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.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/18/2009

• O3Spaces - O3Spaces Workplace

  About O3Spaces Workplace\nO3Spaces Workplace is a Web 2.0 Document Management & Document Collaboration Solution\n\nO3Spaces Document CollaborationO3Spaces document collaborationO3Spaces Workplace offers a fresh approach to document management and document collaboration. With ease of use and end user adoption in mind, O3Spaces Workplace seamlessly integrates its functionality into your every day office work.

  tags: collab-bk-collaboration, collaboration, O3Spaces, document management

• Edublogs Live

  Show Archives From Edublogs.Org Free Live Web Events

  tags: archives, Edublogs, education, blogging, blogs, resources, tools, tutorials

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/17/2009

• Sayings and Phrases - meanings and origins

  Dictionary of phrases comprising categorical lists for Biblical, Sailor's, and Shakespearean lingo

  tags: reference, phrases, language, English, dictionary, quotations, sayings, writing

  • Phrases, sayings and idioms at

    
    

    The Phrase Finder

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/15/2009

• New Feature: How to import your Google Documents to SlideShare (Update) | SlideShare Blog

  Seems to be for fixed displays, rather than auto updating transclusions

  tags: documents, Google, imports, Slideshare, spreadsheets, transclusions

  • We will not ask you for your credentials.

• Athabasca University Press - Mobile Learning

  "This collection is for anyone interested in the use of mobile technology for various distance learning applications. Readers will discover how to design learning materials for delivery on mobile technology and become familiar with the best practices of other educators, trainers, and researchers in the field, as well as the most recent initiatives in mobile learning research. Businesses and governments can learn how to deliver timely information to staff using mobile devices. Professors can use this book as a textbook for courses on distance education, mobile learning, and educational technology." (Details, ¶1)

  tags: mobile learning, distance learning, distributed learning, mobile technology

  • This collection is for anyone interested in the use of mobile technology for various distance learning applications. Readers will discover how to design learning materials for delivery on mobile technology and become familiar with the best practices of other educators, trainers, and researchers in the field, as well as the most recent initiatives in mobile learning research. Businesses and governments can learn how to deliver timely information to staff using mobile devices. Professors can use this book as a textbook for courses on distance education, mobile learning, and educational technology.

• Centre for Distance Education - Collaborative Tools Evaluation Site

  "The site is designed to help distance educators and their students to select appropriate methods of course development and delivery. Athabasca University (AU) in Alberta is Canada's Distance Education University, teaching over 20,000 students around the world, completely via distance education methods and media. The evaluation site is maintained by AU's Centre for Distance Education (CDE), as a collaborative activity by its faculty and graduate students." (Intended Audience, ¶1)
  
  Retrieved 2009.09.14, "last updated February 21, 2008" (page footer)

  tags: applications, asynchronous, evaluations, free, online, synchronous, tools

  • The highest priority is given to software that can be downloaded from the internet
    and used at no cost.
    

    
    New product categories will be added, and the existing ratings updated.

  • he site is designed to help distance educators and their students to select appropriate methods of course development and delivery. Athabasca University (AU) in Alberta is Canada's Distance Education University, teaching over 20,000 students around the world, completely via distance education methods and media. The evaluation site is maintained by AU's Centre for Distance Education (CDE), as a collaborative activity by its faculty and graduate students.

• 100 Ways To Improve Your Blog

  Dragos "grouped the tips into several areas: content, layout, plugins, promotion, networking and money" (¶1).

  tags: blogging, blogs

  • This post is a follow-up of my first “100 things” attempt, 100 Ways To Live A Better Life, which was absolutely a blast. This time, for your convenience, I grouped the tips into several areas: content, layout, plugins, promotion, networking and money.
  • I grouped the tips into several areas: content, layout, plugins, promotion, networking and money.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/14/2009

• Building Communities--Strategies for Collaborative Learning - 2002 - ASTD

  Suggests communities support collaboration

  tags: collab-bk-collaboration, collaboration

  • E-learning communities are groups of people connected solely via technology. All interactions begin and occur over the Internet, through conference calls, via videoconferencing, and so forth. These communities promote virtual collaboration that's focused on addressing a specific topic, and they are supported by one or more online learning and media tools.
  • Blended learning communities integrate online learning and face-to-face meetings. Two core assumptions of this type of community are 1) deep personal relationships between learners create richer collaborative learning experiences and 2) relationships between learners can be strengthened through structured group interactions that employ technology before and/or after a face-to-face learning event.

• elearnspace. everything elearning.

