Sunday, April 8, 2007| Micropresence applications Like many, I have been playing with Twitter to update every last mundane detail of my life and post it for the world to see. Twitter seems to be the current leader but I use Facebook for microupdates (and other things). Two other applications include Jaiku and Plazes. Jaiku seems to be able to 'sense' my current mood based on the settings of my 'smartphone' (e61). Plazes goes one further and detects where I am based on my IP address and shares it with the world in an RSS feed. When I was younger (a lot younger) I spent some time wondering how interesting an archive of my life (or any life) would be. Fueled by Warhol visions, I decided that the result was probably not worth the effort. :) Things feel different now. Plazes seems to be the perfect 'low cost' application to start to share TMI. Mix with iTunes usage stats and throw in Twitter tweets and then you know more about my habits than I do. Auto generated metadata has a certain allure.
I will continue to play - in the interim, cringe when you see what I am up to. And we can all hope we figure out good ways to filter :)
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Thursday, March 22, 2007| Tina Piper Creative Commons Brown Bag Tina Piper, the co-Director of Creative Commons Canada, gave an overview of the history of copyright and the value of Creative Commons yesterday. Organized by Duncan McHugh, the session was part of the ongoing Land and Food Systems Learning Centre Brown Bag Lunch series. We were grateful to have Tina start the discussion on the confusing issue of copyright. In addition to giving a good overview of copyright principles in general, her coverage of the Canadian nuances of copyright was particularly welcome. Her talk engaged the audience and elicited the types questions that have no clear cut answers. :) It seems clear that this type of discussion needs to take place on campus more often.
thanks Tina!
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Thursday, January 11, 2007Chris Johnson kicked off the 2007 Brown Bag Lunch Series
We were honoured to have Chris Johnson give our first LFS Brown Bag lunch series talk this year. Chris gave a talk entitled "The 21st Century Learner in Your Classroom".His talk revealed traits of the 'average' 21st Century Learner. The emphasis was on K-12 students but our enthusiastic audience found many transferable points. Of note were his accounts of the student who types using the old hunt and peck - but with his thumbs. Also interesting was the student who texts at 160 'wrdz' per minute. Chris spoke about those moments in our jobs where we push ourselves to do new things and compared them to a baby's first steps. "A tentative first step... the realization that we are still standing... a more ambitious second step... a tumble accompanied by an 'uh-oh' and then back up again for more!" The audience loved Chris' presentation! Stay tuned for the web archive.
Thanks Chris!
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Wednesday, January 3, 2007| this blog may seem neglected... Actually I have been hanging out in a couple of other spaces...
If you need to find me, this should be enough information.
Please say hi! :)
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Wednesday, November 15, 2006| PathFinder and Avatar John Lester (aka Pathfinder Linden) is doing the lunchtime keynote at the NMC Regional conference at Trinity University. John is holding up his Second Life likeness cast in epoxy through the miracle of a 3-D Printer (the 2004 Horizon Report listed 3-D printing as one of the 6 technologies most likely to impact higher education).
Technorati Tags: nmc2006reg, pathfinderlinden 11:58:28 AM | # | |
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Wednesday, August 30, 2006Cocoalicious is down - please stand by.
If you use del.icio.us to manage your bookmarks then you are probably old hat at tagging. (If not, you should check out 'The 7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking'). While tagging is easy, fun and takes almost no time, it is a practice that one gets better at. My early attempts at tagging often leave me scratching my heads and wondering 'what was that guy thinking?' Once in a while I feel the need to go back and re-visit my tags to get rid of typos and make them more meaningful. This is where Cocoalicious comes in handy. Cocoalicious is one of a number helper applications that interface with del.icio.us. It displays my entire bookmark list along with easily editable tags on my computer. This makes it easy to navigate the whole lot of them (678 at current count) and regroup them. It is perfect for editing tags. The only problem is, is that Cocoalicious is not currently synching with the master list. Its creator has offered a suggestion for an interim solution but it hasn't worked in my hands. It appears that an API upgrade at del.icio.us rendered this and a couple of other programs unable to download the delicious 'database'. From the comments on the weblog, it seems there are quite a number of cocoalicious fans eagerly awaiting the return of the author. For me, this is a blessing in disguise. Instead of spending my days re-tagging (read: procrastinating), I am deliciousing up a storm using my imperfect tagging techniques and the fantastic firefox delicious extension.
