Rebuilding Indianola

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Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Spa Guts Pneumatic Spa Packs

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Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Dig deeper to reveal the secrets of Firefox 3
The latest version of the leading IE alternative is fresh off the assembly line, with revved-up performance and handy new features.Firefox 3's about:config settings let you fine-tune the browser to the perfect mix of speed and security.

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Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Music20 - About the book
Free PDF of Music 2.0

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Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Struggling Musicians' Tool Kit - ReadWriteWeb

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SLCN | Second Life Cable Network

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Freesound Music
Some information about free music creation applications
♪ The Morning Mix

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Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:00:00 PDT

http://soundreasoning.org/
Nice music appreciation course.

Old ladies pass up bingo for cell phones....

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:19:00 +0000

My friend, Michelle Miller has this post on her blog from yesterday.

WonderBranding: Marketing to Women: The First Wave of Boomer Tech?

Essentially, it serves to remind us that females over 40 are one of our fastest growing groups of tech users, whether we are talking cell phones, PDAs or computers. If you are one of these folks or if you are planning to teach to this group, you have chosen a great group to serve. Not to demean other groups, but it's been my personal opinion that this category of users seem to relish the learning more than some other groups. That is not to say that others don't enjoy learning but this collective shouts it from the rooftops when they finally "get it".

My Mom, who will be 80 on her next birthday, has already called me this morning to tell me how much she enjoyed using my brother's laptop (he was visiting her this weekend). Her only complaint was that she has not yet learned the knack of using a scroll pad instead of a mouse. From my background, I know there are work-arounds for that. What did she like best....the portability of the computer games she likes to play.....who'd a think it.

technorati tags:proactiveaging

Blogged with Flock

elderbob.2.07

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 09:00:00 +0000

So, the new year begins. It's already January 15, and aside from several things I worked on during the holidays, it's time to get the machinery cranked back up and working. I am now hosting the RebuildingIndianola blog on my own server, and I have upgraded nearly everything at Elderville (still need to manually upgrade the WordPress blog...maybe I'll get to that soon), most of the videos have been moved over to GoogleVideo, the new Brannan & Brannan Wind Farm is coming together nicely, and BranninniGlassWerx is...well, slow right now...too much to do.

The family is all healthy, and I am still positioned somewhere between my Mom and lots of grand kids and great grand kids in this generational sandwich.

I'm taking a semester out of school this spring (Master of Educational Technology at University of Texas at Brownsville), so I can devote some energy to Knowplace. Knowplace will host the Knowtips Conference and the Canadian MoodleMoot this spring as well as be co-host for the WiAOC (Webheads in Action On-line Convergence), so I felt a need to focus on areas other than my formal studies.

I'm also signed up for a couple of the EVOnline sessions that start today. In fact, that was part of the reason for this post. Toward the end of last year I created a short "Self-Introduction" video that I thought I would display here instead of writing a long drawn-out discourse on who I am for each learning session or training I sign up for. Now I can just refer folks to this post and you can get to know me without having to re-write my bio each time I take a new class.

And with that, Ill post the video and sign out of this post. I'll be putting additional work related post here in the coming days, so put me on your social network.


The Elderbob Profile

Taming a Glass Tiger

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:14:00 +0000


An educational video of me creating a blown glass piece created from glass murrinni.

Happy Holildays

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:20:00 +0000

School's out....school's out....and I have a bit of a break. I have several projects to get started on, but I wanted to get this one up, so people could see it before the holidays get here. I think it is just a part one, since I have a lot of left over video of other cool stuff my grandson has done, but I'm not sure how much of that I will be able to get to.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to all from the Brannan's. I hope youers is a good 'un.

Make it count.

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:12:00 +0000

In response to a post to the The "EdTech" Blog regarding "University of California A-G Guide".

Standardization....hummmm....! I can see why when it comes to obtaining degrees and/or certification, but there are going to be far more classes on the net than those just for degrees and certification. I have taken all sorts of clases on-line. Many have directly related to a degree. I had not really considered whether or not it might provide me a degree that other schools might not accept, but I see the point. I have also taken classes that were supposed to be standardized only to find that in some cases, that meant they would send a spy to the class to see if we stayed on-line for not one minute less than one hour at a time.

