Meg’s Blog

Thomas Stanley Kurdziolek

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:53:46 -0800

Thomas Stanley Kurdziolek was born on January 10, 2013 at 8:07am. He was delivered at the El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA. Tommy weighed in at 8 pounds even, and was 19 inches long.

Tommy was named after two very important people: My grandfather, Thomas O. Dickey, Jr., and Wes’s grandfather, Stanley Kurdziolek. Both men led lives of service and have special places in our hearts. I’m sure they are looking over their new great-grandson from heaven.

Educators as Data Storytellers

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 09:41:59 -0700

One of the current big trends in education reform discussion has been around “Big Data”. There appears to be an overwhelming sense that if we could just tap into Big Data the same way the business world has that we’ll be able to drastically improve the state of education. I agree that Big Data has huge potential and a role to play in education, but I worry that we are pushing for abstracted data models while losing site of what teachers and principals do best: attending to individual students. As part of my job at Education Elements, I have had the opportunity to spend time interviewing and observing educators trying to change and improve the state of education at their schools. I have reflected on some of these experiences, and thoughts around Big Data in education, and written a blog article featured on our company website: Educators as Data Storytellers: Leaving Room for the Anecdotal in Data Driven Decision Making. Check it out!

Working Woman

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:06:03 -0800

I am officially gainfully employed, a working woman, a professional in my field. I even have business cards to prove it. It feels good.

I work at Education Elements - a company that takes on schools and school districts as clients and helps them implement blended learning. (Blended learning is a term for the blend of different modes of learning, including teacher instruction, small student group projects, and individualized student instruction through technology.) My role at the company is essentially to make data more usable to teachers and principals. The schools we work with select different types of educational technologies and content providers to suite their needs, and all those different technologies and content providers capture various types of data about students. The teachers need a centralized place to look at all this data and they need to be able to understand the data well enough to make critical instructional decisions. I spend lots of time looking at data and coming up with prototypes of visualizations and interfaces for teachers to access that data.

Education Elements is still a start-up, and it has roughly ~50 employees total spread out all over the world. In my office in Palo Alto we have about 20 employees, which has required us to find a bigger office space to move into in March. I’ve never worked a large company, but one thing I like about working at a small company is that I already feel useful and productive after just two weeks of working here. The work itself is interesting and challenging, and I’m looking forward to watching the company grow around me.

What it feels like to try and win NaNoWriMo

Thu, 1 Dec 2011 15:55:32 -0800

Well, I did it. I am a 2011 NaNoWriMo winner. That means I started a novel on November 1st and by November 30th I had over 50,000 words written in it. In fact, yesterday I copy pasted my entire novel into the NaNoWriMo validator and I had written exactly 50,176 words. I am now experiencing the “NaNo Crash” that comes on December 1st and you realize (1) that you don’t have to write a minimum of 1,667 words today and (2) that you have neglected a great many projects and responsibilities throughout November and they all require your attention. To ease my feelings of NaNo withdraw I’ve decided to write a blog post about my experience (and I wouldn’t be surprised if this post was roughly ~1,667 words by the time I’m done).

The beginning: “Hey, this isn’t that bad!”
I have been kicking around novel ideas for the better part of two years. It seemed that every time I really got into writing my dissertation and making progress in my research I’d get side-tracked by a creative not-my-research idea that would buzz around my head and bite me until I did something about it. One of those ideas was for an eight foot statue of a zeus-like god with web-cams for eyeballs that would project everything he “saw” onto a screen behind him and on the web.... Thankfully I didn’t invest too much time in that idea beyond sketching out some schematics for it and talking to some “real” artists who would actually have an idea for how to create such a beast. I also had two novel ideas throughout graduate school: the first was a complicated sci-fi novel that would require lots of research and the second was a cheesy romance/mystery novel. For both of the novel ideas I wrote out rough outlines and some character descriptions. That was enough to appease the mosquito like annoying ideas enough for me to continue with my dissertation writing and actually complete my PhD.

For my first NaNoWriMo novel I chose to write up the cheesy romance/mystery idea I had since that seemed like the easiest one to actually finish. Around October 30th I pulled out the outline and character descriptions I had hiding on my hard drive and dusted them off. I fleshed out the outline a bit more, came up with a list of scenes that needed to be written, named all my characters and gave them all a rough background. So when I first started NaNoWriMo I had a lot to work with. I had already thoroughly outlined the first three chapters and the writing came easy. I even had time at the end of every day to do some light editing and really make it shine. I was proud of myself. This book wasn’t just a throw-away book idea, it was actually good!

