We held our first gathering of the “Blogging and Student Publishing” learning community last week. It was a small, informal gathering - only a handful of profs were able to make it due to summer schedules, and another handful of staff. I think the small group was actually a very good thing for a first gathering, though, as the conversation was extremely engaging and dynamic - something that may have been lost in a larger group. What I loved about this gathering, is that we were able to reproduce much of the vibe from the Social Software Salon event held a couple of years ago at UBC. I’m hoping to to much more of this kind of thing, to get faculty members together and properly caffeinated in order to get the conversations flowing.
Twitter has been bugging me for some time now. No, not the single-digit uptime. No, not the constant “Down for Updates” notices. No, not the slow unresponsive website and throttled API.
I just realized that Twitter is actually dangerous. Harmful. Damaging.
It has changed the way that I think, but not for the better. I find I am thinking more superficially when I’m active in Twitter. I think in shorter 140 character bursts. With little to no depth.
First, I need to clarify something. I’m not going to call this “mobile learning” or even the more web2.0 friendly “mLearning.” (although I’ve tagged this post with both monikers, because that’s what everyone else seems to call it). What I’m describing is simply the application of small, portable, personal devices with various features that can be leveraged in interesting ways to support and enhance the activities of teaching and learning. By calling it “mLearning” there is an inordinate emphasis on the shiny technology, and less so on their appropriate pedagogical applications.
We hit the half way mark on Sunday night. 366/2. That’s a lot of photos. It’s been amazing to see so many people take up the project, and watching them learn and grow as photographers and artists.
To commemorate the passing of the halfway mark, I whipped up a mosaic of a globe (using MacOSaiX, this photo by ToastyKen as the source - which was appropriate since he took it as part of a 2007/365 project) and then used all photos on Flickr tagged with “366photos” to generate tiles for the mosaic.
I’ve been following Spore since I saw the first demo at TED. I remember playing SimCity back in the day (on my Amiga 1000!), and SimEarth, and the other variants, and have really been looking forward to Spore.
It’s really a universe simulator, where players interact at various scales separated by orders of magnitude. The full game starts at the single cell stage, evolving up through multicellular life, eventually up to group and society, and finally planetary and galactic scales. What a great way to show interconnections between the various disciplines? Biochemistry through cellular biology through zoology through ecology through sociology through planetary biology and astrophysics. In a format that can be jumped into by anyone, including kids. Especially kids. What would happen if kids are able to develop a sense of these interactions and interdependencies at various scales?
I’ve been working on organizing a project I’ve called “Learning Communities” here at UCalgary. It’s still a bit amorphous, but that’s actually part of the plan. What I’m going to do is offer resources and support to any communities on campus so that they can effectively get together and share what they’re doing. I’ll facilitate meetings, find guest speakers, search for resources, organize presentations, or whatever else is needed for these communities to share the interesting things they’re doing (or want to be doing) on campus.
I had a meeting with a prof last week about a very interesting project she wants to set up (to run the course as a series of blog posts resulting in a science magazine published by the students - I’ll write more on that later). During the discussion of the project, we got to talking about blogging in general and she mentioned that she had recently started a blog of her own.
I’m listening to the EdTechPosse podcast 4.3, and they’re talking a bit about “edupunk”. I fired a few comments into Twitter, but wanted to flesh them out a little more.
“Edupunk” is not about a bunch of middle-aged geeks reliving their youth. Back in the day, I was much too much of a dork to be a part of punk. I was never a punk as a kid. I’m not “reliving” anything. Edupunk is more than just reminiscing some form of adolescent anarchy. It’s not just trying to recapture lost youth. Although, if there is that angle for some people, more power to them.
I’m not sure what to make of this. According to the Associated Press,
The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.
I picked up a Flip Ultra video camera this weekend, and one of the things I wanted to try was strapping it to my bike helmet to record my morning commute, just to see what it looked like. So, I dorked myself up a bit by attaching the Flip to my helmet via a handy dandy bungee cord, and recorded the morning ride. It’s a bit stomach-churning in spots, because of head motion swinging the camera all over the place, but it’s pretty close to being there…
All of the coolkids are playing with the shiny new fancy tag cloudifier over at Wordle. It is shiny. I think this is the best visualization of my del.icio.us tag cloud that I’ve seen. I think I might try to whip up a poster to slap on the office wall or something. I’ve got a vector-based PDF version just itching to rasterize onto some huge chunk of papyrus…
That’s like riding from Calgary to Vancouver and back. Or Calgary to Thunder Bay. Heck, I could have ridden from Calgary to San Francisco, with over 400km to spare. hmmm….
I’ve been riding my bike as primary transportation on my commute for a couple of years now (started really doing it again in 2006, after a few years of not riding very much). I ride just over 28km per day, every weekday, so have managed to rack up the kilometers pretty quickly. I had set a target for myself to ride 3,500km in 2008, trying to beat my 3,100km ridden in 2007. Looks like I’m on track to blow that away, and might hit 4,000km if I’m able to keep going. That’d be like riding from Calgary to Quebec City. Or to New York…
