Local and Regional Conferences
I’m increasingly finding myself attending local and regional conferences and other “events.” I think there are a variety of reasons for attending these events, including: 1. Supporting local/regional organizations and people—they put on this event because they think it is important enough to do so, and most of the time I agree with them. And although sometimes it’s tiring to attend (you know, after a full week of work)…these folks have been working hard for multiple weeks to put this show together. 2. Cheap professional engagement—by attending local/regional events I’m not …
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| November 03 2008 | CommentsPosted in
Blog a Day for a Month
Ok Coop and Devon and Biray…I’ll bite. I definitely need to get blogging regularly again! Not that I don’t have enough to do; but, this might be a way to keep me honest. This was supposed to start yesterday (obviously I wasn’t reading my tweets…I was sleeping off back, to back, to back conferences; what was I thinking?). So, blog a day for a month. I was hoping I would just do my blog, but realized that I had a few out there I’m supposed to be posting to relatively regularly. …
...Continued | November 02 2008 | CommentsPosted in
MCC-Welcome Back
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| August 18 2008 | CommentsPosted in
Survived and Can Never Go Back
I’m still not quite sure how I did it, but I survived the 2007-8 academic year as Mesa Community College’s instructional technologist. First, this actually needing to be somewhere specific for 30 hours a week...nearly killed me. Yeah, I’m so spoiled being regular faculty. But more interesting to me is the “politics” I played this year. Not that I haven’t known politics existed, or that I haven’t played them before, but this year I got them front and center. And the problem is that once you start playing politics somewhere, even …
...Continued | May 16 2008 | CommentsPosted in MCCCD
Reciprocal Learning
I complete the first of three workshops on Google Apps that I’m doing for faculty in the Maricopa Community College District. I’m focusing on the applications that exist in the educational instances of Google Apps, not the “everything” that we get in a regular google services account. I was surprised at how few faculty I had in the room; instead, I had a bunch of librarians, some people from training, institutional advancement, an administrator, to name a few. I did learn that Google didn’t like having too many accounts being opened …
...Continued | March 09 2008 | CommentsPosted in MCCCD
Cyber Salon, The Reality
Have you ever imagined something and known the reality would probably not quite ever live up to your idea. Last spring/summer I dreamed up this idea of having Cyber Salons, like the intellectual Salons of the 18th and 19th centuries. Heck…even the Paris Salons with America ex-pat writers. Part of what I imagined was the combination of laptops and live talking and back channeling, and beer of course! A group of us starting meeting this past fall and have been meeting monthly ever since. Although we are still struggling to find …
...Continued | March 09 2008 | CommentsPosted in Cyber Salon
Friday Night CyberSalon
Im guessing we should have done CyberSalon on a Friday night before. Obviously we are really geeks if we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and spent a chunk of time at a bar, with all of our laptops and very giant beers. This picture became our new CyberSalon Google Groups image. Thanks CogDog! Some of the discussions that stood out to me were BeFitt and I agreeing we would Tumble instead of Twitter (although Im sure …
...Continued | February 09 2008 | CommentsPosted in Cyber Salon
Cyber Salon at Dave & Buster’s
Cyber Salon for 2008 kicked off to a great start by having the one, the only, CogDog in attendance. I got there early to make sure I would find a place with an outlet, only to find that there was no wireless. What? I called last week to verify. Oh, well…we’re geeks; but, we’re also blabbermouth geeks. I knew we would do ok without computers. The evening (or late afternoon) started out with Alan, Biray and I (actually Tom was there too). We talked about how Biray is going …
...Continued | January 17 2008 | CommentsPosted in Cyber Salon
Reboot
...Continued | January 01 2008 | CommentsPosted in
Geeking Out Over New Tools
The Cyber Salon met this past Monday, October 8, at the Village Idiot Tavern again. I felt bad that I did not find something further west, at least in west Tempe, so that Dr. Coop would not have to travel so far. I promise...I’ll find something before the next time. (FYI...we’ll be meeting one week earlier, the first Monday, in November.) What did we do? Alisa and I gabbed about finding Stixy. We really liked the idea that online …
...Continued | October 10 2007 | CommentsPosted in Cyber Salon