Lrng.

FYI: My Last Post Here

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:38:50 -0600

My employer has risen to the occasion and installed a blogging engine I am happy about, so I have moved my reblogging-thinking outloud-webpage-type-thingy over there. I’d be as pleased as a pig in slop if you would follow me over there!

http://wp.lps.org/cpultz

Onion Store Take your office on the road and say goodbye to your...

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:22:00 -0600

Onion Store

Take your office on the road and say goodbye to your “cable car” with this car power strip from Route 56. Plug in up to eight electronic devices and appliances at once! Scan, print, and send with two USB ports, an ethernet port, even a 25-pin parallel connector for you computer’s monitor. Mounts easily to most standard rearview mirrors.

No, the products aren’t real. But the empty boxes are. Wrap your otherwise forgettable gift in thiss gift box, and watch as the recipient struggles to feign enthusiasm for a multi-device power strip that mounts on the rearview mirror. Or take joy as their faces fall upon realizing there is no such thing—just a crappy bric-a-brac inside you waited until the last moment to buy.

‘A handy guide for the new media novice’, via 10,000...

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:08:00 -0600

‘A handy guide for the new media novice’, via 10,000 words.

Would make a great hand-out at Web 2.0 intro trainings.

"By exploring new interests, tinkering, and “messing around” with new forms of media, they acquire..."

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:23:21 -0600

“By exploring new interests, tinkering, and “messing around” with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and media literacy. … By its immediacy and breadth of information, the digital world lowers barriers to self-directed learning.”

- Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (pdf)

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:19:41 -0600

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project:

Findings of three years of research on kids’ informal learning with digital media

Your computer’s Great-Great-Great Grandfather. Click to...

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:37:00 -0600

Your computer’s Great-Great-Great Grandfather. Click to see a HUGE version.

The Tabulator: 1917 | Shorpy Photo Archive

SketchUp 7

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:24:09 -0600

SketchUp 7:

Haven’t grabbed it yet, but it looks like Google dropped a new version of SketchUp today with many new features. More and more I am hearing of school districts and colleges using SketchUp in coursework, so this will be a big deal.

snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:52:46 -0600

snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages:

It appears that Snopes has started a site redesign for the first time that I can recall. I believe their layout and design has been pretty static since the 1990’s. It isn’t applied to all of the pages yet, but most. A nice updated look for a site that should be used far more than it actually is!

Obama's Social Media Advantage, Act II - ReadWriteWeb

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:07:24 -0600

Obama's Social Media Advantage, Act II - ReadWriteWeb:

Obama has begun crowdsourcing the political agenda. And when it comes right down to it, isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be about anyway? A government of the people, by the people, for the…

Social media in Government class?

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:34:00 -0600

Is it time to begin teaching how to use social media tools in our HS Government courses?

Two days after election day, president-Elect Obama has announced Change.gov, a website focused on the transition he is overseeing. While promises like the following (found on the Obama campaign website’s Ethics page) are easy to make during a election year, less than 48 hours after the election he is beginning to show signs of making good on some of these with the announcement today:

Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.
Hold 21st Century Fireside Chats: Obama will bring democracy and policy directly to the people by requiring his Cabinet officials to have periodic national broadband townhall meetings to discuss issues before their agencies.

Make White House Communications Public: Obama will amend executive orders to ensure that communications about regulatory policymaking between persons outside government and all White House staff are disclosed to the public.

Conduct Regulatory Agency Business in Public: Obama will require his appointees who lead the executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet these debates.

I’m not alone in looking at the previous work done by the company that ran Obama’s campaign website and is now building the Change.gov site and wondering what might be to come:

Will the “Sunshine Period” commenting on a revamped WhiteHouse.gov site include Facebook and/or MySpace widgets?
Will official White House Communications be released simultaneously on YouTube and in the White House’s “Online Press Room” (ala BrightCove)?
Will I be able to create a “profile” that follows me from one governmental agency website to another?
Will a technology like DIGG’s comment engine be used to let the cream rise to the top in a transparent and open public commenting system? (One of the biggest problems with public commenting is useless and hateful attacks.)
Would comments be allowed from Foreign entities?
Will the IRS have their own online tax filing tools that rival those from Quicken and HR BLock?
Will the White House have a twitter feed like the Obama campaign did during the campaign?
Will the government set up official SMS networks like the ones already in use in Isreal and other countries?

