Daily Work: Bleh

A rather boring day for readers. My back is all achey, so I’m taking tomorrow off to try to rest it before it gets any worse. Still working on the GIC blog, but the damned thing just won’t publish. I don’t understand how I can copy the settings exactly and fail to have it publish. Gave up on it a bit and did some moderating. I have notes on the book cover interactive to pass on, but I just wasn’t up to working on them. I’m supposed to be taking time off :)

For Windows: HDClone Free Edition

HDClone Free Edition download and review – copy data to a larger hard drive from SnapFiles—another good thing to have around for future use. I haven’t tried it out, but it looks as though it could be a good tool.

Musings: How To Make a Secret Hollow Book:

How To Make a Secret Hollow Book: – How To Do Stuff—I’m horribly entertained by the idea of creating one of these. The problem is that I’d want it to be a book that was in some way meaningful. A random book from a garage sale just won’t do. But I’m never going to be willing to cut up a book that I actually care about. Such difficulties. Beyond all that, I have no idea what I’d put in a hollow book. I just feel like I need one for some unknown reason.

Travel: One Bag

One Bag (all about packing, luggage, and travelling light)—given that I’m about the worst at packing in one bag or packing the right things for the trip at hand, this seemed like a useful link to save. I should restate that really. I normally have every blessed thing I own with me, and 3/4 of it is stuff I never touch. And normally the 2 or 3 things that I need most, are still at home. Maybe I can gather some travel wisdom from this site.

In the News: Study Finds Test Scores Not Lowered by Television – New York Times

Study Finds Test Scores Not Lowered by Television—an interesting study that compared testing results for pre-television communities to current communities. I’m not completely sure that I buy that these communities, decades apart, are a perfect match. So many other areas of difference that have to exist between the two different batches. Still, it’s an interesting study, if only as a beginning point for class discussion and exploration.

In the News: Better Love than Roses

Words of Love More Sought Than Roses – New York Times—there’s something interesting about this article, which tells us that “In the week before Valentine’s Day, people were more likely to search online for the keywords ‘love poems’ than for ‘flowers,’ ‘lingerie’ or ‘e-cards.'” The story doesn’t say where their data came from. I’m guessing the Hitwise company that is mentioned. Not sure how worthwhile or complete their research is, but it’s makes a nice anecdote I suppose.

Daily Work of Varying Types

I did some rearranging in the kitchen, putting up small chrome shelves on the counter. I still don’t know where everything goes, but it’s better than it was.

Otherwise, I was a laze-about. Spent a lot of time on GIC work, if you can call personal research that. I’m still trying to figure out the proposals. I rearranged the forums into threads based on the different details of the proposal. Beyond that, I continued to fight with and be angry about the blog that I cannot publish :(

Daily Work: On a Saturday

I finally finished Donorboy so that I can read Flush. It ended PERFECTLY. Absolutely perfectly. One of the best, most realistic books I’ve read—and definitely the most authentic voices using technology. I knew I wasn’t crazy when I said those other books were all fake. This one if real, and it’s right.

I’ve been working on a category system that uses a search engine. I tried and gave up on using categories via del.icio.us. They just weren’t giving me what I wanted. I’m not sure if the search engine option will either, but it seems a bit closer.

We have GIC resources now, and I’ve also been going through the proposals to try to figure out the details. I still can’t get that GIC Blog to ftp. If I blog and never publish it, is it still a blog?

In the News: New Media and Podcasting

Education’s Next Wave? Duke Augments Its Embrace of iPods With Beta Trial of Apple’s iTunes U outlines ways that the university is using podcasts in the classroom to share media files. There’s so much potential here: giving students copies of things rather than relying solely on one-time projection, for instance. And the possibilities for professional development are also great—imagine conference sessions where you could copy the presentation media to your own MP3 player. As these things happen, teachers will need to rethink the presentations that they give. Not only do they need to think about what students can see and hear, but how to get those files on their MP3 players, and how to deal with split attention (What are they looking at? The presenter or the MP3 player?)

In the News: E-mail and Teaching

“To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me” from the New York Times has caused a stir on all the teaching listservs that I’m on. It just seems like another one of those articles that really ought to focus on audience and purpose in writing—along with a dose of understanding writing environments and situations (for students AND teachers). Overall, the folks in the article seem to lack any real understanding of the media they choose for their messages. Until they understand that important piece, e-mail is never going to work for them.