tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81355392012-02-16T05:26:17.170-07:00Rick West's (BYU) thoughts about how people learn, and how we can help them learn more and learn better. Included are ideas about Instructional Technology, ISD, educational psychology, and the like.Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.comBlogger1121100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1164209916695932972006-11-22T08:26:00.000-07:002006-11-22T08:38:36.760-07:00

Yesterday in class we discussed social network analysis and how it emphasizes the connections existing in a network (community). One of the critiques of the method that was raised was that connections may not mean the same as relationships. I have seen this in the community of youth that I have been observing. Sometimes we see that it appears the youth have relationships with each other --but

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1163865887670386322006-11-18T09:00:00.000-07:002006-11-18T09:04:47.690-07:00

In my literature review on learning communities that I am doing for Dr. Reeves' course, I discuss several ways of conceptualizing what a learning community is, including a functional concept--or rather, that every member of the community is working towards the same function or end goal. One example might be a learning community organized at work or a classroom community, clearly organized for a

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1160617089390208492006-10-11T19:35:00.000-06:002006-10-11T19:38:09.400-06:00

If you are at AECT and happened to read about our BlogTracks presentation, you might have noticed I have this blog listed.This is no longer the right blog for that presentation! My BlogTracks blog is http://rickwest.edublogs.org.In the words of the great blogger, Obi-wan Kenobi:This is not the blog you're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along! :-)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1159392515245502012006-09-27T15:16:00.000-06:002006-09-27T15:28:35.260-06:00

As I was reading on page 156 of Etienne Wenger's Communities of Practice book about negotiating pardigmatic trajectories, and how these can be reified milestones or actual people, it dawned on me that Wenger was talking, in layman's terms, about how people need a model for how to perform, achieve, and become. This is something I believe strongly, and I have written up some research about the

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1158680866316565262006-09-19T09:35:00.000-06:002006-09-19T09:47:46.330-06:00

I haven't been posting here as much as I should for our class. OK, I haven't posted here at all yet! I'm going to have to come up with some method for reminding myself to do this because it's kind of out of my regular flow of homework, so I need to somehow remind myself to regularly stop and post on this blog and not get lost in simply analyzing the literature.OK, first to define my learning

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1158085282313701552006-09-12T12:14:00.000-06:002006-09-12T12:21:22.326-06:00

As I posted last time, my "official" blog where I do most of my thinking about educational research has been moved to http://rickwest.edublogs.org.I LOVE Edublogs. What a great community of educational bloggers!Speaking of community, I am now in a "Community as a Metaphor for Learning" course with Dr. Julie Moore and Christa .... For this class, we are each maintaining a blog connecting our

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1155317437018941822006-08-11T11:24:00.000-06:002006-08-11T11:30:37.030-06:00

Well, since the day I entered the blogosphere and set up shop at Blogger as my first home, I knew this day would come. I'm packing my thoughts, and having them moved over to my home at http://rickwest.edublogs.org. Why? For several reasons. One, I love Wordpress and how it seems to stay a little more innovative and contemporary. Second, I like the edublogs community, just a bunch of educators

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1145629428522948752006-04-21T08:21:00.001-06:002006-04-21T08:23:48.533-06:00

Somebody would think of designing something like this, a widget that looks like a detailed spreadsheet or important document so you can bring it up at a touch of a button to cover up that you have been goofing off at work.Sheesh! What ever happened to honest pay for honest work?http://www.tuaw.com/2006/04/21/widget-watch-hard-at-work/

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1140748525118997922006-02-23T19:23:00.000-07:002006-02-23T19:35:25.156-07:00

It's not at all unusual anymore to see advertisements for companies who will write your English 101 paper for you for a fee. But I was surprised to come across a website today for a company that will actually write your dissertation for you. And for only $10 a page!I had several thoughts about this:• Thought 1: Can this really be possible? Do they collect the data themselves? Do the analysis? Or

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1140709043690198332006-02-23T08:35:00.000-07:002006-02-23T08:37:23.700-07:00

I filed this Fox Trot comic away under "affordances of a design". It gave me a good chuckle. It reminded me of a story I heard of someone thinking the CD-drive loader was a coffee cup holder! It just goes to remind us as designers that if your design affords a certain action, you can bet somebody will use it for that action!http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2006/02/23/

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1140546044561711022006-02-21T11:16:00.000-07:002006-02-21T11:20:44.573-07:00

I just thought of a little design adjustment that could really save me time every day. I use Gmail, and I love how you can view the first few words of your email without having to click on the email. So if my friend answers my email with a "OK." or a "Got it, thanks," then I don't have to open the email because I'll be able to read the message in the standard inbox view in Gmail.What would be

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1136852196927123982006-01-09T17:14:00.000-07:002006-01-09T17:16:36.936-07:00

Forget, the CES, every mac fan is more excited about Steve Jobs' keynote and revelation of what the new, killer Apple products are.Fun comic from Foxtrot today about the excitement surrounding a Jobnote!http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2006/01/09/I'll be keeping a keen ear peeled tomorrow to catch all the news!

