PBS | I, Cringely . May 12, 2005 - Inflection Point

PBS | I, Cringely . May 12, 2005 - Inflection Point

Cringely has his finger in the wind again. And it looks like a free-for-all cage match MSSS/Google/Yahoo/Apple.

Neural Jungle--New learning metaphor?

Lookie here now, boys and girls. Notice where the learner is-- the linking node in a swarm of tools. Borg? Hive mind? New soviet man? For the life of me it looks like a brain with neurons and glial cells and ever rippling complexity. Are we creating an artificial Gaia?

We, the WKU Summer Online Gradu-wits

I met some very fine folks at our weeklong summer camp here at Western Kentucky University. We were all introduced to WKU's lms--Blackboard. I was amazed by the intelligence and true "geek spirit" at work among us all. Thanks to Sally, Allan, Sean, Julie, Beth, and all for making it useful and memorable. I have only been at WKU for a year, but it feels a lot longer--and I mean that in the best possible way.



Harold gets a flash "tapping" in from the Grand Poobah of Datum, Allan Heaps, as another class graduates from Western Kentucky University Summer Camp. More pix are available here at my flickr photostream.

..::littleoslo::..blogpoly

http://littleoslo.com/eng/blogpoly.htm

I could see this as a fun way to do blog PD for teachers.  At least it is accessible.  Note that Yahoo and Google are Park Place and Boardwalk respectively and that the IM is now classified as the “utilities” of the old game.  Nice argumentative piece in the form of a graphic. 

rider.jpg (JPEG Image, 480x713 pixels)

rider.jpg (JPEG Image, 480x713 pixels)

 

Blogosphere got you down?  Pep up with a little bit of fun from Mojo Nixon, especially these live cuts (definitely not safe for work).  Check out the jpeg above-it’s his “rider” to every live concert gig he does.  No, really.  It’s not just a joke.  Mojo insists on Lights ON! at his concerts and no flute players for opening acts exceptin’ the mighty master of the pan flute, the late Country Dick Montana.

The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design

Daniel Saffer has written a fine, useful, and readable essay on metaphor and its applications. This is great place to start if you are rethinking your teaching in light of the web. Below is a shortened set of his guidelines for using metaphors. Read the article to "fatten" the skeleton below. (You see? Metaphor is ubiquitous.)


Guidelines for Metaphor Usage

As we’ve seen, metaphor is a powerful but potentially dangerous tool for
designers. So how can designers use it appropriately? Some guidelines are
below:

• Metaphors are cultural.
• Metaphors are contextual.
• Fit the metaphor to the functionality, not the other way around.
• Use metaphor to uncover otherwise hidden aspects of the material.
• Discard process metaphors when necessary.
• Don’t let your metaphor ruin key features.
• Choose metaphors that are appropriately scalable.
• Let your metaphors degrade and die.

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom : Horizontal Classrooms

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom : Horizontal Classrooms

Command and control is "dead man walking." It will not survive in a world that is no longer built on command and control relationships. And our students will not be prepared for their futures if we continue to hold on to it.

Will Richardson

 

Will has really helped me clarify in my onw mind at least what might seem an esoteric bit of theoretical fluff,  but I believe that theory is the source of practice. Thanks, Will.

 I am reminded more and more of Edwin Abbott's math fantasy/satire Flatland. Weblogs and folksonomic technologies are the incomprehensible world of 3-D while hierarchical, taxonomic technologies (learning management systems like Blackboard and WebCT spring to mind)are the 2-D flatlanders. I would turn Friedman's tepid metaphor of flattening on its head and demand that we view the world as becoming more multidimensional all the time. We are moving toward a metaphor we don't understand, not toward one that we do. That's the bite of it. Moses couldn't delineate the promised land, but he sensed it. As Abbott said in his seminal book, "Flatlanders tell the truth about flatland." In the parlance of his book, we (you, me, and tech attuned) are squares who have been touched by a sphere.

We live in a world we know ain't "right", but knowing that doesn't mean we know what is true. It is the mystery Faulkner spoke of when he said we should never mistake the facts for the truth.

U of M Digital Media Center: Home Page.

One of my colleagues,  (they all know I blog) sent me this link from the U of Minnesota’s Digital Media Center.  It’s a blog rubric.  Is this proof edublogging has gone mainstream?  I think yes, but if that’s not enough proof for you,  the Daily Show’s had it’s take on the blogosphere this week. 

Can’t find the link for that, but I reaaaaallllly hate the expression blogosphere.  My son thinks my whole blogging enterprise is damned lame.  He will walk by me and in complete deadpan say, “Shouldn’t you be in (pause, then holds out both arms like the old Superman series) the blogosphere?” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U of M Digital Media Center: Home Page.

http://dmc.umn.edu/kurtis/pod/blog_rubrics.doc

The Three Amigos

Check it out. Flickr is a very cool photo site with the ability to annotate pictures.
Here is a photo of our peerless tech leaders

New evangelism: mini loans | csmonitor.com

New evangelism: mini loans | csmonitor.com

These days, Christian and other religious organizations, both here and around the world, are lending more than just a hand. Microloans - of as little as $100 - have become as much a part of their ministries as preaching the gospel.

 

Two items sparked by this article:

Why can’t more relief  secular, religious, and governmental be in this form?

