, I’ve done this maybe 6 or 7 times, and of those, more often than not I receive a follow-up e-mail to the effect of “Nevermind, I figured it out.” E-mail can be used as a teaching tool, an understated lesson in technological self-reliance. Or, Jordan, you can always point them to “Let Me Google That For You,” with a comment like. “I’ve found this to be a very helpful website for all of my own questions.”

What surprises me the most about the readings this week is not the results of Stephens’ research questions on perceived credibility, or the surveys of teachers in Duran et al., or even the reasons that students gave for communicating with teachers via e-mail in Waldeck and co.. No, what surprises me the most about the readings this week is that researchers are still publishing articles about e-mail in 2009.

Call me a technophile (I’ll answer those charges). Call me a digital native (I’ll answer to that title). Call me on my office phone (I won’t answer that at all–how the hell did you get that number anyway?). I guess I realize that academics have to find a niche, a problem to address, and consistently try to publish articles on that area, but for me at least, e-mail isn’t a fruitful field of techno-pedagogy anymore. I’m sure the same will be said about Facebook, Twitter, and any other OCC’s (Out-of-Classroom Communication) (Stephens, 2009) that instructors are just beginning to use now to maintain contact with their students. My own students seem to be over it as well, preferring to use FB or text to communicate with each other. A lot of the features of those communication contexts spill over into their e-mails–a point which Stephens, Houser, and Cowan address at length–but the important takeaway there for me as a digiteacher is to remind my students that for each technology they use to create a text (understood not as an SMS message but more broadly as a product of language in any form), there are a set of protocols, etiquette, rules that they need to be aware of. When they send SMS messages to each other, I have no problem with them using txtspk abbreviations. It’s part of the way users react to a 160 character limit. Facebook wall posts don’t need a salutation and a signature, or even complete sentences. They’re quick messages left on friends’ profiles. E-mail, however, is different.

E-mail is a remediation of the personal letter. Imagine receiving the typical student e-mail you do as a personal letter: no salutation, no punctuation or capitalization, no signature. How different is that from a ransom note? Wouldn’t you fear for your life a little? Yes, this illustration is a bit of hyperbole, but only a bit, and it demonstrates nicely why we need to constantly remind our students of the expectations, consequences, and impact of their technological actions, no matter the tool.

R is for Revisiting

morainium — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:47:47 +0000

This week’s readings are a walk down memory lane for me: I drew heavily upon DigiRhet’s and Selfe’s articles in my thesis research, which was a reimagining of Stuart Selber’s conceptual literacies for the Web. I even assigned Baron’s “Stages of Literacy Technologies” in my own class just three weeks ago. Only Comstcok and Hocks’ work is new to me, though after reading it, I feel as though I’ve opened a window into Kati’s head. Of course, nothing against Kati’s head, but I’m happy to close the window again. Sonic literacy just ain’t my gig.

However, before I close that window, I would like to detour quickly and present a related assignment I came up with a few years ago without ever having an opportunity to implement it. Any comments are more than welcome, and y’all are free to use it at will. (I’m guessing you won’t.)

“Catching the Buzz: An Audio Mash-up of Campus Intersections” (title’s not the greatest).

Walking around campus with earbuds in and iPod off affords you a unique opportunity to listen in on those snippets of conversation you catch as you pass a slow-moving twosome or captain cell phone on the sidewalk.

“…It’s just, you know, I’m worried about her. She doesn’t sleep and she drinks to impress other people. I think she might be depres…”
“…and I was walking around the Chinatown part of Chicago and we stopped to have a drink. Some dude gave me a brew but it tasted all effed up. I think it was made from something else. Probably rice…”
“…he couldn’t just give me another half-point to bring my grade up to an A-? Honestly, ease off the powertrip, ‘cause this is such…”

These campus snippets may seem vapid, juicy, depressing, ridiculous, infuriating, or even encouraging, but they offer you the chance to catch a feel for the context, and what’s on the minds of the rhetors in that context.

What if students spent a day or two walking around campus—or another location, I suppose—with a digital audio recorder turned on to catch these snippets? Using a program like Audacity, students could then select, extract, and arrange a collection of snippets related to a particular theme or focus, and turn it all into a digital composition.

Catching the Buzz. Alright, it’s an imperfect assignment, but I think it fits into what Selfe was talking about in her many discussions of multilteracy. She suggests a broader definition of technological literacy “as a cultural phenomenon.” This description encompasses the functional aspects of computer literacy but places more emphasis on challenging our students to use electronic environments to more actively engage in social and cultural discourse, taking technological literacy beyond the walls of the classroom. Her term “further refers to the linking of technology and literacy at fundamental levels of both conception and social practice” (p. 11), making it more applicable to the conceptual approach to multilteracies that I argued for in my thesis and previously in this semester as well.

This definition brings computer literacy under the domain of technological literacy, and it compels us to consider literacy as a conceptual practice, much like Selber does. It also compels me to bring this to a close. I’d comment more on Selber, on Selfe, on DigiRhet–even on Baron–but re-reading through them again turns out to be less of a pleasant trip down memory lane than I’d hoped for. Thesis writing is quite unpleasant.

C is for Comp(uters/osition)

morainium — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:59:40 +0000

Many of my peers have commented this week that they welcomed the readings as a much-needed counterbalance to the unbridled techno-enthusiasm we got from the likes of Palfrey and Gasser or in The Horizon Report.

