Magic Storm Light

I had a great time at the Educause conference. There were very informative presentations at the conference. Folks were there from all over the western states. I met some really interesting people who were very smart and very passionate about their work. It was inspiring.

After the conference I went to SJSU to do some work. When I stepped out of the building I work in I looked up to see this swirling mass of storm clouds. Then, I looked over at Tower Hall and saw a great shaft of light illuminating the structure. It was magic storm light and I had a camera with me. I started shooting until the light went away. As I walked to my car the rain started. It was some of the best light I have seen in a long time.

Notes from Educause WRC, Day 3

Using my Tablet PC I have posted my notes taken today in Microsoft One Note. These are my hand written notes from day three, converted to PDF.

Blogging from Educause WRC, Day 3, #1

I am at Educause listening to the closing general session on privacy and security. This has been a great conference. One of the hardest things has been choosing which of several great concurrent sessions to attend. I truly appreciate the support of Mary Jo, Chris and Mary Fran, my managers in Academic Technology, who have supported my attending and presenting at conferences like this. This has helped me be better at my job and made me even more excited about it.

Notes from Educause WRC, Day 2

Using my Tablet PC I have posted my notes taken in Microsoft One Note. These are my hand written notes from day two, converted to PDF.

Blogging from Educause WRC, Day 2, #2

I am on the BART

Todays session of the Educause Western Regional Conference is over for me. I am heading past the Oakland Coliseum heading for Fremont on BART. My presentation on Podcasting went very well. I will be repeating the same presentation for an Instructional Technology (IT) class tonight. I wish I could teach a class in Emerging Technology for the IT program, that would be great fun!

I took this photo of a cable car while I was walking to the BART station. It is amazing what you can do with technology. I uploaded the photo to my laptop, edited it in PhotoShop and will post it as soon as I get in range of a wireless network. That is a period of an hour or so.

I like the picture. It was taken right after a rain. The air was crisp clear and full of scents of rain, fresh air and the wares of the sidewalk vendors. It was a moment to savor.

Blogging from Educause WRC, Day 2, #1

I am in the San Francisco Ballroom of the Hyatt hotel in San Francisco attending conference sessions at the Educause Western Regional Conference. In about an hour I will be presenting on Podcasting. This should be fun!

MN says Apple pulled Wiley books from store shelves

According to the Tuesday, April 26th edition of the San Jose Mercury News, Apple is going to pull all the books published by John Wiley and Sons from the shelves of all Apple retail outlets in reaction to the publishing by Wiley of the Jeffrey S. Young book, "iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business."
If true, this has got to have a chilling effect on other publishers like O'Reilly and Peachpit Press. The relationship between these publishers and Apple cannot be helped by the sort of heavy handed approach Apple seems to be taking. This is also an example of why the kind of vertical monopoly Apple has on the platform is not always a good thing. Yes, I am typing this on my brand new Macintosh. Yes, I am concerned about some of Apple's business practices. Yes, I bought an Apple despite this.
What about their competition? No matter what you may think of Microsoft, I cannot imagine them doing anything even remotely like this. They have embraced openness and have allowed their own employees, folks like Bob Scoble, to even be openly critical of the company.
Apple, by having a string of retail outlets, and competing with and sometimes replacing the chain of independent retail vendors, is in a unique position to influence and control the Mac platform supply chain. If you consider the market as being the Mac platform, and not personal computers in general, I think you have monopolistic practices occurring here. Pulling all of the Wiley books off the shelves of the Apple outlets is heavy handed, in my opinion.
In my opinion, the consumer public is not served well in such an environment. In my opinion, freedom of the press is also not served well. I applaud Wiley for standing by their authors, I hope the other publishers stand by Wiley and I intend to buy the book. I also intend to use my new Apple PowerBook to order it.

Blogging from Educause WRC, #3

Using my Tablet PC I have posted my notes taken in Microsoft One Note. These are my hand written notes, converted to PDF.
My favorite presentation was one on the educational possibilities of massively multi player role playing virtual worlds. This was very interesting to me and has a lot of potentials for distance learning and experiential learning. This really plays into Bloom's Taxonomy and is a very powerful learning tool, I think. The presentation focused on Second Life, but I imagine it being combined with a virtual reality environment that is more like Halo 2. Can you imagine a distance learning tool that combines the ability to role play historical events like Halo 2 with the collaboration capability of Skype?
I can, and it would rock the educational world!
You could have the students meet in a virtual classroom, see a film on the Cuban Missile Crisis, then suddenly divide into Russian, Cuban and American groups. After the simulation is over, virtual class reconvenes. All this would be done with learners totally dispersed geographically!

Blogging from Educause WRC #2

Brian L. Hawkins, President of Educause, just gave a talk about navigating the seas of IT change and coping with new technology. He used a nautical metaphor. He spoke very keenly about the need to base decisions on research and data. But, isn't research based on gathering evidence after an event? How do you research things that have not happened yet? How do you gauge the success of your voyage when you are sailing on new and uncharted seas?

Blogging from Educause WRC

I am at the Educause Western Regional Conference, tomorrow I am going to be presenting here on Podcasting and speaking about Tablet PC computing in education. The audience is Instructional Technologists from Colleges and Universities throughout the western United States. It is at the Hyatt in San Francisco. The opening session is at 12:45 this afternoon, but I got here early and got oriented and registered. Then I went to lunch at an Italian Restaurant on Powell Street. I ate Panini and watched the cable cars trundle by. I am reading The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. This is an important book. In it he quotes Paul Romer who said, "the most important ideas are meta-ideas." Florida says these are, (again quoting Romer,) "ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas."
This is why I think Emerging Technology and Podcasting (technologies based on RSS 2.0) is so important and disruptive of existing paradigms! That is exactly what it does!
By the way, did you listen to Clayton Christensen's talk? Yes, I know it is long. But, it is important! Please set aside an hour or so to do that. He is speaking to an Open Source convention and the principles he speaks of go right to the core of this emerging/disruptive technology. he even speaks about higher education and the impact of this technology on education.
This is time well spent! This is another gem from ITConversations.