I can see where a University has it's standings to protect. If they dont turn out a certain product, then not only will funding drop but so will the reputation of the school. But I do have a concern that the requirements might get too inane and foolish, and turn into clockwatcher rules or TEKS test type standardization. The best answer for me, is to avoid such types of programs, and focus instead on what fun non-standardized things adults want to learn about, and then keep my finger on the learning pulse of the participants.

I'm gonna have to think about this one for a while. It's a difficult issue and seems to have many sides.

...but does it work?

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:38:00 +0000

In response to a posting in the The "EdTech" Blog on "Study: Ed Tech Has Proven Effective".

One great thing about what I do, is that this question is not quite as important as it is to those of you who teach in the public school system. Since my focus is the self-directed, adult learner, much of my focus is on whether or not the tools allow them to feel like they got their money's worth out of a learning experience. Furthermore, much of what I wish to do, has it's foot in blended learning, and as such, there are several markers by which the participant gets to determine the worth of the class.

For those of you who teach in public school, you are doomed to teach on with the same folks you have always had to work with. To me, we both are faced with a public of "Creators/Innovators", "Early Adapters", "The Great Majority Who Will Eventually Accept Change", and "Those Who Refuse To Change". The biggest difference between me and some of you, is that most of my clients fall into the first and second groups, "Creators" and "Early Adapters". As such, I don't have to work near as hard to use technology in learning situations. If anything, I have to make sure that my technology is highly advanced and in many cases "state of the art".

That is not to say that I have not worked in similar situations as yours. I used to work in a place where everyone was supplied with a brand new high speed Dell laptop computer. But then they were forbidden to use it in the field to tap into the internet, either for email or for looking up useful guidance on the net, or even for collaborative projects or to file office reports. Instead, everything was "word processed" then downloaded to really nice Dell PCs in the office. The reason? "The Great Majority Who Will Eventually Accept Change" is just that.....the great majority. In order for any of us to leverage our position to get into the group of innovators and early adapters, we have to belong to groups where those are the norm, not the exception...and the public school system is just not there yet.

Studies like the one in the eSchool News article go a long way in providing those of us on the fringe with data to help shorten the "eventuality" of majority, but the article is really quite middle of the road....more like those in the "great majority" would like to read. And perhaps that is the problem. The middle ground seeks middle ground data out to protect it's middle groundn turf. The fringes (on both extremes) seek out their own corresponding articles. In order for eSchool News to be read and accepted it has to go very slowly.

On the whole, when all the articles are read and discussed, I think that we are going to find that it is the content and approach that drives the learning, not the technology. The technology is fun and exciting and it has bells and whistles, but you still have to satisfy someone. For me, its the early adapter, and for the rest of you, it's the great majority.

Who's watching who? Social Networking.

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:15:00 +0000

In response to a posting in the The "EdTech" Blog on "A Privacy Paradox: Social Networking in the US".

Privacy and the protection of it, have been problems longer than the "digital age" has been around. Joseph's brothers, stole his coat of many colors and dipped it in sheep's blood to convince their father, Jacob, that Joseph had been killed by wild animals. Joseph was sold into slavery. His identity had been stolen by his own brothers. Now, mini-cams hover above the cities where once hawks lived in trees. The Cams are able to see great detail and though the managers of such services swear that they will not be misused....it's highly likely that they will be. Satelite technology is available that allows Google Earth to show you how many cars are parked in my drive way. GPS technology can track me around town via my cell phone. We are but a step away from imprenating humans with small electronic capsules that will be placed under the skin that will contain not only our identifying data, but perhaps our medical and credit records, along with school records, driving records and what have you.

I am always struck by the idea, that with all this digitized information, that half of us, will be sitting around seeing what the other half is up to. That leaves the other half to sit around and see what we are up to.

I cannot and will not deny that protection of identity via social networking applications is of great importance and deserves to be attended to, I am not quite as sure as the problem is as grave as some folks would like to make it out to be. In my youth, I took great delight in meeting new folks. It was a way of testing my "adulthood"...seeing how someone else matched up to me, learning new things, and of course, taking risks all along. Somehow, I have made it this far, and am none the worse for it. It is probably far better to teach kids how to respond to innappropriate and dangerous behaviors than to outright ban the social networking applications that seem so strife with such things.

Plagiaristic Pugilism

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:05:00 +0000

(In reference to the EdTech Blog and a review of "Students Rebel Against Database Designed to Thwart Plagiarists").