What I was more satisfied to see were concrete pedagogical principles for incorporating technology into the classroom in a useful way. These didn’t come from nay-saying nay-sayers like Ohmann. They came from the good people at CCCC and they came from Lane and Shelton. Like these gems, for example:

Witherspoon (1997) provides five characteristics (both objective and perceived) that are useful in determining whether educators should adopt and use technology in instructional contexts: 1) relative advantage-the degree to which the technology is perceived to be superior to that which it replaces; 2) compatibility-the degree to which the new technology is perceived as being consistent with the user’s prior experiences and values; 3) complexity-the degree to which a technology is perceived as being difficult to understand and use; 4) trialability-the degree to which the innovation/technology can be tried; and 5) communicability-the degree to which people can find out about the innovation, or how easy it is to explain the principles behind, and the use of, the technology to potential users (p. 172-173).

I was satisfied to see suggestions like these for two reasons: 1) we didn’t get anything like this in Born Digital or The Horizon Report, and 2) I spent the better part of 10 months writing a thesis to this very effect. I turned in 120 pages of Web literacy pedagogy theory, and it got sent back. Many times. A lot. One of the primary reasons my committee didn’t like my early draft (besides not being on time) was that so much of my hypothetical assignments weren’t grounded in sound pedagogical theory. So I learned the C’s statement on effective teaching, learning, and assessing writing in digital environments. I learned the works of Hawisher and Selfe, of Selfe and Selfe–in fact, I got quite Selfeish.

As a novice teacher, I learned a lot from these names. I learned how to turn mere ideas into actionable teaching activities and class assignments. I also learned how to write pedagogical research articles on multiliteracies, and just how ambiguous that word actually is anymore, and how difficult it is to meet each and every one of them. Part of that difficulty stems from a criticism overload–any discussion of literacy also necessarily involves discussions of power, of marginalization, of democracy.

And this is where I think the practical pedagogy gets pushed aside. With so much focus on issues of power, issues of political correlations between software and Trotsky, or issues of why we should put our files in a toaster and not a folder, the effective,” boots-on-the-ground activities get lost in the din. And I can only listen to so much din in between classes, because I have to grade electronic compositions that my students produce. So yes, it’s important to bring our attention ot these issues every so often, but what happens to teachers who get away from pedagogy and move more toward criticizing for criticism’s sake? They cease being teachers, they start being critics. So I’ll leave it at this:

How helpful is a critic in the classroom?

H is for Horizons

morainium — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:02:53 +0000

This is what I think of after reading the word, “horizon.” Peaceful. Serene. Promises of new beginnings.

This is what I think of after reading the “Horizon Report.” Apocalyptic. Horrifying.

Well, maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole. Let me back up.

I don’t want to address the treatment of the “Personal Web” discussion in the Horizon Report because it’s nothing new to those of us who geek out about technopedagogies. Web 2.0, for all its obnoxious hype, has been around for several years–since 2004, in earnest–and it represents a literacy shift in the way we interact with the web. No longer confined to a read-only model, we can all now “write” the web: on it, to it, for it. This isn’t something 2 to 3 years off but a model that’s more than 2 to 3 years old. I suppose I’m not entirely clear about what the authors mean precisely by “adoption,” as in “The Personal Web: Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years.” Is adoption synonymous with widespread saturation in the classroom, or as ubiquitous as Microsoft Word use among students? More clarification here would have helped. That said, I can see the usefulness of this report for teachers who want to incorporate more technology into their classroom but don’t know where to start or what’s out there, and have neither the time nor expertise to go digging around on their own. That said that said, I think the Horizon Report misses an opportunity to direct instructors to sound pedagogical resources for using tech tools. Don’t just use them because you can; use them because you can improve some aspect of your course.

I think the most likely and practical tool discussed in the report is the smartphone. If all of my students had iPhones, we could probably make use of some pretty killer apps. Hell, if we had any students operating on a rhetorical level of technoliteracy, we could even design some. Or, at the least, in small groups they could propose a new app that could actually make an impact on their college education and partner with students in computer engineering to actually make and upload them to the app store. Many such apps exist already, so we’d see be challenging them to think critically about a problem with classes, or studying, or scheduling, or insert area of higher education here, propose a solution and craft a rhetorically effective design proposal. Boom. Terrific class project.

Of course, the issue of fairness comes up in any discussion of providing students with equal access to these tools, as Jacob pointed out in his post. Perhaps we’ll see more campuses (campi?) following the actions of schools like Abilene Christian U, which ran an iPhone pilot test way back in 2008 to explore educational uses of the device. Or farther reaching policies, like the one implemented by the University of Missouri’s renowned School of Journalism, which has started requiring all of its students to come to campus with an iPhone or iTouch. Sound radical? Sound unfair? Sound expensive? Engineers here at NCSU are required to have laptops, and have been for some time now. If experts are correct in predicting that the smartphone will assume more and more functions from the laptop, then what we’re seeing isn’t some new unfair agenda of electronic consumerism being forced on students. It’s simply a continuation of the University-TechnoIndustrial Complex that’s been around for decades. Just as I’ve embraced laptop classrooms, I’ll jump at the chance to teach in an iPhone classroom.

