iSean

as Web 2.0 tidbits appear more and more on other blogs, i get the sense that a growing number of folks are disappointed with it. some bloggers are even badmouthing people who barely mention web 2.0 positively when they feel people are overly exuberant. personally, you can count me as a person who is still excited by the various developments happening online. i love my google news. i love the gmail feature set. i love bloglines (though, i just switched to NetNewsWire and access my bloglines feeds with it). i even like that Montastic can monitor all of my domains and let me know when i have any down time and how long i had downtime (quite nice when students tell me that they couldn’t access course materials or class discussions, etc.). i am finding uses for many web 2.0-type applications. that being said, one blogger i read earlier today was complaining that web 2.0 is missing the point — how to make money.

But I still maintain that you have to think about the business model and the customers from the very beginning, incorporating them into your application and design otherwise you end up with a very different product or service than one that will allow you to create a lasting business. If you want to ‘think’ in Web 2.0, you should be thinking not just, “how can I make this cool ajaxy social web service thing,” but “how can I make MONEY off this cool ajaxy social web service thing?”

my initial reaction was to blow off what he was saying, but the more i think about, the more i think that he is on to something. if all of these various services appear and they each offer a nice little service that folks can benefit from then how long can they last without bringing in revenue? on the other hand, i tend to believe that there are many people who just want to contribute to a better web world (e.g., the wikitext project i am working on, which will be a free textbook for anyone to use). granted, i’d guess that most start-ups do have dollar signs on their mind, so maybe the blogger has a point.

but, the article has me thinking . . . for example, i came across a neat little web 2.0 service called ListMixer. Listmixer is, “an easy way to track web pages that momentarily hold your interest. It’s handy for tracking blog comments or for pooling timely web pages among friends.” i have been using it for the past week and i love it. i often come across websites that aren’t quite worth bookmarking, but i know that i want to revist the sites for the next few days to monitor things, but i’ll probably never visit again after that. to use the bookmarklet, i just visit the site i want to monitor for a short spell, tap my bookmarklet and viola! the site is saved for 30 days. each time i visit the site the 30 day count starts over. eventually, i won’t visit the site for 30 days and the site will fall out of my list-mix. but, as much as i am getting used to this little service, i have to wonder whether this will become a part of my daily workflow only to be lost because the company behind this service fails to bring in revenue. or worse, what if i am eventually asked to pay for this service? would i pay for this? i doubt it, so maybe that means i can live without it. but, there are a lot of little services i enjoy that i wouldn’t quite pay for. is a bubble going to burst eventually? time will tell, eh?

Tags: ListMixer, web 2.0

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The Faculty Teaching and Learning Center on my campus gives out two major teaching awards each year. One of the awards recognizes teaching with technology. All full time and part time faculty are eligible for the award. I was fortunate enough to be nominated for the award this year back in October. In December, I learned that I was a finalist for the award. Yesterday my Dean called me to her office. Naturally, I immediately tried to figure out what I had screwed up. ;~)

Come to find out, I was chosen as the winner of the Pew Teaching with Technology Award for 2006. I will be formally recognized in March at the Teaching & Learning with Technology Fair where I will also set up a little booth to share some of the strategies I use for integrating technology into my teaching. What exciting times. Hooray!

Technorati Tags: Ed Tech, GVSU

i am using a new system to get myself organized. it’s all based on the book titled, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. i went to an podcasting presentation on my campus last week to see what the Apple representative had to say and just to make sure i wasn’t missing anything in my workflow. he mentioned a neato online resource called, 43 folders. 43 folders is a blog-type site that is all about Getting Things Done and is inspired by David Allen’s book. but, the 43 folders website caters to Macintosh users. the solutions are mostly Mac-based and there’s many tips and tricks, etc. i am totally changing the way i approach “work.” while i was never the kind of person who gets stressed out over mounds and mounds of work on my plate, i have found that i am less than efficient in figuring out how to attack the bigger picture items (e.g., writing an article).

