Selling Myself Long

Been attending sessions by Meri Aaron Walker about online methods to get paid for our expertise. Meri coaches teachers about those issues.

MAWSTOOLBOX.COM

There’s also a LearnHub “course”: Jumpstart Your Online Teaching Career.

Some notes, on my own thinking about monetization of expertise. Still draft-like, but RERO is my battle cry.

Some obstacles to my selling expertise:

• My “oral personality.”
• The position on open/free knowledge in academia and elsewhere.
• My emphasis on friendship and personal rapport.
• My abilities as an employee instead of a “boss.”
• Difficulty in assessing the value of my expertise.
• The fact that other people have the same expertise that I think I have.
• High stakes (though this can be decreased, in some contexts).
• My distaste for competition/competitiveness.
• Difficulty at selling and advertising myself (despite my social capital).
• Being a creative generalist instead of a specialist.

Despite all these obstacles, I have been thinking about selling my services online.

One reason is that I really do enjoy teaching. As I keep saying, teaching is my hobby (when I get paid, it’s to learn how to interact with other learners and to set up learning contexts).

In fact, I enjoy almost everything in teaching (the major exception being grading/evaluating). From holding office hours and lecturing to facilitating discussions and answering questions through email. Teaching, for me, is deeply satisfying and I think that learning situations which imply the role of a teacher still make a lot of sense. I also like more informal learning situations and I even try to make my courses more similar to informal teaching. But I still find specific value in a “teaching and learning” system.

Some people seem to assume that teaching a course is the same thing as “selling expertise.” My perspective on learning revolves to a large extent on the difference between teaching and “selling expertise.” One part is that I find a difference between selling a product or process and getting paid in a broader transaction which does involve exchange about knowledge but which isn’t restricted to that exchange. Another part is that I don’t see teachers as specialists imparting their wisdom to eager masses. I see knowledge as being constructed in diverse situations, including formal and informal learning. Expertise is often an obstacle in the kind of teaching I’m interested in!

Funnily enough, I don’t tend to think of expertise as something that is easily measurable or transmissible. Those who study expertise have ways to assess something which is related to “being an expert,” especially in the case of observable skills (many of those are about “playing,” actually: chess, baseball, piano…). My personal perspective on expertise tends to be broader, more fluid. Similar to experience, but with more of a conscious approach to learning.

There also seems to be a major difference between “breadth of expertise” and “topics you can teach.” You don’t necessarily need to be very efficient at some task to help someone learn to do it. In fact, in some cases, being proficient in a domain is an obstacle to teaching in that domain, since expertise is so ingrained as to be very difficult to retrieve consciously.

This is close to “do what I say, not what I do.” I even think that it can be quite effective to actually instruct people without direct experience of these instructions. Similar to consulting, actually. Some people easily disagree with this point and some people tease teachers about “doing vs. teaching.” But we teachers do have a number of ways to respond, some of them snarkier than others. And though I disagree with several parts of his attitude, I quite like this short monologue by Taylor Mali about What Teachers Make.

Another reason I might “sell my expertise” is that I genuinely enjoy sharing my expertise. I usually provide it for free, but I can possibly relate to the value argument. I don’t feel so tied to social systems based on market economy (socialist, capitalist, communist…) but I have to make do.

Another link to “selling expertise” is more disciplinary. As an ethnographer, I enjoy being a “cultural translator.” of sorts. And, in some cases, my expertise in some domains is more of a translation from specialized speech into laypeople’s terms. I’m actually not very efficient at translating utterances from one language to another. But my habit of navigating between different “worlds” makes it possible for me to bridge gaps, cross bridges, serve as mediator, explain something fairly “esoteric” to an outsider. Close to popularization.

So, I’ve been thinking about what can be paid in such contexts which give prominence to expertise. Tutoring, homework help, consulting, coaching, advice, recommendation, writing, communicating, producing content…

And, finally, I’ve been thinking about my domains of expertise. As a “Jack of All Trades,” I can list a lot of those. My level of expertise varies greatly between them and I’m clearly a “Master of None.” In fact, some of them are merely from personal experience or even anecdotal evidence. Some are skills I’ve been told I have. But I’d still feel comfortable helping others with all of them.

I’m funny that way.

