August 2008
The Tales of Beedle the Bard →
If you are a Harry Potter fan or love someone who is a fan, you should consider getting The Tales of Beedle the Bard. A Mystery Buyer purchased the only publically-available…
July 2008
Randy Pausch →
UPDATED
Randy Pausch, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, died July 25, 2008
of complications from his pancreatic cancer. He was 47. In addition to being recognized as a…
Getting Your Degree in Second Life →
Texas State Technical College (TSTC) announced that it believes it is the first institution of higher
education to develop a complete online certificate or degree in a virtual world. Is…
Back To School Already? →
It’s not even August yet and I’m already seeing TV commercials and store ads for Back To School sales! Though parents may be eagerly awaiting back to school, it always seems a shame to remind…
Running With OSCELOT →
You can’t get around the idea that
schools are spending time and money on open source software. Of course, commercial vendors need to take note.
Blackboard has
made several recent…
Billy Collins Live →
Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, shares an evening of his poetry in a benefit reading for WNYC, New York Public Radio. Often compared to Robert Frost, his poetry has been embraced by people…
Back in the Saddle, Again →
Okay, so I should never take a vacation…
I’m convinced that IT gremlins, like cockroaches, wait for the
lights to be turned out and the workday (or month) to end before they come out and do…
Knol Has Launched →
Back in January, I wrote about Knol, a project Google was working on to create an encyclopedia online that is
like Wikipedia in that anyone can contribute, and unlike Wikipedia in that changes…
The Medpedia Project →
The Medpedia Project is a project from to collect, organize and make understandable, the world’s best information
about health, medicine and the body and make it freely available on the website
The Newest Poet Laureate →
The new United States Poet Laureate is Pat Ryan. A resident of Marin County, California, Pat Ryan has written six books and has won numerous award including the Ruth Lilly Poetry…
Do You Have A Wish List? →
Well, you might have one with bigger wishes, but on Amazon.com, you can create one for shopping. It’s kind of like being “registered” at Amazon and giftgivers can buy something for you. It’s…
Springfed Arts Writers Retreat →
Cornelius Eady, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Sandra Seaton, Christopher Knight, ML Liebler and other writers of poetry, novels, memoir, screenplays will be featured at the Springfed Arts Writers Retreat…
Serendipity35 MIA
TECH NOTE: The server got whapped and there’s no one on campus to reboot & restore the database until Monday.Read a book…
Toys For Tots & Hasbro Toy Donations →
It seems a bit early to be thinking Christmas holidays, and that’s the time I associate with TOYS FOR TOTS. But there’s a short-term offer that you may want to take part in. The…
Post Your Test →
PostYourTest.com is a site that invites
students to post and view exams from their college classes or other classes iin order to, in their own words, “help
you understand your course material…
First, Second and Third World Schools →
I first
became aware of EDin08 at a
conference, and I wrote a post about the
documentary they produced last December called Two Million Minutes.
That film compares education in…
Can You Get Expelled For Running A Study Group? →
I missed this story back in March. A student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada was almost expelled from the
university for creating a study group. Huh? I was in study groups when I was an…
Uh Huh →
“A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.” ANON Read and post comments | Send to a friend
Open Door Poetry →
Borders Books has a portion of their website devoted to Open Door Poetry. It’s a project to move poetry off the page and into video and audio. The site includes Billy Collins, Paul…
7 Things You Should Know →
The “7 Things You Should
Know About…” series from the EDUCAUSE Learning
Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning
technologies. Each brief focuses on a single…
Hemingway's Birthday →
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21, 1899. Working in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen, Hemingway started his career as a writer. Before the…
I Want A Tesla →
Do You Technorati? →
Do you use Technorati? What is Technorati, you ask? From their site: Technorati is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. Technorati is the…
Using Technorati and Getting Authority
Five blogs that I write for are listed at Technorati. Never heard of it?
Technorati is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.
Technorati is the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the...
Creating YouTube Channels For Your School →
I was talking to some people from another college here in New Jersey last week about posting their videos to
YouTube. In the course of the conversation, it became evident that there was a some…
A Life Full of Second Chances - REPLAY →
Replay, a novel by Ken Grimwood - In the first chapter, the main character, a 43-year-old man, sits at his desk and drops dead of a heart attack. When he wakes up, he feels odd, taking in…
Textbook Torrent Update →
According to the Chronicle Wired
Campus blog, the web site that I wrote about earlier called Textbook Torrents has been taken offline. The site
had hundreds of links to bootleg textbooks…
Share This →
You may have noticed the ShareThis logo appearing at the bottom of my posts here. If you click on that, it allows you to share this post (and blog) with others via your accounts on…
BibMe For Creating Bibliographies →
One of our PCCC librarians, Paul
Martinez, found a very useful tool for creating bibliographies and passed it along. It is BibMe at BibMe.org
It’s free to use, and
unlike NoodleBib, you…
What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the... →
Howard Zinn is a historian and playwright who may be best known for his book A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present. Perhaps, you read it for a course or use it in your teaching.
There is a YouTube video that is an animated version of Zinn’s essay, “Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire”.
The New Writer's Handbook →
The New Writer’s Handbook: Volume 2: A Practical Anthology of Best Advice for Your Craft and Career by Philip Martin (Editor), with a preface by Ted Kooser. The book has 60+ articles, sections…
Virtual Schools →
A virtual school (AKA cyberschool) is an institution that essentially teaches courses through online methods. Plenty of
schools offer online courses and degrees, but far fewer are totally virtual….
Copyright and Adding Images To Your Blog →
Bloggers often pull or take images from other blogs or websites and perhaps do not give much thought to the copyright on those images. Part of that cavalier attitude may come from…
Blackboard+Sakai=What? →
Yesterday, I was reading an announcement that Blackboard is partnering with Syracuse University to try to integrate
its commercial product with the open source alternative Sakai.
They made…
Visualize A House of Cards →
Remember how the band
Radiohead turned the idea of giving away an album but still making money into reality last year? (No? Check here)
That was 2007. Now, they made a video for their…
Fall of Frost →
I started reading Brian Hall’s Fall of Frost last week. It’s a fictional life of poet Robert Frost. Hall says that he wanted to write the “life story of the poems,” and the book into…
Storytelling: Join the Fray →
Fray is the web’s original personal storytelling site, sharing true stories online and off for over a decade. They have evolved into a printed book series, each containing a…
Disruption and Early Adopters in Education →
Is there anything truly disruptive in education? To a teacher, “disruptive” has the negative sound of that
kid in the back row who is ruining your class. Disruptive technologies are innovations…
