Étude 001: Linguistic proficiency

This post transcludes a Google Doc that in turn transcludes a chart from a Google Sheet.



Hopefully I can find a way to make the viewing window in this post wider and taller than it is.

For now, it'll be easier to read the doc. itself: http://bit.ly/Étude-001

Speed tests for Internet connections

Hmm, not so fast today (2015.03.30) compared to last week (2015.03.24-26).

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4242315478

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4239010192

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4236864186

European etymology maps of common words

Check out this colorful album!

[Sorry, the embedding code from Europe etymology maps 1 - Imgur doesn't seem to work here; try viewing it at the source.] Album source: http://imgur.com/a/iVK8a/all

[30 words]

After Google Reader: Getting organized in Feedly

The transition into Feedly from Google Reader is seamless, and what you can do there is amazing! Once you have your feeds in Feedly, you can add them to new categories, and reorganize them into multiple categories.  All will backwash to Google Reader, till it goes belly up on the first of July:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. (Official Blog, A second spring of cleaning, 2013.03.13)

For example, in the screenshot below, there is a Language . . . feed in a topic grouping (Languages and Learning), as well as in another source grouping (Facebook). Likewise, there are social groupings, such as KGUW_13-14, new mash-ups for an instructional cohort, and Learning with Computers, connections from a series of professional development workshops.

It is also possible to rename feeds in Feedly displays. For example, in the Wikispaces (source) category feed  listing above, all five current items look the same. The feed names need to be trimmed back to the essential wiki titles, for ease of reading at a glance in Feedly displays.

[212 words]

Two face drawing videos

Austin Kleon

HOW TO DRAW FACES

MONDAY, JULY 27TH, 2009

http://www.austinkleon.com/2009/07/27/how-to-draw-faces/

Dave Gray | info

Videos – Drawing facial expressions

Thu, Oct 28, 2010

http://www.davegrayinfo.com/2010/10/28/drawing-facial-expressions/

Thanks to Nancy White for pointing these out in her Online Social Learning Practices - Benetec Slides (SlideShare, 2012.11.15).

Spell with flickr

Thanks to Isabelle Jones for point[ing] this out as a tool capable of supporting "development of both writing and speaking skills" (My Languages, Memory Joggers..., 2012.06.01). Check it out!

IMG_1719

IMG_1719, a photo by veryuseful on Flickr.

pabeaufait's favorites strike again

This is more like what I was hoping for:



The Global Player graphic that appears first is © alles-schlumpf (May 28, 2009).

My Startup Labels

books, brainstorms, drafts, essay prep., essays, free-writing, graphics, links, media, movies, outlines, quickposts, reviews, revisions, typing, websites

Another century post slips past

I figured it was time again for a human post when I noticed 300 for potpourri on the dashboard, and the month of February gone by without one. The 3ooth was an automated Diigo bookmarks compilation. Does extending the dashboard metaphor mean I was asleep at the wheel?

No, the three such automated posts last month represent about thirty Diigo bookmarks (February 2011). What with categories, highlights, notations, quotations, and tags as options, not to forget [group sharing,] Diigo-to-blog and -to-Delicious output options and other extensions, I'm beginning to think of Diigo as my micro-blogging engine of choice!

As the chart in the graphic and figures below indicate, total numbers of visitors and countries from which they hail continue on modest upward trends.

2010-10-15 79 2338

2010-11-00 n.d. n.d.

2010-12-15 80 2397

2011-01-00 n.d. n.d.

2011-02-15 81 2444

Thanks for dropping by!

Though the chart below suggests that the number of visitors took a turn upward over the past few months, I'm at a loss to explain why. pab's potpourri has been on MyBlogLog for years, and I haven't pinged Technorati recently.

While I've embedded a few videos here and there, the main new development has been feeding Diigo bookmarks automatically into micro-posts. Are those what attracted extra attention to this potpourri? There is an aggregate feed from all my blogs on one or more of the others; maybe that's generating some cross-checking.

If you're here checking out this post, and have a few keystrokes to spare, would you please leave a brief comment explaining what brought you here? I'd sure appreciate it.

Aren't Otters Extraordinarily Cute?

Though I missed it by a week, last week was "the [20th] anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill" (personal correspondence, 2009.03.24).