I have mixed feelings about plagiarism-detection. Certainly, I do not wish to see a paper copied verbatim for a grade. On the other hand, some things are just so common that it is likely that more than one person may have the same idea. Perhaps using the same language to express that idea is what the argument is about, but I am afraid my thoughts on creation of content are still unsettled.

I suspect that much of this line of thought is headed toward a discussion of copyright enfringement, and if so, then I definitely have some off-center thoughts. For example, we already have Open Source, Copy-left and Public Domain issues to mull over. Thinking too hard and long about whether or not a thing is plagiarism, takes the wings off of thought.

Such a huge mountain of information as we face today, for me, is most likely to lead us to use other tools such as hyperlinking which actually shows the original document. It seems to me that the entire article is frequently more useful that some short quote from within the article. I think we live in changing times and that many of the rules that have worked well in the past will not work so well in the future. Mechanically or technologically searching for plagiarism seems rather costly, and I am not sure that it really benefits the student. Perhaps teaching more creative ways to express oneself has a better role here.

Hearing the world whisper in my ear.

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 16:55:00 +0000

Around 7 PM tonight, I plugged my blue-tooth earpiece in my left ear, grabbed my Motorola cell phone and headed out to my truck for a trip across town to my favorite super electronics store. As soon as I was in the truck, I clicked on Global Learn Day 10, which I had pre-coded into the phone. I muted my side and got in the telephone conference room right away (it's weekend here, and all my cell phone calls on weekends are free). I immediately heard John Hibbs soothing voice telling me that we were about to set sail on a journey around the globe. Over the next 24 hours, John and his merry band of creative educators and thinkers from all parts of the globe would dazzle us with the electronic teaching trinkets of modern times.

So while I am prowling the incredibly crowded aisles of a huge electronic store looking for wi-fi ports, in my ear I am listening to John instruct Bob Zwick (who in actuallity is only about 30 minutes away from where I stand) to play a tape that was recorded a few days ago, of a conversatation between Vint Cerf and Sir John Daniels, two of the real pioneers of our profession. It was recorded because one of them was currently in flight and would have been unable to participate. As I view the stocked shelves of wireless routers and receivers, I am listening to these two living legends discuss things like wiring the third world and the digital divide. The folks around me have no idea what kind of abundancy we are standing among. In fact, it is almost shocking to me to realize how fortunate I am to be able to listen to this conversation and search for electronic parts at the same time. By the time I reach the check out line, Stephen Downes was discussing the interviews with John. I wanted to turne to people and ask them if they had any idea of what I was listening to on my cell phone. I didn't because I didn't want to have to explain it, and I really didn't think most of them cared or would even understand...we take so much of the world for granted.

So driving home in the clear Texas night with a big bright moon, I am thinking about how wonderful my life is. And about how today, John Hibbs and the folks at the Franklin Institute made it just a little bit better.

(after note: at about Midnight, I had to get out again - it's along story) and by now the folks from India are on talking about distance learning and the different meanings of currency. It strikes me, that in terms of this new meaning of currency (up-to-the-moment), John and all those listening are truly wealthy.

Note: The entire GLD 10 is archived.

A new electronic baby

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 05:41:00 +0000

...so today, I finally broke down, opened the piggy bank (actually a wonderful birthday gift from my sweet wife) and bought a new HP m7640n - AMD dual processor with lots and lots of memory and room for more. I love it. Now I will put the old PC in the room where I watch the baby so I can continue to work when I baby sit my grandson, and the new one in my personal office and the laptop wherever I am. I am now in the process of setting up a wireless network for the entire system. I'll let you know when I get it all done. I feel faster already (or maybe I feel lighter because I'm broke).

Day Twelve - Whatcha' lookin' at?

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 05:35:00 +0000

While we are looking at web-based visual sharing communities, I want to look at three very similar communities as our last stops. These communities are OurMedia, YouTube and Google Video. Ourmedia (web site) boasts 115,000 members. Of the three, it houses the widest variety of multimedia, including photos, audio and video. It's also worth noting that OurMedia is a subsidiary of the Internet Archive (the complex effort to index all the internet since 1996). The bulk of the media on OurMedia is Creative Commons material, meaning that virtually anyone can use the materials with proper notation.

