SXSW

In Austin, TX for South by Southwest Education Conference, Interactive, and Music & Film Festivals. And I am excited! I ‘ve picked up few apps to help out over the next two weeks. The obvious ones of course are the SXSWedu & SXSW Mobile apps. Austin Food Carts helps you track down any of the great food carts the city has to offer. RideScout will help you made use of the multitude of transportation options.

Early restaurant recommendations Easy Tiger Bake Shop & Beer Garden and Annie’s Café and Bar.

Tools, Tools, and More Tools (Google Hangout Take 2)

Took my second attempt at conducting a Google Hangout.  This time from my office to make use of my new iMac and duel screen. I am puzzled that my 4-year-old MacBook at home, seemingly on it’s last leg, out performed my 6 month old iMac. I cut out 13 minutes from the original live stream of  waiting for Firefox to stop spinning, so I could move on to the next item. I’m not sure that hangouts are the best avenue for interacting with in this particular MOOC but I’ll keep trying some different things and see if I can’t get better turn out and improve my own off the cuff presentation skills. My upcoming topics are more conversation geared so I think I’ll skim the blogs I see if I can’t target people to join the hangout and discuss their experiences. It’s definitely a different experience talking to screen instead of a classroom of engaged participants. Continue reading Tools, Tools, and More Tools (Google Hangout Take 2)

Google Hangout First Attempt #etmooc

I tried my hand at a Google Hangout for the first time today, which turned into an exercise of futility. However in the end I end up with a half way decent vlog. The general idea of the Hangout, outlined in my previous blog entry, was to offer some tips and strategies for working through the MOOC as well as hear what other were doing. Pretty simple idea really.

What I discussed:

It isn’t pretty, but it’s not awful for first attempt either:

A few takeaways from this experience, first I should have put out another reminder this morning earlier than I had. It looks like I had some interest, but the event was already over. Second Google’s products seem to trip on each other first I couldn’t add the events to the event section of the community because the community is larger that the number of people you can invite to an event. Also, when you create a Google Hangout event and not just click the Google Hangout button it skips the step that allows you to do the live stream on YouTube. To do the Hangout properly it is going to take a second screen because when I did a screen share I couldn’t tell what was going on in the Hangout. For next time I think I’ll create a On Air Event to act as a backchannel and then start the Hangout from there.

Wading through the MOOC

Screen Shot 2013-01-18 at 8.43.06 PMBy the time I got online Tuesday night, the java app installed to allow access to ellu Blackboard collaborate, the slide in front of me looked like a wordle had become part of a this your brain on drugs commercial … and my brain was now on drugs.  During the question period someone astutely put forward the question, how am I suppose to learn from the mess of information in front of me. There were a couple of good answers of which I have now forgot but that question got me thinking about how I planned on attacking this beast, what I wanted to get from the experience, and more importantly what could I share with the community.  So, what I decided I wanted to take a cue from the Obvious to you – Derek Sivers video and try my hand (in a smaller way) exactly what Alec was doing.  So along with tweeting, participating in google+, and blogging I am going to host a series of google hangouts each Saturday on things that I have a little knowledge to share but would also hope to learn more from all of you. I will do two each Saturday, one at 11:00 am EST and one at 7:00 pm EST. This week I’d like to answer or with assists from those who join me come up with a number of solutions on just how best to process all this information. What tools and strategies are you using and what new cool stuff have you already picked up this week that you think will help. I hope you’ll join me. I’ll be using Google Hangouts so if you don’t get in, please join us via the broadcast on YouTube and tweeting your thoughts. I’ll do my best to watch the backchannel.

01/19/13: Wading through the MOOC – How are you participating, what tools are you using, what has worked so far and what hasn’t. 11:00 am session – or 7:00 pm session

01/26/13: Tools, Tools and more Tools –  As an Instructional Technologist supporting Faculty, Students and running our Media Center I come across a lot of great tools that make things go just a bit smoother. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.

02/02/13: Let’s talk integration – Technology is great but its all about the learning. Let’s talk about best practices for integrating projects and tools into courses and classroom and avoiding technology for technology’s sake.

02/09/13: Project Share – Its time to brag got a cool project that you, your students, colleagues did or maybe just discovered and you gotta share.

02/16/13: But how do I assess it? – This is big interest of mine, but I’ll be honest I can’t claim much expertise. This will be a discussion of how to assess media projections and what is the future of assessment.

02/23/13: Digital Literacy – Isn’t everything digital literacy? This has been a big stick of mine. Whether writing, reading, audio, visual, spatial, data, information or even social interaction. What is uniquely digital is pretty small.  Is it just the presence of technology in our everyday lives that have now made it this term so prevalent? Can we use it as a trojan horse for other much neglected literacy?

03/02/13: Promoting Literacy – How is your school promoting Digital Literacy?

03/09/13: SXSW edu Recap – YAY!! I’m going to SXSW this year and there is an education conference as well I’ll recap everything I learned from the week.

03/16/13: SXSW Interactive Recap – Also, attending the Interactive, Music, and Film Festival I’ll share anything I find that will impact education.

03/23/13: Say Cheese! What is your digital snap shot – How do you self promote/monitor your digital identity?

03/30/13: Takeaways – Let’s create a top ten takeaways from the #etmooc

The Google+ community has an events section I’ll add these this evening.

MOOC Madness

cropped-headNavyMonday marks the start of the Massive Online Open Course: Educational Technology & Media (etmooc). And even though they haven’t figured out how acronyms work, it is the brain child of a lot smart people in the EdTech community. There are currently “over 1200 participants registered representing 67 countries,” and I am but one of the masses. As this will be the first MOOC I have participated, the experience itself will be as much of learning experience as the course itself. If you are part of etmooc community reading this and want to learn more about me and my background you can find that here. If you’re interested, there is still time to register or follow along through the multitude of blogs, twitter, and google. You can follow what I’m doing via this blog and @iPeat.

iPeat’s new look: Intent

I recently watched this TED video given by John Hockenberry on design. But the message was clearly about intent and how our own self image of how we perceive and project our self effect how others perceive us. Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti_i-M3pk5M]

So this along with couple of recent podcasts from Pamela Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation podcast (Grow your business through referrals: expert interview with Bob Burg & The dirty little marketing secret no one is telling you). Got me thinking I should do a little redesign myself and do a better job projecting my self image. Not only through design, as you see I gave my site quick redo, but also actions, and attitude. So the past couple weeks my new mantra has become intent.

P.S. I am heading to the ISTE conference in San Diego in a week, which was also a motivating factor as I hope to meet some great new contacts.

Catch 22

Book cover for Catch 22Read this for the first time earlier this year. The insane world of war as seen through the eyes of Yossarian had my mind doing back flips trying to follow all the different story lines to one of the more enjoyable reads I have had. I highly recommend it. Morning Edition’s Lynn Neary revisited the book last Thursday as it turn 50 years old:

When Catch-22 was first released, it wasn’t universally well-received. Until then, books about war tended to be serious works, often tragic in tone. Heller’s war was a black comedy, filled with orders from above that made no sense and characters who just wanted to stay alive. The novel seemed to offend some reviewers. The New York Times called it an “emotional hodgepodge.” But other critics took on the book as a cause.

‘Catch-22’: A Paradox Turns 50 And Still Rings True