Bel Isle

Patton Videos

2011-11-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Lynda.com CSS

2011-06-06T05:13:00.000-07:00

Adding meaning with ID and class attributes

Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS Essential Training | by James Williamson

View this entire CSS course and more in the lynda.com Online Training Library®.

Finally!

2010-09-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

I've been paying so much attention to my art projects that I've neglected my technolgy blog. It's a new semester, and we will see what develops, but so far, I have never had a better group of students. Stay tuned . . .

Creative Commons

2010-02-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

What you should read before you choose a Creative Commons license -
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing

Copyrignt Blog Entry by Lyn Belisle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Vocaroo

2010-02-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

Facebook: Take Five Minutes to Protect Your Privacy

2010-01-23T05:54:00.000-08:00

Here’s an article from today’s New York Times by Sarah Perez that speaks for itself. If you are a Facebook user, even (and perhaps especially) if you don’t check your page every day, these tips are important. It also has links to other relevant articles on social networking security. Highly recommended.

Haps About Apps

2010-01-12T05:46:00.000-08:00

Roy Furchgott’s NYT Blog, Gadgetwise: Getting Smart about Personal Technology, is always informative and entertaining. His post for January 4, 2010, is no exception. Called My Favorite 14 Apps of 2009, it’s based on his choices of the apps “that I was most likely to show people when they asked ‘What do I need with a smartphone?’” You can see his list here.

Being an Ancient Geek, I immediately checked the list to see what I had on my iPhone and, more importantly, what I needed. Arg! I had none of them, and I’m not sure I wanted any, either. Google Sky Map sounds kind of cool, but it’s for Android phones. Shazam? Maybe, but I don’t spend a lot of time listening to music away from my iPod or my computer.

So which apps *do* I consider my personal favorites?

A #1 is my Kindle app – of course, if you don’t have a Kindle, it will mean nothing to you, but it lets me pick up where I left off on my Kindle books by synching to the last page read. Unlike the Kindle, it’s backlit, and the price is right – free.

A new one that’s fun and surprisingly useful is iType2Go, which lets you see what you’re about to run into while you’re texting by allowing you to type over a live camera view of what’s ahead of you. When you are finished with your message, it takes you to your text window and seamlessly pastes in what you’ve written. Free.

A recent favorite is Cleartune, a chromatic instrument tuner and pitch pipe that allows you to quickly and accurately tune up using the built-in mic in your iPhone. I have a treasured Martin guitar (and I play in a band) so having a tuner on my iPhone is incredibly useful for me and for my friends. By App standards, it’s not cheap ($3.99) but it’s worth it.

Dragon is another new one that a genius employee at the Apple store showed me – it’s a great dictation tool. Say what you want to say and it transcribes your words to an email message or to IMS. Honest – and free.

There’s also a personal useful app provided by my credit union which shows the location of free ATMs in the area – that one gets a lot of use!

Apps I thought I’d use but don’t – My Lighter (cutesy, but that’s all), the free level tool, A-Level (somehow never need to tell if something is level by using my phone) and a recipe app called Big Oven – just don’t have time for that one.

What apps are your favorites? Send a comment and let me know. Oh, yeah – and here’s the link to the apps store - always fun to browse. The Staff Picks tell a lot about the staff. What do *your* apps tell about you?

Disney sets release date for San Antonio author’s latest book - San Antonio Business Journal:

2009-11-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

Disney sets release date for San Antonio author’s latest book - San Antonio Business Journal:

The Future of Collage?

2009-10-13T15:34:00.001-07:00

Today's online issue of The Wired Campus has a report about some software that I cannot wait to try if and when it becomes available.

The software, first called Photosketch and now Sketch2Photo, is an astonishing way to compose images based on just a simple hand drawn outline with captions. The software looks at the captions, the outlines and then scours the web for images that match your requirements. And then, sheer magic this, it seamlessly composes the images into one fairly convincing composition.

Sketch2Photo: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.

Its creators, from Tsinghua University, give more details at this link. It opens up a whoe new scope of possibilities for artists and graphic designers who will still be needed to create content and composition. I hope . . . .