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1136660677884820622006-01-07T11:56:00.000-07:002006-01-07T12:04:37.886-07:00

More on the quick rise and fall of technologies. I love Slashdot for its ability to inform me of technology news faster than traditional news outlets. I then learned about Digg two days ago. Now some have proclaimed Digg to be Slashdot's demise! My response was, "already?"Steve Mallett, in an article getting "digged" quite a lot lately, gives some reasons why Digg is superior to Slashdot:"Hidden

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1136660196759509832006-01-07T11:40:00.000-07:002006-01-07T11:56:36.813-07:00

Man! Everytime I start to get a good media collection going, the media of choice changes. I still have some of my favorite movies on VHS, and am grateful you can still find a VCR in some stores. DVD is a superior format, of course, so I've been happily buying new DVDs --- alot lately, as we don't have cable right now---and now feel pretty satisfied with our movie collection. Even more, my wife

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1133825583058059382005-12-05T16:07:00.000-07:002005-12-05T16:33:03.100-07:00

Do you ever feel that we're regressing instead of progressing in the move for more open discussion of scholarly ideas? As if the obscenely long journal review process wasn't bad enough ...My former school, BYU, I guess is in the middle of some controversy because a physics professor is doing research claiming that the WTC towers fell because of controlled demolition and not from the planes. This

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1133374410848013832005-11-30T11:11:00.000-07:002005-11-30T11:13:30.866-07:00

More reports today about scientists' efforts to create fuel from chicken fat:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051130/ap_on_sc/chicken_fat_fuelDon't they get it? They're barking up the wrong tree! What we need is an invention to convert HUMAN fat into fuel. Then we wouldn't have to rely on foreign fuel imports at all! :-)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1132409605722542952005-11-19T07:06:00.000-07:002005-11-19T07:13:25.810-07:00

It's so encouraging to know what really drives our systems of higher education! This morning I got up bright and early to try and get some extra work done at school, and once I arrived on campus realized it was GAMEDAY. (If you don't read this blog often, I should mention I'm a new student at the University of Georgia, where they take their football, seriously).So I did, miraculously, find some

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1132247252842912602005-11-17T10:03:00.000-07:002005-11-17T10:07:32.856-07:00

I'm co-authoring a very short blurb for TechTrends on the possible impact systemic change theories could have on distance learning, or vice versa. Any ideas out there about this? I'd love to hear them as we're in the thinking stage of this right now.Here are some thoughts I've had ...- The impact of alternative degree-granting DLinstitutions on change in higher education (and K-12for that matter)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1131658273092753682005-11-10T14:27:00.000-07:002005-11-10T14:31:13.106-07:00

Well, I haven't had the most productive day today, but it's comforting that whatever I've done will hopefully be more useful than this!"The MIT Musical Theatre Group will be staging a musical version of the Star Wars Trilogy (Eps. IV through VI). There will be tap-dancing stormtroopers, singing Ewoks, etc."

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1131546099435418162005-11-09T07:20:00.000-07:002005-11-09T07:21:39.446-07:00

Here's a fun video blog leading the way-- a group of students in New Jersey.http://www.starw.org/acrc/

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1130952151372474722005-11-02T10:14:00.000-07:002005-11-02T10:22:31.390-07:00

A friend of mine, Rich Culatta, just vented his frustrations over Google:A year ago I thought Google was the answer to all of the world’s problems, today I’m changing my mind. I have two major frustrations with Google. The first is that they do not release any of their products for Mac users. I would pay to have a copy of Picasa for Mac if they would just port it over. Perhaps they think that

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1129827472577030592005-10-20T10:49:00.000-06:002005-10-20T10:57:52.576-06:00

One of the exciting :-) aspects of AECT this year is the impending arrival of Hurricane Wilma this weekend. Some say Saturday, some say Monday. Some say complete destruction of Florida, some say only light rain.Who do we believe?In my carpool, we're taking day by day. we're not leaving today, and whether we leave tomorrow may depend on tonight's nightly news. We definitely do not want to pull a

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1129826985636327862005-10-20T10:43:00.000-06:002005-10-20T10:49:45.643-06:00

I'm here in Orlando at the Association for Educational Communications Technology conference. For some reason (perhaps the fact that this is a conference on Ed technology?) I thought there would be wireless. In fact, wireless is spotty, so my blogging this week may be spotty.And then when I get home, I won't remember anything that was said, so I won't have anything to post about! Oye!In reality,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1129133977683518132005-10-12T09:59:00.000-06:002005-10-12T10:19:37.793-06:00

Just writing the title to this post almost made me gag--it seems we have too much discussion in the blogosphere already about Wikipedia and whether it is or isn't a credible resource.But here's some more thought to add to the conversation.I found it interesting this past week or two that there's been a heated debate on the EdTech listserv about this issue. This listserv is mostly read by K-12

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1128601357719465542005-10-06T06:18:00.000-06:002005-10-06T06:22:37.726-06:00

Everyone who know me, knows I love Mac. When we talk about my reasons why, they often counter with, "Yeah, but, you can't get very much software for a Mac."That may have been true once, but not anymore.Richard Miller on theBYU Mac User Group listserv I belong to recently posted three great sites for finding free Mac software:http://www.freemacware.com> http://www.coolosxapps.net/> http://

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1128433698174319892005-10-04T07:42:00.000-06:002005-10-04T07:48:18.180-06:00

This if to anyone reading this blog from Utah, from which I recently moved to Georgia. I was reflecting on something really random this morning: I'm sure glad I don't have to hear CEO Dell Schanze's (of Totally Awesome Computers) annoying screech on the radio every time I get in the car about how his computers are "tooootally awesome!"That is an unexplicable new luxury of having left the state!