What can I do in the classroom with my skills and talents that even remotely approaches this level of effectiveness?  I honestly don’t believe that my implicit comparison of third world relief and college teaching is apples and oranges.  How do you leverage this kind of effectiveness?  Could it be as simple as finding out what people need and helping them get it?  Leverage like this and I begin to belive along with Archimedes that we can change the world.

 

 

Yahoo! Groups : minciu_sodas_en Messages : Message 5297 of 5299

Yahoo! Groups : minciu_sodas_en Messages : Message 5297 of 5299

The question here is "How do we
change?", and that's a matter of action.

Does a phrase, seemingly unrelated and unconnected, ever spark off the page at you and you pull back both awestruck and aghast wondering, “How do I deal with this?”  It  breaks off a piece of an arctic shelf inside yourself—- but with you on it.  Adrift you are and heading toward warmer climes?  Or maybe the waterfall a la Perils of Pauline.  Still you wonder, WTF. 

That’s what this question does to me.  Maybe you are this way, too.   Poems come to me this way.  Dilemmas come to me this way.  They are harbingers of change.    Only begs the question.  When will the full retinue be here?

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :

And I know not every student was born to be a blogger. But, I would argue that every student, every person was born to be a contributor, whether that's via blog or wiki or podcast or whatever. We need to create a culture of contribution in our schools where our students' work is non only celebrated but put to use in meaningful ways. Don't just e-value-ate what they do but provide ways for what they do to have long lasting value.

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :

The usual thought-provoking riffs coming from Will Richardson.  This inspired me to respond in a comment to him:

  If there is one insight to come out of cognitive linguistics over the past twenty-five years, it is Lakoff and Johnson's theory that the core of thought is metaphoric. We don't just use metaphor as a critical and analytic term and tool. We are metaphoric in our brains. "Classroom" implies an enclosure, a bottle of sorts, a boundary that encloses. What happens when technology breaks the bottle? You have a blogwikiflickrfurlicious open space full of connections. Edblogging 3.0 is the birth of new metaphors for new experience. I oversimplify, but I think we edbloggers hold both metaphors (classroom and connected-open space) in our hearts simultaneously. We live in both worlds, yet we know one of them is a dead man walking. 

I think that what we are seeing is a folksonomic revolution.  Maybe I mistake a small tide for a larger one, but when you begin to feel like a bobber in a spring rise on a mighty river, perhaps a tippin point is at hand.  This bobber-eyed view of the “catastrophe” seems so small;  I dream of  kites to lift me up to see.

Trojanmice Complexity Club - Newsletter No.15

 

An example of folksonomic behavior:

I came across a fascinating example of self organizing in the Plexus Newsletter – it’s called “slugging”.

“It is a form of commuting — solo drivers picking up strangers so they can all cruise to work legally in high-occupancy-vehicle lanes — is called "slugging." Passengers are "slugs," a label alluding not to their energy or wit but to counterfeit tokens and coins. A ride, too, is a slug. Drivers are drivers, or less commonly, "body snatchers," "scrapers" and "land sharks." With little notice outside Washington, these Northern Virginia commuters to the nation's capital and big office sites of nearby Arlington, Rosslyn and Crystal City have blended hitchhiking and carpooling into a quick, efficient way to outmanoeuvre a traffic-choked freeway.
Slugging started by spontaneous eruption and runs by perpetual motion. When the area's three-person, high-occupancy vehicle lanes opened 30 years ago, some guy and then another and another picked up commuters at bus stops to get the passengers needed to use the lanes. No government agency sanctions slugging, runs it, regulates it, promotes it or thought it up. The Census Bureau, which tracks most forms of commuting, knows nothing about slugging.
In slugging, there is no supervisor, dispatcher or schedule, no ticket or fare.”

Trojanmice Complexity Club - Newsletter No.15

Trojanmice Complexity Club - Newsletter No.15

Trojanmice Complexity Club - Newsletter No.15

"The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would
like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do."

*** Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928) Author ***

Touchstone Tools and Resources: Part One

Touchstone Tools and Resources

This is a magnificent article, full of sound and fury, signifying a helluva lot. The problem is posed:

There is a subtle but pervasive pain in organizations. You can recognize it in such complaints as "How am I supposed to get my work done with all these meetings?" and "We always have time to do things over again, but never time to do them right." It is the pain of expecting things to be one way and repeatedly banging into a different reality. It is the pain of trying to do good work in an environment full of motion and effort but few results.

Ah, the voice of experience with a firm grasp on reality. I have felt the same way in both high school and college teaching. Tell us more gentlemen.

We are having to solve a new class of problems-wicked problems-using thinking, tools, and methods that are useful only for simpler problems. That is like trying to use woodworking tools to fix your car. The pain is exacerbated by the fact that people have not distinguished this new problem variety. It is as though we believe the best tool for a tune-up really is a hammer. The pain and frustration are so pervasive they seem inevitable.

Yes, to the surgeon all problems can and must be fixed with a scalpel. I love this expression—wicked problems—they do seem to be intractibly bad. So what metaphor would you use to describe the conventional wisdom on problem solving

Traditional thinking, cognitive studies, and existing design methods all predicted that the best way to work on a problem like this was to follow an orderly and linear process, working from the problem to the solution. Everybody knows that. You begin by understanding the problem, which can include gathering and analyzing data. Once you have specified the problem and analyzed the data, you are ready to formulate-and then implement-a solution…. In the software industry, this is known as the waterfall model because it suggests a waterfall as the design flows down the steps.

Duhs-ville, man. I don’t work that way so tell me how we really solve problems.

In the MCC study, however, the designers did not follow the waterfall model. They would start by trying to understand the problem, but would immediately jump to formulating potential solutions. Then they would go back to refining their understanding of the problem. Rather than being orderly and linear, the line plotting the course of their thinking looked more like a seismograph for a major earthquake….We call this pattern both chaotic…and opportunity-driven, because in each moment the designers are seeking the best opportunity to progress toward a solution.

So why call them wicked?

Of course, linear processes are quite appropriate for solving many problems, such as computing the square root of 1239 or choosing the shortest route to the new mall. But within organizations-such as corporations, institutions, and government-where lots of people work on complex issues, people are encountering a new class of much more difficult problems. We call these wicked problems because of the dynamic and evolving nature of the problem and the solution during the problem-solving process.

What does this mean for me and the online learning business? When we consider what it is we want our students to know and do at the end of our tenure together, aren’t we posing a seismically wicked problem? And if this study is true then we need an equally wicked folksonomic solution. Could this be as simple as saying let’s leave the lower level taxonomies for the web and save the higher stuff for class? I don’t think it works that simply. Let’s look at the elements of a wicked problem as they see it.

First, “the problem is an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints. Indeed, there is no definitive statement of the problem. You don't understand the problem until you have developed a solution.” Christ, is that ever assbackwards, but as Richard Saul Wurman so pithily put it, “Ready, fire, aim instead of ready, aim, fire.” One must, therefore, be satisfied with ever-tightening approximations toward a ‘bullseye’ that grows smaller all the while. This runs counter to any institutional wisdom I have ever heard, especially within schools. In fact, the further up the educational foodchain, the more hidebound and inflexible the system becomes. This non-linear solution set puts you very counter to conventional wisdom.

Second, since there are many folks with a stake in a wicked problem it is important that those folks have a say in the answer, even if it is the wrong one. Wicked problems are social first, logical second. We realize this instinctively when we talk about how we have to “buy into” the solution, but that has usually had the equivocal baggage of the sales metaphor chucked in with it. And most people don’t buy it. And we end up with half an answer most of the time.

Third, constraints change all the time. Legislatures go broke, university presidents who spearhead initiatives move on which is simply to say that wicked problems are slippery. We shouldn’t be terribly surprised when we get grease all over ourselves handling these “little pigs.”

Fourth, final solutions do not exist.

Where does this definition leave us?

“A wicked problem is an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints. A linear approach to solving a wicked problem simply will not work.”

Now that presents a seriously wicked problem for all of us, even if we give it only a passing glance. I plan on responding further to this because it corresponds so closely to the wicked problem I will be facing all week--what do I want my students to be able to do after they have finished my online literature class?

Many thanks to Chris Corrigan who pointed this out via his weblog, Parking Lot. This is for me a groundbreaking analysis on the nature of problems and problemsolving. Thanks to E. Jeffrey Conklin and William Weil for finally bringing all this to the surface for me. The binary of taxonomy and folksonomy has finally fallen into place with a satisfying click of recognition. Part 2 tomorrow.

A Literary Evening with John Prine and Ted Kooser (Library of Congress)

I love this conflux:  Prine/Ted Kooser/Library of Congress.  It has never been easier to love language and literature and music and culture. 

 

A Literary Evening with John Prine and Ted Kooser (Library of Congress)

Poet Laureate Ted Kooser said, "I've been following John Prine's music since his first album came out and have always been struck by his marvelous writing: its originality, its playful inventiveness, its poignancy, its ability to capture our times. For example, he did a better job of holding up the mirror of art to the '60s and '70s than any of our official literary poets. And none of our poets wrote anything better about Viet Nam than Prine's 'Sam Stone.'

 

The Most Useful Web Sites for Reporters

The Most Useful Web Sites for Reporters

The most useful Web sites for reporters, yes, that about says it all.  Now,  where are the reporters.  They seem to have deserted us.  Check out Frank Rich’s Sunday column.  

Tiny Mix Tapes

What a cool site!  Now I have some focus for my many p2p searches.

Tiny Mix Tapes

Sacrilege! (Songs with sacriligious, though not necessarily profane, song titles or lyrics)


01. The The - "Armageddon Days (Are Here Again)" (Mind Bomb)
02. Richard Thompson - "Outside of the Inside" (Old Kit Bag)
03. Sting - "Saint Augustine in Hell" (Ten Summoner's Tales)
04. XTC - "Dear God" (Skylarking)
05. The Eels - "God's Silence" (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations disc 2)
05. R.E.M - "Losing My Religion" (Out of Time)
06. Johnny Cash - "Personal Jesus" (American IV: The Man Comes Around)
07. Simon and Garfunkel - "A Church is Burning" (Live from New York City, 1967)
08. Rufus Wainwright - "Gay Messiah" (Want Two)
09. Iron & Wine - "Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song)" (Woman King)

bonus track for those of you who find this list too sane
10. Cake - "Satan is my Motor" (Prolonging the Magic)

compiled by: Be A Debaser

01. Tom Waits - "Chocolate Jesus" (Mule Variations)
02. Modest Mouse - "Jesus Christ Was an Only Child" (Lonesome Crowded West)
03. Beck - "Satan Gave Me a Taco" (Stereopathetic Soul Manure)
04. Grand Buffet - "Nake Kukla's History of Lemonade" (Cigarette Beach)
05. Grand Buffet - "Cool as Hell" (Pittsburgh Hearts)
06. Depeche Mode - "Personal Jesus" (Violator)
07. Lagwagon - "Kids Don't Like to Share" (Hoss)
08. Nine Inch Nails - "Heresy" (The Downward Spiral)
09. The Breeders - "Hellbound" (Pod)
10. The Misfits - "Speak of the Devil" (American Psycho)

