Digging Out a Car in Montana

• When possible, wait for a sunny day. No sense digging out a car on a miserable day when you don't really want to drive. Take the bus.
• Go at it easy, especially early in the season. You may be using muscles that don't get out much, so be gentle with them. If you have a heart attack, the fact that your car is cleared off won't help that much.
• Don't damage that paint. Swing your pick-ax parallel to the surfaces of the vehicle, not perpendicular. When you are within two feet, switch to a shovel. Within three inches, use plastic tools to break up the snowpack and a broom for bulk removal. Use a brush and scraper combination tool when you are down to the last inch of snow and ice.
• Go inside and warm up from time to time. Especially when you can't feel your fingers and toes anymore. Hot chocolate is good, but no peppermint schnapps if you are going to drive today.
• Let nature work for you. If you are not in a hurry, expose the windows, then go inside and write a blog entry while the sun melts things for you. (see photo)
• If you enjoy life, remove snow from the hood, roof, bumpers and tailpipe, for various safety reasons. Remember the time you saw someone driving with just a patch in front of the driver's eyes cleared? There is a reason you don't see that every day.
• Don't forget to clear a path between your car and the main road. No point doing all that work just to get stuck right away.

AECT Grand Opening in Second Life

The new AECT virtual world headquarters was opened in Second Life in conjunction with the 2009 conference in Louisville. I was not able to attend, but I was able to participate. And I did the video which is posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-kn6Vihz4

MTALN has come and gone

The Montana Thai Active Learning Network 2009 group has come and gone. They are in Thailand now working on their action research projects. One of this year's highlights; I was flipping channels in the evening and there were our visitors being interviewed in the state capitol by some legislators. And this year, I got to go trick or treating with the Thai folks on Halloween, which really was a treat. More details at http://mtaln.blogspot.com/.

ISTE in Second Life

Always willing to try something new in the field, I agreed to run security for a virtual world extension of a professional conference. The peaceful setting produced little in the way of incidents, and I spent three days assisting a great bunch of volunteers. Full details and photos in both real and virtual settings can be found here on flickr.

Windows Vista on our Macs

I spent Easter in the lab putting Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 on one of the Macs using Apple Boot Camp. Plan is to do all of them. Everything worked except that every time I shut Vista down it goes to a blue screen and a memory dump. Then when I log in, it tells me it crashed last time and would I like Vista to look for a solution. I say yes, and the message goes away. Period.

Two or Three Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people in this world, people trying to make a living off the Internet, and people trying to get everything for free on the Internet. Often people are in one category during the day and switch to the other after work.

Well, there is a third kind of person, the person who makes things available for free on the Internet. Boy, do we very love/hate those folks.

Apture

Bumped into a Greek fellow in Second Life today, Nikos Elcano. He is interested in use of interlinking Internet media in health education, viewing the entire Web as one big Wiki. He introduced me to Apture, the service that makes all these little multimedia pop-up links work. Soon, all the world will be a mindmap.

EDSD 453 at MSU visits Second Life

A methods of teaching art class at Montana State University got a short trip into Second Life to explore the possibilities of art instruction in a 3D virtual learning environment. Students were sent to jacksonpollock.org and instructed to spend one minute creating a work that was uniquely their own using that tool which imitates another artist's technique. They cropped with Jing and uploaded into Second Life, where a group evaulation was held in text chat before we all took a tour of some of that virtual world's many art galleries. The gallery they created can be seen in a Flickr photoset.

I have been virtually blogged

Pluton Karas, a self-described sub-atomic particle, has included a photo of my Second Life avatar, Bill Friis, in his blog account of StormEye, a new work of art hanging 500 meters above the NMC Aho museum. If you have access to this virtual world, it is a site worth seeing which Pluton will tell you more about.

ILEP fellows will be blogging

At this very moment I am showing the ILEP fellows how to make a blog post. We will make a page in our Google Group which connects to everyones blog.


They are a good looking group, yes?

International Leadership in Education Program

Sixteen International Leadership in Education Program (ILEP) fellows will be joining us here in the Department of Education at MSU this semester. ILEP brings outstanding secondary teachers from around the world to the United States to further develop expertise in their subject areas, enhance their teaching skills, and increase their knowledge about the United States. ILEP is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State and is run through the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX).