Blogs, RSS feeds, and Del.icio.us

I remember last October giggling as I read Trey Martindale's blog post stating (follow the link to read the whole thing):

My friend John Curry reminded me that I’m not posting very often on my blog these days, and he’s right. It seems I’m taking a shorter route–kind of “mini-blogging”. Basically I’m just saving and tagging interesting net resources in my delicious bookmarks account. I now have over 1000 items in that account, and it’s been useful for me, and for students–sort of like my external long-term memory. So, if you would like to know what I’m reading about, investigating, or find interesting, that’s the place.

Say What?!?

In my reading today I came across Miss South Carolina's interview question and response at the Miss Teen USA pagent. Her question was: "Why can't 20% of Americans locate the U.S. on a world map?" Bless her heart. This obviously wasn't on her study list. I'm sure she's a very sweet girl, and my wife (who did some pagents in her day) has told me a lot about the pressure, but WOW. This is extremely awkward to say the least. Here's to hoping that my kids come out of their classes better able to 1) locate the U.S. on a map, and 2) reason logically. See her response after the jump.

Web 2.0 and meetings, meetings, meetings . . .

So today is one of THOSE days. You know what I mean, right? It's back to school time, and so we as faculty get to spend the day in meetings. So as I sit here listening to the same old things that we seem to go over every year (new faculty, policies and procedures, etc.) I'm wondering, isn't there some better use of our time? Right now I'm in my School meeting, and later I "get to go" to College of Education faculty meeting where we'll go over the same things.

I guess the good thing is I'm getting a free lunch from McAlister's Deli, and who can argue with their potato salad? At the COE faculty meeting, I'll get a new T-shirt, so here's to hoping I like it better than last year's which is now a sleep shirt for my kids.

But what does all of this have to do with Web 2.0?

Addicted to Blogging?

I was going through my Google Reader after class this morning, and I ran across a Bloggers Anonymous post from Doug Johnson at the Blue Skunk Blog. He references a short quiz he found thanks to Jeff Utecht at the Thinking Stick (I hadn't got that far down on my reader). Doug was 55% addicted to blogging; Jeff was 90% addicted. Well, these are guys whose blogs I read, so I know there is no way I'm that addicted.

My results?

Me in four slides

So a few weeks ago Dan Meyer, who writes dy/dan, held a four slide contest. The purpose was to see if you could represent yourself completely in four slides. Now the problem for me is that I have NO TALENT when it comes to visual representation, but I want my grad students in my online EDTC 5203: Foundations of Educational Technology course to do it as a way of getting to know each other. So, I made mine to serve as an example. I don't know how good they are (actually, I know they're not good), and they would certainly never win any awards, but they do represent me. See them after the jump.

One of my all time favorite songs

Did you ever have one of those songs that held so many memories for you that it was tough to explain? Well one of those songs for me is Songs about Rain by Gary Allan. The lyrics don't have a single thing to do with it, but it was the time of my life and what was going on that it reminds me of. I actually have this as my ringtone on my phone. I was listening to it earlier, and I just thought I'd share.

See the video after the jump.

Facebook for CMS?

Susan (?) at Ubernoggin proposed using Facebook as your CMS. She wrote:

Getting tired of the Learning Management System on your campus? Ever look to see how infrequently your students actually log in to see their assignments etc? Let me tell you, it’s pretty darn infrequently. So why not create a course site on a social network where they already live? Facebook now has several apps that make a near perfect course management system. Use “Courses”, a file sharing app, and a chat app and you’ve got every tool in Blackboard on a site that doesn’t go down, isn’t so bland that it puts you and your students asleep, and actually offers collaborative resources that BB can’t provide (oh and you’re not supporting a company which caters to administrators rather than instructors and students but that’s my personal grudge).

If you've read my post about Facebook, you might already know how I responded. If not, here's what I responded on her blog (which you really should check out--she's very interesting):

I *HATE* these types of things, but . . .

My old grad student, Chris Duke, tagged me with the “8 Random Things About Me” meme.The rules are:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts
2) List 8 random facts about yourself
3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

I'm going to do 1, 2, and 4, just because I hate sending stuff like this on. So for those who are curious, here are my eight random things:

Don't you just love the smell of books?

OK, so this really isn't about the smell of books, but they do smell good, don't they?

No, but the other day our librarian called me up because the new Cabell's for Educational Technology and Library Media was out. I went to pick it up, and the first thing I did, instinctually, was crack open the book and smell it. Why? Well, I guess the first answer is habit. But I just looked at her and said, "Don't you just love the smell of books? That's why they'll never go away, because you can't smell something on the computer screen." And it's true. There's just something about the way a book smells.

So what does this have to do with anything?