Loving Guitar Hero

So my son had a birthday and got a gift of Guitar Hero for the Wii. He'd previously played it several times with his friends, but now we have our own CD and plastic guitar in the house. I wasn't too sure that I would be interested in it. I've never had much talent with real musical instruments and that appears to cross over to fake instruments as well. However, there is one very cool redeeming feature about Guitar Hero.

The best thing about Guitar Hero is that my kids are absolutely loving some of the music from my era, which hasn't really been the case until now. When I hear them singing and strumming to some of these songs, I just head on over to the den to join in or sit back and watch them in action:

• Paint it Black (Stones, one of my all-time favorites)
• La Grange (ZZ Top, the one song that they have liked from my CD collection)
• Mississippi Queen (Mountain)
• School's Out (AC)
• Paranoid (BS)
• Pride and Joy (SRV)

There are some newer songs on there as well, which they like but I don't seem to know much at all. Still, this is a good way of bringing the generations together.

Day One at Higher Learning Commission

Wow, what a day. What a crappy, lousy, frustrating day. Apparently I have become the most cynical person on the planet. I have an incredibly difficult time sitting through presentations where the presenters are either a) superfluous, b) clueless, c) close-minded, d) totally self-absorbed, e) a corporate salesperson, or f) not me (just guessing at this last one).

a) This first session would have been the best one of the day if the presenters would have simply talked about the video learning objects that they have created and how they are using them. But NO, they had to go too far. They went too far in claiming that their stuff was innovative (it was good, but nothing innovative in the world of technology). The other problem is that they were trying to tell the audience that their video learning objects are somehow interactive. OMG!! I will write a completely separate rant about that one (some of you know that this is a pet peeve of mine).

b) The second session was worse than the first. This whole presentation was about teaching students to make really lousy PowerPoint slide shows with all the goofy animations (spinning pictures) and typewriter sounds for text entering the screen), and saying that this is somehow what we should be doing with students in the digital age. Ice pick in my forehead on this one.

c) The third session was one of those where they tell you what they did and tell you that soon you will all being doing it - but they never once gave any evidence of a real problem that they were trying to solve. They are the best example of someone who will try to show you all sorts of data or student feedback without having any data in the first place to prove that there was a problem looking for a solution. More about this one later.

d) I attended a session this afternoon by a presenter that I have seen about 4-5 times previously. I always liked his style and his method, although I thought that his material was getting pretty stale over the years. In February I had the chance to see him deliver a keynote and was totally disappointed to see how this gentleman had completely turned into an egomaniac during the past few years. He is all about self-promotion, which I have a really hard time watching. After the debacle in February I decided to go see him again in hopes that the February gig was just a one off for him. The other reason that I went again was because he had a different title for this presentation and even the description sounded like I was going to see some new material from this former great speaker. WRONG!!! On both counts. It turns out that he really is a self-absorbed self promoter and his new session title and description was just sheep's clothing for the same old material and PPT slides. Total disappointment.

e) The corporate guy was talking about a website where students create their online profile so that colleges can hear about the student before they choose where to enroll, and then the colleges contact the students who fit the profiles that they are interested in recruiting. This session was called "Powertapping the Web 2.0 for Unique Students." Very funny. There was not one thing about the system that had anything to do with "THE" Web 2.0.
Maybe it got better after I left, but I'll never know - because I LEFT!

Not the best way for me to spend a Sunday - all day long! What will tomorrow bring? I shudder to think. (Sorry - apparently I'm in a mood today.)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Chinese Ceramic Mural

Lake Superior College has recently been adorned with a new mural by famous Chinese artist Wenzhi Zhang from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Wenzhi has also taught here at LSC a couple of semesters during the past few years and she will return again this summer with many Chinese students in tow for another great learning community here in Duluth.


This montage of pictures (created at bighugelabs) shows the completed mural in the center, with one shot of the mural during assembly, and several close-ups showing some of the details. (Click to enlarge.) The 15' wide by 25' high relief sculpture, named “Stele,” is located near the front entrance to the new two-story academic and student services building that opened in Fall 2007. There are 120 individual stoneware ceramic tiles that comprising the mural. They are attached to an underlying steel framework. The tiles feature several Duluth landmarks including the Aerial Lift Bridge, boats on Lake Superior, the Depot, and the old Central High School clock tower.