Compiled by: peter gibbons

1. XTC - "Dear God" (Skylarking)
2. David Byrne - "Something Ain't Right" (Uh-Oh)
3. Patti Smith - "Gloria" (Horses)
4. Nirvana - "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" (MTV Unplugged)
5. Steely Dan - "Godwhacker" (Everything Must Go)
6. Elvis Costello - "God's Comic" (Spike)
7. John Lennon - "God" (Plastic Ono Band)
8. Randy Newman - "God's Song" (Sail Away)
9. Madonna - "Act of Contrition" (Like a Prayer)
10. Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon - "Plastic Jesus" (Prairie Home Invasion)
11. Austin Lounge Lizards - "Jesus Loves Me, But He Can't Stand You" (Lizard Vision

Backpack: Home page

Backpack: Home page

OK here's a public backpack site for my project to put my intro to lit class online. This 37Signals and they are creating some simple, interesting, and useable sites with Ruby on Rails. I want to learn that programming language.

Teaching to the Six

 So why do I like teaching undergraduates? Because I am not dismayed by the prospect of a world in which at least one-sixth (and as many as one-half) of my auditors-students-interlocutors take seriously the possibility that they will use the critical tools I try to wield and to offer for further use.  I’m actually rather cheered by the idea. I think of it this way: On my bad days I teach to tbe six young adults who just might pursue literary and cultural studies for much of the rest of their lives, but on what scale of values does that constitute failure? Another twelve, maybe another twenty, might be motivated, by me and by my colleagues, to continue serious, critically reflective reading in their adult lives, and how could I possibly hope for a better "rate of response" from anything I might publish in a "public" forum? College teaching is, as many teachers have pointed out in the past decade, a substantial form of "public intellectual" work. And isn't pedagogy, in the end, one of the principal reasons that literary journalists have such complex and conflicted relations with literature professors —because we work the same beat save that they have readerships and we have students?

 Berube, Michael. Pedagogy, Winter2002, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p3, 13p

Michael Berube justifies the literary game.  Teachers should focus on students much as writers should pay attention to their audiences.  Is this so obvious to belabor?  No, because I honestly don’t see many teachers doing that.  What would happen if we really thought of students as our audiences not only now but after they have left our classrooms?  The classroom then becomes 4–D and time outside the semester becomes an element.  How to do this?  Continuing to serve your audience through weblogs, listservs, email zines, contests, surveys, consulting, etc.  The classroom is not a linear thing, an object plopped down in a plaza for all to view then walk away from.  A classroom is an inconceivable conflux of  thread and space that spins out from one short moment in time.  Practically speaking, it can actually be this now much more than ever before because we don’t have to abandon that web each semester.  I want my teaching to be this way because I think that it is a continuing part of the “public intellectual” work that I embrace out of choice.  It is a duty, too.  I owe my students that much because they are also my colleagues and friends .

Yesterday was the last day of finals, graduation was slated for the evening and I was returning some books to the university library.   One of my former high school students walked through the doors to do the same thing I was doing, but it was also his graduation day.  James and I talked about his years in college, his plans, and his dreams.  It was a closure moment for both of us when he told me what he remembered most from my classes—media analysis, especially movies, and most notably by the Wallace and Gromit movies.  If I had had an enlarged view of teaching like I am proposing, I could have shared more of his story and would have had a fuller life in doing so.  As James wished me a fond goodbye, I said I would start some cool rumors about him. 

I don’t express myself well here, but that’s ok.  Blogging can be so much thinking out loud and still be just fine.

 

Teach42 - RSS powered by FeedBurner

Teach42 - RSS powered by FeedBurner

A recent discussion on Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed and a synchronicitous listen to a  Steve Dembo podcast of Teach42 .

Dembo says in effect that blogging is not an intuitive and that's why you need to do the blogging 101 thing over and over. Part of the reason I don't blog personally as much is because I am doing a lot of this bloggo a bloggo interaction. So... let's keep doing the 101 thing, but let's also figure out how to make blogs "useable" to the novice. Any ideas?

Essential Questions in Teaching and Learning

Essential Questions in Teaching and Learning

Schools become invisible when they engage students with real-life problems.

I am not sure who said that originally, but I wholeheartedly agree.  This has always been a goal of mine.  I don’t want to objectify school in somebody’s head, I want somebody to extend themselves into the world.  I am engaged in the process of gettng my intro to lit class on the web.  How do I make that place invisible? 

 

Combobulate.com : Cool Programs

Combobulate.com : Cool Programs

Lots of fun programs to junk up my computer and have my son yell at me, “Dad, there’s no more room on the desktop!”

