Lately, I have generated few posts. I encountered problems with my other two blogs (described here) that I decided I would have to take some time to address in order to make sure my blogs would have some longevity. In brief, my other two blogs were corrupted in such a way that I could not upgrade the software. So, after a couple of days struggling with database issues, I gave up. The only solution was manual. Create a new blog, open the old blog, copy and paste, copy and paste, etc. Repeat approximately 450 times. It took a few days.
If you blog and wonder about this situation, I would suggest you look to see if there is a built-in way to inport and export. Sooner or later your database will become corrupted. WordPress has an input and export tool that makes use of an XML format and allows an alternative to trying to accomplish the same tasks via MySQL database manipulation.
The new blog, Blurts, is what I would describe as my microblog consisting of short posts mostly describing resources others may find useful.
Cindy retired from the school district last year and now works on consulting projects and with the university. One of her activities at the University involves teaching a section of the “Technology for Teachers” class. For whatever reason, yesterday, she decided to send a letter to her colleagues who teach the same course about the present activities involving technology in the district from which she retired. The message, I think, was that we need to be aware of what is going on out there. There must be some connection to practice that I have described as “lead, keep up, or acknowledge”. In other words, there needs to be some connection between the preparation of teachers and the world these students will soon enter. Clearly, this connection does not necessarily require acceptance of everything that goes on, but the idea is encourage teachers to understand and think through what will soon be their work environment.
I think such connections might be described as questions:
What are teachers doing with technology?
What aren’t teachers taking advantage of that should be available to them?
What are teachers doing with technology that is misguided and why?
Her letter ended up being circulated outside of the group for which it was originally intended and so I decided to do the same.
Good Afternoon,
I had a chance to spend time in the GF Schools this week and wanted to make you aware of some applications being used in the district.
Grand Forks is/has:
Adopted Google Apps for Education for collaborative documents, presentations, spreadsheets and form creation.
Studied a one-to-one adoption of student devices (presently piloting ASUS Netbooks in Community High School, Red River High School, Central High School, Valley Middle School, Twining Middle School and Elementary, Winship Elementary, Lake Agassiz, and Wilder Elementary). These computer are running Ubuntu Linux operating system.
Used many cloud apps such as Voicethread, flickr, Animoto, Glogster, Corkboard, Today’s Meet, Wikispaces, PBWorks, etc.
Engaged students in blogging and learning to embed other apps in their blogs as well as work with gadgets and avatars
Students are collaborating with schools throughout the world using Skype and collaborative environments.
A switch is being made to using Chrome and accessing the Web Store
Students are using flip cameras, digital cameras and digital microscopes (some wireless)
There are pockets of iPod and iPad projects.
There are approximately 200 interactive whiteboards.
K-12 Social Studies is in an adoption cycle and they are looking at all digital materials.
All teachers applicants apply online, subs are obtained online, classified staff clock in online, IEPs are written online, professional development is registered for online, grades, scheduling and attendance are online, etc.
I think some of these initiatives should influence what we teach in our Technology for Teachers class.
Wu argues information technologies seem to follow a cycle – they begin with the promise of encouraging wide participation and transformation but morph toward monopoly and limited options. He contends this was true of publishing, radio, and television and perhaps now the Internet. I found the analysis and stories fascinating.
It does seem like the progression Wu describes is underway. Google sells books. People complain that the Apple apps will kill the Internet. Everyone complains about the providers. The recent FCC ruling regarding net neutrality must have occurred shortly after the book went to press.
Wu seems to think public opinion matters to companies (at least while some options are still available). To me, the problem is most advanced when it comes to those companies providing access. The latest FCC ruling while protecting net neutrality in one sphere (hard wire connections) allowed greater opportunities for cell providers.
I have been attempting to understand what Wu thought was the government’s responsibility and have checked my own vagueness against what other pundits seem to claim he said (Inside Higher Ed, Laura Miller). Different pundits seem to come different conclusions Wu’s recommendation regarding the role of government. My understanding was that he argued that the role should simply be to promote competition and this could be achieved through his “separation principle”. So, for example, there is danger when the cable company both provides access and has digital content to sell. There would be greater danger if a company generated content, sold the content, and provided access to the Internet. So, if a company provides access with little competition (e.g., the only cable provider in a community), this is a dangerous situation because it is in the interest of the company to both make money on access and also on the content it wants to sell.
