February 2008
Two Million Minutes →
After 8th grade, the clock starts counting down on the two million
minutes that a student has in school and at home studying, playing, working, sleeping, and socializing until high…
What's All the Ruckus About Downloading Music? →
There has been a lot of talk online about students downloading music illegally using campus networks. There are a
number of issues that are being addressed. Some of it centers on the schools…
An Anthology of Blog Posts →
This post comes via my Escaped Thoughts blog
Add another milestone to the history of
blogging. I read “Finding the ‘Ultimate Blogs’: An interview with Sarah Boxer” posted by Kelly Heyboer on the Jersey Blogs site last week. Sarah Boxer has put together an anthology
of the best blog writing. She admits the term ultimate is:
“kind of tongue in cheek. (I
guess I needed...
Blu-ray Won - Should You Care? →
Do you remember the videotape recorder
battle between VHS and Betamax 20 years ago? VHS won. Anyone who had bought the Sony Betamax was stuck with the 8-track
tape of video.
It has happened again. HD DVD has lost to Blu-ray which will be the standard for high-definition
DVD technology.
The last blow was delivered when Toshiba decided to stop making “HD DVD” high-definition video
disc players and...
NCTE's New Literacies →
TOWARD A DEFINITION OF 21st-CENTURY
LITERACIES was adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee this month. Groups are always developing new literacies. I’ve
seen lists of information literacy, media literacy and others, and I’ve seen multiple lists about “21st century
skills” that we need to teach students. (A search will get you plenty - you might start with...
The Ultimate Blogs →
Finding the “Ultimate Blogs”: An interview with Sarah Boxer that was posted by Kelly Heyboer on the Jersey Blogs site. Sarah Boxer has put together an anthology of the best blog writing that just came out last week. She admits the term ultimate … Read and post comments | Send to a friend
Blackboard Wins Patent-Infringement Case Against... →
Friday, a federal jury in Texas ruled in favor of Blackboard Inc., the leading provider in the U.S. of course/learning
management software, in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Desire2Learn Inc.
It’s a case that educational institutions have been interested in both as customers of Blackboard or as
customers of competing products or even as users of an open source LMS, such as...
Lawrence Lessig '08 - Change Congress. →
Using Blogs in Your Classroom →
I use an open source blog software for
this blog, and the “commercial-but-free” Blogger software for a poetry blog. I also have created blogs on other sites - mostly just to
experiment with the software - as with nes I have on Eduspaces, VOX, Xanga, and even MySpace. One site that I probably should have investigated earlier is Edublogs.
Edublogs was started in 2005 in Australia as...
Where Have All The Subversives Gone? →
SCENE ONE
I went to hear Sharon Olds give a
poetry reading at Seton Hall
University. I have heard her read a number of times. The first time was about 20 years ago and she seemed pretty
radical at that time. But the mostly student audience didn’t see her that way at all. Olds commented that they were
“very polite” as they sat impassively with almost no applause. I’m sure...
New Jersey Knowledge Initiative →
Word comes to me from one of the librarians here at the
college of yet another budget crunch. Though it directly affects those of us in NJ, it will probably resonate with
educators in other places too.
Due to a New Jersey state budget cut of $1 million, the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative is threatened. NJKI provides New
Jersey’s entrepreneurs, small business owners, researchers and students...
A Question of Image →
I stole the title of this post from a Sunday
Star-Ledger article I read this past weekend. (You can’t copyright a title, so go ahead and write your own
The Great Gatsby.) The article appeared at first just to be about the artist J. Seward Johnson. I have been to
his Grounds For Sculpture park in New
Jersey several times and really enjoy it. Now, some of his sculptures of celebrities may...
How To →
Our February writing prompt asks you to write a poem that instructs by explaining how to do something, and also gives advice. Most of us have trouble separating the two in our everyday lives. Ask me how to create a blog, and I will surely go beyond the practical, instructional steps and start giving advice. I knew when I chose Wendell Berry’s poem “How To Be A Poet” that it...
Helvetica →
It’s odd for me to review a film here, but this is an odd film.It’s a documentary called Helvetica by Gary Hustwit. It’s a film about a typeface. Yes, a typeface. If it seems strange to recommend such a film, imagine what it took to get the money to make the film. Helvetica, the typeface, was created by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in the late 1957 in Switzerland. They...
