Bill Freese

Google Docs Keyboard Shortcut Problem Workaround

2011-12-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

Google Documents sometimes ignores keyboard shortcuts. This happens when the computer shifts its attention to another program. For example, copy a block of text from a Google Doc, switch to another program and paste. Or hit the key command to have the text block read aloud. On returning to the Google Doc and selecting another block of text, the keyboard shortcuts may not work. In the menu bar, the copy command is disabled, as if no text was selected. Sometimes the menu command or even the keyboard shortcut works, but not consistently.

The workaround is to click in the Google Document window, type a single letter and then backspace over it. This gets Google Docs attention, and menus and shortcuts work as usual.

Workaround for Hotmail Keyboard Shortcut Problems

2011-12-23T09:32:00.000-08:00

When I try to copy and paste something out of a Hotmail document, I get an error message that says "Hotmail was not able to complete this request. Microsoft may contact you about any issue you report." Same thing happens when I select a block of text and hit the key command to get my computer to read that passage aloud. Apparently Hotmail is unwilling to accept key commands from my computer while I am reading a message.

There are two workarounds. The copy and start speaking commands in the menu bar still work, so one can use those in place of the key commands. Alternately, one can hit the reply button. This opens a window including the entire original message quoted. Since this window expects you to be typing, it allows key commands.

Bin Laden, a bus and the Milky Way

2011-05-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently there was something in the news about some guy getting killed in Pakistan. But the big news today is that a car hit the Streamline bus I was riding in from Belgrade.

Net results: Obama poll numbers have just got to go up. John Negroponte, G. W. Bush's UN ambassador, answered a question on NPR which included mention of the fact that some previous administrations had downplayed the importance of getting Bin Laden. Which previous administrations those might have been was not mentioned. Negroponte assured us that Bush never lost interest in getting Bin Laden for a single second. There was damage to a bus wheel and damage to the already damaged car which looked like it had hit some other bus before it hit our bus. I got to spend half an hour sitting in a sunny bus reading a fascinating article in Scientific American while the police did whatever it was they were doing.

What we know: Bin Laden and his people were hiding in a huge house very near a Pakistani military facility and Pakistan says they did not know it. We flew a helicopter strike force into that area meeting no resistance from Pakistan, and we say we did not tell them we were coming. The kid who hit the bus says he ran the red light and hit the bright yellow bus which was clearly illuminated by the sunlight coming from behind him because he was picking up something he had dropped on the floor. Everybody who hears this assumes that what the kid had dropped was his telephone. And, most importantly, matter constantly flows into and out of galaxies to an extent not previously imagined. We already knew that the heavier atoms in our bodies, everything above lithium, were formed by fusion reactions inside stars. Now we know that many of those atoms that make us up were probably formed in stars in galaxies outside our Milky Way. Bits of Osama Bin Laden now resting on the floor of the ocean came a very long way to get there, and will someday return to intergalactic space.

Cinnamon Meringue Tort

2010-03-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

This has been served at our Christmas Eve party for many years, and is my personal favorite. My mother used to make it, but my sister has taken over that duty and gave me the recipe printed below.

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Meringue: Cover a cookie sheet with a piece of heavy paper and draw a circle 8 inches in diameter. Beat two egg whites with a 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. vinegar until soft peaks form. Blend 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon together. Gradually add to white until very stiff peaks form and the sugar is dissolved.

Spread meringue within circle on paper. With the back of a spoon, build a rim about 2 inches high, leaving a 1/2 inch thick bottom. Bake in preheated 275°F oven for 1 hour. Turn off heat and let shell cool 2 hours or longer. Do NOT open oven until total time is up. Shell should be cool before filling.

I usually make the shell the night before and let it stand overnight in the oven.

Filling: Melt 6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate bits in a double boiler. Cool slightly, then spread 2 tbs. over the bottom of the shell.

Blend two beaten egg yolks and 1/4 cup water together. Add to remaining chocolate. Chill until thick, around 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Whip 1 cup heavy cream gradually adding 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, beating until cream is stiff. Spread half of whipped cream mixture over chocolate in shell. Fold remaining whipped cream into the chilled chocolate mixture and spread on the whipped cream in the shell.

Chill several hours or overnight. Garnish with whipped cream, chocolate curls or pecans.

This can be a tricky recipe, depending on the weather and humidity. Sometimes, it works perfectly. Sometimes, not so much. Make sure the egg white and whipped cream are beaten to stiff peaks. I usually double the cinnamon. The egg yolks are NOT cooked so this is a forbidden recipe by modern standards. Mom liked it because the yolks and white were even. Most meringue recipes, you end up with something left over.

Hotel to Airport on Marta

2010-02-22T20:02:00.000-08:00

From hotels around the Peachtree Center Mall, like the Atlanta Hilton, Atlanta Marriott Marquis or Hyatt Regency Atlanta, the Marta Station in the mall is a dandy way to get to the airport. Going back Sunday I found the Mall locked, so had to go around the outside of the building, but there is an exterior entrance to Marta there. The machines inside will be happy to take three one dollar bills and convert them to a Breeze ticket and fifty cents change. The concierge at the Hilton warned me not to use a large bill to pay, as the machine gives change in heavy coins. It was not obvious how to buy the $2.50 one way trip at first, but after pushing the first button, the one-way ticket option appeared. Once you have the ticket, you tap it on the pad at the gate, then step forward and through. Keep the ticket, as you use it to get out of the gate at the other end.

Both the red and yellow lines go to the airport. They also go north away from the airport, so make sure you get the train on the correct side of the platform. A sign on that side tells you how long it will be before the next train to the airport, and it was accurate. You can't miss the airport as it is the last stop. I finished checking out at the Hilton at 8 a.m., took the Marta, and was through airport security at Hartsfield Jackson airport by 9:15. Of course, your experience may vary.

If you are used to bus or subway travel, you will love it. Like any public transportation, there will be a good diversity of folks on board. The Marta site suggested walking purposefully as a safety measure. I am a generally nervous traveler, and felt comfortable the whole way. If strangers worry you, of if you have baggage of checkable proportions, you will want to spend the extra loot for the Airport Shuttle. But for a guy with a laptop and a duffle, Marta was a fine way to go. Thanks, Atlanta.

Acronyms

2010-02-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

There is a rule in journalism that says the first time you use an uncommon acronym in a document, you must spell it out in full. After that, you get to use the acronym. This should not be a rule of journalism. It should be a federal law.

Digging Out a Car in Montana

2009-11-15T12:04:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

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

2009-07-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-06T11:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-08T19:49:00.001-07:00

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

2009-02-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-15T11:57:00.000-08:00

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).

AECT 2008 in Blog Order

2008-11-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

Below, one man's view of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology convention at Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 2008. In typical blog fashion, order is reverse chronological. Dates are a bit off because the hotel charged for in room Internet, and I was not going to shell out $55 for five days during which I would only be on line for moments. I scrounged wireless when I could, and posted the last few items the first day back at work. Next year's convention will be at the Galt House in Louisville where they promise us in room Internet at no extra charge. Really, these days, that is more important than comfortable beds.

AECT 2008 - Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow We Go Home

2008-11-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Joint University Reception (great place to pick up ball point pens) then University of Central Florida Reception (with Tom Atkinson on the horns again) then much conversation and sipping time in the president's suite, then the hotel lobby bar, then the Kook sports bar where some of us tested learning theory while playing Guitar Hero. You can really feel those mirror neurons at work. Now, must sleep.