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1128375665765062842005-10-03T15:38:00.000-06:002005-10-03T15:41:05.770-06:00

Ironic twist of life: Today's Calvin and Hobbes' reprint on ucomics.com is a nice companion to the inevitable clash in America over the new Bush nomination to the Supreme Court. In this strip, Calvin tells Hobbes that we all argue and shout at each other because it keeps the monotony away.Can't we all just get along? Or agree to disagree? :-)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1128363359247315472005-10-03T12:12:00.000-06:002005-10-03T12:15:59.253-06:00

As a consumer, I love it when two companies work their tails off to beat each other--it just means better tools for me to use! But I think the battle between Yahoo and Google is starting to get old. Turns out Yahoo now wants to do an online digital library too, just like Google. Do we really need two online digital libraries of everything ever printed? No, we don't. One would be nice, and I've

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1127845248740518102005-09-27T12:13:00.000-06:002005-09-27T12:20:48.813-06:00

Okay, let's flex the power of the supportive blogosphere and see if we can help Rick out. I'm having a couple of problems, and I don't know how to fix them:1. On this blog, you can't have trackbacks naturally through blogger, so I installed a plugin through HaloScan to allow readers to trackback to me. However, I just realized today that it doesn't email me when people leave comments, like

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1127343512493132722005-09-21T16:09:00.000-06:002005-09-21T16:58:32.530-06:00

Rumors are spreading that Microsoft is planning to completely overhaul their new interface for the Office series of programs. Great. That's the last thing I need is to have a "sharp learning curve" for the technologies I NEED to function every hour of every day.Woah. Did I just say that? Can there be such a thing as techno-addiction because apparently I've got it.As I was thinking about this new

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1126113862839234292005-09-07T11:22:00.000-06:002005-09-07T11:24:22.846-06:00

Just found out that the video archives of the Syllabus 2005 keynote addresses are available online. You can view them here:http://msite.sonicfoundry.com/mediasite/viewer/?cid=5afbae3e-74cc-4bc7-a66c-8375f5410682I plan to check them out, when I have time. The problem, however, is they are only available in video stream format. Hey, Syllabus! Ever thought of a podcast? :-)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1124827254539681552005-08-23T14:00:00.000-06:002005-08-23T14:00:54.550-06:00

File this (which I read on Slashdot) in the "sometimes scientific advances AREN'T advances" department: Ryan O'Rourke writes "According to a study led by Dr. Sam A. Deadwyler and published by the Public Library of Science Biology, a new drug called CX717 developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals has been shown to reverse the biological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation. Tests performed on

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1124199787705130332005-08-16T07:40:00.000-06:002005-08-16T07:43:07.713-06:00

Slashdot reports today that Google might be thinking about providing free WIFI to everybody. One more piece of evidence that Google understands the new information society. By spending the money to provide free WIFI to everyone, they would increase, exponentially, the access people have to Google's services! Plus, what wonderful PR--who won't love Google when you can open up your laptop anywhere

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1119547397921633702005-06-23T11:00:00.000-06:002005-06-23T11:23:17.933-06:00

Joel Galbraith at Penn State started a blog, it appears, to ask and debate one post (hopefully he'll continue blogging afterwards! :-). It's a good discussion. Joel gives this background to the discussion:"I got a question today from a friend asking what the most "innovative teaching methods in higher education" were these days. I had to stop and think, and felt a bit frustrated that I had no

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1119546014582787792005-06-23T10:49:00.000-06:002005-06-23T11:00:14.610-06:00

I heard about Odeo a while back -- a work in project designed to make podcasting easy and free for everybody, much like blogging is. I signed up on their list to be notified about the project when the beta was ready.Well, it's ready! Got the email today.I only had a minute to look over the site, and it seems to be fairly easy to navigate and use. However, it doesn't have quite the slick and easy

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1118379127613725632005-06-09T15:31:00.000-06:002005-06-09T22:52:27.900-06:00

Sometimes people ask me, "how do I become a better blogger or increase my readership?" My first answer is, "Why are you asking me? Have you looked at my blog lately? :-)"Here's a few tips from Sharon Housley about how to be an effective Blogger. Thanks to Mike Barbour, and a bunch of other people to tipping us off to this. Here are the tips in brief: 1.) Stay on topic. 2.) Stay

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1118284098112052562005-06-08T20:26:00.000-06:002005-06-08T20:28:18.116-06:00

Well, I know things changed quickly on the internet, but ...I saw this today:"thought I'd give the old podcasting a whirl"Old? OLD?Man, maybe I'm getting old. I'm losing my memory or something. I thought podcasting was up and coming!