2009-09-30T13:41:00.000-07:00


Calendar test



The Trinity Coates Library Rocks!
2009-09-30T05:35:00.000-07:00
Yesterday, my classes were treated to a presentation by Trinity Professor and Librarian Benjamin Harris, who shared his expertise (and his amazing energy) with us - we learned all about:
Locating books and articles in     the Coates Library
Finding answers through the     Library website
Using academic databases to     search
Where to go to get help
Many many thanks to Benjamin.
One of the highlights of the presentation was a sneak preview of the new library web home page (see screen shot, above). What a super interface - attractive, easy to navigate - great job. It should be up in a few weeks.
Our library just keeps getting better and better. It is a Trinity Treasure!

   



   



Flat Classroom Project
2009-09-21T05:22:00.000-07:00
It’s always exciting to come across something rich with possibilities and new technologies – I stumbled across the Flat Classroom Project in the usual manner, while looking for Something Else. Read the description and you’ll know why I skidded to a stop and changed directions right away:

"The Flat Classroom™ Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and senior high school students. This project is part of the emerging tend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. The project was co-founded by Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, USA) and Julie Lindsay(Beijing (BISS) International School, China) in 2006. The Flat Classroom Project 2006 is was featured in Chapter 13, 'If it's not happening it's because you're not doing it', of the latest edition of Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat' upon which it was based. (pages 501-503)"

One of the first resources I saw was a nice tutorial on embedding a video on a wiki page created by Julie Lindsay. There are also many student-generated tutorials in this great site. I’ll be exploring more of them and will include them in this blog and in our own Class Wiki.




Movie Fan Mom
2009-09-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

I’ve learned a lot about the whole book to film process by following my son’s hugely popular adventure story for young readers, The Lightning Thief, undergo that transformation. The author has very little to do with the movie, in this case and many cases, but it’s fun to anticipate how the characters will be portrayed. Here’s short movie trailer that gives me some clues – it looks exciting!
One of the amazing things is just how long it takes to get a book from manuscript to market, and once the film rights are acquired, it seems to take forever (even after the filming is completed) to get it edited and into the theatre. I understand that there are many special technical and digital effects in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – that could be part of it. The director, Chris Columbus, has also directed two of the Harry Potter movies and certainly understands the genre, so I am looking forward to the film, which is still – sigh – four months away.



Great Example of Student Network Diagram
2009-09-15T06:49:00.001-07:00
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This is such an outstanding semester - the students are talented and enthusiastic. Here's an example of a very comprehensive diagram of the compicated Trinity University local area network drawn using only the fairly limited tools provided by MS Word - great job, Caroline - and everyone else. You all have proven that there is more than one "right answer" to a design assignment.



The Viral Aesthetic
2009-09-13T10:40:00.000-07:00
A discussion with Benjamin Harris, Assistant Professor and Instruction/Liaison Librarian at Trinity, about fast-spreading altered photos like the "crasher squirrel" led me to an blog entry/essay called If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Seven): Aesthetic and Structural Strategies by Henry Jenkins.
He discusses the spread of such media penomena as the Cadbury's "Gorilla" spot -- an ad featuring nothing but a life-size Cadbury-purple Gorilla belting out the drumline to Phil Collins classic "Something in the Air Tonight" which, he says, “didn't spread just because it was 'producerly'. It was also incredibly amusing. There is still truth in the notion that good, compelling content remains a crucial factor in the spreadability media.”
Read the essay, certainly, but – if you haven’t seen the gorilla on You Tube, check out his (or her??) awesome moves.


A Test of Critical Thinking
2009-09-02T19:15:00.000-07:00
1.How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2.How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Did you say, Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator? Wrong answer.

Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous 3.

3.The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend . . .except one. Which animal does not attend?

Correct Answer : The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

4.There is a river you must cross but it is used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?

Correct answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

According to Anderson Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong, but many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting Worldwide says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals do not have the brains of a four-year-old.

We doubt this “conclusion,” but the questions are amusing.


Article Review
2009-09-02T18:58:00.000-07:00
Differentiating Information Skills and Computer Skills: A Factor Analytic Approach

Authors: Judith M. Pask and E. Stewart Saunders
Libraries & the Academy; Jan2004, Vol. 4 Issue 1, p61-73

For the first time this semester, the goals of the CSCI 1300 classes will be deliberately and directly aligned with the goals of Trinity’s Information Literacy Committee. This is an exciting prospect – finally, our course content will hopefully be regarded by the academic community as something more than merely teaching technical aptitude .