AECT 2008 - Allison Rossett Keynote

2008-11-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

You are either doing distance education or retiring, so if you plan to stay you might as well get ready to do it right. Allison was surprised to see that so many of us had postponed the last night partying to attend her keynote. We were glad we did. Her lively and humorous presentation put us in the mood to party.

AECT 2008 - Learning Outcomes and Instructional Strategies in Second LIfe

2008-11-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

Leaunda Hemphill, Western Illinois University, reporting on her work in Second Life in a joint project between her class in the US and students in China, with emphasis on learning by interacting with the differently abled community in Second Life. Leaunda is DocL Brandenburg in SL. DocL attended a presentation by Bill Friis in SL a few months ago. One of those "even though we have never met, we have met before" moments.

AECT 2008 - Is There Such a Thing as "Too Safe?"

2008-11-10T11:50:00.002-08:00

LeAnne Robinson, Western Washington University, and Abbie Brown, East Carolina University, presented information from their forthcoming book, coauthored with Tim Green of CSU-Fullerton. Theme is that by going overboard in keeping kids safe from new digital technologies, we damage their learning experience. Reason must prevail.

AECT 2008 - Second Life and Concerns Based Assessment

2008-11-10T11:50:00.001-08:00

Arrived late for Aline Click and Sharon Smaldino's presentation, but caught all of Kathryn Ley, University of Houston Clear Lake. General conclusion, it takes a team do design of instruction in Second Life. Secondary conclusion, Kathryn gives a lively presentation.

AECT 2008 - Second Life Task Force

2008-11-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

The SL task force met in incoming AECT President Marry Herring's suite for lunch and much discussion about how to advance the instructional use of virtual worlds, and how to represent AECT in them, with emphasis on the currently hot version, Second Life. Much progress made, and the discussion will continue.

AECT 2008 - "As I Lay Dying" in Second Life

2008-11-10T11:34:00.001-08:00

Carrie Coker-Bishop on Real Life, and Michele Estes in Second Life, aided by Daisyane Barreto, University of Georgia, reported their experience as instructional designers for a project based around the Faulkner story. A very interesting project and a good example. Main points, in SL keep the client involved in the design process and everything takes longer than you think it will. Just like in real life.

AECT 2008 - Embedded Conceptual Knowledge

2008-11-10T11:33:00.001-08:00

Iskandaria Masduki and Bi-Jen Hsich, Florida State University, reported a study on the advantages of including information explaining why the student does things in a tutorial that tells the student what to do. ANOVA analysis says the slight positive result is not significant, but the sample was very small. More study needed.

AECT 2008 - Roundtable- A Year of My Second Life

2008-11-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

Abbie Brown, East Carolina University, lead us in a discussion centered around his experience using Second Life to improve contact with his distance education students. I really must set up an SL office and establish regular office hours.

AECT 2008 - School Media Technology and Teacher Education Divisions Breakfast

2008-11-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

Due to MSU's policy of not letting us charge anything to the University that might involve food, since food is being paid for through the per diem allowance, I was not allowed to pre-register for this breakfast. But AECT was going to find a way to get me in. Mary Herring came to my rescue with a ticket because she was unable to attend. Leigh Zeitz (Leigh Writer in Second Life) also arrived without a ticket. I split mine with him and we each paid half price for a fine meal on the lovely veranda of the Outback Restaurant. Much making of contact was made during the breakfast and many business cards were traded. And the scrambled eggs were fabulous.

AECT 2008 - ect Foundation Reception and after

2008-11-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

Tom Atkinson played horn for the event. And quite well. He is a man of many talents. Food included breaded sesame chicken, stuffed cherry tomatoes, a very nice selection of olives and cheeses. Cash bar. We were told later that the set-up for that one hour event, room, staff and snacks, cost AECT $5000.

At the reception I ran into Barbara Rosenfeld who I had met (and had ice cream with) at AECT last year. This year she came with Sharon Anne. They are New Yorkers, and were shocked at the high prices here. So you can imagine how it is for a Montana boy. I joined them for a shopping trip to the Downtown Disney Marketplace. We walked a friend of Barbara's to his meeting at an Irish pub there, and then shopped our way back, including time in the Disney store and the toy store, which is called "Once Upon a Toy". We also stopped at Ghirardelli's for ice cream, so having ice cream with Barbara is now an annual thing for me.

We went back to the hotel, and sat in the bar for a bit. We were joined by many interesting AECT folks. One of those parties that gets larger and larger. Kay Persichitte bought our drinks, bless her heart. The conversation was lively. I snuck away at about 11, leaving others still chatting. Making contacts with people is one of the best things you can do at these conventions. If I can only remember peoples names, I might get good at it.

AECT 2008 - Membership Meeting

2008-11-06T14:44:00.000-08:00

Membership meeting. Things are looking good for AECT. Books are balanced and money is being saved. Membership is up. Presidential candidates both have a sense of humor. Awards and honors and such.

Next year the Galt House in Louisville with (drum roll) in room Internet access included at no extra charge! The year after, Anaheim.

AECT 2008 - Internet Safety in a Virtual World

2008-11-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

The presenter was Bill Freese from Montana State University. Hey, that's me. Small crowd (Who voluntarily goes to the seat belt lecture?) but we had fun. The videos all played flawlessly. The crowd was attentive. Mary Herring talked me into doing this. I really must thank her. And thanks to Robert Carson and the department for sending me to this conference.

AECT 2008 - Notes from a day of Second Life presentations

2008-11-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

This is pretty much notes to myself on a full day of Second Life sessions. I may need to edit these someday, Yeah, sure I will.

Alice Bedard-Voorhees (MustangQuimby Messmer) and Lisa Dawley (Mali Young)

Badrul Kahn's E-Learning Model

LIsa gives prereqs of Second Life skills. People arrive without them. So, bootcamp before the class.

Some technical problems with the audio on the panel at 10:30 prevented in world sound as we fell back on telephone conference to avoid monster feedback loops. Good thing Tom decided to go with phone, eh?

Longg also feels we should feel free to fail while learning.

Wikinomics - Book on mass collaborative world. We mod each other's activities.

Pathfinder Linden: avatar island http://secondlife.cyberextruder.com/portal1.aspx on topic of avatars looking like themselves.

Steven Hornik (SL Robins Hermano) accounting teacher, presenting. Irene, the instructional developer could not come. Really Engaging (that is, non-boring) Accounting. University of Central Florida Kenneth Dixon School of Accounting.

Student Epistemological Beliefs - Students don't arrive thinking of themselves as constructivist learners. They expect lectures and tests. In ten years, it will be different. You won't have to spend a lot of time on SL training.

He has a SL only TA. He has 700 - 900 students. Very large class limits ability to do much in SL. No way to bring the whole class in. Things are done asynchronously. With smaller classes, could use it synchronously.

He gets to watch his students in SL while they are doing their homework. Powerful tool. Steven has SL e-mal data to students. Students work in a notecard and results are returned in a notecard.

Steven has been using SL hard this quarter, and it hasn't broken.

Ross Perkins
SOLVE in Teen SL - a pilot project
Perceived Attributes of Innovations
Relative advantage
Compatibility
Complexity
Trialibility
Observability

Innovation has to connect to standards for teachers to adopt.
Innovation has to be compatible with infrastructure.
Installation or maintenance has to be non-complex.
Must have time to experiment.
Public school admin wants locked down island, only our students.

You must create an av who will transfer to the Teen Grid with everything you want to take with you before you leave. Bring ed stuff and fun stuff, too. Kids will need it.

Steven and Ross both point out the digital native thing is a sweeping generalization. Some young folks are not digitally aware or active or happy about dealing with digital stuff.

