cmduke
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Posts by cmduke
Rate of Adoption Precludes "Natives?"
Jan 21st
A colleague is attending Educause Learning Initiative 2009 Annual Conference and is live blogging Michael Wesch’s keynote address. One of Wesch’s comments struck a nerve with a line of thought I’d heard recently elsewhere.
There are really no natives to the net. So many of the technologies are less than 4 years old. We are all in the same boat, faculty and students.
None of our current K-20 students have grown up with YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or iPods or RSS Aggregators or Virtual Environments etc. Many of the potentially, educationally disruptive technologies have surfaced with “Web 2.0″ in the last 3-5 years. More >
AJ’s SLER 2009 Kickoff Event
Jan 6th
I’ll come back and post notes, hopefully. AJ Kelton, Montclair State University, hosts a weekly Second Life Education Roundtable (SLER) discussion; this week, he’s arranged an impressive panel discussion described below. More >
SCORM Help Needed v1.0
Dec 18th
If you’re not familiar with SCORM in some depth, this post may well be gibberish to you. That’s okay; I’m not entirely certain that it’s not written in gibberish (grin). If you aren’t familiar with SCORM, I thought this SCORM overview at Toolbook.com was somewhat useful, and I’m digging through a number of other resources that appear useful, at first glance at least:
- ADLNet.gov’s explanation of SCORM (ADLNET is the home of SCORM),
- Aaron Silvers blog SCORM category, and
- Ostyn Consulting’s Understanding SCORM page.
- Also, I’ve bookmarked a number of applications and resources relevant to SCORM.
I’m working with SCORM in some depth for the first time; “in some depth” is the key phrase in that statement. More >
Google Friend Connect @ Edtechatouille
Dec 5th
Google Friend Connect entered open beta today. I’ve been waiting and watching for this tool to become more generally available. As of this posting (12/4/08), Google Friend Connect is installed in this space to experiment with the features etc. The members gadget is at the top of the right sidebar, if you’d like to try it out. I may be adding other available gadgets as well. When the closed beta for Friend Connect was originally announced, More >
Reply to: Definition of Emerging Technologies
Nov 29th
Dragging through RSS feeds, noticed a recent post by Darren Draper at Drape’s Takes highlighting George Siemens tweeted question, “Anyone want to share their working definition of emerging technologies for teaching/learning?” Rather than starting from scratch, I’ll start with Darren’s initial stab (as he calls it) at a definition,
Emerging technologies for teaching and learning consist of all hardware, software, concepts, and ideas that can be employed to advance social, connective, and educational processes.
Another Thought on Mistakes as Portals
Nov 28th
Randy Nelson’s presentation Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace provoked and helped coalesce a range of recent thoughts and ideas. In addition to ideas on collaboration described in a previous post, Nelson also commented on mistakes which immediately took me back to a post by Gardner Campbell almost a year ago, Mistakes as Portals. In relation to Pixar’s search for innovative potential employees, Nelson commented:
The core skill of innovators is error-recovery not failure avoidance.
Explaining Collaboration to Learners
Nov 26th
I took 10 minutes to watch at Edutopia.org Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace – a presentation by Randy Nelson, Pixar University, at the Apple Education Leadership Summit this past April (embedded below). I know there’s a cohesive message in this presentation, but I didn’t quite catch it because the presentation was densely packed with a number of thoughts or ideas that hit upon recent or important topics for me. I’m interested in hearing what you may take from the video. I focused on several key thoughts that ultimately may help explain to learners several things they can do to help facilitate a collaborative effort rather than a cooperative one.
My Browsing Experience
Nov 25th
In my “Introduction to Computers” class this semester, I’ve described the “browser experience” more than a few times. My own personal, customized browser experience has become a critical point of efficiency when it comes to my use of the web for learning, researching, and playing. When I happen to use a machine other than my laptop and don’t have my personal browser configuration available, I feel like a fish out of water; I’m much much slower, and browsing becomes a hassle more than anything else. To what extent is your browser customized for your use? How different is browsing for you when not using your personal browser configuration? Does your personal browser configuration make your learning easier or more efficient? Out of curiosity, the add-ons I use in Firefox 3 are: More >
Google Shutting Down Lively
Nov 23rd
I’ve been absent in this space for several months; I’ve spent any available blogging time in my general educational technology blog: Edtechatouille. However, a few developments within my institution will likely bring me back to this space on a regular basis in the coming months – more on that later.
I did see an interesting announcement in the last several days I thought worth mentioning here. Google will be shutting Lively down at the end of the year: More >
Great Image Library for Educators? Or Not?
Nov 19th
I noticed via a post at Lifehacker today that Google is hosting the entire LIFE magazine photography archive. As Google’s announcement indicates, this doesn’t include just published images; it includes any and all images which can be digitized; currently, they have about 20% of the 10 million image library scanned and online:
Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.
Whether browsing from the LIFE Photo Archive Hosted by Google start page or doing a search from Google by adding “source:LIFE” to the search, it’s an amazing resource and collection with only 20% currently available. I’m not sure where else we might find images like this one. What baffles me about the announcement and the resource home page is that there’s absolutely zero mention of copyright or license or permissions to use the content. Given that there’s nothing posted, the assumption is that the entire library is (C) All Rights Reserved, and of course, that doesn’t mean that the content can’t be used in the classroom. But, I’m surprised that there’s not at least some explicit indication of the license of the images. And, it’s discouraging that such a collectoin isn’t being made available via a more lenient and usable Creative Commons license: attribution-noncommercial-noderivative, perhaps? Maybe that’s an educator’s perspective, and just maybe, I’m asking and expecting too much. Oh well.

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