 

Speeches by Bill Gates - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Speeches by Bill Gates - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

America’s high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded – though a case could be made for every one of those points.

By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.

Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times.

Well,  duh.

\What's

\What's a character blog.  Read here and find out.  Would be fun to use a university mascot as a character blog with guest bloggers to round out the PR.  Good way to sell a university a weblog—PR especially if you are having a big anniversary.

 

 

Grant Robinson : Montage-a-google launcher

Grant Robinson : Montage-a-google launcher

 

Take what is and make it new.  This montage maker via google is the ultimate fun for the random learner/thinker. 

Why Won't They Just Use Technology?

There is an order of at least one magnitude between teachers who are oriented toward getting things done in the classroom with web and electronic technologies and those who aren't. This is a tipping point issue. As the digital generation takes over the classroom, change will come. I believe that the problem is in our own orientation: we are carpenters and every problem can be solved best with a hammer and nail. Here is the problem in a nutshell. We must put ourselves in the shoes of the non-enamored and skeptical. If we do this, then the proper order of business at the beginning of any professional development training becomes (1.) what do you teachers want students to be able to do in your content, and (2.) what are the best tools for doing it? Real 3 by 5 cards might just be a more effective tool than a weblog.

We need to know what our tech tools do best and then back off if there are other alternative tools available. Wouldn't we be better off developing methods which help teachers decide on the best mix of all available tools and that includes which ones fits our teaching personas best. That's a lot more nuance than most of us blogvangelists have been able to muster. Until the ed schools get off their butts to do this, I think we better get started with it.

Will at Weblogg-ed broaches this topic. I think he is dead on when he says that we must continue to get the message out. I thing the best way to do that is by making these tools part of the larger mix of tools. We must co-op the old tools just as the Catholic Church co-opted pagan holidays by squatting down next to, say... the lesson plan and taking it over incrementally. And we need to make damned sure that the mix makes their teaching lives better in demonstrably easier ways. Technology must pay for them in their own way first. If they come to see it our way so much the better, but until that tipping point is reached we are pissing in the wind by just putting the food down where the goats can get to it.

Madame Bovary v. Half-Life 2

JoHo speaks about Steve Johnson's new book, Everything Bad is Good for You,

"Although Half Life 2 is, as Steve points out, far more complex than the previous generation's Pac-Man, for all its amazing physics and integrated puzzles and pretty good pixelated acting, HL2 gives us a toy world. The world of Emma Bovary, on the other hand, doesn't resolve to rules and puzzles. It's messy, ambiguous, and truly complex. Of course Steve knows this, but he underplays it when pointing out the hidden complexity of video games."

Could literature get more respect from students by a head on comparison with video game narrative? I should think that any lit teacher worth his water should be able to do that. That would be the real marketplace of ideas in action. I think I can win that debate.

IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog

IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog

It's probably safe to say that every designer goes into the business with the intention of shaking things up. We want to "Change the world" or "Make a difference". And that's awesome. There are tons of problems that need worldchanging solutions. It just happens that not all the solutions are barn burners like a sexy new car or supersonic jet.

Take for example the brainchild of Deborah Adler and Klaus Rosburg. They are responsible for Target's brand new (and desperately needed) update to the lowly prescription pillbottle. Believe it or not, with the exception of the frustrating, and largely ineffective childproof caps, the orange plastic pill bottle has been unchanged since world war 2!

OK.  Now let’s do what they did for the lesson plan , the gradebook, the bulletin board and  the classroom.  What would a redesigned lesson plan look like in a weblog?  I would hope it would emphasize the organization of the old with the improvisational and interactive nature of the new.  That’s the hard part, now somebody go out and do it. 

 

 

 

Blogging 101

Blogging 101

The major cause of fatalities among online learning operations, internal and commercial, is not technical failure or pedagogical failure, it is process failure flowing from a failure in vision. Short-sightedness, tunnel vision, and technology focus can leave you very exposed.

Parkin's Lot: Defining an E-Learning Strategy

Parkin's Lot: Defining an E-Learning Strategy

The major cause of fatalities among online learning operations, internal and commercial, is not technical failure or pedagogical failure, it is process failure flowing from a failure in vision. Short-sightedness, tunnel vision, and technology focus can leave you very exposed.

 

Amen to this.  The proper order of business at the beginning of any project:  1. what do you want to do?  2.Where are the tools for doing it?

Hullabaloo

Justice Sunday.  The jackboots are gathering and I can hear their thunder from afar.  What will you do?

Hullabaloo

Twenty years ago, I wrote about “National Socialism as Temptation,” about what it was that induced so many Germans to embrace the terrifying specter. There were many reasons, but at the top ranks Hitler himself, a brilliant populist manipulator who insisted and probably believed that Providence had chosen him as Germany’s savior, that he was the instrument of Providence, a leader who was charged with executing a divine mission. God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas.

German moderates and German elites underestimated Hitler, assuming that most people would not succumb to his Manichean unreason; they didn’t think that his hatred and mendacity could be taken seriously. They were proven wrong. People were enthralled by the Nazis’ cunning transposition of politics into carefully staged pageantry, into flag-waving martial mass. At solemn moments, the National Socialists would shift from the pseudo-religious invocation of Providence to traditional Christian forms: In his first radio address to the German people, twenty-four hours after coming to power, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

As Digby says,  “Makes the hair stand up, doesn’t it?”