Buy an island. Linden Lab can't figure out how to do billing. It was about $2500 per year, despite the $18,000 bill. Buying land is renting server space. Background check through Ascertain.com, unless your school has already cleared you, in which case you need to fax the school proof consisting of a letter on district letterhead from the superintendent. Takes weeks to get the island set up.

RegAPI creation. FireSabre Consulting, LLC. Accounts must be set up in advance. Regular Teen Grid accounts are locked out if you have set up your island that way. Fred Fuchs (SL Gus Pliskin, lives in Houston). He let his students pick a common last name. You can pay Linden to create a last name. You could let them all have different last names. Must have real birth dates. If kid turns 18, must have a background check. Goochland County paid 50 per 18 year old for the background check.

Letter went out to parents for approval with full details of project.

Opening or closing a sim involves LInden Lab. The adult av is always stuck on the sim.

Project was to put the kids on the island and see what they would do. Sort of like Lord of the Flies.

Kids got a plot of land and were asked to build a house. A girl asked if she could live with her boyfriend. Ross said very much no.

First experience? Ross put them into a closed box and kept them there for a lesson before letting them out. Must navigate and change appearance.

Scaffolding for SL skills? Ross let them learn natively.

Training for adults?

Worked on school machines with some glitches.

"Goochland county, where teachers blog" was school motto before blogging was common. Advanced tech school.

Hard to be participant and dispassionate observer.

Navigation hard at first. Building stayed difficult for some.

Experiment needs multiple weeks, personnel and equipment.

Original plan was to pose problems to solve, but actually had kids create and then solve problems.

Voice problems with firewall.

Good platform for teamwork and creativity.

FireSabre has open sim rentals. No close sims.

AECT 2008 - Round-up Reception

2008-11-06T13:54:00.002-08:00

Many enjoyable conversations but the highlight was that I bumped into Sandy Patton, friend and traveling companion (Ecuador and Peru this year) of my mentor, Grace France. It was Grace who originally go me into AECT. Always a little odd traveling great distances and then bumping into people I usually see in Bozeman.

AECT 2008 - Keynote - George Strawn

2008-11-06T13:54:00.001-08:00

Dr. Strawn is Chief Information Officer for the National Science Foundation, and he has been thinking about the future of education. He leaned heavily on Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Sustaining technologies make things we have better incrementally, but disruptive technologies, while not necessarily improving the existing systems as well, bring in the new systems. Incoming AECT president Mary Herring made the point to me at the SL prep session that virtual worlds may be such a disruptive technology for education. Strawn mentioned other books to read, including one of my favorites, VS Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain. Any time you would like to hear me declaim on the topic of constructivism, brain science and virtual worlds, just ask. Then try to shut me up.

Strawn mentioned a number of interesting points derived from his reading. Among them, as science learns more about learning, educational systems will be more scientifically engineered. As new technologies make it easier to publish, we may publish everything, and let the peer review take place later as needed. Teaching modules may be created by teachers, students and parents, then placed on-line in a wiki format to be adopted by teachers, schools and managers of teaching systems.

AECT 2008 - Second Life prep

2008-11-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

Luca is Seed Lane in Second Life, and after his presentation, I spent a happy afternoon working with folks setting up for tomorrow's Second Life related presentations. Tom Atkinson (SL Professor Tomsen) lives about two miles from the hotel, and is taking the lead in setting up real world connections to get us all on screen in Real Life and to put us on audio in Second Life. Cherly Comstock, (SL Ize Mesmer) is running things in-world in SL. Much technology will happen tomorrow. Hopefully, it will all work. (Tomorrow is Thursday. This is one of those items written offline and posted later.)

AECT 2008 - Ethics and AHS

2008-11-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

Luca Botturi, University of Lugano, Switzerland, presented on Ethics in Eudcational Technoloties, specifically dealing with Adaptive Hypermedia Systems, that is, systems that pay attention to what you are doing and modify how they present things too you accordingly. Like the way Amazon.com decides what books to recommend to you. Or, in Luca's case, the way three computer programs, Push, Inspire and Adlego, modify how they present information to you based on your own previous behavior or preferences. Ethical questions are raised when automated systems decide how best to teach you. A thought provoking presentation.

AECT 2008 - Games in the Classroom

2008-11-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Susan Stansberry of Oklahoma State University (a former Dillon, Montana resident) and Elizabeth Simpson from the University of Wyoming presented on using off the shelf entertainment games in the classroom and connecting them to state and national standards. We played Content Standards Bingo while watching a volunteer play Zoo Tycoon In building a zoo, we learn life sciences, math, language arts, earth science, by using the game as a jumping off point for lessons. $ 9.99 at Hastings. Full version has sea and dinosaurs. We got to see a bengal tiger eat a couple of camels, which turned out not to be a good decision on the part of the zoo manager.

Oregon Trail was mentioned as an educational game often used as reward rather than as the lesson.

Recommendation: Assign team roles. Mouse driver, note taker, researcher with scheduled circulation of positions. Similarly with game specific roles. zoo keeper, specialists in animals, habitat, economics, public relations, etc. in Zoo Tycoon.

Civilization, High School AP History class.

Lemonade Stand available online early economics.

Darfur is Dying mentioned.

Real Lives - Windows only - extremely realistic - girl not allowed to continue in school - raped - has an online demo.

Fun is essential emphasized by a participant. Much agreement here.

Some public libraries have games waiting to be played. Happy to work with you.

River City - Science - social game under development. I have heard a lot about this one and really need to see it.

Favorite game source like a favorite author - get kids into a good series. And games with similar structures cut down time wasted learning game interface.

Digital natives have to find information on their own in the game.

If you use Grand Theft Auto to discuss the cultural and social aspects, great. If you use it for another purpose, those aspects could be a problem.

Goals on the box may differ greatly from teacher and/or user goals.

Restaurant Empire - Authentic evaluation she has her Junior High students interview local restauranteurs about businesses. Actual Restaurant Association rubric used for evaluation.

Accuracy of games. Money in a game was off. Got into long classroom discussion of net vs gross.

Triangulation of information. Distrust. Compare sources. Have students check the game against other sources.

She asks the kids to find games that have educational relevance.

Brain Meld is a source of lesson plans using existing games.

Peace Maker - Very detailed game in which you are Israeli or Palestinian leader. Demo available online.

Introduce the game at parent night before the kids see it. Get the parents in first. Let them know they need to support the educational function of the game(s).

Serious Games Initiative recommended as source for health related game info.

Jing is free Windows or Macintosh video capture software connected to free screencast web service. Yow!

Joan Cook, lots here we need to look at.

AECT 2008 - After Workshop Wandering Tuesday

2008-11-05T08:40:00.001-08:00

Thinking of my nieces, I took a walk around the grounds and across the street to Downtown Disney. The hotel is called the Buena Vista Palace, and all the conference rooms have names like Knight and Squire and Hampton Court. My workshops this morning were in the Windsor room, and the Second Life presentations Thursday are in the Ireland room.

My own room really does have the best view in the hotel, on the top floor, looking out over a small lake with swans. There are shops and restaurants in the hotel. The Outback Steakhouse has three big colorful fish tanks, and then a waterfall into a pool full of very big goldfish. There are three outdoor swimming pools, tennis and beach volleyball courts and lots of nice places to walk, surrounded by tropical plants. I heard some pleasant frog calls.

Downtown Disney is a short walk from the hotel. It is a shopping area. There is a huge toy store with many interesting displays. I saw very big characters from various Disney movies, and Monopoly cards about as tall as I am, and a Tinkertoy windmill the size of a real windmill. There is a Lego store with many lego sculptures, including a tyrannosaurus (about half life size) which looks like it is made from giant Legos, but when you look at the giant Legos, they are made from jillions of regular sized Legos. (Jillions is a word that means "a very large number but I don't really know how many".)

