Funny (and I Agree)

As a proud Wikipediaholic, I had to chuckle when I discovered Uncylcopedia's artice on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a Massively Multiplayer Online Editing Game played by experts in redundancy, skepticism, pseudoscience, hyperlinking, reverting articles, demanding reliable sources, redundancy, verification, redundancy, identifying original research (which is often quickly denounced in the article talk pages), and initiating subtle flamewars over what is encyclopaedic.

And further down, within a list of reasons Wikipedia can't be trusted:

Most Wikipedia articles are written by people whose lives closely resemble that of that 40 year old, over-weight Comic Book virgin on The Simpsons. Therefore, they have little or no real world experience to write about.

Classic.

Time Magazine's Person of the Year

It's me! And you. And you. It's all of us.

We, the bloggers, the YouTubers, the Wikipedians... we're Time's People of the Year. Hooray for us! Awesome, Time Magazine! Thank you!

The computer itself was Time's "Person" of the Year way back in 1982. Back then, everyone knew the computer had power. The computer was going to change the world, and it has. However, kudos go to the human race for taking the reins of the computers, harnessing the power they possess, and finding ways to utilize it to empower all of ourselves. Yay, humanity!

[L]ook at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Let me quote that last sentence again:

It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Can we not apply this statement to teaching as well? Let the students wrestle that power away from us. Let them help us by letting them help each other. I don't think I need to say much more than that. This is the generation of self-controlled learning... self-directed knowledge... self-produced collaboration. We as teachers need to embrace that and allow these applications to infilitrate our classrooms daily, for the sake of each and every one of our students' futures.

DATE Conference Website

2007 DATE Conference Website

The Rain and Thunder, the Wind and Haze...

...I'm bound for better days.

Sorry, blogaholics, for the lack of posting in the last two weeks. Life is treating me like a baby treats a diaper. I'd like to thank Norm from Cheers for that gem of a metaphor, which I'm definitely appreciating right now. A lot of external factors, a lot of life things, have caused school to become very low on my list of priorities recently. The fact that school has taken this plummet in my importance list during the final two weeks of classes, though, definitely has me worried. But anyway...

I'd like to thank Ray for being a super-good friend right now, despite the fact that I barely even know him. I'd also like to thank Joe for calling me last night to ask for help with text formatting on the wiki. Good to know that, despite the lack of bloggery, I am still needed in the ENG506 classroom.

The DATE conference website, my project for the course, is in fine shape and ready for upload as soon as my username and password is received from ACS. Huzzah! One less thing to worry about.

OK, I'm needing to buckle down and spend all this time with which I find myself burdened on finishing some projects for other courses (*cough*unit plan*cough*). I just needed to blog quickly to let all my fans know that, yes, I am still alive and, yes, I'll be there for you ('cause you're there for me, too).

iWeb versus FreeWebs/GooglePages

Considering the fact that part of the course curriculum for our ENG506 class is learning iLife applications, I find it pretty funny that no one in the class (except I think Ray) is using iWeb to make his/her website. However, I actually view this as a good thing. Let me explain.

The computer applications of the future are going to be all freely available on the Web. Audacity is not quite as great as GarageBand, but it's free and available to anyone with an Internet connection. The same goes for Picasa versus PhotoShop, and for dozens of other free downloadable applications off the Web which are nearly as comprehensive as their corporate counterparts.

I'm doing my final project for this course in iWeb, and, so that I can become more familiar with multiple ways to make a webpage, I am using GooglePages to make my personal site. I know that many others are using FreeWebs. I think this is great. Down with the man -- the Internet should be free!

Seven-Goal Outburst

The first NHL highlights I saw on YouTube, and it was the amazing seven-goal second-period outburst by the Sabres in last night's pounding of Tampa Bay. Let's go Buffalo!

Enjoy Rick Jeanneret's goal calls. He is without a doubt the greatest announcer in the history of sports.

The Bloglines Plumber

I just tried to log into my Bloglines, and instead of seeing my feeds, I saw this. Apparently, according to the text that was next to the picture, Bloglines needs a little "fixer upper" and the plumber is on the case. I like it, and I'm sure my feeds will be back soon.

What do we do in the classroom when our websites, blogs, wikis, whatever are down for maintenance, or when (God forbid) they disappear altogether? Are we totally up the creek? Do we need to work contigency plans into our units/projects/lessons to account for such misfortune? I hadn't thought of this before. Very interesting.