Wiki Winner

Schtuff is well and good, but for serious wiki action my choice has become seedwiki.

Today I set up a seedwiki account. I plan to use wiki pages for collaborative research projects in my Advanced Composition course.

Scenes from a Laundromat

OPML Blog Launched!

My OPML weblog is up and running. The blog is for evaluation purposes. Thanks Dave!

Another Rhetorical Abstraction

"The Outcast Boy" is another rhetorical abstraction It is the story of many an unlikely hero. It is the story of Rudolph.

Musical credit goes, again, to Ehren Starks and an unknown midist.

Drawing with Lines

To learn about drawing with pen and ink I recommend Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur L. Guptill.

The turtle weighs about 5kb. I drew it, scanned it as a .bmp, then saved it as a .gif.

Change of Focus

With the exception of Dave Winer's OPML editor, I won't be thinking about new tools for a while. Instead, I'll be thinking about pedagogy and course design with reference to ENGL 201 (Advanced Composition) and the first in a sequence of Web Design courses.

A "Rhetorical Abstraction"

This recording is different than any I've done. I call it an exercise in rhetorical abstraction. In it I use as few words as possible to outline a plot. An altered voice and background music (I hope) establish character and and mood.

The background music consists of two tracks. The first is the beautiful and haunting "Bailar Tristemente" by Ehren Starks. The second is a midi rendition of "A Wonderful Life," the origin of which is obscure.

Oatmeal Box Pinhole Photography

Oatmeal Box Pinhole Photography by Stew Woodruff - How to Make and Take Pictures With Pinhole Cameras Made from Oatmeal Boxes

Gotta Love It

Even when the sometimes hard-to-take tendencies of 3 ½ kick in, you still gotta love that father / son time.

PhotoStory

Microsoft's PhotoStory program offers the means to create automated slideshows, with sound.

Nevermind. "PhotoStory" is just a wizard-driven MovieMaker lite. Forgettaboutit.

DOMSlides

"DOMSlides turns an HTML document into presentation slides via Unobtrusive JavaScript"

See ya later, PowerPoint! ;->

Twice As Nice

If you're not brushing your teeth with water after you brush them with toothpaste, try it. See if your mouth doesn't feel better.

Right Place, Right Time

Another thought on the connection between informal and formal learning:

Sometimes you'll be talking to somebody when, suddenly, there arises in the conversation a moment that is the perfect moment for you to tell a favorite story. Well, we might think about strong impressions and research notes the same way: as stories or ideas that we hold in our heads (or our notebooks) as we wait for the right moment to let fly.

The conversation occasions the telling of our story. The research essay occasions our selective release of researched information.

Canoe Launch

Another day, another lake.

Connection

Ever since a learned colleague asked me the question, I've been puzzling over the connection between informal and formal learning in the context of journaling and nonfiction writing. So far I have two thoughts. The first is that the informal learning of a journal may loosely and spontaneously find its way into imatative formal writing (writing from models). The second thought is that the informal learning of a journal may find its way into formal writing through the vehicle of keyword indexing and searching (i.e., the journal keeper keeps a list of keywords and furthers his or her research by running searches on those keywords with Technorati, Google, library catalogues, etc.). In these ways the journal's record of a writer's strong impressions continues to guide the creation of content into formal research and writing.

Details, Please!

Details of Dave Winer's OPML roadshow, via Mal Watlington, with links to more (here's one more).

Here is a quote from the session:

Jim Moore: A lot of knowledge work is about reframing what’s there, and sharing your reframing of different stuff…what’s nice about this thing, is that each of these things are kind of atomic units that you can re-put together in any new reframing in any way you’d like.”

Exactly! And exactly what I've been saying about digital journals, too!

On The Beach

From a lake beach in Maine . . .

The Beauty of Text

Working with a series of dialup connections during my vacation (I am posting this entry from Maine), I have learned to appreciate the beauty of text!

I Embed Video

Through the blugcast I discovered the "I Make Things" blog. I admire its creative spirit. I really marvel, however, at Bre Pettis' tasteful and effective use of embedded video. Bravo, Bre!

"I Make Things" is the first blog that, by its example, has made me consider embedding video into my own blog.

UnConference as UnClassroom?

Could Dave Winer's ground rules for his BloggerCon unconference be used as ground rules for an unclassroom?

I think it could, particularly in a wireless classroom full of laptop PCs.

Update: Rob Wall agrees.

Schtuff

If you don't mind glancing away from a sidebar of Google ads, "Schtuff," a free wiki, makes a pretty good collaborative writing space.


Link to Schtuff:
http://www.schtuff.com/

RSS Strategy

This year (Sept. 2005 - May 2006) I will use Bloglines as my aggregator and RssOwl , loaded with a synchronized list of feeds, as my backup. This way I'll be covered should Bloglines interrupt its service as it has done several times in the last few months.