CogBlogged from ‘June, 2005’

Does anyone out there read/speak Irish? One recent message among the several thousand we get via our Writing HTML tutorial comes from a .ie domain email address, so I am guessing this is in Irish: Fógra faoi Rúndacht agus Síniú Leictreonach: Tá an ríomhphost seo agus aon iatán a ghabhann leis rúnda agus tharlódh go mbeadh ábhar íogarach tráchtála san áireamh ann. Is leis an duine / nó daoine sin amháin a bhfuil siad seolta chucu a bhaineann siad agus ní ceart iad a léamh ná a scaoileadh chuig aon tríu páirtí gan cead roimh ré ó Údarás na Gaeltachta. Tabhair faoi deara freisin nach nglacann Údarás na Gaeltachta le sínithe leictreonacha d’aon chineál chun conradh a dhéanamh. Caithfidh chuile shíniú a bheith i bhfoirm fhisiciúil. Deimhníonn an fonóta seo chomh maith gur seiceáileadh an teachtaireacht ríomhphoist seo ar fhaitíos vírís. Tabhair cuairt ar ár suíomh idirlín ag http://www.udaras.ie Can [...]

I had first stumbled into the J-Walk Blog a while ago, and remember it as a place that is oozing with sarcasm, right there from the byline: Stuff That May or May Not Interest You Wow, a real mission statement! I had first done the J-Walk with the first of three wickedly funny fake sites below. If you have a tough time dealing with sarcasm, don’t go here. The 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference “Write better emails. Make more moneys.” Spam University “Welcome to Spam University, the world’s top-rated educational institution for the growing spam industry.” Google Content Blocker “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads. That’s where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements.” The [...]

Poking around the site, I found what is more or less some evolving documentation of the ITConversation software and recording process (that would said as “pro SESS” by by northern neighbors ;-) as a wiki document- see IT Conversations Wiki for things like AudioProcessing, IT Conversations in Education, File Formats, Encoders, Bit Rates and More, and much more. Cool. Oops, don’t let the spammers know about this.

Here is a quick summary of audio streams I have loaded/unloaded listened/skipped on my iPod. I hesitate to call them “podcasts” since I am manually downloading MP3 files and manually moving them on and off my Shuffle. All are found from ITConversations. For what its worth, I typically use the auto fill mode to populate my Shuffle and then play in shuffle mode (is that a double shuffle?). When I have some speeches to load, I clear enough songs off and manually move them to the Shuffle playlist, inserting them in the top tracks, and then switching the shuffle to run in playlist order. What I have not mastered is getting the Shuffle to jump to the top of the playlist (it is supposed to be 3 button clicks, but I have not gotten that to work). Anyhow, here are some casts that have been on my pod, listening recently [...]

Yesterday I added two new mirror sites for Feed2JS, bringing the full list of mirrors to seven. The two new kids on the block include: OpenGUI serving feeds from California Astra Systems serving feeds from somewhere in the U.K. All sites have been updated to the same functionality (latest update; al;l are listed as the full frenzy history) as the central hosted one (version 1.5 since I started numbering). I need to come up with a better way of sending code updates, as now I am just uploading them to the various sites. I know one molecule next to nothing about managing software projects beyond my own stuff, so it is being made up as I go. I do have things organized that once given ftp access to a new mirror site, I can get one running and tested in about 15 minutes. FWIW, we provide all the code one [...]

This has nothing to do with blogs, wikis, podcasts, learning objects, or anything technology related. Evidence to the contrary, much in life is not related to that stuff. Yesterday I took a colleague to one of my favorite out of the way lunch spots, hidden away in a local industrial park area. It is a great place for down to earth good Mexican food (carne asada to die for). I had told Eric I would spring for lunch, but after ordering my food and ferreting through the wallet, I saw I had only $7 half of what we needed. And this is not a place wired for taking debit cards. But here is where it is crazy- the lady behind the counter, who may or may not recognize my semi-frequent visits, just wrote down our names, attached my business card, and served us lunch on our promise to return today [...]

flickr foto The Topavailable on my flickr The end of the Kuli’ou’ou Ridge Trail marked by this sign, about 1700 feet higher than our starting point. The view behind it which should be the shoreline is masked by clouds. The rain really started coming down hard on the way back down. Here I am back in Phoenix, all 110+ degrees of it, and a long way from this spot where I was standing yesterday, the top of the hike up Kuli’ou’ou Ridge on Oahu, some 1700 steep feet above the beach. After the end of the NMC Summer Conference, there was a good bit of catching up or promising to with many colleagues there before next year in Cleveland (the tune goes “Cleveland Rocks…”). Nick Noates was moving about recording podcast interviews with his iRiver device. Grabbed a nice lunch with D’Arcy and his family at Cheeseburger in Paradise (thanks [...]

Since I am on the extreme margin of involvement of course management systems at Maricopa, I’ve not intensively followed the latest CMS stuff, but hear that Sakai is bubbling and there is even more spots of interest on the adoption of Moodle. Leon at Y.uk? emailed about 2 new Moodle articles on his blog, “Innovative Practitioners and Moodle” Listen to our latest two casts from innovators in education Ian Usher and Drew Buddie. as well as “Skype interview with Miles Berry about Moodle”: If you have wondered about Moodle and how it is being used in schools – listen to our third podcast over Skype with Miles Berry of St Ives School in Haslemere Surrey. Apparently there is a Moodle gathering coming up called MoodleMoot (the rate of Moodle word creation is peaking, it is just such a fun word. Do you fell that little giggle when saying the name [...]

A bit of back blogging from the opening plenary at the NMC 2005 Summer Conference, where for the second year in a row, Henry Jenkins provided a provocative and engaging opening session, this time: “Media Literacy – Who Needs It?!!” Henry Jenkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Much of the core thinking shaping media literacy education in American took shape in the 1970s and 1980s in response to an age dominated by mass media production and consumption. Over the past several decades, the media environment has changed dramatically, starting with the shift from young people understood as consumers of popular culture to young people engaged as participants in popular culture. What can we learn from looking at young “artists” working in a range of media — old and new? How have shifts in technologies of production and distribution changed the way they think about their work and created opportunities for them [...]

Beyond Words -reality of reading and writing in the 21st Century (closing plenary) Stephanie Barish If you are reading these words on paper or in an inert form on a screen, you are participating in our most enduring written form of communication. We’ll call it “plain text,” and it’s been essentially the same since Mesopotamia, through the ages of the scribes, Gutenberg, the typewriter, and the word processor at the end of the last century. We have cleaned it up over time and improved distribution, but the act and the process of what we think of as writing have changed little since the innovation of papyrus transcended the communication arts of the cave walls, clay, and stone. On the other hand, since the turn of the last century, the knowledge and the technological ability to communicate with media other than words has been dominated by the arts and entertainment industries. [...]