There is a Disney Store that makes all the Disney Stores in all the shopping malls look small and dark and quiet in comparison. There are stores selling pins and crystal and clothes and pearls and lots and lots of other things. I saw a glass Cinderella's carriage that sparkles wonderfully and a surprisingly large magic castle and a very fine crystal Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore that cost too much to mention.

There are also many places to eat. There is a Rainforest Cafe, and a restaurant full of dinosaurs which was so loud you could not hear a baby scream. Down on the dock, kind of out of the way, there is a Margarita Bar where you can drink and smoke a cigar by the waterside. Not for the nieces. There is a MacDonalds, of course. The place I really want to eat is Fulton's Crab House which looks like a full size riverboat. But I noticed that local employees were eating at the Earl of Sandwich, a sure sign of good food.

Since I was alone, and eating alone in a restaurant is always kind of odd, I came home and bought a tuna sandwich in the little market in the hotel and ate it on the balcony in my room. So, I really do wish you were here. If you were, I would take you out to dinner.

AECT 2008 - Tuesday General Observations

2008-11-04T13:10:00.000-08:00

Both presenters use and recommend the same technique for generating code. Steal. Find a script (HTML, CSS, Flash Action Script) that does something much like what you want and modify it. Even if you can't read the whole mess, you may be able to figure out which bits to change to get things to work. This is a method I have used for many years, and tried to pass on to students. It may not be ideal, but we must often deal with the real.

Just like last year, after the first day of workshops I am totally satisfied that this trip was worthwhile. I have so much to bring back that I can use in the lab. The workshops may be pre-conference extras, but they are worth the extra days.

AECT 2008 - Flash Video Workshop continues

2008-11-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

Taeyeol Park, Georgetown University, is the presenter. In the second half, we embedded videos, which turned them into individual frames to which Flash animation could be added. Very flexible, but limited to 16,000 frames and we are warned that sound will go out of sync. We also imported progressive download videos with cue points which could be scripted. Event cue points are set at time of import, but Action Script cue points can be added later from the Component Inspector. Publish Settings includes many options. Include HTML and it will generate page with code to embed the video.

Adobe Captivate (PC only) can be used as an easy Flash video authoring tool. Taeyeol says he is always looking for easier ways to do it, because Flash itself gets to be a little complex for many faculty at some point. I can believe that. It looks like something I could use, but it would be hard to train some faculty in its use.

AECT 2008 - Flash Video Workshop

2008-11-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

We are using the demo of Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, a demo of CS4 not being available yet. Half way through the workshop and I can now convert videos to .fla, .flv and .swf files. Mighty easy, assuming you have the $700 Flash software. Typical well organized Adobe product. Presenter and participants speak highly of the free VLC Media Player but the free Flash Video Player seems to work fine. After importing video into Flash, the files that need to be uploaded to a website are the resulting .flv file and two .swf files, one of which is the player skin. Files created with Flash Video Encoder are one piece without the controller skin.

Florida and Floridians

2008-11-04T10:04:00.001-08:00

Just bumped into Janis Bruwelheide at registration. This exotic tropical paradise is where she grew up. I am disappointed. It is only 26 degrees warmer here than it is in Bozeman. We are promised better weather later in the week.

AECT 2008 - CSS workshop

2008-11-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

Peter Rich from Brigham Young University gave us a hands-on introduction to Cascading Style Sheets. He says he actually uses Coda on his Macintosh but went with Style Master for the workshop because everybody could download a free demo. I learned a lot which I can use with our websites and in helping other folks debug theirs. Just knowing that span is the inline version of div is going solve some problems.

Peter directed us to the CSS Zen Garden to demo how CSS can change a page look just by switching style sheets, and recommended The Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice by Robin Williams available from Amazon.

AECT 2008 - Prep and Travel to

2008-11-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

Offline blogging posted Tuesday:

Saturday downloaded and installed Adobe Flash CS3 demo software. Good for 30 days. Played with it just a touch in anticipation of Tuesday Flash workshop.

Monday
Travel day. Bozeman to Denver, nice. Fantastic view of MSU on the way out. Looked down on Reid Hall at 1:30 and thought of you all.

Denver to Orlando, traveled with the colicky baby convention, I believe. The movie was Wall-e. Audio in English unavailable due to technical error. Wall-e works pretty well with no audio.

Airport in Orlando undergoing renovation. At 9:30 p.m. contractors way outnumbered passengers.

Mears Shuttle Service from airport to hotel very efficient and friendly. HIghly recommended. Three passengers. Me, Mike also going to AECT, and a fellow going to Sloan-C conference at another hotel. Three instructional technology guys. We talked distance education, course management systems, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance the whole trip.

Buena Vista Palace hotel works. Easy check-in. Comfortable scale to the architecture. I got a room on the top (well, except for the ballroom) floor with a balcony overlooking various water features. Set out at 11pm looking for a snack not expecting to find one. Found a little in-hotel market with breakfast, lunch or dinner items available at reasonable (for in the hotel) prices. So far, I like this place. Now, sleep, and then conference.

Tuesday early
Charming views from the balcony this morning. Found the NPR station last night, so awoke to Morning Edition as usual. Dixville Notch went heavily for Obama this election day.

I love a hot shower. Water pipes are connected backwards in my shower. Since it took a while for hot water to arrive at all, I was fooled into not realizing this, and took a cold shower. Tomorrow, perhaps.

MTALN Blog

2008-10-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

Much progress with MTALN. We are all now sharing a blog at http://mtaln.blogspot.com.

Getting Ready for the Next Group

2008-10-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

I am setting up the Montana Thai Active Learning Network pages for our next round of Thai scholars who will be arriving in Bozeman on October 19 for a two week program. We are very excited about meeting the new people. Thinking about them reminds us of what a good time we had learning together with the 2007 group.

Getting Ready for San Antonio

2008-06-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

View my page on NECC 2008
I am working with ISTE in Second Life folks, getting ready to participate in the National Educational Computing Conference, the world's largest educational technology conference for teachers and technology coordinators. My intention is to blog it here.

Smart Board Support

2008-03-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

Your incident has been logged as Incident # 49440.
----------------------------------------------------
Howdy,
Incident number 48334 and incident number 48389 are now also incident
number 49281 and the problem seems to be solved. I broke down and
called tech support, which is a nightmare with most companies. But I
got Howard on the line in only a couple of minutes. He talked me
through the solution. All is well. I am one very satisfied customer.

Oh, these incidents are also incident number 48546, because when I
sent a message to you telling you that 48334 and 48389 were the same
incident, you replied telling me that this was incident 48546. I
suppose this message will also generate an incident number. I have
learned something very important from all this which I will pass
along to others. If you have a problem with a Smart Board, don't
contact tech support by e-mail. Call them. Unless you need a five
digit number generated. In that case, e-mail will do it.

Oh, How Can You Be In Two Places At Once?

2008-03-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

Readers of the recent two posts below may notice that I attended an AECT and an ISTE event on the same evening. And there is one of the joys of Second Life. Two organizations schedule events I want to attend on the same night. What to do? Attend both of them. Popping back and forth between them is a simple teleport.

ISTE Machinima Theater

2008-03-08T16:23:00.000-08:00

Those of you stuck in the flat old 2D web can view the growing collection of International Society for Technology in Education machinima on the ISTE machinima page hosted by Knowclue Kidd, (the real life Marianne Malmstrom). But those of us who have made the move to the Metaverse got to enjoy the films (including a production by your humble narrator) in a luxurious drive-in theater on ISTE island in Second Life on Thursday.

