It’s amusing how much I take my web browser for granted — and how I under-utilize its capabilities. Depending upon which machine I am using I rotate across Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. Right now I am using Google Chrome, in many ways my browser of first choice. I really should revisit and reorganize all the bookmarks here before school starts. I imported all my bookmarks from all other browsers. I also need to re-evaluate all the  extensions that at some point in time I judged important enough to add.  Some clearly are of value to me as an educator. Other, far too many, are just neat or deemed “best” by others! So much to learn, so little time—so many distractions. Alas, summer is almost over.

I enjoy “reading” cartoons. Friends say that I am often “funny” and have a good sense of humor. Alas, I’ve never been good at telling jokes (except about me).

I am toying with revisiting my academic interests in the psychology of humor when I teach the Research Seminar next semester. What makes something funny? Is the same thing funny across cultures?

I am quite impressed with the accuracy of recent dictation software (that converts my speech into text), and I’ve recently been interested in comparing the accuracy of different language translation software apps and browser extensions. Here is one of many situations where I can be helped immensely by my international students and friends.

How good are these translation programs? Are we ready to solve the space alien communication issue which science fiction author Connie Willis so cleverly described in her hilarious novella “All Seated on the Ground?”

I thought about attempting to tell a joke in English and then seeing how well it “translated” across languages—without emoticon smiley support. Alas, the Muse of Funny Jokes Appropriate for Cross-Cultural Sharing and Language-Translation-Software Bench-marking (just TRY Googling that!) did not appear to me tonight when I called upon her. So, I ‘ll try using some aphorisms which might be more culturally universal or at least literally translatable. James Geary delightfully explores aphorisms in his book The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of Aphorisms. Here he is in his own words.

Here is an aphorism about education from Mark Twain:

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Here (I take on faith) is a traditional Chinese translation using the InstantTranslate extension for the Chrome Browser. (The extension also allows for hearing the spoken translation.)

Here is a translation from English to Lithuanian.

Žmogus, kuris neskaito knygų neturi nei žmogui, kuris negali jų perskaityti pranašumą.

Here is a translation from English to Turkish:

Kitap okumaz adam bunları okuyamaz adam üzerinde hiçbir avantajı vardır.

Here is a translation from English to Polish:

Człowiek, który nie czyta książek, nie ma przewagę nad człowiekiem, że nie może ich odczytać.

Here is a translation from English to Spanish:

El hombre que no lee libros no tiene ventaja sobre el hombre que no puede leerlos.

And, for my Chinese whispers telephone game test, here is the resulting translation from English to Lithuanian to Turkish to Polish to Spanish and back to English. I’ll leave to my students the challenge of investigating  all the possible differences with different orders of translation.

“This is a man who does not read books, you can read an advantage.”

LOL:)

One of my favorite reference books is the J. I. Rodale’s  The Synonym Finder.  I am forever fascinated by shades of meaning of words. Tonight, as I sit down to begin revisiting all the courses I shall be teaching a month from now —in a different time frame (70 minutes, three days a week) rather than as I have taught them the past 34 years (50 minutes, 4 days a week), I am distracted by the word curator. Among the synonyms tendered by Rodale are guardian, custodian, concierge, protector, preserver, steward, and manager.

To what degree is a professor a curator? Without doubt one role I play as a university professor is sifting through vast amounts of content, ideas, and ways of knowing and of learning about specific topics  (e.g. my area of expertise, social psychology) and attempting to share with others in a coherent way what I have learned. There are myriad tools available to discover and manage digital content. I’ve recently focused on the utility of two such content curation tools identified and explained in Jane Hart’s marvelous A Practical Guide to the Top 100 tools for Learning.

Paper.li allows one to create a daily newspaper consisting of stories shared by persons followed on Facebook and Twitter and other online news sources. Therein lies both its strength and its weakness—one must carefully curate and be wary of the credibility of the sources. Still, just for fun I created a daily newspaper to follow events in Lithuania.

Scoop.it allows one to create an online magazine and discover others’ curated online magazines. To experiment with it I created an online magazine of Technology Tools for Learning. The challenge would be maintaining it (updating and adding value through thoughtful comments). Another use I made of it for my own purposes was to gather together information on Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo in preparation for his September 4 Opening Convocation talk. I’ll not share my results here before our new freshmen have a chance to read the book!