June 09, 2006

Skype video calls for free!

Two sites to help get us started with free video calls (think distance, near distance, and video conferencing):

How to make video calls with Skype
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=VPE0CQN4N4XZSQSNDBOCKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleID=188703026

VideoCallTips.com
http://www.videocalltips.com/

Posted by jmeyerto at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

Echo – history and new media

The Echo site at George Mason illustrates how history and new media can come together through technology to form a wonderfully creative, collaborative venue for gathering and sharing historical materials. While this idea is not new or unique to George Mason, I haven’t seen many schools actually get this off the ground. Hats off to them for this fine beginning!

I’d love to see this developed for other disciplines as well – an Anthropology faculty member and I recently tried to win a grant for something like this on logging and forestry in Oregon. Imagine one of these for each of a variety crtiical theory efforts, only localized and loosely linked to other localities? Imagine the riffing and mixing that might occur if we mixed experts and community, technology and personal narrative, creative expression and historical artifacts, experience and simulated experience – and what else? It could be truly amazing!

Posted by jmeyerto at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

Raymond Yee’s blog

Raymond is an “information architect” at Berkeley who has a pretty cool blog going on new technologies. He teaches a course called “Mixing and remixing information”, which I think sounds fascinating. Yee links to some of his student projects here:

http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is290-4/s06/ProjectGallery.html#Description

Posted by jmeyerto at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2006

Google spreadsheets

I just signed up for Google Labs’ new sharable online spreadsheet tool. I has a way to go before it replaces sophisticated and powerful desktop spreadsheet packages such as Excel. It is annoying to have to switch to a different tab view every time you want to add or delete a row or column, for example. Also, my test was with one small spreadsheet, and making changes to the spreadsheet was noticeably slower than on a desktop. For simple things like my sample, this wouldn’t really be a problem, but for a truth budget meister or data whiz-bang professional, this delay would never do.

All that said, I was impressed by its one truly special feature: Sharability. You can send invitations to others in two modes, view and edit. They need to have Google accounts to view your spreadsheets, but that is a free and easy deal, well worth the time it takes to register.

Posted by jmeyerto at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2006

99 Words about Consulting Effectiveness

Thiagi has a neat gig going on in which they are collecting and sharing 99 second talks. Now they’ve created a variant called 99 words – same theme in essence; concise, to the point, easy to understand in a NY minute. Here’s an example:

What makes an effective training consultant?
The shampoo instructions say, “rinse and repeat.” The consultant’s say, “listen, reflect, and repeat.” Start with a list of general questions about the organization, individual and group performance, strategic and tactical goals, and learner characteristics. Reflect your understanding. As you listen and reflect, ask additional probing questions.

Your goal should be to fully understand—and demonstrate your understanding of—the client’s vision. Once you are on the same page with the vision, the door is open for discussion of possible interventions or solutions. You have two ears and one mouth; use them proportionately.

Catherine B. Tencza

One critique of Thiagi’s efforts: If you have a heavy accent, perhaps audio isn’t your best medium. Why not recruit one of your many fans, colleagues or students to record the audio for you? Distribute the work, engage more people, share the glory, and look better while you are at it.

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2006

Apple gripe, with some praise

Last week, some reps came from Apple to do a presentation on iTunes, iTunes U and pod/vodcasting for our MMCamp. I was pleased with the presentation overall, as the Apple guys did a good job of demonstrating how things could be created without being too uppity and sales-pitchy about Apple stuff. They did piss off the Management profs with their Apple snobbery, and I winced a few times myself when they told my faculty stuff I know is just made up nonsense. Their marketing is just a raft of lies, and it is so unecessary, in my opinion. Apples are pretty machines, and many people will access a computer who might not have otherwise because of that.

But the fact remains: Windows machines can do anything Macs can do, for less money, and in many cases better – EXCEPT possibly for creating enhanced podcasts with Garageband. This is the first application I’ve seen in years that I don’t think Windows can match – YET. We shall see. It’s not that big a deal, this enhanced podcasting. It’s nice to be able to search for chapters in a podcast, but really people prefer shorter podcasts anyway so it is almost moot.

With this new enthusiasm, I borrowed an iBook G4 laptop and set about trying to set up a copy of 2004 Garageband on it that I had lying around gathering dust. What a friggin ordeal! I had to upgrade the laptop before anything could be done (not necessarily Apple’s fault), only then to be told I couldn’t install because one of the apps in iLife was already running. No way! I checked everything I could, and nothing is going on – and it can’t be addressed because Apple makes all its softare so idiot proof that we idiots who are Windows users can’t use the damn stuff at all! If it were a Windows app, I’d be running by now.

