Learning Paths

Yeah, I know, I already posted a couple of times about this.  But I really think it needs to have more attention.  Granted the third act is pretty weak (did you run out of gas guys?), the first two parts easily make up for it.

And, you know what would be cool?  A Pre-quel.  Yeah, how did Dr. Horrible even get on the road towards the Evil League of Evil?  I want to know.  Heck, I'm sure others are curious too.  Anyway, here's the whole thing from Hulu.com.

A.J. Jacobs does these life experiments for a living.  It makes me wonder, "how often do I take time to expirement with my faith and life?"  While don't completely agree with Jacobs' implimentation; I do respect the cause.

Yeah.  It's really good.  This is just a great show with wonderful music (no grammy or tony, but I do want to sing a long) and really fun acting.  The conflict set up is refreshing and I'm cheering for the 'bad guy'; how cool is that?

So, since the site is down to view this (digg\. effect) I've uploaded the torrent.  This is the FLV file for the video.  Plays great in AMP.

Click for torrent: Dr. Horibble's Sing-Along Blog - Act 01.flv.torrent (13.53 kb)

So, this looks really good; surprisingly.

I got to write a blog post on the Visual Lounge, TechSmith's corporate blog.  I really enjoy working with Betsy.  She's a lot of fun and a really good person.  I'm also glad to have SnagIt 9 out the door.  These last few months have been really hectic and it's finally slowing down.

I just got back from NECC where we demo'd SnagIt a lot as well as Jing and Camtasia.  It's fun showing educators and technology coordinators all of our software because they see the need and understand the value of visual communication. 

But, there are some funny things.  For example, aggressive handshakes.  At some shows we'll actually get hugs in the booth; nothing too weird, but it happens regularly.  Not at educations shows.  You get the impromptu-double-hankshake.  The type where they grab your hand and just start shaking it when you show them a feature that really helps.  It's really too bad that these aren't hugs, because I personally prefer them, but I understand how the American Education System is; no touchy.

"Hah!"  That's what I said when I got this in my inbox a few moments ago.

Well, since I can finally try this out, I'm going to give it a go.  I really want Live Mesh to work; or at least, have a public platform with similar functionality.  It seems like Apple's MobileMe is an honest effort, but will it play nice with other platforms and have an open API structure?  Really, I want any applicationt to be able to use these syncing technology.  Because, it really doesn't do me any good to only sync 'some' of my data and files.  I need the control to do anything I want with out constantly importing it into 'another application'.

We'll see what comes of this... now that my UAC-disable laptop can run it.

So, I saw this on TechCrunch this morning and it got me interested.  I wouldn't suggest watching all of the video posted there; it's kind of boring, but I think the idea is sound.  So, I thought I would give it a try.  If anyone else signs-up, let me know in the comments.

Scoutle.com

Betsy Weber put together a great little montage about SnagIt and all the people that love this little program.  I am proud to say I am a member of this group.  Go Sninjas!

So, I was kind of excited; I got an invite to Microsoft's Live Mesh web/desktop application for syncing files.  So, I log into Live Mesh and start playing around with it. Here's a short screencast of Live Mesh and my initial reaction:

http://screencast.com/t/oimTJavoYo

You see, Microsoft needs to learn they can't force users to use their stuff.  True, I use a lot of Microsoft products, but only the ones I like.  And right now, Live Mesh is not on my list of web/desktop applications I like.  So, good try M$, maybe I'll try this again, but not anytime soon.

The funny thing is, I bet that any XP user would not have this restriction.  So why force Vista users?  I would think that M$ already knows that most 'power users' have turned off UAC and I would think those are the early adopters they want to attract to a tech preview like this.

Of course, I'm left wonder what would happened if I logged on with a non-administrator account with UAC enabled and then installed the plug-in, but I'll never know because I'm not interested in the hassle.  But, if you've tried this, let me know.  I'd give you my Live Mesh login, but it's tied to my old-school hotmail account that I only use to access Microsoft stuff.

A good friend of mine, Jethro, had a great post on his blog about a situation he faced with Twitter and his students.  What's impressed me is the amount of comments he's received on this post.  And, I think what brought the comments out is that he was unguarded.  He just posted about the situation and tried to talk about a real situation in a real way.  So, kudos Jethro, you're doing a great thing here.

1. You're talking about a relevant and current issue; i.e. 'Students see twitter post from teacher about students in class.'  These are what Education Administration textbooks are written for.  The funny thing is, those textbooks should probably be re-written, because today they would probably suggest teachers not post to twitter-like services because Murphy's law says the students will find it.
2. You've also created a great forum here.  You have a lot of like-minded people from different groups and areas talking together.  I don't know any of the other people who posted comments, but I bet you I'll run into them again because of this strong community that's been developed.
3. You've spurred other blog posts, like this one.  Anyone else blog about this post?

So, I'm sure they'll be other topics, but this one is still so interesting.  I've had a couple other thoughts that have come out of this:

• Should/could a school be managed like a business?
• What is the social agreement in public education?  Do the teachers, students, and administration support these non-verbal agreements?  Should the agreement be verbal--or written plainly?
• What can an instructional designer learn from this?  Most of the clients I work with come from public education; what baggage do people carry from the United States public education system?
• Do I dare go against the expected; is it really worth it in the long run?  (No cheap answer here, like 'it depends'.  I want truth!)

Cool stuff this blogging/twitter/social web thing.