Corinne Fleury (rl: Christie Thomas) and Kittygloom Cassady (rl: Jennifer Ragan-Fore) came up with the drive-in and populated it with a collection of good old tail finned pollution spewing beauties. (Fortunately, the atmosphere of SL is not effected by greenhouse gases.) The videos were all well received, admittedly by a pretty uncritical audience. No Oscars are anticipated, but for a bunch of first time machinimists, we did pretty well.

AECT Dance Party in SL

2008-03-08T15:50:00.001-08:00

The Association for Educational Communications and Technology hosted a dance party on the roof of their building on Eduisland in Second Life Thursday. It was well attended, particularly including many folks new to SL. For those of you who have not been to a dance in a virtual world, all I can say is try it. Virtual dancing struck me as a silly idea when I first heard of it, but I have been to a number of SL dances since then, and have enjoyed every one. The ability of Second Life to host such social events is one of its charms.

MaryLee Sewell was clearly into the music that night. MaryLee is the avatar of the real life Marry Herring, president elect of AECT, and a very graceful virtual dancer. Ize Mesmer (rl: Cheryl Comstock) gets the credit for organizing the dance.

AECT is planning a series of presentations in SL. I am currently scheduled to give one in the summer.

ISTE Machinima

2008-02-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

The folks at the International Society for Technology in Education are moving into Second Life in a big way. They started out as neighbors on Eduisland, but have now moved to three islands of their own. They have asked ISTE folks in SL to produce machinima about their experiences with ISTE/SL. Your humble narrator made a contribution which can be found on Knowclue Kidd's ISTE machinima page.

Lion Dance in นครสวรรค์

2008-02-26T10:57:00.000-08:00

Michael Brody is back from Thailand and has posted lion dance video from Nakhon Sawan. It is amazing. A lot of personality in those lions.

University of Texas-Austin art show in Second Life

2007-12-05T07:54:00.001-08:00

Joe Sanchez (North Lamar in Second Life) and his students at the University of Texas - Austin hosted an art show at the Educators Coop sim in Second Life. Other SL educators were invited to participate, so I had some of my photos there. If you would like to visit, the show was still up at the time of this posting. If you have a Second Life account, click here to go there.

AECT? What's that?

2007-12-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

My journalist relatives have pointed out that I violated one of the rules of style. I used an acronym without spelling it out in the first paragraph. However, since blogs appear in reverse order, this ends up being the first paragraph of the report. Ha! I attended the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) conference in Anaheim, CA, in October.

AECT 2007 in Reverse Order

2007-10-28T12:08:00.002-07:00

Read from here down and you will get a pretty good look at one person's experience of AECT 2007 blogstyle, that is, chronologically backwards. The last few posts, which is to say the first few below this one, were all posted at the same time as I was away from my Internet connections and typed them all up while making my way back home. The Tuesday and Wednesday workshop items, which are found now in the archive, were posted on the fly during the workshops and really are my live notes. AECT 2007 was great. Thanks to everyone who made it such a wonderful experience for me.

ESL in SL

2007-10-28T12:08:00.001-07:00

Checked out of my room. An hour and a half to kill before the ride to the airport. Is there anything else to see here. Oh, look. Another Second Life presentation. Despite my best intentions, I have missed quite a few of these. Here is a chance to catch Sabine Reljic's. OK, I didn't really learn much that I did not already know, as Sabine spent most of the time introducing SL to the uninitiated, but it did take my mind off the trip.

Beyond PowerPoint

2007-10-28T12:07:00.003-07:00

Al Mizell and Marsha Burmeister gave a presentation, mostly in PowerPoint, about going beyond PowerPoint. The handouts consisted of a single web address, just like I did it for MEA/MFT, but in this case, on a label that could be stuck onto the conference program. The programs discussed looked interesting, and the presenters were cheerful enough to take my mind off the fact that today is a travel day. Did I mention that I am a nervous traveler?

Instructional Games

2007-10-28T12:07:00.001-07:00

Three part session: Mansureh Kebritchi and Atsusi Hirumi presented on how game designers are, or are not, identifying the learning theories they apply in their game design. Conclusion: things are getting more professional, but there is plenty of room for improvement. Debbie Denise Reese presented on game design (the game here being Selene) with the goal of bringing students to the state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow", that balance of skill and challenge that keeps you happily going until you realize to your surprise that many productive hours have passed unnoticed. Mary Jo Dondlinger and Les Lunce presented on wayfinding affordances (cues to keep the learner from getting lost) in virtual reality, a subject we will get to practically apply in Second Life.

University Reception

2007-10-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

Snacks of a high quality (the oysters were not properly appreciated, so I gave them my attention) give aways (I just took a couple of pens) and lots of conversation with lots of interesting folks. As mentioned earlier, a conference like this always involves missing something to attend something else. A presentation called "Dear Professor, I Demand a Response..." was on my list until I saw that it conflicted with the intellectual property session which I really had to attend. But, at the reception, I was introduced to Barbara Rosenfeld and Lisa Novemsky, the "Dear Professor..." presenters. We had a lovely chat which ran for hours, wandered beyond the reception itself, included interludes with Nai-fen Yu, Christine Sorensen, and a bowl of real spumoni ice cream the likes of which you just can't get in Montana. All in all, a most satisfying evening, followed by a rather short round of sleep.

Membership

2007-10-28T12:04:00.002-07:00

Don't ask me why I would attend the membership meeting, since I have long been one of AECT's least active members, but I have actually been tracking AECT from a distance all these years (I last attended in 1993) including the organization's downward plunge and subsequent recovery. As was pointed out at the meeting, even in its most troubled moments, AECT was alive and kicking. But there is no question that the outfit is staging something of a comeback, and it was good to see that things really are going well at the moment. Much of this comeback should be reflected in the new aectnow.org website.

Also, like all instructional media outfits, AECT is very much focused on the future. As an old history major, and the brother of a historic preservation officer, I was glad to see that AECT is making an effort to collect its own memories, including doing with its senior members what many of us are doing with our elderly kin, interviewing them on video while they are still here to be interviewed.

Collapse

2007-10-28T12:04:00.001-07:00

OK. I was planning to attend a little more Friday afternoon, but instead I went back to my room and collapsed. Mostly, I think, cognitive overload on my part.

Intellectual Sharing and Stealing

2007-10-28T12:02:00.002-07:00

Rosemary Talab moderated a discussion by Preston Parker, Leonard DuBoff, esq. and Mary Ann, and our very own Janis Bruwelheide on the topic of intellectual property (that is, not stealing stuff like music and movies and books and such.) Janis keeps us pretty well filled in on her data, but her handouts included some very useful links. Preston spoke on Creative Commons and GLU Licensing, two different ways to make your stuff free to use. He pointed out problems with the "non-commercial" designation (If I am being paid to teach, and I use this, is that a commercial use?) and the fact that there are two systems (If I blend both kinds in one new work, how do I "share-alike" it?) Leonard, being a lawyer, spoke about the law itself, and how it will or won't work (If you created something and it is stolen in China, can you afford to pursue remedies in Chinese court?) All of AECT's accumulated copyright wisdom can be found at www.aect.org/copyright.

Cognitive Trouble in River City

2007-10-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

Benjamin Erlandson and Brian Nelson presented on a study they are doing on cognitive overload and how to avoid it in a multi-user virtual environment, specifically working with River City. Information which will be of use to designers of learning games of all kinds.