  Defines and explains benefits of collaboration, list additional resources

  tags: collab-bk-collaboration, collaboration

  • At it's simplest level, collaboration may be simply sharing information with another person, department, or organization...at it's most advanced level, collaboration involves unifying communication processes and content and establishing forums for accessing resources and building content and value together. An effective collaborative project that is sustained may involve into more complex relationships and purposes

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/11/2009

• Issuu - You Publish

  "Collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best." (Issuu - You Publish [home page], Publish by millions, ¶1, 2009.09.10)

  tags: publishing, pdf, magazines, books

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Herding Cats

This appears to be the source of a concept I recall James Farmer included in a presentation years ago. If you recall that pres., and know where it is, I'd appreciate a pointer to help me track it down.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/09/2009

• Learning about Learning | collaboration | movies

  Cover page for informative, illustrative, and perspective movies (videos) about collaborative learning in Scottish schools, presenting principles, spotlighting teaching techniques and learning experiences, offering educational leadership views; updated 06 September 2007

  tags: collaboration, schools, Scotland

• A Guide to Protecting Your Online Identity - Annotated

  Online identity management and personal branding, that includes social media optimization, can work to fight online identity theft. There are several tools and companies that monitor, repair, or build online reputations. - para. 6

  tags: Identity, security, safety, online, branding

• FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster

  The beauty of Facebook’s many features is that now you can choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life. - para. 3

  tags: facebook, privacy, settings, security, identities, social media

  • No one will know you’ve changed settings, either for them or in general; these updates will not show up in your news feed, so block people with abandon. Also note that photo albums settings must be changed individually, either when you set up a new album or by going to the Photos section of the Privacy page. However, any photo you use as a profile picture goes in a separate album called “Profile Pictures” which the settings cannot be changed for. So don’t make an inappropriate photo your profile pic. But you knew that.

• Canada: Facebook Doesn’t Comply with Our Privacy Laws

  "A Canadian privacy commission report released on Thursday says that Facebook breaches privacy laws there" (para. 1)

  tags: Facebook, privacy, Canada

• My Languages: Summer Reading: Guy Claxton-What's The Point of School?

  Outlines Guy Claxton's Building Learning Power program, and asserts that: "As students are being coached in how to be usefully reflective about their own learning journeys, they are also developing collaboration skills and developing a richer meta-language in which to talk, not just about the content of their learning, but bout its process as well" (para. 4).

  tags: assessment, coaching, reflection, collaboration, meta-language, confidence, enthusiasm

  • As students are being coached in how to be usefully reflective about their own learning journeys, they are also developing collaboration skills and developing a richer meta-language in which to talk, not just about the content of their learning, but bout its process as well.
  • Collaboration
  • I also loved the words from Joseph Payne, dating back to 1856, against continual testing and likening it to “continually pulling up the plants to see the conditions of the roots, the consequence of which was that all good natural growth was stopped”.

• Diigo Blog » Diigo vs. Google Notebook (& importer…) - Annotated

  Google just announced that it will gradually phase out Google Notebook and many people are looking for alternatives. Here is a brief side-by-side comparison of Google Notebook and Diigo:
  
  1. Google Notebook is very much similar to Diigo Lists. ...

  tags: diigo, google, bookmarking, technology, education, importer, google notebook

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/08/2009

• LearningTimes Network - "LearningTimes.org"

  Comment on Social Presence in Online Learning that resonates with points in Stephen Downes recent presentation at Ars Electronica (2009.09.05): The Cloud and Collaboration
  (http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/the-cloud-and-collaboration)

  tags: collaboration, collab-bk-collaboration

• LearningTimes Network - "LearningTimes.org"

  Comment on Social Presence in Online learning indicating distinct categories of online collaboration during coursework

  tags: collab-bk-collaboration

  • We can divide this 'social presence' into two categories, I feel... (a) the interaction which is graded as part of the collaborative learning process, involving discussions amongst participants and comments on the content of others' posts. There are obviously elements of quantity and quality to be considered here.... and (b) the kind of interaction which takes place spontaneously (and is not graded by the e-tutor)... where participants simply share useful info or their personal feelings about a particular topic, thus establishing affective links not only with the other learners, but also with the e-tutors.

• Digital Citizenship

  Within this website are many examples of how educators can begin the process of teaching their students how to use technology more appropriately. These resources can be used by any anyone who is interested in helping students or others better understand appropriate technology use. (Digital Citizenship Today,¶1)

  tags: appropriacy, technology, citizenship, digital, education, publications, resources

• XMind - Social Brainstorming and Mind Mapping

  tags: mindmapping, opensource, software, download, brainstorming

• Statement of Rights and Responsibilities | Facebook

  tags: Facebook, services, terms of service

  • you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook
  • You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law.
  • You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial or sponsored content served by us. You give us permission to use your name and profile picture in connection with that content, subject to the limits you place.

