Finally In-Sync

Part of the what I hope to do in this space is to show how I found the technology to make my life easier.  I know that perhaps I am not the most tech-savvy person in the world, but still I get frustrated at how difficult it can be to find what should be simple information.  Here was my task, which seemed simple enough: I have a computer at home, one at the office, and a netbook.  My computer at home was running Windows Vista, of all things!  My netbook and the office computer were both running Windows XP.  I wanted a way to keep all my document files in sync on all computers, and to do this without having to remember to do anything.  That is, I wanted it to happen in the background and I knew I could not rely on my memory to keep things up to date.  The first thing I did was to upgrade both my Vista machine and my netbook to Windows 7.  Yes, my netbook is running Windows 7 and is happy doing it!  Along with my update to Windows 7, I downloaded Windows Live Essentials.  This allows one to Sync computers in just the way I wanted, while also keeping copies "in the cloud" that can accessed from any computer that as internet access.  However, the new version only allows syncing between computers running Windows 7.  I still have my office computer, which runs XP (until our IT people decide to switch to Windows 7), and this computer cannot, therefore, sync with the other two.  The solution to this problem came from an article on Lifehacker.com.  I downloaded Syncplicity and followed the instructions carefully.  Syncplicity is free and also offers 2GB of storage with the free version, 50GB with the paid version.  I had already decided only to use this option for documents, so the 2GB limit is fine with me.  Here, then, is my current setup: my home computer and netbook, both running Windows 7, sync through Windows Live Essentials, while my home computer and office computer (running Windows XP) sync through Syncplicity.  The result? Any time I open my documents folder on any of these computers, I am sure that I have the latest version that I had worked on on any of my computers.  Plus, I have the additional benefit of having access through the web to any of my files from any computer.  This is exactly what I wanted, namely a way of keeping all my computers in sync without me having ever to do anything manually!

I will add that there are also ways to do this through Google Docs.  Syncplicity also has the ability to sync with Google Docs, and there are plug-ins available for OpenOffice (my word processor of choice) that allow you to work directly with Google Docs.  However, I have found that the formatting of a document is not maintained as the file goes through Google Docs.  The solution outlined above, however, keeps the formatting identical accross all instances of the file.

Certainly one can find this information on the web, but I put it here because it took me several hours and several failed attempts to come to this solution.  Hopefully, I can help save someone else a great deal of time!

What is This Blog About?

I am a professor of philosophy at DePaul University.  Recently, two sides of my life or personality have come into a sort of conflict.  On the one hand, I am excited by and interested in technologies of all sorts (lately, this focuses around my Android phone!).  On the other hand, I am getting tired of the University, the press, and some members of the techno-intelligentsia telling me that certain forms of technology will "revolutionize" my classroom.  Often, I am told, old forms of teaching (primarily lecturing) are not delivering the kind of education my students need or, even more troubling, can handle.  We have all seen how this last point works: current students have been "raised on the internet," and therefore need an interactive atmosphere in which they are contributing and also following out threads and links of their choosing.  I recently heard an episode (though I am not sure it was a recent episode) of This Week in Tech that included Don Tapscott.  I am a huge fan of the entire TWiT Network and listen regularly to many of the shows.  But the critique of the lecture centered classroom offered in relation to the possibilities opened by new technologies got me thinking: I am a semi-troglodyte!  That is, while I am not a full-blown trog in that I love, use, and appreciate a whole host of new technologies, I hesitate to accept that I should "revolutionize" my classroom (and my scholarship, for that matter) simply because there are new technologies out there.
     One thing that I think is often forgotten when it comes to the idea of revolutionizing education is that those calling for such revolutions did so on the basis of an education they received.  That is, perhaps we should recognize that all of us received the very tools of analysis, critique, careful reading, etc., that we deploy in the name of making our students' lives better from the very kind of education we now want to overthrow.  Not all revolutions are progressive.  In fact, most are reactionary.  Perhaps we should pause to contemplate whether, in revolutionizing higher education in some ways, we might be robbing our students of tools that will be necessary for them to think through new revolutions.
     On the other hand, I have many colleagues who remain suspicious of almost all forms of technology.  There is good reason for this.  As Martin Heidegger argued in "Question Concerning Technology," each technology, and, perhaps, technology as a whole, has a way of making the world and things in it appear.  We should be cautious about that way of appearing, since technology seems to thrive on making all things into "data" that are completely fungible and lose their moorings to a world.  However, I do not share this blanket rejection of technology.  There are things I want to do (collaborate with colleagues, present students with different learning tasks) that can only be done with the advancement of web applications, software, and hardware.  So I am a semi-trog, not a full blown one.
     In this space, I hope to reflect on new technologies and their relation to higher education, specifically to the humanities.  I also hope to reflect on these larger questions concerning what effects technology has on our ability to do philosophy, to continue the goals of a liberal arts education.  And, I hope to use some of my experience with actual technologies to help those who, like me, just wish technology would finally make our lives easier, not more confusing!