The Idea Man at Southwest : Weblog

OpenOffice for Mac OS X Alpha Released ::

This is big news if OpenOffice has a chance in education (from Slashdot).

Note on the start of the semester ::

I enjoy the first day or so of a semester for 2 reasons:

1. never do I feel more directly valuable than when I help a student find their class.
2. more importantly, seeing students, including Southwest's great number of night students, working to make their lives better is an  awesome sight.

A couple of weeks late, but still worth mentioning.  

Governor's Community College Tuition Plan ::

I haven't posted anything in a while, so this is in the category of delayed reaction:

Governor Bredesen wants to offer a stronger motivation to high school students to stay in school.  He's proposed that the state pay up to 90% of tuition costs for college-ready high school graduates.  It's estimated that the initiative would cost $20 million dollars annually.

Of course, working at at community college, I'm interested,  but it sounds like a good deal and great idea.

Blender Class: Landscape Tutorial ::

Zach Wilson will present on creating landscapes in Blender, including creating a landscape and grass, then getting the grass to blow in the wind using force fields.

Details:

Date:  Friday, September 29, 2006
Time:  12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m.
Location:  Jennings 12a, Macon Cove Campus
Cost:  Free!

Blender Class: Mini Film Festival ::

I'll be showing some samples of work using Blender, including:

• a short movie combining live action and Blender-created visual effects.
• Blender's official Siggraph 2006 reel.
• trailers for other Blender-enabled movies.
• and, if anyone hasn't seen it yet, or wants to see it again, the Open Movie, Elephant Dreams.

Details:

Date:  Friday, September 1, 2006
Time:  12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m.
Location:  Jennings 12a, Macon Cove Campus
Cost:  Free!

2 upcoming web development classes at Southwest ::

Prior art in online education ::

Regarding this story, Wikipedia has a page dedicated to the history of online education.  So does Moodle.  

A patent on online learning? ::

On July 26, the U.S. Patent Office awarded a patent to a major vendor of a Learning Management System, i.e., online education software.  The patent has already achieved notoriety for both its breadth and now its use against a competitor. 

And the race to establish prior art has begun.

Update:  read the patent for yourself.

The commercial benefits of blogging ::

Although this Commercial Appeal article talks about blogging as a tool for techie businesses, its primary subject, Justin Palmer of Encytemedia, makes clear that blogging's usefulness transcends that narrow category:

...it's the smaller businesses that really benefit.

"Blogs are about openness and communication," he said. "It puts you in direct contact with consumers and colleagues. It levels the playing field for small businesses and entrepreneurs because you talk directly to clients. If not for the blog, I wouldn't be able to do what I do."

Of course, since it confirms what I've written about before, I deem it correct!

My one caveat is they have a quote from an intellectual property lawyer stating:

"If you have a blog and you start linking to new sites, you have to ask yourself if you have a right to do that linking," said Field, an intellectual property lawyer with Memphis-based Bogatin Law Firm who has advised a number of businesses on Web-related projects.

In order to avoid violating someone's copyright, it's a good idea to have a linkage agreement in place, he advises.

Linkage agreement?  What the heck's that?  I never heard of needing permission to hyperlink to another's website.  In fact, if you're going to refer to someone else or their work, it's good manners if not good law to let your reader decide for themself.  Of course, IANAL, and he is.

Postscript:   I did a google search on the terms "linkage agreement linking blog".  Guess what hit the top?  That's right:  the CA article mentioned at the top.  Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but...

YABC (Yet Another Blender Class): UV Mapping ::

Date:  Friday, July 28, 2006
Time:  12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m.
Location:  Jennings 12a, Macon Cove Campus
Cost:  Free!
Materials:  bring a flash drive or floppy if you want to save your work.
Objective:  To give a basic introduction to to the powerful technique of UV Mapping in Blender.  UV Mapping "can be used to apply textures to arbitrary and complex shapes, like human heads or animals. Often these textures are painted images, created in applications like The Gimp, Photoshop, or your favorite painting application".

Another reason to have dynamic content ::

Hopefully this will convince you.

If it does, then you should start using tools that make web publishing easier.  Tools like blogs, RSS, wiki, and content management systems.

Open (re)sources for podcasting ::

For the benefit of anyone who might be thinking about spending lots of money to podcast, I give them these resources:

• Indie Podcasting with Open Source.
• Video tutorial on How to setup your Audio for Podcasting using Audacity.
• Video tutorial on How to record your first Podcasts.

Podcasting in the Memphis City Schools ::

Although this has gotten some negative attention, it's not necessarily a bad idea.  After all, if MCS is graduating only 48.5% of their students, what harm can come from trying it? One harm would be to spend money on software and expensive hardware from proprietary vendors that could be used elsewhere, especially since there are free and open alternatives.  But assuming that the school system doesn't buy a boatload of expensive gizmos before they even begin, what other harm could there be?  Perhaps it would divert teachers' limited time resources to less productive means.  Maybe, but we don't know the answer to the question:  will podcasting in fact be less productive than good old fashioned front-of-the-class-with-chalk-and-blackboard teaching? 

A more practical question is this: how will the students even listen to these podcasts?  I don't have the statistics, but my gut feeling is that the students who are dropping out are more likely to come from poor backgrounds than not.  So getting them to buy expensive gizmos, or assuming they have a computer and internet access at home, is unwise and/or unlikely.  Cellphones could be an answer here.  Their sheer ubiquity would make it possible to have them as deployment platforms, if they could play mp3s.  But that capability is not universally here yet, but I bet it won't be long.  This is where buying a propietary solution upstream could also hamstring the system, especially since some vendors sell hardware for the consumption side as well. 

Honestly, I don't think it will work, but who made me Nostradamus?  Give it a try!  I have to assume that no one likes the status quo, so let's give it and other ideas a shot.  If you make your ideas inexpensive you can try lots of things.  If they don't work, you move on.  If they do work, they work.

Is disruption really an eruption? ::

The problem I have with most criticisms of disruptive forces: 

they overrate the status quo.

Happy 4th of July! ::

Besides shooting fireworks and decorating wagons for parades, I spent today reading Frederick Douglass' astounding speech, " What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"  My favorite passage:

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work.

Via this post from the Volokh Conspiracy.