Next I tried to set up an iSight session for a Marratech video conference. Hey, just try to set up a Java runtime environment if you are running anything less than 10.4! It’s ridiculously hard to find the correct version of Java on Apple’s site.

Would somebody please tell me how Apple is easier to use? My past 24 hours have been a hellish battle with what is supposed to be a few simple apps on a sophisticated laptop. Screw this; I am sticking with Windows.

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

Summer to do – AUGH!

This is a long list which I am posting here for posterity, and so I can telecommute on Fridays without forgetting what my priorities are. Disregard if you prefer:

Organize GIS, learn it better
Rubrics for MM for MMCamp participants
Grow more specific examples of MM use on our campus – develop web site
Work with Nacho on wikis
iPods, podcasting and vodcasting – master it all
Michael Harker projects
Reorganize office, computers
DSpace
Get caught up on Moodle, Sakai status
BB support documents – 7.1 out, upgrade due June 23
Delete old BB courses by mid-June, send out notices of upgrade
Re-do plagiarism web site – John Repplinger
Flickr, Google Earth – master, develop example learning applications
Expand, update sample blogs and wikis for classroom use
Write “Fear is not on my list” articile – develop into conference presentation?
Start outline for practical MM with ID book
WITS survey – schedule with JB for late June, early July
Flash, eternallly
BB piece for BB&N in fall
Revision Cheryl’s job
IDS150- revisit with JB, Deborah, Librarians

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2006

Graduation at last

After nearly a year of paperwork obstacles, calendaring delays, and one actual defense, I have finally officially completed all requirements for graduation with my doctorate in Education. All this coincided with a large budget cut at my university, which partially explains the delays. Staff has been cut, the IT department completely reorganized, and the Graduate School of Education downsized partially due to budget cuts, and partially due to faculty evacuations. They are running now, which is a sad state of affairs since many of our best and most experienced faculty members are gone. OTOH, long-suffering folk waiting for the boomers to retire are finally getting a shot at some of the few remaining positions. Maybe this will herald more much-needed technological change.

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2006

It’s a new year, folks!

Time to quit blogcrasticating and get back to it for 2006. I’ve not been loafing, mind you, in spite of my best intentions over winter break. I’ve been:

-Preparing for my dissertation defense next week (Augh)
-Preparing for our new and improved IDS150 spring class
-Learning many wonderful things about ARCGIS9 and its relatives
-BlackBoarding away like a fiend
-Locating, detangling, and testing all our PRS equipment (”PRS” stands for personal response system in case you were wondering – more commonly known as “clickers”)
-Planning and preparing for our annual Tech Fair
-Learning all about my lovely new Canon EOS SLR Rebel XT
-Trying to revive my poor neglected plants
-Cleaning all the crap from last fall out of my office in my continual drive to purge my life of all that is extraneous and dull
-Lots of other junk

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:38 AM | Comments (1)

November 29, 2005

the value of the list-this I believe

Today, our “open minds” list is raging on about creationism vs ‘intelligent design’ vs science. I love that this list is able to provide a way for all of us to have a conversation together about topics on which we often disagree. Most of the time, we remain civil. However, I’m a little shocked and disappointed in some of our students – many of them seem to have no natural ability to think critically. They put forward arguments that clearly come straight from the pulpit or from talk radio. That’s just lazy.

I had rejected gods, bibles and other such nonsense by 13, and I was quite well on my way to understanding the craziness that is human nature by the time I had survived to college. Agree with me or not, I had put in some serious thinkin’ time about these issues, and even rooted around in the library in the great philosopher sections as a teenager. Yes, I didn’t go out on many dates in high school, it’s true. Thank heavens for that – I never liked dating anyway and library books kept my spirits alive and kicking when all else failed.

Still, I am not hopeless for the kids. They are at least able to formulate questions and ask about these things in a safe place. Who knows where they’ll be intellectually in another five years?

Penn Jillette is the taller, louder half of the magic and comedy act Penn and Teller. He is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and has lectured at Oxford and MIT. Penn has co-authored three best-selling books and is executive producer of the documentary film The Aristocrats.

“I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows, and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough… It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. ”

Morning Edition, November 21, 2005 · I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.