AECT in Second Life - The Demo

2007-10-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Hooray! After a couple of technical difficulties were worked out, the demo did indeed take place. A few of us got together at AECT headquarters in Second Life while Professor Tomsen (Tom Atkinson) interacted with interested visitors at AECT in Real Life. Second Life is a topic which has come up a lot at AECT this year. What education is being / can be / will be done in virtual environments? My primary response is jump in and find out. If you think what is being done here is not yet what it should be, join us and show us how to do it right. We will be happy to work with you. As for Second Life, AECT is now officially in.

AECT in Second Life

2007-10-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for tomorrow. Plan is to do some in-world demoing following Mary, Lisa and Ross's presentation on AECT Activities and Opportunities in Second Life. If called upon, I am ready to serve.

Oh, and when I popped in to take this picture, I was invited to the ISTE Halloween party. While I was there, I learned that Scottmerrick Oh and I had tied for first place in the portion of the ISTEGOSH where we took pictures of ourselves. Can I help it if I love pictures of me, in both real and virtual worlds?

Chinese Characters and Artificial Intelligence

2007-10-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

I wrapped up my Thursday attending a presentation on a method being developed to teach Chinese characters through beautiful animations, and another being developed to guide HTML based portfolio production through Artificial Intelligence Markup Language. Both Nai-fen Yu and Kenneth Luterbach have set themselves difficult tasks. Both had interesting things to report. I have seen AIML used in pandorabots in Second Life, and so enjoyed learning about AIML. But I really wish I could show you the Chinese character animations. They are instruction delivered in a way that lifts the spirit with their beauty.

Can We Respond?

2007-10-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

Presentation by Mary Herring (another person from breakfast) Sharon Smaldino, Kay Persichitte, Christine Sorensen and Clif Mims on how we are all going to respond to all this legal and technical stuff. The general conclusion is that we educational technology folks are going to have to lead the rest of our field into the future. Do the folks at English lit conferences see it this way?

I kept thinking about the day our college had their big brainstorming session to plan for the future. Everybody knew that technology was one of the things we had to do. When all the votes were counted, it was not even in our top ten goals. But, you know, we still had to do it. And, I must say, many of my colleagues have made a lot of progress in this area, even if it was not a priority for them.

Videogame Literacy

2007-10-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

Christian Loh ripped into his topic with such vigor that Luca Botturi (a fine fellow from the University of Lugano who I met at the Second Life breakfast) was left with exactly zero minutes and zero seconds to do his half of the presentation. The message was, you had better know something about video games, because your kids are going to be playing some real brain and spirit damaging nightmares, and they will need your guidance before [name of horrible violence glorifying video game deleted to avoid giving them more publicity than they need] ruins them completely.

E-Connections During Field Experiences

2007-10-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

Guy Westhoff presented on the system he has set up at Washington State University to allow students doing their equivalent of paras and student teaching to communicate with each other and with faculty via various electronic means. They are using Marratech due to its superior ability to handle multi-party video conferencing. Sounds like the whole thing was a challenge to set up, both technically and legally, but now that they have it, the can do much student teaching evaluation via distance, and their student teachers are relieved of much of the isolation that I certainly recall from my own student teaching experience

Dispositions

2007-10-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

David Carbonara presented on work he is doing to create instruments to assess the dispositions of teacher candidates toward technology. We really don't do that in our lab, and he has a long way to go before he does in a way that he will find satisfying. But he is making much progress. This goes on my list of things to do just as soon as he figures out exactly how to do it.

Sound!!!

2007-10-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

I just had to go to MJ Bishop's presentation Necessary Bells and Whistles, Designing With Sound to Enhance Learning, even if it did mean missing Marc Prensky's follow-up chat. I am a big fan of well used audio, and a big enemy of badly used audio, in instructional technology. MJ was a bit flustered, having thought that today was tomorrow, but that happens at conferences like this. Days whip past with a soft whooshing sound. Once she arrived and got rolling, her presentation was most enjoyable, and useful. Ideas I must bring back home, as soon as I get a copy of her handouts.

Interactive Flash Video

2007-10-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

I attended Taeyeol Park's presentation on Adding Interactivity to Video with Cue Point and ActionScript in Flash. We are not doing Flash videos, but if we ever start, I now know something about how to make them interactive.

Keynote - Marc Prensky

2007-10-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

Marc Prensky is a good guy for an eight a.m. keynote, as he gets you going. His topic was the rate of change in education and what we have to do about it. We see this as a thing which has happened, but our students see it as how it has always been. They are used to new technologies every day, and rather bored by our attempts to teach them without keeping up. Rather than being the place where ignorant students are led out of the dark, today schools take the students raised in the light of networked learning, and plunge them into darkness while we try to teach them in old ways. Marc correctly notes that we can't add all the new things without deleting some of the old, if only because of time constraints. Marc quoted Charles Handy, "Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture which may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can." Marc says the most important learning is taking place after school, and programming is the new literacy. Feels right to me.

Second Life Breakfast

2007-10-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

Had breakfast this morning with seven other folks on the AECT in Second Life task force. Mary Herring gave us the news that the AECT board has given us the go ahead to establish an AECT presence in Second Life beyond the building Ross Perkins has already put up on Eduisland. This, coupled with the breakfast at Coco's that Lisa Dawley picked up the tab on, made for a great start to a very busy day.

The Roundup

2007-10-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

AECT's Welcome Reception used to be called the Roundup. Now, it is called the AECT Welcome Reception. Less confusion, less charm. At any rate, I spent most of the evening chatting with the presenters of the Tuesday morning workshop and another of the folks who attended that one. Delightful people. One of them turns out to be involved in Second Life, so I will have to make contact with her there, as well.

Keynote - Stephen Downes

2007-10-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

Stephen Downes, an educational technology philosopher who spoke like a philosopher, often stopping in mid-sentence to change his mind. He set up a screen with a web address where you could go to enter commentary on his speech during his speech which was displayed on the screen. Thus, we got to chat about his presentation together. At least, everyone who brought a computer did. Sadly, my machine was not with me for the first time in two days. Stephen runs OLDaily, a website which reports every day on on-line learning. His presentation made much of the fact that learning is not the acquisition of known things, but really the growth of a network in the brain, which is literally true. He compares current learning to a utility, like water or power. There is a constant supply put in, and users take out what they need when they need it. He sees this leading not to a hive-mind like uniformity, but to knowledge which is a joint product of what we all know and share. Group vs network, in which the group is the sum of its parts, but he network is something more.

Stephen mentioned Second Life, saying that it does not support diversity, since sometimes you feel directed in some direction, and does not support autonomy, since he could not pick the last name he wanted. Specifically, Downes. So we can say that he has visited SL, but not really come to know the place. Sounds like he may not have gotten much past Orientation Island.

Practical Promotion Idea

2007-10-25T21:17:00.000-07:00

One of the projects Shuyan's students do is a brochure advertising one of the department's courses for next semester. Hey, Jim, maybe we should have students in your class create a poster advertising my class.

Electronic Portfolios

2007-10-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

One of AECT's affiliate organizations is The Society of International Chinese in Educational Technology. I spent Wednesday afternoon at SICET roundtables, specifically the ones dealing with electronic portfolios.

The first, focusing on student involvement, was led by Dr. Shuyan Wang of the University of Southern Mississippi. My notes:
Four types of e-portfolios: summative, formative, job application and teaching. My thought, our portfolios at MSU are a little of each.

Her Ed Tech masters students create their portfolios in a Word document which she has preformatted. They are built on jump drives, backed up on a file server, and eventually end up on CDs, like ours. Portfolios are submitted, receive comment, are resubmitted, receive comment again, are submitted a third time. The final version includes all three stages of the student projects.

