Category: General

C|NET News has an interesting piece on the ways technology REDUCES our work efficiency – too many demands, too many options, too many distractions, and way too much time writing blog entries.
Maybe the issue should really be the blurring of that line dividing work and life. The line “I have a life …” has become my favorate annoyance. The utterance is often used to explain why a task has yet to be completed or why an interesting opportunity is being ignored. It is almost as if work is something that is a nuisance and the required activities should be dispatched as quickly as possible. So, while I do listen to Internet radio or an audiobook while I work and that probably reduces my productivity a bit, I also answer email while at home because I assume the person who sent the note would prefer a rapid reply. The total time involved is greater and the productivity per minute might be lower but that is fine with me.

SimSchool, a simulation activity intended for use by preservice teachers, is now online. This project results from the PT3 grant program (for those of you who were involved in this funding opportunity a few years ago).

The most basic version of the activity is available at no cost, the more advanced version costs $12 (I have not paid for the full version). I have no opinion at this point regarding the value of this sim to students at this cost. I guess that depends on the depth of the experience.

Project leaders are continuing to improve the resource and welcome those with ideas for collaboration.

When I do repetitive tasks, I am able to listen to audio books. It is my purposeful way of expanding the breadth of topics I think about. The latest effort of this type has involved John Battelle’s book on “Search”.

After listening to this book, I have decided to purposefully contribute my behavior to the cause. Here is what I am doing and why.

I conduct frequent searches as part of my work and all other aspects of my life. I assume you do the same. I have fallen into the habit of using Google for these activities. I regard it as the most useful search engine.

I have decided to use a greater number of search engines. I used to do this as a way to explore what different services had to offer. I now intend to to so for a different reason. I am convinced the search industry needs samples of my behavior. These data will be helpful in determining how people like me use the Internet and then using this information to improve the experience for all of us. I have made contributions of this type before. I have created several web sites that link to other web sites. Google has analyzed my decisions and has combined my “votes” on what web resources are valuable with the votes of many others to generate its page rank approach to ordering the results of your web searches for your consideration.

Contributing examples of my “click stream” works in a somewhat similar way. The terms I use in my searches and the sites I visit when receiving results from my searches are data that may somehow be useful. Such data represents a compliment to data on how the web contributors have cross linked their resources. On one side there is a system for prioritizing what providers have to offer and on the other a system for contextualizing what searchers are looking for and use.

You can contribute too (or just explore some new ideas if you see things in a different way). Try:

1) the A9 toolbar

2) Yahoo Y!Q

It’s Saturday morning and you don’t feel like watching cartoons. What to do? How about watching a few of the presentations from ACM SigGraph. More than 250 hours of content (including the George Lucas keynote) are available. You will first be required to download special software (I am guessing because someone wants to show off an application) and then enter a guest name and password provided on the page I link above.

Cindy is in the dissemination phase of her history grant. The idea is to extend the training first conducted with history teachers in Grand Forks to other teachers within the region. Today, the program involved an online experience with professionals from the Library of Congress.

No matter how extensive my background with technology, I continue to be amazed by experiences such as this – sitting in Grand Forks and interacting with people from the Library of Congress is pretty cool.

History teacher or not, the LOC is worth exploring. What a tremendous repository of resources and these resources are becoming easier to locate. While I have explored this site on several locations, the tour provided some new insights (perhaps things are being added all of the time). Here is a suggestion – consider exploring the Self-Serve Workshops.

The afternoon session was devoted to teaching with primary sources. This turned out to be less interesting and similar to other sessions I have experienced several times locally. Practicing the three stage analysis system with a couple of images – what do I see, what do I know, what do I think – was probably not the best use of a limited amount of time. This is an issue that has always troubled me in the development of teachers – given a limited amount of class time, should class time be devoted to working through examples. What can be assumed regarding the ability of educators to apply from the presentation and discussion of examples? Homework is one thing, the limited amount of time available when interacting with people from the LOC another.

The demo image follows. Like so many with a computer in my hands, I tend to get off track when not completely engaged. I immediately Googled “evacuation sale” and guessed the image was a forced sale by a Japanese store owner. It turns out the phrase brings up this topic at the top of a Google search. Was I doing history?

The buzz is that virus creators have found a way to pick on Mac users (Washington Post article). As I understand the approach, Mac users must be tricked into downloading a file purported to be a picture but that is actually a program. When opened, the program attempts to send itself to anyone on the users iChat list.

The logic works like this – here is a secret file, open it, run it, and see what happens (I am being facetious here). The danger would seem to be in situations in which you receive such a file from someone you know and do not stop to wonder why an image file would come in a compressed form, etc.

MacWorld Article