Archives: February 2008
Sat Feb 23, 2008
Web 2.0 in the Enterprise
I'm marking this as a personal bookmark as I prepare for an upcoming talk I'll be giving on Web 2.0 in education. This article from Alexander Wilms over at Boxes and Arrows, titled The Trouble With Web 2.0, does a nice job of summarizing some of the issues that large corporations and government agencies (like a certain school district) face when they attempt to find the value of Web 2.0 tools within their organization. Worth a read.
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Mon Feb 18, 2008
Fourth Year Blogaversary Coming Up and Still a Work in Progress
Yep. I'll be marking four years of blogging here at BrainFrieze.net this week when the calendar rolls around to February 20th, when I allowed my first posting with the snappy title Still A Work in Progress to go live for the world to see. Or, at least for the few dozen folks that I told about my blog to see.
And today? Well, the blog is still a work in progress, but for a semi-personal, quasi-professional blog like mine that's probably about right. The fun part of blogging for me has always been the freedom it allows for me to write whatever I want and on any topic I want. After writing several books, a couple of online courses, and over 100 tutorials--all that have to be written to precise requirements the blog has always allowed me to just write for the pleasure of writing. That I've gained an audience is gratifying and fun and strokes the old ego, so there's a good personal payoff in all of this. Hey, and I've even occasionally covered the cost of hosting the blog through a few Google ads, so it hasn't been too expensive a hobby.
My analytics tell me that when I write something good, particularly when it dips into the web design and technology world, I get thousands of readers. My friends who've followed the blog for a number of years prefer the humorous and personal pieces. And of course, my passion for teaching has a certain group of readers as well.
So, four years, 718 articles and over 1,000 comments later, (and 3.7 million hits)--the blog plugs along, and my enthusiasm for writing waxes and wanes along with things that are going on in my life that exists away from the keyboard. Sometimes I feel like writing, and sometimes I don't.
But in the end, the cathartic release I get from getting the thoughts in my head in a place where I can share them with others is enough to keep me plugging away. Not to mention the value I find in just working at the craft of writing, another important part of why I've stayed at this.
My thanks to all of you that have stopped by for a read in the past four years and especially those who take the time to post a comment. I hope you've found the writing to be interesting, enjoyable, or informative.
And of course, I'm hoping you stick around and keep reading.
There is that ego part of me that has to accounted for as well. :-)
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Sat Feb 16, 2008
Meme: Passion Quilt, or What Makes You Passionate About Teaching with Technology
My work buddy Lee Kolbert has tagged me with what's known as The Passion Quilt Meme, a fun little exploration among educators about what makes us passionate about teaching.
This meme was kicked off by Kevin Jarret where he showed the hand-drawn note passed to him by a kindergarten-aged girl as she left a class he taught in his school's computer lab. Kevin, like every good teacher I've ever known, is passionate about what he does for his students. 'Cause if you don't have the urge, the drive, and the passion, well then teaching is just another high-stress, poorly-paying job that you slog your way through to retirement.
So, following along with the rules of this meme, I'm posting a screen shot of a game that was programmed and designed by one of my 14 year-old students during the last year I was teaching web and graphic design at Roosevelt Middle School in West Palm Beach. Here's a look at what Nate was able to create after a very focused and lengthy project that my 8th graders worked on for over a month.
What's the big deal here, and why does seeing something like this interactive game get my juices flowing even 3 years after Nate completed the assignment?
To me, the pride comes from seeing what a bright young student is able to accomplish when given time and tools and a little direction. The school where I worked would easily be classified as "inner city", and Nate, like most of my students, came from a poor family. But that didn't stop Nate from being an incredibly talented visual designer, and didn't keep him from focusing on this project, despite its complexity and a difficulty level that would challenge many high school and college students. Nate (and many of his classmates) was so energized by the possibility of making what was essentially a video game of his very own that he stuck with the project and infused it with his own sense of style. In the end we all (teacher included) learned a lot about interactive programming, design, and the sense of satisfaction that you get when you get a big job done.
And if you can't get passionate about those kinds of classroom experiences you'd might as well get out of teaching right now.
Alrighty then, on to the meme part of this.
Here are the rules:
* Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
* Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
* Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.
And here are my tagg-ees:
Dean Shareski
Kathy Schrock
Brenda Frisk
Gary Stager
Miguel Guhlin
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Fri Feb 15, 2008
10 Tips for a Better Acrobat Connect Meeting
I've been using Macromedia Breeze--now called Adobe Acrobat Connect--to conduct trainings and hold meetings for nearly four years now, and I'm the project manager for our school district's self-hosted Connect system. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time in Connect meeting rooms as a trainer, a presenter, and as a participant.
Along the way I've learned a whole bunch of practical and technical tips for how to provide a better Connect meeting experience for the participants in this online video conferencing program. I've gathered my Top Ten Tips for a Better Acrobat Connect Meeting in an article over at CommunityMX, which was published today.
This is one of the over 100 free articles on CommunityMX that have been written over the last four years by some of the leading experts in the web design community.
While I've been out of the writing loop a bit myself over the last year my colleagues have continued to churn out terrific tutorials and articles over at CommunityMX in what has to be one of the longer-running subscription-based online communities where subscribers receive 10 articles per week plus assistance in online forums. It's a unique concept powered by some of the smartest people I know and I'm glad to be slipping back into writing mode and reconnecting with my buds.
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