CogBlogged from ‘September, 2004’

I am writing live from Black Canyon Conference Center in Phoenix doing session on so-called “new technologies” for people who work in workforce development centers and job training place. The “presentation” was whipped up this morning (it shows) as a wiki (a) because it is fast; and (b) I can demo a wiki. See “Rip. Mix. Learn… The Digital Generation, Social Technologies, and Learning” This was written to show the instant publishing power of blogs. The audience is stunned. I think they are breathing. Actually they were very responsive.. I was asked to toss some new things at them. And hats off to Rudy for taking the camera and taking some pictures to use for a flickr demo– the audience chose his self portrait. I did a quick upload to flickr and then a reload to show how Flickr updated the from of CogDogBlog– they were astounded. And I ran [...]

I just got a message from one of our faculty member’s who got a notice that her Maricopa learning eXchange “package” on Creating a Webliography was blessed with a comment from “Casino Gambling” offering tons of wonderful and exotic URLs for various substances and things I had never heard of. So into the database I went and quickly rooted out a few more (also FYI, Spammer, I have a filter on you, splfffffffff!). We have been ready to roll in a tool for package owners to have delete control on comments, so now I have a reason to finish that task. I guess getting a web site spammed is some sort of sick, twisted, form of recognition… that I would rather not waste my time dealing with. Is there no end? I wasted time again this morning with a spat of Chinese URl wiki spam. Maybe there will be a [...]

If I ever came across this in a workshop or presentation, I’d be headed for the door or flipping the laptop open while praying for wireless. In the September 2004 Training & Development Magazine, under a department of fundamentals is “A Trick For Your Trade” Are you looking for a lively demonstration of a learning tool to kick off your next learning session? Try this simple card guessing trick. In addition to helping trainees focus on how to use learning tools, this flashy card trick, when sued at the beginning of a seminar, also sets the mood for creative teaching and the intentional learning that follows. The article goes on to describe this “powerful” card trick thta involved cutting a hole in the corner of the playing card box, obscuring it with your thunmb, and then sneaking a peak when some schmuck in the audience shuffles the desk, and puts [...]

Wednesday night, the Simpsons are coming to Maricopa! Writer Mike Reiss is coming to give a lecture on “Simpsons Mania: Behind the Scenes with America’s Favorite Family”: Culled from more than two decades of creating the funniest and most outrageous shows on television, Reiss’ presentation is a unique glimpse inside the cutting edge of entertainment, including rare video clips from The Simpsons. He takes audiences inside the lives of Springfield’s first family, revealing how The Simpsons was almost cancelled before it hit the air, secret trivia of the show, insane dealings with network censors, and lots of gossip about celebrity guest stars. Reiss also delves into the current state of television programming, describing with his characteristic wit why TV is so rotten and what steps need to be taken to bring the medium back to life. Reiss is the first speaker in the Honors Lecture Forum, a series our office [...]

Some readers may have followed our mention new efforts this year with our ‘Ocotillo’ faculty-driven technology initiatives, now in its 18th year of existence. This year, we ripped the page right out of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined concept and built a system to support our four action groups that will lead activities and projects on: Learning Objects ePortfolios Hybrid Course Structures Emerging Learning Technologies Each group publishes their activities, findings, ideas on a weblog. Each group also has a wiki of its own to build collaborative resources, and a discussion board to have “conversations” (previously alluded to in July 2004). The map sort of looks like: larger image So four groups times a blog,, wiki, and board = 12 information sources.. plus a blog for the General faculty Ocotillo chair and we have it all tied together with RSS or RSS-like feeds to present a dashboard view of all [...]

Not to clog this blog with too much non educational technology stories (but I am my own editor and publisher…), I am just back to work today after what was supposed to be a tranquil backpack into the Grand Canyon with my stepson that turned out to be a near death experience. I kid you not. Our 3 day excursion on the backcountry Hermit Trail was extensively planned, the route, the food, the terrain…. what was not planned was crazy weather. Here in Arizona, the call for rain in the summer means you can count on a chance of a short intense downpour that moves on in less than 30 minutes. The descent on this trail was not nearly as deadly as the park service information presented in their permits. Sure, it is not to be taken lightly, as Rim to River on the Hermit trail is a descent of [...]

In preparation for some workshops during my November 2004 visit to some colleges in the Auckland, New Zealand area, I am launching an “inverted” version of the main CDB as the “CogDog(kiwi)Blog” (perhaps here after acronymed as CDkB?): http://ablog.unitecnology.ac.nz/blog/ Being on the opposite side of the globe, the new blog has the trendy blac kbackground, and most colors in the style sheet have been inverted. Also, my dog “Micky” has been replaced by a New Zealand Huntaway. Thanks to the great folks at UNITEC I will have this server as not only home for blogging this experience, but also hosting local versions of software running here, including Feed2JS, the Maricopa ePortfolio, the MLX, and more. This should be popping up in the next 6-9 weeks. Howover, I am eager to announce to my colleagues over there, that they now have access to a local version of Feed2JS, installed at: http://ablog.unitecnology.ac.nz/feed/ [...]

In about 8 hours I will be pulling the Matrix plug out of the back of my neck, as I head north for a 3 day Grand Canyon adventure on the Hermit Trail — (e.g. no blogging, no barking, no ranting, just sweet silence on this blog site). It should be interesting- our streak of endless sunny days (18? 26?) is in jeopardy as moist air swung our way from Hurricane Javier off the Pacific Coast will meet a cold front dropping in from the northwest… a perfect recipe for an Arizona thunderstorm. I should be sore, but back in action Tuesday, September 21.

Linkrot is a preventable scourge- it is rampant despite the available of utterly simple solutions. What is Linkrot? Jakob coined it early, when web sites are “improved” or “redesigned”, often web urls are changed, or files are moved to a new directory, or just taken off the server. This is the case where a web developer only sees what they work with, and they completely forget when they move files around on a web server, that they leave stranding out there: anyone who had a bookmark to the abandoned URL Anybody who had a hyperlink to a foresaken URL Search engines who still have the crufty URL listed. There is no excuse for not leaving a forwarding address, a “this page has moved” message, or better yet, an automated forwarder (see below). This happened recently when someone asked about one of our older web pages. I had a link to [...]

Okay, 14 readers took the time to try the goofy, meaningless survey I posted as a quick demo of using phpQuestionnaire. The survey is open, and I have set this one up so the results are publicly viewable: http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/phpq/stats.php?sid=3. What was nice was that I could tweak it in midstream based on the early feedbacks that said the font was too small and they did not like all the items being mandatory. I could have in one stroke flipped the formatting by setting a different template too. The results? Meaningless? Charming? 1/3 read the blog from the web site, and 2/3 read from RSS reader or Bloglines. Only one person knew the dog’s real name (no it is not “Biff” or “Alan”) but most folks knew my bike ride was about 10 miles. The best ones were responses to question 6:   If you were describing CogDogBlog to a colleague, [...]