Today I tuned into a DyKnow webcast in which several professors from another university talked about how they’re using laptops (without pen technology) instead of tablets. The audio was a little rough and I have to admit I didn’t learn much, but I think the audio capabilities are very promising.
If you’re not familiar with DyKnow, it’s a piece of software heavily used in education as a teaching aide. It combines various presentation technologies, presenting text and images, polling, chat, feedback, user submissions, along with monitoring software to block applications, web access, etc. It’s a pretty useful tool that has come a very long way since we first started using it.
I’d like to see how well this would work in a distance learning or online course application. It’s easy to post some notes, PowerPoint slides, and have a couple of assignments online for students to login and look at. I haven’t seen too many people using the internet for innovative ways to teach. If you didn’t catch it earlier, DyKnow has been working on the integration of audio along with its already useful software package. Now the audio wasn’t necessarily perfect in what I experienced today, but there were a lot of factors affecting that and I know it’s only going to get better in the future.
Just imagine the teaching possibilities of being able to interact with students from afar using DyKnow. Instead of posting some material and assigning some homework, teachers can now interact with their students with audio, video, text, etc. I think this is a big step in making online teaching worthwhile.
I remember in high school there were classes people could take to learn life skills. Things like ironing a shirt, balancing a check book, changing the oil in your car, and making pancakes. I learned how to do those kind of things at home so I chose to learn in different areas. It looks like I’ve finally been able to pass some of my life skills on.
Liz: Thanks for teaching me to FTP things.
Chalupa: no problem
it’s a good life skill to have
Liz: I think so.
I know, I know, I’ve been off gallivanting with my other projects and I haven’t been updating you on all the fun stories of my life and I apologize. I just got home from hitting the gym after work and my computer notified me there was a software update for iTunes. I just hit “ok” and let it do it’s thing. Twenty minutes later I notice an icon for Safari sitting on my desktop and found another one in my quicklaunch. Lo and behold, that iTunes update, which I thought was just for iTunes and Quicktime, installed a Mac browser. I don’t need no stinking badgers and I don’t need no stinking Safari. I’m a Firefox man. Where is Jesus Quintana when you need a proper rant?
Here’s a little gem Joe shared with me from the interwebs. What if celebrities moved to Oklahoma?
I posted my first sponsored review today. A grassroots marketing company contacted me to review an upcoming DVD release. It kinda cool to find out somebody like that likes your movie reviews. Hopefully I’ll be asked to do more in the future.
It’s not often I buy clothes. I’m sure some people think I don’t really care about the clothes I wear, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m all about comfort. There are only about 3 shirts I even wear to work and I’ve been wearing them since 2001 or 2002. Once I find something I like (pants, shirts, shoes) I’ll wear it(them) until I can’t anymore.
Sadly enough, all of my good pants wore out about 4 months ago and all I had was an old pair of big pants. These jeans are so big they had to be worn with a belt so they’d stay up. I’ve been wearing them at work this whole school year and now the bottoms are all frayed. I decided it was finally time to get something new.
I was able to find a couple pairs of jeans and a couple pairs of khakis. Besides being loose-fitting and comfortable, another pants criteria I have is the pockets. I tend to carry about 5 lbs of stuff around with me and I can’t abide pockets I can’t put things in. I think these are the first pairs of new pants I’ve bought in at least a couple years. Hopefully they last a while.
Liz, Paul and I will be heading out to Lebowski Fest in Chicago soon. Hopefully the snow won’t give us trouble. The tentative plan is to drive back tonight. We’re hoping to interview some people for an episode idea. We’ll also be watching an original 35mm print of the movie. I’m looking forward to it.
For those of you who are my friends, you should know by now how much I love the BP in the town where I live. You probably also know about my “Vote for Pedro” hat that I’ve been wearing for over 2 years now.
Recently I’ve been getting comments about the hat because it’s an election year. Apparently nobody has noticed it until now. The other day, one of the ladies at the BP made a comment about my hat and I told her it was a movie reference. Today I went in to pick up a beverage and some Boscos and that same lady said, “hey, I don’t even know your name but I thought of you the other day.”
me: Oh yeah?
lady: Yeah, I watched this crazy movie called Napoleon Dynamite and I was like - that’s what that hat means on that guy who always comes in.
me: Oh, cool.
lady: Yeah, I bet you can’t believe I hadn’t seen it yet.
So I introduced myself. It’s cool being recognized at some of your favorite local places.
This weekend we were supposed to meet with a couple of English profs from IU and U of Louisville for a podcast episode. We had been emailing back and forth for a while and even rescheduled a couple of times. The date was set for March 2nd and we were going to meet them in Bloomington. I thought it was a little weird to meet on a Sunday, but didn’t think too much about it. Saturday rolls around and I’m being lazy watching movies and I get a phone call from one of them wondering where we’re at. They thought we were meeting Saturday and we thought we were meeting on the 2nd. In true Dude-like fashion we said, “what day is this?”
Due to some work conflicts on our end, they graciously drove up here to meet us and we ended up talking for an hour and a half. Lots of ins, outs, and what-have-you. It should be a good episode. I’ll have to edit it down to something more manageable, but I think we might get two episodes out of it.
Recent Comments