YouTube (web site) is similar to Ourmedia but is smaller. However, we are talking about small in relative terms. The community that supports YouTube currently uploads about 65,000 videos per day. Thats a lot of members. YouTube's videos encourage interactivity among members by forum like comment areas linked to each video. With it's Video target, many of the comments on individual videos are videos as well. YouTube also allows for a lightweight tagging system, but not near so well organized as Flickr.

And finally, the guys and gals of the Googleplex, give us Google Videos. Google Videos probably have the most progressive effort to make video accessible to any OS, thought they are also most criticised for the quality of their videos. Although it sounds like everything here is video (and it is) amazingly a number of musicians have begun to use Google Video to get their music videos out on the net. Google Video also has close ties to the commercial television industry (several of the major players have put entire episodes of commercial TV on Google Video).

Looking at these communities individually, one can ascertain a number of minor differences. But for our purpose what is more important is the underlying structure. One of the first things to note, is that all three of these communities have massive server support, with YouTube being the smallest. Google, with it's huge net indexing and search facilities and OurMedia with its Wayback and Internet Archive facilities would seem to be able to host more videos on their servers, but in actuallity, there is little difference between all three in terms of servers space. Another thing that I think makes these communities very important in the learning community sense is that they are while there is an ever greater need for broadband to play the videos, they all seem to be gravitating toward formats that leave even smaller footprints on our computers, meaning they load quickly and are easily viewed. Google and YouTube both exclusively use Flash technology, with Google tinkering with several other possible extensions to make for faster and better quality video. OurMedia also heavily reliant on Flash but more likely to use some other types of files. Finally, all of them are right out at the leading edge of Web 2.0 technology. When you think about how long they have been around and how astoundingly successful they have been, and how easy it is for the educational community to embrace this technology, it's easy to see why these communities are just the first wave of many more come.

Finally, what is not said may be the most important thing about these commuities. They are all set to be put on hand-held and ipod type devices. Not only can you carry your TV with you, you will have an amazing choice of videos to look at. And with the indexing ability inherant to these behemoth servers, you should be able to look through videos like you look through books and periodicals in the library.

Anyway, I thought these would be a good final stop and would give us plenty to think about in the near future as we all explore more learning communities on our own. I am pulling the convertible off the internet highway now, and I'm going to check into the nearest cyber-motel. My eyes are bleary and my head is exploding from information overload. I need some rest. What about you ....?

Day Eleven - I'll show you mine, if....

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:26:00 +0000

One learning community, I wanted to make sure I visited is a place with lots of visual appeal, but few words...and yet it is a very highly effective community. There is much sharing, a huge membership with lots of sub-groups, and a very well known social element.

Flickr identifies itself as a photo-sharing community based on a Web 2.0 platform. When I first encountered Flickr, I didn't really notice the community so much. I thought it was a great way to use photos on various websites or classes I was taking. I could take on my photos, and instead of posting it to my own server, I could use the space at Flickr. Then I found the tagging mechanism. I found that there were other folks out there taking similar photos of similar things. Not only that, but many of them were willing to share and in many cases let me use their photos on my web endeavors. Much of the material on the site was marked "Creative Commons" which allowed me to use it with proper documetation. This was my first real-life encounter with the "copy-left" culture. This in itself was an education. Most of this attentiveness came about whent the original Canadian owner (who established Flckr in 2002) sold their holding to Yahoo in March 2005 and came under the strict US Copyright laws.

Then much to my surprise in 2005, I got my first invite to join in one of the many sub-communities of folks taking photos based on specific subject matter. From here I went on to join several other groups of like minded amateur photographers. In Flickr's early days, there were chat rooms where groups like this met (IRC), but that has since been replaced by the tagging and internal email systems.

There are several other photo sharing communties but none have had the success of Flickr.

A new slide show tool...

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:59:00 +0000

I am exploring the uses of a new slide show tool. The tool is called SlideShare and is only avialable via invitation. You can use it to embed a slide show on a blog or webpage. I'll be trying it soon on a wiki and a Moodle.

For those of you who do not know, one of my hobbies is working with hot glass. I have taken several years of instruction at my local university (University of Texas at Arlington) and in the course of those instructions, I had cause to put this slide show about glass paperweights together. I hope you enjoy it.