Those of us who have designed and taught this course have long understood that there is a vast difference between computer literacy and information literacy, and we have always included the latter as an integral part our curriculum. The following article validates the difference in these “skills” in a study conducted at Purdue University with freshmen students. Here’s a quote from the introduction:

“Many labels have been used to describe information and technology skills including information literacy, computer literacy, fluency with information technology, digital literacy, and information technology literacy--but all distinguish between the computer skills, the ability to use specific hardware and software programs, and the higher order thinking skills of information literacy. 2 Although an individual needs computer skills to be information literate, it is generally agreed that information literacy has much broader implications than computer literacy. 3”

And here is the authors’ conclusion, obvious to those of us who teach the Computer Skills course, hopefully to be renamed soon as Essential Information Technology:

“The study clearly shows that students need instruction in both skill areas. Now libraries not only have a logical rationale but also an empirically demonstrable foundation for the pursuit of information literacy programs. Librarians, in collaboration with other classroom instructors and information technology professionals, can and must develop information literate students by teaching research and evaluation skills that go beyond the mechanical skills necessary to use computers and databases.”

As we look forward to the semester, we review our revamped goal for our students – to develop hands-on innovative approaches to experiential learning, enhance critical thinking skills, understand and master tools of software applications in an academic environment and explore imaginative ways to use technology inside and outside the curriculum.


IT Literacy and E-Portfolios
2009-08-23T03:41:00.001-07:00
Sometimes you stumble across a blog that speaks directly to you – that happened early this morning when pre-semester jitters were keeping me awake, so I checked my RSS feeds – I had actually forgotten that I had subscribed to Computer Literacy 3.0 – IT Literacy. Wow.
This blog is concerned with questions like
  What skills should be included in computer literacy 3.0?
  What concepts should be included in computer literacy 3.0?
  Who is developing courses that teach these skills and concepts?
  Should we teach computer literacy as a stand alone course or disperse it throughout the    curriculum?
  Does computer literacy require two full courses?
  Should all students take the same computer literacy course or should there be different versions?
  Is the term "computer literacy" too narrow?
Then I found the link to a discussion of e-portfolios, which literally woke me up. I read the article E-portfolios at 2.0—Surveying the Field by J. Elizabeth Clark. Wow, again. This is some of what the author writes:
“At this point, hundreds of thousands of educators around the world know that e-portfolios are digital collections of student work, defined by the mantra: collect, select, and reflect. No precise count of the number of e-portfolio initiatives in higher education has been established, but available evidence suggests that the number is high.”
and
“Today, programs like Clemson University’s psychology department are experimenting with capstone e-portfolios for graduation that connect a student’s entire general education experience at the institution with their education in a major. Spelman College is redesigning and extending its first-year electronic portfolio to address benchmarks during each college year, culminating in a capstone portfolio.”
The implications and inspiration are huge for our revamped courses in Essential Information Technology at Trinity. Look at some of the e-portfolio examples from Penn State, and you can see why I am so excited that I can't get back to sleep.
‘Scuse me, I have to go rewrite my entire curriculum and syllabus for the coming semester!



2009-08-22T19:23:00.001-07:00
Mobile blog post sent from iPhone - nice to have unlimited texting. This would work well if I had to post w/o an Internet connection.


Welcome to a New Semester
2009-08-22T19:16:00.000-07:00
There’s always something new going on in Essential Information Technology (CSCI 1300/03). Right now, I’m trying to get back to posting to my all-too-inactive blog by trying some new ways to send posts.
This is an introductory post sent through my personal email account to my email posting account at Blogger.com. While I’m not sure it’s the way I’ll post most often, it is a interesting alternative. I’ll also set up mobile blogging from my iPhone. 
For an overview, try this article written in 2003 <!!> - it’s amazingly current:
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/blogging/
And, as a test of emailing a post, I’ll attach a picture of our new kitten, Chico. He’s doing what most people in the 8:30 class would like to be doing. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ



Colleges Struggle to Keep 'Smart' Classrooms Up to Date? Not at Trinity!
2008-10-13T04:49:00.000-07:00
Recently (10.17.08), the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the frustration professors in many colleges and university are feeling about the lack of maintenance and upgrades to the so-called “smart” classrooms that were built a decade or so ago. Carl Pletsch, assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, says the situation has gotten so bad that administrators "are now discouraging faculty members from using technology because they can't predict if it is going to work." Another professor quoted in the article noted that "The smart classrooms are now dumb.They have not been upgraded or adequately maintained."