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1116178555285044032005-05-15T11:32:00.000-06:002005-05-15T11:35:55.290-06:00

There's been some pub lately about Windows' Longhorn incorporating a Red Screen of Death to mean REALLY bad errors, to separate these from the mere Blue Screen of Death errors. As KairosNews reports, "Chilling," before going on to say,My guess is that this is a bad move. The Blue Screen of Death isn't nearly as alarming; that blue tone is almost peaceful. Red--well, do we really want people

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1116093649556746952005-05-14T12:00:00.000-06:002005-05-15T08:49:24.153-06:00

Ahhh. Finally I feel validated for not being the blogger I should be. This from Brian Lamb:"My great deficiency as a weblogger is that I never write the posts I really want to write. If I feel genuinely engaged with a topic, I defer the actual writing of it endlessly -- mulling it over, adding elements, seeing linkages elsewhere"That is exactly how I feel! The most exciting and (hopefully)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1116084902388162802005-05-14T09:34:00.000-06:002005-05-14T09:38:34.650-06:00

An interesting idea from Don Ely here at PIDT:"Any statement of philosophy regarding instructional technology is tentative."He is also commenting on the fact that the only constancy in our field is change. How exciting ... and how stressful at the same time! This is a field where it is constantly important to be up to date, involved in the recent conversation, and working towards new thoughts.

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1116084494822322922005-05-14T09:16:00.000-06:002005-05-14T09:28:14.830-06:00

Well, I am currently at the 2005 PIDT conference (Professors of Instructional Design Technology) in Estes Park, Colorado. This is really what a conference should be, in my opinion. There is no schedule -- the concurrent sessions are decided on the fly as people decide they want to group together to discuss certain issues. We're also spending about half of the time hiking, horseback riding,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1114643810991974882005-04-27T17:12:00.000-06:002005-04-27T17:16:50.996-06:00

Well, I haven't posted in a long time -- finals will do that to you. Speaking of finals, in my human computer interface design course, one of the questions on the final was to consider what the design challenges will be for future interface designers. I thought this was a very difficult question to consider -- it's always difficult to predict the future-- but here was what my stab at this

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1112212345630457792005-03-30T12:31:00.000-07:002005-03-30T12:52:48.440-07:00

This was bound to happen--and has probably happened many times without being published in an article. Will points to an article in the Rutland Herald about a principle banning a blogging site from being used at school. Why?1) "because blogging is not an educational use of school computers."2) "he found the prospect of students putting information on the Internet, potentially available to

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1110477139744896902005-03-10T10:46:00.000-07:002005-03-10T10:52:19.746-07:00

Just saw a post on Edugadget about a cool use of Google Maps to create walking tours about places. An example is Jon Udell's screencast, and a recipe for doing this is available on Engadget. This is really cool. You need to have to have the right gear, such as a GPS device and some scripting ability, and I'm not sure how difficult that will be. It would be great if teachers could create tours to

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1110415038845209172005-03-09T17:33:00.000-07:002005-03-09T17:37:18.846-07:00

Cogdogblog has this great photo about where all conference bags gohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/6054905/SOOOOOOOOOO true. I just got back from SITE and have one more worthless bag and worthless propaganda to trash. They even gave me a water bottle. What is that supposed to be for? Who needs a water bottle? Who needs another bag? The only thing I needed in the bag was the conference

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1110304067816461242005-03-08T10:41:00.000-07:002005-03-08T10:47:47.816-07:00

Whoa! I knew the first few years of teaching were tough--they were for me--but not this tough. Edutopia reports that nearly half of all teachers leave the profession within five years. Half! Wow. This begs the question of what we can do for teachers to have a more positive experience. Edutopia suggests that first year mentoring programs help. I'm sure more pay would help too :-). I also think

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109977046831470842005-03-04T15:50:00.000-07:002005-03-04T15:57:26.833-07:00

I presented with Charles (Graham) and Geoff (Wright) today about our implementation of blogs and wikis in our instructional technology for preservice teachers course. We've been to several presentations on blogs and wikis here at SITE and have been somewhat disappointed so far because they have been very basic and focused on questions like "what is rss?", "what is a blog", "what is a wiki?" and

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109976619059455202005-03-04T13:51:00.000-07:002005-03-04T15:50:19.060-07:00

SITE05: Platform decisions, PC or Mac?Anyone who knows me knows I love my Mac. So I was interested in a presentation about a college struggling with the decision about whether to buy/support macs or PCs. They had PC people and Mac people work together to evaluate the advantages of both platforms. Here's some of their findings:ServersMac servers were more reliable. One person claimed to run with

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109957326542174102005-03-04T10:14:00.000-07:002005-03-04T10:28:46.543-07:00