Day Ten - Learning Communities - Hacking Folders and Things

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:44:00 +0000

I don't know about you, but I often find that I am a poor time planner. I think that it is just part of the human condition in these days of information overload and multi-tasking. David Allen wrote a fine little book a few years ago, about his experiences at fighting to maintain control of his scheduling and stress levels throughout years of professional work. The book, "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity", spawned several communities of like-minded learners who embraced Allen's approach and then went beyond. One of the best known of those communities was 43 Folders.

43 Folders is a geeky little community, whose inhabitants have an almost religious zeal around Allen's thoughts. The site is full of information based on the book and has a nice GTD Wiki in addition to discussion list and MP3 potdcasts. There is a very narrowly focused niche here, and seldom do the constituents stray from it. It is sometimes as if the book were the original open source platform, but this dandy little group of developers has taken the API and created a myriad of by products all aimed at the same end result....saving time and alleviating stress. It is hard to visit this community without bookmarking it and coming back here to spend a lot of time and take away a lot of great ideas about how to take better care of yourself and your work.

Poke around the community a bit and see if you can find the motivation under the activity here. What is the "value ad" that keeps people coming back?

See also:
Life Hacks - A spin-off community from 43 folders with much the same general focus
LifeHacker: - The products end of 43 folders.

NOTE: I am not a fan of pseudo-scientific time organizers and stress releivers...things are usually not that simple. But seems like the more times I read Allen's book and look at these sites, the more I agree with his simple approach. Now if we could just approach life with a similar process.

Day Nine, Learning Commuities - Geeks in Sleeping Bags

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:45:00 +0000

We are in for a treat today. Today, we stop in a community where everyone is a geek like us, but we get to meet each member of the community in person. Not only that, the level of interactivity is super high...almost everyone here participates in some way. This particular community of learners is a blended community, that is, it exists not only online but also Face 2 Face. This community is called BarCamp. The BarCamp community is generally informal and relies on mixed-mode delivery to provide for learning. The scaffolding of the community is the Open Space Technology format. The learning content of such communities is very much user driven. The BarCamp facilitators may put together a list of potential subject areas for discussion and learning, but in the end, it is totally up to the learners as to which subjects will be included in the BarCamp. Furthermore, the content itself is completely controlled by the participants. There are no hired presenters...just participants who are willing to share their knowledge with other participants. And finally, membership in the BarCamp community, requires each member to promise to present on some subject matter. F2F BarCamps generally occur in centralized cities in a free meeting space, and it is not unusual, due to the scaffolding for the BarCamp to advertise itself is "round-the-clock" learning, and because of that, often boast of "bring a sleeping bag" overnight accomodations (people gotta sleep dont they?).

The on-line part of this community is then heavily reliant on blogs, photo sharing (often similar to power point presentations), social bookmarking and wikis to follow-up the subject matters encountered in the F2F portion of a BarCamp. There are also a couple of E-lists that carry BarCamp discussions (I've listed the best below).

What is the BarCamp's role in "Learning Communities"? I am not sure there is an answer to that yet. BarCamps may be a passing fad, or they may be the inevitable result of the social side of on-line learning communities. Only time is going to tell us where BarCamps fit in our Learning Communities model.

Additional Reads:
BarCamp for Dummies
BarCamp Wiki - A terrific list of BarCamps that were, and BarCamps that are yet to come.
The Nuts and Bolts of BarCamp
Google Groups Bar Camp - Probably the best e-list group on BarCamps.

Day Eight - Learning Communities - Increasing Learning and Involvement

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:21:00 +0000

Today, I thought we might pull into the next drive in movie and watch whatever is on the screen. Well, lucky for us, there is a film here about learning communities. It's short but it brings up some pretty good points. One thing that really has been hanging around my brain since watching it, is how professionals talk to each other. Far too often we couch what we say in language that we fully understand, but makes many of us sound like outter space invaders to other group members. In order to sustain a really interactive community, we have to re-learn or re-hearse basic communication skills. Using the latest terminology may prove to us, that we are on top of technological change, but if the party who is listening to us does not understand that of which we speak, then it does little to even open our mouths.....


Academy for Sustainable Communities

What kinds of things in this short movie reverberate or connect for you?