TV and Movies from Amazon Unbox →
Just testing out this new service from Amazon.com. It’s TV and Movies from Amazon Unbox. It’s, of course, meant to sell things, but you can preview a lot of material too. Read and post comments | Send to a friend
Frozen in Time →
A friend of mine who knows I’m a sucker for time travel and for public art thought I would enjoy this little guerrilla art that plays with time. I did. Frozen in Time in Grand Central Station, New York City Read and post comments | Send to a friend
Love Can Be Blind →
I just love (well, appreciate - gotta watch
how I use the L word on this Valentine’s Day) the social networking that can occur by blogging.
Saw a new comment
pop up today from Adrianna Montague-Gray who is one of the bloggers for the American Foundation for the Blind on the AFB Blog. This group blog
covers topics such as technology and education and is worth your attention.
Her...
Writing Ethics and Technology →
I’m on the panel in April titled “Writing Ethics and Technology.” It’s part of the NJWA Conference. The New Jersey Writing Alliance
examines pedagogical and
institutional innovations in teaching reading and writing both in high schools and at the two and four-year
colleges. This panel will address issues around the success and failure in using technology to prevent and...
6 Word Memoirs →
I stumbled upon a book while I was looking for some “flash fiction” - those short, short stories. It’s called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure by Larry Smith. There are a thousand of these little literary glimpses of humanity. The “assignment” is to capture one life in 6 words. Some of you have probably seen the Ernest...
Happy Second Anniversary →
We missed posting on our two year anniversary on February 2. Tim & I
were attending French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former supermodel Carla Bruni’s wedding that day at the Élysée Palace. Wow, we’ve never seen so much
cheese!
It’s strange to think that when I posted that first time
as a test of this new blogging software package that 456 entries later we’d still...
Podcasting Seminars →
I’m no longer involved with iTunes U as I was when we built our site (very successfully, I might add) at NJIT. I’ve written here a number of times about podcasting and I think it’s an
important learning tool and a significant marketing tool too for a school to use.
I’d love to see my new home at
Passaic County Community College get into that area, but
it’s not part...
Thinking and Growing Inside the Box →
The photo here isn’t new. It illustrated a number of news articles back in 2001 about these unusual square
watermelons. It’s not genetic engineering. They were inserting developing melons into glass cases.
Is it all for style, or is it at all practical? As with many
other practices in Japan, lack of space is a real issue that needs to be addressed. A fat, round watermelon can take...
Oh Joy, More Networks →
There are two education network resources from
Microsoft that I discovered and wanted to pass on to our readers. But, in looking at them this week, I was suddenly
overcome with ennui.
How may
social educational networks do I need? Maybe it was the end-of-the-week blues, but it seems like there are already too
many networks and certainly no lack of resources and tools online. Maybe telling you,...
CAPTCHA Gotcha →
a sample
CAPTCHA from the Serendipity35 comments area
You probably have come across a CAPTCHA online lately.
It’s a challenge-response test that is used by many sites to try to insure that the person posting a message or
registering is a human and not some spambot. We use a simple one on this blog when you post a comment, and it works
pretty well at preventing bots, but allows annoying...
If It's Tuesday This Must Be →
There are so many things I want to blog about and so few hours to do
it. Luckily, there are plenty of others mining these fields, so sometimes it’s a bit easier to put a few ideas together
here. (Though I still seem to spend an hour doing copy, paste, format, links and images.)
Sharing Notes about Collective Intelligence, which is
one of the topics addressed in the 2008 Horizon Report...
Where We Are, Where We Are Going →
Two reports, one video, one in print that I looked at in January that are worth some time and consideration. One
looks at where our students (and therefore their teachers and schools) are online, while the other suggests what
technologies may be emerging this year.
On
January 22, FRONTLINE on PBS ran a program called Growing Up Online which they advertised as taking
viewers “inside the very...
Join A Google Labs Experiment →
Google Labs is always experimenting with new
features and tools. Most of us won’t ever get to visit inside the Googleplex in California, but you can
play with some of the things in their labs.
There is an interesting experimental area where
you can actually join an experiment and you’ll see that feature whenever you do a Google search. You can only join one
experiment at a time but...
