YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvORKwmk9Xo
TeacherTube link: http://tinyurl.com/66o9hv
PDF transcript
Quicktime download (57.7 MB)

Following my previously posted rant about content, I spent the evenings at my journey to Educause 2008 working on another content project for school: an instructional video. Since I didn't have much to work with and I didn't have my own machine...only iMovie and Jing, though TechSmith offered to help and tried to sell me a copy of Camtasia Studio on the Educause expo floor. But I got away with a free Camtasia manual for the team at work: SCHWAG! So, I decided to make a video geared toward teachers and the first time ed-tech conference goer.

I have been to many conferences in my career, and I wish someone told me these things a while ago. Educause is especially big, busy, and intimidating the frist time around; but careful prep, comfy shoes, extra business cards, and a willingness to meet people go a long way to making the conference experience a good one.

Wow what a week! First of all, I came face to face with my own digital mortality when the logic board on my trusty year-old MacBook Pro decided to have a campfire. So it's out for a week, thank goodness for the extended AppleCare! I am using the loaned Mac from work at the Educause 2008 conference this week.

Here is my first digital story, at least the first one created outside the confines of my current employ ;). Enjoy... This is dedicated to my Mom who always teased me about the Menehune. Downloadable version in Quicktime format available here or link to it on TeacherTube.

This has been an enlightening past couple of weeks. First, creating the WebQuest and now I am working on a digital story. Digital stories are essentially that: stories created digitally using all sorts of tools. I happen to be using iMovie which is still fairly new to me. The best part of this assignment is that it can be about anything. I happen to be on vacation this week in Kaua'i, so I am doing some investigative reporting into the story of the Menehune.

I am having a lot of fun with this. Somewhere along the line, I forgot about the actual content of what goes into online education, or education in general even. I think what I am grappling with is that I have spent so much time on managing the "container" that we put content into, that I forgot about the content itself. I think I have been in an instructional design rut.

I posted my most recent project, a WebQuest, at http://www.withaq.net/eportfolio/webquest/index.html. It is entitled "Sending Work Overseas: The Outsourcing Debate in Apparel Manufacturing." Yeah pretty heady I know. I love working as instructional designer primarily because I get to learn about so many things just by exposure. Working at FIDM, I have been exposed to an industry that I would not have previously ever encountered. I decided to tackle a topic that is very close to the heart of the fashion industry: outsourcing.

I am usually not one to ruminate on and on about information I get at work. Many schools are run like a business, and being on the IT side of things, you get exposed to a lot of the business-y cross-talk and things that don't necessarily relate to the world of education on the surface. In higher-ed, the two worlds are closer together as we need to prepare our students for the business world and to compete in an economy that ain't what it used to be. But when you look at K-12, the dissociation between the business world and the world of schools seems much further apart. Or is this changing?

Hi everyone...this is for the course's iWeb fans. Apple has released new iWeb themes for it's popular blogging, web-site building, kitchen sink 2.0 tool. Read more at TUAW.

Just a quickie post to rebroadcast a link floating around recently: Web 2.0 and Emerging Learning Technologies from Curtis Bonk, one of the lead collaborators along with many students around the world.  (Really, who authors anything in a vacuum anymore?)  Anyway, I saw him speak at Educause a few years back and he was great.

So I have added a new link to the site, as you can see...right up there, that's it: "ePortfolio." This was an assignment but I also saw it as a chance to present myself in a way that I hadn't previously. I have been all wrapped up in trying to figure out a way to roll out an ePortfolio system that it hadn't occurred to me to make one of my own.

Hi everyone, I am in Vegas right now. I took the picture on the flight. I love the shadow of the cloud as it actually gives it some substance. The inner 5 year old wanted to scream that it was a spaceship coming to get us from somewhere over the I-15. I mentioned to my wife that I was going to post it on my blog, she rolled her eyes and said that she didn't know how I could find time to keep it going. I guess I have been blogging for a year or so now, and it serves its purpose of letting me vent or kick around ideas.