Yesterday was the poster session here at SITE, and they have an excellent model for poster sessions that I WISH AECT WOULD DO (did I get anyone's attention?). At SITE, all of the poster presentations are the same day, same time, in the same room. The benefit of this is more people come to your poster presentation. At AECT, I rarely go to poster presentations because they are often not the

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109876408010145022005-03-03T11:45:00.000-07:002005-03-03T12:00:08.013-07:00

I'll reflect briefly on our presentation yesterday (Dr. Charles Graham and I). I'd post up the conference paper here, but I can't get my server to work while I'm here in Phoenix for some reason.Anyway, it was a roundtable reporting a project Charles and I worked on together last year that will be published in Educational Technology in a few months. Basically, we asked instructional designers on

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109872189789070252005-03-03T10:47:00.000-07:002005-03-03T10:49:49.793-07:00

SITE05: "From Text to Video: The Evolution of Video Case Study for Teacher Professional Development"Pamela Redmond, Univ. of San FranciscoI was interested in this session because as we have tried to help preservice teachers get the vision of how to integrate technology into their teaching, we have found that the use of models is very important. We have used both video case studies, and “live”

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109872040104754142005-03-03T10:07:00.000-07:002005-03-03T10:47:20.106-07:00

SITE05: Christopher Sessums, Univ. of Florida "Examining the teaching styles of online instructors: A proposed research study of online instructors at the university of Florida."Quoted Marcel Proust"The only real voyage of discovery ... consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes."How do we help teachers to think differently about education online, so they realize that teaching

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109797624178415092005-03-02T13:57:00.000-07:002005-03-02T14:07:04.180-07:00

Paul Allen of Infobase Ventures wrote an interesting column in connect-utah.com this week. He made the point that we all knew, but it's good to be reminded:"The paradox for knowledge workers is this: the more time you spend in gaining knowledge, the less time you have to apply it. The reverse is also true. We must strike a proper balance between learning and doing. Most people have their nose to

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109796898477747392005-03-02T13:51:00.000-07:002005-03-02T13:54:58.480-07:00

Just for fun, if you can't live without your daily comics (and I can't :-) then try comicalert.com, a service that allows you to pick your favorite comics and generate a RSS feed for you. I also like that it doesn't break copyright laws, because instead of sending the comic directly to your news reader, it sends a link each day to comic's website, where you can view or ignore their advertising.

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109795588394757232005-03-02T13:20:00.000-07:002005-03-02T13:33:08.396-07:00

Just found out about Podcast Alley from Paul Allen. Looks like it provides links to the most popular podcasts on the 'Net. Now that's useful, because I don't have time to listen to everything. Now we need someone within AECT to put together a site like this for stuff related to instructional technology and design. I was asked by somebody the other day what podcasts I'd recommend that were related

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109783596164218402005-03-02T09:56:00.000-07:002005-03-02T10:13:16.166-07:00

I'm at the SITE conference (Society for information technology and teacher education) in Phoenix AZ. Being from Utah, this was a convenient and easy conference to attend. I went last year, and had a good experience, so I submitted some of the projects I've been working on. I'll be presenting later today, Friday and Saturday with Dr. Charles Graham and Geoff Wright. More on that later.As is my

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109614609953866072005-02-28T11:14:00.000-07:002005-02-28T11:16:49.956-07:00

As David prompted me, it really was time to enable trackback on this blog. Unfortunately, Blogger does not offer this service, so I had to install HaloScan, a free commenting and trackback service. It's easy to do, but when you comment on this blog, it will pop up their window, instead of blogger's with some annoying advertising underneath the commenting window. At least one of these ads, I felt,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109614321835172772005-02-28T11:12:00.000-07:002005-02-28T11:12:01.836-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109608160882406622005-02-28T09:22:00.000-07:002005-02-28T09:31:06.046-07:00

And it's not me saying it:Virginia Governor Mark Warner:""We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work,"Bill Gates""America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109188397183177402005-02-23T12:45:00.000-07:002005-02-23T12:53:17.186-07:00

This is something I've been wanting to blog about but have been pretty busy lately. You know, that thesis thing that everyone says is important ...Recently there's been some buzz about Google's allocation of employee time, the "70/20/10" split as reported by EWeek. Basically, employees spend 70% of their time working on main projects, 20% of their time working on adjacent projects (like Froogle,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1109173335326006272005-02-23T08:30:00.000-07:002005-02-23T08:42:15.326-07:00

Mobile PC magazine just released their list of the top 100 gadgets of all time. Of course, like all top 100 lists (don't we have too many of those now a days?) the decisions are completely arbitrary and subjective. But like other lists, it's also fun to see where your favorite gadget stacks up. Included on the list is the abacus, iPod, walkman, pez dispenser, scissors, stapler, TiVo, and others.