Day Seven - Learning Communities - Use it or lose it

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 04:18:00 +0000

Today, the throttle is wide open. We are moving at speeds we never thought were possible. In fact, we are learning so fast that we surprising ourselves. Now, we are whizzing through learning communities and quickly recognizing their qualities and make-up. In fact we are not entering a community that will help explain this phenomena and get us to thinking about how we can provide faster learning in our learning communities. Up ahead is Brain Connections, the on-line learning community of the Scientific Learning Company. It's sister learning community, Posit Science, actually is spread out accross the U.S. in various F2F communities, in a number of Universities and can actually be ordered installed in new Dell Computers. Both are communities established by Dr. Michael Merzenich, based on his theory of Neuro- or Brain Plasticity, which posits that learning can actively and delliberately be acheived by action on the learniers part. Duh? you say. Well, at first it doesn't look like much, but this theory has profound effect on adult learning. It means, that humans can continue to learn as long as they want to, and as long as they actively (let me repeat that - ACTIVELY) pursue learning.

Now, here's the reason I wanted to visit these two communities. Information is coming at us so fast to day, that in order to keep up, we must remain adaptable and we have to become fast learners. Neuroplasticity, allows us to see that we all have the capability to adapt to new learning. And through action coupled with attititude we can learn at amazingly fast rates. So there are two elements here that should be important in your learning community. One is involvement. If people perceive themselves involved in something they really want to learn, the weil learn much faster. And secondly, it has to be something they WANT to learn. One of the beauties of on-line learning communities, is that people generally join them because they truly want to be there. There are some few exceptions but by and large if you are still a member, then it's because you really want to be there. And the speed by which you learn something you really want to know, re-inforces your desire to learn which in turn allows you to continue to learn at fast rates.

Common sense? Well you'd think so, but....read "Change or Die", and see if we normally follow these rules of common sense learning. I think you will be surprised at the results of the surveys described. If you were truly given a choice of changing or dying, you would choose change...right? Wrong. There is good statistical evidence to suggest that you wouldn't. In fact, in this article, the odds are nine to one that you would not. Remember what I said about "attitude" being an element of "fast learning". You indeed, have to want to change. Learn more about how to invoke that kind of attitude in your community members by reading the article.

Finally, how does this all apply to you as the facilitator. I beleive that much of what we learn in a situation has to do with modeling. If you are going to model "fast learning" for your community, then you have to model it for them. We have already noted that there are three distinct phases in a learning communities existence. We can take that same model and apply it to how we learn in a daily environment. What do we need to do to prepare our selves for fast learning in the start-up phase (learn before doing), in the middle (learn while doing), and at the end (learn after doing). By modeling a few techniques to our community members we can effectively facilitate faster learning on their part. Read "The Future of the Future: Learning Fast to Stay Relevant in the World" and let me know if these are things that you do or want to do in your life.

Day Six - Learning Communities - The Great Divide

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 04:09:00 +0000

Today, if you get a chance go over and take a peak at "internet's largest community for educators"....Digital Divide Network. This is a fine example of learning community and it is one with all the bells and whistles. In light of earlier comments about low threshold communities....has this one overdone it? It's membership continues to grow and there is terrific involvement of some of the best online educators out there. So how does it maintain its stature? What keeps it in the positions it is in? What kinds of things here would you like to emulate in your own personal learning community?

Have a great weekend.

Additional Readings: What Can Social Networking Do For Your Organization

Day Five - Learning Communities - Living with Albert

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 03:44:00 +0000

What do you need to know about the technical limitations of your members and their equipment before they participate in a learning community?

When one thinks about how to start a learning community, one of the issues that needs to be dealt with is to consider the technical limitations of your members and their equipment before they participate in a learning community. That consideration might include matters of privacy and security for a youth community, speed of the computers for rural community, or perhaps whether or not a computer or a telephone might be the best and most affordable device for a community in a poor area. Today, I’d like to us to visit a community for those with limited abilities. Certainly, the handicapped, the elderly and others can enjoy and benefit from learning communities, but just how do we go about making those types of communities accessible to potential members?