so, i started using a new application (Omni Outliner) and implemented a free prebuilt system called kinkless Getting Things Done (kGTD). this forces me to write down everything i need to do and turn everything into actions i can take. and, this includes house-stuff, which pleases my wife very much. ;~)

anyway, we’ve neglected our family website that we started when our daughter was born in 2000. we add entries every month . . . or two . . . or three, but it gets much traffic from the extended family and beyond. i built it originally in HTML and then shifted it into PostNuke. This was before blogging tools were really known; though, that’s really how it was used. i have spent the past few days setting up a new hand-installed WordPress blog on our server. i customized the theme and then i installed Menalto’s Gallery. i even figured out how to get our old photos imported into Gallery 2.0 (painlessly at that). these efforts have been fun and have been weighing on my mind for a long time. in the next few days, i am going to set up a way for my wife to add blog entries by merely sending emails to a special address i create. i want to make the usability of this family site as easy as is possible so that she can jump on board and contribute often.

and, while this has been family related, i am scheduled to present at the MACUL conference next month and i will be speaking about my experiences installing various MySQL databases and how i use these tools, so this has been helpful for me.

Technorati Tags: lancaster, MySQL, wordpress, gallery, MACUL

link here

Michigan could become the first state in the nation to require students to experience some kind of online instruction before graduating, if the state legislature approves a proposal now before it. The plan is part of a larger effort to ratchet up high school graduation requirements in the state, and its supporters say it’s a bold idea that will help prepare students for the challenges of an increasingly global economy.

wow! that’s terrific to read. i have struggled to try and get our undergraduate program to implement a system that would require all of our preservice educators to have some online learning experiences before they graduate. i think the model for graduate school is increasingly looking at online learning as a way to provide graduate classes to teachers. in michigan, all teachers must complete 18 hours of coursework towards a planned program in their first 5 years of teaching. many teachers are not teaching next to a university so the online options become even more appealing. in any regard, i thought i’d pass along an initiative coming out of michigan that i hope sees the light of day and spreads to other states. should be interesting to learn how this plan plays out.

i still can’t get the commenting on my site to show up on this front page, but i’ll keep fiddling. also, i have some neat new technologies that i’ve been playing around with that i can’t wait to share when i have some time. stay tuned!

ever since i started using coComment (see previous post), i have noticed quirkiness in the comment notifications on my blog. for example, my previous blog entry shows No Comments right now. in fact, there are two comments to that entry. now, it is entirely possible that i messed things up; however, i don’t think i did anything other than follow the instructions for installing coComment . . . and, coComment appears to be working. i’ll submit a bug on that. UPDATE: while i was submitting this, I received an email from the coComment team letting me know that they’re looking into this. terrific.

in other news, i have changed the way my comments operate to look more like my email. no longer will the newest comments appear at the end of the list. now, when you visit comments on a blog entry that has many comments, you should see the most recent comments at the top. this isn’t a big deal, but it’s a nice little time saver for me.

to switch things up in WordPress, i merely added 4 letters (DESC) to the end of line 18 in my /wp-includes/comment-functions.php file. ORDER BY comment_date DESC”); instead of ORDER BY comment_date”); — thanks to this blog for the tip.

if nothing else, having this blog is forcing me to learn much about php files than i ever imagined i’d do. i am now to the point where i can make minor tweaks and sort of understand how to make these edits. i couldn’t write it to begin with, but i can modify things to fit my needs (e.g., the menu off to the right has been rearranged to suit my preferences).

i like to read a lot of blog sites. occasionally, i even post comments on other blog sites. and, i often forget where i post comments. if the author happens to respond i may never know. now, some bloggers will come back to my blog and comment and that allows a dialogue to take place. but, i wonder how many dialogues i’ve allowed to flounder away? well, this is how i go about introducing coComment — a free tool to track your comments on various blogging sites. i have a little bookmarklet that i click just before i submit my comments and then my comments are recorded and tracked on the coComment site as well. i can visit the coComment site and login to see where i’ve posted and to see if follow up discussions ensued. here’s the snippet from the coComment site:

When you comment on a blog, coComment keeps a copy of your message on a special page - called "your conversations" - that allows you to quickly see your comment and where it was posted, with a link to the original site.

moreover, i can also have my comments from elsewhere appear right here on my blog, which you can view right now off to the top-right. i should be able to customize it in the future, but coComment is still in the very early beta-testing phases. in fact, you need a secret code to sign up right now. i was lucky enough to find a bunch of invitation codes posted on another blog, so i don’t have any i can give away at this time. but, as the tool develops more, i imagine the site will open up. and, if you really want to try it, you might just have luck emailing the folks at coComment and asking. cheers!

