Under the wire

Overall, my general experience at each phase of the Web 2.0 learning challenge was that of impulsive frustration, typically culminating in a feeling of, "Oh, that wasn't too bad." Hopefully, reflecting back on that will give me a sense of empathy for my students. Of the thirteen 'things', my favorite is probably LibraryThing. I'm looking forward to creating my personal bibliography and wishlist with it. However, tonight I demonstrated ScreenToaster to a friend and neighbor who runs his own business. He sells a technology anywhere he can; For instance he's heading to Atlanta and Biloxi the week after next. Thus, he was intrigued by the thought of being able to record his narration of a PowerPoint presentation. Spread the learning, man.

Here's my cloud: LettersToLincoln13ThingCloud

Burnt Toast

How frustrating! I tried both Screentoast and Screenjelly (after creating accounts for both) and neither would function properly. They would both timeout in trying to access the Java applet. (And even their help sections were unavailable. ARGH!!) Funny thing is my MacBook is only a few months old and I double-checked to make sure all the software is updated. I then joined and tried Jing and that seem to direct me to ScreenCast, but after viewing the tutorial, it seems more gear to organizing things after they're 'captured'. So, . . . I came back to Jing, but I can't figure out how to do anything but capture a whole slew of individual screenshots. It seems like a pretty tedious and inefficient way of doing things, particularly after seeing what ScreenToast and ScreenJelly purportedly do. Can I be so dense that the issues I encountered are not encountered by anyone else and thus don't warrant some instructions to circumvent such problems? (That's a rhetorical question folks, there's no need to respond affirmatively to my question.)
Well, the epilogue here is that I contacted Mike 'SuperMac' Flender and he suggested the problem might be my browser. I use Firefox most of the time - though you may notice that I watch Gameday on Safari -- and I was apparently using an older version of Firefox. After updating to version 3.6.8, ScreenToaster now works for me . . . but my personal Gmail account is all screwed up on Firefox. Double ARGH! And Screentoaster won't recognize my authentication for YouTube (though I can easily log directly onto YouTube with the same information). In any case, here's my lame video. Let me know how many times I say 'actually'.

Free online screencasting tool

paradox of choice

While the notion of RSS feeds somewhat simplifies the wealth of information, there still is a seductive plethora of possible rss feed sites from which to choose. It reminds me of the work of Swathmore social psychologist Barry Schwartz, whose research has investigated the debilitating effect of too many choices. Thanks to 'Thing 8', I am attaching a TED video of Dr. Schwartz. (N.B., it's a 20-minute video.) In a related vein, I discovered a NYT article this morning about three neuroscientists studying the effect of technology on the brain and attention: Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain

Share and share-alike

I think that, essentially, Creative Commons helps to clarify the issue somewhat, though the waters are still pretty muddy -- just no completely opaque anymore. I agree with Bruce, if I understand him correctly, that not every idea or creation, like physical property, need be 'fair game'. The analogy that came to my mind is that I don't see a big problem in turning around in someone's driveway or walking on their grass. However, if I block their access or inconvenience them in the former case, or damage their grass or start digging for oil in the latter, then it's a problem. I guess, for me, it's a matter of the spirit of the law, as I interpret it. That is, to not profit from others' work in a such as way that denies them from profiting from it. Then again, it's a thin line between rational thought and rationalizing thought. I tend to rail against people who argue morality based on a 'philosophy of convenience', i.e., if it's convenient for them, then it's okay, such as downloading music. Then again, in typical hypocritical fashion, I'm sure I've been guilty of that myself, . . . though it's okay when I do it. ;-/

This isn't the Cat in the Hat's things

Wow, I wish I had LibraryThing long ago (user name: 'midrivdan'). I don't keep many books, and of the ones I do have, they are still in boxes in the attic of our new house. Consequently, my current list is biased towards Lincoln and humor. However, I look forward to adding to the list as other books occur to me. Most importantly, I'm looking forward to creating a wish list. I do have a few book wish lists on Amazon, but this looks like a much more effective way of organizing and editing the information.
I'm not sure how I'd use this in class, though I will use it to track resources for my courses and for research.

A Bob Clampett cartoo . . . oon!

Several years back, I experienced a 'forgotten memory'; Something primed me to recall a cartoon from my childhood: The Beany and Cecil Show -- the tales of a young boy, who wore a propeller beanie cap, and his 'seasick sea serpent friend as they went on adventures, typically with the amiable Captain Horatio Huffenpuff and the despicable Dishonest John. The shows were full of play-on-words and cultural references, most of which I'm sure I missed as a four-year-old. 'Kind of reminds me of contemporary animations, such as 'Shrek'. I recalled I even had a felt-covered Cecil doll, with a voicebox in it that I activated by pulling a string. During my re-discovery a few years ago, I was somewhat astounded at how I had not thought about the cartoon since my childhood. I ended up searching for it on YouTube and found the intro to the program, and thus created a YouTube account so I could save it. I even used the name of their boat, 'Leakin' Lena', as my YouTube user name. I ultimately got online and purchased a DVD set with all the old episodes and much of the history, including the fact that BandC got their start as a puppet show in 1949.

