Thing 19: Podcasts

At last! I thought. I’ll finally get around to hearing a "DisVisibility" podcast (and finish a Thing as well).

Not immediately. I opened up the podcast app on my phone, and couldn’t find a listing for the series at first. @DisVisibility is actually the Twitter handle of the Disability Visibility Project, the activist site “dedicated to recording, amplifying & sharing disability media & culture” and the source of the podcast. Trying a search for “disability” brought up the Disability Visibility podcast itself. It’s always good to have reference skills.

Episodes to date range from 21 minutes (immigration and disability) to 36 minutes (two of this length, one on the ADA, the other on the BBC America science fiction drama Orphan Black). Transcripts are posted for each episode (enabling hearing-impaired people to access the content). I picked what at first glance could have been a light-hearted topic: “Disabled Comedians,” episode 21.

Of course, the nature of disability is that there are always external challenges people need to overcome. Danielle Perez and Maysoon Zayid, the guests interviewed, made it clear that many facilities for comics aren’t accessible, which hinders both their ability to build a following through live performance and their ability to get booked for gigs. In addition, the conversation, perhaps inevitably, touched on advocacy--very fitting for this section of the MOOC. Zayid remarked on using comedy to change negative perceptions of Arabs and Muslims after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. Perez, a Latina bilateral amputee who uses a wheelchair, noted that when she can make people laugh, she can shift their perspectives on who can be a successful comedian.

I won’t say I’m completely smitten by podcasts, but their portability is definitely a selling point. My phone contains a collection of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! episodes, which come in handy during long bus rides. 

Note: Like some other participants, I did not find a way to enter a rating for the podcast.

Thing 14: Personal Information Management

Personal information management is an ongoing challenge for me.

I’m a survivor of a brain tumor and a subsequent stroke that’s left me with encephalomalacia—softened, inactive, even dead nervous tissue—in both frontal lobes of my brain. (For those of you somewhat familiar with functional brain anatomy, my best guess is that most of the damage is in my dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Thus I can’t regale you with tales of binge drinking or compulsive sexual behavior. You’d have to settle for far more boring accounts of finding myself unable to mentally calculate tips for cab drivers, or forgetting the proverbial milk when buying groceries.) 

Having brain surgery in one city, recuperating in a place five hours away, and returning to a home a full day’s travel from there, I fell through the cracks in the healthcare system. I wasn't referred for a neuropsychological assessment after my operation, nor was I sent off to a rehabilitation specialist to address the “executive function” issues that emerged—a less than optimal experience. Consequently I had to figure out my own approach to organizing my life, and I’m always interested in hearing about alternative tools and approaches.

Rehabilitation neuropsychologist Pamela S. Klonoff described paper datebooks as “the foundational compensatory tool after acquired brain injury” (Psychotherapy After Brain Injury; Principles and Techniques, Guilford Press, 2010, p. 126). Michelle Ranae Wild has published books on “making cognitive connections” using iOS and Android devices. In the abled world, “bujos” or self-designed “bullet journals” are in fashion. Clearly, there’s no single universal or optimal solution for personal information management problems.

What do I use (for now)? Mostly a combination of a bullet journal, the suite of Google apps I need to use for work, and two apps that came with my iPhone—Reminders and Notes. For shopping lists, I use the sophisticated technique of grabbing a piece of scrap paper and pen, then quickly surveying every room in my residence to see what needs to be restocked.

I tried a couple of the apps recommended for this Thing, and quickly eliminated Remember The Milk. The free version requires access to a data plan or Wi-Fi. This was an unwelcome contrast to the Google apps that permit offline work. Inexpensive data access is not a reasonable assumption for life here in the boondocks. There are literally times I have to stand at one particular window in my home and wave my phone around to connect to my data service. And with only two transformers for the entire town, all it takes is one squirrel or raccoon jumping onto the wrong part of the equipment to produce an hours-long power failure and no free wireless hotspots for a couple of miles in every direction.

I’ve been using Feedly (recommended at the start of this MOOC!) for a few months—albeit on my workstation rather than my phone—and find it a useful addition to my routine, although I do have to fight the urge to subscribe to feeds in packrat fashion. Pocket and Evernote look interesting, but the start of the semester means it will be best to revisit them after the pace at work slows down a bit.

Thing 5: Video Presentations

I'd describe the making of my first Screencast-O-Matic Video as irritating and annoying.

If you've read my first blog post, you know that I have a number of musculoskeletal problems. I use some assistive equipment at work, including a small touchpad mouse. This doesn't make for long, smooth sweeps from one part of a screen to another...which appears to be an unstated best practice for Screencast-O-Matic videos. For me, preparing a higher quality video with this software would also mean finding a different workstation--one with a conventional mouse I can use (briefly!) to maneuver in a larger expanse on a table or desktop.

Here's my final product, which I created on a laptop that has a larger touchpad. It's rough around the edges, but I reached the point at which striving for improvements wasn't worth the investment of time and energy. I opted to omit a soundtrack, as that would require spending a bit more time on transcripts and captions.

[Video (3:38). Title screen: NUR 101 Library Presentation--A Quick Recap (Visuals only). Demonstrates a search of the CINAHL database, starting from the Fogler Library homepage. The presenter clicks on the Databases button and uses an alphabetical index to view part of a long list of library databases. She selects CINAHL with Full Text and clicks CINAHL Headings in the database menu bar. She searches for nurses, finds it as a CINAHL heading, and clicks on the term to display the tree of more specific terms under Nurses. She clicks the term Nurses by Role to reveal more details of the tree, scrolls down and selects Nurse Liaison, then clicks Search Database. She clicks Advanced Search under the search boxes to reach options for limiting the results. She selects 3 checkboxes: English Language, Peer Reviewed, and Research Article. Scrolling down, she selects Nursing from the Journal Subset menu, and All Child from the Age Groups menu. These limits dramatically reduce the number of search results. Some search results link directly to full text. For another, she clicks the Article Linker button under the result, and selects University of Maine as her location. After a moment, Article Linker returns a screen linking to the full text.]

Powtoon looks intriguing (and far less reliant on smooth mouse sweeps), but there's another Thing waiting in the wings.