July 29, 2008
GTD Lite - Toodledo
Good overview/refresher of GTD methods and a pretty good online app for implementation. Just wishing they had an app for iPod Touch, but I guess since the iPhone is always online nobody cares..
WARNING: Productivity can take serious amount of time if you let it. Pick a system and commit to it!
Toodledo :: Getting Things Done (GTD)
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a method for organizing tasks so that you can focus your entire energy and creativity on completing those tasks in a stress free manner.
July 28, 2008
Comcast vs. FCC
Comcast throttled peer-to-peer apps for years now and it's time to pay the price..
Comcast Spoiling for Fight With FCC
"We continue to assert that our network management practices were reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices, and that we did not block access to websites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services," Comcast said.Network neutrality advocates hailed the news of the F.C.C.'s ruling.
"This vote reflects the bipartisan support for protecting consumers' access to the free and open internet," said Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press and author of the original complaint.
Great guy, great speech
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.
I will say I've had a deathbed conversion... I just bought a Macintosh.
I really liked his emphasis on enabling the dreams of others. What a great way to go out.
July 20, 2008
Family Photo
Haven't had a successful one of these in years, and not sure we did here, but needed one to send to a friend in India, so thought I would share..
July 19, 2008
Brendan Fraser is lame...
Great stuff..
» Proof Brendan Fraser Is The Happiest Man Alive | Cracked.com
What I Want To Be When I Grow Up
By Brendan Fraser, Age 8When I grow up, I want to be a movie actor...The reason I think I can be an actor is because I have normal expectations. I don’t want to be a big dramatic actor, or even a big action star. All I want is to be that guy that people know his face, and some people know his name, but most people just go “oh, yeah, that guy.” This is my dream.
UTC should start doing these things
Daily Home - ACCESS lets students take courses not offered at their schools
Additionally, students are taking Advanced Placement courses for college credit through ACCESS from teachers certified to teach AP courses.
In other TN Higher Ed news:
WREG-TV Memphis - Tenn. tech schools shorten schedules to save gas
Some Tennessee community colleges and tech schools are moving to a 4-day school week to help commuting students facing a financial roadblock in rising gasoline prices.Four Tennessee Technology Centers and three community colleges are adopting the new class schedules after hearing from students that high gas prices could force them to drop out.
That sounds pretty good to me..
The Chronicle talks about this case causing a tipping point for Distance Learning to finally take off:
"It's getting to the point of either gas or class," says Robbie K. Melton, associate vice chancellor for the Tennessee Board of Regents, where this summer the number of students taking online courses spiked 29 percent, in part because of the high cost of buying gas to drive to campus.
July 18, 2008
To iPhone or not to iPhone?
This article says no.
Iphone 2.0: Why You're Better Off Avoiding the iPhone
the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.
July 17, 2008
This guy spent a year living biblically
TED | TEDBlog: My year of living biblically: A.J. Jacobs on TED.com
Speaking at the most recent EG conference, author, philosopher, prankster and journalist A.J. Jacobs talks about the year he spent living biblically -- following the rules in the Bible as literally as possible.
"Scrubs" hopping networks
Without skipping a beat, star Zach Braff chimes in: "It'll be on CBS next year."Rather than let him wrap up his final season and bow out with a series finale--as creator David Chase was allowed with HBO's The Sopranos and JJ Abrams is poised to do with ABC's Lost--NBC abruptly pulled the plug on Lawrence's series following the 100-day writers' strike.
Lame NBC, very lame..
Manufacturing plant locates in Chattanooga: Entire community pats itself on back..
I'm pretty sure my dry-cleaner has a clipping from the newspaper about how he was also instrumental in this achievement..
July 14, 2008
World of World of Warcraft
You actually believe you're in a dimly lit basement staring at a computer screen.
'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'
July 12, 2008
Christian Copyright Issues
Not that these issues are different for anyone else, but here is an interesting debate sparked by someone doing what I've been doing with my Sunday morning Bible class, which is to use movie clips to introduce a topic for discussion.
Using video clips before a bible study... | Geeks & God
Basically it boils down to, Does fair use work any differently for religious educational groups and in what settings?
To totally disregard copyright laws check this out:
A Fair(y) Use Tale
Bio
Here is a brief bio that I put together for the new UTC Communication Department website.
Chris Willis loves going to school. Having graduated from UTC with bachelor's degrees in Environmental Science and Sociology, he returned for a Master's in Writing, and is now pursuing a Doctorate of Education in Leadership and Learning at UTC. "I'm hoping this last degree will help to pull everything together," Chris says. Having taught as an adjunct professor for the Communication department for nine years, Chris believes that students learn best when given the opportunities and facilities to explore themselves creatively. "I love television and film and I'm focusing more now on teaching students how to tell stories visually--from the initial ideas to a final product that they can share with an audience."