• | The Public Domain | [Enclosing the Commons of the Mind]

  Boyle, James. (2008). [CC-BY-NC-SA]
  

  tags: copyright, laws, intellectual property, books, opensource, public domain, cultures, sciences, technology, policies

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PABeaufaitBookmarks 09/05/2009

• McToonish » ... » The Death of Communities When Courses End

  "Fortunately Facebook, Ning, Google and Yahoo Groups and many other options for social networking don’t work that way. Those communities can continue for as long as the members of the community put in the effort to keep it alive. This can be very useful for students to stay in contact for social, professional and learning opportunities" (Ross, 2008.10.06).

  tags: access, cohorts, communities, course management systems, courses, death, learning, learning opportunities, glossaries, opportunities, professionalism, resources, social networking sites, third-party sites, universities, wikis

• Plaxo

  tags: no_tag

  • an opt-opt confirmation

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity

Wesch (YouTube, 2009.07.16) presents "a brief history" and extolls a new age of "whatever" (33:44 min.), which as Couros (2009.07.21) suggests is well worth our time.

pabspotpourri 09/04/2009

• sleeping alone and starting out early: on social networking guidelines for teachers

  Jenna McWilliams' post frames and follows on from Steve Taffee's post comprising Proposed Guidelines for Use of Social Networks by School Faculty and Staff (Blogg-Ed Indetermination, Social Networking Guidelines for School Employees, 2009.02.12). Follow-ons focus "On 'Misrepresentation'" and "On Course Use of Social Networking."

  tags: social networking, guidelines, strategies, misrepresentation

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Removing mail from servers

Now that I've switched to LDAP mail services for most of my accounts (three of five), to enable synchronization across multiple machines, in various venues, I have run into problems where message that I'm sure I sorted, replied to, or deleted, show up again as unread messages. That is, mainly in alternate users areas (Restorers) in which I hardly ever open mail.

In Mac Mail, I used to delete trashed messages permanently from mail servers after a month, just in case I mishandled some, and didn't discover the errors in my ways till more than a week afterwards. I'm resetting preferences to delete them after one week, and may switch to after one day, or to when quitting mail, if necessary.

Gravatars sound cool!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://v.wordpress.com/UyDfmflZ" width="400" height="224"/]

(Wordpress. tv, How-To, Introducing Gravatar: Your Globally Recognized Avatar)

Collaboration Technology - What's Next

One pick from a rack of attractive productions from case:
http://www.youtube.com/user/case
Case Western Reserve University

Mendeley sync's ... [from] CiteULike

I've accepted an invitation to adopt Mendeley desktop and online bibliographic reference management applications, whose features Mendeley Research Networks summarize here. They work with Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows, as well as online, so you can use Mendeley just about anywhere. It was quick and easy to sign-up, and start a profile.

The Import to Mendeley bookmarklet, found through a dismiss-able feature link in the profile sidebar, dragged and dropped sweetly into a biblio. folder in my Xmarks synchronized Firefox Bookmarks toolbar. The CiteULike Importer (Account Settings) set up was almost as dreamy.

I wonder how long it takes to get CiteULike references flowing [in-]to Mendeley, and how seamless sharing references with collaborators will be.

Addenda: Although adding spot-on articles highlighted by Mendeley at login was a piece of cake (shown first by field, perhaps filtered through new research interests), I've found no trace of previous CiteULike citations coming through to Mendeley over the past hour or so. I checked to make sure the CiteULike Importer connection was hot. Anyone know a way to release the backlog?

AdSense promo blocked access to layout

I've been trying out new gadgets in the sidebar for the past few days. I got one to show blog statistics, thinking it might be useful on students blogs.

However, I was stuck with it in the top one-third of my sidebar because an Adsense promo was blocking access to the lower parts of the blog layout interface, in both Firefox and Safari (below). No scrolling available to get past it, even after refreshing page views.

Firefox

Safari

I tried following the link to the Google Adsense interface, not activating anything, and navigating back to the blog layout interface, to no avail.

Finally, after closing Firefox, and firing up a new window, starting this post, and taking another look at the Blogger layout in another tab; the layout loaded completely, and showed the remainder of sidebar elements. However, in Safari, even after quitting and relaunching the browser, reloading and refreshing the page; the AdSense promo is still stuck there about 5.5 gadgets down a sidebar of 17, hiding 11.5 of them.

Brainless language defaults: not necessarily so

Though service providers seldom notify individual users of enhanced affordances, it has come to my dumb-founded attention that Google Calendar embedding code generators now offer recovery from defaults imposed according to user ISP locations. Deep among your calendars, you may find:

• Settings:
• Embed This Calendar:
• Customize the color, size, and other options (sorry, no screen shots here because they might violate copyright).
  

Then, after culturally sensitive options like "Week Starts On" (left sidebar, 2009.06.19), there's a drop down menu that enables you to over-ride the default. I've over-ridden the default on two calenders, embedded in singular locations, so far.

If you have more calendars that you wish to appear in certain languages, when embedded in multiple locations, more power to you! You may need to regenerate embedding code in Google, and then replace whatever you've embedded in other websites.

Building design and evacuation plans

How fast can you get down the stairs?

A news item on TV this evening reminded me that building designs may fail to prioritize evacuation, and that laws enacted after designs get implemented may be equally likely to fail to make evacuation feasible in existing buildings, whether there are natural or human impacts, for example: earthquakes or missiles; that threaten building occupants.

The following mind map represents consequential impacts on stairwells, rather than superstructures, without taking into account variation in individual or planned evacuation speeds; which depend in turn upon immediate floor-level casualties, and willingness of non-casualties to engage in near-peer evacuations.

Odeo player test

The purpose of this post is to test scripts for embedding Odeo players for recordings that students made.

Track One



Track Two