I LUV these!

Meeting tokens. One good for 15 minutes. One to announce that the meeting is over.

Luv. Them.

Via Jason at The Salt Box, who asks:

Can anyone in higher ed imagine deploying one of these nifty tokens at a meeting of any standing committee ? Or, for example, at the faculty senate?

Really, though, tokens for meetings seem like a good idea. Apparently, some feminist consciousness raising groups back in the day used tokens to keep everyone's contributions equal. Everyone got, say, three tokens at the beginning of a meeting. Had to use them up. Had to stop talking when they were gone. I've sometimes thought of using a system like that in my classes.

Teaching Web 2.0

Next semester I'm teaching a course I'm calling "Writing Web 2.0." I've been asked to please hurry up and submit my course description since registration starts next week. Here's what I've got. Would you take it?

Web 2.0 or the “Read/Write Web” refers to the many social networking and collaborative applications that characterize the second-generation World Wide Web. In this course, we’ll experiment with a variety of applications, including blogs, wikis, real simple syndication, and social networking sites. We’ll also read some practical and theoretical explorations of Web 2.0 and social networks. The major project for the course will be student-designed and will make use of at least one Web 2.0 application. Because the Read/Write web also has many educational applications, this course will be especially useful for both writers and future teachers.

Movement/Mystory

Bonnie's comment sent me (where else?) to Google. According to Wikipedia, the Jesus Movement

was the major Christian element within the hippie counterculture, or, conversely, the major hippie element within the Christian Church. Members of the movement are called Jesus people, or Jesus freaks.

Wow. I had forgotten all about "Jesus freaks." It was the melding of being "born again" with being a hippie.

I also found this pretty cool website on the Jesus Movement. According to the "History" section of that website,

Though the Jesus People Movement remains relatively neglected by mainstream and religious historians, its influence throughout the church had a profound affect upon shaping many facets of the contemporary evangelical movement.

So, Bonnie, you aren't the only person who hasn't heard of the Jesus Movement! But, thanks to my older sister, it was part of the culture of my childhood. In Texas. Among evangelicals.

And thanks to the One Way website (as well as its Jesus Music site), I'm able to add these images to my on-again, off-again exploration of mystory. I haven't thought about these things in a long, long time:












Don't you love that last one? The appropriation of popular culture was a big part of the Jesus Movement. I remember another poster that riffed off Coke: Jesus, He's the Real Thing.

But "one way," as you can see in the posters above, was the big slogan.



One way. It sounds dogmatic. Only one way. But that first image, from Agape's LP Gospel Hard Rock, was popular exactly because it wasn't clear cut. What is it? Mountains in snow? No: it's Jesus. Yeah. It's Jesus. Yeah. (A snippit of some more lyrics I remember from my sister's record-playing.)

I remember (as a fuzzy emotion, not a definite thought) the Jesus Movement as risky. Not clear cut. My mother didn't like my sister's records. It didn't seem right to mix church with rock and roll. And look at those Jesus freaks in Dallas! One of them is shirtless! That's not my grandmother's worship service!



Another link to explore another time.