Raj Boora attended my presentation on Weblog Communities at AMTEC, and this prompted him to start blogging again – check out his new blog EDITing in the Dark Any other bloggers out there who attended the AMTEC conference in Calgary? Leave a comment, and I’ll put together a list of AMTEC bloggers.

Hello. I am presenting a session on weblog communities from AMTEC2005. Rick Schwier is also taking notes, and he’s not here to stop me from linking to his blog.

It was a super first day for the AMTEC 2005 conference started by great keynote by John Seely Brown. Rick Schwier has been blogging the conference (so I can just be lazy and link to him). Here is Rick’s post on JSB’s keynote – Rick’s Café Canadien: AMTEC 2005 – John Seely Brown

Way to go, Rick! That’s a grand-slam homer!! Rick’s Café Canadien: Free cappucinos in the café 2005 3M Teaching Fellows announced

I’m heading off to AMTEC 2005 in Calgary next week, so some of my current projects (like the Generic High School) will be on hold for a little while. This weekend, I’ll be spending a bit of time putting together my presentation – Weblog Communities: Emerging Environments for On-line Learning. Here’s the description: This presentation will demonstrate how personal publishing tools such as weblogs and RSS aggregators provide opportunities for novel learning models beyond the traditional course-based model of online learning. It will demonstrate how weblogs can become loosely affiliated to form ad hoc virtual communities. A variety of learning opportunities presented by these affiliations will be discussed, as well as the importance of open file formats, such as XML, as a means of forming connections between individually created weblogs. If you are going to be at AMTEC, it would … Continue reading »

I promise I’m not going to start doing movie reviews. There are tons of bloggers who do movie review far more eloquently than I could, so I’m not going to do it. But, I just have to say that RotS was great! I could be critical about the flaws in the movie – they were definitely there. I don’t think, though, that anyone was there to listen to great dialog and believable characterization. I was there to remeber what it was like to be 10 years old again, just like I was when I watched the first one in 1977. At that level, it does not dissapoint. I think the 10 year olds among and within us recognize that the movie is not about actual characters – its about myth. Its about good, evil, and the fine line between them. … Continue reading »

Thanks to Darren Cannell for this: Raising Boys. The tears in my eyes are from a combination of laughter and relief that the sperm with the X chromosome got there first!

I’ve had some great feedback from my podcast Why Schools Need Drupal, as well as the generic high school site I am prototyping using Drupal. Dries Buytaert was even kind enough to encourage me to repost the blog entry from the podcast on the Drupal site and promote it to the front page. One net result of all this was that the podcast was downloaded over 1000 times! Now I’m really starting to feel some pressure to come up with something decent for the next podcast ;^) I’ve been asked a couple of times to give a bit of a description of the setup of Drupal to create the generic high school site, so here it is. The theme and all modules listed are described in more detail at the Drupal website: The theme is SpreadFirefox – nice and clean … Continue reading »

I’ve wondered for a while about what kind of models might be developed for the ways that podcasting can be used as tools for learning. There are a few examples that have started to reach my attention. I’d like to share a couple of these with you, and if you know of any other good examples leave a comment. I just listened to Whosaid.org – an evolving literary podcast game. The basic premise is that passages from great works of literature. (I know – this gets into the whole can of worms about who decides what the great works of literature are, but we’ll just skip over that debate for now). Listeners can have a chance to leave guesses on the site, as well as get hints. The great feature to me is a discussion board – after listening to … Continue reading »

I could have used my time productively tonight, but instead I put together a brand new stigmergicweb podcast, looking at school websites and how to improve their functionality. Problems with many existing school websites: out of date information poor navigation, cluttered web pages (clown pants page design) content is maintained by a single person or small group of people within the school doesn’t serve the school community What we need: timely, relevant information design with web standards everyone is a contributor enhances the community. Several highly successful online communities exist including slashdot and kuro5hin. Drupal is a great tool for setting up a dynamic web site that can be maintained by all members of the school community. It has many features that lend itself to enhancing communication and community within a school. My generic high school site is an example … Continue reading »