elluminate | Footenotes

September 6, 2010

The Contrite Round Up – 8/24ish to 9/5

I knew it would happen.

I made a sad-sack Round Up wondering where all my peeps went and then I vanished last week when the blogs blew up. It’s not that I abandoned you, I was super busy putting the final touches on some outreach documents we’ve been working on. I know, I know – it’s not an excuse. All the same it’s been great to come back to the blog roll and see a bunch of new faces. I’ve gotten kind of lazy about hoping up on the soap box before I get into the blogs and I miss abusing my power here so let me thumb through the news and see what I can rant about…

Well there was my favorite Arizonan, Jan Brewer, having a fantastic meltdown. I’ve pretty much said all I can say about her and stay employed. It’s not like Footenotes is FootenotesonJanBrewersterrifyingrisetopowerinwayssarahpalincouldonlydreamof.com so I’ll leave it at that. But seriously, her poll numbers actually climbed afterward.

On a slightly less catty note, folks are starting to take notice of the impending disaster students loans are going to be for us. This handy chart does a little explaining of the shape we’re in and makes for a quick read. At this point I don’t even look at my student loan statements, I just put them in a shoebox and quietly wait for the apocalypse. I’m sure after my dissertation gets published and I start getting royalty checks from the movie they’re going to make about me while I was writing it everything will be fine.

Ok, enough – let’s talk about blogs before we all get bummed out!

First off – Tim Wilson’s @twilson long slow project to teach us French has started to pay off. Another francophone blog popped up! I’m excited to see so many languages turn up around the Commons, it even looks like an Italian language blog is in the works out there. Speaking of Italian, I noticed a new blog crop up – Beniamina Cassetta’s @beniamina A Cosa Stai Pensando / What’s on your mind? With posts alternating between two languages it’s great see the French set with some competition now. Beniamina had some pretty nice things to say about the Commons too and we’re glad to have you!

Maura Smale @msmale returned to the blogs to share some changes that have come to your library. The big three article archives messed around with their interfaces and Maura walks us through them. There’s a little note at the end about librarians lighting torches and storming JSTOR, check it out.

Resident Elluminate expert Adam Wandt @Awandt has been interviewed by the Elluminate folks. As you will recall he walked us through his experience with the software right here on the Commons.

Of course you can’t mention Elluminate now without thinking of BlackBoard. The folks over at BlackBoard took out the checkbook and snatched up a good thing when they saw it. Everyone has their own opinion of the education behemoth – Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano gave us hers. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Helldriver @helldriver had been on hiatus, but returned this week with a prolific post about Demolition Hammer. I don’t know who this guy is but I imagine he must have the most fantastic record collection in New York. Usually I try and say a little something about a Helldriver post and then realize that I’m totally inarticulate when talking about music and feel like a putz so I’m going to leave this one alone. All the same it’s good to have you back.

Finally Michael Smith also returned with a great post about the art of watching the police. Seems as though there have been a crop of stories in the news lately about people getting arrested for doing this very thing. Naturally a quick Google search fails me for the recent things I was thinking of but I assure you it’s happening. Not that that’s assuring…

Anyways, it’s great to have everyone back and welcome new faces! Here’s hoping this semester is our best yet on the Commons. See ya next week.

2 Comments

July 19, 2010

The Round-Up Where I Realized Summer is Almost Over – 6/12-6/18

Sorry, I guess that was a bummer of a headline. Think of it as a wake-up call, the beach will never be warmer. Seriously.

Things started off this week with some big news from Anthony Picciano’s @apicciano blog about education media giant Blackboard acquiring Elluminate. If Elluminate sounds familiar to you that’s because our very own Adam Wandt @awandt blogged about using it quite a bit last semester. While Adam had a pretty positive experience with the platform, I’ll be curious to see what Blackboard decides to do with it. My hope is that they leave it alone and let the Elluminate team continue to develop it, but I suspect it’s something they want to integrate into the Blackboard portal itself. I can see where it’s clearly a smart move for both companies; Elluminate gets a bunch of cash and Blackboard gets a better feature in their suite, but you know…*cough*…there have been some problems with BB’s stability and I wonder how well it’ll take to something like Elluminate if the two concepts are put together. And that’s not even touching on some of Tony’s greater concerns about centralization that should probably have all of our eyebrows perked a little more.

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more of his work, this week reflecting on art in the age of catastrophe. I hate to play armchair critic, and wince a little when I go back and look at times when I’ve tried to publicly have an opinion on art, so I’ll just say that I really like what you did there. As someone who came of age in the late 90s rest assured that the insulation of padded foam on everything lingered well past the ‘everything is going to kill you’ 80’s. To that end I can’t help but feel like my generation of artists lack a certain appreciation for danger.