The middle: “I am writing utter crap”
Around November 12th or so I ran out of previously outlined material and started to just write by the seat of my pants. I knew where the novel needed to go and what my characters needed to accomplish, but I just had a hard time coming up with the answers to “how” and “why”. For example, I knew that a particular character (the heroine of the story) would want to do some solo investigating but why would she ever do that? What was her motivation? I knew that two characters would need to get in a fight but what would be their tipping point and how would that come to be? I knew my antagonist needed to reveal her true colors but how would that come about and why was she such a bitch in the first place?

When these questions came up, I had to keep going. I had to just write something, and as the words came up on the screen I would sometimes say to myself, “this is all utter crap”. I didn’t have time to edit anymore, because I was too busy coming up with the next step in the plot.

Sometimes when I was truly truly truly stuck I would “phone a friend”. I told my sister, Jennifer, my idea for the novel at the beginning and she has been monitoring my progress through NaNoWriMo the whole time. She helped me come up with the poison the murderer used and helped me think of interesting plot twists that kept the book moving forward. (She was particularly adept at helping me find a poison since she is a bio-chemist and works for the FDA.) I also talked to my friends Laurian and Stacy about my book while we were rooming together at the Grace Hopper Conference. They both gave me excellent ideas that I incorporated into the novel. My mom even helped me come up with ideas for my novel! In fact, my mom came up with the ultimate plot twist that I think will really make the book shine in the end.

The end: “I want to do anything but write this stupid novel”
Around Thanksgiving time I became fed-up with my novel. I had already decided that I was writing nothing but utter crap and it was potentially fruitless to keep moving forward. Why waste my time on crap I don’t even want to read? I would never in a million years recommend this book to a friend. I was embarrassed by my writing.

But I kept writing. I kept writing for two reasons: (1) I am not a quitter, and (2) I had already told my friends and family about this project so now they expect me to finish. (If your goal is to be #1 in this list then it helps to have #2.) So I wrote more utter crap. I wrote the crappiest crap you could imagine. But I did it. I hit 50,000 words. I got my finisher’s certificate and I ordered my winner’s t-shirt. I’m going to wear that t-shirt with pride and I deserve it. I persevered.

December 1st: “My novel isn’t done and I want to keep writing”
So my novel isn’t done yet. Most novels aren’t done at 50,000 words. In fact, if your novel is just 50,000 words it might be better described as a novella. I know I have two, potentially three or more chapters left to write. And believe it or not, I actually want to finish this book. I’ve come so far, it seems a shame not to finish it. I’ve also taken the day to read through and edit some of my writing and I have found myself pleasantly surprised. While I’m still not happy with it, some of the parts I thought were crap when I wrote them turned out to not be so crappy with some editing. There is potential for this little book of mine, and it might see the light of day yet.

Title and Synopsis of my NaNoWriMo Novel:
Title: Mixed Messages: A story of death, demons, and donuts
Terra Clemens is fresh out of graduate school with a degree in English, and she has moved to San Francisco to live with her aunt, a psychic by the name of Lillith, until she can figure out what to do next. While she has put in countless of resumes, she has only managed to secure a job for herself as the “leader of squadron one” at Debbie’s Donut Army. So most of every day is spent serving up donuts and coffee, and most of every evening is spent helping out at Lillith’s psychic shop. Despite Lillith’s predictions that Terra is on her way to ultimate happiness, things aren’t looking up anytime soon. After a bizarre evening protesting with her aunt and the “Elderly and Environmental Coalition”, Terra is pressured into sending a little note of concern to the mayor of San Francisco. This leads to Terra winding up in the middle of a political plot for power and a murder mystery. With the help of Daniel Angelo, her new-in-town co-worker, and Eddy, the happiest bum in the world, Terra tries to stay alive and figure out why a budding cult of would-be “demons” has her in their sites.

Filling my days

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:00:19 -0800

It had been awhile since I’ve written a blog post, but not for a lack of anything to write about. (In fact, it seems like I’ve been doing a little too much writing.) Since coming to California I’ve been filling my days with all sorts of projects. Some of these projects revolve around publishing my dissertation work and finding the right start to my career, and some of these projects have just been for me. I am in an interesting place in my life and I think it is important for me to capitalize on the (relatively) free time I have now to do the things I may not have the time to do in the future.