And now, to move from practical and realistic tools back to robot uprisings. The most disturbing predicted timeframe–and least likely, from my humble position as a futurologist–is the 4-5 year window for “smart” objects, at least in the classroom (I know they have refrigerators now that can tell you when you’re running low on milk, but the pedagogical applications of that seem rather limited). A smart object, as explained by the HR, “‘knows’ about itself–where and how it was made, what it is for, who owns it and how they use it, what other objects in the world are like it–and about its environment” (p. 27). If that doesn’t sound like the precursor to the Robopocalypse, I don’t know what does. Also, I found the lack of concrete examples in existence or a creative speculation of possible applications of smart objects in the report to be disheartening and misleading. On what basis is the 4-5 year timeframe? Which disciplines can we expect to take up interactions with smart objects? The report mentions Oncology, Health Care, and Archaeology, and if those folks can make good use out of smart objects now, more power to them. But what about the rest of us?

I’ll pose this question as a teaching challenge to my peers: who can come up with the most practical use of smart objects in our English and Communication classrooms?

Best answer gets a 5-month stay of execution bestowed upon them by the Killroy 2020 MX models.

RUSLI ZAINAL SANG VISIONER

mimite — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:24:02 +0000

Ya masih iseng iseng siapa tahu beruntung dan mencoba untuk RUSLI ZAINAL SANG VISIONER bagi Sang Pemberi Komentar RUSLI ZAINAL SANG VISIONER Orang Susah dan untuk Pusat Komentar. RUSLI ZAINAL SANG VISIONER untuk Orang Susah dan RUSLI ZAINAL SANG VISIONER Zone CJ. Serta RUSLI ZAINAL SANG VISIONER AsmaaulHusnaa.

M is for Multiliteracy, Multiple Shout-Outs

morainium — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:05:50 +0000

Before I launch into my discussion and analysis of the remaining chapters in Palfrey & Gasser’s Born Digital, I’d like to address a few of the call-outs I received–for reasons not entirely known to me–on my classmates’ blogs this week.

I’ll start with David who, on the subject of Internet memes, writes:

Are the so-called “Digital Natives” really “not passive consumers of the media that is broadcast to them, but rather active participants in the making of meaning in their culture” (131)? Perhaps, Matt can answer this better than I can–I am thinking here of how difficult it is to produce a viral video or a “meme” and how few digital creations actually sway “meaning in their culture.” Perhaps Matt has some opinions on whether digital creators actually have real sway as they “participate” in digital culture, whatever that may look like. (via)

First of all, I’m encouraged by the underlying possibilities in your musings that Internet phenomena have an impact on digital culture that extends beyond “gee whiz, would you look at what they’re doing with cats online these days.” For me, for my experience in the classroom as a teacher with a heavy emphasis on advancing both technological and Web literacies (and yes, I draw a distinction), and for the research I’ve explored on Internet phenomena so far, I’ll fall back on the 1,000 monkeys at a 1,000 typewriters model that we’re all familiar with. Our students are prolific publishers of content. Every day. Information overload of Facebook updates and photos alone. Yet I’m hesitant to use the word “creators,” as David does (and as P&G do in chapter 5). I ascribe a higher meaning to “creating” than I do “producing,” and, somewhat like P&G, I don’t think it’s necessarily tied to the Bible. Instead, I think of something created as something creative, and something produced as a product; I’ll let it fall to someone else to provide the requisite critique of consumer culture here, but I think the same basic principle applies. Yet it appears that I’ve digressed: in sum, David, I think students have very little effect on the creation of Internet phenomena in digital culture, but I think they take an active role in consuming it.

From memes I’ll move to Kati’s discussion of Wikipedia. She writes:

Although many instructors (such as: shout out to Matt) have adapted sophisticated and empowering assignments using Wikipedia (for good,) it has always bothered me that many other instructors have taken a more (for evil) approach to a la what Colbert termed “wikiknowledge.” (via)

I think the term you’re looking for is “wikiality,” but to know that I would have had to internalize it or look it up; certainly, Stephen T. Colbert, DFA would be against the latter.

Now, quick to the point to the point no faking, I will say that my assignment for improving Wikipedia in and from the classroom only empowered students insofar as they had developed critical Web literacy skills (alluded to by Jason’s post about Stuart Selber’s Multiliteracies for a Digital Age). Some students that completed the assignment–which was to find a page on Wikipedia in need of further citation and then to either research and supply it to support the existing content or to refute incorrectness with more <loaded term>authoritative</loaded term> sources–reverted right back to using Wikipedia as a primary research tool. As per Jordan’s post about the disturbing practice of citing an encyclopedia, I’ll bring in Wikipedia founder Jimmy Swales who once famously quipped, “For God’s sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.” This, again, goes back to the need for critical literacy, the second level of Selber’s trifurcated model of multiliteracies. By this point in your career, if you’re planning on teaching in a technopedagogically informed way, you really should read this book. I based my entire masters’ thesis around it, arguing for a new model of Web literacy in the FYC classroom that recognizes functional, critical, and rhetorical faculties in light of radical changes in recent years to the increasingly social Web.

If you’ve stuck with me this far, you have more digital attention than most of the students you teach. I think this point is emphasized, though perhaps somewhat implicitly, in P&G’s chapter 8 on information overload. I’m glad they’re careful to add a historical aspect to the problem, a problem we tend to conceive as only a recent, digital one. What I’m really interested in re: information overload is the extent to which this will be treated more and more as a serious issue, and, to an extreme, as an addiction. The Center for Internet Addiction is a real thing.