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1108749797977246862005-02-18T10:56:00.000-07:002005-02-18T11:03:17.976-07:00

Well, Google's done it again! I'm already a huge fan of their search engine, scholarly search, news alerts, email service, and other innovations.Add Google maps to that now.I've always been loyal to Mapquest, but I tried out Google maps for the first time today and I'm never going back. Here's why:- If you type in the city a little wrong, Google searches for what you might have meant. I've gotten

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1108582828437542762005-02-16T12:35:00.000-07:002005-02-16T12:46:52.540-07:00

Ever wondered how your tangle of contacts/thoughts/ideas related to each other? Now there's a tool called Flickr Graph that dynamically shows you how your Flickr images relate to each other. To quote:" Flickr Graph is an application that explores the social relationships inside flickr.com. It makes use of the classic attraction-repulsion algorithm for graphs."This is really quite wild. You

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1107807206875567892005-02-07T13:07:00.000-07:002005-02-07T13:13:26.876-07:00

There is a lot of blogging out there about new technologies, written for information technologists. There is also a lot of blogging for teachers about how to integrate technologies that are already known. Finally it seems that somebody has put together a blog geared towards reviewing the latest, most cutting-edge tools available for teachers, with some discussion about application. The site is

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1107446305392109032005-02-03T08:46:00.000-07:002005-02-03T08:58:25.393-07:00

I thought this was funny. Wired magazine reports that iPods are wildly popular among Microsoft employees -- and that as much as 80 percent of the employees who use mp3 players (which is most of them) use iPods. And Mr. Gates and the administration hate it. "So popular is the iPod, executives are increasingly sending out memos frowning on its use." iPods have also taken over our campus here at

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1107272699940591102005-02-01T08:34:00.000-07:002005-02-01T08:44:59.940-07:00

Well it does ... or it can. Red Herring announced the other day that MIT Media Lab says they can build a home PC for $100. To quote: The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1107271841388240752005-02-01T08:28:00.000-07:002005-02-01T08:30:41.390-07:00

Want some cool software on a student (i.e. nonexistent) budget? I just heard that some good folks at my university (BYU) have put together a starving student software collection of free, but useful, software programs. You can download it at http://uug.byu.edu/ftp/sss/

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106851956776772932005-01-27T11:50:00.000-07:002005-01-27T11:52:36.776-07:00

Remind me again why Encyclopedia Brittanica is so much more credible than wikipedia? Especially after a 12-year-old finds several errors in their 15th edition? Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1456119,00.html

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106851836893203692005-01-27T09:38:00.000-07:002005-01-27T11:50:36.893-07:00

I really enjoyed this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, reprinted today by ucomics: http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1994/01/27/ I often have felt like Calvin. I have a pretty good verbal memory, and it was easy for me to memorize words, especially, and numbers to regurgitate on tests. But did that mean I learned anything? No, not necessarily. Learning has to be more than known facts, dates, and

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106411619488878272005-01-22T09:32:00.000-07:002005-01-22T09:33:39.486-07:00

I must have missed this before (How did that happen), but I was glad to find today a list of references of blog-related publications. Here it is: http://blogresearch.com/ref.htm

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106237041673362962005-01-20T08:48:00.000-07:002005-01-20T09:04:01.673-07:00

Do you ever feel that things in the blogosphere move too quickly to really digest? Maybe even if I had all day to mull over what I read in my morning jog around the Internet ... For example, I used to be a journalist for the Idaho Falls Post Register and Logan Herald Journal. I also love to blog. So I have some interest in the debate over blogs vs. traditional journalism. I read what Will

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106064186663872782005-01-18T08:56:00.000-07:002005-01-18T09:03:06.663-07:00

A while back, CogDogBlog reported that you can take your favorite (?) piece of spam and make a shirt out of it! At least that junk is good for something ... On the topic of spam, I have had much less trouble with spam in my gmail accounts than I do with my Yahoo accounts, although it's gotten a little worse lately. What is the experience of others? What email accounts handle spam the best? What

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106063196877969762005-01-18T08:36:00.000-07:002005-01-18T08:46:36.876-07:00

This post is especially directed towards my fellow classmates in Dr. Graham's HCI class. I recently saw an article by Jakob Nielsen where he sampled 60 usability guidelines from the 944 created for military designs in the 1970s and 1980s. He felt that 90 % of these guidelines were still valid. He concludes that: The more permanent guidelines tend to be those that are the most abstracted from

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1106062310885099132005-01-18T08:26:00.000-07:002005-01-18T08:31:50.886-07:00

D'Arcy tips us off to Keyword Assistant, a small plugin for iPhoto that makes it quick and easy to add keywords to photos. D'Arcy makes an observation that really hit me: I found it odd when I spent more time tagging web pages that I might look at possibly once or twice in the future, than on the photos I take of my family that I hope will remain valuable forever. Guilty as charged, D'Arcy. I

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1105981536359528922005-01-17T09:57:00.000-07:002005-01-17T10:05:36.360-07:00

Now here's a good idea from Dave Gilbert through Will Richardson! Any bets on how long it will take this to happen? Based on how quickly podcasting is taking off, I'm betting not long: Podilicious is an imagined social search engine and clips manager for the Podosphere. The design of Podilicious is based on successful social software such as del.icio.us (its namesake), Flickr, and Furl. Cool,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1105631684739468162005-01-13T08:47:00.000-07:002005-01-13T08:54:44.740-07:00