Submitting Papers:
In the past two months I have submitted papers to Gender, Bodies, and Technology (GBT 2012), Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2012), and International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2012). So far, I have heard that our GBT paper proposal was accepted (co-authored with Stacy Branham and Joon Suk Lee), and the reviews for the CHI papers just came back (acceptance hangs on a knife’s edge - rebuttal time). I also just sent in the first draft of a book chapter I wrote with my adviser (Deborah Tatar) on my dissertation and master’s work. Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll be able to make head-way on a journal article I hope to submit to the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

Writing a Novel:
It turns out that I love writing, and that the academic writing I’ve been doing simply wasn’t enough for me. This year I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I am steadily progressing towards my goal - a 50,000+ word novel by the end of November. I have actually had a novel idea kicking around in my brain for years, and I decided now was the time for me to actually articulate it. As part of my participation in NaNoWriMo, I have gotten to know other crazy WriMo’ers in the South Bay area at various write-in events. I have also been fundraising for the Office of Letters and Light (who provide awesome experiences for young creative students and materials for great educators). You can see my fundraising page here. Since I have raised $250, I’ll be attending the “Night of Writing Dangerously” in San Francisco with other WriMo’ers. I’ll try to write separate blog post on that noir themed night of literary abandon.

Going to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing:
I just got back yesterday from the Grace Hopper conference held in Portland, OR. As always, Grace Hopper was a fantastic experience. (I’ve been to about, uh... 5 of them now?) There are fabulous diverse technical women every where you look, and they are all friendly too. I have a particularly fantastic technical woman as a friend, Laurian Vega, who let me crash with her in her hotel room along with Stacy Branham. After the conference was over we spent a whole day touring Portland, OR, which is a really fun city. I now know what all the buzz is about over Powell’s book store and Voodoo Donuts.

Interviewing for full-time positions:
At and through the Grace Hopper Conference I was able to arrange interviews with a couple companies in the bay area. One of those companies even gave me a letter of intent saying that they intend to give me a job offer after I work out the details with the hiring managers. I’m pretty excited. As much as I have enjoyed my time between graduate school and the real world I think I am ready to move on to the next new thing.

The Cross-Country Road Trip

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:04:41 -0700

West Virginia:
My sister, Beth, and I started our trip in Charleston, West Virginia on Saturday August 20th. We said some tearful goodbyes to my Mom and Dad, and then we were off to visit my cousins in Louisville, KY.

Kentucky:
My cousins Jon and Liz Williams (and their one-year old son, Evan) live in Louisville, KY. Louisville, KY is where you can see the world’s largest baseball bat, as it is the home of the Louisville Slugger. While there we took a tour around town, taught our young cousin Evan how to high-five, and treated Jon and Liz to Bourbon Ball Milkshakes at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe.

Missouri:
On our way west from Louisville, we passed to St. Louis Missouri. In St. Louis you can see the famous Gateway Arch, which commemorates the brave explorers, pioneers and frontiersman who found their way west. The Gateway Arch is also part of the larger Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which has a free public museum.

I passed!... & some Acknowledgements

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:50:21 -0700

On August 5th, 2011 I gave my final defense presentation to a room full of family and friends. I also *passed* that defense so you can call me Dr. Meg. Above you should see copies of my slides published on scribd.
I feel happy and satisfied. I also feel like I need to take long naps every day to recover some of my energy. I am very excited about the future, and I am looking forward to my cross-country road trip that will start on August 20th. Also, I am working on editing my dissertation document so it is ready to be archived next week.
I’d like to thank everyone who came to my defense. For our department, I had an unusually large audience. That could mean that my research is particularly interesting, but what I think it really means is that I have some of the most supportive friends anyone could ask for. Thank you everyone!
Also, I wanted to post the acknowledgements section of my dissertation document. There were several researchers and lab-mates who helped me along the way and they deserve some credit.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I would like to acknowledge my committee members, Roger Ehrich, Steve Harrison, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Jeremy Roschelle, for their guidance. I would like to especially thank my adviser, Deborah Tatar, for her continued support and advice. I truly hope that I can continue to collaborate with my committee members in the future, as they have always pushed me to make the research better!

Also, my colleagues in the POET lab have served as a sounding board for my ideas and have been a great help in preparing my presentations. Specifically, I’d like to thank Bobby Beaton, Stacy Branham, Tejinder Judge, Joon Lee, Sirong Lin, Michael Stewart, and Laurian Vega. My colleagues on the “video and interview team”, Ian Renga, Jessica Watahovich, Michelle McLeese, and Dan Dunlap deserve special thanks for their help with the data gathering and analysis.