That last sentence alone would have blown Thoreau’s mind.

Alleged Contradiction Against the Quran is Wrong; How Long is a Day? 1000 or 50000 years?

yahyasnow — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:23:27 +0000

The Critics Accuse The Quran of Contradiction Concerning The Length Of A Day. The critic says: ‘Sur

D is for Digital, N is for Naive

morainium — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:09:37 +0000

Given the class that I’m teaching this fall–”Technologies for Texts”–I’ll be quite vocal about the subject of so-called “Digital Natives” (DNs) this semester. My students are mostly senior Language, Writing, and Rhetoric (LWR) majors with a sprinkling of underclassmen in the hard sciences. While their coursework may differ, they all share a similar characteristic: unease, fear, or inexperience with technology. That’s one of the primary reasons they take this course, to receive hands-on instruction in common software programs in order to take that tool set into their future classes, internships, and full-blown jobs. They don’t start the course with the supposedly natural ability to manipulate, learn, and use any software program or consumer gadget, as Palfrey and Gasser’s rosy introduction would have us believe. Granted, my class might represent a unique demographic of students, but I’ve had the same experience in every year I’ve taught.

This shared characteristic runs antithetical to the very jubilant and hyperbolic descriptions ascribed to them by Palfrey and Gasser. Yes, DNs do spend an awful lot of time online, but they as authors (and we as teachers) would be fools to equate time spent doing with knowledge or mastery. Mediated experience does not translate to rhetorically savvy technological interactions and productions; Facebook updates do not a Web designer make.

When Digital Natives sticks to characterizing a qualifying feature of digital natives as near-constant connectivity, I find myself agreeing with it. As a digital native myself studying digital media, the better part of my day is spent online; it’s a different way of living than certainly the authors probably experienced at 26. I also applaud Palfrey and Gasser’s efforts to bridge the generational gap between older digital immigrants and younger natives, as both the former and the latter seem, at times, to have a geniune difficulty relating culturally.

The chapter on identity seemed the most accurate of the three we read, and I found myself consistently going back to Aristotle’s notion of artistic and inartistic identities. For him, the artistic identity is the outwardly constructed identity, the “hat” we choose to wear by which the rest of the world can judge us. We compose these identities in the physical world, and they may change frequently, but at our core is an inartistic identity, the unchanging self to which we inwardly retreat when our hats come off. What struck me as I read this chapter (also “Dossiers,” “Privacy,” and a few of the Educause readings) is that online identities are in a greater state of flux, as P and G somewhat allude to:

“The various online expressions of identity not only reflect a Digital Native’s state of identy as s/he currently perceives it, but also shape that identity by influencing the Digital Native’s perception of how other think about him or her. In this sense, the creation and revision of identity is a sort of feedback loop.” (p. 32)

With this constant reinvention–the “identity feedback loop”–DNs may be losing more and more of that inartistic self, and they may not care. This is something I hope to revisit this semester in a little more detail than 500 words can permit.

Der Augenblick

goetheist — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:37:02 +0000

“Ich bin viel zu weit weg” rufe ich ihr zu. Irgendwas ist zwischen uns. Vor mir geht sie her. Den Blick auf den Boden gerichtet, damit sie sehen kann, wo sie hintritt. Vor lauter Laub sieht man den Rasen nicht und überall sind Pfützen unter den Ahornblättern. Mein Blick folgt jedem ihrer Schritte.

“Das Muster ist schön” sagt sie, während sie durch das Laub stolziert, einen Fuß vor den anderen setzt. Muster sind überall. In den kleinsten Details sind Muster verborgen. Muster hat ihre Hose, aber eins von den Feineren, Unauffälligeren, eigentlich kaum Merklichen und fast schon Verborgenen. Viel auffälliger sind da schon jene Muster, die ihre weichen Rundungen in dieses Stück Stoff zeichnen. Das sind lebendinge Muster, sie verleihen dieser Hülle aus irgendwie verstrickten Fasern Leben und sie drücken sich in jeder Bewegung aus, in jedem zögerlichen Schritt und jedes mal entstehen neue Windungen und Formen, die vorher noch nie da waren. Die Farbe bleibt gleich. Sandfarbener Stoff. Doch darunter mischt sie die Farben in ihren Formen und Zügen. Darunter ist sie bunt wie der Regenbogen. Wenn es stimmt, was man über sie sagt, dann läuft sie auf Gold. “Die Farbe bleibt immer gleich” Sie hat mich nicht gehört. “Sie leuchten wie ein Pyrit, die Blätter” Sie dreht sich um. “Ich bin eher wie ein Achat” sag ich zu ihr. Ihre warmen Augen schauen mich an. Wir gehen weiter, weil irgendwas zieht uns, und etwas anderes hält uns fest. “Wohin gehen wir?” Wir gehen weiter runter zu der großen Eiche, da ist das Licht so schön. Da werde ich Bilder von dir malen und jede deiner Farben einzeln einfangen, bis in die Abendstunden und bist die Nacht sich auf uns legt. Ich werde dir zusehen. Dir, dem Gras, dem Wind und allen anderen Wesen, wie sie die Hand dir küssen, sich verbeugen und ihr Herz dir schenken. Ihren Herztanz werd ich miterleben und mich dafür in dich dich verlieben. Und ich werde für einen Moment vergessen, wie ein Achat ist. Ich werde glauben, dass es einfach so sein kann.

