Moodling

I love Moodle. I love its simplicity. I love that it's educationally oriented but applicable and easily modified to the outside world. It's free (sort of), by that I mean no ridiculous licensing fees.

That being said, let me vent... phoooooooooosh. I despise Internet Explorer. I'm a Macophile and I even hold strong dislike for Safari. I can't find any sites or applications that work "best" in either of these browsers. USE FIREFOX - it's better on both platforms. Moodle will work in both Safari and IE, but we have glitches in both. I recently encountered a Moodle problem that, yet again, is specific to IE. People were getting an error opening pdf's with IE (Acrobat Reader), but when you finish the error script window, you can click on the pdf in the breadcrumb trail and Acrobat Reader will THEN open it.

There's some php code glitch blahblahblah, if anyone read this blog, they wouldn't care. Just get something that works. I'm realizing that I'm spending a good chunk of my time dealing with Moodle issues, many of which are coming from IE. Please, if you are a tech support person, tech director, anyone in charge of deciding what programs go on network images - PUT FIREFOX ON THE DANG IMAGE.

End rant.

A hopeless dreamer, who's not dreaming it anymore

I have a friend I've always referred to as a hopeless dreamer, until recently. My friend has a new job. He's working to rebuild New Orleans. Not like he packed up the VW Microbus, burned a fatty and put up a tent offering a hammer to any passerbys he encounters. No, he's an architect for a nonprofit approving building plans, designing renovations and new homes so people can live there again.

Some of you know that Brad Pitt is there too. Great guy, great image. My friend took a couple of innocent shots at him in his blog and they (Brad's people) asked him to take it down. So in his honor, I'd like to post what I believe to be Brad's crowning achievement.

Take it away Floyd.

•PG13 NOTICE•
(inappropriate language alert)

Blogging About Blogging

My wife doesn't understand why people blog. She's an intelligent, educated woman of the world but doesn't understand why people feel the need to post stuff to the web "that most people don't care about."

My explanation is:
You know how you text me with a story because I think it's funny, or you feel the need to call Boss because she'll "get it." That's what people are doing. Just because people are reading blogs doesn't mean they are reading them all. I read Scooby Doo Mansion because he's a friend and posts really funny stuff. I read The Blue Skunk Blog to learn tech stuff. The point is, I read what's useful to me and don't care about the rest.

I know this isn't good enough for her, but she has a point. The web is a public space, searchable, with vast amounts of information that can help or hurt any of us at any time. Why would I want strangers "listening in" on a conversation? Despite the fact that as I write this, I know of only a few people that even know I HAVE a blog, much less what the URL is. When I say a few, I literally mean four. I still have reservations about having this info "out there" for all to read.

Knowing that I am currently questioning why I am. I don't know that anyone has read this or even care is anyone has.

Blogging is an outlet. It's a way to get opinions, thoughts, and clutter out of my head. Some people will eventually read some of the crap I have put down (or up) and I'm fine with that.

Smokey on My Tail

So, my friend Adam called one day and said, "hey what can you tell me about Smokey and the Bandit?"

Great start to any conversation.

He explained that the friend of a friend has entered a contest to win a Bandit Trans Am that Burt Reynold rebuilt on the DIY Network. He needed to make a three minute video "commercial" for why he should win.

A couple weeks later, Adam called and said:
"Hey what are you doing from 11-1 tomorrow?"
"Nothing," says I.
"Do you want to help with the Bandit video?"

You're damn right I did.

Here are the results: Click and learn, you'll feel your mustache grow.

Jing

I can't get enough Jing. Let me nutshell what it does:
1. Take screenshot - video (swf) or still (png)
2. Instantly uploads the image or video
to website.
3. Copies the URL to the new upload to your clipboard so you can immediately share it in an email or message.

Here's what I love about it (click the link to see me using it)... it's ridiculously simple, flash video format, F'IN FREE. Check it out, it taps the mic in the computer to record myself talking. OMG! What am I gonna do with this...?

Other than pure sweetness, why is it useful? From the perspective of an educator, the idea of making short recordings of instructions is pretty sweet. I already made a How-To video for logging into the TIES Moodle server. Easy as pie. I like the collaborative nature of it,
that it's designed for people to be working on their systems at the same time and communicating and can demo what's on one screen and send it to another quick as a snap.

Think of applying classic Bloom's taxonomy, the second highest level of understanding is evaluate, the highest is creation. Having students create demonstrations as a class project and evaluating each other's instructional technique is a fantastic way of learning. They learn the content as well as how to best communicate the message to others.

Yes, it's a project that could be done in a multitude of ways. Technology integration in education is the application of technology not to learn the technology, but to make the lesson/learning easier, faster, or more comprehensive. Jing can make the content the focus, not trying to figure out how to record, how to save, where to send, how do I get it to my teacher... all the garbage that makes integrating technology difficult for teachers. Jing fits this definition perfectly.

Jing me.