I have been extraordinarily blessed with a supportive and loving family. My husband, Wesley Kurdziolek, has resolutely and unfalteringly supported my pursuit of a PhD. My in-laws, Colleen, Matt, Trishia, and Jill Kurdziolek also deserve special thanks for their understanding, love, and support. My parents, Thomas and Susan Dickey, have told their friends they are “blessed to have such smart daughters” but really my sisters and I are blessed to have such magnificently intelligent, patient, and supportive parents. Also, I have found that my sisters, Jennifer and Beth Dickey, have a remarkable way of being supportive by employing an ingenious blend of goading and understanding. For example, recent phone calls with my sisters usually include statements like: “have you scheduled your defense yet?”, “don’t let that dissertation hold you down”, and “when are you going to finish that PhD anyway?”

Lastly, I would like to thank my case-study participants. I was warmly welcomed into each of the case-study classrooms and I have fond memories of the students and teachers I observed. Ultimately, this experience has changed the way I view the world. I have found that the longer I spend observing classrooms and reviewing case study and interview data the more respect I have for teachers. Teachers are charged with the task of managing chaotic classroom environments while simultaneously facilitating student learning – a phenomenon neither assured nor easily witnessed. Furthermore, teachers often take on crucial roles in the larger community, such as counselor, coach, or simply “trusted adult” and confidant. Teachers are responsible for ensuring that future citizens will have the knowledge they need to participate and contribute to society. Teachers are charged with a nearly impossible but monumentally important job and they are wonderful people for taking it on.

The Final Countdown!

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:54:44 -0700

According to my 750words.com stats, I am still an introvert and positive, however I have moved from being “uncertain” and “feeling” to “certain” and “thinking”! I’m not sure how 750words comes up with these assessments (because anyone who knows me knows I am *not* an introvert), but I can’t help but feel that my recent “thinking” and “certain” reflections in my daily entries must have something to do with my finalized defense date! I will be giving my final defense presentation on August 5, 2011 at 2pm in the Knowledge Works II building in the CRC. If you are in the Blacksburg, VA area, you are more than welcome to come. After my presentation there will be a party where we (hopefully) celebrate the end of my grad-student-hood. (I am planning on the party being a gathering for celebration rather than a gathering for consolation, but I don’t want to jinx it!)

Visit to the ATLAS Institute

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:35:17 -0700

A little over a week ago I had the pleasure of traveling to Boulder, CO so I could participate in the ATLAS Institute speaker series at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I was invited to speak at ATLAS by Revi Sterling, who I met at the 2010 Grace Hopper Conference. I really had a great time at ATLAS, and I told Revi at the end of the day that I wish they could “adopt” me. Everyone I met was nice, funny, warm, and working on fantastic research projects that resonated with my own research and philosophies.
Kindred Spirits:
On the day of my talk I was met in the hotel lobby by Revi Sterling. She took me out to breakfast and got me started on a long day of meeting people and talking. Revi joked that I must have already known everyone at UC-Boulder because lots of friends I had met previously requested time to chat with me.
In particular I got a chance to meet with Sarah Vieweg and Kate Starbird who are both graduate students in the EPIC lab. I had previously met Sarah and Kate at the 2010 CSCW conference. They are both working on projects that involve evaluating, visualizing, and ultimately harnessing the power of social media tools (like twitter) to better serve citizens under duress due to natural or political disaster. (If you have heard of “Tweak the Tweet” then you are thinking of work done by the EPIC lab.) I also got a chance to meet with Kate and Sarah’s adviser, Leysia Palen, who is also a friend and past co-worker with my adviser.
Also from the EPIC lab, I got a chance to reconnect with Aleksandra Sarcevic, who I previously met at the GROUP 2007 Doctoral Consortium. Aleksandra previously received her PhD from Rutgers and then moved to a post-doc in the EPIC lab. Aleksandra studies the use of technology in emergency situations like the trauma and emergency rooms of hospitals. Also, I recently heard that Aleksandra has accepted a faculty position at Drexel University :) Congrats, Aleksandra!
I also got to meet with another old friend, Ian P. Renga. Ian used to be a middle school science teacher at the Blacksburg New School, and he was one of the first evaluators of ThoughtSwap. Also, Ian has helped me tremendously on my dissertation work, and was part of the analysis team that helped develop and code the massive amounts of video data we collected in the Scaling-Up SimCalc project. I guess after helping out the students in my lab at Virginia Tech he decided to go get his own PhD, and is now a doctoral candidate in the School of Education there.
I didn’t *just* meet people I had already met. I also got a chance to meet the graduate students in the ATLAS IT-for-D program and one of the visiting professors on sabbatical, Michael Twidale.
The Talk:
By the time I had gave my talk I had already met and gotten to chat with a good number of my audience members. Everyone I had met throughout the day felt like a kindred spirit and seemed to share a great many of my ideas and philosophies, so giving my talk was a breeze. The title of my talk was “Technology For Learning”, and you can page through my slides on my Scribd upload here : Technology for Learning.
After I gave my talk I got a fair number of questions, and I wish I had thought to record them so I could reflect on them some more. In particular, I remember a lot of the questions pertaining to the “reality” of what goes on for students and teachers in classrooms. I love those type of questions because it means I get to tell some of my stories from the field. Also, as I was giving my talk I saw a number of people in the audience smile and nod their heads. There is nothing quite like the feeling of connecting with a group of people during a talk. Overall, it was a fantastic experience and I’m thankful I had the opportunity to go.

