Check this out!

Not much to say about this... just that I could watch it all day - MSNBC Interactive shuttle launch.

Good Afternoon Everyone

Here's the link to Kim's powerpoint on video conferencing...

The URL is:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~kpeacock/IntroToVCMES.ppt


Cheers

Harv

Interview

Hi there everyone, the Sun wants to interview me as to the technologies that kids are using in schools these days - are they all on PDAs, laptops?? (yeah right) - do they ever unplug the MP3 players? What is the upside to all this kit? Downside? Is there a growing gap between the kids who have the technology and those who don't?

I'm thinking that most kids are pen and paper based - with a few PDAs (laptops are expensive and heavy to haul) - and work on computers after class as opposed to during - outside of class my guess is that the cell phone and "uber PDA" is the king. Thoughts?

The interview is at 10am tomorrow (Thursday) so if you have anything, please get back to me by then.

George's July 24th Power Point Presentation

Hi Everyone

I have posted George's July 24th Power Point presentation at:


http://www.ualberta.ca/~hduff/George_July_24.ppt


You should be able to download it without difficulty. If you should have any problems, please let me know. Contact me at:

hduff@ualberta.ca

Cheers

Harv

George's Presentations from Wednesday July 20 and July 22

Hi Everyone

I posted George's July 20 and July 22 Power Point presentation at:


http://www.ualberta.ca/~hduff/George_July_20.ppt


and


http://www.ualberta.ca/~hduff/George_July_22.ppt


You should be able to download it without difficulty. If you should have any problems, please let me know. Contact me at:

hduff@ualberta.ca

Cheers

Harv

Evaluating Websites

A many of you are going to be doing lots of work with websites - you may want to take a look at this.

list serve password

Hi All
I was trying to get on the listserv that was sent to us about the books. Did anyone give an indication of a password. I tried to sign up and was sent an email that someone was trying to break into our listserv. Any ideas?

APA Style References

I have used a few of these APA references when writing papers. You may find them useful as well :)

Documenting Sources - APA Style (Prince George's Community College)

APA Style Electronic Formats (American Psychological Association)

Crib sheet to the APA Style (University of Minnesota, Crookston)

APA Style Guide (University of Southern Mississippi Libraries)

APA Citation Style Guide (pdf format) (Bucknell University)

Formatting Your Paper Using APA

Sample Paper - APA Style (Prince George's Community College)

Psychology with Style - A Hypertext Writing Guide (University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point)

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Tablet PC Blog

Hey all - you might be interested in this Tablet PC Blog.

Firefox Update

There is a new version of FF out 1.06.

USB Headsets

Because you are going to use these for a while, it is worth getting a good set. Logitech makes a nice set and this one is fairly reasonable.

A Special Day for Harvey

I'm sure Dr. Buck could come up with a great metaphor comparing Harvey's marriage to the evolution of technology, but I just wanted to wish Harvey and Mrs. Duff a very happy 37th wedding anniversary today!

All the best from the MES 2005 group!

George's Presentation from Monday July 18

Hi Everyone

I posted George's July 18 Power Point presentation at:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~hduff/George_July 18.ppt

You should be able to download it without difficulty. If you should have any problems, please let me know. Contact me at:

hduff@ualberta.ca

Cheers

Harv

Elluminate Sessions

Hi Everyone

Here are the links, times and dates for the upcoming Elluminate sessions.

The first session is to give everyone a chance to do an equipment and software check. This session will run on Tuesday, July 19th from 7 to 9 PM. To access the session, click on the following link within 30 minutes of the specified time.

Participant Link: https://www.elluminate.com/mtg.jnlp?password=443147096

When you log in, you may be prompted to download Sun Microsystem's Java Web Start (or OpenJNLP for Mac), a pre-requisite to Elluminate Live!. You only need to do this the first time you use Elluminate Live!.

Our main Elluminate session will be on Wednesday, July 20th from 2 PM to 4 PM. The participant link for this session is as follows:

https://www.elluminate.com/mtg.jnlp?password=789174843



We also have three other sessions set up in case we need additional practice or check time. Those sessions are scheduled for:

Thursday, July 21st from 7-10 with the following participant link:

https://www.elluminate.com/mtg.jnlp?password=1213984357

Friday July 22nd from 6-9 with the following participant link:

https://www.elluminate.com/mtg.jnlp?password=1253421762

and Sunday, July 24th from 7-10 with the following participant link:
https://www.elluminate.com/mtg.jnlp?password=1358196559

The last two sessions are there primarily for the out of town folks who will need to check their home machines.


Cheers

Harv

Cool Learning Object

For those of you playing in Flash - here is a game for you to look at - Planarity.

20 Technology Skills Every Teacher Should Have

An interesting article from Laura Turner in the T.H.E. Journal. Check it out.

Article on Cmaps

Take a look at this.