Trinity’s commitment, by contrast, is impressive. Classroom computers and software are routinely and effectively updated. In our classroom, for example, we were experiencing a software problem. I requested help, and one of our IT staff was there, in person, in minutes. This reflects both a philosophical attitude and financial investment in providing the best for Trinity students.

Last week, my students paid a visit to the updated AT&T Center for Learning and Technology, which is available to all students. Their blog entries reflect the kind of impressive information literacy opportunities Trinity offers.

“It still completely astonishes me when I look around and see how technically advanced Trinity University is. Sure, it is a university and should be able to offer its students the best technology for their own personal educational advancements, but it has truly gone beyond that expectation.”
            ~Angel Dominguez, First-Year

“The Technology Classroom (Library 310) seats 27 in a three-tiered semicircle. Each student workstation has a computer connected to a switching system that allows the instructor to take keyboard, mouse & monitor control of or all student computers as desired.”
            ~Jen Wight, First-Year

“Each station is comprised of a group of computers, and each station has a different focus. This is the area primarily available for student use. Here you will find the latest hardware and software. All of the computers here are equipped with the full Adobe suite for all kinds of projects. For video editing, the Apple computers are equipped with iMovie and the PCs are equipped with Sony Vega. There isn't much one couldn't do in the studios to make an impressive presentation. I could use these studios to create and/or edit a video or multimedia presentation for this or another class.”
            ~Jordan Enloe, Junior


Web 2.0 and the New Semester
2008-08-17T18:22:00.001-07:00
The new semester is almost here. I’m excited, anxious, and looking forward to working with new students, new colleagues and new challenges.
When I started teaching at Trinity five years ago, I did not incorporate blogs, wikis or any other aspects of Web 2.0 as part of the Computer Skills curriculum. I had not heard of podcasts or You Tube (which apparently didn’t really exist until April of 2005).
Now, one of the first things we do is to set up our class blogs in order to share thoughts and reflections about the class content, lab activities, and material from guest presenters. We also use the Class Wiki almost immediately to add to the body of knowledge that we’re developing.
Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics at Berkeley, has described has described the academic blogosphere as a kind of Invisible College. Students (and instructors) who blog and contribute to wikis within a higher education environment should probably keep this in mind. It’s not Facebook, although Facebook is definitely another way to share information. In fact, some professors are apparently using as part of a classroom experiment ("Academic Facebook: Lessons learned so far")
Our classroom blogs and wikis are here to stay. We are part of a dynamic academic community, and we’re all in this together.


Collage: Art or Theft
2008-04-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

I recently came across an interesting blog developed by Peter Friedman and the students in his Legal Analysis & Writing classes at Case Western Reserve University of Law during the spring 2008 semester. The posts navigate the tricky waters of Fair Use and artistic license to parody, incorporate and generally use existing material in a new and original manner. 

As a graphic designer, I often incorporate snippets of existing images into digital collages for personal and commercial work. Is this theft? The image used as an example in this discussion is a collage by Robert Rauschenberg that combines (possibly copyrighted?) partial images to make an artistic statement about the political and social turmoil of the 1960's (on right).
The blogger says, "Artists who routinely appropriate, on the other hand, are not attempting to profit from the marketability of their subjects at all. They are using elements, fragments, or pieces of someone else's created artifact in the creation of a new one for artistic reasons. These elements may remain identifiable, or they may be transformed to varying degrees as they are incorporated into the new creation, where there may be many other fragments all in a new context, forming a new 'whole'. This becomes a new 'original', neither reminiscent of nor competitive with any of the many 'originals' it may draw from. This is also a brief description of collage techniques which have developed throughout this century, and which are universally celebrated as artistically valid, socially aware, and conceptually stimulating to all, it seems, except perhaps those who are 'borrowed' from. "
 
It seems that this could be taken further, perhaps past the realm of two-dimensional collage to multimedia productions of various kinds which use parts of existing video, music or still photography in combination as part of an "original" project.
 
I don't know how I'd feel if my own work were borrowed and transformed - it's an interesting question, and one that probably produces more controversy that it does answers.




