CogBlogged from ‘February, 2006’

It’s only been a few days since a number of fabulous presentation as conversation sessions on blogs, social software, and education here in Vancouver (I am still lingering at chez Lamb). D’Arcy has already posted a superultimate summary that distills the summaries quite nicely, and I am one of many where at our UBC and Northern Voice sessions with a new sense of wonder at how we move forward. From the words, experiences of colleagues here, I have a nagging ring about the phrase “Blogs In Education”, something I likely have used myself and of which are countless conference sessions, journal articles, PhD theses… It’s the “in” that bugs me. The disconnect for me is this phrase presumes that blogs can be something that lies solely within the confines of education, excluding the personal nature of blog writing, the personal ownership of blog writing, and the connectivity in our lives [...]

Here’s an example of something we’d love to see more of via our Maricopa ePortfolio system — a faculty member or any employee using the built in blog tool to provide coverage or notes from a professional conference attended. Phoenix College Biology faculty and Ocotillo Chair John Arle did just that this week as he participated in the Instructional Technology Council e-learning 2006 Conference. You can find his notes at: http://eport.maricopa.edu/published/j/ar/jarle/weblog/1/. Session coverage included among others, “Tailoring Discussions to the Asynchronous Environment”, “Proprietary v. Open Source Course Management Systems”, “Logon or Retire? Getting Senior Faculty On-line“, “Blackboard vs. Moodle: A Comparison of Online Teaching & Learning Tools”, and more. And it is RSS-ified. And if John had been set up for it, he could have also podcasted coverage, since that feature is built in as well. Doing this has that double impact of Social Software- it gives Johns a record [...]

flickr foto Northern Voicedavailable on my flickr The coveted t-shirt from the Northern Voice 2006 conference. It’s been one day of favorable rest since the close of the Northern Voice 2006 conference here in Vancouver… and I still struggle to capture all thoughts and impressions. The flickr tag stream for northern voice photos was impressive and made it to the list of “hot” tags. You may also trace the wide impact via Technorati space. Apologies to the EdTechTalk guys Dave and Doug– I pretty much slept through any chance of a Skyperview. Hopefully in the future. Firstly, there is definitely more of a community spirit at this grass-roots organized conference, purposefully kept simple to keep the fees low. All the logisitcal stuff was very smooth at the UBC downtown Robson campus. If anything, being down below in the concrete made us unaware of the gorgeous clear weather hovering outside. And [...]

Opening pieces of Northern Voice 2006. I would have thought the auditorium would be a wee bit more packed. First up was Starting with Fire: Why Stories Are Essential and How to Blog Effective Tales by Julie Leung. There was something very refreshing in the presentation style (pure images, a pointed presentation lacking word bullet points. The imagery was moving, but it seemed a bit to go more on about the virtues and values of storeis and less about how stories are donw via blogs. There were a handul of blog examples tossed up at the end (hope I got the URLs correct): http://www.blogs.salon.com/0003522 http://www.theworldisnotflat.com http://mysonnicholas.blogspot.com http://www.2020hindsight.org/category/1945 http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com http://ferrytale.blogspot.com http://postsecret.blogspot.com http://unkemptwomen.blogspot.com I would have liked ro see more on this and the hows, methods, etc. She did offer up a delicious tag stream of references: http://del.icio.us/julie_leung/storytelling The next headliner was Sifry on the Blogosphere, Dave Sifry interviewed by Tim Bray. [...]

Day One of the Northern Voice conference, and Nancy White is running a great session on the important assets of online interaction. I hastily set up my iRiver to get a recording, may be noisy due to proximity to projector fan. And I rushed the editing. http://cogdogblog.com/wp-content/audio/nancy_white_nv06.mp3 [52 minute MP3, 24 Mb] Some sloppy written notes as well are below, most likely she will post on her Online Interaction blog updates feb 20 2006: Nancy posted her slide images– not as some bloated PPT but as a flickr set. Rock on! Nick Noakes combine the slides and audio into a windows media video (weighing in at 112 Mb) available at http://www.archive.org/details/ConferencePresentation Beverly Trayner listened to the audio and posted a distilled series of summary notes and comments. First, share the chocolate! Struggled with facilitating online community in mid 1990s. Why did what worked in f2f world fail in online? Why [...]

