A Techy Feely Approach to Life » ruminations

Movin’ on up

ajwms — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:42:54 +0000

I took the plunge and bought my own domain name. You can find the continuation of this blog now at http://techy-feely.net

Thanks for following the yellow link road.

Connectiveness – more and more and easier and easier

ajwms — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:29:11 +0000

While I have argued before with folks about how I don’t want all of my life to be merged (or converged or mind-melded) into one device (read cellphone), it does appear that this is the case for all of the new, emerging apps and services that are in the Web 2.0 camp.

Just today, I have learned that the Wikispaces site now allows for WAY EASY integration of media from such sources as YouTube, Odeo and MySpace. I was so happy when I figured out how to upload and link to an mp3 in the wiki and now, I can add a video greeting from Hellodeo or embed other media with a simple copy-paste-done. Cool.

And, I found Dabble, which appears to be a way to “collect” video from around the web (Google Video, YouTube, Ourmedia, Internet Archive, etc) and connect with folks who have the same interests. Hmmm…more to consider.

Of course there is always SuprGlu for keeping my little Flickr, Blogger, del.icio.us, lastFM self together in one place.

Why do I like convergence on the web but not on my belt?

Back from the WebCT (RIP) Conference

ajwms — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:05:27 +0000

Well, Chicago was a fantastic city. I was quite taken with how easy it was to get around. How much FREE stuff there was to do. Oh yeah, and the conference! Actually, I have always been one of those folks who actually attend the conference and this time was no different. This year, the conference seemed more somber..and the fact that the name “WebCT” is out the door was not lost on me. I am a bit bummed by that fact, for some reason. Just like I was when GoLive was bought by Adobe and then Macromedia was bought by Adobe and then…well, you get the idea.
The major theme for this year, in the sessions I chose, was Web 2.0. Wikis, wikis, wikis. RSS, podcasting – but I quibble with many folks’ definitions, and so forth. I’m curious to watch and see how this whole 2.0 thing will play out with educational technology in general and online learning, more specifically. The customization, the need for media experiences, the end user as the major player of the content and its organization all go really against the traditional thoughts and schemes of academia so the growing and changing might include some pains.

I need to sift and sort and think about some of the other things I learned this past week. Stay tuned!

Hello World – New Mac

ajwms — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:43:59 +0000

I was pleasantly surprised on Friday when my new office Mac arrived ahead of schedule. I promptly put the new feature Apple added to these machines. It is designed to make the task of importing all of your info/apps/data from another Mac quick and painless. See the smiles:

So, a few questions, a firewire cable and 60 minutes later, I have imported about 30 GB of stuff and my new computer looks just like my old one with apps in place, my dog in the desktop and favorites, Yadal, etc all running pretty well.

Its been a few days and I have had to reinstall RealPlayer 10, Virex didn’t make it over but I haven’t messed with that. iMovie HD that came with the new machine was fighting with iMove 2 from my iMac so I had to take care of that. GarageBand screams now..which is fun as we get into podcasting here.

I get so giddy when I get a new computer…I’m such a geek! Here’s the pic…

Starting a New Term

ajwms — Wed, 31 May 2006 12:58:48 +0000

We started Summer 2006 classes yesterday. It was a hectic day..one with two message on voice mail when I hung up the phone with someone else. But, I also got to solve a lot of little problems for folks and they were always appreciative and I was glad to be able to help.

I love looking out during our WebCT orientation and see folks smiling and nodding as they actually understand what I am saying. A lot of folks who come to the orientations care about their coursework (of course, they do – they drove in to the orientation session) and they want to succeed and we want them to do so as well. It’s a good feeling and I always look forward to it…even though I am totally pooped when the day is done!

@@THINGS TO CHECK OUT

ajwms — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:28:56 +0000

Okay..I was overwhelmed the other day but then, when I take a minute to look at all the cool things I find and get to use, it is exciting. I keep a small text file on my hard drive called “@@THINGS TO LOOK AT”. It sits at the top of my directory and whne I have a few minutes, I look at the file and visit the site or check out the tool/technology to learn more.

From that list, there are several tools/sites that I now use on a daily basis that, less than a year ago, I didn’t even know existed. Some were around just waiting for me to find them. Some got easier to use. Some just popped up (hello, world).

Now, I’m figured out how to use them (mostly). Time to figure out how to use them well with others!

Things like

Flickr
Writeboard/Writely (part of Google now, hmmm)
Frappr
del.icio.us
Blogbridge
Wordpress/Movable Type and OF COURSE – edublogs.org
Wikispaces
Portals (we are implementing Luminis here)
Xinhahere (cool little WYSIWYG HTML editor plugin for Firefox)

Still on the list:

Drupal
Blosxom
Pachyderm
Google Notebook
360 Yahoo

What’s in your list?