A family member and friend sent me that picture of two small victims probably no longer inhabiting our planet. Though otters' life-spans may reach 20 years, that wouldn't be the case for those unlucky ones, not even ten years later (Most Exxon Valdez otters sent to zoos are dead, Juneau Empire, 1999.03.30). Otter aren't the only ill-fortuned ones.

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, pockets of oil — an estimated 16,000 gallons — remain buried in small portions of the intertidal zone. ... As the 20th anniversary of the spill arrives, hopes are fading for a natural recovery of herring.

(Hal Bernton, Exxon Valdez oil-spill recovery still is work in progress, 20 years later, The Seattle Times, 2009.03.24)

On behalf of her otter buddies, my friend asked me to do "one thing out of the ordinary ... that eliminates the use of oil and gas ... on the planet." If you're reading this post, I'm asking you to do more of the same.


View Larger Map

Visual Dictionary: Blog this - Blog tools

If you click on a "Blog this" button appearing on a Visual Dictionary Online page, you can get HTML code to represent dictionary illustrations and terminology on blogs and websites, with permission, for non-commercial purposes. Here is an example:



For detailed terms of use, see the Blog Tools page.

SearchCrystal

This is an experimental post in which I'm embedding a searchCrystal widget. Thanks to MaryH for pointing it out, and providing a concrete example of its use.

I discovered this interesting visualization tool on the IES Book and Literature Circle Blog, in The Little Prince Literature Circles Week Two post (2008.05.28), through a Learning with Computers network connection in a Shelfari Group: Book, Short Stories Suggestions for the Classrooms and Activities (2008.09.04).

According to the page where I got the widget embedding code for this post (seachCrystal: Widgets), "The searchCrystal Widget visualizes the overlap between the result sets of five major search engines," for example, images on Ask, Flickr, Google, MSN, and Yahoo! (searchCrystal: Home). In order to fit the current template for this blog, I reduced the size of the display (below) from a default 600 pixels square to 400 pixels.

Exhibit A in PictoBrowser and Flickr displays

This post displays a Flickr photo set (Exhibit A, public), embedded with a new-found slide show tool, in which I'm just beginning to fiddle with display parameters other than height and width to fit this blog's template.



Thanks to Alan Levine for pointing out Pictobrowser on the CogDogBlog (Slick Flickr Browser, 2008.08.13). It sure is easy to use.

For purposes of comparison, I'm including a Flickr generated slide show the same size below.



The most noticeable differences apart from border shades (colors) and the like are:

1. Thumbnails and jump arrows for navigation appear constantly in PictoBrowser display, while only briefly after starting the show (">") or on mouse-over in Flickr;
   
2. Slides advance only manually in PictoBrowser, but automatically or manually in Flickr;
   
3. Titles get displayed in overlays at the foot of the graphics in PictoBrowser, but only in full-screen view with "Info On" in Flickr (or on the Flickr site);
   
4. Notes - Descriptions from Flickr - appear in PictoBrowser on mouse-over ("Notes"), but only in full-screen view with "Info On" in Flickr (or on the Flickr site); and
   
5. As Alan suggests, PictoBrowsers "spawn" - you can generate another PictoBrowser slide show on the spot, by clicking on the link at the lower right-hand corner of the display frame, while you must got to the Flickr site to accomplish the same feat.
   

Balance, on all fours

Balance, on all fours, seems to be what keeps tails from wagging dogs. For educational technologists, these days, the balance and interplay of humanity and technology seem to keep coming to the fore. The technological end of things has been twisting my noodle since I chewed over Achieving Sleep/Network Balance (Ceraso, ELT Blog, 2007.10.21) in pab's potpourri (2008.01.28).

Call it a rush, or addictive, vacuous pressure to adopt more and more diversified web tools, join more and more diversified professional and social networks, hold further discussions - with more people, explore existing topics more deeply, share and try new ideas, compare findings, pool and package resources, ..., and what do we get?

Loud whooshing sounds as our lives evacuate online, or something graphically represented as an exploding head, for which Alan Levine suggests he is "lacking an easy answer beyond shrugging it off, unplugging, letting stuff slide, or just floating along til the groove returns." Nonetheless, he keeps contemplating "how much 'power' we acquiesce to technology tools" (CogDogBlog, Exploding Heads, 2008.07.22).

Without ever having tried twittering, I'm inclined to agree that doing it needn't make everyone who does micro-thinkers. Yet humans are creatures of habits, and Levine wonders, "If some of the most sharp and clever people I know and respect find themselves overly immersed in something like twitter, what does that portend for the many more people who look to them for guides?"

