e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: DArcy-Norman

  • How to Keynote an Unconference

    A while back, I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker at the NERCOMP LMS Unconference. I had never attended an unconference before, nevermind keynoting one, and I found the prospect to be fascinating and exciting. And nerve-wracking. On the surface, a keynote appears to be the antithesis of the unconference spirit. I needed to do something different than the usual fare in order to make it work. I needed to do an unkeynote. And yet, Stephen Downes had warned me that he, Brian Lamb, and D’Arcy Norman had tried giving an unkeynote before and, in his words, “They almost lynched us. They were not happy to receive an unkeynote.” (D’Arcy’s post-mortem of their effort is definitely worthwhile reading.) So, what to do?

    The approach I tried seemed to work, judging by the feedback I got from the attendees and, to a lesser degree, by the influence of the presentation that I was able to observe on the rest of the unconference. I had intended to blog about the experience a while ago but it fell off my to-do list. However, prompted by the good folks of the NERCOMP LMS SIG, I am now returning to the topic.

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  • Apple and Textbooks, Part 2: Is There a Class In This Text?

    When Apple announced both the release of their iBooks 2 and upgrades to iTunes University, I was curious to see what kind of integration they had between the two. If you do a web search on the subject, you will find plenty of articles that tell you that iBooks textbooks “fully integrate with” iTunes U—but without providing any details. What does that mean?

    From what I can tell, it means that you can put a deep link from iTunes U to a specific page in an iBook. That’s what “fully integrates” means. What it apparently doesn’t mean is the ability to insert iTunes U content directly into the book via an iFrame or some other means. Technically, speaking, it would have been easy for them to do this. The iBook format is essentially EPUB. It’s HTML, CSS, and Javascript. A collection of web pages. They even have explicit support for widgets. It wouldn’t have been hard at all for them to create an iTunes U widget. But they didn’t go there. I think that omission, while not a huge deal in and of itself, is deeply revealing about the limits of Apple’s vision about textbooks and education.

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  • D'Arcy Lays it Down on ePortfolios

    D’Arcy has a very useful wiki page up outlining all the various dimensions of the huge, amorphous blog sometimes known as “ePortfolios.” This is why there will never be just one class of ePortfolio apps .

  • Web 2.0 for Tracking Web 2.0

    Before I start on this post, I want to note that I am writing it in the Bleezer offline blogging client found via D’Arcy. This little freeware application is just a couple of months old and it already rivals much older for-pay blogging clients.

    Anyway, Alan Levine is asking for a Web 2.0 tools list that is managed using a Web 2.0 tool.

    His wish is my command (created using Lazybase):

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