Having worked in a computer lab for The Tennessee Valley Authority as a training specialist, Chris came to UTC full-time as a technology specialist for Continuing Edcucation, focused primarily on distance learning through videoconferencing. Due to a growing interest in developing a campus television studio, Mr. Willis was involved in the grant-writing, design, and implementation of a brand-new facility at UTC, which has been used by the entire campus for video production and editing. Some of the work of the UTC Television Studio can be viewed online, as well as being broadcast on Comcast Cable Channel 3.
Asychronous learning found to be better for retention
Dividing achievement outcomes into synchronous and asynchronous forms of DE produced a somewhat different impression. In general, mean achievement effect sizes for synchronous applications favored classroom instruction, while effect sizes for asynchronous applications favored DE.
Delphi Method - Potential for Dissertation
An interesting way to conduct research without travel, plus to get ideas from participants as to what is important.
Delphi method is a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of independent experts. The carefully selected experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, participants are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of the group. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results.
July 11, 2008
Connectivism - A New Way to Think About Learning
An interesting article from Canadian George Siemens, dealing with how technology supports "off-loading " human knowledge.
Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn. United States Distance Learning Association. Jan05_01
Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.
Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.
Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
A central tenet of most learning theories is that learning occurs inside a person.
Additional concerns arise from the rapid increase in information. In today’s environment, action is often needed without personal learning – that is, we need to act by drawing information outside of our primary knowledge. The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.
We can no longer personally experience and acquire learning that we need to act. We derive our competence from forming connections.
Butterfly Effect - “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” profoundly impacts what we learn and how we act based on our learning."Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.
Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.
Conclusion:
The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.
Even better, from Siemen's blog:
Pedagogy First? Whatever. In dealing with faculty and instructional designers, a series of almost default phrases are vocalized once technology is mentioned: "We need to start with pedagogy"..."It's pedagogy first".
Or, whenever I'm in a meeting and someone says "pedagogy first", the apparently genetic instinct to nod viciously is enacted by everyone around the table. "Yes, that is right. We need to have priorities here. Let's tame technology and focus instead on what we already know and are comfortable with. Let’s ensure that technology does not get away from the tried and true method of containing innovation and new approaches.”
Let's abandon the somewhat silly notion of pedagogy first and recognize
that the choice of technology is driven by many contextual factors and
therefore context is what we are evaluating and considering when we
first start talking about possible technology to use. Then, after we
have selected technology, we can start talking about pedagogy. Pedagogy
is just not a practical starting point for deciding the technology we
should use.
July 8, 2008
Enviro water park..
Splash Valley Tennessee
Surely this can be done in an environmentally sensitive way. "Splash down into a natural wave pool full of cat-tails, lillies, and live frogs!"
July 5, 2008
Digital-Age teachers as co-learners: A new method of instruction or just a bunch of hot air?
I have to say I very much support the International Society for Technology in Education's new definition for the role of teachers.The Future of Instruction: Teacher as 'Co-Learner' : June 2008 : THE Journal
"Now and in the future, effective teachers of digital-age learners will be challenged to move away from models of teaching and learning as isolated endeavors. As they model work and learning that reflects inventive thinking and creativity, teachers must become comfortable as co-learners with their students and with colleagues around the world. Today it is less about staying ahead and more about moving ahead as members of dynamic learning communities. The Digital Age teaching professional must demonstrate a vision of technology infusion and develop the technology skills of others. These are the hallmarks of the new education leader."
But what will actual educators think?
More GTD Goodness
OK, this guy is just full of great ideas. Something I've been meaning to do for a while, since self-reporting is a huge weakness at work.
Reminders: Keep Your Supervisors Up-to-Date « Youth Hacks
How about using this technique for spiritual matters, like, Hey Big Guy, here's what I've been up to..?
July 1, 2008
GTD your spiritual life..
I've been thinking of some faith hacks for a while that might be useful for myself and others, then I assumed others may have but thinking the same things. This is all I found, but it is pretty good:
GTD Principle: Re-claiming Your Ability to Focus « Youth Hacks
The main idea was that we can only hold so many items in our short-term memory at once. I've heard 2 or 3, and I've heard 8, but either way, there's a ceiling on how many things we can hold in our attention at once. David Allen compares it to RAM in a computer.I like this a lot, especially since the GTD system has helped me so much for work and home projects, so now I want to hack my spiritual life. Here are some ideas I've got so far, but please tell me if you can think of others:As that RAM part of our brain gets full, we start to triage, only dealing with what we deem the most "urgent" at the moment. The result is that we don't get around to doing some of the things are really important to us, especially those that don't feel urgent (visiting students, praying, spending time with family, writing personal notes, self-improvement, etc.)
I think these things could easily make an improvement on helping me close some open loops on my mind related to spiritual matters, which sadly are the least likely things to get done on all of my lists.
Get productive about getting things done in your spiritual life. Ask yourself, What's the next action on this? Then do it.