If collection and recollection of both data and thoughts becomes largely and ubiquitously mechanical and piece-meal, it may lead to flattening of the web, and bode ill for discursive thought patterns, coherent conversations, cogent analyses, and deliberative syntheses. When push comes to pull, which way will online educators be leaning - towards the flat, quick, and transient, or the deep, rich, and stable?

It comes as some relief to hear of folks abandoning twitter accounts before I ever got one. However, I felt a twitch of dismay yesterday discovering So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet) (Marielle, Authorship 2.0, 2008.07.03), about which I growled on the LTD Project Blog (2008.07.24). Marielle reminds us "not to get lost in a plethora of solipsistic silos, speaking without listening, [and] reinventing rather than building upon each other’s ideas and deepening the collective dialogue." I wonder how long it may take twitter-free digital immigrants to groove deep enough into the web for the rest of the world to hear the music.

Photo by Andrey Sukhanov (2008)
Creative Commons License BY-NC 2.0

The World is a Mosaic!

AppAppeals Map of theWorld 2.0, with hot-linked graphics in the original (World Mosaic Created from 1001 Web 2.0 Logos):

Source: http://media.appappeal.com/map/appappeal-mosaic2.png

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Spring into Summer

At long last, I've got Spring Widgets working again. The exasperation was unbearable. It has taken almost a year to get to where I almost was last spring. That is, to:

• Display more than one feed in one widget, if any at all, and
• Get one logo to display at the head of more than one feed in the widget.

Work-arounds among Feedburner, SpringWidgets, Firefox, and Safari finally succeeded! Though I'm not sure I can replicate, or even remember the steps, an RSS Reader near the top of the sidebar now displays feeds from two Edublogs:

1. The Language Learner Development Project Blog (my newest), and
   
2. The Language Teacher Development Project Blog (oldest, second only to pab's potpourri).

Saving the logo separately for each feed in Feedburner seemed to do the trick for the display, but had to be done for both before getting the widget code for either blog from Spring Widgets. The bar divider between SpringWidget blog feeds worked in Safari, today. I should have tried that instead of Firefox months ago, when I first encounter scripting errors while trying to retrieve widget code through Firefox.

Yet just now, drafting this post in Safari, I was unable to use standard copy and paste keyboard commands. So I saved this post there, opened it again here in Firefox, et voilà!

Vox Privacy Zones & Blended Learning

This illustration was originally for a private group on Vox that colleagues and I use to conduct and collect discussions related to our teaching, where I wrote "This graphic represents four out of five privacy levels that Vox affords. The fifth level, zero of four if you will, is public" (personal correspondence, October 14, 2007). As you might guess, we are all quite keen on the fine-grained privacy controls that Vox provides on every post. We are interested as educators in adopting and adapting or subverting those privacy controls for use in teaching situations.

I have a bit over a month to decide whether to take the leap to teaching with Vox in a new class starting in April. However, in face-to-face discussion last month (January 2008), a colleague who had introduced students to Vox last year suggested that the friends and neighbors display features, along with automated recent post and comment feeds for groups, could quickly outgrow both individual and group blog display spaces.

Only so many (three to five?) recent contributions will remain visible in automated Vox feeds. So, while perhaps suitable for groups of up to a dozen members, for classes any larger than that, aggregating everyone's individual contributions in a single group might not work so well. Especially in the space of class meetings (blended face-to-face & online learning), fresh comments and posts from group members would quickly disappear from view.

Do any of you have experience using Vox blogs in blended learning environments, or any thoughts on trade-offs between community building and learner privacy? If so, I'd love to hear them.

Blogging Cmap (JPG image)

This post represents a Cmap of my current (and projected) blogging activities, exported as a JPG image (no active links), to illustrate - roughly - where, how, why, and for whom I blog:

(blogging080125gg.jpg)

If you click on the image (above), you can get a closer look. You may need to pan and scroll around to view the entire image.

I've got an IT Contest to attend in a few minutes, and exams to prepare afterwards. Then, when I get back to the drawing board, I intend to:

1. Add links to the blog header elements in the Cmap;
2. Simplify and enlarge the whole scheme;
3. Strive to post an interactive version.
   

Then maybe I'll have fresh goes with other mind-mapping tools that I've tried out already, to warm up for new courses next year (starting in April).