CogBlogged from ‘November, 2008’

Functional Simple Web Design by cogdogblog posted 27 Nov ’08, 11.00pm MST PST on flickr No frills, but in zero clicks, goingtorain.com/ gives you your local weather forecast (detects location via IP address). Maybe it is the start of some new minimalistic zen of web design… Linktribution to Mashable.com

4:00 PM by cogdogblog posted 27 Nov ’08, 9.08am MST PST on flickr That means another glorious aristict sunset in Iceland. On this day of giving thanks, I give mine for this world, and all that it unveils, from a simple un-assuming sky, to unexpected treasures you were not asking for, to perhaps a place where people do not exert violence on each other. Maybe its only a theory. I aim for optimism.

I certainly have little interest in returning to school for more formal Edukashion, but if I did, I think I’d go back to 5th grade over grad school. Following up on a recent connection to Chrissy H’s class in Bangkok, yesterday I had another opportunity to view an active elementary school classroom through my Skype window. This time I connected with Brian Crosby‘s energetic class in Reno, Nevada. I enjoyed meeting and hanging out with Brian in Shangai a the Learning 2.008 conference, and he is one bundle of energy himself- Teacher Ed programs may want to sign him up as poster boy. This works out well because in 2 weeks I am visiting with some of his district’s leaders. Washoe County is the NMC’s first school system member and are on to some really innovative stuff. This looks like one of those trips they invite me in to give [...]

In my everyday technology browsing I see a fair number of interesting tools, sites, ideas, that come my way via RSS, twitter, etc. A lot of them I give a quick look, say “Hmm”, tag ‘em, and move on. Besides almost every post of unbelievable wizardry and in depth explanation of Tony Hirst, not often are there things that just knock me over breathless. Maybe I have been drinking the Web 2.0 Koolaid for too long. I had one of those “wow” moments tonight with something that came out of the blue. I’ll share it all, and am curious if my excitement is misplaced or not (would not be the first time) Like many others, I have had my

Wow, the new interface for Google Maps Streetview is very slick! It fills the entire map frame, and you get a spinny controller (like in Google Earth) to rotate your view, plus drag and clicking the mouses gives a tilt-pan effect. So you can zoom down streets! I decided to pay a visit to the house I grew up at in Baltimore (I have blurred out the location and street name; the present occupants deserve some privacy). Fortunately they have painted my old room, but I did zoom in and see where I had carved my initials on the underside of the side steps (just kidding). I sure do not miss racking leaves or cutting grass, but there is where I lived until I was 18. I took a drive past my elementary school, and up through some old neighbor hoods, and did not really recognize much. Now the notion [...]

Pushing the Day Out by cogdogblog posted 24 Nov ’08, 6.26am MST PST on flickr Bring me warmth and light to push out this cold Icelandic night… Nothing like a glorious sunrise to get the week started off right (good and plentiful coffee are right up there as well). One advantage of this time here in Iceland; I can sleep in til 9 or later (the sun still not up yet), make breakfast, take some photos, do some non-essential email, and I still have like 6 hours head start on the rest of America! This begins the last week here in Iceland, so this is the last Monday, tomorrow the last… I hear astral conditions are good for Northern Lights tonight and tomorrow, but the cloudy skies are going to have a different opinion on that. My Monday has been cracked up bright and glorious, full of possibility…

I have an idea how some rag tag blog army can storm the castle of the Walled Garden Content Horders and do some damage. Maybe. It is likely a dumb idea that someone will poke the Hummer sized holes in. This just flickered n when I read Clarence Fisher’s Twitter gripe: What he is saying is that he is checking the referred log to his (emphasis added) wide open shared blog and finding inbound links from locked up course management systems. Maybe he is just curious how people inside the walls are using his stuff. Maybe he wants to know if they have ideas that he might benefit from… after freely giving up his content; they just horde it inside the castle pantries, and at the end of the semester, dump it in the moat. So here is my quarter-thought out idea… Let’s say a lot of bloggers, content publishers [...]

How cool is this (and found via a tweet from Barbara Sawhill- twitterbution!)? Barbara Ganley splashes the New York Times on its story of Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace: When Barbara Ganley wants to collect her thoughts, she walks in the Vermont countryside, wanders home and blogs about it. In a recent post, she wrote about the icy impressions left in the snow by sleeping deer. In another, she said she wanted to commute by bicycle and do more composting. If her blog, bgblogging.wordpress.com, sounds slow and meandering, it is. But that’s the point. Ms. Ganley, 51, is part of a small, quirky movement called slow blogging. The New York Times, Yay for bgblogging. Now Barbara Sawhill tweeted back shortly that several people were head scratching because this story was in the Fashion & Style section, not Technology. But that makes so much sense to me. Look at [...]

George Siemens is fine despite his sparsely titled circa telegraph text post Need help in which he asks some super broad (yes important) questions: I often hear educators talking about “education needs to change” (I do it too). This is the case for the K-12, higher education, and corporate training/education markets. As a small research project, I’d like to ask people to answer the following questions (on their blog, in YouTube, Seesmic, or wherever – please post a link in the comments section below): 1. Does education need to change? 2. Why or why not? 3. If it should change, what should it become? How should education (k-12, higher, or corporate) look like in the future? My first knee-jerk response was terse: (1) Yes. (2) If not it dies. (3) Different. But that is not very helpful, and as George has helped me much in the past, I ought to [...]

I can agree with all the positive acclaim for the archive of Life photographs Google is hosting. It is a vast archive of important historical moments. What is striking me odd that is not strictly mentioned on this site is any statement on usage of the images. I looked high and low, and I am rather perplexed that such a collection would overlook something I have found front and center (or footer and center) on every other photography or art archive online. After my cursory research this is what you can do with this site: You can search or browser for images using the Google interface. You can look at the images. You can buy merchandise related to the image. You can (guessing) provide a link to the page holding an image And that is it. Everyone who is embedding copies of these images is violating copyright. It is not [...]