Everything that does not have a home, just a big old stinking pile of posts.
I had 5 minutes of technical glory today, where I felt like I mastered the machine. The rest of the day I may have been under its thumb, where I belong. Readers may note that a few weeks back I was dealing with some strange web server activity every Saturday morning that managed to take […]
Our Ocotillo project’s use of blogs+wikis+boards, coined last summer as “Small Technologies Loosely Joined”. The premise of this was that each of our 4 working groups would maintain a regularly updated blog as its public “face”, use discussion boards for some asynchronous dialogues (and guest experts), and the wikis for brainstorming. The suite of tools […]
My colleagues and I had another full on day of absorbing and observing at MIT. the night before, our host and contact Phil Long took us to an outstanding Afghan restaurant in Cambridge, called Helmand. Friday started with a bit of blue sky, but the snow did not wait long to start its thing. In […]
I’ve been in the sub-arctic zone known as “Boston” since Wednesday (hey, it is 85 degrees back home!) for some visits at MIT. Yes, that MIT. This was set up partly to learn more about the iCampus initiative thanks to a gracious invitation from Phil Long at last fall’s EDUCAUSE conference. I am here with […]
My editor is breathing down my back (considering it is like 15 degrees this morning in New York City, that may not be a bad thing). No, I am behind on writing my technology column for the Spring 2005 issue of our publication, the mcli Forum . I need some help 😉 The article will […]
Today was our presentation on our “Ocotillo” project titled Maricopa’s Ocotillo Evolves Again: 18 Years of Faculty Led Instructional Technology Initiatives: Since 1987, Ocotillo has been a faculty led initiative to promote the effective use of instructional technology. Like its desert plant metaphor, Ocotillo has evolved again into four new action groups, leading a range […]
Whew! I found a stellar presentation session today…. all hope is not lost . Margaret Hvatum and Gayla Stewart from St Louis Community College presented “Computer Hacking as an Educational Tool” (no web links ;-):
For education to happen, students must be interested and engaged in the subject material. Computer hacking interests students and motvates them to read, do research, talk in class, and present their findings on hackers. Since both white-hat and blach-hat hackers exist, students also learn to develop their own value systems as the class explores the topics of hackers, what they do, illegal versus immoral behaviors, and appropriate versus inappropriate use of technology.
More or less, this is an excellent approach for a freshman new student experience course, where they learn some literacy, research, and writing skills. What was also good about this session was that it was only half lecture format, as the second half, participants engaged in a scnerio activity that had as look at different viewpoints on the issue of hacking.
Some notes follow…
It’s time to do away with the silly conference bags and the wasted trees contained within. The whole concept is so, 1980-ish. I may get some organizational dings for this, but I am compelled to complain once more about the staleness of the educational conference format. Somebody please stick a fork in it. This League […]
I’m back. I think. The last two days have been technically the worst of my career. This is a long story. The bottom line is that this blog is now running on a new URL http://realgar.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/alan/ but things are forarded nicely (.htaccess redirect) so all links to http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ end up here. But that is just […]
Just arrived in the big city for the League for Innovation conference that starts tomorrow. Perched on the 40 something floor of the Marriot with my own commanding view of Manhattan. About 1/3 the plane from Phoenix was loaded with folks from Maricopa, almost like a chartered jet. Sometimes you have to travel to a […]