Update: An earlier post on social bookmarking is here and includes a link to Ruben Puentedura's discussion on the value of disciplined tagging.
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Monday, August 28, 2006| Calico is a great tool to make panoramic photos I have been playing with Calico to generate my panoramic photos (or 'panos'). The program is great! It does all the heavy lifting using a patented UBC autostitching algorithm. All I have to do is pick the photos, click the button and wait. I am using version 1.3b1. It blazes along and makes the entire process painless (and fun)! 9:29:59 AM | # | |
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Wednesday, June 28, 2006| Tinderbox 3.5 is out The new Tinderbox is out and feels faster. :) I am still trying to figure out the best use for this program for but find that if I need to be creative, this is the application I turn to. Consequently, I have a big jumble of random thoughts, journal entries and rough drafts sitting in an increasingly large tinderbox file. I have played with exporting a couple of times, with no satisfying outcomes.
I continue to find that this application is one that I would bring with me if I had to pick ten to go on a long trip with me.
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Sunday, May 21, 2006| A New MacBook Pro - inevitable? Dave Winer noted that his previous mac laptop dies coincident with the release of the new MacBook. My own experience was remarkably similar. Three days after I took possession of my MacBook Pro, my 15" G4 laptop just stopped booting. After two weeks of agonizing over potentail lost data, I finally determined that nothing was lost. Thankfully, the cloning utility that comes with new Macs did a superb job of moving everything from the old to the new. I went ahead and formatted the hard drive. Final analysis: my hard drive died (again)! Coincidence? Dave writes: Decide for yourself: "Here are two events, you can decide for yourself, if it's a coincidence, or a marvelous example of planned obsolescence." 12:54:11 PM | # | |
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Saturday, May 20, 2006| The LFS Learning Centre renovations are underway! IMG_0029.JPG: The Learning Centre staff just completed the move to our temporary summer digs. While our new rooms are much smaller than before, it is comforting to know that around Aug 15th we will have a new home featuring more natural lighting, pleasing colours, open spaces and a combined 'one stop shop' and 'single experience' for all Information and Communication Technology and Learning Support in the faculty. In the interim, you can follow our pain as we document the process with extensive photos and blueprints. Duncan snapped the following shot of my empty office (but somehow missed snapping pictures of us moving the aquarium :)).
lfs.learningcentre posted a photo:
A complete photoset has been posted. The Learning Centre Renovations SMART LIST (a la Jon Udell) will be posted soon. (7) Technorati Tags: LandandFood, renovation, LFS 3:28:24 PM | # | |
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Friday, April 7, 2006"Is the blog an ePortfolio?"
I am at the Lifia ePortfolio conference in Richmond, BC. Maureen Layte from Eifel is bringing a European perspective to all things related to ePortfolios and the encompassing eStrategies. While discussing e-strategies, Maureen lists many related themes of interest including blogs, social software, personal learning spaces, eAdministration, eHealth and personal development plans. Each one of these topics likely sheds light on where ePortfolios need to go....At one point Maureen provocatively asked the audience 'Is a blog is an eportfolio?'. Nobody took the bait. There is definitely a sense in the room that bloggers and their practices may shed some light on successful ePortfolio use and adoption. The conference continues through tomorrow. Perhaps we can figure this nut out ;-). (8)
Technorati Tags: blogs, Eifel, ePortfolio, lifia, tag 11:33:50 PM | # | |
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Last update: 4/8/07; 7:50:12 PM .