Domains of  Expertise

French

• Conversation
• Reading
• Writing
• Culture
• Literature
• Regional diversity
• Chanson appreciation

Bamanan (Bambara)

• Greetings
• Conversation

Social sciences

• Ethnographic disciplines
• Ethnographic field research
• Cultural anthropology
• Linguistic anthropology
• Symbolic anthropology
• Ethnomusicology
• Folkloristics

Semiotics

Language studies

• Language description
• Social dimensions of language
• Language change
• Field methods

Education

• Critical thinking
• Lifelong learning
• Higher education
• Graduate school
• Graduate advising
• Academia
• Humanities
• Social sciences
• Engaging students
• Getting students to talk
• Online teaching
• Online tools for teaching

Course Management Systems (Learning Management Systems)

• Oncourse
• Sakai
• WebCT
• Blackboard
• Moodle

Social networks

• Network ethnography
• Network analysis
• Influence management

Web platforms

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Ning
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Jaiku
• YouTube
• Flickr

Music

• Cultural dimensions of music
• Social dimensions of music
• Musicking
• Musical diversity
• Musical exploration
• Classical saxophone
• Basic music theory
• Musical acoustics
• Globalisation
• Business models for music
• Sound analysis
• Sound recording

Beer

• Homebrewing
• Brewing techniques
• Recipe formulation
• Finding ingredients
• Appreciation
• Craft beer culture
• Brewing trends
• Beer styles
• Brewing software

Coffee

• Homeroasting
• Moka pot brewing
• Espresso appreciation
• Coffee fundamentals
• Global coffee trade

Social media

Blogging

• Diverse uses of blogging
• Writing tricks
• Workflow
• Blogging platforms

Podcasts

• Advantages of podcasts
• Podcasts in teaching
• Filming
• Finding podcasts
• Embedding content

Technology

• Trends
• Geek culture
• Equipment
• Beta testing
• Troubleshooting Mac OS X

Online Life

Communities

• Mailing-lists
• Generating discussions
• Entering communities
• Building a sense of community
• Diverse types of communities
• Community dynamics
• Online communities

Food

• Enjoying food
• Cooking
• Baking
• Vinaigrette
• Pizza dough
• Bread

Places

• Montreal, Qc
• Lausanne, VD
• Bamako, ML
• Bloomington, IN
• Moncton, NB
• Austin, TX
• South Bend, IN
• Fredericton, NB
• Northampton, MA

Pedestrianism

• Carfree living
• Public transportation
• Pedestrian-friendly places

Tools I Use

• PDAs
• iPod
• iTunes
• WordPress.com
• Skype
• Del.icio.us
• Diigo
• Blogger (Blogspot)
• Mac OS X
• Firefox
• Flock
• Internet Explorer
• Safari
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Maps
• Zotero
• Endnote
• RefWorks
• Zoho Show
• Wikipedia
• iPod touch
• SMS
• Outlining
• PowerPoint
• Slideshare
• Praat
• Audacity
• Nero Express
• Productivity software

Effective Web searches

Socialization

• Social capital
• Entering the field
• Creating rapport
• Event participation
• Event hosting

Computer Use

• Note-taking
• Working with RSS feeds
• Basic programing concepts
• Data manipulations

Research Methods

• Open-ended interviewing
• Qualitative data analysis

Personal

• Hedonism
• Public speaking
• GERD
• Strabismus
• Moving
• Cultural awareness

Note-Taking on OSX iPhone

Attended Dan Dennett’s “From Animal to Person : How Culture Makes Up our Minds” talk, yesterday. An event hosted by UQAM’s Cognitive Science Institute. Should blog about this pretty soon. It was entertaining and some parts were fairly stimulating. But what surprised me the most had nothing to do with the talk: I was able to take notes efficiently using the onscreen keyboard on my iPod touch (my ‘touch).

As I blogged yesterday, in French, it took me a while to realize that switching keyboard language on the ‘touch also changed the dictionary used for text prediction. Very sensical but I hadn’t realized it. Writing in English with French dictionary predictions was rather painful. I basically had to click bypass the dictionary predictions on most words. Even “to” was transformed into “go” by the predictive keyboard, and I didn’t necessarily notice all the substitutions done. Really, it was a frustrating experience.

It may seem weird that it would take me a while to realize that I could get an English predictive dictionary in a French interface. One reason for the delay is that I expect some degree of awkwardness in some software features, even with some Apple products. Another reason is that I wasn’t using my ‘touch for much text entry, as I’m pretty much waiting for OSX iPhone 2.0 which should bring me alternative text entry methods such as Graffiti, MessagEase and, one can dream, Dasher. If these sound like excuses for my inattention and absent-mindedness, so be it. 😀

At any rate, I did eventually find out that I could switch back and forth between French and English dictionaries for predictive text entry on my ‘touch’s onscreen keyboard. And I’ve been entering a bit of text through this method, especially answers to a few emails.

But, last night, I thought I’d give my ‘touch a try as a note-taking device. I’ve been using PDAs for a number of years and note-taking has been a major component of my PDA usage pattern. In fact, my taking notes on a PDA has been so conspicuous that some people seem to associate me quite directly with this. It may even have helped garner a gadget-freak reputation, even though my attitude toward gadgets tends to be quite distinct from the gadget-freak pattern.