After a too long hiatus Helldriver @helldriver returns. It’s hard to write about music, especially in way that does it any justice, but this blog always delivers. Often it’s the insight drawn from writing on music that resonates the most, such as:

But in a broader sense, what’s happened to the 55 is indicative of what’s happened to New York City as a whole, which for the last couple of decades has been busy draining itself of all its wonderfully garish “local” color, and repackaging itself as one more franchise in a global urban chain store, drawing liberally on its own myths to manufacture a brand identity.

I couldn’t have said it better. To be fair, that’s not the moral of the story so do read on, but New York and I are in a fight this week.

That being said, run – don’t walk – and catch up on what’s going on at York College’s ‘Boot Camp’. This project is awesome and I hope to see more about on the Commons. It’s a great idea and I hope as our community here grows we’ll see more projects similar to this appear across CUNY.

And finally, from the Community Team come two posts you should definitely check out. Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano posted to Commons Connections and gave us a handy guide to adding users to your blogs. Scott Voth @scottvoth posted to Wiki Wrangler about the Apture plug-in that allows readers to stay on your site while browsing links from your blog instead of being directed away.

There’s the week that was on the blogs. I mean it people, go out and play. It’ll be back in the classroom before you know it.

3 Comments

April 10, 2010

It’s Blog Pandemonium!

I mean, ok, that’s hyperbole – but did you see the sidebar this week? It’s full of blog posts!

The week kicked off with our very own Sarah Morgano over at ‘Random Interweb Findings‘ more than a little annoyed with the governor of Virginia, Robert McDonnell. Turns out April in Virginia is Confederate History Month! Why so glum Sarah, sounds fabulous…Civil War reenactments, spirited and reasonable debates about the inherent dignity of an entire ethnicity, and solemn reflection on those lost comrades…er…brothers…er…patriots who died to make this country…er…what would have been this country great. Just the thought of it is enough to make me want to put on some boots and drive down to Dixie.

But that wasn’t all. A little further down the week Sarah discovered that the only way for her to get a phone signal was to buy a phone tower for her apartment. By time you buy the phone and the tower you might as well plug a cord into the wall and re-learn how to use a rotary. Having all that gear in your house means you’re just a drum machine and some speaker cable away from being a Radioshack. I talk a big game but honestly I really want a Sprint MiFi because my wi-fi service is terrible. Good ole lead paint and asbestos walls.

Joseph Ugoretz from ‘Prestidigitation‘ dropped in twice this week to give us his thoughts on the iPad and some thoughts on his trip to Googleplex for the Google Apps for Education Summit. Basically the iPad is mega-awesome and either you already own one or you’re at your front door now pacing back and forth till the UPS guy shows up.

*ahem*

At the risk of setting off Michael Oman-Reagan of ‘My God, it’s full of Macs‘ I gotta say – I hate Macs. I know, I know…I was seduced by the touch screen. My heart melted at the beer drinking app on the iPhone. Everyone loves Shazam because it really is annoying when you’re at a bar and some great song comes on and you get home and can’t remember a snippet of the lyrics to Google.

But there’s something so……..judge-y……about Macs. Something kinda Sarah Palin-y about how they know everything and have this utter lack of shame and humility.

“I’m an iPad, ain’t I cutesy patatoosie?”

I just think of a murder of iPads out together taking stupid pictures of themselves in front of landmarks.

Ok, I’m done. Googleplex sounds awesome though and I’m looking forward to seeing what Google will do to education as technology advances further into the classroom.

While we’re talking about technology and education, Adam Wandt at ‘Academic Technology in Higher Education‘ checked in with us to go over the relative merits of various online classrooms. His insights are indispensable for anyone who wants to know what their options are for online meeting tools and we learned that if you’re super-lucky the ‘Goddess of Communications’ for Elluminate will visit your blog and comment. We didn’t even have to sacrifice an iPad.

Anthony Picciano and his blog ‘Tony’s Thoughts‘ return to the blog roll this week. This week Tony pulled out a great NY Times article about cyberbullying and the rarely considered longevity of all things left to float out in cyberspace by today’s capricious young people. Yes, I just wrote cyberspace. It fit in with my mention of ‘floating’. I know, I know – I don’t even deserve a Mac. Tony pulls out the best from the Times so take a bit and go have a read.

Finally on the week that was, the Commons own Scott Voth at ‘Wiki Wrangler‘ put up a piece about WiliLeaks, a Swiss run wiki that gives people of all stripes a safe space to leak documents and information. It’s funny that Scott put this up because I just learned about it a couple of days ago from a colleague of mine who shared some video footage Scott also mentions in his post. the footeage incriminates some US soldiers in violating rules of engagement and beyond that I’m not sure what to tell you. Part of me wants to say don’t watch it because it’s awful, and the other part of me feels like we’re all obligated to make ourselves sit down and watch it because it’s irresponsible not to. No jokes here, do what you think is right.

See ya next week!

4 Comments

Footenotes

Tag: elluminate