Wu seems to think public opinion matters to companies (at least while some options are still available), the convenience may limit complaints until it is too late. To me, the problem is most advanced when it comes to those companies providing access.
It is now complete. My 365 project has ended. A year ago I made a commitment to generate one image a day for the next year.
I took a lot of abuse because of this project. My kids thought some of my pictures were uninspired or just generic. No argument from me. It is difficult just remembering to take a picture each day. What do you do when it is 11 PM and you have yet to take a picture. Once I drove to the parking garage on campus and took a picture of part of the campus. My collection of pictures is a pretty good account of my life. Most of which is probably not that interesting. The final picture is a good example. We are spending time with relatives in Northern Minnesota and Scott is a great breakfast cook.
I decided this should be the picture of the year. Cindy had an angiogram and asked for data. Good heart.
So, now is the time for you to think about next year. I probably took more pictures with my phone than with the 7D. Remember, the best camera is the one you have with you. You might want to consider how you will organize and share your collection (e.g., Wes Fryer will use Tumblr for 2011). Several photographers have made the commitment to take a picture of a door each day. For me, this was as much an exercise in commitment as anything. Next year, I plan to focus on quality.
There was a time when the tools and blank media for copying records – blank tapes and tape recorder – were assumed as tools to violate copyright. The argument that the tools and media could be used for something else, e.g., recording your own voice, seem to relieve the pressure on those selling to products.
There several tools for “saving” web content and “making web content easier to read” that pose a similar ethical challenge. Evernote, an app I really like, comes to mind. Do I as a consumer have the right to subvert the format intended by the author? The most obvious intention might be to avoid viewing ads. A second intention might be to avoid the time limit the original is available to encourage a purchase of a subscription allowing long term access.
I am not certain about these concerns and admit I save resources. An option in such services that must be a copyright violation according to my interpretation is the sharing of content via RSS or some form of granting access to a specified group. If someone else gets content from me that I did not create, this seems pretty obvious. I am not arguing whether such a feature has value, I am just wondering how the practice could be considered legal.
It is time for top 10 lists. Here are the top ten posts from this blog for the past year. The list includes 12 entries, but I am discounting the home page and the aboutme page.
This blog generates most of its traffic via web searches rather than RSS feeds. The most frequent hits appear to be for tutorial-like posts – e,g., how to write to Google apps from the ipad, how to do text to speech in snow leopard. Perhaps people search for tutorials and read opinion posts via RSS.
I am guessing Delicious is the most popular social bookmarking site. It allows users to store, tag and annotate links to web sites. It also allowed access to the link collections of others who had stored the same link and were willing to share their resources. In this way, users have the opportunities to discover some of the “finds” of others with related interests. The Delicious approach was simple and while not as powerful as similar services that followed it had the advantage `of being on the scene at an early point and it engaged a large number of users who invested enough time they were likely reluctant to give up on the service. I guess there was simply no way to monetize the service. Too bad it is not being given/sold to some other company. There would seem to be a base of users worth acquiring.
Delicious would not be my first choice, but I use it because it seems tied in with iPad apps I use to read my RSS feeds (e.g., NewsRack). I can add to my bookmarks as I go through the feeds. If Delicious is not saved, there were will be repercussions for other products.
If you have invested a lot of time in Delicious, you should export your bookmarks. Shutting down Delicious is not a certainty, but it appears many are concerned. The link at the beginning of this post contains information about how to export the resources you have accumulated. Exporting Delicious links and then inputting them to Diigo was easy to do.
P.S. – Within a day or so of this Yahoo! news, Yahoo indicated that it did not intend to shut down Delicious, but rather to abandon it (find a new home). As I originally noted, this makes sense and it would seem to be a valuable resource because of the user base. However, the clumsiness with which this was handled probably has done a lot to erode this base. I have already moved on to Pinboard which was promoted by a number of prominent bloggers. It appears that this was a fairly common response, but Pinboard was struggling to keep up.
I am hedging my bets at present. Anything I send to Delicious automatically gets forwarded to Pinboard. I guess we will see what happens.
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