I’m looking forward to seeing this. It’s a documentary about the lives of high school students–two in Indiana, two in India, and two in Shanghai. The title comes from the amount of time students have n the four years of high school.
Call me a big fan of Merlin Mann, 43 Folders, and Getting Things Done. I’m learning ways to deal effectively with information overload, including changing my email habits.
Video: Merlin’s New Time & Attention Talk | 43 Folders
Technorati Tags: productivity, GTD
So the authoring tool Director has in effect risen from the dead. And jumped from version 8.5 to version 11, after 3 years of no public development.
I’m a former Director user, and it was a pretty good tool for developing interactive CD-ROMs, before this fancy WWW thing became really popular. The rise of Flash also seemed to doom Director to obscurity. But no, here is Director, back with new features. But it may be too late, as Flash has become entrenched. Director needs the Shockwave player to play content in one’s browser. Shockwave used to be installed on a large percentage of browsers, but not so much these days.
I’m going to give the new Director a spin. I’m wondering if I could use it for an authoring course I teach. We formerly used Authorware, and have moved to Dreamweaver and Flash. The latter are fine tools for creating web content, but it would be a stretch to classify these general-use tools as e-learning authoring tools. Like hammering nails with a brick. One can do it, but it’s messy.
Macworld | Adobe introduces Director 11:
Today at the University of Memphis Advanced Learning Center, Brian Janz (of Management Information Systems) and I gave a talk (actually facilitated a discussion) about Web 2.0 (a somewhat nebulous concept) and how we use these related tools and processes in our instruction and professional activities. We had about 25 attendees and they were very interested, asked lots of good questions, and gave us some issues to consider.
We recorded the session (MP3, 47MB). There was one microphone, near Brian and me, so the comments of the participants may be difficult to hear. The total recording is about an hour and twenty minutes.
I put together a list of things to talk about which is also a primer on Web 2.0 in education. It’s limited, but its a start. We discussed some of these resources in the session, and some we didn’t get to. Feel free to add items or supporting text and links or metadata or whatever you like.
I’m sure my comments were influenced by people like Brian Lamb, David Wiley, Alan Levine, and others–all of whom occupy some sort of “mental mashup” in my mind as a think about where online learning environments are headed.
It was good to make some connections with some faculty here who are also interested in new media, open educational resources, the read/write web, etc.. Thanks to Joanne Gikas and Sandy Schaeffer of the ALC for sponsoring this meeting, and thanks to all the participants who made this a really rich discussion. I’d like to do this about once a week, because there’s so much to learn and discuss about emerging technologies and how they can augment teaching and learning.
LSU players use video games to prepare
By RALPH D. RUSSO, AP College Football Writer Sun Jan 6, 2:59 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS - When practice is over and film study is done, LSU quarterbacks, as most college kids do, play video games. The difference is Matt Flynn and Ryan Perrilloux are usually still working on the game plan for the BCS national championship game against Ohio State when they fire up the Xbox these days.
Technorati Tags: games, simulation, software
via Campus Technology:
Louisiana State Moves to Moodle
It’s interesting to see a large state university move to an open source and free (at least in the sense of purchase price) course management system. I wonder if LSU will have a service contract with some entity, or will do all their own service, customization, and integration.
The AECT annual convention has come and gone, and it’s a bit of a blur. I’m in the second year of a three year term on the Board of Directors. This means an all day meeting before the convention, and a half-day meeting afterward. Lots of volunteered time by about 15 board members. Ward Cates is the outgoing President, and now Pat Miller is the incoming President and Mary Herring is the President-Elect.
I was asked by the nominating committee to run for “President-Elect Designee”, and I agreed. So, Mike Spector of Florida State and I will be on the ballot for this position in the January election. We both gave a brief speech during the membership meeting at the convention. I’ll write more about that later.
Stephen Downes was one of the keynote speakers, and he did something unusual during his initial talk–he put up a live chat screen the audience could see for a back-channel conversation during his talk. It ended up distracting both him and the audience, as a few people (or possibly one fast typist) posted some snarky comments.
Overall the convention seemed to go well. Planning the conference is a complex, distributed, time-sensitive task, and it is done mostly by volunteers. One issue was we had some inaccuracies in the print program, based on some late changes and miscommunication. So, we need to figure out how to reduce the number of versions of the planning documents and schedules so that the planners are all on the same page, quite literally. One quick fix is to use an online spreadsheet (such as a Google doc) as opposed to sending around versions of a document.
I hear that the conference was in Anaheim. From my point of view, it was in a series of hotel conference rooms. (That means I didn’t get out much).
Today I gave a keynote presentation to the Management Division of AECT. We discussed free and open source social software tools and processes. Here’s what we talked about.
Technorati Tags: AECT, free, open source, aect2007, wiki
John Curry of Oklahoma State U. and Anne Leftwich of Indiana U. will be coordinating the recording and podcasting of audio from the AECT 2007 convention in a couple of weeks in Anaheim. If you’d like to help out in this effort I’m sure they would welcome you. Podcasts will end up here.
john.curry@okstate.edu
left@indiana.edu
So many people have asked me about this, I decided to write about it.
You may find yourself in the position of planning a meeting with many people with busy schedules. The big obstacle is of course how to get everyone together at the same place and time. You could email everyone and say “what time is good for you?”. Then each person replies (often to all) with all the possible times they could meet. Listing all the times one is available takes time, and is inconvenient for the attender.
Then you, the planner, must wade through the available times for each person, looking for a common open spot. If you find one, you then email everyone again. If the time still works, everyone emails you back (often replying to all) that yes, they will attend. Surely there’s a better way. Oh yes, dear reader, there is. MeetingWizard is a free service that handles this onerous task with flair. Here are the steps for you as the meeting planner.
The MeetingWizard software then sends an email to each attendee with a web link, and a message from you about the meeting details. Attendees click the link and view a chart of possible meeting times. They check their own schedules, then click the times on the chart they are available. MeetingWizard aggregates all this information, and then notifies you when everyone has responded. You then click the link provided by MeetingWizard and confirm the meeting time. MeetingWizard emails the attendees a confirmation message. A nice feature is you the planner can see at any time who has and has not indicated availability, and easily send a reminder message.
It takes longer to explain it than to do it. We’ve used MeetingWizard successfully in our department several times, and I’m not just a fan, I’m a customer. (Can I be considered a customer if it is free)?
Technorati Tags: free, productivity