Trying to BeFunky

I took one photo montage from my Flickr account and made four sample cartoon renderings from it using BeFunky, which is a rather funky site for creating cartoon panels out of photos. You'll see a few of the options in the slideshow below. Finally I made another of just the center picture from the montage and put a border/frame around it at BeFunky. Just trying it out.

Using geoTwitterous

I saw a tweet, followed the link, and 60 seconds later I had this map of Twitter Tweets on my blog. Pretty cool use of Pipes. Thanks Britt.

Creative Commons SlideShare

For some time now I have been wanting to put together a self-directed presentation that explains the use of Creative Commons licensing for various educational resources. But why should I do that when Mark Woolley has already done such a great job and of course, he licensed this content using CC-Attribution, Non-commercial? Therefore, here it is embedded below for your learning pleasure.

| View | Upload your own

Off the Grid

I plan to be totally disconnected for the next 9 or ten days. I suppose I'll have cell phone coverage for the first day or two and the last day or two, but no Internet access at all. A few thoughts and predictions:

1) I expect to have about 820 emails waiting for me in my college email account when I return. About 50% will be spam or spam-like (look what's on sale today!) and another 30% won't require any sort of reply. That leaves the other 20% which will be a real pain. Then there will be another 100-150 personal emails in different accounts.

2) I expect to have about 1,500 unread items in my Bloglines account.

3) I expect to have only a few blog comments waiting moderation, about 6-8 new Twitter followers to check out to see if I want to follow them as well, about 10 YouTube comments to check out to make sure that they are appropriate and don't need to be deleted (yes, I censor those comments - my kids look at those), only a couple of friend requests for Facebook or new contacts for LinkedIn, and about 10 new items sent to me by people in my del.icio.us network.

4) Maybe most important is that I will have a chance to see if 10 days away from the keyboard makes any difference on heading off the carpal tunnel that seems to be starting in my right arm. One can hope. At any rate - I'll be back the week of March 24.

Students Using Wireless

Here are more results from our beginning of semester Student Technology Survey that was completed by over 800 students here at LSC. I think it is surprising that only 28% report never using wireless networks. I would have predicted more like 50% use wireless networks either at home, schools, or other places. (Click to enlarge)

Even more surprising, I think, is that nearly two-thirds say they have a wireless network in their house. I guess that shows how cheap and easy it is to install a wireless network these days.

And finally, less than 1% say they pay to use wireless in public places. I'm with them. I'll gladly buy some coffee, or a beer, or a sandwich, or maybe all three - but I'm not going to pay to use your network to check my email (I mean Twitter page).

CC-By photo by dana~2

Article on Second Life

The Second Life article ran Sunday in the Duluth News Tribune. They are notorious for disappearing links on their website, but hopefully this article will still be available for a while.

The following lines were taken from my interview with the reporter.

"Using it for educational purposes can have downfalls, said Barry Dahl, vice president of technology and the virtual campus at Lake Superior College."

"Powerful technology is needed to run the program, and while the college has accommodated this, not everyone has that at home. Behavior “in-world” as it’s called, can also be a problem, he said. Linden Labs, which runs Second Life, has taken steps to end illegal gambling. But a large amount of sexual activity and “griefing” takes place on Second Life, he said."

"Griefing is when someone causes harm to another avatar or disrupts others."

"If a student were to complain about something done to an avatar on Second Life, Dahl said, the college couldn’t treat it as a serious offense because it didn’t really happen."

I have no qualms with any of this except for the last sentence. That is not what I said. In fact, I've never said that we "couldn't treat is as a serious offense." In fact I'm concerned about whether our existing policies and procedures are applicable to some of the things that could happen in SL, and I'm not exactly sure how we would handle something that is a serious offense. I believe that the potential for a serious offense is actually quite high.

All in all, I wasn't painted as the extremely negative SL-guy - which is probably a fairly accurate portrayal. I do however, have many more questions than answers about using SL for serious academic pursuits.

Second Opinion on Second Life

I'm becoming known as the anti-SecondLife guy around these parts. It's a badge that I wear proudly even though I don't think it's entirely accurate. I'm not the anti-SL guy, but I am the somewhat-less-than-enamored-with-SL-guy.

