Learning Together

Welcome - Basic Information

We have been wanting to add a simple way for others to contribute comments for some time. We have a Drupal installation that allows protected contributions, but Drupal may be more than you require. So, we are going to give Chyrp a try. Chyrp is described as a microblog although it does appear to allow extended comments. 

We welcome your comments and contributions. Please note that this site is intended for the education community. Inappropriate material will be removed immediately.

I do offer longer posts on a separate blog - Learning Aloud.

Blogger Update

I moved from Blogger to my own WordPress implementation some years ago. However, Blogger has continued to improve and offers sophisticated features. This seems to happen - I move to something new and the old service morphs into something more powerful. I guess this is the nature of supported online services. This post from Technologizer describes some of the most recent innovations.

More and more options - is there evidence of productive outcomes

Tech and Learning is offering a multi-part series on web tools (100 tools to enhance collaboration). The first installment is now available. If one wanted to get into the mindset of exploring and explaining new tools, this could be a never-ending commitment. I have mixed feelings about this abundance. On one hand I think innovation is great and the competition it creates for attention drives advances. On the other hand, I think tech-committed educators can easily waste too much time looking...

Finally - citizen action focused on issues of substance

The tea party thing was cute - interesting label and lots of yelling. Now, it is time to focus on services for all - protesting educational cuts and misguided priorities.

Defend Public Education

CNN (later) - protestors arrested

WIFI may be enough for iPad to be successful claims ATT exec

This story from Reuters quotes an ATT executive as indicating that most will likely use the iPad via wifi. I agree (or at least hope so since ATT can't seem to find North Dakota). The article offers additional comments on net neutrality and improvement in broadband access.

My advice: take your money out of ATT and invest in coffee shops.

Some Numbers to Consider

Gizmoto offers a comparison between what they think are the actual costs of providing a book and an ebook. My experience in authoring textbooks has been that there are more costs than this. Products I have been associated with include heaving editing (someone who works closely with the author in "smoothing" the final product", media (e.g., fees to photographers and graphic artists), lawyers (e.g., securing copyright releases for embedded images and other protected materials), and fees to...

How does this work now?

I just read that picnik (the online image editing software) has been purchased by Google. What makes this confusing is that picnik is the image editing software you access when working within Flickr and Flickr is owned by Yahoo!. Google owns Picasa which has free desktop image editing and storage software that links with Picasa online. So, why did Google need picnik and what happens to picnik availability through Flickr?