For perhaps obvious reasons, I’ve typically been able to train myself to efficiently use handheld text entry methods. On my NewtonOS MessagePad 130, I initially “got pretty good” at using the default handwriting recognition. This surprised a lot of people because human beings usually have a very hard deciphering my handwriting. Still on the Newton, switching to Graffiti, I became rather proficient at entering text using this shorthand method. On PalmOS devices (HandSpring Visor and a series of Sony Clié devices), I was usually doubling on Graffiti and MessagEase. In all of these cases, I was typically able to take rather extensive notes during different types of oral presentations or simply when I thought about something. Though I mostly used paper to take notes during classes I’ve attended during most of my academic coursework, PDA text entry was usually efficient enough that I could write down some key things in realtime. In fact, I’ve used PDAs rather extensively to take notes during ethnographic field research.

So, note taking was one of the intended uses for my iPod touch. But, again, I thought I would have to wait for text entry alternatives to the default keyboard before I could do it efficiently. So that’s why I was so surprised, yesterday, when I found out that I was able to efficiently take notes during Dennett’s talk using only the default OSX iPhone onscreen keyboard.

The key, here, is pretty much what someone at Apple was describing during some keynote session (might have been the “iPhone Roadmap” event): you need to trust the predictions. Yes, it sounds pretty “touchy-feely” (we’re talking about “touch devices,” after all 😉 ). But, well, it does work better than you would expect.

The difference is even more striking for me because I really was “fighting” the predictions. I couldn’t trust them because most of them were in the wrong language. But, last night, I noticed how surprisingly accurate the predictions could be, even with a large number of characters being mistyped. Part of it has to do with the proximity part of the algorithm. If I type “xartion,” the algorithm guesses that I’m trying to type “cartoon” because ‘x’ is close to ‘c’ and ‘i’ is close to ‘o’ (not an example from last night but one I just tried). The more confident you are that the onscreen keyboard will accurately predict what you’re trying to type, the more comfortably you can enter text.  The more comfortable you are at entering text, the more efficient you become at typing, which begins a feedback loop.

Because I didn’t care that specifically about the content of Dennett’s talk, it was an excellent occasion to practise entering text on my ‘touch. The stakes of “capturing” text were fairly low. It almost became a game. When you add characters to a string which is bringing up the appropriate suggestion and delete those extra characters, the suggestion is lost. In other words, using the example above, if I type “xartion,” I get “cartoon” as a suggestion and simply need to type a space or any non-alphabetic character to accept that suggestion. But if I go on typing “xartionu” and go back to delete the ‘u,’ the “cartoon” suggestion disappears. So I was playing a kind of game with the ‘touch as I was typing relatively long strings and trying to avoid extra characters. I lost a few accurate suggestions and had to retype these, but the more I trusted the predictive algorithm, the less frequently did I have to retype.

During a 90 minute talk, I entered about 500 words. While it may not sound like much, I would say that it captured the gist of what I was trying to write down. I don’t think I would have written down much more if I had been writing on paper. Some of these words were the same as the ones Dennett uttered but the bulk of those notes were my own thoughts on what Dennett was saying. So there were different cognitive processes going on at the same time, which greatly slows down each specific process. I would still say that I was able to follow the talk rather closely and that my notes are pretty much appropriate for the task.

Now, I still have some issues with entering text using the ‘touch’s onscreen keyboard.

• While it makes sense to make it the default that all suggestions are accepted, there could be an easier way to refuse suggestions that tapping the box where that suggestion appears.
• It might also be quite neat (though probably inefficient) if the original characters typed by the user were somehow kept in memory. That way, one could correct inaccurate predictions using the original string.
• The keyboard is both very small for fingers and quite big for the screen.
• Switching between alphabetic characters and numbers is somewhat inefficient.
• While predictions have some of the same effect, the lack of a “spell as you type” feature decreases the assurance in avoiding typos.
• Dictionary-based predictions are still inefficient in bilingual writing.
• The lack of copy-paste changes a lot of things about text entry.
• There’s basically no “command” or “macro” available during text entry.
• As a fan of outliners, I’m missing the possibility to structure my notes directly as I enter them.
• A voice recorder could do wonders in conjunction with text entry.
• I really just wish Dasher were available on OSX iPhone.

All told, taking notes on the iPod touch is more efficient than I thought it’d be but less pleasant than I wish it can become.

For Those Who Don’t Grok Blogging

A friend sent me this link:

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger – WikiHow
Cute, but not that insightful.

Outlining

ATPM 11.10 – Outliners: TAO and OmniOutliner Pro
Comparison between two approaches to outlining. Some interesting comments about outlining usage.
As academics often need to write structured texts, a good outliner should really be a part of any academic's toolbox. Ted Goranson's column on outliners frequently contains insightful ideas about computer-assisted writing.
This specific column could use a bit of editing, though.

Technorati tags: software, workflow, outlining, note-taking