I’, lagging a bit in writing up today’s MooseCamp experience, the day session before the Northern Voice 2006 Conference. All in all, it was a full and tiring day. On one hand, it was a bit like a standard conference format; the sessions seemed to fly on by and lack significant time to reflect and absorb. It started with the EduBlogger Hootenany, with fellow blogmiesters Brian, D’Arcy, and Scott. This was in some sense a secondary follow-up of the Social Software Salon we did yesterday at UBC. Instead of carefully planning out a scripted presentation, we set up in the middle of the room, joked around and almost spontaneously, a conversation started from the audience. I am thinking more about this as conference sessions as conversations rather than transmissions. It was extremely rich, and ended all too abruptly. D’Arcy has already posted a nice comprehensive summary. There is more too [...]

flickr foto Man With a Microphoneavailable on my flickr Brian extends the microphone so gardner Campbell can hear (he is remotely present via Skype) Mea culpa, my blog pace is waning. Maybe it is jet lag or just some fatigue, but it’s bothering me for not prattling on to the blog stream. Anyhow, yesteday was a full on day in Vancouverm at UBC. Brian and I met up with D’Arcy who came and did a dangerous live demo of Pachyderm (dangerous only because the local network was not cooperating, but solved via a nifty end around by Tim Yang). I saw among participants that same level of excitement, of “give it to me now” buzz in the participants. Heck, me too. I had not done any Pachyderming since June, and would very much like to pry some time for a real project. The afternoon was a full on 3plus hour [...]

I use NetNewsWire on sometimes an hourly or minutely basis to check my RSS sources. There is this thing off to the right of the menu bar for “Sites Drawer” that I hit only by mistake when trying to activate the window. It’s a set up RSS feeds provided in the software, likely in case you have trouble finding feeds to susbscribe to. Just for curiosity, I noticed there was an education category, including sites like ADL News, DartLog (Dartmouth News), Hilltop Highschool and woah that one looks familiar- they have an entry for the Maricopa Learning eXchange! Now I feel guilty. I;ve gotten pummeled (many self inflicted) with some many tasks, projects, presentations, that I;ve not done any coding on the MLX for maybe 9 months. And I sorely miss it. I love coding, programming, more than any other techie thing. There is sheer joy in creating something from [...]

I’m in lovely Vancouver, BC. I had heard their winter was one of record setting rainfall, so coming from the Arizona desert where we’ve had the opposite problem (111 days and counting), I was enchanted by the notion of seeing the spectacle of water falling from the sky. No deal. Stepping off the plane was a glorious polaroid filter blue sky and lovely snow capped mountains for a backdrop (sorry words only, I took some time off from snapping photos). It was a wonderful relaxing day at the hospitable Lamb homestead. Tomorrow we are slated with other colleagues for a Social Software Salon @ UBC (do not picture lavish hair stylists applying folksonomic tag gel). Friday is a “Edublogger Hootenany” session at the Northern Voice Moosecamp, and Saturday, the main Northern Voice event. This is going to be a fantastic gathering and I plan to cross off a lot of [...]

Again, on the read/Write web, there is a place for everything. Episode II: Attack of the Cluckers is documenting the ascending politcal career opf Brother Clucker, who appears to be running for President under the “Not So Fowl” party. I only squandered some time here because Tim Lauer had posted on Will Richard’s Revinvention post, and kindly Technorati tagged the blog entry as “Rubber Chicken”. Go Brother Clucker. Go Will! Hopefully the hen at Will’s house is still clucking at him.