Open Monologue
Just because I'm making it up as I go along doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing

Archive for March, 2005

Blogreggation

2005/03/22

James points towards Robert’s post about the WordPress Aggregator Blog. If I understand this correctly, it is a WordPress hack that allows a blog to be created by aggregating several blogs. Fantastic – instant online community, just add water! I suppose there is an ethical/intellectual property issue here – what permission would a blog author [...]

Stories from the Right Hemisphere – Norm is blogging!

2005/03/21

Stories from the Right Hemisphere About time! Now, let’s talk about podcasting …

Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School

2005/03/21

It was great to see this article about the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School article in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. This is a model that needs to be developed in more school divisions. The most important difference, by the way, is not the use of computer technology, although it is a convenient medium for delivering content. “In [...]

Text messaging among teens raises illiteracy fears

2005/03/21

Of course, the fears are largely unfounded. Here’s the story: CBC News: Text messaging among teens raises illiteracy fears The article does point out (down towards the bottom, where not every reader will see it: In Europe, where teens have been texting for years, researchers report that claims that texting leads to illiteracy are unfounded. [...]

Yahoo to acquire Flickr

2005/03/20

According to post on the FlickrBlog, Yahoo will be acquiring Flickr. This fits nicely with Yahoo’s forthcoming Yahoo 360 blog/photo sharing/messaging service. I can only hope that they do better than MSN’s blogging service (so unmemorable that I’ve already forgotten the name). This does, however, seem to put an end to my dream of having [...]

New Look – Neuron theme for WordPress

2005/03/19

Today is tidying up my web resources day. A major part of this is installing a new theme for the site called Neuron. So far my favourite feature is the ability to hide some of the content in the sidebar. This is configurable, and right now I’m working on trying to understand how this works. [...]

Signs of spring

2005/03/18

Ah signs of renewal are starting to show up in the ed-tech-blogosphere, most notable being a lively fresh rant from David Wiley entitled Pedagogy-Agnostic Standards and a Much Needed Rant. A brief sample: Why would we turn the greatest enabler of social interaction into a simple data download service? It’s like the great sequence of [...]

elearnspace: Informal Learning

2005/03/18

George Siemens on elearnspace has a post about Informal Learning. He articulates the challenge of integrating informal learning into formal learning contexts (like school) very nicely: I think there is a balance of formal/informal learning. Each has a place. Context and need should drive which one is utilized. One of the opportunities for formal education [...]

The New Media won't fit in the classroom.

2005/03/18

A recent article in The Walrus Magazine – Missing Marshall McLuhan describes how the McLuhan Festival in Toronto. Like Harold Jarche, I found one paragraph particularly juicy reading: “The new media won’t fit into the classroom,” he told the audience. “It already surrounds it. Perhaps that is the challenge of counterculture. The problem is to [...]

I'm a d12 …

2005/03/11

… not a d4 like that sneaky D’Arcy! ;^) Ah – life was so simple as a young proto-geek. Take the quiz at dicepool.com UPDATE – I finally browbeat my wife into taking the test – I always knew my wife was a perfect 10, but now I have data to back it up! :^) [...]