“Wie ist denn ein Achat?” Fragt sie mich. Wie ein Achat ist… Wir haben nicht viel Zeit. 3 Sekunden sind keine Ewigkeit. “Dann lass mich dich vergessen machen”. Ich will nur diesen Moment festhalten und deine Augen, den Augenblick. Dieser Ort in Zeit und Raum, der sich zu einem Punkt verdichtet hat, so als gäbe es keine Gesetze mehr. Keine Physik, keine Schwerkraft. Keine Kraft, die schwer macht. Nur dieser eine Punkt und diese eine Linie. Der Punkt bist du, die Linie der Weg zu dir. Aber diese Linie verschiebt sich. Jetzt gerade in diesem Augenblick setzt sie sich in Bewegung. “Linie 704?”. Ja, so heißt sie. Ich weiß auch nicht wieso sie so heißt, aber die Linie wird gleich gebrochen. Nicht wie Licht, dass sich in seine Farben aufteilt und erst dann sein ganzes Wesen offenbart. Eher wie ein einfaches, billiges Plastiklineal, mit dem gespielt wird, das überdehnt wird und dann zerspringt.

Dieser komische Bus, er biegt einfach um die Ecke ab, er bemerkt das Band garnicht reißen. In Zeitlupe schnellen die überdehnten Fasern an ihren Ursprung zurück. Wie Peitschen knallen sie zurück mit voller Wucht. Eine lautes Bersten, dass die Ohren betäubt. Er überspielt es einfach mit lauten Dieselmotorkrächzen. Ein kurzes Aufheulen zum Beweis, wie egal es ihm ist. Dann ist es still.

Ich konnte es ihr nicht mehr sagen. Wie alles in Mustern verborgen liegt, wie sich alle Farben nur wiederholen und wie ein Achat ist. Von außen ist er weiß, mit dunklen grünen Stellen versehen. Innen aber ist er nur blau. Vielleicht hätte sie es verstanden.

Let's help Dave

thatyouththing — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:56:46 +0000

Guns of Indian Mutinee: First war of Independence

factsindia — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0000

by Garry James
From Dixie Gun Works Blackpowder Annual

Source: Royal engineers canada

After considerable testing, they settled on an arm of the French Minie system. This practicle muzzle-loader employed a hollow-based sub-caliber conical bullet that a soldier could ram down the barrel easily, which, when the gun was fired, would be expanded into the rifling by the force of the explosion.

The first British issue Mini rifle was the .702 caliber Pattern of 1851. Externally it resembled the older smoothbores, with the exception that it mounted a sophisticated graduated rear sight rather than the customary non-adjustable notch. This arm was issued to selected troops in the Crimea, where it received almost instant acclaim.

Swiss smallbore experiments convinced the Select Arms Committee that a reduction in caliber would provide greater range, better accuracy and an advantage in logistics. Exhaustive research and redesigning resulted in one of the finest arms of the age, the .577 caliber Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle Musket. The gun was sleeker and lighter than its forebearers and, for the first time in an English military arm, had a barrell that was secured to the stock by bands rather than pins or wedges. With its brass furniture, browned barrell, case-hardened lock and oiled walnut stock, it was indeed a handsome piece.

Though tests showed that ranges of 900 yards were not excessive for the riflr, it was agreed that the P-53 Enfield did its best work at distances between 50 and 300 yards.

The cartridges for the P-53 consisted of a heavy paper tube containing 2 1/2 drams (68 grains) of musket powder and a 530-grain, pure lead “Pritchett” type bullet which had a boxwood plug in its hollow base to improve expansion. As the bullet incorporated no annular grease rings like the French and American Minies, it was wrapped with a strip of greased paper to facilitate loading. Then cartridge itself was covered with a thin mixture of beeswax and mutton tallow for waterproofing.

To load his rifle, the soldier first bit off the rear of the cartridge and poured the powder down the barrel. He then inverted the tube (the projectile was palced in the cartridge base up), pushed the end portion into the muzzle to the approximate depth of the bullet and tore off the remaining paper. The bullet could then be easily rammed on top of the charge.

P-53 Enfields saw limited used during the Crimean War, and their marked superiority over the older muskets, and even the P-51s, caused them to be in great demand. The War Department and East India Company set about equipping all their troops with versions of the P-53 rifle musket, and by early 1857 the arm was being carried in India by the regular British regiments hired out to the Company, as well as many sepoys (native troops).

At first the rifles were well received by the sepoys, but sooner a rumor was spread that the cartridges were greased with pig’s or cow’s fat. The former was regarded by the Muslims as unclean, and the latter by the Hindus as sacred. To the native troops this was just another plot by the Feringhees to force them to renounce their traditional religions.

Fears and rejection of the cartridge began to spread. Officers noticing the unrest amongst the sepoys suggested that the drills be revised to allow the men to tear off the base of the cartridge with their fingers, or to allow the troops to grease their own cartridges. These reasonable suggestions, however, had come too late.

During a parade on February 27, 1857, the sepoys of the 19th Native Infantry refused to accept their issue of cartridges. Their commander, Colonel Mitchell, rushed to the parade ground and threatened to ship the troops to Burma. The soldiers became restive and Colonel Mitchell backed down, fearing an open revolt. He allowed the men to retain their arms and return to duty while he decided what to do. On March 23 the 19th Infantry was marched some 90 miles to the south to Barrackpore where it was ignominiously disbanded.