But, this “This I Believe” thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there’s no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,” or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, “How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do.” So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

1st sign of snow

Today the weather is “dreadful”, except it is exactly the kind of thing I love. The campus is showing signs of holiday festivities, everyone is bundled up against the cold, and today, there was a healthy dose of snow mixed in with our usual drizzle. I got myself a decaf au lait and a molassas cookie from the student union coffee shop, and for once didn’t mope about the 4 o’clock sunset.

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

ID on Podcasting

This instructional design guy is working on thinking about how podcasting might be used effectively in teaching and learning. Might be worth following.

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2005

MAD magazine covers

Another interesting use for Flash (straight from Boing Boing, who deem this accurately enough a sure-fire “clicktrance”):

http://www.coverpop.com/index.php?pop=mad

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

more on the LMS search

We are evaluating a set of learning management systems (LMS) as we move into the upcoming year, seeing as how BlackBoard is raising its prices for our basic product that is increasingly outdated. But who do we move to? Our decision is complicated by the fact that we are a small liberal arts university without a fleet of programmers or even computer science students who can support any customization or open source product, and the fact that we are small. It just doesn’t make sense to spend a gazillion on an LMS for 2400 students. Still, we are seeing other advantages to having a quality LMS – for instance, we are well-positioned to move into portal land, and our financial transaction system is embedded in BlackBoard now. Here’s a guy who manages to see the silver lining in all these cost increases:

http://www.a-hec.org/blog/2005/10/the_real_significance_of_black.html#more

Posted by jmeyerto at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2005

Simulations

I found an interesting simulation on MSNBC that claims to try and educate people on possible voting reforms. I isn’t quite as intuitive as I would hope, but it can be replayed as many times as I like and I got the concepts fairly quickly. How long would it have taken me to read something in order to grasp these ideas? In comparison, I suspect a lot longer.

http://msnbc.com/modules/mockracy/

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

The problem with podcasting

From the Knowledge at Work blog (http://denham.typepad.com/km/2005/10/podcasting_for_.html) via Siemens -

“Poscasting for Knowledge: “Currently podcasting is very much one-way broadcasting, true it lowers the barriers and access to radio sound bites, but there is limited feedback opportunity and almost no interaction. Affordances for annotation, commentary, refutation and analysis are missing or serial at best.”

As I’ve posted here before, I’d add that Podcasting isn’t pleasant to listen to unless it is done by someone with a relatively professional delivery style. If actors, radio starts, DJ’s and other skilled orators were to deliver the podcasts, I’d have less problem with them. But amateurs are often terrible orators, even if they have perfectly fine content to deliver. They hum and haw, include peculiar vocalisms that may not even be aware of, pause or speed up in all the wrong places, don’t pay attention to noise equalibrium, and all the many other faults of amateur orations. If the delivery vehicle really stinks, students will need much more motivation to listen than they would to read or engage in some other way with content.

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2005

Today’s Treo Fun Shot

Today somebody in my vanpool started asking me about all the cool features in my Treo 600, and I rediscovered this little gem in my image library. It’s a shot I took at the circus a couple of weeks ago – this is a man and a woman being shot out of a cannon. As you can see, the image quality isn’t first-rate, but I am still impressed that you can catch such fast moving objects with a cell phone camera. I could barely see them with the naked eye.

Oh, and btw, the modern circus changes every year and I think it is just as entertaining (maybe more so) than the fancy Cirq de Soleil. For the money, it is a much better deal.

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

Fall 2005 flock

Every fall, students and faculty decend on Willamette just like the Vaux’s Swift decend on the Chapman School Chimney each September in NW Portland. We always go to watch them roost for the evening – it has gotten even more exciting now that a Sharp-shinned Hawk or two have figured out this ritual makes for a nice sunset snack. It’s a madhouse; everybody trying to get settled in at once, trying to avoid various dangers, and all the while struggling to keep looking ever so cool and under control. I have to hand it to the staff – we all worked our tails off to make sure things went well for everyone. So far as I can tell, everyone has roosted nicely and we’re all humming along very well.

Now that things have calmed a bit I hope to return to my regular posting schedule.

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2005

Big influx in BB users

This year, I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people expressing an interest in BlackBoard. Also, the people who are coming to my workshops and meeting with me are expressing a lot more enthusiasm and less trepidation than in years past. Yay for progress!