A nice article to read in consideration of these factors is “Building Smart Communities: what they are and how they can benefit blind and visually impaired people”. Afterwards, why not visit Leukodystrophy Family (Nervous System Disabilities), or the Visually Impaired Blind Users Group of Massachusetts, or listen to this audio interview (Life with Albert Part I and Life with Albert Part II - If you have problems with these links try to listen from my blog, Rebuilding Indianola) with Albert, a blind instructor in a refuge camp in Western Sahara, Africa (an incredible interview with a unique approach to using very sparse resources, basically a screen reader only, to build a learning community in a place with 95% illiteracy). This interview was original podcast from another interesting learning community with unique approach to using technology to enhance education, EdTech Talk, a part of the WorldBridges network. Now that these communities with unique approaches to user capacity and capability are in our rear-view mirror, how will you implement your learning community so that user equipment and technical limitations will not hamper the other aspects of creating a learning environment?

Day Four - Learning Communities - The Moodle Commons

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:36:00 +0000

Yesterday, Kayla commented on SCoPE an how comfortable she felt in another community that was built on a Moodle foundation. I thought that today, we might look at still another community built on Moodle---The Moodle Community. This is the development community at Moodle. It is large, well organized and a wonderful example of how a Moodle can be set up to handle a learning community.

It also brings to mind a question about foundations of learning communities. How distinct are the appliications that communities of learning rest on. We will look at some communities that are strictly email list, some that are Moodle based like this one, and some that use other applications, like Joomla and Elgg. So give me your thoughts on the foundations of learning environments. How do they influence the community or do they?

Day Three - Learning Communities - "V" Towns

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 03:11:00 +0000

I am not much of a "gamer" myself, but certainly many "digital natives" grew up learning to use the tools of learning technology by navigating their way through the various levels of many on-line games. One developer has called this future oriented technology as "learning on steroids". Currently, we have to choose among classroom-based training, synchronous online seminars, asynchronous Web-based training and a smattering of other options when determining the best delivery mechanism for learning content.

So driving into future learning communities lets make a virtual stop. Web-based training and a smattering of other options when determining the best delivery mechanism for learning content.

Second Life is a community built in a virtual environment. It has over 700,000 residents, it's own economy, and the roots of educational systems ( It's internal search engine boast of 23 "educational" entries, though some might not be what we would consider traditional education with Second Life University the largest with 279 members.) You don't have to have an account to prowl around the front page and see some examples of what this site is all about. Obviously, this type of community brings up all sort of issues about privacy and security (similar the the communities at FaceBook, MySpace and There), but their popularity would indicate that those issues will eventually be resolved. For now, they provide wonderful examples of potential learning communities and environments.

Does Second Life pique your creative side a bit in terms of how you would use such a product for an educational community?

Day Two - Learning Communities - A Band of Gypsies

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 01:23:00 +0000

Our second stop is a temporary community, sort of a "band of gypsies" of learning. It is a short term moving community, going from place to place in real life and communicating to larger learning networks from the experiences the gypsies are gaining.

Otago Polytechnic has initiated a traveling open space conference called The Future of Learning in a Networked World. Participants will meet on September 18 and travel to participating institutions in Dunedin, Christchurch, Northland, Auckland and Wellington recording discussions around this topic.

Day One - Learning Communities

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:03:00 +0000

Our first visit is to one of the first communities of learning that I ever enjoyed. Both Knowplace and I have offices there, though I don't use mine as much as I once did (I guess I must dwell there only in certain parts of the year). But I still love the place. It is built on one of the "Cadillacs" of web-sharing platforms - Elluminate.

The community is called Learning Times. LearningTimes.org is an open community for education and training professionals. Members have free access to a wide range of opportunities to interact and network with peers from across the globe. Member activities include live webcasts and interviews with industry leaders, online debates and discussions, live coverage of industry conferences, and international working groups.

Whirlwind Toor of Learning Communities Starts Tomorrow

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:42:00 +0000

I am hosting an educational workshop at Capillano College/Knowplace over the next couple of weeks on "Learning Communities". A portion of the workshop will be devoted to a whirlwind tour of different "learning communities". The tour will provide the prudent explorer an opportunity to travel the Internet speedway, cruising from one community to another. I will be posting a new community each day of the course, so take a glance or spend some time, or at least put it in your aggregator or your del.icio.us list or however you save mementos of places you have been and would like to return to. It will be up to the explorer to glean what they can from each community, but feel free to commit your thoughts to this blog, as you pass these places of learning.