For faculty to actually make use of e-portfolios, they must be a course objective included in the syllabus, not just an add on. A participant said his school is looking at having faculty submit their own performance review materials in e-portfolio format, in part to make evaluation easier, but in part to force faculty to become familiar with e-portfolios so that they will be better able to work with students on them.

The second session, focusing on assessment, was led by Rui Hu of the University of Georgia. My notes:
The reflective component of their e-portfolios counts as 30% of their projects. Reflection addresses four questions: how I did this, what I learned, what problems I encountered, how I can use this in the future. E-portfolios are peer reviewed. Set of questions helps students keep on track with step by step reflection. Peer review helps keep students aware of rubric. Students are given guidance on constructive criticism, to avoid getting just "this is very nice" reviews.

Rui's students are creating e-portfolios in Google pages (thus fulfilling a dream which formed in my head yesterday). She does a session with them in which they create a set of links, then build the eight pages those links go to, and put the links on all pages. There was some later discussion of uploading to Google pages. This is something we must look into. Could make our own e-portfolio process simpler, and solve the "where to house them" problem at the same time.

K-12 e-portfolios were mentioned. Helen Barrett was cited as a good source on this.

Running Around Like Headless Chicken

2007-10-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have never attended a conference like this, deciding where to go each hour or two is a big part of it. You have to pass up nine interesting programs to go to one. A session runs late, a session changes time, somehow, despite your best planning, you end up in a corridor frantically reading presentation descriptions trying to decide where you will go one minute from now.

Wait for it...

2007-10-25T13:04:00.001-07:00

Very busy. Many notes. Little Internet access. Plan to be on later today or much of tomorrow, however, and will update then. Half the fires are out, but this place is still smokin'.

Audio Observation

2007-10-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Nobody thought to put a speaker on the computers today. People in the front row could just barely hear the sound. Those little Anchor AN-100 speakers we have are such a good idea. I wish I had one with me today.

Webinar

2007-10-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

Still Karen Kaminski, Colorado State.
livemeeting, infiniteconferencing, globallinkcommunications, instantaccessplus, etc.
Google "webinar hosting services" and you will find.
Campus can set up webinar hosting, but it is expensive to set up and maintain.

Streaming

2007-10-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Karen Kaminski is presenting.
Recommendations:
Logitech webcam V-US20. Good, quiet, non-echoing room. Headset w/mic. Plantronics DSP-500.

We are having tech problems connecting to a live Webinar. Ah, it wouldn't be tech without problems.

Streaming servers allow less copyright concern, since the file is not actually copied to the listener's computer. Still, copyright laws still apply.

Real, Microsoft and Apple all have software to produce. For bandwidth, stick with audio unless the video really contributes to the content.

Helix Server is free. Recommendation, if the University Tech folks won't set up a server, set up your own. When the tech folks see lots of incompatible servers going, they will probably step in to clean up the mess. Hmmmm........

Streamed content should be brief, since it does not allow pausing. If you want pauses for reflection, let the student download the content and play it locally. On streamed files, post a listening time, so students know when they will have the 14minutes 32 seconds to sit and listen to the streamed file.

Podcasting

2007-10-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

Eugene G. Kowch, U of Calgary, our presenter, has begun by pointing out the waving palms right outside the window. Eugene is Canadian and is enjoying the palms as much as I am. He promises to e-mail us his presentation, of course. He will be using only free software. My kind of guy.

Podcasting is, unlike everything else we have seen here, one way. Making content into a Podcast does not make it magic. Poorly designed instruction on an iPod is poorly designed instruction that you can take with you to the beach.

Eugene is bioperating-systemal but prefers Windows. However, he says, "we can do it on PCs, but on a Mac it is 100 times easier." We knew that. In fact, Eugene has done his presentation on Windows, and is having a multitude of problems because of that. He has just hit the "video only plays on the primary display" Windows curse.

Eugene, despite being a Windows guy, says for Podcasting, go Mac, go iPod. Asked directly, iPod vs iZune says iPod. The iPod Touch is demoed. Ooooooo.

How to do it on a PC: Audacity is recommended as audio editor. OurMedia is recommended as server. iTunes as Podcast locator. On PCs you also need Spinexpress2 and LAME for various file conversions. Many steps are displayed. "On a Mac, you just press one button."

Go to iTunes and subscribe to the feed on OurMedia. That tells iTunes where the feed is. iTunes --> Advanced --> Subscribe to Podcast. Paste in OurMedia URL. Click OK. Oh, Man! I have got to do this! For audio, mp3, for video mp4. Otherwise, same system.

Warning, OurMedia.org is full of "adult" content. NOT for grade schoolers.

University sites serving podcasts. Yale, Penn State, etc. Student click one button. Every time the student connects an iPod to their computer, they automatically get the latest lecture downloaded. Apple runs it through uTunes.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ekowch/AECT Podcasting101.html

Blogging

2007-10-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

Blogger (aka Blogspot), Edublogs and WordPress are recommended as places to put blogs. WordPress has the advantage that you can install it and run it on your own server if you want to. Our first presenter has run out of time, but will be e-mailing us her entire presentation. Oh, this modern age.

RSS Feeds and Readers

2007-10-24T08:16:00.001-07:00

We begin with, RSS feeds and readers. The Google reader is the first suggested. Also Bloglines. I have never done RSS, but next week, I will. RSS is shown to us first, because it is a good way to read blogs. You can have a class blogging, and with your RSS reader, you get each student's most recent post on your reader.

Our presenter is giving us handouts via del.icio.us, the same thing I did with MEA last week. Man, we are so cutting edge!

Blogging, Podcasting, Webcasting and Streaming

2007-10-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

Good morning, folks. I am sitting in Salon II, and the presentation with the same title as this post is getting started. Heather Tillberg-Webb is presenting on blogging right now. There are only two people here who have already used blogging with a class. Hey, EDCI 320 students and Thai educators, we are on the cutting edge!

This Town is on Fire

2007-10-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that this town is on fire. No, really. Fire. You know how you see pictures of a forest fire in Montana. Well, this is like that, only the fires are surrounded by a thick carpet of city. Flying in was fantastic. Looked like the city you would expect to find on the lowest level of hell. Today, every time I walked out the door of the hotel, I looked for the flames. You can't actually see them from here, but the hot Santa Ana wind, carrying all that smoke, felt like there should be a fire right by the door.

Google Workshop - Hour Seven - Collaborative Presentation

2007-10-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

We used Google docs to create a presentation collaboratively. Here it is.

I Love Christmas Eve Even More Than Christmas

2007-10-23T14:48:00.001-07:00

My family has a big party on Christmas Eve. As a child, I loved the Christmas Eve party just about as much as opening presents on Christmas Day. As an adult, it is really the Christmas Eve event that I love. All our decorations are put up with the Christmas Eve guests in mind. My mother leaves the cooking now to the next generation, but she still spends a happy couple of days sending me up, down, in and out to put all the traditional things in all the traditional places. These images were gathered from Freefotos, Pics4Learning, and Flickr.

2007-10-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Murder at the

AECT Conference

Jennifer Banas, Bill Freese, Sung Hee Park

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

With travelers from all over the state, country, and world, there is a great deal of room for anonymity. Thank goodness for the name tags, otherwise, we would never have known who the body in the lobby was. But it was an AECT name tag, so we knew it was one of ours.

Who could have done such a thing? Who could possibly become so angry with an AECT member, the kindest, most gentle people in the world. Fortunately, there happened to be a detective's convention on the third floor. One of the greater of the detectives volunteered to help us out.