Most people think that I would be the first one in line for the virtual world experience. Sure, I have spent some time in there, but so far it just hasn't floated my boat to a level where I'm ready to give up several other pursuits in favor of SL. My experience so far tells me that I really would have to immerse myself in SL in order to "get it" on the same level of those SL evangelists. As far as I can tell, that would mean giving up my time spent a) blogging, b) using my personal learning environment, c) keeping on top of Web 2.0 technologies for presentations and workshops, and probably d) some of my non-technology personal time.

You don't get much out of SL by spending an hour or two per week in there. I do read many items about the ways that SL is being used in education, or at least trying to be used. Right now it's a bit more fun to sit back and watch others go through the trial and error process that is inevitable with something like this. Yep, I laughed right along with many others as some of the early efforts of building an educational setting within world was to build a virtual classroom that looks basically like a traditional (i.e. old-fashioned) classroom - with students sitting in rows and the professor standing in front delivering a lecture. However, I am intrigued as I see (or at least read about) others who are now thinking outside the virtual box a bit and trying to come up with some novel uses of SL for educational purposes.

Today I attended a classroom session of a hyrbid Sociology class at LSC where SL is being used for part of the instruction. Marlise is teaching this class which is a good thing because she is absolutely one of the hardest working and most engaging instructors on campus. It was fun to see all of the student avatars and some of the places they are visiting, including this Sociology research library in SL (photo below).


At the same time it was strange to see all these students in the same classroom but interacting with each other using their avatars. Many of the issues that we have encountered this semester are related to this unusual use of SL. It was never intended to have many people all in the same location, using the same bandwidth (etc.) but interacting within world. It is obviously intended of bringing together people (or at least their avatars) from various distributed places. There is a reason that the class is being taught in this unusual way, and from what I witnessed today I would say that it is paying off. Most importantly I think, is that Marlise is able to pilot this approach with real students in a real educational setting. I think she is learning even more than her students about how this tool can be used effectively for educational purposes. It would probably be harder for her to assess what the students can do and can't do in world if they truly were distributed over various locations.


The local paper is doing a story about all this which will probably be published in the next couple of days. I'll wait to say more until after that comes out. Chances are good that I will be painted as the anti-SL guy, mainly because I am the only one (at least that I know of) who is asking some of the tough questions related to school policies and how we will deal with the problems that will surely pop up further down the road. I'm also questioning whether Second Life is the correct choice for a virtual world for educational purposes. More about that later.

Me and My MoGo

I have a new little gadget that I really like. I saw someone using a MoGo BT (mouse on the go, I'm guessing) and I just had to have one. Go to Amazon - click, click, click and one shows up at my door. Really simple to get started.

I have used various laptop mice over the past few years, but always had problems with a) knowing where they are (they hide a lot), b) batteries needing to be replaced at inopportune times, and c) just not being very cool. MoGo solves all three of those problems.

a) You always know where it is because when you aren't using it, it lives in your PC card slot which you probably have no use for whatsoever anyway. b) You don't need to replace any batteries because it charges while it is docked in the PC card slot. c) It is definitely cool.

Since my laptop has built-in Bluetooth (most newer ones have it) I have no need for the included USB receiver - which is good because that would just be one more thing to keep track of. As luck would have it, I probably bought too quickly. Now they have a new model (X54) that is the same as my MoGo but has the added functionality of also being a presentation remote. The basic model sells for about $50 and the presenter model sells for about $70. Shop around and I'm sure you'll find even better prices.

Turning Point Response Systems

For my keynote address at the e-Learning 2008 Conference last week I used the Turning Point Audience Response System from Turning Technologies for getting audience participation related to the myths and realities of online learning.

Most of the info about this presentation will be over at Desire2Blog since most of it is specific to online learning. However, the use of the response systems belongs in this forum and I will write a bit more about using these systems.

First: Turning Technologies has been wonderful to work with. Any of you who know me probably know that I am not a guy who gushes about vendors very often. In fact, I am usually the devil's advocate (or just the devil himself) who is constantly harping on how they can be better and what they need to do to be worthy of our scarce higher ed dollars. So, for me to say that the Turning Point people have been great to work with is somewhat notable in itself. But that is exactly what my experience has been so far. I've dealt with three different people to one extent or another and they all have been great and easy to work with. And very responsive.

Second: the technology itself is very easy to learn and you can quickly get up to speed. I attended one 45-minute live webinar which was very well done; and the next thing I knew I had all 21 of my audience response questions built, tested, and ready-to-go. The software itself is just a plug-in to PowerPoint, so for anyone who uses PowerPoint there is a very small learning curve.