“Clicking in the Classroom” Delivers
2008-03-31T05:45:00.000-07:00
In a March 28 commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled How to Find What Clicks in the Classroom , Judith Tabron writes, “I'm surprised at how low the adoption rates of technology really are. Colleges and universities have ended programs that rewarded early adopters for trying the latest gee-whiz thing. At the same time, many of my IT colleagues still give presentations on gee-whiz technologies that they built in the hope that someone would come.”
Tabron, director of faculty computing services at Hofstra University, finds that not much has changed since the mid 90’s when universities spent a lot of money adopting class management systems such a Blackboard. Their bit for Instructional Technology was done. But as Tabron points out, these systems do not facilitate true academic interaction. Basically, they deliver the course content on a computer screen with the same old instructions – read it, absorb it and review it.
In order for this to change, she says, “IT-staff members with teaching experience and an understanding of the mission of liberal-arts education need a place in which to demonstrate the latest technologies. And they need both space and time to help professors develop new types of lessons, assignments, and grading methods that can fundamentally change how teaching and learning happen.” Unfortunately, they often end up fixing printers.
It would be tempting to quote her entire commentary – it’s that good. Here, for example, is her final thought in this short but inspiring article:“Our students live online. They fall in love, they shop, they order pizza on the Web. Their iPods, TV's, and Xboxes are sophisticated technologies. They instant-message their blogs from their cellphones, and they can't picture college having a place in any of this, because we haven't shown them that it can. It will be a dismal future if the only thing our graduates cannot do online is learn.”
Read How to Find What Clicks in the Classroom – and you will be ready to listen, talk, challenge, answer, try, fail, try again.


Gimmick or Godsend?
2008-02-06T05:24:00.000-08:00


From The Wired Campus, February 5, 2008:

“The smart pen that Wired Campus flagged back in May was unveiled last week at a technology conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The company behind it, LiveScribe, has been aggressively marketing the device to college students with the slogan ‘Never miss a word.’”

I took the link and watched the demo video. It looks impressive, it looks like fun. It’s basically a combination recording machine and camera. Students can take lecture notes while a minirecorder, embedded in the pen, records whatever is being said. Later, the user can touch the pen to a specific spot on the notes page and listen to a recording of the instructor speaking those words. A tiny camera links what is being written to what is being recorded.

The comments following the article are definitely worth a read – how well does it work, what are the ethical implications, and, my favorite, “Reading course materials and paying attention in class are the right solutions, unless the problem is to show how rich your parents are.”

On the other hand, as an educator who worked in special education for many years, I can see that it might be a useful tool for students with learning disabilities who need additional resources to process and review information.

Take the link, watch the video, and see whether the smart pen is for you! It will apparently be available just in time for this year’s fall semester.


Unlocking the promise of open educational resources
2008-01-28T05:42:00.000-08:00
This short notice in The Chronicle of Higher Education's Daily Report caught my attention last week, and I’m very glad it did.

January 23, 2008

Open-Access Activists Publish Declaration

The founders of Wikipedia and Connexions, an open-access source for educational material, revealed their Cape Town Open Education Declaration in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday.
The declaration grew out of a September 2007 meeting to spur the open-education movement. The goal is to create more educational resources that anyone can freely access and contribute to. Members of the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation, which support education, attended the September meeting.
Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) and Rich Baraniuk (Connexions) write that open education “promises to turn the textbook-production pipeline into a vast dynamic ecosystem that is in a constant state of creation, use, reuse, and improvement.” —Hurley Goodall

The opening paragraph of the Capetown Delcaration is promising and exciting:

“We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.”

After reading the declaration, I realize that I am woefully unaware of the growing pool of open educational resources. But I intend to become a proactive learner and discover more about how I can integrate the practice of creating and using open resources in my own classroom. It’s an exciting notion.

Click here to read the entire declaration and follow the related links, and here is a link to the FAQs.

See Mark Shuttleworth as he introduces the Cape Town Open Education Declaration:




Flying Without a Safety Net(work)
2008-01-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

On weekends, I rely heavily on the Trinity network to check email from students and colleagues, and even (gasp) to get some work done for our Computer Skills class. Imagine my surprise, which quickly turned to panic, when I logged on to the network Saturday morning and found that my account was “no longer valid and has expired.” Nothing helped, not retyping my password, not using the Trinity webmail exchange. I wrote the HelpDesk, even though I knew it was closed. Monday was a holiday, and my next class was 8:30 Tuesday morning.

I drove over to a virtually deserted campus to try to log in from my office computer. No luck. I was still “expired.” So I took a quick look at the class syllabus to see what advice I had for my students who found themselves in a similar situation:

What if the Computer Network is down?
Plan to complete assignments before they are due. Unforeseen computer problems sometimes occur. Due dates will be changed if the server is down for a significant period of time. Due dates will not be changed for personal computer problems.