Posted by jmeyerto at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2005

Oh, sweet alma mater, Almeda U

Almeda U is one of those outfits that will bestow a degree upon suckers who fill out a form. No college attendance required! You get the degree for ‘life experience’, which is defined by them, of course.

https://almedauniversity.org/application/enrollment.pl?affid=D02FWWAA

All snorts of derison aside, I do wish fully accredited universities would grant a little more respect to those of us with significant life experience. We in acadamia suffer from an overabundance of bulls**t (see http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/) and an occasional underabundance of reality checking. I’ve taken courses so outlandishly useless, so grandly silly, such a huge waste of any thinking person’s time that I wonder how the faculty have persuaded society to actually pay for this nonsense. I took one course in which the senior, tenure track faculty member essentially had us collect objects from the beach, then talk about the objects. I mean it; that was the gist of the course. I got an A, but I felt so-o-o dirty…. Other things I’ve done in my life were certainly more challenging and informative, so why no credit?

I should think we could allow a comittee to judge people’s submissions, and assign credits based on perceived value. Programs could include some of the credits from such submissions as electives where relevant, or at the very least students could acquire some general education credits. If the student paid a fee to cover the university’s costs and the comittee’s time, wouldn’t that be worth it? It is obvious these life experiences have value; why can’t we assign some value points to them?

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:50 AM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2005

Test of the image upload feature

Posted by jmeyerto at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2005

screencasting!

TechSmith’s Camtasia is a great voice-annotated screen capture program that I use to create simple show and tell movies for software applications. It’s amazingly easy to use. Now you can “screencast” your creations via blogs (beats podcasting all to hell).

http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/screencasting.asp

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)

Good explaination for how wikis work

“How Stuff Works” sometimes serves up nice descriptions of things regular Jo’s like me might find complex. Here’s their take on wikis, which some might find helpful:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wiki.htm/printable

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

blog vs discussion board

I get asked a lot of questions about blogs and their value. Here’s an exchange from the ITSTTECH list that might help shed light on the topic:

One of the prime differences between a blog and a discussion/bulletin
board is in the metaphor. A blog is a space that is “owned” by the
student; they get to set the rules about how long they want their posts
to be, what kinds of comments they will allow, and so forth. A blog is
defined by the fact that what the owner of the blog has to say takes
pride of place. Discussion boards have a universal class of users on a
system “owned” by someone else. This sense of personal ownership may
account for the quality of writing issue that you pointed out. In a
discussion board, the creation of content is a collaborative affair; on
a blog, personal work is highlighted.

In strict organizational terms, a blog allows a user to create a
portfolio of their own work and ideas, with appended comments from
others. While that content can be aggregated and presented in the same
way you might view a discussion board, at its heart it’s an individual
creation.

Hope this helps!

Rochelle Mazar
Instructional Technology Liaison Librarian
University of Toronto at Mississauga
David Antonacci wrote:

>I’ve read several articles on the instructional uses of blogs. While
>some useful learning can be promoted using blogs, I haven’t seen
>anything that can’t be done using a discussion board, such as in
>Blackboard or WebCT. For example, students can post their thoughts to
>their blogs and others in the class can reply, just like a asynchronous
>discussion forum in Blackboard or WebCT. The instructor can post
>comments and answer questions in his or her blog, just like he or she
>could do as a course announcement or in a “Course Questions” discussion
>forum in Blackboard or WebCT.
>
>Since the blogs could be public, students might be more motivated to
>make quality entries… at least the research on student writing would
>suggest that. But, public student blogs could present some privacy and
>FERPA problems as well.
>
>Also, blogs are a real-world tool. By using blogs as part of a course,
>you are exposing students to a tool they may find useful when they don’t
>have access to other learning systems.
>
>Blogs could extend beyond a course to span the entire program. That
>might be a little more difficult, but not impossible, to do in most
>online learning systems.
>
>Are you aware of any other instructional uses (value) of blogs that
>cannot be done in a standard online learning system?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Dave
>
>
>David M. Antonacci
>Educational Technology Liaison
>Teaching & Learning Technologies
>University of Kansas Medical Center

Posted by jmeyerto at 10:27 AM | Comments (1)

August 02, 2005

Harry Potter Myers Briggs

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

These tests don’t really do much for me, since nobody I know stops to ask a co-worker which type they are before beginning an interaction. Even if they did, would it really change the way we behave? I for one get too busy to hold the rules of engagement in mind at all times. Further, I change from day to day and situation to situation. Nontheless, this is a fun little twist on the game. Today, I felt quite evil – I tested as Lord Voldemort!

