I’m trying to quickly check in from home, but the browser on my home machine is acting up and refusing to access websites. I guess that’s forgivable - I’m still running my (otherwise) trusty old PowerMacintosh 8600/300 running MacOS 9.1. Before you laugh, this bad boy was literally the fastest personal computer in Calgary for a few weeks when I got it, and I paid more for this system than many people pay for cars.
Read MoreIt’s the end of an era. The Learning Commons is no more. It’d be dramatic, if we weren’t just changing the name to the “Teaching and Learning Centre”. It’s a little less pretentious, and should require less explanation about what we do. It’s a shorter web domain name, too - just “tlc.ucalgary.ca”. Maybe we should have thrown a “2.0” in there for buzzword compliance :-)
Read MoreI’m so sick and tired of people and companies slapping “Web 2.0” stickers on their websites/products/blogs/resumes to show how kewl and innovative they are. I saw a website for a design company that mentions “Web 2.0” a whopping 5 times on their home page alone, and once more in the title of the page. I get it. You’re innovative. I should worship you.
Here’s an idea. Just do cool stuff. Be innovative. Stop trying to brag your ass off by buzzwordifying everything. It’s starting to come across like some kind of high school clique - jocks, preps, bangers, and the “Web 2.0” gang. If you’re not in the Web 2.0 Gang, you suck. Whatever. I was an outcast then, and I’m happy to be one now.
Read MoreI just checked in on Josie’s map of Edubloggers, and has it ever grown! There are now 347 people around the world identifying themselves as “edubloggers”. The pattern of distribution is interesting, too. Most of Europe and North America are saturated. Africa is basically unrepresented, and northern Asia (including all of Russia) is blank.
Patrick Feng attended a recent Alberta Ingenuity Media Master Class event on campus aimed at discussing the communication of science and research with the general public and in The Media. He live blogged the session, and has some interesting thoughts on the various presentation styles used by the 5 presenters as they talked with Jay Ingram and the audience about their research.
I’m most interested in what seems like an emphasis on conversational (or at least natural, less formal) presentation styles. I think we need to figure out ways for more professors to take advantage of this style. Many stick to chalk-and-talk (or ppt-and-talk) because it’s an easy, low effort presentation style that feels like they’re accomplishing something (I have 150 bullet points in this ppt! it’s great!).
Read MoreI think everyone that will be “presenting” to a group should have to be familiar with Levine’s Law before they take the podium.
Start with the demo
I tuned into what promised to be an excellent session on flexible, organic, dynamic ePortfolios using social software, only to find myself holding back from screaming “Levine’s law! For the love of God, Levine’s Law!!!” as bullet point after bullet point was dutifully addressed.
Read MoreReally hard to tell where my head’s been lately…
I’m just putting some additional refinements to my automated server backup process, and have rolled together a handy script to backup each database into its own backup file (so I can restore a single database, rather than blowing them all away to restore from an --all-databases backup.
I’m going to work on making a fancier / more dynamic script based on MySOL’s show databases command to get all databases backed up individually without having to remember to add them to the backup script. In the meantime, here’s how I’m backing up my databases.
Just writing down the process so I don’t forget. If anyone else gets some use out of it, that’s cool too…
Here’s how I just set up my Mac to automatically back up 2 servers, as well as my home directory, to an external firewire drive. The process uses stuff that’s included with MacOSX, so won’t cost a dime. And it’s automatable, so I won’t forget to run it.
Following these instructions, boiled down to bare essentials below. Run this stuff from the “client” machine (in my case, my desktop box in my cube) - where all data will wind up.
Read MoreThere are only 2 words to describe the finale. Holy. Frak.
I’m not going to put any spoilers in here, because this finale would be worth watching the miniseries, and all of seasons 1 and 2 just to get to the point that you’re ready to watch this. It’s that amazing. I can’t remember a series that took such a gamble with rethinking the show so completely.
Ronald Moore described the finale as an attempt to roll hard sixes. I think he’s pulled it off. BSG wasn’t stale - yet - but was beginning to fall into the usual
Read MoreHelen Chen posted a notice about an upcoming webcast by Jude Higdon for ADCE about the nature of ePortfolios in an environment where people are already using blogs and social software. The session will be a quasi-interactive Elluminate production.
Who needs an ePortfolio? All my coursework is on my blog…
EPortfolios have been defined in various ways by vendors, professional organizations, and institutions of higher education.
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With emerging technologies such as social software that include the ability to freetag and syndicate across multiple resources and environments, the need for standalone ePortfolio “software” is perhaps called into question. This discussion will raise issues regarding the NetGen student, and how she is already using technology that has natural affordances that allow her to collect, aggregate, and syndicate content into portfolio views that can be useful to herself, other students, faculty, departments, colleges and universities, accreditation agencies, funding bodies, and potential employers.
I just saw the PodPress plugin mentioned in the WordPress dashboard feed, so checked it out quickly. What a kick-ass plugin! Totally manages podcast publishing, enclosures, web players, iTunes integration. Handles files uploaded to the blog, as well as remote files (absolute urls). Presents mp3, m4a, mov, mp4, pdf, etc… files. Very nice.
I’ve updated the most recent 2 entries in my podcast section, to see how it works. Pretty slick.
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