Three days later another incident occured which brought the situation rapidly to a head. A Sepoy named Mangal Pande had run amok during a parade and cut down two British officers. He harangued the troops to join him and kill all the British, while surprised officers looked on aghast. The commander at Barrackpore, General John Hearsey, rushed to the scene and was warned by one of the officers, “Have a care–his musket is loaded!” Hearsey continued undaunted. “Damn his musket, ” he replied. “If I fall, rush in and put him to death somehow.”

The frightened sepoy turned the rifle on himself, but only sustained a minor wound. He was captured, tried and hanged, but his name became a rallying cry for the mutineers, and “Pandy” a term of contempt the British heaped on all native troops.

The Europeans soldiers were out-numbered some eight to one by the Indians, and it was decided that as many Crown troops as possible be swiftly brought to India–a decision that merely fanned the embers of the rebellion.

Events soon speeded up, and on May 10, in Meerut, 85 sowars (native troopers) of the 3rd Light Cavalry who had refused to take the Enfield cartridges were sentenced to deportation, publicly stripped of their uniforms and medals, and imprisoned. This humiliation and harsh punishment proved to be the final straw and Indian soldiers and civilians rebelled. After releasing the prisoners, they swarmed to the European bungalows where they committed unspeakable depredations.

Sepoys ransacked houses for weapons and valuables, killed the inhabitants, then burned the structures to the ground. Despite numerous warnings the British were caught completely off guard, and by the time they were able to organize a defense. Meerut was in ruins. The sepoys headed toward Delhi some 40 miles away, and when they arrived the old Emperor received them cooly, although they were hailed by other rebels as liberators. The native troops within the city rose and by May 12, Delhi itself had become a hellish scene of carnage. The rebellion had begun in earnest.

According to General G. F. McMunn, in his book The Armies of India, “The mutinous regiments, under command of their native officers, marched to Delhi, to Lucknow, or to Cawnpore, with their British colours flying, wearing British war medals, with their bands playing British airs. The British on the ridge before Delhi could often hear the mutineer bands playing the airs their officers had taught them, before the Emperor’s palace. The anomalies of the mutiny were many. In some regiments the officers were murdered with every possible atrocity. In others great pains were taken to conduct them within reach of a place of safety. One day the bulk of the regiment or the older native officers, with tears in their eyes, would protest their loyalty to their colonel and comrade of fifty years. The next morning he and his officers would be dead in the rising sun.”

Military arms found in India during the time of the Mutiny were of two basic types: regular British service patterns carried by Crown troops, and weapons ordered from contractors by the East India Company to equip its own Army.

For the most part, the arms used by the East India Company kept pace with those used by the Regular Army. This had two distinct advantages. First, the Company was able to take advantage of the research and design work done by the Board of Ordnance, and secondly it was able to place orders with the very same contractors who were furnishing arms to Her Majesty’s forces.

Generally, Company guns were of the same style as those of the British Government. Often, however, subtle differences, such as a slightly modified trigger guard or ramrod would be encountered. The lock markings were quite different: Government locks would be engraved (later stamped) with a crown surmounting the initials “GR” Georgius Rex for King George III) or “VR” (Victoria Regina for Queen Victoria), the date of manufacture, and the name of the contractor or the word “TOWER” for Tower of London Armouries where the gun would have been assembled. The P-53s that were made at the Royal Small Arms Factory bore the name “ENFIELD”. Company lock-plates featured either a quartered heart containing the letters “VEIC” (United East India Company), a rampant lion holding a crown, or simply the contractor’s name.

Too, many richer Indian princes had their own private armies, whose arsenals were stocked with everything from the latest British and European military weapons to fine sporting arms, surplus East India Company flintlock muskets, and rifles and domestic matchlocks.

The Crown troops for the most part were equiped with the new Enfields, as were a goodly number of mutineers. Once the rebellion had begun, the sepoys seemed to forget their objections to the “accursed cartridge” and gleefully turned them on their former masters.

While undoubtedly the most common model of the P-53 in service was the 39-inch-barreled infantry rifle, two variations–the 33-inch-barreled P-56 Short Rifle and 30-ich-barreled Artillery Carbine–were also available in some quantity. In fact, all the men of the 60th Rifle Regiment, who were stationed at Meerut at the time of the uprising, were armed with Short Rifles.

The main differences among the three arms, besides barrel length, were the rear sights and bayonets. While the infantry rifle took a standard triangular bayonet, the Short Rifle and Artillery Carbine were both fitted with a long, leather-handled, wavy-bladed “yataghan” style sword bayonet designed to offset the guns’ reduced lengths.

Many Company troops still carried the older .753-caliber Pattern 1842 percussion smoothbores, and arsenals were well stocked with India Pattern and New Land Pattern Brown Bess Flintlocks. Aside from their ignition systems these three arms resembled each other quite a bit. They all featured more or less ornate brass furniture, full-length walnut stocks, and pinned barrels.

The .75-caliber India Pattern Bess had been introduced in the late 18th century. It was simplified and streamlined in 1802 and rechristened the “New Land Pattern.” When the decision was made in the early 1830s to switch to percussion ignition, the New Land models were at first converted to that system, and then, following a disastrous fire in the Tower of London where a great many of these muskets were destroyed, work was started on the manufacture of the P-42.

