Are we totally missing it?
Sometimes a comic really hits the real points…
Mountebank Blog
"There is nothing so impossible in nature, but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible, but they will affirm."
The Producers
We gave all our incoming freshmen Flip Cams this past fall. These are very small digital camcorders. They are small enough to be carried all the time, ridiculously easy to use (no cables, and basic software is already installed right on the camera itself, and using AA batteries), and the video quality is […]
School 2.0 Will Not Be in School
We’ve been talking throughout the semester in the Core II class in the ITP program about the idea of “School 2.0″ (which I’ve also explored as “the University of the Future“). It wasn’t really an intended theme of the course, but we do seem to keep coming back to it.
And at a meeting […]
Newspapers Will Fold?
Time Magazine lists 10 Newspapers that will either Fold or Go Under Next.
1. The Philadelphia Daily News
2. The Minneapolis Star Tribune
3. The Miami Herald
4. The Detroit News
5. The Boston Globe.
6. The San Francisco Chronicle.
7. The Chicago Sun Times
8. NY Daily News
9. The Fort Worth Star Telegram
10. The Cleveland Plain Dealer
They give their reasoning for each one in the linked article above. It could be they’re right, even about all of them.
But here’s something I notice…I read this list because of a link from one of my twitter community–somebody I don’t know in “real life” at all. He linked to this Time Magazine story. On Yahoo News (where that link above is going to). And Time is actually just taking it from 24/7wallst.com.
So if I’m counting right, this story reached me only after being re-purposed 4 times from its original source. And now it’s reaching anyone reading this after a 5th.
Content “producers” become content aggregators–and content “consumers” become content disseminators in the new media economy. And then those disseminators comment on the content, and re-purpose it, and make their own points. Like I’m doing here. So everybody’s role gets reshaped. Who’s the “real” producer?
Interesting times, that’s who.
(And by the way, I can’t think of a time in the past 10 years or more when I’ve actually bought a paper copy of Time Magazine–or even touched one except when stranded in a doctor’s office with nothing else available.)
This is what it’s about
When we talk about open publishing, open creating, students having the tools to be their own media sources, not just consumers, this is what it means. Lights? Cameras? Nah. I’ll just do it on my phone!
20 Years Later, Remembering
R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.
February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988.
Eportfolio Rollout and Tech Day
Yesterday, in a very exhausting but exciting Macaulay Orientation Technology Day, we hosted all 363 of our incoming freshmen for lunch, workshops, and of course the eagerly-awaited laptop distribution! This year we also gave the students laptop sleeves for the first time, which resulted in some of them (as you can see from the photo!) discarding the boxes their shiny new laptops came in just as soon as they left they Graduate Center. But we did give them more than that–things which (we hope) they won’t discard as eagerly.
On the tech side, I got to try a (very impromptu, but successful) first public attempt at using Poll Everywhere. Very fun, and I may post more about that another time. (Why use “clickers” when all the students already have cellphones?) The Tech Fellows also gave some very well-received workshops–introducing Leopard and the Mac, showing the students (most of whom were not experienced with Macs at all, even if they enjoyed my joke about the tattoo on their knees) what these new machines could do. Photobooth, as always, was a big hit, except for the students whose cameras didn’t work (it seems most of those cameras revived later. Not sure what happened there.)
But the most interesting, and risky, part came with the rollout of the Macaulay Eportfolios to all these incoming freshmen. I admit I was a bit worried that the whole WPMU installation was going to fall apart when it got hit by so many people all trying to create eportfolios at the same time. And in fact there were some glitches, especially at the peak (which seemed to come right around 430 PM in the 3-5 PM workshop session). When that happened, some people got “invalid authorization key” error messages–although those seemed to go away if they just tried again after a minute or two. The system also stopped sending me the automated notifications of new blogs being created for a while–it picked up again later in the evening, but there were a whole bunch–probably around 40-60, for which I never got a notification. Even worse, some of the eportfolios seem to have been created, but bogged down in a weird way so that they’re there, but with no CSS whatsoever–and no users, either. Those will ultimately be deleted, I suppose. But still, we got about 200 eportfolios created in the same two-hour period. Not a bad start.
Most of them are still in their default state, but a few students have already gone in on their own and done some updating–trailblazers! For us, now, follow-up is going to be key. Getting some attention to those trailblazers, doing some show and tell, getting some commenting and sharing going, and adding some students from the upper classes, too…all of that is going to be part of this year’s work. Or fun!
Blog From iphone
To post directly from the iPhone, and even with a picture. How nice!
Sync iCal Outlook Entourage iPhone Google Calendar
This was (for me) the holy grail of syncing. I wanted all the possible syncing to work in all the possible directions–so if I added an event (or changed or deleted one) on the calendar on my iPhone, it would be reflected on the other calendars, too–and vice versa and versa vice. On Mac and on PC. (probably not necessary to explain why this complicated syncing was necessary–but I know, from much googling, that others would like to be able to do it, too.)
At first it was looking like it really would not be possible. But then two new developments made it all work.
IPhone 2.0 included true Exchange integration, and Google Calendar released their Calendar Sync (PC only, damn it, but that was workable).
So here’s how it all works now…
On the iPhone, set up to sync mail, calendar, and contacts with Exchange. That’s easy one-step, and syncs almost instantly.
Then the Exchange server handles syncing all that info with Entourage (on Mac) and Outlook (on PC).
The Google Calendar Sync handles syncing Outlook with Google Calendar (I keep that running in a VMWare Fusion virtual Windows XP machine on a desktop Mac).
And Spanning Sync (on the Mac) handles the syncing between Google Calendar and iCal.
Believe it or not, the whole thing works. There is (at most) a 10-minute lag for any event to sync, but they all do reflect all the same changes, and the best part is that it works for the iPhone without connecting the cable to sync.
Of course, an open calendaring standard, shared by everyone, would make all these gymnastics unnecessary. But as long as there’s Microsoft Exchange around, I don’t hold out much hope for that actually coming.
“Unnecessary”
Even with ongoing health issues, I still enjoy everyday absurdities, which is why I’m a big fan of The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.
It’s not a terribly mean grammar “gotcha” site. It’s really just for fun, and many of the finds are quite hilarious.
So I sent in a photo of my own–a sign that I noticed right here in Brooklyn. And today it was posted! This is a measure of fame that I can handle–first name only, and just plain silliness!
(I saw another classic–the “all you can eat” pancake breakfast, over the weekend, but didn’t snap a photo).