From Will Richardson comes this thought: What’s even more ironic (scary? sad?) is that we have an educational system that still asks students to basically try to learn independently (they work collaboratively but seldom learn) and use that learning to impress a very limited audience of teachers. Meanwhile, what the real world expects are students that are able to truly learn through collaboration

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1105459440772196832005-01-11T08:53:00.000-07:002005-01-11T09:04:00.773-07:00

Finally! Someone has said what needed to be said long ago. There is too much blogging ... about blogging! I love to blog, but the blog is not the answer to every educational dilemma, and I'd like to read more discussion about other educational technologies. But it seems all the really interesting educational bloggers talk about blogging, podcasting, rss, open learning, and the like. Blogging is

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1104938553775812442005-01-05T08:21:00.000-07:002005-01-05T08:22:33.776-07:00

From Pew Internet and American Life Project and by way of Will Richardson comes these statistics: 38% of people know what a blog is 27% of people read blogs 12% have posted to blogs 7% of people own blogs 5% of people use RSS

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1104938311009040152005-01-05T08:16:00.000-07:002005-01-05T08:18:31.010-07:00

For all the hoopla that Microsoft has put out lately in their battle to dethrone Google's search engine, Vistorville Intelligence (whoever they are) reported that in a study of how employees at different companies use the internet, 66% of Microsoft employees used Google as their search engine while only 20% use MSN Search. Who knows if this study is legitimate, but it's funny. I'd believe it --

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1104853237399674892005-01-04T08:40:00.000-07:002005-01-04T09:19:33.986-07:00

News.com reported last week that internet use has cut into our social time, more or less making us less social because we spend about three hours a day (is that all?) online. The researchers quoted in the article that According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1104853132351691392005-01-04T08:33:00.000-07:002005-01-04T08:38:52.350-07:00

Here's a little positive peer pressure to encourage you to blog (although if you're reading this, you probably already blog anyway). The BBC reports that blog readership is up 58% this last year and six million Americans now use aggregators. I believe that most of the rest of America should be! The article also reports that most bloggers are, likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1104366215333210532004-12-29T17:14:00.000-07:002004-12-29T17:23:55.036-07:00

I hope you sense the sarcasm in my title because this is one of those "We already knew that" kind of things. Take this for what it is, a simple online poll, but eSchoolNews just sent me their newsletter and reported the results to last week's online poll question, which was "Grade your students' ability to choose reliable sources for their online research." The results are not unexpected, but

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1102541500893571422004-12-08T14:28:00.000-07:002004-12-08T14:31:40.893-07:00

I love when competing companies drive the prices down and the performance up, benefiting all of us consumers. Wasn't it just a few months ago that Yahoo was only giving me something like 6 megabytes of email space? I can't even remember anymore what my old account was because it seems that email space A.G. (After Gmail) is just skyrocketing. When Google released Gmail, Yahoo jumped my account up

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1102520821768387182004-12-08T08:26:00.000-07:002004-12-08T08:47:01.766-07:00

Whoa! Long time, no post. End of semester finals will do that to you. I couldn't keep quiet, however, when I read Nate Lowell's post about getting rid of paper journals as we know them. He's really taken an ax to that sacred cow. And it's about time. Others have talked about this kind of thing before, but there needs to be a continued discussion to update the awful printed journal tradition.

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1100375945682722042004-11-13T13:54:00.000-07:002004-11-13T12:59:05.683-07:00

Well, ok, so Microsoft is only claiming to own part of the internet. But it's still pretty funny! Read more here about how "Microsoft is claiming intellectual property rights on over 130 Internet protocols that make up the very core of the Internet infrastructure." What an awful thought! Can you imagine the wall we'd hit if Microsoft could control any part of the internet? Honestly, Microsoft

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1099762229020766302004-11-06T10:29:00.000-07:002004-11-06T10:30:29.020-07:00

The debate sometimes rages about the value of stated objectives in instructional design, but I think we can all agree that fuzzy and poorly defined objectives are worthless! To back this up, get a chuckle from Dilbert: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20041106.html

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1099681166798994212004-11-05T11:35:00.000-07:002004-11-05T11:59:26.796-07:00

I was shocked to read on James Farmer's blog that his university adminstration has banned him from using weblogs and wikis and required him to use a standard CMS. This is awful for two reasons: 1) How is a university supposed to be able to progress in knowledge if they do not allow faculty to research and experiment with new innovations? 2) Anytime you standardize something, quality is lost. I

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1099452901971280472004-11-02T20:28:00.000-07:002004-11-02T20:35:01.970-07:00

Well, a recent study vindicated what Macaphobics have known ever since OS X came out: The Apple operating system is simply the best out there. The mi2G Intelligence unit concluded that the safest and most secure operating system are the open source BSD (who?) and Apple's OS. And what about Windows? Need you ask ... near the bottom with Linux.