Yummy

I like the idea of Delicious, in concept. Being somewhat impulsive and scattered by 'nature', I gravitate towards trying to organize my external world. (Read: 'a bit anal-compulsive'.) Consequently, I've already bookmarked thousands of websites and organized them into folders. The use of tags would make them that much easier; however, 'transporting' all of my bookmarks to Delicious seems like a herculean task. Maybe I should have proposed that as my sabbatical project instead. ;-)
Oh, my delicious user name is d.a.lehn.

Twhat's with Twitter?

Does any Twitter page count as a 'person'? That is, I signed up to follow 'The Onion', 'Psychology Today', and 'Social Psychology', as well as health-writer 'Andrew Well, M.D.'.
My twitter name is 'Midrivdan'.
Since I just signed up, I'll try to reserve judgment for a while; however, at this point I remain un-seduced by Twitter. So far, this 'assignment' has only confirmed what a huge time-sink Twitter is. I think the technology preys (albeit unintentionally) on the easily distracted, ADHD types such as myself. There's just TOO many choices and options for what appears to be a lot of disjointed, irrelevant information. It reminds me a lot of the listservs for which I signed up years ago. Everyday, I still get numerous messages from each of a half dozen listservs. It is so daunting that I pretty much hit 'select all' and 'delete' when a clump of message appear in my In-Box. I do briefly scan the subject titles and occasionally open one that appears potentially interesting (the majority of time it turns out not to be), but mostly I treat it all as garbage. Gosh, I'm sounding like such a curmudgeon. Maybe I should see if there is a curmudgeon twitter page and follow it. :-/

picture this

I have used Flickr® a little bit already. I actually found it very useful when I created my GooglMail signature. I just uploaded an image of the Coe logo to it and then created a link to it in my signature. However, I don't have many personal photos, especially of me, as I'm usually the one who takes the photos. And I don't like to post photos of other people out of respect for their own privacy.

Comments

It probably serves me right for taking such a long (unintentional) hiatus from 'things', but this was very frustrating. I tried to comment to a few people's blogs, but the comments do not show up -- even after a week. Argh!

wiki (3)

Dan: Naturally, I lift all of my lectures from Wikipedia. Despite that, I've never contributed to one or used them in my classes. I do use the wiki function in Moodle to keep 'hidden' notes for me in most of my classes. Like Bruce, I've used Moodle for group discussions, but I've yet to venture out from there. I'm not sure how I'd want or need to use wikis in my classes at this point. I want to be open to using it, but I also want to mindful of not letting the technology drive the pedagogy.

Cloud Computing

While I've been aware of GoogleDocs, I realize that I've missed the opportunity to use them more. For instance, my department went back-and-forth and back-and-forth about an APC proposal earlier this year. It would have been sooo much easier with GoogleDocs. And I often share documents with research students and work-study students using a shared folder on the I-drive. But that seems so much more cumbersome to go through multiple layers of the network to get to the folder -- not to mention the added headache of signing onto the network if I'm off-campus. However, as I set up a trial shared document to for my 13 Things exercise, I did not want to annoy people with getting an invite from me, yet I could not figure out how to add their names to the share list with out an invitation being issue.

what? 2.0

I viewed all the videos that I saw on the '13 Things' web site, but it's still not clear to me what 'web 2.0' is. Thus, I cannot say what interests me about web 2.0, since I still don't know what it is. Maybe that will be become more apparent as I progress through the next twelve 'things'.

[Earlier this month, I was back in Hanover, New Hampshire, where I did my graduate work. Theodor Geisel (a.k.a., Dr. Seuss) was an undergrad there, so Seuss themes regularly pop up. As a matter of fact, when I was in grad school, there was a movement to change the mascot from the vague 'Big Green' to the ecologically-oriented Seuss character, 'Lorax'. Unfortunately , the transition never happen--probably due in part to licensing legalities. In any case, this year, 'Thing One' and 'Thing Two' ('Cat In the Hat' characters about whom I had forgotten) t-shirts were seemingly all the rage. Perhaps we could create 'Thing Thirteen' characters and t-shirts to commemorate the '13 Things @ Coe College' summer?]

First Post

Interestingly, for someone who talks a lot, I'm stymied when it comes to writing. Thus, I have no idea what to discuss for this first blog. I guess I'll just start with a question: At the bottom of this box in which I'm entering text, there is a field for 'Labels for this post'. What's the difference between that and the title (which is entered in a field above this text box)?