How does your dissertation grow?

Mon, 7 Mar 2011 20:57:04 -0800

I started dissertation writing in earnest back in October. I started by taking my proposal defense document (which was around 20,000 words) and adding and reorganizing from there. Besides some holiday time set-backs, I’ve been making some slow but steady progress.
In the beginning, I believed that my dissertation would be somewhere around 50,000 words when it was done. 50,000 is the average number of words for a novel so I figured that would be a good estimate for my dissertation. However, I think my dissertation might be longer than that in the end. I recently crested the 40,000 word mark and I still have a couple chapters left to write and literature review to add. Perhaps mine will be more like 60,000? I’ll let you know when I get there.
I wanted to take a time-out from dissertation writing for a few minutes so I could share some of my recent obsessions and strategies that have been helping me a long. If you are a fellow dissertation writer and want to share some of your strategies with me (or just commiserate) then I’d love to hear from you.
Save, save, save, save again, email it to yourself, and save one more time:
One of the dirty secrets of getting a PhD is that it makes you a little bit crazy. Those crazy professors you know weren’t always that looney and absent minded - their PhDs made them that way. Its all part of the graduate school process, which reaches its climax during the dissertation writing time. It is during this time that most graduate students develop a few obsessive compulsive habits. The most common OC trait that dissertation writers share would have to be compulsive saving. Everyone knows that you should make back-ups of your work, but how important is it to make sure copies of your data are contained on a multitude of different devices spread across the globe? I currently have copies of all my data living on 1 machine and 1 external hard drive in the lab I work out of at Virginia Tech, 1 external hard drive in my house in Christiansburg, VA, and 1 external hard drive and 1 machine that I have with me in California. I also keep copies of just my dissertation document saved on 2 usb thumb drives: 1 thumb drive I leave in my backpack with my laptop and 1 thumb drive stays in my purse so I can keep it on my person at all times. I also periodically email my dissertation to my gmail account so there is a copy in the cloud, you know, just in case.
I am certainly not alone in the “obsessive compulsive save data in case the zombie apocalypse happens” department. (I don’t care if my committee members are zombies just as long as I can interpret their cries of “brains” as “you pass”.) My friend Mat Grove told me he made sure that his dissertation was saved on servers located on different continents. You can never tell when the whole country will erupt into flames and there is a possible post-doc waiting for you in say, Iceland? Dubai? Australia? Easter Island? Who cares. You get the point.
Keeping track of words:
As the graph above suggests, I keep track of my dissertation word count. After coming this far in my PhD program it would be a damn shame if I didn’t have a love for data and graphs. With this particular graph, I love watching that red line creep steadily upwards as time moves on. (I also reward myself with cookies when I see a positive increase in the slope of the line.)
Accountability Buddy:
Back in the fall my friend Laurian Vega and I started a “300 words a day” accountability club. Every week day we would txt each other with our daily word counts and cheer each other on. Its sorta like having an accountability partner for exercise. You are much more likely to “show up” if you know someone is expecting you to.
Writing Group:
I recently joined the “Shut Up & Write!” meet-up group for the Silicon Valley. The meetings are exactly like the group name suggests - everyone meets at a designated location, we have about 15 minutes of social “get-to-know-you” time, and then we are instructed to shut up and write. Everyone writes for about an hour, then you are free to leave or start socializing again as you like. Through this group I’ve met some very interesting people who love to write. Most of them are writing novels or screen plays, but they are perfectly a-okay with having a dissertation writer in their midst. I find that I actually get an incredible amount of writing done at these meetings.
Knowing I’m not alone....:
Besides having friends who are also going through or have recently gone through the dissertation writing phase, its nice to read some funny blogs and comics about it too. I’m sure most of the people who would read my blog have seen PhD Comics before. Those are always good for a pick-me-up when you have the phd blues. I also recently found the To Do: Dissertation blog, which looks like it has potential to inspire and help with the whole process.
Have any strategies for dissertating you’d like to share? You can find me via email (meg DOT kurdziolek AT gmail DOT com) or twitter (@megak).