Every Friday night, Holly keeps an eye on the road as she moves between tables serving beers, pizza and soft drinks. When she sees my car she begins to pour a pitcher of Bud and fixes the cokes for the kids. When we walk in the pitcher is waiting, with 2 frosty mugs and 2 styrofoam cups with the kids names written in blue ink are waiting on an empty table. IF she sees the Warren's car behind ours, there are 4 frosty mugs and the kids cups are on another table. We do not order our pizza, we do not even know what we get on our pizza. Every week our bill is $30 including an $8 tip (Jessica).
Venus Pie is a dive. The interior is the same as it was in 1982 when I moved to Spartanburg. The most important thing about Venus Pie is the pizza is fresh (made on site- the dough is tossed for my children's entertainment), the beer is cold, and I do not have to think about dinner on Friday night. My mother in law will not come to town on a Friday night because we will not forgo our visit to Venus Pie for her arrival and it lacks the sophistication of the more recently built establishments.
Remuneration.
We return to Venus Pie week after week, because we know what to expect, we know Matt will be behind the register, Holly knows what kind of pizza we want, and the guys in the kitchen do not mind passing a little dough to Ligon as he sits at the bar, asking questions and demanding a refill.
I have not found my digital Venus Pie yet. Perhaps it is BodenUSA clothes, as I know they will fit every time but I cannot afford to visit it with the regularity I would like. I know of many people who find remuneration on Facebook, but I do not have the time to scroll through the inane comments of people not busy enough to realize we do not care about their delicious pot roast from the Southern Living recipe. Seriously?
My 30 something (almost 40) friends are in agreement with me about Facebook. I understand the initial "extraordinary success" of Facebook but even that "sociability itch" is starting to wane. The people who send cafe (and such) requests are irritating (only because they have time to play such games and I barely have time to answer my email). Now that we (the 30 somethings - with a few 40s) have been "reconnected" we realize we do not want to be reconnected after all. There is a reason we grow up and leave home (or in my case across town). But my question is what can or is Facebook doing to keep those of us no longer under the reconnection spell members. I personally do not have time to figure out how to unsubscribe and also more honestly wonder what I would miss if I did disconnect. There are those 40 somethings that finally logged onto Facebook (my brother and sister) who suddenly think this is the only method of communication and get mad when I do not respond promptly (within a week). And those people who have decide the only way to invite or inform you about an event is through Facebook (and are irritated that you did not read the poster they posted on Facebook detailing how to place the mandatory Innisbrook order for the elementary school.
Facebook is adhering to The Checklist of Techniques provided (p.58) in Dr. Howard's Designed to Thrive. So essentially this tells me the waning pull of Facebook is only from my end - and my peers that are too polite to disagree with me. (I imagine them sitting in the closet logged onto Facebook for fear I may drive past their house and see the familiar blue and white glow on their computer screens).
I of course think about the educational implications of remuneration. I tried applying the techniques Dr. Howard listed to an instructional tool and I came up with blogs. I think blogs are the best way to provide learners a platform to express their ideas as well as to get feedback from their peers. It is a relatively low stake assignment - provided the student has the maturity to edit and think about their entries well before they post on the blog (Just as Lindsay did with her blog). Blogs offer instant membership to a community (which you can get lost in - and lose many hours - going from post to post) of people within your class or people out there in cyberspace sharing ideas. I have been unsuccessful in establishing a blog for my English 101 and 102 students. Perhaps I need to take Chapters 4 and 5 in Design to Thrive and follow the steps one by one and hope I will in turn create a requirement that will provide remuneration (can you provide remuneration?). I think a blog is better than the discussion board due to the element of play if offers and the more opportunities the students are afforded to express their personalities in their presentations. Now to convince the masses (or more importantly the 60 Freshman in my classes).
Well this reading has given me a lot to think about --- as well as to wonder if these same principles apply to teaching.... could this be part of a dissertation? I think perhaps.
Venus Pie sounds incredible! I haven't found my digital Venus Pie either. I don't know that it's possible to get that kind of personal attention in a digital format. What's come close for me is Netflix. It's not a community, but they seem to have some really effective algorithms at work. Amazon doesn't work as well, possibly because I order such a crazy variety of things from them (gifts, cell phone batteries, textbooks) that the algorithm can't get a handle on the real me. Still, when it comes to books and movies, I'd rather hear a recommendation from someone I trust and that's not necessarily the stars on a website.
ReplyDeleteStill, the stars are far better than some of the professional listservs to which I subscribe. That's where I find the professional equivalent of pecan pie recipes. I wish SCAA would take up Dr. Howard's recommendations about cross-posting. Not so much because of the intellectual risk in that case but because the cross-posters (always with a "please excuse the cross-post" note), seem to assume that we all maintain only one professional tie (theirs) and that it is their bounden duty to rebroadcast the news. GAH!
As far as blogs are concerned, they can be friendly and easy to follow, but some students will always see it as a chore. My husband was supposed to keep a weekly blog for a class and he actually sat down and composed his first few "diaries" in one sitting and would post them at the prescribed interval. He just didn't get that there could be an interaction.
BTW, you can hide and ignore almost everything on Facebook, including your friends. That helps a lot.
Okay both of your posts cracked me up! I love the Venus Pie story. My Venus Pie is Barley in downtown Greenville. My husband and I go there every Friday night, and the waiter doesn't bring us menus anymore or even ask what we want. A couple of weeks ago, for the first time, we brought some friends there. So when we showed up at the hostess stand, we said we needed a table for four, and the hostess did a double take.
ReplyDelete"Four???" she said incredulously.
"Yes, four," I said.
"Oh...okay," she said, and she sounded a bit lost.
"I know, I know, it's crazy," I said. "We have friends."
What I've realized is that there is an almost domino effect. I receive remuneration from the restaurant because they take care of me – they know what I want, where I sit, etc. But the hostess made me realize that she, in some way, gets some kind of remuneration from me as well. When I walk in, she doesn't have to think. She doesn't have to worry about high chairs or big crowds or rude people or anything. She sees us, and she automatically acts. So my husband and I bring her some sort of satisfaction as well.
I love the fact that everyone is discussing restaurants as far as remuneration (partly because Dr. Howard discusses Japanese restaurants in his book and that the show is the remuneration). I love that the service is seen as a form of remuneration and not just the atmosphere, although I'm sure the service is part of the atmosphere. As for the waitress side of things, yes, we love when regulars come in because we know what they want and we don't have to go through things like, "Do you have chicken fingers?" "No. This is a Japanese restaurant. We don't have chicken fingers." "Ok. Well little Jimmy just wants fries then." "I don't know who little Jimmy is, but he's going to be very disappointed as we don't have fries. You know, Japanese restaurant and all. What we have is on the menu. Pick something from there." "Ok. Little Jimmy likes Kung Pao Chicken. Do you have a kid's portion of that?" *Epic facepalm* The regulars know what we have and we know what they like. Thus, less time is spent explaining things.
ReplyDeleteAs for the blogs, I don't know why your class wouldn't want to do that? I mean, students my age and younger spend so much time online and probably already have their own blogs. Maybe they just want to spend their time more productively on facebook... Which brings me to my next point. Maybe instead of blogs, you could create a private facebook group (since your students are on facebook 24/7 anyways) that they could post to. Surprisingly enough, a lot of people think about what they write on facebook because they want to sound smart or funny, or witty or whatever. This may make them think about a response before posting it to a group of their peers and they won't have to learn how to use a totally new system...