GoogleApps in Education

I wish this bus was coming to my neighborhood!

Mary Grush, “Driving Google Apps for Education,” Campus Technology, 9/10/2008, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=67337

Smokin’ with Pipes

I am so proud of myself.  I figured out how to incorporate the RSS feed schedule of a TV Show I was blogging about into the blog post itself.  I used Yahoo! Pipes.    Thus, the schedule for the show is always updated no matter when someone views the post.

Wow-now, I need to figure out other ways to use this.

Power of WIKIs in Higher Education

The recent edition of the Campus Technology has a great article on various uses of WIKIs on college campuses.  They included uses that I had not previously considered, which makes it worthwhile on that point alone.

The periodical interviews Stewart Mader, an author of two books on the benefits of WIKIs, and includes a link to his comprehensive website on the subject.

A Political Issue of Concern to all Internet Users

ESchool News has posted an article that compares and contrasts McCain’s and Obama’s technology agendas.   The article explains that the two candidates agree more than they differ.  However, the two candidates do differ in their positions on Net Neutrality.  Obama supports Net Neutrality.  McCain is against.  I won’t try to tell you how to vote, but if the ability to access anything you want on the internet without impedement or additional charge from your ISP is important to you, you might want to keep this article in mind come November.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Textbooks

I’ve really been changing my educational philosophy in the past few years. For example, homework. When I first heard of the “no homework” movement, I thought “how crazy are those folks?” But, then I read the books and listened to the discussion. It makes sense to me now to NOT have homework. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and even tried to take over the reigns with a recent NO HOMEWORK presentation to Education majors at St Charles Community College.

I recently heard about the Open Source textbook movement and how it is being applied to Community Colleges. I think in this age of ever rising textbook costs and constant edition revisions (without any substantial revisions), this is a great first step. But, the more I think about the more I wonder–why do we need textbooks? A college instructor could easily use a WIKI to create links to releveant articles (newspapers, journals). She could also create links to a relevant bibliography, perhaps even require reading of one or two of the books available in their library (or through MOBIUS).

While I still think reading is optimal to learning, I don’t think it necessarily needs to be via a textbook.

Second Life

I am still trying to determine if Second Life and its uses are worth checking out.  I did come across the following article, 7 Things You Should Know About Second Life from Educause, that not only explains things for the neophyte it also gives some great examples on how this is being used for training.

In a related story, a college is doing an entire Associates program in Digitial Media via a Second Life application.

Operation Overload

When I saw the headline for this story on my RSS feed on Distance Learning, Beware of Social Networking Overload, I thought maybe the author had attended by Web 2.0 for Libraries “Boot Camp” this week, too.

Wrong that I was, the article does contain some good information (and stats) on how to choose which social networking sites to join.  It states you can’t do everything, so don’t even try.   

On a side note, I had to appreciate the Brady Bunch reference at the beginning of the article.  Someone should start a blog aobut “Everything I Need to Know, I learned in an episode of The Brady Bunch.”

RSS Feeds

I just finished setting up a Google Reader account. This will make keeping up with blogs and news a lot easier. Now that I have it set up, it’s probably a blocked website at work.

The one thing I can’t figure out in all of our RSS learning is how to customize an RSS feed. Say, for example, I want to pull all news about Overland from the St Louis Post-Dispatch RSS feed and post that to my Overland-specific blog. How do I do that? I’ve played around in Yahoo! Pipes but cannot seem to get this to work. This will be something to play with in the coming weeks.

Note to Self: Druple

I need to remember to check out this Drupel thing.

Perpetual Beta or Ongoing Brainstorming Session

The instructors have referred to Web 2.0 as Perpetual Beta. In the Wiki World this could also be considered an ongoing brainstorming session. One persons small idea in a Wiki could blossom into many great and useful ideas.