 

The Future of Mathematics

The Future of Mathematics

New technologies inspire and infuse with energy. One math teacher's love for Flickr. Check into it even if you aren't a math instructor.

Index card conversion : Lifehacker

Index card conversion : Lifehacker

de Kooning, Willem -- Encyclopædia Britannica

Encyc. Brit. has an RSS feed.  LiberalArtRSSUniversity.  Tres bon.

 

de Kooning, Willem --  Encyclopædia Britannica

de Kooning, Willem
Encyclopædia Britannica Article

Page 1 of 4

Print PagePrint ArticleE-mail ArticleCite Article

Willem de Kooning
born April 24, 1904, Rotterdam, Netherlands
died March 19, 1997, East Hampton, New York, U.S.

Photograph:Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, photograph by Hans Namuth, 1952.
Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, photograph by Hans Namuth, 1952.
Hans Namuth


Dutch-born American painter who was one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the form known as Action painting. During the 1930s and '40s de Kooning worked simultaneously in figurative and abstract modes, but by about 1945 these two tendencies seemed to fuse.

WFMU's Beware of the Blog

WFMU's Beware of the Blog

One of the most consistently mind-blogglingly cool sites.  Be there.

Teacher Package

Teacher Package

Moodle Hosting possibilities

 

I am reading "The Metamorphosis" with my Intro to Lit students. It is one surly piece of work. And resonant for anyone who has had to recreate themselves or been involuntarily recreated by circumstance. We all wake up as insects at least once in our lives, helpless, leg-twitching, chitinous instinctoids driven by circumstance into our bughood.

Here's a copy of the e-text which I would like to annotate by voice for students.

Creating Passionate Users: One of us is smarter than all of us

Creating Passionate Users: One of us is smarter than all of us

The wisdom of crowds comes not from the consensus decision of the group, but from the aggregation of the ideas/thoughts/decisions of each individual in the group.

At its simplest form, it means that if you take a bunch of people and ask them (as individuals) to answer a question, the average of each of those individual answers will likely be better than if the group works together to come up with a single answer. And he has a ton of real examples (but you'll just have to read the book for them ; )

 

Need to read  James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds .  Combine this with Open Spaces meeting technologies, Appreciative Inquiry, the notion of “thin-slicing” in psychology, and the technologic innovation of connectivity with the web and I think what you have is a brand new classroom, one that needs a new name and a new taxonomy.  We could call it the folkschool. 

Extreme ESL

 

http://www.eastasiacenter.net/apcampbell/xml/rss.xml

My ESL colleagues could get a real charge from this kind of technology.  It keys into their habits (text messaging, cell phones, picture phones). 

I'm really interested in learning more about how to use mobile phone technology with my students, as everyone of them has a phone with digital camera, email capability, and most with limited internet access. Some quick ideas:

• I could record a 'good morning message' on Audacity and send it out to their mobile phones a few hours before class, seeding their minds with key vocab and questions to get them thinking. I could even give them the warm-up conversation exercise so that they are already speaking when I walk in the classroom.
• Using their mobile phones, students take a weekly picture according a given theme, record a 30 sec message describing the picture and why they took it, and have them post to their blogs via telephone. I could then aggregate weekly thematic posts via RSS, link to Flickr tags, and have students find and comment on similar photos. I can't help but think of Rudolf's EFL Flickr project when I write that.
• Once Skype gets hooked up on mobile phones, students could be assigned partners from abroad to chat with, completing some information gap type exercises, in addition to finding out more about cultural differences and similarities. Imagine free international telephone calls! We could even do real time scavenger hunts where the foriegn counterparts have all the clues and frequent telephone calls are necessary to complete the assignment. You could even get them using GPS technology. With the potential for free video streaming someday, perhaps our students can actually sit in their classrooms and walk into a real American diner and order a burger and fries....and not have to eat them!

apcampbell :

apcampbell :

apcampbell :

I mentioned earlier that compassion is a necessary condition in the teacher/student relationship for a movement toward learner autonomy to be possible, not to mention a healthy communicative learning environment. I then stated that 'creative visualization' practices could be helpful in bringing about compassion, something that Matt just asked me to explain.

A post near and congruent to my vision of classroom communion and communication.  Life is too short to leave it outside the schoolhouse door.  Bring it in and your students will know you as a real person.  One less obstacle to truth. 

Google Blog

Google Blog

Hey, gimme that camera,  I want to make a video to upload to google.  OK, videobloggers unite. 

KR Washington Bureau | 04/15/2005 | Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report

KR Washington Bureau | 04/15/2005 | Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report

Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report

If the truth is gummed up by the facts, get rid of the facts. Classic Himler technique.  Way to go Condi.  You are right up there with the best of them. 

American DialectTest

This is fun, but I am uncertain as to its accuracy.  As a tool to get people to consider the roots of language you can’t beat it.

I am:

 65% General American English

25% Dixie

10% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

<table width=400 align=center border=1 bordercolor=black cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2>
<tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#A8FFB3">
<h3>Your Linguistic Profile:</h3>

Free Books

Have at it textbook makers,  free etexts.