George's Presentation from Wednesday July 13

Hi Everyone

I posted George's July 13 Power Point presentation at:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~hduff/George_July13.ppt

You should be able to download it without difficulty. If you should have any problems, please let me know. Contact me at:

hduff@ualberta.ca

Cheers

Harv

Movie Maker Tutorials

This is a great site for anything related to Movie Maker 2. I know you probably don't need it due to our thorough tutorial this morning :) but in case you do, the address is http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Tutorials/Index.aspx

More on FF1.05

Register has a little do on the update. I would say that even if it puts a few kinks into the system, the security patches are worth it.

More Tutorials

JoAnne has spotting a cool tutorial site - Atomic Learning. Check it out.

George's Presentation from Monday July 11

Hi Everyone

I posted George's July 11 Power Point presentation at:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~hduff/George_July11.ppt

You should be able to download it without difficulty. If you should have any problems, please let me know. Contact me at:

hduff@ualberta.ca

Cheers

Harv

Mozilla Firefox Security Update

Hi everyone,
I'm not sure how big of a deal this might be (any thoughts Raj, Harvey, Kim, Christian?) but there is an update to Firefox which patches some security glitches (even over our current version 1.0.4). Download version 1.0.5 here if you're interested.
Danny

A Few Tutorials...

Kim sent me the following links to a number of Dreamweaver and Fireworks...

From Macromedia...

Macromedia's manuals and tutorials for Dreamweaver:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/dreamweaver/

Macromedia's interactive tutorials:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/interactive/

Macromedia's Dreamweaver Video tutorials:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/video_tutorials.html



Some basic interactive/video demos...

http://www.accd.edu/spc/cis/dw/

http://www.joycejevans.com/home/index.html (go to “tutorials”)



A fairly thorough print/image tutorial for Dreamweaver:
http://www.iboost.com/build/software/dw/tutorial/786.htm



Some good general guides to web development...
http://www.smartwebby.com/web_site_design/

Tutorial on “Information Architecture” – Laying it all out:
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html

The Web Style Guide
http://www.webstyleguide.com/

Enjoy

Harv

Sharing Triumphs/Tribulations

Harvey mentioned that he'd like us to record both our successes and our challenges in our journal, and also asked that we contact him or one of the instructional team members to ask for help should we need it. I'd like to take that notion a step further and I'd like your feedback on it.

The true power of having a cohort model as we do (in my humble opinion) is that we are all going through this journey together as a group. As we become more at ease with each other, we will feel more open to sharing both our successes and our challenges with each other, and we have the opportunity to learn a great deal from each other. Given that, I'd like us to earmark a time (daily, every other day, weekly, whatever) where we can do a group share of these successes/challenges rather than just to Harvey. 21 heads are better than 1, and if one of you have found something or done something that might help me, I'd love to know about it. If I have a problem or I'm looking for something, I'd like to be able to not only rely on Harvey, Raj, Dr. Buck, and others, but also all of my classmates. Sure, I might learn something over coffee some morning by chatting with a couple of you, but I'd rather see something structured so I can hear from anyone who might have some input. Ralph, Ray, and I chatted informally for 5 minutes at our table this morning and within that 5 minutes we each shared something with each other that we all found very useful. It would have been great to expand that outward to the whole group.

I give people like Harvey, Raj, and others all the respect in the world for the knowledge, skills, and experiences they have. I'd just like us to take advantage of this face-to-face summer cohort model to build the open sharing culture that will be invaluable when we all part ways this fall for our online courses. It could be an important step toward building leadership capacity amongst this group.

Danny

Quest Garden

Thanks to Raj for posting about QuestGarden on his EDITing in the Dark blog, a project by Bernie Dodge (co-creator of the WebQuest activity structure). For those interested in going further with WebQuests, this might be useful.

20 Skills

Hey there everyone, I won't spam the other blog... well I might, just in case you only check one, but there is a post on my blog that is a response to another blog that posted about the 20 essential skills that teachers should have. Check it out.

Glad to play

I love the idea of playing with laptops and blogging while listening intently to instruction. Keep up the good work
Cathy

EDU597

EDU597

So much for the first day...

Hi Everyone

So what did you think of your first day?

We covered an awful lot of technical "geek speak" but it was necessary to get to the good stuff. Tomorrow we'll start on the actual course content and I think everyone will find it a much more straight forward day.

Cheers

Harv

Welcome!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my informal class blog.

I have set up this site for two reasons. First, and most important, I wanted to have a place where we could communicate as a community outside of regular class time. Second, I wanted everyone to see how a blog can be used to augment either regular or e-class presentations. Given all the other information vehicles we will be using in this class, this blog likely represents a certain amount of communication overkill. However it is one of the tools available to Ed IT specialists and I would be remiss if I didn't use it. I hope this will be the site of some lively discussions!

Cheers

Harv