Thanks for your patience during our recent outage at scalar.usc.edu. While Scalar content is loading normally now, saving is still slow, and Scalar's 'additional metadata' features have been disabled, which may interfere with features like timelines and maps that depend on metadata. This also means that saving a page or media item will remove its additional metadata. If this occurs, you can use the 'All versions' link at the bottom of the page to restore the earlier version. We are continuing to troubleshoot, and will provide further updates as needed. Note that this only affects Scalar projects at scalar.usc.edu, and not those hosted elsewhere.
12013-07-15T10:37:44-07:00Dana Montello898ad311c330353bc25f0e573ada7fb8c3d507297503In which we experience Scalar and decry Blackboardplain2013-07-22T10:35:48-07:00Dana Montello898ad311c330353bc25f0e573ada7fb8c3d50729DebatesI'll admit right now that Scalar is absolute voodoo for me. It took me awhile to figure out how to create a page, and even now I have no idea how to edit a page that I created so I can put in all that fun multimedia material that is desired. It's a zone where there are buttons everywhere, they may sometimes be labeled, but you don't really know which one is the one you're looking for. Simpler designs would be easier, but would limit what I was trying to create (which I'm not exactly sure of yet). This will . . . take some time.
However, I can say it's much better than BB, both discussion board and blog. I can easily log in from a standard user page rather than routing everything through a university account that signs me out every so often. It seems much more dynamic, and the colors are more pleasing (and controllable). On BB, you're just an extension of a student account, probing your professor for information, reading what is presented. You're not a creator or a scholar or a collaborator; you're a pupil. Compared to Twitter, Scalar a godsend of proper text and images as opposed to snippets and web addresses. I can actually converse here, which I couldn't easily do on Twitter. Your Twitter identity is you boiled down to your media savvy aspects. It's not a place for scholarship, but rather where the current check the trends to find out what's new. Identity is being up-to-date and aware. I actually did like Social Book quite a bit, though it's more concerned with annotating than creating versus Scalar. You're a student again when using Social Book, but an empowered one, able to navigate, claim, and make points. You're a participant, unlike in Blackboard.
As far as the identity of Scalar, I'm still learning the ropes so can't definitely say yet. More akin to creation than the others, self is a producer and commenter on what others have produced. You are your work, a blogger in a closed network of tubes. Whether this assessment holds up or is altered by my future experiences will be seen.
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12013-07-22T10:29:54-07:00Dana Montello898ad311c330353bc25f0e573ada7fb8c3d50729Dana Montello JournalsDana Montello6In which we provide insightplain2013-08-07T10:30:20-07:00Dana Montello898ad311c330353bc25f0e573ada7fb8c3d50729
1media/3d-colorful-cubes.jpg#39ee202013-07-11T07:36:07-07:00Gretchen Garrison Conyers870215673ca705015788e91f7b20d009ff5dab3bCritiquesr mendez15My thoughts about technologytext174942013-08-13T19:26:15-07:00r mendezaf28934a6bfed132c4d25975432b0fcd7ba354a4