100 Funniest Jokes of All Time

100 Funniest Jokes of All Time

Tres amusant. Really. Some you know and some you don't.

FroshComp : tellio

FroshComp : tellio

This English-to-Snoop translation of my class weblog is freakin' top snizzle, dogg.

Cheryl Kirby-Stokes presents.... the ALIVE Center! 

Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain

Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain

Freeware - Wikibooks

Freeware - Wikibooks

Freeware sources.

Grad School Letters Of Recommendation

Grad School Letters Of Recommendation

how to write letters of rec

eLearn Magazine: In-Depth Tutorials

eLearn Magazine: In-Depth Tutorials

"One possibility is a system of hierarchical peer-reviewed group assignments developed by David Hanson and Troy Wolfskill (Borman & Washington, 2003; Wolfskill, 1998) as an online component in face-to-face chemistry courses. For problem-solving assignments with multiple solutions, students are put into groups of five. Once every student in the group submits a possible solution, the group then discusses and selects the best one, finally submitting it to the whole class. The online environment is "hard-wired" so no student can participate in the group discussion without first submitting an individual assignment. Once every group has submitted their solution, the whole class, including instructor, discusses the group solutions and selects several as outstanding."

a possible solution.

Carl Soundboard - Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Brad Parker

Carl Soundboard - Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Brad Parker

The might Carl from Aqua Teen with sound bytes from Brad Parker. Hey, have a crappy weekend, hope yer house burns down.

Product Reviews by MetaEfficient

Product Reviews by MetaEfficient

what a great website.

Computer Microscope: QX5: by MetaEfficient

Computer Microscope: QX5: by MetaEfficient

Science teachers check it out.

VoIP Internet Phone Service: by MetaEfficient

VoIP Internet Phone Service: by MetaEfficient

Bring it on! The age of telephony is upon us. Every mobile technology is converging on the telephone. Damn!

Hackers and Painters

Hackers and Painters: "What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better."

Paul Graham smashes through the artificially sharp edges of academic discipline and makes the observation that bits and bytes are just another medium more akin to tempera and clay and stone than numbers. This essay reminds me of how when you first use a Coleman lantern you have to burn the mantle to expose the bright burnable skeleton underneath. Burn, baby, burn!

Orcinus

Orcinus: "SpongeBob is just a caricature. For Dobson and Co., he's a handy symbol -- not of gays, but the mere concept of tolerating them. And when we no longer have to tolerate gays and lesbians on the basis of religious beliefs, it will only be another half-step before we no longer have to tolerate non-Christians on the basis of religious beliefs. Muslims or Jews: take your pick as to who will be first in line. I'd guess Muslims."

Amen to this. It is a damned slippery slope that Dobson would push us down. At its bottom is a damn sure nasty surprise.

CNN.com - Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider - Jan 19, 2005

CNN.com - Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider - Jan 19, 2005


This would be funny as an exercise in meta-journalism and irony in The Onion, but is simply a testimony to the idiocy of CNN and their ilk.

Folkways Smithsonian

Folkways Smithsonian

What a great site! Plus a stream of existing recordings.

YouSendIt | Email large files quickly, securely, and easily!

YouSendIt | Email large files quickly, securely, and easily!: "Select File to Send (Up to 1 GB):


"

Another file sending/sharing program that looks useful at least a few times a year. Could have used it yesterday.

TypeBlaster - Download TypeBlaster from Teaching Tools category

TypeBlaster - Download TypeBlaster from Teaching Tools category: "TypeBlaster"

I need a program like this to get better at typing. I am so poor even though I use all my fingers. Sigh. OK. I will give it a try and do the Ben Franklin improvement thing.

Poynter Online - Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right

Poynter Online - Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right

Yahoo! News - Demand for KFC Soaring in China

We may not be very good at exporting democracy, but damn we can sure spread the gospel of fast food. Spooky.


Yahoo! News - Demand for KFC Soaring in China: "China's relentless appetite for the colonel's chicken has KFC on a building boom in the world's most populous country, with 1,200 locations, soaring profits and a menu that mixes in bamboo shoots and lotus roots."

Approximately Perfect: Social Security Day!

The Times finally gets Social Security right!

Approximately Perfect: Social Security Day!: "Social Security privatization and tax incentives for the affluent have another major drawback that endangers everyone's retirement security. Neither would add to national savings - the sum of government and individual savings that is a key determinant of the nation's overall standard of living. Privatization would not add to national savings because every dollar that goes into a private account would be offset by the government borrowing needed to establish the private system. Tax incentives for the rich do not add to national savings because they simply induce wealthy people to shift current assets from taxable to tax-free accounts.

Put more simply, with privatization and continued high-end tax breaks, the few would get richer as the many fall behind. Preserving Social Security while increasing savings outside Social Security is a better way to achieve a prosperous retirement."

The joke, however, is on our soldiers. Funny not! 

Approximately Perfect: Mixing it up

Approximately Perfect: Mixing it up

Friday's commute

Friday's commute
Originally uploaded by bodhi47.

Wow! What a pic! Time to start carrying my camera.

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - National Issues

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - National Issues

In reality, the only sure way to create a bull market, and enjoy the reflected glow of approval it implies for a president, is to find a new source of funds. That’s where privatizing Social Security comes in. Create a new investment account, and the laws of physics take over. Momentum defies gravity. Remember what happened in the 1980s, when everyone, even the wealthiest taxpayer, was suddenly invited to open an I.R.A. account?

