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Here's my beloved Bennie complete with sparkles and water reflection.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Paco Animoto
Making no attempt to maximize the creativity and professionalism of this production I made a quick (and it was quick and easy) slide show with a few pictures of Paco, a miniature Australian Shepherd.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Wikis and Social Networking
OK. I finally got around to creating my wiki so I'm anything but wiki (Hawaiian for quick). Like the other technologies this was a very simple process. The wiki is located at
http://synergism.pbwiki.com
If other Blue 2.0 participants want to help in the construction, send me your pbwiki e-mail address and I'll give you permission as a writer.
Social bookmarking is an interesting concept. It had not occurred to me that I might want to access my bookmarks from a remote site. The toolbar button makes it a no-brainer and the tags make it sortable. Cool.
http://synergism.pbwiki.com
If other Blue 2.0 participants want to help in the construction, send me your pbwiki e-mail address and I'll give you permission as a writer.
Social bookmarking is an interesting concept. It had not occurred to me that I might want to access my bookmarks from a remote site. The toolbar button makes it a no-brainer and the tags make it sortable. Cool.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Blogged Down
After much delay, Mr. Bill has returned to his old Kentucky blog (be it ever so humble) to catch up on Blue 2.0 assignments.
Tagging – Easy and potentially useful for blogs with a good deal of content. Of course, tagging blog content when there are only four entries two of which are “video” tagged is useful to the extent that one learns how to do it in preparation for the day when there are 87 entries of which 16 are videos.
Posting comments on other blogs – Again, easy. But, for me, the non-typist (see blog post #1), this is time consuming both in terms of reading the other blogs and then typing and editing and re-editing what will be a brilliant response for all to see online. I think using an alias might be part of the answer for me to avoid concerns about grammar, spelling and content. Then, rather than having to craft a thoughtful response (“I believe your extrapolation of the data is fraught with erroneous assumptions that contradict your major premise and, therefore, undermine your deductive inference.”) I could simply do a stream of consciousness thing (“U r a idiot and dont know nothing about what u say.”).
Bloglines – OK. I’ve got feeds for everything from dog news to environmentalism to jokes. I think there is a trend afoot that runs counter to being an expert. I tell my class when I discuss specializations in science that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know practically everything about nothing. With the plethora of blog feeds and podcasts and twitters and whatnots we might be moving toward knowing less and less about more and more until we know practically nothing about everything!
Wikis will have to wait. My mind has become blogged down for the day.
Tagging – Easy and potentially useful for blogs with a good deal of content. Of course, tagging blog content when there are only four entries two of which are “video” tagged is useful to the extent that one learns how to do it in preparation for the day when there are 87 entries of which 16 are videos.
Posting comments on other blogs – Again, easy. But, for me, the non-typist (see blog post #1), this is time consuming both in terms of reading the other blogs and then typing and editing and re-editing what will be a brilliant response for all to see online. I think using an alias might be part of the answer for me to avoid concerns about grammar, spelling and content. Then, rather than having to craft a thoughtful response (“I believe your extrapolation of the data is fraught with erroneous assumptions that contradict your major premise and, therefore, undermine your deductive inference.”) I could simply do a stream of consciousness thing (“U r a idiot and dont know nothing about what u say.”).
Bloglines – OK. I’ve got feeds for everything from dog news to environmentalism to jokes. I think there is a trend afoot that runs counter to being an expert. I tell my class when I discuss specializations in science that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know practically everything about nothing. With the plethora of blog feeds and podcasts and twitters and whatnots we might be moving toward knowing less and less about more and more until we know practically nothing about everything!
Wikis will have to wait. My mind has become blogged down for the day.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Vodpod
While I enjoy watching videos that I find online, I haven't been into collecting videos. Now that I know of a tool for doing so, perhaps I'll start a collection. It's sort of like finding a hammer and then starting on a quest to find nails.
I am not particularly impressed with some aspects of the Vodpod site, however. The directions on organizing the videos into categories do not match the options that I see on my page. Go to X located in the lower left hand corner of the window and click on Y. No X. No Y. Plus, errors in the text. Perhaps I'm being too picky here, but I don't like sloppy text and I like explicit, correct guidelines. It's the teacher in me.
I think I'll try importing the videos of dachshunds from Vodpod into my blog and see how that goes.
I am not particularly impressed with some aspects of the Vodpod site, however. The directions on organizing the videos into categories do not match the options that I see on my page. Go to X located in the lower left hand corner of the window and click on Y. No X. No Y. Plus, errors in the text. Perhaps I'm being too picky here, but I don't like sloppy text and I like explicit, correct guidelines. It's the teacher in me.