This last general-issue smoothbore musket was similar to its flintlock ancestors, although it incorporated simplified brasswork and a new-model bayonet catch located at the forend cap. Earlier Brown Bess bayonets simply slipped over a stud at the muzzle and, with the exception of some East India Company models, they employed no catch or retaining spring.

Two other percussion smoothbores that found favor in India were the .753-caliber Sappers and Miners Carbine and Artillery Carbine. They both looked a great deal like the P-42 Musket and, in fact, used the same locks and furniture. Their barrels. however measured only 30 inches, and this extra bit of handiness caused them to be quite popular with the sepoys. The Sappers and Miners Carbine, which was originally intended for issue only to company pioneers, was fitted for a long straight sword bayonet (early ones were saw-toothed) with a socket similar to that found on the P-42 musket bayonet. The artillery carbine mounted the standard triangular blade.

The 26-inch-barreled .733-caliber “Victoria” cavalry carbine, while never particularly popular with the regulars because of its excessive recoil, was also used on both sides during the Mutiny. It resembled its infantry cousins, but incorporated a “Paget” swivel ramrod that made the arm easier for the trooper to load on horseback.

While none of these smoothbores had the long-range accuracy of the modern P-53s, they were deadly at 50 yards, could be loaded fairly rapidly and, like all British military arms, were well made and serviceable.

Prior to the decision to equip all troops with rifles, the British Army and East India Company formed special rifle units which were at first armed with flintlock Baker rifles, and later with percussion Brunswicks.

The Baker had first come into service during the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars and had served with distinction on the Peninsula Campaign and in America. It was later issued worldwide, and continued in regular service for almost 40 years. The design of this sturdy weapon hearkened back to its Germanic Jager forebears. Its .625 barrel was rifled with seven grooves, and featured a bar at the muzzle to which a brass-hilted, 17-inch-bladed sword bayonet could be affixed. The Baker had all-brass furniture, including a buttbox on the right side of the stock where a soldier could carry tools or spare patches. It was loaded with loose powder and a patched ball in the manner of the American and German arms it emulated, although the soldiers were issued paper cartridges so the rifle could be fired rapildy with “running ball,” should the need arise.

In 1837 the Baker rifle was replaced with the Brunswick. While this percussions cap rifle resembled its flintlock ancestor externally, the rifling system was totally different. The brunswick employed a.704 belted ball which fit mechanically into two deep spiral grooves in the barrel.

Brunswick bullets were issued to the troops sewn into greased calico patches. Powder was contained in separate packets. Like the Baker, musket type cartridges were given to the soldiers for emergency use. The Brunswick took a wide-bladed sword bayonet, somewhat similar to that of the Baker.

Both Bakers and Brunswicks were on hand in some numbers during the mutiny, though it is likely they saw more use with the sepoys than with the English. The Bakers were old and in questionable condition, and because of their heavy recoil and indifferent accuracy, the Brunswicks had never been particularly popular with British riflemen.

European civilians rapidly joined existing Crown or Company regiments and some formed their own irregular cavalry or infantry units. A good number of these clerks-turned-warrior carried high-quality sporting rifles or shotguns brought from home, although when available, they would opt for military muskets or carbines.

Mutineers were known to brandish matchlocks, but they too preferred the modern percussion arms. Many Indian princes (and at least one princess–the Rani of Jhansi) even rode to battle wearing traditional gold- and silver-ornamented Indo-Persian helmets, breastplates and chain mail.

Handguns were widely used during the Mutiny, and we find many references to them in British dispatches, letters, and reminiscences.

Colt revolvers were well known to the British. In 1851 Samuel Colt had exhibited his wares at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, and had made repeated attempts to interest the Board of Ordnance in adopting them for the military.

Large .44 caliber 1st, 2nd and 3rd Model Dragoons, as well as the widely popular .36 caliber 1851 Navy revolver, were imported into England and were eagerly snapped up by officers and civilians headed for the Crimea, Africa, India and any number of other colonial outposts throughout the world. The initial acceptance was so good that Colt was promoted to open a London factory in 1853.

The Colt’s main rival in England was the self-cocking (double-action) five-shooter of Robert Adams. Adams too had exibited his Deane, Adams and Deane revolver at the Crystal Palace and, like Colt, was an aggressive entrepreneur who was anxious to secure lucrative government contracts.

Trials by a select small-arms committee showed that the singel-action Colt navy had greater long-range accuracy than the Adams, but that the Adams was more powerful (both .442 and .50-caliber versions were available), and that it could be discharged much more rapidly than the Colt–two features that were favored by British officers. The Adams’main drawback was that it could not be fired single action.

In 1855, however, Adams incorporated the improvement of F. B. E. Beaumont, which enabled the gun to be thumb-cocked. This sounded the death knell for the Colt Navy, as reports of its lack of power began to filter back from the Crimea and, later, India.

A typical damning report of the ‘51 Colt’s lack of stopping power against the sepoys was related, second hand, by Lieutenant Colonel G. V. Fosbery.