The mind reels at the possibilities!

These may sound idealistic, but I think we may be surprised how much the Obama White House works to extend the White House (and by default all other branches of Federal government) into the daily lives of America’s youth. Taking the discussions and extending the playing field into their sphere of influence in a transparent and authentic way has the potential to involve a new generation in ways that preceding generations never had the opportunity to be involved.

I’m not doe eyed here. Politics is a business, and getting your message out to “Generation We” in the place that they live is not only a proper Socratic mission for a Democracy, it also doesn’t hurt when the next election cycle comes along. It will be interesting to see if an Obama White House can build the ultimate social media machine and NOT use it to their own advantage come election time again.

All the same, if our goal as Educators is to produce well rounded citizens, and the government begins to adopt many of these social media technologies previously believed to be “for the kids” and left out of classrooms… won’t it be our RESPONSIBILITY to teach the future citizens how to use them?

it's special somehow

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:11:37 -0600

kanamit:

it’s special somehow

when someone’s post is quickly deleted

but you catch a quick glimpse

like a shooting star, so to speak.

Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:57:59 -0600

Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre:

A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a…

"…Today is not a day to talk about education. It’s a day to reap its harvest. Here’s hoping..."

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:57:44 -0600

“

…Today is not a day to talk about education. It’s a day to reap its harvest.

Here’s hoping that our young people have been well-served by the adults entrusted with their education, so that they appreciate the ideals of our democracy and the sloppy miracle of this day…

”

- Robert Pondisco ‘Today is Not the Day’

You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter!

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:14:50 -0500

You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter!:

Two of my favorite technologies just converged. You can now get RSS feeds of your Google Alerts.

I may be the lamest person you know, because this just makes my week!

Hat tip to Scott Mcleod for introducing me to this movement. As...

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:19:00 -0500

Hat tip to Scott Mcleod for introducing me to this movement.

As a person in my mid-30’s and a child of the baby boomer generation, I have never really felt like a part of any one societal group. I think now I have identified one that I want to be a part of.

A story of mixed emoticons TED.com

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:13:48 -0500

A story of mixed emoticons

TED.com

"despite appearances, our classrooms have been fundamentally changed. There is literally something in..."

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:59:34 -0500

“despite appearances, our classrooms have been fundamentally changed. There is literally something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation. In short, they tell us that our walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.”

- Dr. Michael Wesch

Revisiting “A Vision of Students Today”

Reading This Will Change Your Brain

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:51:21 -0500

Reading This Will Change Your Brain:

A leading neuroscientist says processing digital information can rewire your circuits. But is it evolution?

By Jeneen Interlandi of NEWSWEEK Published Oct 14, 2008

Creative Commons starts their annual awareness campaign with a...

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:27:11 -0500

Creative Commons starts their annual awareness campaign with a nice new video about their purpose. If you aren’t aware of Creative Commons as an Educator, do yourself and your students a favor by stopping whatever you might be doing and go learn about it. I would say that it is one of the most fundamentally important things you should be aware of and utilizing in today’s internet culture.

"Paul Lazarsfeld, a political scientist from the 1940s argued that [political] campaigns are..."

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:46:16 -0500

“Paul Lazarsfeld, a political scientist from the 1940s argued that [political] campaigns are essentially over before they have begun. The outcomes are structural — they are decided by events and party identification and satisfaction with the incumbent and other predictable indicators. Campaigns, he said, are “like the chemical bath which develops a photograph. The chemical influence is necessary to bring out the picture, but only the picture pre-structured on the plate can come out.””

- Undecided voters? - Los Angeles Times