"Operator!...May I help you?

elderbob@gmail.com (elderbob brannan) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 05:16:00 +0000

Response to "Mobile Learning: The Next Evolution of Education?" posted to The EdTech Blog.

"Over the past decade, mobile computing and communications devices have become essential tools in higher education and business environments. It is now routine for business travelers and educators to carry laptop computers, cell phones, and PDAs that allow them to access data and information from anywhere—whether in a conference room, classroom, or while on the move."

While this statement may be true, note that it concerns itself with "educators", not those being educated. Of course, that is not to say that many of those being educated do not also find a need to carry a laptop, a cell phone or a PDA, but the handheld computing devices are not the ubiquitous devices that the article seems to be describing....or at least not here in Texas. Major School Districts all over the state allow students to bring the devices to school, but insist that they be turned off during regular class day (apparently this means no use in between classes as well). Penalties range from loss of the device to a fine.

I did a Google search before writing this post to see what information exists on the net regarding Educational Cell Phone Use in Texas. Not too surprisingly, there was little definitive information. Instead, there were several things that struck me as I scrolled through several pages of results.

First, it was interesting to see how many places are studying the use of cell phones as educational devices. This can probably be taken a number of different ways but for me, my first thought was that we are desperately seeking tools to re-inforce our current notions of how to teach. We have tried a lot of other things, but it just seems that most of them don't have the desired impact (personal opinion:putting our money where our mouth is, is probably the most likely to impact classroom test scores - the continued funding deficit in public education only re-inforces poor education).

The next thing I noted was that most of the Texas school districts indicated, had banned the use of cell phones during regular classroom hours. In light of item one, this seems a bit strange. If the devices really have potential, why aren't we letting some schools experiment with them...woops, I forgot, we are in an educational democracy here. We can't let one school have something without giving it to all of them....and God forbid, we find someone to give every schoolchild in Texas a simple cell phone and school account (even though most phone plans will give you a free phone to use - we are probably holding out for one of those $100 laptops for each child instead). I didn't see anything about teachers or administrators being allowed to carry these illicit devices, though earlier entries in the EdTech blog comments, would lead me to belief that they are fairly ubiquitous.

Another seemingly unrelated but serious issue was the use of cell phones in cars, being disruptive to driving activities. Hmmm. So the power of the cell phone is so great that it breaks our concentration and causes us to run into other autos. Or maybe on closer look, it has more to do with the dialing and answering process. Maybe audio and voice enhancement for all cell phones and screens large enough to see the print on, would make a difference. Keep in mind that my blog entry here (at least on my blog) is read aloud by a female voice without me activating anything after the original programming. Of course all those voices might distract drivers from listening to the drive time DJs, that radio pays so highly during those periods of high drive time. We had similar problems back when I was going to school in the 60's. Back then we called such distractions "daydreaming", and though most teachers banned such activity, they were not very successful (poor pedagogy leads to poor learning). Maybe if we turn this around, it might bring about a more profitable outcome. If cell phone can command such attention, then perhaps the best place to instruct would be over the cell phone. Of course, then we would have to ban driving while learning.

Finally, my last observation had to do with the fact that there are all these devices and none are on the same wavelength. They all use exactly the same technology, but charge different prices at different times of the day for use on devices that only work in specific geographical areas. The manufacturer of almost any cell phone will tell you that by and large, any phone will do anything, any other phone will do (or at leas most can be programmed to do what the others do). The catch is, that when the benevolent cell phone provider gives you that cell phone for free, they also program the memory chip in the phone to restrict use to meet their personal policies. This enables them to make ever more money to help save a terribly failing hard land line infrastructure, that could be replaced by WiFi and cell phones. Or heck, maybe the line their pockets with the extra money.

Whatever cell phones realities there are, this conversation has just begun, and it's ramifications will be with us far into the future. Already VOIP is looming on the horizon, and we have yet to get much of a handle on device usage in the classroom with limited capability cell phones. Not only that, but cell phones have become so ubiquitous in many societies, that we can hardly put them back in the box. And increasingly, we are finding lots of good reasons to have them in our pockets.

If you are an instructor, you need to continously think about my first observation....the new cell phones are coming, and they are quite likely going to change the way we educate. They will be VOIP, multi-media, have more processing power, interact with PCs or laptops more readily and will be cheaper than ever. You can turn them off, but the kids will learn on them, whether you are involved in what they learn or not.