“An officer, who especially prided himself in his pistol-shooting, was attacked by a stalwart mutineer armed with a heavy sword. The officer, unfortunately for himself, carried a Colt’s Navy pistol of small caliber and fired a sharp-pointed bullet of sixty to the pound and a heavy charge of powder, its range being 600 yards, as I have frequently proved. This he proceeded to empty into the sepoy as soon as he advanced, but, having done so, he waited just one second too long to see the effect of his shooting, and was cloven to the teeth by his antagonist, who then dropped down and died beside him. My informant, who witnessed the affair, told me that five out of the six bullets had struck the sepoy close together in the chest, and all had passed through him and out of the back.”

The Board of Ordnance did favor Colt with some orders for the Royak Navy, but they eventually chose the Beaumont-Adams for general adoption by the Army. This decision, coupled with the public’s flagging enthusiasm for his wares, caused Colt to close the London factory after only 4 years of operation. Even though the Colt Dragoon revolvers were every bit as powerful as the Adams, their finish was not as good, and they were half again as large. For want of other arms, Dragoons and Navies were used in the Mutiny, though officers discarded them for more “modern” weapons as soon as they had the chance. Because of this, Deane, Adams and Deane .442 and .50-caliber revolvers and Beaumont Adams .442s seem to have been the most favored, if not most widely used, handguns during the Mutiny.

Other handguns used during the rebellion included a potpourri of English pepperboxes, transition revolvers, double-barreled greatcoat and holster pistols, and

military horse pistols. In the latter category, two particular arms saw some action in India–the Pattern 1842 Lancer’s Pistol and the East India Company pistol.

The single-shot P-42 Lancer’s Pistol was, as its name implied, adopted as a sidearm for lancers who did not carry carbines, and for cavalry troop sergeants. It was little more than a scaled-down version of the P-42 musket, and its poor balance and awkward hold, abetted by a 9-inch .75- caliber barrel, caused it to be “lost” by the men at earliest opportunity. It featured the usual P-42 brass furniture and a Paget swivel ramrod.

The East India Company Pistol, while maintaining the same general dimensions, caliber and ramrod as its Regular Army cohort, was somewhat better designed. It’s grip was not as severe as the P-42’s and the brass furniture was much hardier. Also, a lanyard ring was attached to the butt.

Crown troops were eventually sent to Dehli and finally laid siege to the sity–a siege that would provide severe hardships for both the Europeans and the mutineers. Rations became short, and disease broke out. Ammunition became so low that the British would pay natives to retrieve cannon balls after they had been fired. Finally, on September 14, 1857, Dehli was stormed by a mixed force under Brigadier General John Nicholson, and the city was reoccupied.

Other part of India, notably Cawnpore and Lucknow, both about 250 miles south of Dehli, were the scenes of fierce fighting and horrible carnage. However, by mid April, 1859, English forces had the situation pretty much under control.

The British repaid the sepoy’s cruelty in kind, and in retribution committed some of the worst rapacity of the conflict. Captured mutineers were shot or hung out of had. One favorite method of execution involved tying a prisoner over the muzzle of a cannon then firing the piece [a method of execution learned from the Indians]. The results were vividly described by an eye witness at Lucknow.

“It was a horrid sight that met the eye; a regular shower of human fragments–of heads, arms and legs–appeared in the air whirling through the smoke; and when that cleared away, those fragments lying on the ground–fragments of Hindoos and of Mussulmans mixed together–were all that remained of those ten mutineers . . .

Perfect callouseness was depicted on every European face; a look of grim satisfaction could even be seen in the countenances of the gunners serving the guns. But far different was the effect on the native portion of the spectators. Their black faces grew ghastly pale, as they gazed breathlessly at the awful spectacle. You must know that this is nearly the only form in which death has any terror for a native. If he is hanged or shot, he knows that his friends or relatives will be allowed to claim his body, and will give him the funeral rites required by his religion; if a Hindoo, that his body will be burned with all due ceremonies; and if a Mussulman, that his remains will be decently interred, as directed in the Koran. But if sentenced to death in this form, he knows that his body will be blown into a thousand pieces, and that it will be altogether impossible for his relatives, however devoted to him, to be sure of picking up all the fragments of his own particular body; and the thought that perhaps a limb of some one of a different religion to himself might possibly be burned or buried with the remainder of his body is agony to him.”

Fears brought about by the Mutiny caused the British Government to transfer control of the country from the East India Company to the Crown.

The Company’s white troops were disbanded, and in the future the only European soldiers to serve in India would be those of the Regular Army. It was decided that the proportion of native to British troops would never be more than two to one, and that Indians would not be allowed to man artillery.

The Government also decreed that small arms given to natives would be of lesser quality than those used by Crown regiments. Muskets and carbines externally resembling the P-53 series, but smoothbore, were included in early issue.

In 1876 Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India. However, the hate and mistrust engendered by the Mutiny would eventually cause the brightest stone in the Crown Imperial to fade in the eyes of both the Indians and the victorious British.

704 Made Headlines

thatyouththing — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:47:18 +0000

704 Made Headlines

In case you missed it, the Stanly News and Press ran a great article about That Youth Thing and its plans for 704. Awesome things are happening, and this article was an unexpected way of letting the word out.

Thanks to so many who have called, emailed, and Facebooked us with encouraging words of support. God is doing this!!!

- Paul

First random sighting!

the704 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:07:17 +0000

Today I spotted the very first cling on a random car, of which the owner I did not know! Up until now I’ve known everyone who has a cling on their vehicle (and those are usually in church parking lots). It was cool to spot one out of the blue. Thanks mystery mini van owner! Keep ip the good work.