What if you don't have a computer or your personal computer isn't working?Computers are available for you to use in many locations on campus. Anticipate problems and complete your work well before deadlines.

Fortunately, I had completed most of my notes for the Tuesday class in advance – taking my own advice about completing work before it is due was a good thing - but I was still out of touch with my students. What if they needed me? How would they survive?

Well, or course, I underestimated their self-reliance and overestimated my own importance. When Heather from the HelpDesk blessedly fixed the problem Sunday afternoon, I had exactly two messages from students, both friendly and neither urgent – my students were just fine.

But the experience made me thing about terms such as Internet Dependence.

I turned to – where else, the Internet – and checked out Dr. Sanity’s Blog to test myself. Did I exhibit any of the following symptoms of withdrawal from my network??

Withdrawal, as manifested by two or more of the following occurring after cessation or reduction of heavy prolonged internet browsing:
(a) autonomic hyperactivity such as sweating or heart rate in excess of 100 beats per minute
(b) hand tremor and an intense desire to type rants
(c) nausea or vomiting when re-entering the real world from the virtual
(d) transient visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations
(e) psychomotor agitation
(f) anxiety that something will happen and YOU WON'T KNOW ABOUT IT!
(g) grand mal seizures or perhaps just tics as you longingly look toward the shut-off computer

Whew! So far so good (well, maybe I did experience a bit of Symptom F), but I did “re-learn” two big lessons from flying without my safety network:
· Get the work done in advance. You never know when you’ll be cut off from your network. If it happens, relax, go to a movie, enjoy the weekend knowing that you’re ready for class
· Your students are more resourceful than you think – and the best thing you can teach them is how to get answers for themselves!



Academic Blogging?
2008-01-14T06:15:00.000-08:00
A short article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education caught my eye this morning, particularly since I'm thinking about ways to make my students' blogs meaningful to them and to the things they will be learning in our Computer Skills class. The title of the article was Blogs Are Increasingly Venues for Scholarship, Librarians Are Told. It's fascinating to follow the links in the article and read some of the discussion and academic arguments the entry in question produced.

I don't pretend to understand specialized botanical comments such as "I think my main point is that the authors need to have considered more complex (i.e. realistic) evolutionary genetic situations before they proposed an alternative method of molecular heredity. I think the most important data that is missing is the actual biochemical function of the hothead gene. Knowing that would really help to figure out what is occurring in the double nulls." However, the spirit of academic give-and-take is lively and fun to read. Some commenters can't resist correcting spelling errors, and one in particular has strong feelings about a certain journal:

The papers that are published by bigshots that are completely crap (I’m thinking about a particular journal family- one can guess) are the ones that bug me the most.

Blogs seem to have the potential to provide an informed yet informal forum for academicians and students of all fields and generations. Here's what Carlton Clark of Collin County Community College has to say.

"By reading and occasionally commenting on my students' blogs and by making mine available to them, I hope to establish a greater rapport with my students. I can establish a dialogue or sense of trust, which I would expect to carry over into the classroom. Although my teaching philosophy statement contains a few sentences on the importance of developing a sense of rapport with my students, I've found that, in practice, establishing this rapport has always been a great personal challenge."

His comments and more on the topic of academic blogging can be found at Lore: An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing.

I am excited about a new semester and new blogs that allow us to share our thoughts and ideas in an academic, but nevertheless, fun and creative setting.




Remix Culture?
2008-01-02T18:06:00.000-08:00
I recently completed a design project for a client that included stills from classic films, and I thought a lot about copyright issues regarding photos of iconic film stars and movie set photographs. It’s complicated. One of the new sites I found, The Center for Social Media at American University, explores some of these new concerns, specifically the Fair Use aspects of “transformative” treatments of copyright material. Here is a short description of their findings:

“The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by Center director Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, shows that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups)—all of which could be legal in some circumstances.”

The most entertaining part of the report is a wild, funny and thoughtful list of videos in each of the “gray” categories. My personal favorite so far is Evolution of Dance, but there is so much original splicing and cutting and reuse in each of the examples, and each of them may or may not fit in the category of Fair Use. At the end of this page is a video with further videos that are designed to generate discussion and debate.

There is much creativity in the user generated space, and much of it builds on unauthorized uses of copyrighted material. In this new era of participatory media, where should the line be drawn between infringement and fair use?


