CogBlogged from ‘March, 2006’

Two days ago, a colleague at one of our colleges asked me what wiki software our district provides. I responded, “none” (In Maricopa, such services are hosted at each college), but I took the opportunity to suggest that he try one of the free, externally hosted ones to experiment and flesh out some content or ideas. Like PBWiki. It seems to make sense to use the freebies before deciding on an Enterprise Institutional Official Wiki. So how cool it is less than a day later than James shares with not only me, but his colleagues, his Glendale Community College’s Wiki for Spanish students, where it looks like he is providing web resources that correspond to the chapters in his textbook. He says that ChapterTres has the most so far. I am not sure of his plans, but I can envision having his other Spanish faculty, even students, help co-author this [...]

I get email requests all the time for link exchanges generated by the visibility of the MCLI web site in Google (a virtue of having thousands of old web pages?). Today’s takes the cake, the icing, and the last bottle of cold beer: Greetings! While surfing the web, I came across your excellent resource of real estate links at (http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu) I am a webmaster of a Real estate site http://www.[deleted].org. I was wandering if you can give a link to my site from your above mentioned URL. Below is a sample HTML to be included at your URL for linking my site. Real estate appraisal – Online information provided within this site is formatted and presented in a way to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our real estate agents. Warmest Regards, Daniel Xxxxxx Now either Daniel is incapable of reading, lacks cognition skills, or is just a [...]

Among the cleanup I am doing here is continual emptying of the comment spam on a site I created, blogged about, but will not link directly, but it is more or less a publication, perhaps even, a “forum” that “i” created at MCLI. But I am not writing about the content. Nooooooooo, when would I have time? Again, the utterly brilliant “Evil Genius” of Dr Dave’s SK2 plugin catches all of these before they see the light of blog. Among the piles of porn, mortgage offers, acts with animals, cruise stuff, casino offers, acne treatment, pharmaceuticals I have never heard of, comes this top secret tidbit offered by a spammer: Personally, I never use more than a single link in the comment I post because doing so can trigger spam catchers if the user has that plugin activated, whereas a single link will not. Maybe elsewhere, but not here Spam-opolis. [...]

Where did all the conversations go about “EduGlu” apps? Maybe people are doing it rather than writing about it… Well, here is a nice example from the Maricopa trenches– Shelley Rodrigo teachers a Cinema Class at Mesa Community College and has pretty much set up her class across a trio of Web X.0 tools. The course content for HUM 210: Contemporary Cinema is hosted at UniBlogs.com as are the student blogs listed on the sidebar. http://rrodrigo2.uniblogs.org The assignments include things to be blogged, as student watch and write about films they look at, and in addition, they are asked to “furl” their resources (see the “Student Furls” on the sidebar). Shelley is also asking them to use an “aggregator” ? ?RSS glue tool called GritWire (that was a first for me) that allows not only aggregation, but searches from among a number of user selected sites. She had another good [...]

I could have done something in those four, make it, five, make it several college years, when wonderful offers like today’s email spam brings: Obtaining a DIPLOMA has never been so easy! Call today and find out how you could get your DIPLOMA from a highly credible college, Full Transcripts, A Letter of Recommendations, and even honors. 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx No required tests, classes, books, or interviews. Diplomas are available include but are not limited to: Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and Doctorate (PhD). Available in any field of your choice. Everyone is approved, Never is anyone turned down. Total Confidentiality assured. Call Today get a DIPLOMA within days!!! 24 hours a day, 7 days a week including Sunday and Holidays. What a fool I was, all I ever got was a diploma, and I could have gotten a DIPLOMA, and rather than studying, reading, working, I could have been out on the beach. [...]

In the past I have used this space to vent about experiences with bad customer service (phone trees, bad online help systems, etc), so it is only fair to report a positive experience. This morning I called Qwest to set up phone lines and internet service for my home office to be ready when I start working for the NMC April 10. I have to say that Matt on the phone end and Barb on the internet set up (Maybe Qwest requires shortened names??) were both clear, courteous, and very helpful. I almost hate to say this, but they both spoke clearly so I could understand them, and I gather I was not talking to someone in a call center on the opposite side of the globe. I was not rushed, I was allowed to ask questions, and the apologized profusely when putting me on hold. So thanks for the [...]

flickr foto Another Project, Another Dayavailable on my flickr This stack of 70+ CDs now hides in my home office closet. It represents my archive of personal photos going back to maybe 2000. Since iPhoto (older version) gets fussy with more than 500 photos, and is really groaning the drive on my old 700MhZ iBook with the 4 Mb images captured by the Rebel XT, I’ve been offloading originals to disc and stuffing them in a drawer. Someday, I will organize them all on a nice external hard-drive, and then my life will be in full order and harmony. Until then, more entropy. One day, when a leap month rolls around, I may get serious about organizing this pile of digital photos. I honestly could not find the original of a specific photo from 2 years ago if my life depended on it. And with the 4 Mb images typically [...]

I had fun this afternoon helping in a wiki workshop at South Mountain Community College. “Dr Coop” is Alisa Cooper, a gem of an English teacher who pretty much tries and finds almost every new technology- in a thoughtful and effective manner. She got turned onto PBWiki last year and has been using it extensively with her first year composition students- but she dabbles also in 2 other hosted wiki places, several blogs, Writely, YouTube, and like 10 more I am forgetting. Today she led a “What Can You Do With a Wiki?” Workshop: which, of course, was a workshop on wikkis, that used a wiki for the workshop. Get it? She does: http://drcoop.pbwiki.com/ it’s been a few weeks since I’d been in PBWiki, and they keep adding cool new features. She paid the fee for the upgrade version, which gives you discussion areas on all pages, the ability to [...]

Nutrition experts tell us breakfast is the most important meal of the day. As dedicated cereal-aholic, after munching my bowl, there is just no room for the heaping piles of fatty, fetid, rotten spam that I empty out of my SpamKarma 2 traps on a daily basis (bless you 1,000,00 times, Dr. Dave). The portions have been dramatically increasing, this morning I dumped more than 50 into the disposal, and my volume is probably small compared to others. As an example of the nutrition I am missing from these meals, here are some of the lovely dishes that have been served to me on a regular basis, all without my request, nor interest, nor desire expressed to any of the overly generous servers: Yum, these are all things that some “people” have taken the time to figure out I am interested in. A world without spam, oh what a wonderful [...]

flickr foto Wow, This Web Thing Might be BIGavailable on my flickr Our site got featured in one of the early books about the web, The World Wide Web Unleashed by John December (1994). As I winnow down the last 2 weeks on the job at Maricopa, I am unearthing a lot of nostalgic artifacts in my office (a.k.a ‘junk’). So rather than documenting some code, I am taking photos of them in a new flickr photo set. Now where is that trash can? I have a giant stack of conference programs, the Lingo Journal, and HyperCard Script reference manuals.