January 2008
Do We Really Need A Whole New Mind? →
I was directed to a webinar from Discovery Education with Daniel
H. Pink by a news clip in Technology & Learning magazine.
Pink wrote A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will
Rule the Future which I had read in 2005 when it was published.
I think most of us would accept that
information workers have a greater economic importance today than in the past when physical laborers drove the...
The End of the Faculty Web Site →
Last fall I had bookmarked a blog post called “What Happened to the Personal Web
Site?” It focuses on academic librarians using blogs versus personal web sites, but it started me thinking
about the use of personal web sites by faculty. Here’s an excerpt from that post:
The sample
of prominent (legacy)academic librarians I chose suggests that traditional web site content may be...
Cloudware →
This past month, I gave up
two laptops and two desktop computers from my old job and gained a new laptop and new desktop for my current position.
New computers are nice and shiny and virus-free and empty of all the fragments of deleted files and downloaded
software tests that remain even after you defrag and all that. However, given a choice I would have hung on to my older
machines to avoid the...
Classroom 2.0 Live: A Free Meetup →
Well, I can’t attend the first Classroom 2.0 LIVE Meet-up on February 1 & 2 in San Francisco, California, but I really like the
spirit and idea behind this event which is all about Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.
I’ve
blogged before about the main Classroom 2.0
site which I joined
and have spent some time on.
They have been seeking vendor sponsorship so that...
“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand”
– Kurt Vonnegut
“Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.”
– Frank Zappa
Grab That Screen →
Many of us use screenshots (a still image of what’s on our monitor screen) for presentations and in teaching tools,
training materials, lesson etc. It’s a great way to walk people through a process if you can’t provide a full motion
screen capture “movie” in Flash or some other program.
The basic way to capture your screen is to use
the “Print Screen” key...
Writing and Open Everything →
I have been writing down some ideas for a upcoming panel presentation for the New Jersey College English Association
spring conference in late March. NJCEA
is an organization of college English instructors and graduate students interested in language, literature, pedagogy,
and other aspects of the teaching and study of literature and writing.
The panel is on “Writing and the New Media:...
“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
Writing...”
– E.L. Doctorow
Disposable Web Pages →
I found a site called Disposable Web Page. The idea is that you can create a disposable web page with a few key
strokes and then add content to it.
Huh? What’s their point?
There are already other ways to create web
pages pretty easily. Lots of sites allow you to create web pages and store them without knowing any HTML or having
server space. I wrote a post last year called...
Martin Luther King: Words That Changed a Nation →
In what may become a tradition, CNN re-aired the program, “Martin Luther King: Words That
Changed a Nation” hosted by Soledad
O’Brien this year in the days before the January 22nd observance of the of the Martin Luther King holiday.
Last year, when the King paperswere purchased, Soledad and a CNN crew went back to some of the places
connected to the papers and made the writings...
Green at College →
Some commentary
on college tuition and college campuses from Jessica Hagy’s wonderfully simple and visual blog, indexed.
Jessica describes her blog as “a little
project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without
resorting to doing actual math.”
Planaria, Gamma Rays and the Classroom →
I was reading some of The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable
Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom over my Barnes & Noble coffee recently.
The title plays with a comparison of the two creatures. Chop off a spider’s leg and it is crippled. Cut
off its head and it will die. Cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one. More amazingly, the old leg can grow...
Plan for a Blue Iris Year →
So, blue, specifically “Blue
Iris”, is the color of 2008.
So says Pantone in a press release. They describe it as
“a beautifully balanced blue-purple, as the color of the year for 2008.
Combining the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and
spiritual qualities of purple, Blue Iris satisfies the need for
reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint...
The Open Everything Movement →
I’ve been thinking about this idea of the move towards what I call “Open Everything” that seemed to be
rolling forward in 2007. I can’t see it slowing down this year.
I suppose “Open Everything” probably has a
simple interpersonal model in the “share-and-share alike” teachings of childhood. And, if you need to write a
paper on it, you could also look to Adam...
Bill Gates Last Day at the Office →
It gives me hope that as Bill Gates preps for his last day in the office (ending his daily Microsoft duties this
July, but remaining on as chairman), he is actually showing some humor.
The humanitarian work must be having a
good effect on him.
I wonder how many favors or dollars he had to use up to get all the cameos in this
video.
Editing →
Found this interesting idea about EDITING on Seth Godin’s blog
Turns out that for the last
twenty-seven years, every single movie that managed to win the Oscar for best picture was also nominated for best
editing.
Great products, amazing services and stories worth talking about get edited along the way. Most of the time, the
editing makes them pallid,
mediocre and boring. Sometimes, a...
The Classroom Without Us →
This little thought experiment of a post started with reading
The
World Without Us by Alan Weisman. That book asks and answers the question, “What would happen if the
human species were suddenly to disappear from the Earth.
I suppose the book falls into the section of the
bookstore with popular science, though Weisman uses the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists,...
What's the net effect of the Net Effect on... →
If we think about the impact that TV has had on elections since those much discussed Kennedy-Nixon televised
debates, I can imagine the same discussions, papers and theses being written now for the Net.
Whether or not the
net effect of the Net Effect from sites like YouTube will have a meaniningful
impact on this election or not, 2007 was already big for YouTube Politics.
Some moments:
...
Think Globally, Act Locally →
Do you remember the phrase “think globally, act locally” that came about during the early green days of Earth Day? Save the Earth, but start
by saving your backyard, hometown etc.
In my eco-mind, that’s also good advice for teachers. I like to see
teachers create their own sites for their school community. If you’re doing that on the Net using blogs, wikis,...
The Submission Game →
My friend Diane Lockward wrote recently a semi-serious post on 7 things you should know about being a poet and the one that caught me was
You would write poetry even if no one published you. But you might not revise so carefully.
I made a conscious decision about 5 years ago to stop submitting poems to publishers. It was a combination of things including the time involved, the...
Knol →
Google, possibly as part of its efforts to conquer the world, has a new Web encyclopedia they call Knol.
One of the complaints teachers have with Wikipedia is that you don’t know who wrote the article (probably many
people) or what their “authority” is in the subject. Some are written by experts, but many are written or
revised by simply interested folks and then possibly...
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish →
Today was my last day at NJIT. I have left my position as Manager of Instructional Technology that I’ve held (in one
incarnation or another) since 2000.
I’ll be moving his month to Passaic County Community College to be the Director of the Writing Initiative grant.
Passaic
County Community College (PCCC) was awarded a grant through the Department of Education’s Strengthening...
Online Video for the Year of You Name It →
Though I have personally have dubbed 2008 “The Year of Open Everything,” many other “official”
designations have been given to this year. There are plenty of charitable and other special causes and
issues that have the year locked up. I came across a few that have some educational applications when I was looking at
Annenberg Channel for this
month. (if you don’t know...
Will An Android Smash Open Your Mobile Phone in... →
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - Alan Kay
This
is a time when we all review the year and make predictions and resolutions for the new year. Blogs the past few weeks
have been full of “Best Of” lists. I’m a big list maker in real life, but not big on predictions.
One
of the rumors that was strong in the last half of 2007 was that Google...