We are going to here a lot of hard sell for changing Social Security over the next few months. A conservative says, "No" a true conservative says, "Hell no!". A free thinker will sniff the bad air and say, "Fugeddaboutit!" God help us if these fools win the day. You will notice that none of the folks who want to change Social Security are actually going to need it. Follow the money, folks, and it leads straight to a Wall Street brokerage firm. It slamdunk obvious.

Long weekends make woodcutting possible. Thank you MLK for this and so much more. 

Terror Level Alerts: Collect them All!

Terror Level Alerts: Collect them All!

mother and daughter 

home sweet home 

A Giant Step Forward for Punctuation? - Introducing the long-awaited sarcasm point. By Josh Greenman

A Giant Step Forward for Punctuation? - Introducing the long-awaited sarcasm point. By Josh Greenman: "A Giant Step Forward for Punctuation?
Introducing the long-awaited sarcasm point."

New Scientist - Novel calendar system creates regular dates

New Scientist - Novel calendar system creates regular dates: "A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year."

The New York Times > Week in Review > China Expands. Europe Rises. And the United States . . .

The New York Times > Week in Review > China Expands. Europe Rises. And the United States . . .

Cracking like a limb in an icestorm--american hegemony crashes to the ground, it's rotten core revealed.

Cabin fever takes its toll and Mike is the victim. 

EPIC 2014

EPIC 2014

The Paris Review - Interviews

The Paris Review - Interviews

Unparalleled resource in any lit class.

Johns Hopkins University Press | Journals | Philosophy and Literature | Philosophy and Literature Sample Article

Johns Hopkins University Press | Journals | Philosophy and Literature | Philosophy and Literature Sample Article

evacuate into the morning mist thou dread wraith fog 

My sweet Phoebe 

MIT OpenCourseWare | Literature

MIT OpenCourseWare | Literature

If you haven't seen MIT's open courseware site, get here quickly and see what an independent learner can do right now for absolutely no sheckels whatsoever.

helen

helen
Originally uploaded by jperkinson.

Possibly the funniest picture I have ever seen.

Sweet Mo 

test

Bloggertest

Here they are!

Originally uploaded by Tellio.

Here they are!

Originally uploaded by Tellio.

Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar

King Allen on the 24th of July.

ginsberghat Originally uploaded by Tellio.

CTHEORY.NET > Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left by Peter Lurie

CTHEORY.NET > Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left by Peter Lurie: "The Web is a postmodernist tool that inevitably produces a postmodernist perspective"

Amen.brother. But is it really a tool? A tool implies specific use and a deconstructionist reading makes it rather toolish to be that tool.

How communities work?

: "Additionally, in many case studies, networks and swarms co-exist. The 'Battle for Seattle' is one case in point. On one level, there were the self-organized affinity groups of the protesters coordinated by Direct Action Network. This level involved a swarming of bodies at particular physical locations (intersections, roads, buildings). Yet, as numerous commentators have noted, this swarming would not have been as successful without the layer of networks that, in part, enabled protesters to coordinate their local movements. This layer was composed of mobile and wireless gadgets, police scanners, and even streaming video. Therefore, in this case there is a combination of swarming bodies with a network of data transmissions. Similar instances of the co-existence between swarms and networks can be seen in the biological domain. In ethology, the study of ant foraging involves not just the corporeal swarming of individual ants, but what enables the swarm to achieve its goal of finding a food source is the informational content of the pheromone trails. The laying of pheromone trails constitutes a network of data exchanges, which both communicates a message ('go this way') as well as enabling the swarm to achieve its overall goal. At an even smaller level, the study of antibody production in the immune system shows that, in addition to a swarming of antibodies and other enzyme co-factors, there is an informational network that exists through the signaling of molecules in relation to each other."

What is the common element behind all this activity? Trust. So the question begs itself: "What is trust? Is it related to belief? Are believers and unbelievers and non-believers all needed in this trust system?"

Water Cooler Games - Education Arcade, day 1

Water Cooler Games - Education Arcade, day 1

Laurel pointed out that schools are incredibly immune to change. Gaming can't change schools. The kind of learning kids need is not going to come up in schools. When used in classrooms, games become an accessory to the same hierarchy; they don't puncture the spectacle of culture of politics.

Amen to this. Now what do we do? Fucked if I know. Keep on or get out.

Read Darwin -Are You Ready for Social Software? - WHAT'S NEW - Magazine - Darwin Magazine

'equaintance'

A brand new word on the horizon. I love neologisms like this. When I hear them I feel the satisfying click of brass-on-brass in my mind and know they are 'true'.

Our farm at dusk. Glorious. 

Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed

Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed

The Long Now Foundation: Press

The Long Now Foundation: Press

Brooklyn BloggEd

Brooklyn BloggEd

Atest

A test of my referrer for log for my main weblog.

O'Reilly Network: Some Nice Editorials on Dean and Blogs [Feb. 01, 2004]

O'Reilly Network: Some Nice Editorials on Dean and Blogs [Feb. 01, 2004]

expertise trumps enthusias,? I think that is pretty limited view of how one becomes an expert--by becoming enthusiastic about a useful tool whether that tool is an idea or a new technology or a skill.