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1098824761849465372004-10-26T15:01:00.000-06:002004-10-26T15:07:17.176-06:00

Ed reflects on a recent class discussion on the famous Clark/Kozma media and methods debate. This discussion followed similar discussions on the debates in our field about Addie vs. other models, Constructivism vs. Behaviorism vs. Cognitivism, etc. Exasperated, Ed says: "I am still not understanding why it is that many people are still trying to divide the sea and call one side water and the

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1097785304602994282004-10-14T14:17:00.000-06:002004-10-14T14:21:44.603-06:00

This post is mostly for Charles and to anyone else interested in computer-supported collaboration (by the way, if you are going to BYU, make sure you consider taking Charles's Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning course next semester). Anyway, Christopher Allen has a nice summary of the history of the terms associated with technology-supported interaction or collaboration. He begins with

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1097089273051077312004-10-06T13:49:00.000-06:002004-10-06T13:01:13.053-06:00

Oh, this is rich! Microsoft's Steve Ballmer said in a press conference in London that most IPod music is "stolen," and he basically tried to bill Microsoft as the good guys in corporate America and Apple as the villains trying to destroy corporate America. At least that is the way Andy McCue reported it. Well, if for nothing else, Microsoft's always good for a laugh! :-)

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1097018198385114362004-10-05T16:19:00.000-06:002004-10-05T17:16:38.386-06:00

For those who are reading my blog who attended the IT Institute with me, this is old news. For others, there is a lot of chatter on the Internet now about RML: Rip, Mix, and Learn. The basic idea is that with the Internet, a good model for learning is to rip stuff that's out there (or in other words, grab it, collect, convert it so you have it, whatever it is), mix it (which means personalize it,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1097014516812766692004-10-05T16:09:00.000-06:002004-10-05T16:19:39.116-06:00

Well, if you like blogging, and if you like IPods, you'll love Podcasting. You can post audio files, which are sent by rss feeds to all your buddies' computers. They can then download your daily, or weekly, or whatever, audio file into their IPods and listen to it. If you want to read more, here's a news article, and here's Adam Curry's blog, where he posts a daily audio essay. How cool would

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1096691312801226362004-10-01T22:24:00.000-06:002004-10-01T22:28:32.800-06:00

Back to a favorite soapbox of mine, an article by wired.com quotes Tim Berners-Lee as saying a major hurdle to the collaborative internet he always envisioned is standards. To quote the article, "The inventor of the World Wide Web told a technology conference on Wednesday that making the web more useful hinges on a familiar challenge: Getting the players behind the technology to agree on

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1095705564613853322004-09-20T13:25:00.000-06:002004-09-20T12:39:24.613-06:00

Then you should be. Not only is Firefox the safest way to surf the Internet, not only is EVERYBODY doing it (one million downloads in 4 days), and not only is it NOT Internet Explorer (a good enough reason there), but the Firefox designers have added two really cool features to the browser: 1) rss feeds and 2) wikalong. The rss feeds feature is the ability at the push of a button to subscribe to

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1095274863628979012004-09-15T13:55:00.000-06:002004-09-15T13:13:39.210-06:00

In my last post, I refer to a new collaboration tool called Web Collaborator. In my post I ask if anyone wants to try it out with me. Theresa from the United Kingdom suggest I get something started, and she might participate. So I did. I created a project at Web Collaborator, creating a list of differences between blogs and other forms of CSCL tools. This is something I am interested in because

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1095223535388526772004-09-14T22:40:00.000-06:002004-09-15T12:30:39.763-06:00

There's a new collaboration tool that I heard about from Will Richardson that looks pretty interesting— Web Collaborator. Best part is it appears to be free. Here's what it claims to do: "Web Collaborator coordinates collaborations automatically, keeping backups of every revision ever made to the project, letting you see who made the changes, and allowing you to focus on the work instead of

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1095194198799980722004-09-14T14:29:00.000-06:002004-09-14T14:36:38.800-06:00

First, my apologies to Charles and everyone in his 692r class for being quite off-topic in this blog, but this is the place where I think and store things I want to think more on later. This falls in the "compatibility" department. Recently Rich posted a neat tip about Jabber as a way of chatting with ALL your contacts, regardless of whether their instant messenging souls belong to AOL, Yahoo

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1095099766295102542004-09-13T13:16:00.000-06:002004-09-13T12:30:00.466-06:00

There's a new transitive technology out there that claims "our software allows any software application binary to run on any processor/operating system." This means Windows programs would run on Macs, Mac programs would run on PCs, and we'd finally be all one, happy computing family. For more on this, check out the article in Wired magazine. On Slashdot, someone asked the all-important question,

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8135539.post-1094772877082742152004-09-09T17:32:00.000-06:002004-09-09T17:34:37.083-06:00

If social and collaborative learning is your thang, then you might want to check out this article on ISociety by William Davies. Here's the plug on the website: "Social capital analysts have debated the implications of the Internet for some years now. But this debate has recently been joined from the opposite side, as software experts and

Rick Westhttps://profiles.google.com/107805097986166133399noreply@blogger.com0