i-Anya

Fro-zen
Originally uploaded by drp.

Happy Winter Solstice!

I usually have my mobile phone switched on silent (it’s mega-embarrassing to have it ring in the middle of a lecture!). Well, via ringtonia, I have now discovered that ringtone choice can tell me about my identity. Here’s the details of the report cited, with my identity highlighted:

Research indicates that people do judge mobile users based on their ringtone. Earlier this year, U.K.-based carrier Tesco Mobile surveyed 1,000 customers and discovered that 21% of them thought having a standard ringtone was “uncool.”

— The survey also concluded that people who use their own recorded voice as a ringtone are self-obsessed, and that users who constantly change their rings might be flighty and unreliable.

— If your phone plays a classic rock tune, you’re showing your age, but you get points for figuring out how to change the ringer, Gramps.

— If your phone is still playing “Jingle Bell Rock” in July, you’re not going to impress people with your productivity.

— If your ringtone is a current hip-hop or R&B hit, you’re young at heart, but you’re not particularly original. Hip-hop ringtones accounted for more than half of the $300 million U.S. market in 2004.

— If your phone plays the sound of an old mechanical phone bell, you’re not as funny as you think you are.

— If your phone plays the theme song to a television show, you’re not going to impress anyone with your intellectual acumen.. Perhaps a Mozart or Beethoven ringer would do some damage control.

— If your phone never leaves vibrate or silent mode, you may be the kind of important person who can’t afford to waste time answering a phone call right now. Or maybe you just think you’re that important. However, you may also be considerate and respectful, the kind of person we’d like sitting behind us in a movie theater.

— Unfortunately, we tend to get saddled with seatmates whose phones play the popular “Crazy Frog,” the clucking chicken, or any number of other annoying animal noises. If you’re one of these folks, you may be a sociopath.”

(Like my selective bolding?).

Today has been yet another day of prac visits followed by assignment marking (and tomorrow its going to be the same again!). Marking is one of the tasks I often find incredibly onerous, but I have to say that today I have been absolutely amazed and impressed at the quality of some of my students’ work! I had students argue a case for using various forms of “new literacies” in the classroom context and they really wrote some exciting papers! (Using blogs, using hypertext poetry, using digital fiction are some examples).

I also had my second year undergrad writing class doing online discussions about using popular culture texts in the classroom context and I have to say, I read the best, most critical and well researched discussion I have ever seen ever today. One group were writing about manga comics (and then comics in general) and the discussion went way beyond the “its a way to bridge the gaps between home and school literacy” or “it will get the boys more involved” (which are both valid arguments but ones I was expecting). This discussion started with those points but then went on to discuss, in detail, the INTER-MODAL reading demands of comics!!! Not only that, but the actual DISCUSSION was a genuine discussion - to-ing and fro-ing of ideas, adding onto each other’s points, etc etc. I was so impressed I gave it *drum roll* 100%!!!! And…… guess what mode their discussion used? No, not that awful WebCT (I truly hate that!), not blackboard, not any artificially-designed-for-educational-purposes software… no it was… A BLOG!! Yes, a blog!!! I am going to ask them for permission to link to it if they decide to keep it online and not delete it.

It’s exciting to see students get excited over their assignment work!!!