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2005

Sustainability? Green blog

This is a great blog for those of us who are feeling a little green:

http://www.worldchanging.com/

Posted by jmeyerto at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2005

Second Life – educational applications

The folks at SecondLife have written up a nice little piece on educational users of their sim world. Given that learnes LOVE games or game-like simulations, and given that there are possibilities for learning and comprehension available in this virtual world that are not available in a face-to-face world, this is worth a look. An instructor would have to be careful in how they structure assignments, though – if it were me, and I were given this baby to learn with, I’d rush through an easy assignment and then get to a place where I can play, play, play. I’d get maybe a little crazy with it. The assignment would need to be rather involved and ongoing to keep me on-task.

http://www2.kumc.edu/netlearning/SLEDUCAUSESW2005/SLPresentationOutline.htm

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

spare me from Podcasters

The darling new media of the day seems to be Podcasting. If you don’t already know what Podcasting is, in a nutshell:

Podcasting is a way to record your own pithy musings in audio form, and then distribute these recordings over the internet to iPods or the web or other listening devices.

What’s so great about this? IMNSOHO:

These recordings are amateur in nature, much like blogs – but unlike blogs, they nclude all the awkward pauses, “uh’s”, “like’s”, “you know’s”, mis-pronunciations, pointless repetitions and other weird vocal tics and flaws that seem to take front and center stage every time anybody speaks informally. And when I say “amateur”, I don’t necessarily mean they are created by amateurs – perhaps the top dog in podcasting is the famous DJ Adam, formerly of MTV. He sucks as badly as anyone else I’ve ever heard on a podcast.

If you are like me and are more visual in nature than aural, you will find these things annoying as heck. Podcasts remind me of my opinionated but ignorant little brother who recites whatever is on his mind without much thought or examination – which is totoally tiresome for we analytical types. Quit wasting my time with your poorly thought-out and even more poorly delivered rants. This is thoughtless narcissm at its very worst, and for once, I am an opponent of this new technology development.

One shred of hope: Podcasts might improve as others start to discover how awful these things are, criticism begins to emerge, and maybe some guidelines for podcasting will emerge. Mostly, the advice I hope that will emerge is this: If you don’t have anything truly new, thoughtful and worthwhile to say, please shut up.

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2005

Macrodobe? Adomacria?

Wow, today Adobe announced it bought Macromedia. Now it’ll be Macrodobe, or maybe Adomacrobe. This is big news in my little multimedia world! What will it mean? I hope a better integrated image editing and Flash tool, and not more of that annoying PDF crap. Don’t get me wrong; Adobe’s PDF tool is good for some purposes. I’m just very tired of slow and cumbersome documents that should have been built on a hypertext standard first, rather than on a print standard. Institutions get a little PDF-happy too quickly, I think – mainly because too many of our leaders can’t get beyond the concept of the print model.

Read more.

Posted by jmeyerto at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2005

Clemson U uses MT to learn about laptops

Clemson U uses MT to learn about laptops

In this site, Clemson uses MovableType to let students create an E-book on
laptop use in learning. Interesting and timely, given that I am trying to convince
Willamette to consider a discussion of both!

http://www.nutball.com/laptopresearch/

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

Media Education

Media Education

Fascinating look at the relationship of “the media” to…well, everything.

http://www.mediaed.org/

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

David Gagne’s Weblog Dictionary

David Gagne’s Weblog Dictionary

From David Gagne’s Weblog Dictionary: http://www.davidgagne.net/main/dictionary.shtml
blog:
short for “weblog”, anything on-line that is updated frequently by one or more people that is not owned by a major corporation; at least that’s my definition; good examples are re-run, /dan.el.ope/, and bling; also called “on-line journal”
to update or otherwise edit a blog
from Follow Me Here …:
Unlike a list of “cool links,” the links in a blog are “hot”, more timely and dated and, as one commentator put it, of “finer granularity.” Another maven describes a weblog as “kind of a continual tour, with a human guide whom you get to know”.

I like this guy’s synthesis of blogging, mainly because of the snippet about the continual tour…I like how one gets to learn interesting things in tours; I just hate that I can’t control the pace. I feel exactly the same way about education.

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

My custom learning philosophy

My custom learning philosophy

In higher education, a new profession has emerged in the past dozen or so years. Whatever our titles are (instructional designers, educational technologists, various and sundry specialists, etc.), we are all struggling to understand how to make use of technology to improve teaching and learning.

Over and over, the message I hear is: AVOID BIG BUSINESS POWER MONGERS and other centralized control hierarchies. Instead, try to harness technology to democratize creativity and intellectual growth in a granular, organic way to allow all of us to bypass “the hierarchies” and form intellectual collectives that can be customized to fit the individual learner’s needs, thus creating a world in which CUSTOM EDUCATION is possible.