There was not much time to investigate, since we needed the crime to be solved before the next session. We could not possibly concentrate on our work with an unsolved murder hanging over our heads. We like closure before we move on.

Realizing that time was limited, our investigative guest decided to skip the search for clues and go totally on instinct. The great detective spun on his heals, pointed with the tip of his Meerschaum pipe, and declared, "the presenter did it."

It was obvious that the presenter had done it. It was a perfect guise. No one would suspect her since she appeared to be at the front of the room at all times....or was she?

Ah, everyone thought, just as I suspected.

Google Workshop - Hour Six, is it

2007-10-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

Now, a shared Google Document.

http://docs.google.com/

Three authors, Jennifer Banas, Bill Freese, Sung Hee Park, are working on a single document. The rest of the room has been broken into similar teams. It is an odd experience. We tried the experiment of having one person change the spelling of a word while another person was replacing the word. We got a message telling us of the conflict, and that one person's modification was discarded. The revisions tab allows tracking of changes, including who did what. Handy for grading.

Our collaborative document is now available at http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcdnmpzk_0cd9nvr. And now it is successfully posted as a blog post, sent here from Google docs.

Google Workshop - Hour Five, the one after lunch

2007-10-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

We are learning to use Google Earth as a teaching tool. We have seen examples teachers have used with class content which has a geographic component (journey of an explorer, melting of a glacier). We have now learned to create, annotate, save, upload and post a link to a Google Earth location. So as a teacher, I could give an electronic handout with links to locations on the globe that were relevant to the content.

My office on Google Earth To make this link work, you will need to have Google Earth installed on your computer. If your browser asks what to do with the file, you can either download it and then open it, or just directly open it with Google Earth.

Google Workshop - As hour four progresses.

2007-10-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

Now, blogs. On this one, I am ahead of the game, since we created blogs for the Montana Thai Action Learning Network. In fact, I am blogging this on my blogspot blog. But, there are new things to learn. We started creating blogs at http://www.blogger.com.

I have just learned how to make a blog private (information I needed last week) and how to set up a blog with multiple authors (information I needed three weeks ago). This is a very useful workshop. Oh, and we are supposed to post our picture from the workshop here.

This picture was taken by Dr. Shiang-Kwei Wang during the AECT Tuesday workshop. Hey, it was really early, and I got to bed really late last night. I tried to smile. Really.

We just learned how to put a little survey question on our blog. As per the little multiple choice question in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Google Workshop - Hour the Third

2007-10-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

Our next task is an online web photo album.
I downloaded Picasa from http://picasa.google.com/web/mac_tools.html. Evil Windows version also available. Links at http://icttools.googlepages.com/onlinewebalbum.
Our instructors have put us all on their album, which you can find at
http://picasaweb.google.com.tw/icttools/AECTWorkshop.
Access at http://picasaweb.google.com.
I have just added a photo of me at the workshop to my new website at http://bill.freese.googlepages.com/home. Enjoy.

Google Workshop - Hour Two

2007-10-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

I am sitting between Tamme McCowin and Jennifer Banas. Tamme is one of those "run ahead of the class" students. I am being my usual "do exactly what you are told" kind of guy.
All of us have posted Google pages, which are linked from http://icttools.googlepages.com/googlepage.

Google Workshop - First Hour

2007-10-23T09:12:00.001-07:00

New Literacies = those Internet skills, of course.
Online handouts are at http://icttools.googlepages.com/ .
Now we create Google webpages.
http://pages.google.com - Free Webspace - 100MB!
And now, a few moments later, I have a website at
http://bill.freese.googlepages.com/home.

Arrival at AECT

2007-10-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Monday, 10/22/07, 7:50 p.m., Salt Lake City Airport, Gate C4

Forgot I had a flat pocket knife in my card wallet, and got a very serious patting down at Gallatin Field Security. The 2:45 p.m. from Bozeman was delayed on the way here. Something about Santa Ana winds. I boarded about 4:10 and arrived in Salt Lake City about 5:30. Since my connecting flight left at 4:37, I was rescheduled for the 8:50. Story's like this never make any sense to non-travelers, so let's just say a lot of down time. I dined in concourse C at the Squatters Pub Brewery. I had the bourbon burger (cheddar and onions sauteed in bourbon ($10) and two glasses of Robert Mondavi merlot (@$6) for a total of 23.73, which, I assume, includes one of those "sales tax" things. Being a guy not used to traveling on the company, I forgot to keep the receipt, so that one was on me. You can thank me any time, MSU.

I walked all over the airport killing time. We expect to begin boarding in half an hour, says the announcement. Wireless access is available in both Gallatin Field and here for $7.95. Thus, I am typing this into a word processor, with the intention of posting it later.

Tuesday, 10/23/07, 7:00 a.m., Hyatt Regency Orange County hotel, room 1526

Internet access costs $2.95 for 15 minutes. $9.95 for 24 hours. $39.95 for four days. Wireless or wired. The wireless signal I picked up was weak, and even then turned out to be from the Marriot across the street and also pay only. Maybe I can find a cafe with free wireless. I think I will blog in bursts.

I took the Supershuttle from the airport, a trick Denby Starkey taught me many years ago. Takes a little longer, but you see more of the town, and it costs a whole lot less. ($10) Seats way more comfortable than the airplane. Driver was a very nice fellow. One couple was being dropped off at somebody's home, so got a spin through a little residential neighborhood.

Hyatt first impression, huge and horrible. Lobby is vast, and, at night, dark. Registration desk is one pool of light among many. Friendly staff, though. Corridors remind me of computer game graphics. Look nicer than they are. Arrive in the room dying of thirst. Find two bottles with this message:
"Aquafina
Purity Guaranteed
Enjoy A Refreshing
1-liter Aquafina for $5.00
this bottle of clear, crisp, cool refreshment is
provided as a service for our Guests.
If consumed, a charge of
$5.00 will be billed to your
room. For your convenience
our staff will refresh daily."

This is not a welcoming kind of thing. "You look thirsty, weary traveler. For five bucks you can have some of this water." If I am buying water from them at $5.00 a liter, they are not just refreshing it for my convenience. I spent the rest of the evening being afraid to use anything in the room without reading it carefully first to see what it was going to cost. The ice machine on my floor was broken. The vending machine offers Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Aquafina, and Aquafina. I tried a couple of other floors, found ice, but could find nothing with fizz that was not caffinated. I drank the tap water, and woke up this morning regretting it.

I scouted out the location for the Tuesday workshop and found a couple of AECT folks setting up in a room full of projectors and cardboard boxes full of tote bags. They seemed very nice, which helped to relieve some of the oppression of this hotel. My sensation at the moment is a lot of nice people working inside a vicious machine.

The bed was very comfortable. Five pillows. Good mattress. Slept like I always do, loglike, despite the odd thump the ventilating system makes each time it kicks on or off. In the morning I discovered that the bathtub has a nearly straight up and down back. Very uncomfortable. Lots of hot water. Bumpy "massage" bar of soap. Not at all like a massage. Label on soap says nothing about extra charges, but I am worried.

Garden Room 2
Sarah McPherson intros Hui-Yin Hsu and Shiang-Kwei Want of NY Institute of Technology.

Intros. Lots of handouts. AECT has free wireless here. wOOt! I will post this during the intros.

Where are we?

2007-10-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

This map shows Bozeman, Yellowstone National Park and Miles City, as well as Helena, which is the location of Montana's state capitol, and Billings, which is Montana's biggest town. Belgrade is so close to Bozeman that it would be on the northwest edge of the yellow Bozeman dot on this map. Map made with Google Earth and Photoshop.