Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Month: August 2009

  • Deciding the Fate of North America

    The French and Indian: War Deciding the Fate of North America In high school and college the French and Indian War was this long amorphous event in between settling the colonies and the American Revolution. It took a movie, The Patriot (not even in my top 500 movies), to give some color to the story…

  • TED Talk: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

    I was attracted to this video because a while ago I read Daniel’s book: A Whole New Mind. Take the concept that simple, clearly defined jobs will move to overseas. So to succeed in the United States, children need to be learning conceptual skills and become the people inventing the work doled out to overseas workers. Let’s…

  • LMS in a Pandemic

    As we head into the new school year across the United States, medical officals are warning about higher than normal numbers of young people with the flu. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) says this about H1N1, “Current visits to doctors for influenza-like illness are down from April, but are higher than what is expected in…

  • State of the LMS

    Watched an informative WebEx about The State of the LMS: An Insitution Perspective presented jointly by Delta Initiative and California State University. An true innovator in this market could become the leader. Market share numbers annoy me. These are always self-reported numbers from a survey. The sample sizes are almost always not very impressive and when…

  • A Head Above

    A Head Above, originally uploaded by Ezra F.

  • TED Talk: Social Bacteria

    We have 10x bacteria cells on or in our bodies as human cells. By far most of those protect us. Soap which kills 99% of bacteria kills both the good and the bad. This video by far gives an idea as to how cool bacteria can be. Bonnie Bassler here says bacteria use produce chemicals…

  • Name Collisions

    Blackboard has a conference they call BbWorld. I noticed there are some odd tweets with the same #bbworld hashtag lately. These appear to be about a Blackberry conference to be held next month. Collisions on names are common enough. For example, here are a couple names our clients use to brand their sites which other…

  • Cognitive Load

    My parents taught me as a child lying is harder than telling the truth. I am way too lazy to bother with anything other than using a tangent to change the subject. Simplicity also helps keep track of my life. I like understanding what is happening and why. Skills involved in deception also teach problem-solving,…

  • Computer Metaphors

    An effective way to explain something is to use a metaphor. This can be especially effective by picking an metaphorical object or behavior with which the audience is already familiar. The one I see most often is comparing computers to a car. This morning I saw this on an email list describing a person’s experience…