educating eric

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"In Buddhist terms, some of our students are very 'attached' to being busy." I need to look up that phrase/language; never heard it before.

A friend said something interesting this morning as we had our weekly breakfast meeting to help steer what our church calls an "adult bible fellowship" (also known as an "adult Sunday school" though I think "Sunday school" has too much baggage and that title's acronym isn't one you want to use in church). As we talked about the challenge (for the class and for ourselves) of helping people engage in the material and stay motivated for personal growth, we realized something: At our stage of life (parents of young kids) we now have lots of competing time pressures and priorities. Conversely, our college years were marked by an externally applied "demand" that we learn and grow ; even if we didn't enjoy sitting through calculus class, we couldn't help ending that semester having been "changed" in some way. Today, we no longer have a mandate of personal growth imposed on us . Maybe it's just me, but I found this really ...

I could be wrong (what a way to start!) but I think I "get" Flavors.me and why it's slow (sometimes really slow) for me. At the suggestion of someone replying to a Wordpress question on some site or another, I did a view-source of my Flavors.me page. All the feed content was loaded. I have a lot of feeds. So, what it seems to be doing is pre-loading the content, then displaying it "hidden" with CSS. What that means is that when my page loads, the server needs to grab a dozen RSS feeds, arrange them a smidge, then push all that content down to the browser. Someone who just wants to see my latest Tweet doesn't need several thousand words of blog writing dropped into their cache. So, I'm going to see if some type of "equivalent" could be built out of flatter pages, rather than handling everything within just one page. Maybe in Wordpress, maybe not. (I know that the "cool" way to do things is to push all the content down at once a...

HOWTO use Google AdWords to prototype and test a book title - Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/25/howto-use-google-adw.html Quote of the day: "There's almost a pathological sense of deceptiveness to some of his stuff." The covering up others' books does seem to cross an ethical line...?

In "Twitter???s Golden Egg" ( http://www.alchemyofchange.net/twitters-golden-egg/) the author notes that "I???m using the term??'Information networker' to describe a group of people whose work centers on creating and connecting information." Wouldn't the same description apply to educators? What more (or less) do educators offer to society?

My first podcast was recorded in 2005. More than five years later... recording, editing and distributing a podcast isn't any easier. Isn't that a bit surprising? I've lamented the loss of GigaVox Audio Lite , which became Podango ShowBuilder Lite, which became totally nonexistent. I figured something would step up to take its place. Nothing has. Phone-to-podcast solutions came and went -- Gcast , Garageband, etc. I finally became excited about the idea again when I discovered that drop.io offered the service... only to find they discontinued it. (The phone number reference still appears on accounts but it doesn't seem to do anything.) The few I've come across so far ( UHaveAudio.com , ipadio .com -- which has nothing to do with the Apple iPad -- and Yodio.com ) don't seem to match the ease/simplicity of Gcast -- nor do they have the posting speed. (I don't want to have to wait a few hours to see if my call was successfully recorded.) Paul Colligan ima...

From: @emlarson Sent: Oct 28, 2010 7:46a @C3POJones Mulling that insight in context of http://read.ly/Matt4.1.NIV (Odd phrasing in 4:1; does God lead us to temptation?) sent via ??berTwitter in reply to @C3POJones On Twitter: http://twitter.com/emlarson/status/28985284337

...Or was Paul's desire sufficiently not "of God" because, had it been, Satan couldn't have stopped them? "For we wanted to come to you???certainly I, Paul, did, again and again???but Satan stopped us." http://read.ly/1Thess2.18.NIV

In the latest Ericast (repeat episode) Mikael Rudolph mentioned Bill Irwin and some of his performance art that explored the "space" of television. I need to read up on him...: Great Performances . Bill Irwin, Clown Prince . Essay . Bill Irwin | PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/billirwin/essay3.html

According to this interview, "your friends have more friends than you do" -- I need to figure that one out. Hmmm... (They're talking about tracking flu outbreaks with that, using "network mapping") Podcast Title: APM: Marketplace Tech Report Episode: 09/20/10 Marketplace Tech Report Media URL: if (FlashDetect.installed) { $('flash_embed-vCgkoqpgAj').show(); $('quicktime_embed-vCgkoqpgAj').hide(); } else { $('quicktime_embed-vCgkoqpgAj').show(); $('flash_embed-vCgkoqpgAj').hide(); } Podcast feed URL: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/podcast/tech-report.php

An interview with Aaron Dunn of Musopen and his project to create public-domain recordings of classical music. The more we engage in classical music, the better off we are... right? (This episode was also my introduction to the Looxcie...) Podcast Title: APM: Marketplace Tech Report Episode: 09/16/10 Marketplace Tech Report Media URL: if (FlashDetect.installed) { $('flash_embed-xFeIrHklAi').show(); $('quicktime_embed-xFeIrHklAi').hide(); } else { $('quicktime_embed-xFeIrHklAi').show(); $('flash_embed-xFeIrHklAi').hide(); } Podcast feed URL: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/podcast/tech-report.php

A good summary of Clayton Christiansen's notion of "disruptive technology" and surveillance; what happens when we turn that toward ourselves? Podcast Title: APM: Marketplace Tech Report Episode: 10/18/10 Marketplace Tech Report Media URL: if (FlashDetect.installed) { $('flash_embed-mrvAEAjxin').show(); $('quicktime_embed-mrvAEAjxin').hide(); } else { $('quicktime_embed-mrvAEAjxin').show(); $('flash_embed-mrvAEAjxin').hide(); } Podcast feed URL: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/podcast/tech-report.php

I always saw this as a "solution in search of a problem" (which I'm ordinarily fine with) and it looks like they're no longer offering hosting to the general public... But I wonder where/how this could be used. The "what's it good for?" question. Ideas? What does "digital storytelling" look like today, five years after I first saw Pachyderm? ASSETT ?? Pachyderm: A Tool for Digital Storytelling http://assett.colorado.edu/post/1114

It doesn't keep me awake at night, but I'm still pondering what seems to be a big issue: buying used and recycling/repurposing things only "works" (i.e. is only dramatically cost-saving) because so few people do it and society is so wasteful. That is, if everyone shopped for X used on Craigslist, the cost of X would go up because of high demand and limited supply. As it is, you can buy X cheap because most people are buying Y at retail instead and are just trying to get rid of X to make room. With me so far? Thing is... This is great for those of us who shop used... but by definition you can't build a society on these principles because they break once everyone starts doing them. Kant wouldn't approve. Personally, I can leave that as "Oh, well; too bad for the others!" I suppose... but something doesn't seem "right" about the situation. Are there any economic models or theories that address this?

I respectfully charge that this isn't really a "mashup" but is more like a "medley"... and, even then, it's really just two songs next to each other in different keys... but at least someone else spotted that "King of Anything" and "King of Wishful Thinking" really belong together... [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PY7g9xz7to?wmode=transparent]

I hate to admit my stupidity and lack of vision... but I don't get how popular "making stuff" is going to be. Am I just in the wrong field and there's a "silent majority" of people who want to build little 3D thingies? Other than "art" (sculpture, scrapbooks, etc.) and engineers who need to build little nuts and bolts and assemblies... What is there? http://ng.cba.mit.edu/

Put this one in the "to read" category (when I get the chance, am thinking clearly, etc. etc. etc.) "Inventing a Planet ?? Blog Archive ?? Truth" http://www.inventingaplanet.com/truth/