A New Kind of Multi-Platform Literacy for Kids?
2007-12-20T06:58:00.000-08:00
My son, author Rick Riordan, has been involved with Scholastic for the last year or so on a hush-hush project that was officially announced Tuesday, December 18, and immediately picked up by news services and bloggers. Here’s some of the information from the Scholastic press release:

Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, breaks new ground with the launch of The 39 Clues, a multi-platform adventure series for ages 8-12. The first book in the series, The Maze of Bones is written by #1 New York Times best-selling author Rick Riordan, who also outlined the program's 10-book story arc. The Maze of Bones will be released in September 2008, and the official The 39 Clues game will begin worldwide on September 9, 2008.
With the Harry Potter series now completed, Scholastic, the United States publisher of those wildly successful books by J. K. Rowling, is moving forward with what it hopes will be its follow-up blockbuster series. It will feature 10 books — the first of which is to go on sale next September — as well as related Web-based games, collectors’ cards and cash prizes. The project demonstrates Scholastic’s acknowledgment that as much as the publisher heralded the renewed interest in reading represented by the Harry Potter books, many children are now as transfixed by Internet and video games as they are by reading.
“We want to go where the kids are and really be part of their complete world, rather than going to one aspect of their world,” said David Levithan, an executive editorial director at Scholastic. He added, “We talk of it as being subversively educational.”
"The series is an immersive experience, with high-powered, adventurous storylines and characters," said Deborah Forte, president of Scholastic Media. The books will come out once every two or three months. The first title in the series, "The Maze of Bones", has been penned by Rick Riordan, the New York Times best-selling author of the mythologically themed Percy Jackson series aimed at preteens. He has also given the story outline for the next nine installments, which will be written by a team of authors. Scholastic will launch the program simultaneously in all the major English speaking countries — the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Comments from bloggers vary greatly.

Enthusiastic, from the My Cup of Tea blog:
Smart, Scholastic. Very smart. Kids love card games, and its been a while since we’ve had a good one. YuGiOh, Pokemon, my brother and I used to spend hundreds of dollars on the old Star Wars CCG produced by Decipher. This could work. You’ve even made it flashier by having on online component!

A bit hesitant, from The Reading Zone Blog:
A series like this feels too manufactured for my tastes. I will say that I am a bit intrigued by the plot summary. It sounds like a middle grade version of “The Da Vinci Code”/National Treasure. But I can easily see it moving into the boring, preachy, historical fiction that my students can’t stand. I will probably read the first volume and make a decision from there. But I will be interested in seeing the final product when it is released in September.

And some comments were downright negative, saying that great literature was never produced this way – and that standards are being set way too low. What do you think? Are young gamers ready for books and vice versa? I’m excited about the project and can’t wait to see it in September!

See today's local/regional interview with Rick here.


"Computer Skills"
2007-11-29T08:02:00.001-08:00
Since the end of the semester is almost here, I've been reviewing for our final exam and thinking about the difference between knowing the "how" and the "why" of using computers in academia. I came across these excellent definitions from Penn State's website:

Information literacy is defined as a group of critical thinking skills which consists of individuals' abilities to identify when they have an informational need and to use any necessary technology to access, evaluate, and use information effectively.
Computer literacy is defined as the understanding of what computers can and cannot do, and the ability to use both hardware and software appropriately and skillfully.

In a sense, the name of our class, Computer Skills, is misleading because it implies the we are learning about computers when, in fact, we are learning about learning. We are developing critical thinking skills using technology as a tool, and we are creating lifelong learners in the process.

Here is part of what the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) had to say about information literacy and higher education:

Developing lifelong learners is central to the mission of higher education institutions. By ensuring that individuals have the intellectual abilities of reasoning and critical thinking, and by helping them construct a framework for learning how to learn, colleges and universities provide the foundation for continued growth throughout their careers, as well as in their roles as informed citizens and members of communities. Information literacy is a key component of, and contributor to, lifelong learning. Information literacy competency extends learning beyond formal classroom settings and provides practice with self-directed investigations as individuals move into internships, first professional positions, and increasing responsibilities in all arenas of life.
I would encourage any educator who uses technology as a tool to read this thoughtful analysis, the rest of which can be found at the ACRL website. It was written in 2000, but remains very relevant today, if not more so.






