stumbling toward clarity, balance, and insight
Posted in Creative on Apr 13th, 2008
I just finished watching Bruce Sterling’s speech at the “Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign” conference. Though a science fiction writer by profession, he’s become more and more immersed in the world of design, first as a vehicle into his fiction and eventually as the direct object of his study and thinking.
Primary Point: Reducing Cognitive Load
The main thesis [...]
Posted in Creative on Apr 12th, 2008
Setup: Part One
One of the requirements for my Masters in English1 was the standard scholarly research course. The major assignment of the course was to create a bibliography on a subject or author and then compose a bibliographic essay from the findings. I chose to research H. P. Lovecraft because I’d been interested [...]
Posted in Creative on Apr 7th, 2008
I don’t even know where to begin with this recent article from New York Magazine, “Testing Horace Mann,” about the fallout (or lack thereof) from offensive student postings on Facebook. It’s at the center of the current technology-related problems schools face. Part of this has to do with new problems the technology makes [...]
Posted in Creative on Mar 30th, 2008
This morning, Doug Noon shared a post entitled “The Fiction of Intellectual Property.” The post and the comments are thoughtful, but ultimately frustrating. What follows isn’t a direct response (hence, I didn’t leave a comment), but just some thoughts that have been kicking around my head for a while related to that post [...]
Posted in Creative on Feb 20th, 2008
I’ve just dumped Word for RoughDraft,1 at least when it comes to stories and scripts. So far, RoughDraft is much, much better than a typical word-processor for writing prose and scripts, and a decent replacement for (and certainly cheaper than) FinalDraft or Movie Magic Screenwriter.2
I haven’t worked much with FinalDraft, but MMS does have [...]
Posted in Educational on Feb 15th, 2008
I delivered a presentation last night to teachers who work in a county that only allows them to use Blackboard. Given that, I saw no point to going in and talking about the possibilities that other tools and services make available, or complaining about the limitations of Blackboard.1 That’s a presentation for the administration. Instead, [...]
Posted in Educational on Feb 13th, 2008
I mentioned the notebook/textbook approach in my previous post, so I thought I’d take a minute here to explain it further. The idea is pretty basic, and something a lot of people already do without necessarily calling it that. To me, it’s just an approach to these tools that integrates blogs and wikis [...]
Posted in Educational on Dec 24th, 2007
If you haven’t already heard, some exciting news (and two clarifications) from Dan Cohen:
I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive.
The Zotero-IA alliance will create a “Zotero Commons” into which scholarly materials can be added simply via the Zotero client.
Cohen’s [...]
Posted in Educational on Nov 9th, 2007
Gary Stager, in a few recent posts, has been stirring the pot by confronting some popular “Web 2.0″ ideas, like the digital immigrants/digital natives divide, the concept of the flat world, and the latest Michael Wesch video. Ultimately, Stager is serving as the voice of caution, warning pro-tech educators not to become enamored with [...]
Posted in Educational on Nov 7th, 2007
Google and Weekly Reader’s Writing for Teens magazine have put together a few lesson plans for to help teachers and students use Google Docs for collaborative writing. The lessons provide instructions for using Google Docs, student-oriented suggestions, tips, and checklists for working through an online, collaborative revision process, and an educator’s guide. Helpful [...]