Technorati Tags: coComment, blog, ed tech

well, it looks like the wikitext is off and running. my core team of professors who teach the same course i teach are all on board. we’re scheduled to meet and discuss how this might best work and how this can be an improvement over our current textbook (which i helped write, fwiw). i am going to spend some time explaining how the wiki works and how folks can contribute to our project.

one of the instructors asked me why we don’t just start with wikibooks. that’s a valid question, but i think our immediate efforts are sort of selfish. we want a textbook that meets our teaching objectives. the State of Michigan has standards that will be unique to Michigan schools. then again, our standards differ from the national ISTE (NETS-T) standards very little. so, we’ll donate our efforts to wikibooks when we’re satisfied. but, i want to be able to mess up along the way and not worry about the world community misinterpreting our progress and veering us off in a different direction. i want to try content and let it sit for 2 weeks and then replace it completely if it doesn’t fit. wikipedia doesn’t seem like a collaboration as much as it is many individuals trying to independently come together and produce quality work and i want our wiki to be more of a team project. i guess what i am saying is that i don’t want to be completely responsible to the world just yet. i do want to let MACUL members know that we’re starting this project because other university instructors in Michigan could potentially benefit from our version of the text and they might choose to help, which would be nice.

there are just so many little steps that keep creeping up that i am sure this project will not move as quickly as i had hoped. on top of that, our college of education is undergoing major discussions for restructuring in our university. this restructuring effort could have major implications for the computers in education course i teach . . . and, thus the wikitext. that being said, i am committed to making this project work.

in other news, i just upgraded to WordPress 2.0. this is quite a nice upgrade. i was nervous because the upgrade notes indicated that i shouldn’t upgrade if i had altered themes and/or installed any plugins. i have done both. i backed up prior to the upgrade, but i quickly realized that nothing was ruined upon upgrading. whew!

Technorati Tags: wikitext, mediawiki, ed tech

well, i have spent the past few hours installing MediaWiki, which is the same wiki engine that Wikipedia uses. a comment by Dave Cormier in my previous blog entry suggested i try it out. i like the look and feel of Wikipedia so i figured I’d give this thing a shot. the problem i encountered is that most of the tools i try are easy to install and uninstall using Fantastico. MediaWiki had to be done by hand. i haven’t installed a database in over a year, so i had a bit of relearning curve . . . but, i was successful.

so, if you want to preview what i have, here’s a preview of the very beginnings: http://integratetech.net/wikitext/ — i registered integratetech.net a few years ago and it’s largely gone unused. i have to play around with the subdomain features because i notice when you click on the link, the URL gets shifted so that atticmooses.com appears as well. hmmm. shouldn’t be too hard to fix when i have a little more time. and, eventually i want to move it to take over integratetech.net without being a directory down . . . but, not until i fiddle first. and, at some point i want to talk about the installation process and why it could be quite daunting for a newbie.

anyway, i just wanted to pat myself on the back for installing the MediaWiki tool and even updating the little logo. if only i had some artistic skills to match my desire.

EDIT - UPDATE: i think i fixed the subdomain issue. oh, and i have already found how easy it is for a random poster to just post anything unrelated on the wikitext site (thanks Dave). ;~) i really need to learn how to manage the mediawiki site, but there’s much i have yet to figure out and understand behind the scenes.

The key standard and performance indicator being addressed this week comes from the ISTE NETS for Teachers as follow:
IV. ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION.
Teachers apply technology to facilitate a variety of effective assessment and evaluation strategies. Teachers:

1. apply technology in assessing student learning of subject matter using a variety of assessment techniques.

This session covers a few different types of assessment tools that can be enhanced with technology. First, I had us look at authentic assessments. Specifically, I choose to introduce you to rubrics and the rubric making site: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/. The benefit of this site is that it is free to use and it makes the development of rubrics very easy for anyone with access to the Internet. They even have many models to help you get started on all sorts of academic projects. I knew about this site because I worked on the Rubistar project when I was at the University of Kansas. If I hadn’t worked on this project and relied on a Google search, I might have searched for “rubric” or “rubric maker” and in both cases the number 1 hit turns out to be Rubistar, so I likely would have found this resource anyway. I did explore many other rubric making sites, but none had the same ease of use and none offered the same level of support and online tutorials.

Another type of authentic assessment that can be enhanced with technology is the portfolio. Portfolios turned out to be a larger topic than I could fit into this session. So my approach to this introduction was to stick to looking at how portfolios can be useful in the assessment of student learning since that is the NETS standard that is the focus this lesson. Therefore, we are just taking a cursory overview of one angle of the topic.