Social Bookmarking
2007-11-04T18:46:00.000-08:00
Those of us who were used to storing our favorite websites in a sidebar-like window on our own computers on which we could click while we were sitting at those computers had our world expanded several years ago when Social Bookmarking appeared. Suddenly, we were able to access our favorite sites from anywhere on the Internet because they were stored on an online site, del.icio.us being one of the first and most popular of these sites.
Not only could we save these favorite sites for our own use, but we could share them with everyone and see what others had bookmarked through the use of categories called Tags. I could, for example, see who else had been saving sites on Aromatherapy and compare my tagged sites with theirs.
This process has triggered the sequence of events that resulted in a social web ecosystem, one that is rich in sharing mutual interests and also, along the way, allowed a sort of mutually-created "map" through the jungle of overwhelming cyber-information that pointed out trailmarkers toward specialized topics.
I discovered a helpful video produced by Lee LeFever about Social Bookmarking 101. It's great, and makes me want to take more advantage of this community resource.
http://www.youtube.com/leelefever
If you haven't explored Social Bookmarking, I encourage you to give it a try.


Teaching With Tech - Does It Work?
2007-09-04T11:36:00.000-07:00
In this article,
http://tech.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5280563,
Tom Oppenheimer, author of The Flickering Mind: Saving Education From the False Promise of Technology, is quoted as saying:
"When you’re on the computer instead of in the real world, when you paint with a mouse instead of using a paint brush, do research on the net instead of the library, or go on a virtual field trip instead of a trip to the pond, you develop bad habits. It causes a stunting of imagination. A narrowing of mental capacity."
Other seemingly anti-tech concerns voiced in the article include students who spend their time on flashy digital graphics rather than quality content in their presentations, and students whose constant use of text messaging and instant messaging results in that abbreviated syntax spilling over into their academic compositions.
Certainly, students are learning to use computers. The government is spending over $700 million a year to support technology in the classroom. But are students actually "learning to learn" when they use computers as a classroom tool?
Here are two statements that are paraphrased from this article about technology as a teaching and learning tool. Which do you tend to agree with. . . and why?
Podcasts are a fun way for students to learn about a topic that might have otherwise seemed dull reading out of a textbook - therefore, it's better to have students learn from a podcast than not learn at all.
Years ago, students had to work much harder to find and record information, and by going through that arduous process came to a greater genuine understanding of it - technology provides shortcuts that undermine scholarship.



Thoughts About Blogging, Especially in an Academic Setting
2007-08-14T18:01:00.000-07:00
In her thoughtful blog called Eats, Blogs & Leaves, Jennifer Garret says, "A blogger must be a writer and an editor if he wants to attract and keep readers. A well-written blog indicates respect both for the medium and for the reader." Read the complete entry here:
http://www.lynbelisle.com/eatsblogs.htm
She describes blogs as the unedited voice of the people, but also makes a strong case for appropriate punctuation, usage and grammar. Do you agree? How is a blog that is used as a classroom tool for a university course different from an informal blog that you share with your friends? As a writer, can both styles be an "authentic" voice with which to share your observations and opinions? Can you compare this to dressing for a job interview versus dressing for a Saturday morning at home? Which, if either, is the Real You?


Hello, and Welcome
2007-08-11T11:19:00.000-07:00



Welcome to Computer Skills. I hope you discover a lot during the next few months, and I look forward to getting to know you. This is the seventh semester that I've taught at Trinity. CSCI 1300 is a very comprehensive class with something for everyone, no matter how much you think you know or think you don't know about computers. It was designed to help you master all of the technological challenges you'll encounter while you are a student here, no matter what field of study you choose.

My own background and interests are in graphic design, fine arts, and integrating technology and education. I’m a practicing artist and designer and use both computer software and traditional media in my own work. It's hard to believe how much computers have changed the field of graphic design. Just fourteen years ago, I was at a computer conference in Portland, Oregon, and a new program was being unveiled that allowed people to see pictures on the World Wide Web, and to connect to other files and pictures with something called "hyperlinks." We were all amazed. Little did anyone know how much of a phenomenon the Internet and the World Wide Web would become, and how much impact these developments would have on our personal, cultural, and academic lives.

Special thanks in advance to our great TAs, Sara Hills, Mattina Van Coppenolle, and Sarah Lube - they are incredibly knowledgeable about the course content and are your strong supporters and advocates. Please don't hesitate to let us know what we can do to make this a successful and enjoyable semester for you.

Ms. Belisle