CogBlogged from ‘May, 2005’

Here in the Phoenix area, the housing industry is booming with the roll out of these new “master planned communities”. Physically, these communities are surrounded by high walls and require passing through a security gate to enter, and individual back yards are each walled off. So it looks like Apple Digital Campus Exchange is extending this walled-in community concept to the web– this place of “exchange” is a “community” of weblogs where you have to get a login and password to enter, even just to read content. (RSS sneaks out of the walls! Thanks to some quick work by D’Arcy Norman, you can read an aggregated version of all the ADCE blogs in a site he quickly cobbled together, it is the equivalent of hanging out in the alley behind the walls). This is, well, stupid. To me. This is no stinkin’ community if you have to go past a [...]

Flying home from San Diego to Phoenix after my piece in San Diego State University workshops this week, two, maybe three not so brilliant ideas floated in my head. Perhaps the Wrong Tactic On Intro Blog Workshops In the morning of the first day’s sessions we had all participants create new weblogs at Blogger. It went well, the usual issues of dealing with selecting a unique URL name, but everyone got started. It was lunch conversation Monday and likely Jim Julius who raised this point that perhaps we move too quickly into the “start a blog and start posting mode” when really a more sensible path would be to have people first spend time reading and identifying blog content, e.g getting a better taste of the blog-o-sphere, and a sense of the informal layers of connection (comments, blogrolls, etc). It was like I was the Coyote getting an anvil dropped [...]

Webquest Overview (Bernie Dodge) The father of WebQuests…. What is a WebQuest? A structured inquiry-based activity where the most of all information students use comes from the web. Ideally it is wrapped around a do-able, authenitc task. Life and Work are getting more complex, not less Making sense of the new taking a stand on complex issues solving problems creatively expressing oneself creatively with new tools (“it’s easy to make bad music now quickly”) The Ancient Past (1995) The first WebQuest: Investigating Archaeotype: A WebQuest http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596/webquest1.html Archaeotype was a multimedia software created at the Dalton School (wealthy school in New York) for simulating the process of examining an archaeological site. Dodge did not have access to the software created a web site that was provided a sense of how the software worked. Used CUSeeMe to videoconference with the teacher and software developer. Students, in groups, than responded to a series [...]

I’m at day two for an invited participation in an “Emerging Trends Workshop” for some 50 plus educators at San Diego State University. I was invited by the “father” of WebQuests Bernie Dodge, who emailed a few weeks ago, “Can CogDogBlog Come and Play in San Diego”? Bernie is one of the pioneers in Educational technology and the fact that he thinks I am any sort of expert generated a few night sweats. But hey, winging it is fun. Actually we collaborated, along with another SDSU colleague Bob Hoffman, on Skype conference calls, a wiki, and built the content inside a Moodle. How’s that for a smorgasboard? The format is a mixture of mini presentations by us where we fly by complex topics at light speed and then spend more time in breakout sessions in the computer lab where participants get to try stuff hands on. Yesterday for example, I [...]

Did you catch the obits? Teemu Leinonen, one of the members of the FLOSSE Posse has bravely cast out the notice in “Learning objects – Is the King naked?”. He argues that the IEEE definitions of “any entity, digital or non digital hat may be used for learning, education or teaching” is broad enough to mean nothing, or that if everything is a learning object, what does that mean? Because any entity in the universe – digital or non-digital – can be used for learning, education and teaching… I know that many people are using the term “learning object” when they talk about pictures, graphics, simulations, piece of texts, video and audio clips that are specifically designed for learning purpose and can be combined together to build up larger learning material units. This all makes sense. But why should we call them “learning objects” and not just learning content, or [...]

a.k.a “What to do in the boarding area when there is no free wireless…” As a public service, I am here to expose some of the great puzzles of the species humanus nomadus moderni. (1) Coffee. Is Starbucks truly as superior to say the brew bubbling at Cinnabun, Nathans, or Burger King? When I say “truly superior” I mean enough to warrant a 7 fold increase in the line length? I heard the guy in the TSA mutter as he glanced over at the snaking line, “I wish I could have little bit of that 5 buck coffee flow”. I am guessing the TSA rate is a bit lower than the Starbucks profit margin. (2) Rented Headsets. I am utterly amazed at the sheer volume of passengers that will fork over 5 bucks (at least they could splurge on the coffee before boarding) to “rent” headphones for a video rental.. [...]

flickr foto Semi-Serious Burgeravailable on my flickr This is art- a 10oz burger from “Cheeburger Cheeburger” on Sanibel Island- only half the size you need to put away to get your photo on the wall (I was in no mood to go such SuperSized) I’ve got a few hours in between coming and going. But it never hurts to dream about Cheeseburgers in Paradise. Especially when we return home to Phoenix for 113 degree heat. And the Suns lose while I am in flight. Last Wednesday, burned out from a ramp up to a crazy schedule of major Maricopa events, we split town for Southwest Florida, flying a red-eye all night from Phoenix. We enjoyed time visiting my Mom, the “Cookie Lady” in Ft Myers and spending time on the beach at Sanibel and visiting family in Sarasota. We ate great, like here from “Cheeburger Cheeburger”, seafood at “The Timbers”, [...]

This dog will be going to low blog mode for the next week or so. First up is some time off to visit Mom in Florida. On May 23-24 I get to be a guest presenter at a faculty workshop at San Diego State University, invited by Bernie Dodge, the genius creator of WebQuests and other cool things. I am a bit overwhelmed as he seems to be way ahead of me on a lot of great educational technology projects. It should be fun, perhaps blogged, perhaps flogged.

flickr foto Hybrid Courses Matrixavailable on my flickr Our Ocotillo Hybrid Courses Action Group chair Shelly Rodrigo went wildly over the top with a “Matrix” theme for her demo on the group’s efforts this year… with red pills and blue pills for those faculty considering the plunge into hybrid courses. But I cannot help but mention the fantasic effort Shelly did with sharing! She went for a total Matrix theme here: Take the RED Pill You stay in wonderland and we show you how deep the hybrid learning goes. Take the BLUE Pill The learning ends. You wake up in your office and believe whatever you want. I love it! Maybe for our evaluation purposes we will chart the number of blue pills and th enumber of read pills versus….

flickr foto We Made The Marqueeavailable on my flickr South Mountain Community College rolled out the big red carpet as host for our Ocotillo Retreat including getting the event on the electronic marquee. I’m too tired to blog much, but today’s Ocotillo retreat was a raging, energetic success, with some 200 attendees taking in 2 keynotes, 15 breakouts, 40 demos… maybe I can recap tomorrow… too tired .. to do … much….