I think I'll try importing the videos of dachshunds from Vodpod into my blog and see how that goes.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sharing a YouTube Video
The second assignment of our Blue 2.0 series is to learn how to share videos on our blogs.
It seemed to me that an appropriate video to embed in a blog might be a video about blogs. So, I went to YouTube and did a search for "blogs." Although there were about 702,000 hits, the first one was "Blogs in Plain English" which I had viewed before thanks to an e-mail post to a faculty development discussion list that shared this same video to faculty developers wishing to show a short (3 minute) clip about blogs to faculty.
So, in answer to the question, "What's the big deal about blogs," here's what Lee and Sachi LeFever from the Commoncraft Show have to say.
It seemed to me that an appropriate video to embed in a blog might be a video about blogs. So, I went to YouTube and did a search for "blogs." Although there were about 702,000 hits, the first one was "Blogs in Plain English" which I had viewed before thanks to an e-mail post to a faculty development discussion list that shared this same video to faculty developers wishing to show a short (3 minute) clip about blogs to faculty.
So, in answer to the question, "What's the big deal about blogs," here's what Lee and Sachi LeFever from the Commoncraft Show have to say.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
My First Blog Post
Welcome to My Old Kentucky Blog!
This blog is part of a ten-week online workshop series conducted by the Teaching and Academic Support Center at the University of Kentucky for staff members in our center and other academic support units. The series is intended to introduce support staff to various Web 2.0 applications that can assist with our own internal communication and collaboration and with our work with faculty and students (additional ways to provide resources and services and being able to suggest creative options for them to use). It's also a pilot for a campus-wide faculty development series to be offered during the academic year. The series is called Blue 2.0 because it addresses Web 2.0 applications and because, at UK, we see blue in everything we do.
The first assignment is to create a blog in order to have a virtual venue to post comments about the Web 2.0 experiences.
This is my first post to my blog or any blog for that matter. Creating the blog was extremely easy and quick. However, I'm not one from whom words flow effortlessly in some stream of consciousness manner nor am I a decent typist. Who knew typing would be a daily requirement? When I was in school, typing was for girls and boys took shop. I hated shop. I still can't use a hammer or saw with any degree of proficiency. I hire it done. If I had taken typing, I'd have a useful skill now and I might have met more girls. Who knew the early 21st century would have personal computers with keyboards? I was told I'd have robots and rocket packs, not some smart typewriter.
So, I don't know how much I might use a blog given the prerequisites. However, I can imagine the following applications. In my faculty development work, I can see posting teaching tips that faculty would eagerly await to receive through their RSS feeds. I can also imagine posting something akin to a case study or a teaching question or comment that would prompt responses. For my Biology students, I can imagine posting answers to questions that might be posed to me through individual e-mails or posting supplements to what's covered in class such as class announcements or additional content information in the form of text, graphics, videos or web links.
We'll see. For now, I can say that I have blogged and I even have my own blog. However, I'm still waiting for my rocket pack.
This blog is part of a ten-week online workshop series conducted by the Teaching and Academic Support Center at the University of Kentucky for staff members in our center and other academic support units. The series is intended to introduce support staff to various Web 2.0 applications that can assist with our own internal communication and collaboration and with our work with faculty and students (additional ways to provide resources and services and being able to suggest creative options for them to use). It's also a pilot for a campus-wide faculty development series to be offered during the academic year. The series is called Blue 2.0 because it addresses Web 2.0 applications and because, at UK, we see blue in everything we do.
The first assignment is to create a blog in order to have a virtual venue to post comments about the Web 2.0 experiences.
This is my first post to my blog or any blog for that matter. Creating the blog was extremely easy and quick. However, I'm not one from whom words flow effortlessly in some stream of consciousness manner nor am I a decent typist. Who knew typing would be a daily requirement? When I was in school, typing was for girls and boys took shop. I hated shop. I still can't use a hammer or saw with any degree of proficiency. I hire it done. If I had taken typing, I'd have a useful skill now and I might have met more girls. Who knew the early 21st century would have personal computers with keyboards? I was told I'd have robots and rocket packs, not some smart typewriter.
So, I don't know how much I might use a blog given the prerequisites. However, I can imagine the following applications. In my faculty development work, I can see posting teaching tips that faculty would eagerly await to receive through their RSS feeds. I can also imagine posting something akin to a case study or a teaching question or comment that would prompt responses. For my Biology students, I can imagine posting answers to questions that might be posed to me through individual e-mails or posting supplements to what's covered in class such as class announcements or additional content information in the form of text, graphics, videos or web links.
We'll see. For now, I can say that I have blogged and I even have my own blog. However, I'm still waiting for my rocket pack.
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