Third: The reporting capabilities are pretty strong. I have generated a few different user reports from the data gathered at the conference, and am finding more and more ways of using the information. Below is an example of one of the pie charts that I edited. This was the audience response to the statement that I threw in near the end of the presentation. So many people seem to think that Second Life is going to be such a big deal - I wanted to see if this tech-savvy audience had all drank the Koolaid. Apparently not (although I admit that the question was somewhat heavily loaded with the whole "Second Coming" reference - still, it was fun for me and that's what matters).

Overall, the use of the response systems added a lot to the conference in general (we used them four times) as well as my particular presentation. I understand that Turning Technologies is working on another new system that will be web-based rather than PPT-based. I very much look forward to that development. There is at least one of those web-based services available that I am aware of, but I prefer the idea of an experienced provider of the technology and one that has proven to me that they are good to work with.

Memo to Turning Technologies management: DON'T LET BLACKBOARD BUY YOU OUT - or all bets are off!!

UStream Becoming MainStream

Ustream.tv appears to be finding a significant audience, at least among many of the technology-enabled educators that I know and follow. More and more things are being broadcast live from conference presentations, to classroom activities, to special events at the school.

To that end, I will be livecasting my upcoming keynote address via UStream.tv. The keynote is scheduled for Saturday, February 16 at 5:30 Eastern time from the e-Learning 2008 conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. The topic is "E-Learning Mythbusters - Is Conventional Wisdom Wrong?"


For this presentation the audience members will be using clicker technology to vote on whether they think something is a myth or reality. I'm not sure how well that will all come through over UStream, but I'm hoping for the best. Apparently, there is a way that you can also have remote viewers vote in polls as well, but I don't think I'll have time to get that figured out by tomorrow night. That does sound very cool though.

At any rate, UStream is being used more and more all the time by educators to broadcast live events such as lectures, conference presentations, classroom projects and students speeches, and in any other way that you might think of using your own little private TV channel.

The UStream window can be embedded in any web page, including inside your VLE such as D2L, Blackboard, Angel, etc. I'm thinking that this will continue to grow. It is free. It is extremely easy. It allows for both live and archived video. Sounds pretty good to me.

Last Vista Rant - Maybe

My Vista trials and tribulations continue. I'm borrowing a laptop for the next three weeks that has a nice clean copy of Windows XP so that I can prepare for the ITC conference in St. Pete. I am making several presentations there and absolutely don't feel that I can rely on making Vista do what I need it to do during these presentations.

Tom Hoffman has given me even more reason to consider ditching Vista altogether and retreating to XP for the foreseeable future. If Windows XP is going to be supported until 2014, maybe I'll take the opportunity to completely skip the hell that is Vista - except of course for the past two months of increased gray hair and blood pressure.


Some day maybe I'll be brave enough to make the move off of Windows altogether. However, I do use several programs that currently do not have alternatives in the Linux world, but not many.

In closing, I'm hoping to make this my last Vista rant. Even I have no interest in reading this blog if it becomes just another one of the "Vista Sucks Out Loud" diatribes that are scattered all over the net - even though those are the truest words I've ever spoken.

Microsoft Windows Vista SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS!!! There, now I'm done.

More Vista Angst

So I'm shooting some personal video over the weekend (here's the result). Just messing around but using the same techniques that I would if I were making a video for work or some other serious project.

I shoot the video using my Sony DV camcorder and then try to transfer the video to my Vista-"powered" (quotes intentional) laptop for editing purposes. Well guess what? Vista doesn't recognize this very popular (and not-too-old) camcorder. So I try to find an appropriate driver at the Sony website. There isn't one.

I spend the next two hours reading various websites about how I might possibly get the camera and computer to talk to each other - but the end result is a no-go. Just another example of something that worked flawlessly (well, almost) with my previous XP-driven laptop, yet there seems to be no chance of getting it to work on this new one. Apparently the only solution is for me to buy a new digital video camera. Keep this in mind when you get stuck with Vista - you will pay for all kinds of things because software and hardware will no longer work for you the way you expect them to.

In the end I used my four-year old home computer to transfer the video, edit it in Windows Movie Maker, and upload it to YouTube. My new laptop sat in the corner with a dunce cap while I got my tasks done without it.

Vista is pathetic.