What a concept, man! This is my holy grail; the reason I became an Instructional Designer/technologist/specialist in the first place. Perhaps because we moved so often when I was a child, my education was mixed. I knew I could be a “smart” learner given the right circumstances, I knew that teaching was inconsistent from school to school, and that the effects of forcing me to grow up in the wrong learning circumstances could have a devastating effect on my life. I KNOW there’s a better way, and I am bound and determined to see it happen so other little girls don’t have to go through what I had to go through.

So, what does this mean for small liberal arts colleges? We love the sweet online intellectual objects and how we are free to access them at will, but we now know how much we human beings still need FTF interaction. Thus, we could create online collective universities that host local (satellite) campuses, where FTF content/interaction can be delivered.

How do we capture the personal growth experience that is so valuable in colleges for kids right out of high school? I think we need to reconstruct our image of college as a four-year experience. Personally, I think every high school graduate ought to be able to choose between a 2 year vocational school and a 2 year liberal arts school. The students who graduate from the 2 year vocational schools can get jobs, and those who graduate from the liberal arts schools can then move on to phase two: Higher order vocational schools, also perhaps 2 years (but not necessarily) in length. Anything beyond the first two years that people choose could be either taught via distance or hybrid course formats, freeing up a huge wealth of capital resources and ensuring accessibility for many more students. That way, everybody gets 2 years of personal growth on campus, and if they change their minds, they haven’t lost a whole 4-year era in their lives.

Issues: Copyrights, standards, literacy and Instructional Design (course redesign, team teaching), and changing roles for faculty. Will all this ever happen? Hey, maybe not, but I’m thinking about it and I bet I can float the idea and get some good responses from other ed tech radicals like myself.

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

Now that’s using the medium!

Now that’s using the medium!

This site demonstrates rather nicely how color, images, movie clips and hypertext can be blended together with text to form a rich, collaborative piece:

http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/7.3/binder2.html?coverweb/Gossett/index.html

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)

Stanford picked MT as well

Stanford picked MT as well. They have a couple of interesting things here on how they are dealing with it:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/projects/blog/

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

trends in ed tech

Lately, I’ve noticed three themes emerging in higher educational technology venues.

1. video games as learning tools
2. storytelling as a learning resource
3. creativity – what it is, how to foster/nurture it, why it matters

Creativity is the most perplexing for average humans, I would guess. It is all too frequently treated as some kind of loosey-goosey, cerebral, pomo thing that has no structure, when in fact all creative efforts are hard, hard work. Structure is key to success; it’s just a matter of understanding that a structure is necessary and then sticking to it.

Video games and storytelling are easier to wrap our brains around. They’re familiar and easily engage the learner. What’s not quite fleshed out yet is the way these things shape and impact learning, although we are starting to see some pretty interesting work in these areas.

I’d say I need to devote some time to developing better skills in each of these three areas.

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

Old MT entries

I tried to import my old MT blog here, but there are so many spam comments that the file is too large. Sigh….So, I’ll try and recapture them all in the new MT blog.

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2005

Adding images

Adding images to your blog is really a snap in this version of MT. Just click on “upload file” in the edit menu on the left side of the screen, and voila! You can browse for your image. Larger image collections can be included as well, through third party tools like Flickr.

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2005

yagoohoogle

http://yagoohoogle.com/

If you like to search both Google and Yahoo, this is a great way to search both at the same time. Once you enter search criteria, you are prsented with a split screen showing the results from both engines. Simple, and so very handy! Also, what a great way to compare the results of two different algorythms.

Too bad I can’t say the name.

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

Content Management Systems

Today we looked at http://www.hannonhill.glance.net at http://hannonhill.com. Need to think about how and why this would work for pedagogy.

Posted by jmeyerto at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2005

People interested so far

People who want a new blog so far

Posted by jmeyerto at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2005

Sound design

Here’s an interesting web site that discusses issues related to sound design.

Posted by jmeyerto at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2006

The evolution of social software

Here’s an interesting piece on the evolution of social software:

http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html

Posted by jmeyerto at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2005

Collaborative Learning Environments Sourcebook

http://www.criticalmethods.org/collab/index.htm

Here’s a simple little site with some neat resources on collaborative learning spaces. As the page reads,

“This book is a resource for academics and students who want to develop collaborative learning environments (or communities of practice) in which people work together to create new knowledge while learning new skills.”