So, I was stuck in a long meeting, absorbing endless slides in a powerpoint deck. And I vented something onto Twitter, as I apparently do.
@TedTheSith responded:
Heh, @dlnorman, stuck in a Powerpoint rut? Seen this yet? #TED on.ted.com/AFxg
— Teddy (@TedtheSith) January 25, 2012
In workshops, I often joke about doing stuff by interpretive dance instead of powerpoint. Turns out, that's not a bad idea after all. Awesome.
O’Donnell, M. (2006). Blogging as pedagogic practice: Artefact and ecology. Asia Pacific Media Educator.
A really interesting paper based on a conference presentation. Talks about some of the promise of blogging as an agent of pedagogical change, but actually goes into some of the reasons why the change might happen (as opposed to other articles that leave it up to BECAUSE… MAGIC! BLOGS!)
Basically – blogging changes the nature of discourse, making it idiosyncratic and reflective. It also changes the ownership of the discourse to being student-centric.
Instagram's CEO, talking about the awesome plans for ramping up ads in their service:
"I think the advertising experience is going to be extremely engaging," Systrom said. "It's much harder with text," but Instagram offers photos, and brand names such as Audi, Kate Spade, and Burberry have joined Instagram.
"They're sharing pictures of products and the message of their brands. That shows we're at the beginning of what will come with brands," he said.
Matt Gemmell just posted a great summary of some of the recent discussion about comments on blogs.
One line in his write-up stuck with me, because it's basically what I experienced as well:
For most people in this discussion, the main worry about switching off comments has been a fear of reducing engagement or conversation. For me, that was about 50% of my concern; the other 50% was that I really, really liked getting those comments each day from people who (for the most part) agreed with what I'd written. I was in the absurdly privileged position that disabling comments amounted to switching off daily reassurance and validation. Accordingly, any accusation that I'm hiding from disagreement is frankly ridiculous.
4159.8km, with a lot of downtime. Hopefully next year will be better for riding,,,
I needed to archive several WordPress sites as part of the process of gathering the raw data for my thesis research. I found a few recipes online for using wget to grab entire sites, but they all needed some tweaking. So, here's my recipe for posterity:
I used wget, which is available on any linux-ish system (I ran it on the same Ubuntu server that hosts the sites).
wget --mirror -p --html-extension --convert-links -e robots=off -P . http://url-to-site
Back in September, I made some noise about boycotting eBooks because they seem to be extremely overpriced. Fast forward 4 months, and this happened:
2 entire series of novels later, and a scattering of other standalone books. I'm reading more now than I have in years. But I haven't bought the Big Ticket eBooks. Most of these are either free, or low-cost books put out by independent authors. Very cool stuff.
Every now and then, I have to pause a little when I realize that almost all of my photographs this year were taken with a cell phone. Many (most?) of the photos would have never happened otherwise - I'd grow tired of lugging out a DSLR and all that entails. But because a good-enough-camera is in my phone, in my pocket all of the time, I'm documenting stuff that would have gone forgotten otherwise. That's worth far more to me than pixels and f-stops.
John Gruber, commenting on Dave Winer's post on why he uses Android rather than iOS:
Fear of Apple is about losing control over the software on our computers. Fear of Google is about losing control over our privacy.
That's the best, clearest description of the difference I've seen. I don't care what anyone else uses. But I value my privacy more than I value the ability to compile the kernel behind my operating system.
A few years ago, we headed into the mountains to spend a few days at a cabin with family. It's a development built on top of the remains of a failed ski resort on Pigeon Mountain, overlooking the Bow Valley. The weather was pretty crappy for much of the stay, but I was drawn to the way the clouds and wisps played along the crags. I think these peaks are Windtower and The Rimwall, forming the south part of the famous Three Sisters overlooking Canmore.
I've been using several pieces of "enterprise" software lately - applications that university basically runs on. Until recently, I'd only been exposed to a small portion of Peoplesoft (and even then, only for processing extremely infrequent travel claims). But now… I get to use several apps. And they all seem to have something in common: disdain or even active loathing for the users. From the application that is deployed as a "web site" built using ActiveX controls so we have to use IE on Windows to even see it. To the application that manages all IT support activity, but is designed to use a rigid unresizable 640x480 web page crammed with tiny bits of data. Etc…
Top, E. (2011). Blogging as a social medium in undergraduate courses: Sense of community best predictor of perceived learning. The Internet and Higher Education. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.02.001
The purpose of the study was to examine pre-service teachers’ sense of community, perception of collaborative learning, and perceived learning. Fifty pre-service teachers from two undergraduate ICT courses which incorporated blogs participated in this study. The data were obtained via three online questionnaires (Collaborative Learning scale, Sense of Community scale, and Perceived Learning scale) administered throughout Fall 2009-2010. The research questions were answered by using Pearson Product-Moment Correlation and multiple linear regressions. Results indicated that the pre-service teachers had positive feelings about the collaborative learning and perceived learning; also, they had moderate feelings related to sense of community in the classes which incorporated blogs. Additionally, to a great extent sense of community and to a much lesser extent of computer knowledge level were the predictors of explaining their learning perceptions.